Augustus J. C. Hare

“Napoleon used to say that what was most fatal to a general was the knack of combining objects into pictures. A good officer, he said, never makes pictures; he sees objects, as through a field-glass, exactly as they are.”—Macmillan, No. 306.

To the Hon. G. Jollife.

“Holmhurst, August 1891.—I enjoyed my months in London at the time, yet was very glad to come away. It is a terrible waste of life. The size and lateness of dinners have killed society. Scarcely any one says anything worth hearing, and if any one does, nobody listens.

“‘Que de bonnes choses vont tous les jours mourir dans l’oreille d’un sot,’ was always a true saying of Fontenelle, but is less true now than formerly—there are so few bonnes choses.

“People love talking, but not talk. Dinners are rather display than hospitality, supplying abundance of sumptuous viands, but no esprit. I heard pleasanter conversation in one quiet luncheon at the Speaker’s from his delightful family than at a hundred parties: as a social art it is extinct. One never hears such conversationalists as gathered round my aunt Mrs. Stanley’s homely table long ago, or as, in later times, round Arthur Stanley, Mrs. Grote, Madame Mohl, the first Lady Carnarvon, Lord Houghton, Lady Margaret Beaumont. The dinners, in food sense, have never any attraction to me. L. and I dined out together at —— and I think it was an even match which of us suffered most, L. or myself: myself, because the dinner was too good; L., because it was not good enough.

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THE OAK WALK, HOLMHURST.
THE OAK WALK, HOLMHURST.

“From what I hear from the East End, the scandal of Tranby Croft seems to be acting as the affaire du collier did in France in preparing the way for a revolution. But the West End goes on as if nothing had happened. I saw the Emperor (of Germany) several times, a fat young man with a bright good-humoured face, though apparently never free from the oppression of his own importance, as well as of the importance of his dress, which he changes very often in the day. And I went, one glorious afternoon, when the limes were in blossom, with several thousand other people to Hatfield to meet the Prince of Naples, whose intelligence (especially on subjects connected with Natural History) seems to have pleased everybody. He is very small, but has none of the aggressive ugliness of his father and grandfather. One day I went to luncheon with Miss Rhoda Broughton, who is seen at her very best in her little house at Richmond, most attractive in its old prints and furniture and lovely river view. Then I spent a Sunday with my cousin Theresa Earle in her pretty Surrey home, and wound up the season by meeting a large party at Cobham.”

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THE VENETIAN WELL, HOLMHURST.
THE VENETIAN WELL, HOLMHURST.

To Miss Leycester (Æt. 94).

“Holmhurst, Sept. 2, 1891.—You will imagine how your birthday makes me think of you, and how much I give thanks for the blessing which your love and kindness has been to us for so many years. I like to think of you on your peaceful sofa, and I know you are like John Wilson Croker, who, when some one remarked in his presence that death was an awful thing, said, ‘I do not feel it so. The same Hand which took care of me when I came into this world will take care of me when I go out of it.’”

To W. H. Milligan, and Note-book.

“Holmhurst, Oct. 1891.—I have returned from my autumn visits, which have been delightful. The Watsons, who live at Rockingham, the old royal palace of the Midlands, are well worthy of its noble rooms and its brilliant gardens, relieved against the quaintest of yew hedges.

“At Hovingham, in Yorkshire, I found Mrs. Lowther, and we sketched together very happily. It is an unusual great house, approached through a riding-school and a sculpture gallery, which contains a huge work of Giovanni da Bologna and the loveliest little Greek statue in England. Genial Sir William Worsley, the adopted uncle of all the nicest young ladies in the county, is a centre of love and goodness, and his saint-like wife, crippled and utterly motionless from chronic rheumatism, is the sunshine of all around her. Most quaint are some of the old-fashioned dependants. The old coachman seriously asked his master, ‘Is it true, Sir William, that Baron Rothschild was refused when he offered to pay the whole of the natural debt if he might drive eight horses like the Queen, instead of seven horses and a mule?’

“We saw Gilling, the fine old Fairfax castle, and spent a delicious day at Rievaulx. Sir William has oratorios(!) annually performed in his riding-school.

“I arrived at Bishopthorpe the day before the Archbishop’s enthronement, and found a large party of relations assembling; but it would be difficult to crowd the house, as there are forty bedrooms and the dining-room is huge. The palace lies low, and out of the dining-room window you could very nearly fish in the Ouse, which often floods the cellars, the only part remaining of the original house of Walter de Gray. The rococo gateway is imposed by guidebooks upon the uninitiated as that of Wolsey’s palace at Cawood: perhaps a few of its ornaments came from thence. The ceremony in the Minster was very imposing, the more so as a military escort was given to the Archbishop, as having been an old soldier. Most moving was his address upon the responsibilities, and what he felt to be the duties, of his office. The ebb and flow of processional music was beautiful, as the long stream of choristers and clergy flowed in and out of the Minster. The Archbishop’s brothers—one of them, Sir Douglas-Maclagan, being eighty—made a very remarkable group.

“Most happy and interesting were my four succeeding days at Hickleton, where I met one of the familiar circles of people I always connect with Charlie Halifax—Lady Ernestine Edgecumbe, Lady Morton, Canon and Lady Caroline Courtenay, the Haygarths. More characteristic still of the host was the presence of a nun in full canonicals—Sister Caroline—‘this religious,’ as Charlie called her—who appeared at meals, though only to partake of a rabbit’s diet. In the churchyard a great crucifix, twelve feet high, is being erected, and the people of Doncaster do not come out to stone it; on the contrary, the crucifix and its adjuncts attract large congregations of pitmen, who would not go to church at all otherwise; and the neighbourhood is beginning to wonder how long the Church of England can dare to deny its Lord by condemning the crucifix, the vacant cross being but the frame of the picture with the portrait left out, and in itself an eloquent protest against the omission. Another smaller crucifix commemorates the three dear boys who have ‘gone home.’ The shadow of their great loss here is ever present, but it is truly a sanctified grief: their memory is kept ever fresh and the thought of them sunny, and thus they still seem to have their part—invisible—in the daily life, upon which their beautiful pictured semblances look down from the walls of their home. Only a deep sudden sigh from the father now and then recalls all he has undergone. The short morning services in the house-chapel, with its huge crucifix from Ober-Ammergau, where the household sing in parts, are very touching. Still more so are the Sunday services in the beautiful church, close to the house, the low mass, then the full surpliced choir and the blazing lights, and the holy rood above the reredos glittering through them in a golden glamour. In the darker aisle where we sat were the sleeping alabaster figures of the late Lord and Lady Halifax upon their great altar-tomb, and near me the dearest friend of my long-ago was kneeling—a stainless knight—in a rapt devotion which seemed to carry him far into the unseen. I could only feel, as Inglesant at Little Gidding, the presence of a peace and glory utterly unearthly, and as if there—as nowhere else—Heaven took possession of one and entered into one’s soul.

“A journey through the Fen country took me to Campsea Ashe, where the artistic party collected in the pleasant Lowther home spent a most pleasant week in drawing—studying—by the silent moats of old-timbered houses—Parham, Seckford, and Otley. We went also to the attractive old town of Woodbridge, where Percy Fitzgerald lived, who wrote so many capital articles. A characteristic story told of him is that he once spent the evening in the company of a bore who buzzed on incessantly about this lord and that till he could bear it no longer and left the room, but as he did so, opened the door once more, and, putting in his head, said, ‘I knew a lord once, but he’s dead!’

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BISHOP’S BRIDGE, NORWICH.
BISHOP’S BRIDGE, NORWICH. [497]

“I was at Felixstowe for a day afterwards, and made acquaintance—friends, I hope—with Felix Cobbold, a most attractive fellow, with a delightful house, and a garden close above the sea, which truly makes ‘the desert smile’ in that most hideous of all sea-places. Then I was a night at the Palace at Norwich, full of childish reminiscence to me, and most stately and beautiful it all looked—the smooth lawns and bright flowers, the grand grey cathedral and soaring spire, the old chapel and ruin; only the palace itself has had all the picturesqueness washed out of it. Its geography is entirely altered, but it was delightful to recognise old nooks and corners, and I almost seemed to see my Mother sitting by the old-fashioned chimney-piece in the Abbey-room. I spent a delightful evening with the Bishop (Pelham), who poured out a rich store of anecdote and recollection for hours. He spoke much of Manning, whom he had known most intimately—how his characteristic had always been his ambition. He wanted in early life to have gone into Parliament; then, when that failed, he wished to have entered diplomacy; then his father’s bank broke, and he was obliged to go into the Church. ‘Your uncle Julius and he,’ said the Bishop, ‘were once with my brother (Lord Chichester), and Manning had been holding forth upon the celibacy of the clergy. “At least you will agree with me,” he said, turning to my brother, “that celibacy is the holier state.” “Then of course you think,” said my brother, “that matrimony is a less holy state than celibacy.” And he started, with a reminiscence of his own happy married life, and said, “Oh no!”’

“The Bishop talked much of Jenny Lind’s visit to Norwich when he was here with the Stanleys; how the Duke of Cambridge had spoken to her of the wonderful enjoyment her noble gift of voice must be, and how she had answered, ‘I do enjoy it, and I thank God for giving it to me, and I feel that in return I ought to use it first for His glory, and then for the raising of my profession.’ When her great concert took place, Mr. Thompson, a Norwich doctor, who had the management of the town charities, ventured to put the best of the workhouse school-girls under the orchestra, where no one could see them, whilst they could hear everything. But Jenny was sometimes greatly overcome at the end of one of her own songs, and it was so then, and when her song was over, she retired to her own room; but, to reach it, she had to pass under the orchestra, and there she saw a number of girls in tears, and asked who they were. Mr. Thompson came to explain with some diffidence, for he did not know how she would take it; but she was much interested, and asked, ‘Is there any one of your charities especially to which I could be of any use?’ And he thought a minute and said, ‘What we really want is a children’s hospital; there has never been one in Norwich.’—‘Then that is just what I will give a concert for,’ said Jenny Lind; and of course every one was delighted, and so the hospital was started. Afterwards she sent down some one incognito to see how it was managed, and the report was so favourable that she said she would give another concert, and that set it up altogether. It is now the ‘Jenny Lind Hospital.’

“Talking of the late event at York led to the Bishop’s saying, ‘I heard a fine thing of Archbishop Musgrave. I was not meant to hear it, though. I was at Bishopthorpe to preach a consecration sermon for the Bishop of Ripon. It was before I was a bishop myself, and I knew nothing about precedence, and did not take my proper place in the procession as was intended, though I was all ready, and I let them all pass out before me. Only the Archbishop and Mrs. Musgrave remained. The Archbishop had had a stroke of apoplexy then, from which he was only just recovering, and it was his first appearance since, and they were all very anxious about him. Just as they were leaving the house, the Archbishop said to his wife, “My dear, take this key: it will unlock that box, in which you will find a commission ready signed and sealed for the three bishops present to take my place if anything happens to me during the service: whatever happens to me, the service must not be stopped.” And they went on quietly to the church. I did not know which to admire most, the Archbishop for making the speech, or Mrs. Musgrave’s perfect calmness in hearing it and in taking the key. I spoke of it to Mrs. Bickersteth (the Bishop of Ripon’s wife) afterwards, and she said, “That explains what the Archbishop said to me last night—‘I am afraid you may be anxious about the service to-morrow: set yourself quite at rest: everything is quite settled, so that, whatever happens to me, the ceremony of to-morrow will be carried out.’”

“The Lowthers joined me at Norwich, and we went together to Woodbastwick, and for a delightful visit to the Locker-Lampsons at Cromer. What an enchanting place it is! All the society meets on the beach. Two bathing-machines were drawn up side by side, and their inmates were in the sea. ‘I hope you will kindly consider this as a visit,’ said one of them to his neighbour, with his head just above the water. ‘Oh, certainly,’ said the neighbour, ‘and I hope you will kindly consider this as a visit returned.’

“Mr. Locker is delightful. He says, ‘I suppose what makes a bore is a man’s perpetually harping upon one subject, not knowing what details to leave out, and insisting upon making his voice heard at unsuitable times. But certainly a bore is a bore in accordance with what he is talking about: if, for instance, a man went on talking for hours of my “Lyra Elegantiarum,” I should never think him a bore.’ ‘My dear,’ he says to Mrs. Locker-Lampson, ‘are you not sometimes of rather too rigid a disposition? You know, at railway stations you often point out to me a man as eternally damned because he wears trousers with rather a broad check, and has an unusually large cigar in his mouth.’

“In Lady Buxton’s pretty house are a whole gallery of Richmond portraits—a stately full-length of (her aunt) Mrs. Fry, most speaking likenesses of her benignant father, her beautiful mother, of Sarah and Anna Gurney, the ‘Cottage Ladies’—of her father-in-law, Sir Fowell of the Slave Trade—of her sons and brothers-in-law. Yellow tulips, like those at Florence, grow wild in her fields in abundance, and the cows eat them.”

To the Countess of Darnley.

“Hotel d’Italie, Rome, March 30, 1892.—I think you will have wondered what has become of me, and that you will like to know.

“I have been abroad since November 16, beginning by a week at Paris with George Jolliffe, who was very ill then, and a month spent at Cannes in visits to the De Wesselows, old friends of my Hurstmonceaux childhood; and to my old schoolfellow Fred Walker and his nice wife, one of the few people I know who have seen two separate and undoubted ghosts with their own eyes. How civilised and be-villa’d Cannes is now, almost the least pretentious house remaining in it being the little Villa Nevada, where the Duke of Albany died, which was close to us, and which was so often visited by ‘Madame d’Angleterre,’ as the people of Cannes call our Queen. My ever-kindest of hosts were more people-seeking than place-seeing. We had one delightful picnic, however, at the old deserted villa of Castellaras, looking upon the blue gorge of the Saut de Loup. A little suspicion of earthquake remained in the air from the alarm of the last shock, when my friends’ native housemaid had refused to leave the window, saying, ‘Puisque le dernier jour est arrivÉ, je veux avoir les yeux partout, pour voir ce que se passe!’ Here at Rome there was a smart shock this spring. Our old friend Miss Garden asked her ‘donna’ if she was frightened. ‘Oh yes,’ she said; ‘I felt the two walls of my little room press in upon my bed. I knew what it was. But I could not remember which was the right saint to pray to in an earthquake. So I just prayed to my own grandmother, for she was the best person I ever knew, and immediately I heard the voice of my grandmother, who said, “Don’t be frightened; it will all pass; no harm will come to you.” So then I was quite calm and satisfied.’ Might not this incident account for many stories of Catholic saints?

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SASSO.
SASSO.

“I spent a week at Bordighera. Such varied points for walks! villages like Sasso, which are just bright bits of umber colour amongst the tender grey olives; little painted towns amongst the orange-gardens, like Dolceacqua, with its pointed bridge and blue river and great deserted palace of the Dorias. George Macdonald, a most grand old patriarch to look upon, is king of the place. He writes constantly, and never leaves the house, except to see a neighbour in need of help or comfort. One after another of his delicate daughters has faded away, but his sons seem strong and well, and there are several adopted children in the house, half in and half out of the family, but all calling Mrs. Macdonald ‘Mama.’ It is a very unusual household, but ruled in a spirit of love which is most beautiful. I dined with them, the dining-table placed across one end of the vast common sitting-room. On Sunday evenings he gives a sort of Bible lecture, which all the sojourners in Bordighera may attend.

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AT BORDIGHERA.
AT BORDIGHERA. [498]

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AT REBEKAH’S WELL, NEAR S. REMO.
AT REBEKAH’S WELL, NEAR S. REMO.

“Then I was a month in a palatial hotel at S. Remo, and greatly enjoyed bright winter days of quiet drawing in its ravines with their high-striding bridges, by its torrents full of Titanic boulders, or on its pathlets winding through vine and fig gardens or along precipitous crags; most of all in a delicious palm-shaded cove by the sea, where I spent whole days alone with the great chrysoprase waves breaking over the rocks in showers of crystal spray. With a charming Mrs. Rycroft and her pleasant Eton boys, I made longer excursions to Ceriano and Badalucco, very curious places surrounded by high mountains, with deep gorges, old bridges, and waterfalls.

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AT S. REMO.
AT S. REMO.

“But it is in changed, spoilt Rome that I have spent the last two months. All picturesqueness is now washed out of the place, so that people who have any interest about them now usually give it only a glance and pass on. It has been delightful for me, however, that Miss Hosmer is settled in this hotel, and that we dine together daily at a little round table, where she is a constant coruscation of wit and wisdom. All day she is shut up in her studio, which is closed to all the world, but she cannot have a dull time, by the stories she has to tell of the workmen and models who are her only companions. Here are a few of them, only they sound nothing without her twinkling eyes and capital manner of telling:—

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GLEN AT S. REMO.
GLEN AT S. REMO.

“‘Minicuccia was an excellent model, but very jealous. “Have you seen Rosa? What fine arms she has!” I said to her one day. “I have seen Rosaccia” she replied, “and I should have thought, Signorina, that a lady of your taste would have known better than to admire her arms. What are they in comparison with really fine arms—with mine, for instance?”

“‘One day Minicuccia was at a cafÉ, and some one admired the legs of another model. Forthwith she gathered up her petticoats, and danced with her legs perfectly bare all about the place. She was not a bad woman; on the contrary, she was a very moral one, and there was never a word against her, but she wanted to show what fine legs were. The police, however, heard of that escapade, and she was put in prison for a month afterwards for such an offence against the decenza pubblica. Poor Minicuccia!

“‘Then there was Nana, whom Lady Marian (Alford) painted so often, and whom she was so fond of. She was a magnificent woman. Dear Lady Marian used to say, “I would give anything to be able to come into a room with the grace and dignity of Nana.” Her dignity was natural to her. Another model once said to me, “I met that Nanaccia; she was walking down the Via Sistina as if it all belonged to her.”

“‘There was a very nice boy-model I had, Fortunato he was called. He is dead now—died of consumption, for he was always delicate. One day he said to me, “Last Sunday, Signorina, I went to the garden of the Cappuccini, and it is such a garden!—quite full of fruit, the most beautiful fruit. And the Fathers are so kind; they said I might eat as much as ever I liked; only think of that, Signorina!”—“Well, that was kind indeed; but what sort of fruit was it?”—“O, cipolle and lettuge,[499] Signorina—most delicious fruit.”

“‘Marietta was another model who came to me, a large handsome woman. One day I said to her, “Now, Marietta, I want you to look sad—tutta dolorosa.”—“What! lagrime, Signorina?”—“No,” I said, “only look sad; but if I wanted lagrime, could I have them too?”—“SÌ, Signora: basta pensare a quel calzolajo chi m’a fatto pagare sette lire in vece di cinque, et piango subito.”[500]

“‘Marietta had a brother who managed her little business for her. I asked her if it would not be very easy for him to misappropriate a scudo now and then. “Facile sÌ,” she said, “essendo fratello.”

“‘Mariuccia lived to be old, and many is the dinner and paolo I have given her; but when she was fifteen or so, she was the model for Mr. Gibson’s ‘Psyche borne by the Zephyrs.’ She was always a wonderful model: no one could act or stand as she did.

“‘Then there was that woman who had the drunken husband, who used to beat her. One night he came in late and fell down dead drunk across the bed. She took her needle and thread, and sewed him up in the sheets so that he could not move, and then she took a stick, and beat him so that he died of it: she was imprisoned for some years for that, though.

“‘I asked one of the workmen what he did when every one was away. “Why, Signorina, I have the studio to clean out.”—“Well, I suppose that takes you half-an-hour; and what do you do then?”—“Ma, Signorina, sto a sedere.”—“And after your dinner, what do you do then?”—“Sto ancora a sedere, Signorina.”—“Well, and in the evening?”—“Ma, Signorina, continuo di stare a sedere.”

“‘My man Gigi came to me the other day and said, “I went to the Acqua Acetosa[501] last Sunday, Signorina, and I liked the water so much, I drank no less than twenty fiaschi of it.”—“Well,” I said, “Gigi, that was a good deal; I’ll get twenty fiaschi of it, and put twenty scudi down by them, and then, if you can drink them all off, you shall have the scudi.”—“Well, Signorina, perhaps I did exaggerate a little: now I come to think it over, perhaps it was ten fiaschi I drank.”—“Well, do it again before me, and you shall have ten scudi.” “Now, Signorina, you know I like to be precise, perhaps it was six fiaschi I drank.”—“Well, do it again and you shall have six scudi.”—“Well, I suppose it really was two fiaschi.”—“Oh, I could drink that myself!”’

“You may imagine how entertaining stories like these—traits from the life around one—make our little dinners, and afterwards we often go into the Storys’ apartment close by, where the easy intellectual pleasant talk and fun are always reviving. Besides, it amuses Mrs. Story, who is most sadly ailing now, though her cheerfulness is an example. She says she comforts her sleepless nights by the old distich—

“Nothing can describe the charm of Mr. Story’s natural bubble of fun and wit, or the merry twinkle which often comes into his eye, even now, at moments when his wife’s illness does not make him too anxious.[502] He and Miss Hosmer are capital together. It is difficult to say what are their ‘projecting peculiarities,’ as Dr. Chalmers would have called them, they have so many; but they are all of a perfectly delightful kind.

“‘Well, what’s the news, Harriet?’ he said as we went in to-night. ‘Why, that I am going to be married.’—‘What! to the Pope?’—‘Yes, only I didn’t want it to get out till he announced it himself.’

“‘An American was looking at my statue of Canidia the other day,’ said Mr. Story, and exclaimed—“Ah! Dante, I suppose, or is it—Savonarola?” Another man who came to my studio said, “Mr. Story, have you baptized your statue?”—“Why, yes,” I said; “generally we think of the name first, and then we set to work in accordance with it.”—“Well,” he said, “there’s some as doos, and there’s some as doosn’t.”’

“Mrs Story was very amusing about an Italian who wanted a portrait of his father very much, and came to an artist she knew and asked him to paint it. The artist asked, ‘But when can I see your father?’—‘Oh, you can’t see him: he’s dead.’—‘But how can I paint him, then?’—‘Well, I can describe him, and he was very like me: I think you can paint him very well.’ So the artist painted away, according to the description, as well as he could. When he had finished the portrait he sent for the son, anxious to see if he would find any likeness. The son rushed up to the picture, knelt down by it, was bathed in tears, and sobbed out, ‘O padre mio, quanto avete sofferto, o quanto siete cambiato: O non l’aveva mai riconosciuto.’

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CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT.
CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT. [503]

“Mr. Story says that when Othello was performed at Rome, he saw it with an Italian friend, who said afterwards, ‘Convengo che ci sono qualche belle concette in questa dramma, ma fare tanto disturbo per un fazzoletto non mi conviene.’

“Miss Hosmer told of a countryman who was asked what he thought of a train, for he had just seen one for the first time—seen it as it was entering a tunnel. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was just a black monster with a goggle eye, and when it saw me, it gave a horrible shriek and ran into its hole.’

“I should like you to have heard Miss Hosmer’s recollections of Kestner, whose name was so familiar to me in old Bunsen days. He died soon after she first came to Rome, but she recollects him as always wearing his old red studio cap. He knew he was dying, and when it was very near the end, he said to those who were with him, ‘Now, my dear friends, it is a very sad experience to see a person die: I must beg you to leave me: it is my great wish to be alone, and you may come back in two hours.’ They came back in two hours, and found him lying peacefully dead. That is a beautiful story, I think. It was Kestner who, priding himself very much on his good English, said to Lord Houghton, ‘Allow me to present to you my knee-pot (nipote).’

“Outside the charmed circle of Palazzo Barberini there is little now at Rome but the most inferior American society. ‘We must stop at Milan, you know, going back; there is a picture there by a man called Leonard Vinchey we must be sure to see,’ said a neighbour at the hotel luncheon. And, ‘Mr. Brown, sir, how’s Mrs. Brown’?—‘Well, she’s slim but round’ (meaning weak but about): this is the sort of thing one hears.

“In this hotel is the intelligent Indian Princess Tanjore, with whom I have spent several evenings very pleasantly. Her ‘lady’ is Miss Blyth, sister of the Bishop of Jerusalem, and authoress of that capital novel ‘Antoinette.’

“Dear old Miss Garden, whom you will remember hearing of as the kindest and most original of Scottish ladies, still lives at 64 Via Sistina. ‘How did you manage to boil the eggs so well, Maria, when you can’t tell the clock?’ said Miss Garden to her old donna, ‘for the eggs are just perfect.’—‘Why, I’ll tell you how it is,’ said Maria: ‘a lady I lived with showed me how to do it. I just put them into the water, and then I say thirty-three Credos, and then I know that they’re done.’

“With Miss Garden and Mrs. Ramsay I went one day to the curious little early christian cemetery of S. Generosa, a lovely spot, where marble slabs covering the graves of martyrs under Diocletian are still seen in a little hollow surrounded by wild roses and fenochii.

“My room in this hotel looks out on the Barberini gardens, and the splash of its fountain is an enjoyment. Its being lighted by electricity for the King’s visit the other day was a type of the times, rather a contrast to twenty years ago, when there were torches on every step of the great staircase to welcome even a cardinal, and when not only the staircase, but the whole street as far as S. Teresa, was hung with tapestries for the Prince’s funeral.

“On Ash-Wednesday I went, as I have always done here, to the ‘stations’ on the Aventine. It is still a thoroughly Roman scene. Before one reaches S. Sabina, one is assailed by the chorus of old lady beggars seated in a double avenue of armchairs leading up to the door, with ‘Datemi qualche cosa, signore, per l’amore della Madonna, datemi qual’co;’ and behind them kneel the old men—‘Poveri, poveretti cieci, signore,’ in brown gowns and with arms stretched out alla maniera di S. Francesco. Spread with box is the church itself, with its doors wide open to the cloistered porch and the sacred orange-tree[504] seen in the sunny garden beyond. The Abbot is standing there, and has his hand kissed by all the monks who arrive for the stations, till a cardinal appears, after which he takes the lower place and is quite deserted. Then we all hurry on to S. Alessio and its crypt, and then to the Priorato garden, where, by old custom, we look through the keyhole of the door, and see St. Peter’s down a beautiful avenue of bays.

“The passage of the Pope to the Sistine on his coronation anniversary was a very fine sight. Borne along in his golden chair, with the white peacock fans waving in front of him, and wearing his triple crown, Leo XIII. looked dying, but gave his benediction with the most serene majesty, sinking back between each effort upon his cushions, as if the end had indeed come. Only his eyes lived, and lived only in his office; otherwise his perfectly spiritualised countenance seemed utterly unconscious of the thundering evvivas with which he was greeted, and which rose into a perfect roar as he was carried into the Sala Regia. The potency of ‘Orders’ here is so great, that my Swedish decoration not only gave me the best place, but I took in two young men as my chaplain and equerry! After the Pope had entered the Sistine, we sat in great comfort in the Sala Regia till he returned, and then, as there was no one between us and the procession, we saw all the individual faces of the old cardinals—how few of them the same now as those I remember in the processions of Pius IX.

“There are no evvivas now for the comparatively young king with the white hair and the ever-tragic countenance: the taxes are too great. I believe that he can read, if no one else can, the handwriting on the wall which foretells the doom of his southern kingdom. And yet personally no one could be braver or more royal, and, where they detest the king, the people honour the man. ‘Your king is at that house which has fallen down, helping with his own hands to dig out that old man who is buried: he won’t leave till the old man is safe,’ said Mrs. Story to her Italian maid Margherita. ‘Si, Signora, casa di Savoia manca qualche volta di testa, mai di cuore;’ and it is quite true. All one hears of the King’s self-abnegation is so fine. He used to be quite devoted to smoking, but he was ill, and one day his physician told him that it was extremely deleterious to him. He instantly took his cigar out of his mouth, threw it into the back of the fire, and has never smoked again.

“The Pope’s secretary has just died of the influenza. Leo XIII. was much attached to him, and is greatly distressed by his death. There is something touching in the newspaper account of the Pope’s having refused to eat, and his attendants having had to use qualche dolce violenze to make him do it.

“We have had two months of rain, only four fine days last week, in which I went to the Crimera, to Fidenae, to Ostia, and to a touching and beautiful Mass in the heart of the Catacomb of S. Praetextatus, where the martyrs’ hymn was sung by a full choir upon their graves, its cadences swelling through the subterranean church and dying away down the endless rude passages, so long their refuge, and at last their place of death.

“And now I must stop. I am just come up from luncheon. ‘Wal, I guess I’m stuffed, but I’m not appeased,’ said my neighbour as we came out; and she was con rispetto parlando, as they say here—a lady.”

To Hugh Bryans.

“Rome, April 26, 1892.—How I wish you were here: how you would enjoy it, though there is little to admire now in this much-changed Rome beyond the extreme loveliness of the spring, with its Judas and May flowers, and the golden broom of the Campagna. I have just been, with my old friends Mrs. Ramsay and Miss Garden, to the Villa Doria to pick anemones. There were thousands of them, and the ladies gathered them in like a harvest. Their servant was told off to look after the violets. Their late man, Francesco, said his was usually a very light place—‘ma nella primavera, al tempo dei violette, e duro veramente.’

“I have seen little of the Easter ceremonies. On Holy Thursday I went to St. Peter’s, and watched in the immense crowd for the extinction of the last candle and beginning of the Miserere; but all the effect was lost and the music inaudible from the incessant moving and talking. Afterwards there was a fine scene at the blessing of the altar in the already dark church—the procession, with lights, moving up and down the altar-steps, and then kneeling all along the central aisle, whilst the relics were exhibited from the brilliantly lighted gallery.

“Fifty-eight artisans and schoolmasters from the Toynbee Hall Institute, with some of their wives, have been in Rome for the Easter holidays. On Thursday I took them all over the Palatine, finding them most delightful companions, and the most informed and interested audience I have ever known. So since that I have been with them to the Appian Way, and Miss Fleetwood Wilson kindly invited the whole party to tea at the old Palazzo Mattei, unaltered through three hundred years. I made friends with many of the party individually, and think that for really good, intelligent, high-minded society, one should frequent the East End.

“What struck me most of all was the absence amongst them of the scandal-talk which in our own society is so prevalent. ‘Consider how cheap a kindness it is not to speak ill: it only requires silence,’ is an exhortation of Bishop Tillotson. They remember this; we don’t.

“Do you recollect the pretty Miss Cators? With them and some pleasant Americans, and Lanciani the famous archaeologist, I have been up Monte Cavi. Lanciani was most delightful, and told us about everything in a way which had all the enthusiasm and colour without the dry bones of archaeology, and oh! what lilies, violets, cyclamen, narcissus, covered the woods. Another day he lectured on old Fidenae, standing aloft on the ancient citadel, with all his listeners in groups on the turf around him, and afterwards they all had luncheon—still in scattered groups: it was like the pictures of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

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REMAINS OF TEMPLE OF JUPITER LATIARIS, MONTE CAVI.
REMAINS OF TEMPLE OF JUPITER LATIARIS, MONTE CAVI. [505]

“It has been a great pleasure to see a good deal of ‘Mark Twain’ (Mr. Samuel Clemens) and his most charming wife. He is a wiry, thin old man, with abundant grey hair, full round the head, like an Italian zazzara. He speaks very slowly, dragging his words and sentences laboriously, and is long in warming up, and when he does, he walks about the room whilst he makes all his utterances, which have additional drollery from the slowness with which they are given. He began life as a wharfinger, throwing parcels into barges, and as he threw them the overseer called out ‘Mark one, Mark twain,’ and the chime of the words struck him, and he took the name. Speaking of the Catacombs he said, ‘I might have hooked the bone of a saint and carried it off in my carpet-sack, but then I might get caught with it at the frontier. I should not like to get caught with a thing like that; I would rather it were something else.’ ‘That story by Symonds,’ he said, ‘of a crucifix which contained a dagger, reminds me of the State of Maine. Spirits were strictly forbidden there, but pocket-testaments became very abundant. They contained two or three leaves, then there was a whisky flask. Now with one of those crucifixes and one of these pocket-testaments, one might cope with the worst society in the world.’

“‘My man George has made his fortune,’ said Mark Twain. ‘He used to bet on revivals, then he took to betting on horses: he understands it all round, and he has made a good thing of it.

“‘One night when I came home unawares, I found the house-door open. After going in and poking round, I rang up George. “Well,” I said, “George, you’ve been here probably some hours with the house-door undone.”—“Good heavens!” he cried, striking his forehead, and rushed up the stairs five steps at a time. When he came down I said, “Why, George, what was the matter?”—“The matter! why, that the house-door was left open, and that there were fifteen hundred dollars between my mattresses.”’

“Mrs. Clemens spoke to George one day about his answering ‘Not at home’ when she did not want to see visitors. In England it is understood, but in quiet places in America it is not: it is a lie. And Mrs. Clemens said, ‘George, you really should not say what you know is not true; you should say I’m engaged or that I beg to be excused.’ George came close up to her and said, ‘Mrs. Clemens, if I did not lie, you’d not be able to keep house a month.’

“A rival to Mark Twain, or rather one who draws him out capitally, is an American Miss Page, a very handsome elderly woman like an ancient Juno. She said yesterday, ‘I must be going home soon to see all the coloured friends and relations. Aunt Maria was groaning very much one day, so I asked her if she had found religion. She said, “No, but she was on the anxious bench.” A few days after she had “found religion,” and I asked her about it. “Why,” she said, “I got religion, and when I found that I’d got religion, I just did make the chignots (chignons) fly. And so we did all; we danced so hard that Uncle Adam had to be sent right away the next day to bring them all home in a wheelbarrow.”

“‘My cousin was begged of by a woman one night,” said Miss Page. ‘She was very violent, and she said, “You must give me money, you shall, or I’ll say you’re Jack the Ripper.” He went close up to her, and in sepulchral accents whispered “I am!” and the woman ran off as hard as she could.’

“There are other friends I must tell you about. At No. 38 Gregoriana, in a delightfully home-like apartment with a view of St. Peter’s, live Miss Leigh Smith and her friend Miss Blyth. The former is a sister of Madame Bodichon, who was such an admirable artist, and is of a most serene, noble, and beautiful countenance, but perhaps severe: the latter is gentleness and sweetness itself, though she is less striking in appearance. Every one likes them both, but every one loves Miss Blyth. They are known as ‘Justitia’ and ‘Misericordia.’

“Another person of interest, another American, who has come to Rome to visit Miss Hosmer, is Mrs. Powers. She is charming. She said this to me to-day: ‘I took a young lady with me on a Mississippi steamer. She was very pretty and attractive. On the deck she sat by an old lady, who looked at her and ejaculated “Married?”—“No.” “Engaged?”—“No.” Just then her husband came up, and she said to him, “Here’s a young lady who says she’s not married and not engaged: how’s that?” He looked her all over and said, “Guess the pattern don’t take.”’

“And now, that you may be introduced to all my present society, Miss Hosmer is going to give you one of her dinner enliveners. ‘An American came in one day with, “Have you heard this extraordinary news from England?”—“No; what?”—“Why, about the Archbishop of Canterbury.”—“No; what about him?” “Why, about his having refused to bury a waiter at the Langham Hotel.”—“No; what a proud contemptuous priest he must be; but what possible reason could he give for refusing to bury the waiter?”—“Why, that he was not dead.”

“‘That’s a good catch,’ says Miss Hosmer, who is talking to you; ‘and now I’ll give you another. A young man—a very charming young man—was engaged to be married, and he went down from London for the wedding to the place where his bride lived, full of the brightest hopes and expectations, and in his pocket he carried the ring with which he was going to marry his love. But alas! when he reached his destination, his love had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not marry him at all. So he came away very miserable, and he thought he would go and hide his sorrows in a little fishing-village, where he had often been in happier days; he really could not face the world yet. And as soon as he arrived at the village, he went out in a boat, and took the ring from his pocket, and threw it far out to sea. Next day a remarkably fine fish was brought to table, and when it was opened, what do you think they found?—“Why, the ring,” of course you will say, as I did—No, a fishbone.’ A most provoking story!

“There are two Misses Feuchtwanger in the hotel, kindest of elderly American ladies, full of funny reminiscence. ‘Mrs. Broadhurst,’ said one of them, ‘liked nothing so much as going to dine with her old “Black Mammy;” it was the thing she liked best: and so, through a long course of years, she heard Black Mammy’s old husband say grace, and the words he used were always the same. “Beautiful mansions, we thee redorable, many sensations, Amen.” The sound meant a whole world to him.’

“But I shall send you too much anecdotage, so good-night.”

To the Hon. G. H. Jolliffe and Journal.

“Rome, April 27.—All the features of this Roman spring have been American. Mrs. Lee was in this hotel. ‘I was just raised in the South,’ she said, ‘and I’m a Southerner to the backbone. Some one wanted to be complimentary, and wrote of me in a newspaper as one raised in the lap of luxury, but I was just raised in the lap of an old nigger.’ She was very full of having been to the masquerade ball at La Scala. ‘It was awfully indecent. I could not have let my daughter go, but for me it did not matter; so I just went, and stayed to the end, for I thought some one might come along and say, “Ah! you don’t know about that, because it happened after you left,” so I thought I’d just see what was indecent for once; it might be my only chance; and I made quite sure nothing should happen after I left.’

“‘Don’t you know,’ she says, ‘that we call a story we have heard before “a chestnut”? Why, in America the smart young men used to wear a little bell on their watch-chains, and if they heard a story too often, they rung it to show the story was stale. That was the chestnut-bell.’

“Perhaps the most interesting American here is the Bishop of Nova Scotia. ‘“I’ve captured a church,” said a young American parson to me. “Captured a church! what in the world do you mean?”—“Why, I went into a church where the boys (soldiers) go, and I was asked to take the service. Soon the boys came in, and I saw that there was going to be a row. A lot of them sat down by the door, and as soon as I began to preach, one of them crowed like a cock. I said, ‘Just crow again, will you; I’m not ready for you yet.’ So he crowed again. Then I said, ‘Now, if you crow again, I’ll just fix up your beak to the anvil of God’s righteousness, and I’ll beat out your brains with the sledge-hammer of the wrath of God. Now, crow again, if you dare,’ and he did not crow any more, so I captured the church.”

“‘I would not give five cents to hear what Bob Ingleson considers to be the faults of Moses, but I’d give every cent I possess to know what Moses thinks of the faults of Bob Ingleson.

“‘I asked somebody if he thought my sermon was too low or too high, and he said “Neither, but I thought it was too long.”’

“I always dine at a little table with Miss Hosmer, where I am sure her fun and wit are more nourishing than all the rest of the viands put together. She says, ‘Our real name is Osmer, but our country people could never manage a name like that, so we voluntarily added the H. Generally, provided we are born somehow, we never care who our fathers and mothers were; but I did, and I had an uncle who found out that we were descended from a robber chieftain on the Rhine. Afterwards, in Turner’s “History of the Anglo-Saxons,” I found that the robber chief Osmer was one of the sons of Ida, king of Northumberland, and Ida claimed descent from Odin, so it is from Odin that I descend.’

“‘I promised to tell you about the siege of Rome,’ said Miss Hosmer the other day. ‘All that year we knew it was coming, and at last it came. The Italians had 70,000 men, and the Pope had only 11,000, so of course all effectual resistance was out of the question; but it was necessary to make a semblance of defence, to show that the Romans only gave in to force. September came, and the forestieri who remained in Rome were all urged to leave, but Miss Brewster and I elected to stay. We were not likely to have another chance of seeing a bombardment, so we just hung an American flag out of our windows; that we were told we must do, as it might be necessary to protect us from pillage. All the other forestieri left, and most of the Roman aristocracy. In the last days, when the Sardinians were just going to enter, there was a solemn Mass in St. Peter’s for the Pope, to implore protection for him against his enemies. I went with Miss Brewster. It was the most striking sight I ever saw. Every corner of the vast church was filled. Every one was in black—every one except the Pope in his white robes, and when he appeared, a universal wail echoed through the church. It was not a silent cry; it was the wail of thousands. There was not a dry eye in the church. The Pope passed close to me. His face was as white as his dress, and down his face the large tears kept rolling, and all his clergy, in black, were crying too. Oh, it was a terrible sight. I am not a Catholic, I am much the contrary, but I sobbed; every one did. Well, the Pope passed into the chapel where he was to say Mass, and he said it, and he walked back again; but he was still crying. It was very piteous, and when we went out into the piazza, there was Monte Mario white with the tents of the Italians, waiting, like vultures, to descend. It was uncertain, for the last few days, by which gate they would enter. It was thought it would be by the Porta Angelica, then by the Porta del Popolo; finally, it was by the Porta Pia.

“‘We were told that there would be no bombardment, but at five in the morning we were waked by the cannon, and they went on till ten. Shells came flying over our house, and one of them struck the church near us, and carried part of it away. At ten there seemed to be a cessation, so I sallied out as far as the Quattro Fontane, with my man Pietro behind me. When I got into the Via Pia (now Venti Settembre), I heard a cry of “In dietro! in dietro!” and the people ran. I thought I might as well get out of the way too, but indeed, any way, I was carried back by the crowd. I heard what I thought was a scampering of feet behind me, and when I reached the Quattro Fontane, I looked back, and seeing a man I knew, I said, “Why, what is the matter with you?” for he was covered with blood, and he said, “Why, Signorina, did not you know that a shell burst close behind you, and it has carried off several of my fingers, Signorina?” So I just took him into my house and gave him some wine, and bound his hand up as well as I could, and then sent him on to a surgeon. Then I went up to Rossetti’s house beyond the Cappuccini, because I thought from his loggia I should be able to see all that was to be seen; but as soon as we reached the roof a musket-ball grazed my face, and others were playing round us, so I said, “We had better get out of this,” and we went down.

“‘After the firing finally stopped, we went to Porta Pia to see the damage. The house which is now the British Embassy was completely riddled. Six dead Zouaves were lying in the Villa Napoleone opposite, and though the statues of S. Peter and S. Paul, which you will remember at the gate, were otherwise intact, both their heads were lying at their feet.

“‘At four, we went out again to see the Italian troops march into the city. There was no enthusiasm whatever. The troops divided, some going by S. Niccola, others by the Quattro Fontane, to their different barracks.’

“No one who did not know the ‘has been’ can believe how the sights of the Rome of our former days have dwindled away. All is now vulgarity and tinsel: the calm majesty of the Rome of our former winters is gone for ever.”

To Miss Leycester.

“Cadenabbia, May 13.—At Florence, I went with the Duchess of Sermoneta and Lady Shrewsbury to spend an evening with the grand old family of Torrigiani, in the palace where the four sons, their wives, and children innumerable, live with their charming mother, the Marchesa Elisabetta, in perfect harmony and love; and another day went out to Poggio Gherardo, a grand fortified villa, approached through half-a-mile of roses, where the Ross’s now live. Then I was half a day at Padua, visiting it as a tourist after many years, with my own book as a guide, and a most delightful book I thought it!

“At Venice, I went to see ‘Pen Browning’ at the Palazzo Rezzonico, his most beautiful old palace, full of memorials of Pope Clement XIII. The son Browning has no likeness to either father or mother: he has worked hard, both as painter and sculptor, and has a good portrait as well as a bust of his father, from his own hands. There were many relics of his parents and their friends, amongst them a sketch by Rossetti of Tennyson reading one of his own poems to them, with an inscription by Mrs. Browning. ‘Pen’ was going off to his house at Asolo, a place which his father first brought into notice when he walked there and wrote ‘Pippa Passes.’

“Calling on a Mrs. Bronson in a neighbouring house, I met a young lady with fluffy hair, a Countess Mocenigo. ‘My dear, how many Doges had you in your family?’ said Mrs. B. ‘Seven,’ she answered, and there really were seven Doges of the name Mocenigo, besides all those from whom she was descended by the different marriages of her ancestors.

“Venice is still as full of odd stories as when my sister went to a party there, and was surprised because the oddly dressed old lady by her side never answered when she spoke, and then found she was made of wax. Most of the company were, being ancestors present thus in the family life of the present. Recently a lady named Berthold has lived at Venice who was of marvellous beauty and charm. All the society flocked to her parties. One evening she invited all her friends as usual. They found the palace splendidly lighted, and listened to the most exquisite music. At the close of the evening, curtains which concealed a platform at the end of the principal room were drawn aside, and within, the beautiful hostess was seen, seated on a throne, and sparkling with jewels, in all her resplendent loveliness. And then, as she waved a farewell to all present, the curtains were suddenly drawn, and she disappeared for ever. No human eye has seen her since. She had observed signs, unperceived by others, that her beauty was beginning to wane!

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VENETIAN POZZO.
VENETIAN POZZO. [506]

“In the hotel was a charming old lady who had just come back from Japan, and who was arrayed in a thick quilted and embroidered dress, presented to her by a Japanese lady. Her name, American fashion, was Mrs. Mary Ridge Perkins. Her husband had sent her abroad, as she said, ‘with a big letter of credit.’ ‘Mary, you may just go and do the honours of the old country alone.’ She hates English aristocrats, but was ameliorated towards Lord Digby, with whom she travelled back from Japan. He pressed her to come and see him in London—‘Not if you have your paint on.’ She has no children of her own, but, in the war, she and her husband adopted no less than thirty, who were rendered homeless. They all call her ‘Auntie Perkins,’ but their children call her grandmother. All the thirty are married now, and Mrs. Perkins never intends to leave her own home again, except to visit them. She came down to the gondola to see me off to the station with no bonnet on her aureole of short white curls, and I was touched by her parting benediction: ‘May your life always be happy, for you have always made others happy.’

“Here, at pleasant Cadenabbia, I have been glad to fall in with Lord and Lady Ripon. He said, ‘Do you know that you have been the cause of my buying a property in Italy?’ It was in consequence of the sentence in my ‘Cities of Central Italy’ beseeching some Roman Catholic nobleman to save such a sacred and historic place, that he had bought S. Chiara’s convent of S. Damiano near Assisi, giving its use to the monks on the sole condition that it was never to be ‘restored.’

“An odd thing has happened to me here, almost like a slight shadow on the path. I met —— who lives here, and whom I used to know very well, and went up to meet him with pleasure, and he cut me dead! I have not an idea why, and he will give no explanation. ‘Il faut apprendre de la vie À souffrir la vie.’

“The Archbishop of York and Augusta are at Cadenabbia, and have taken me across the lake in their little boat to tea with Charlie Dalison on that lovely terrace of Villa Serbelloni.”