SOCIAL AND RURAL.
In such a record of personals as this, it is fortunate both for the author and his readers if he has never been one of those literary lions who are merely histrionic creatures of society. It is a privilege not to have to reproduce the common small-talk of ball-rooms and garden-parties, nor to be obliged to make the most, after a semi-libellous fashion, of after-dinner scandals, or gossip in the smoking-room. Not having heard them he cannot well report racy anecdotes, whereof sundry memoirs have been too full. In the happier condition of a partial anchoritism I have escaped clubs, London seasons, and country mansion gaieties; as a youth and to middle manhood a stammerer, I would not willingly court the humiliations of chattering society, and thereafter, up to to-day, a domestic country gentleman of literary pursuits, I have avoided (as far as possible) fashionable gatherings of every sort, social, theological, or political. Not that I abjure—it is far otherwise—any kind of genial intercourse with my fellows; a few friends are my delight, but I never would belong to a club, though sometimes specially tempted by indulgence as to terms (more than once having been offered a free and immediate entry), nor to any society or charity that expected of me personal publicity or active service,—albeit, once, and once only, I had to figure as a reluctant chairman at Exeter Hall. Privacy has ever been my preference; whence it will clearly be inferred how much I have had to sacrifice in the way of self-denial when forced by circumstances to enact the "old man eloquent" before assembled hundreds, sometimes thousands, as a public reader. People who have made themselves acquainted with my "Proverbial Philosophy" may remember that my Essay on Speaking contrasts the misery of the man who cannot speak with the happiness of the emancipated orator, and I have experienced them both; whilst it may be seen in what I have written about silence and seclusion how cordially and perhaps foolishly, as "wearing my heart on my sleeve," I have shown that I greatly love to be alone, especially in what I am known to call "holy silence;" in fact, as ill-nature may like to put it, I prefer my own quiet company to that disturbed by the talk of other people. So much, then, as to one cause for the scantiness in this self-memoir of expected spicy anecdotes and perilous revelations. Not but that I could make considerable mischief, and perhaps help my publisher in sales, if I chose to make the most of the many celebrities, both American and English, with whom I have had intercourse both at Albury and elsewhere. My humble hospitalities and the constant welcome I have given to strangers, have been like their author, proverbial; but that is no reason why our converse, free and frank as private fellowship commands, should be produced in print; naturally the host was ever generous, and the guest—equally, of course—appreciative.
Perhaps though, not quite always: and I am tempted here to say just one unpleasant word about the only one of my many American guests, hospitably, nay almost affectionately treated, who wrote home to his wife too disparagingly of his entertainer, his son having afterwards had the bad taste to publish those letters in his father's Life. One comfort, however, is that in "The Memoirs of Nathaniel Hawthorne," that not very amiable genius praises no one of his English hosts (except, indeed, a perhaps too open-handed London one), and that he was not known (any more than Fenimore Cooper, whom years ago I found a rude customer in New York) for a superabundance of good nature. When at Albury, Hawthorne seemed to us superlatively envious: of our old house for having more than seven gables; of its owner for a seemingly affluent independence, as well as authorial fame; even of his friends when driven by him to visit beautiful and hospitable Wotton; and in every word and gesture openly entering his republican and ascetic protest against the aristocratic old country; even to protesting, when we drove by a new weather-boarded cottage, "Ha, that's the sort of house I prefer to see; it's like one of ours at home." That we did not take to each other is no wonder. This, then, is my answer to the unkindly remarks against me in print of one who has shown manifestly a flash of genius in "The Scarlet Letter;" but, so far as I know, it was well-nigh a solitary one.
One further curious illustration of an uncongenial guest is this: Alexander Smith wrote a "Life Drama," full of sparkling poetic gems, which at once made him popular, apparently with justice enough. I asked him down to Albury, made much of him, praised warmly sundry morceaux of his (which I had marked in my copy), and to my astonishment received the brusque reply, "O, you like those, do you? I shall alter them in next edition:" as I found afterwards he did. He was a common-looking man, with a rough manner, and a squint. As he seemed upset,—though why I could not guess,—I tried in other ways to please him; as, by a ramble in the woods and a drive in the waggonette: but all would not do,—his day came to an end as gloomily as it began. Long after, I stumbled upon the reason. I had then for the first time read Bailey's "Festus," and found some passages therein very similar to Alexander's; thereafter, other little bits from some other poets (I think Tennyson was one) struck me. Little wonder, then, that I heard no more of Smith,—who clearly had thought himself found out,—and so received my first ignorance of his plagiaristic tendency as if I had known all about it: and years after Aytoun had (as I was told) avenged justice by that cleverest of spasmodic poetries, "Firmilian, by Percy Jones"—a burlesque on Alexander Smith, and a book which the world has too willingly let die. Let no one, however, after all this, fancy that I am unaware of Alexander Smith's true merit. He very neatly fitted into his mosaic word-pictures the titbits he had culled in his commonplace-book out of many poets, and so utilised them. A self-made and self-taught man, "elbow to elbow," as he told me, "with Jack, Tom, and Harry in a workshop," as a designer of patterns, he had well and wisely made the most of his scant opportunities of culture, and it is only a pity that he did not allude to something of this in a preface.
It is not for me to recall here much about the inevitable hospitalities of an old country house, to which a not unkindly host often invited English and foreign friends, whom something to do with authorship had made celebrities. Do I not pleasantly remember the jolly haymaking, when old Jerdan, calling out, "More hay, more hay!" covered Grace Greenwood with a haycock overturned, and had greeted a sculptor guest appropriately and wittily enough with "Here we are, Durham, all mustered!" the "we" being besides others, Camilla Toulmin, George Godwin, and Francis Bennoch? Do I not remember how much surprised we were at the melodies whereof an old piano was capable when touched by Otto Goldsmidt? Can I forget, also, how marvellously a young Canadian, Joseph Macdougall, of Ottawa, extemporised on the same piano as only a genius can (Mr. Assher was another), and sent me afterwards, as a memory, a vast volume of American photographs, whereof he had munificently prepaid the enormous sum of £6, 18s. for postage? And was not our village stirred to its depths by the visit to Albury House of two black gentlemen and a blue,—all in evening dress?
It was President Roberts of Monrovia, attended by his secretary and chief minister; for they came cordially to return thanks to one who had helped a little in slave emancipation, under the influences of Elliott Cresson, Dr. Hodgkin Garrison, and others,—and, moreover, had given a gold medal for African literature, biennially to be competed for by emancipated slaves;—whereof I have heard very little, since (by the volunteered assistance of Mr. Taylor, the seal engraver) I gave it many years ago: the medal was as large as a crown piece. President Benson, also of Liberia, a magnificent ebon specimen of humanity, visited me with his staff, not long before his lamented death—it was said, by murder.
Let me add now a word of kindly memory for some good friends long gone to a better world, but once welcome guests at Albury. There was Benjamin Nightingale, the enthusiastic antiquary; there was his fidus Achates, Akerman, secretary to the Numismatic, whom I greatly pleased by enabling him to catch a trout near my carriage gate; there was Chief Baron Pollok, head of the Noviomagians: the eloquent Edwards Lester of America, whose speech at a Literary Fund dinner to which I had treated him was hailed by Hallam, Dickens, and others on the spot as the speech of the Society: and the Warrens of Troy, N.Y., about whose casual visit this singular thing happened. For the first and only time in life I had had the strange luck to catch at Netley Pond three perch of nearly a pound each, and a fine trout of about two: I little knew then the final cause thereof: in those days we could not easily get fish in the country, unless indeed we caught it: now my eminent Transatlantic stranger friends came on a Friday, and proved to be Roman Catholics: could any piscatorial luck have been more timely?
When a few days after I told of my sport to a neighbour (it was Captain Russell of the Cleveland family), a great angler, he, of course, without imputation of my veracity, hinted that he wished I might have such luck again, as he would then come and dine with me. I answered at once, "Come to-morrow, and see what I may have caught." He did,—and I produced from the same old mill-head a three-pound trout,—to his astonishment, as it had been my own to have caught it. I have never had such luck before or since, though always a zealous angler in an unprofessional way.
Let me not forget here also the beautiful "Albury Waltz," composed in my drawing-room by Miss Armstrong, and published—it must be twenty years ago now—by Robert Cocks, New Burlington Street: wherein by request I originated the idea of song words for the dancers. This singing as you danced has been often done since, but I suppose no one then thought of it but myself since King David. I need say little more about Albury visitors:—for many years there were plenty of them,—but if one put down a tenth part of what even the faithless memory of old age still retains, there would be no end to such inexhaustible recordings.
And here is an Alburian anecdote which may amuse, as illustrative of the mental calibre of some of those myriads of untutored rustics whom our partisan governors have made politically equal with the wisest in the land. Three young friends came to spend a day with us, and for fun brought in their pockets the absurd noses popular at Epsom races. We came upon some turf-diggers, and my visitors mounted their masks to mystify them. The clodpoles looked scared and very quiet, till I went up to one of them who knew me,—of course I was in my natural physiognomy,—and I said to him, "My friend, these are foreigners:" and the poor ignoramus staring at those portentous noses said seriously, "Ees, I sees they be." Clearly he thought all "furriners" were so featured.
Another specimen of agricultural intelligence is this: A labourer in my field one day said to me, "Master, please to tell me where Jerusalem is, because me and my mates have been disputing about it, and I says as its in Ireland, because the Romans goes there!" He meant the Roman Catholics! and he might have heard also that St. John's Pat-mos was in fact an Irish bog, Pat's-moss: many of our legislative constituency being found to believe that.
But not only is the common labourer thus dense: take these two instances of country guests at my table. One whom I had asked to meet two Americans told me of his disappointment at not finding them—red men! And another (this time a provincial parson) wanted me to expostulate with my friend Hatchard (afterwards Bishop of Mauritius) because he meditated in his philanthropy giving a drinking fountain to Guildford. "Only think, a drinking fountain! surely you cannot approve?" The poor man supposed it was one of those pumping apparatuses for spirits presided over by barmaids! It is manifest that the schoolmaster was not so much abroad a few years ago as he has been since board schools have arisen.
Amongst other specialities of ancient Albury House, which has 1561 on a weathercock and 1701 on a kitchen wing, is the same peculiarity which Tennyson told me at Farringford vexes him in his own less ancient dwelling,—and which Pindar of old declared to be the privilege of poets. We are, and have been for generations, a very house-hive of bees: the whole front of two gables has them under its oak floors and panelled walls throughout,—and when guests sleep in certain rooms they have to be forewarned that the groans at midnight are not those of perturbed spirits, but the hum and bustle of multitudinous bees. We cannot drive them away, nor destroy them utterly,—as often has been attempted; and if we did, the worry would be only worsened, as in that case hornets would come and succeed to the sweet heritage of bee-dom. When the stuccoed front of our house was demolished, to show the oaken pattern (but it had to be re-roughcast to keep out the weather), there were pailsful of honey carried off by the labourers, of course not without wounds and strife: but in ordinary times it is a strange fact that our bees never sting their hosts; be careful only to remain quiet, and there is no war between man and bee. Two years ago a great comb was built outside an eaveboard, probably because there was no room for more comb inside. It is curious that it should have survived two hard winters. Is not all this apposite, as suited (let Pindar and Tennyson bear witness) to a poet's home?
In this zoological connection (for bees are zoa) let me record that there is a legend of a fox having been killed in our drawing-room (on the ground-floor with French windows) during some tenancy in my absence,—only fancy the havoc of such a strife! but all had been cleared up before our return. Also, it is memorable (and I saw it myself) that a hard-pressed stag from Sir Gilbert Heathcote's hunt took refuge in our harness-room,—to the extreme horror of a gardener's boy, who thought it was a mad donkey,—and no wonder, for as those brave barbarian sportsmen get the antlers sawn off for fear of wounds to themselves or their nobler dogs, the poor scared creature with its uncrowned head and loppity ears is very donkey-like.
Let me give another like homely anecdote of past days.
We are all now so wrapt in security as country dwellers, guarded by the rural police everywhere, that the following ludicrous incident may seem hardly worth a word; but in the good old days, when poor Jack was such a highway brigand that my nurses feared to take the children off the premises, and when burglars were not infrequent callers at remote residences, what happened long ago, on a certain dark winter's night, at Albury, may amuse. Long after all had gone to bed, we heard with trepidation stealthy steps crunching the snow round the house, and something that now and then touched the ground-floor doors and windows, as if quietly trying to get in: at last it fumbled at the ancient hanging handle of the outside kitchen-door! Now was the time for Paterfamilias to show his pluck, in the universal scare; so, armed cap-a-pied, with candles held in the rear by the terrified household, he valorously drew the bolts and flung open the heavy oaken door,—to greet—his children's donkey, escaped somehow from its stable, and trying to get indoors that cold night for warmth. Laugh as we might, and as you may, the test of courage was all the same; and if this donkey story is pounced upon by some critic or comic as a weak link in my chain of autobiography, I only hope he will behave as bravely if a real ruffian tries his doors and windows by night; by no means an improbable hypothesis in these days of communistic radicalism.
The old house itself may deserve a word. It came to me as a—shall I say?—matrimony, from my mother; if patrimony means from a father, why not matrimony from a mother? her great-uncle, Anthony Devis, having bought it in 1780. He was a remarkable man in his way and before his age; a good landscape painter (as Pilkington avouches), a collector of pictures and curiosities,—mostly sold by executors at his death, aged eighty-nine, though a full gallery remains at Albury; a carver too, and a constructor of cabinets,—whereof two fine specimens (inlaid with brecciated jaspers, and made of ebony and cedar from his own turning-lathe) decorate our large drawing-room; and the oldest folk in our village still remember the good old gentleman who always had gingerbread in his pockets for them as children, and who was known by them as the "man mushroom," seeing he was the first who ever had an umbrella in the place! There was, however, another and a better reason for this name, inasmuch as he built for himself an outer painting-room on a hilltop near which he called Mushroom Hall, because it was just like one (as a picture in our drawing-room testifies), being a circular turret surmounted by a flat broad dome, with overshadowing eaves all round. This strange summer-house has long vanished.
Anthony came of a good old stock paternally, as the civic archives of Preston, in Lancashire, testify; and his mother was Ann Blackburne, of Marrick Abbey, Yorkshire,—the title-deeds whereof, old slip parchments and maps from Henry II. to Henry VIII., I found in a chest at Albury, and years after transmitted them to Lord Beaumont, the present owner; albeit, as a boy, I had been allowed to cut off the seals and paste them in a copy-book! All these deeds, and the history thereof, I had printed in Nichols's Antiquariana.
The prominent feature of our village, so far as religion is concerned, has for nearly fifty years been the fact of its being the headquarters of the party originated by Edward Irving,—a full history whereof, impartially and ably written by Mr. Miller of Bicester (whose hospitality I have enjoyed for some days at Kineton), will be found at Kegan Paul's, if any wish to read it. I have always lived on kindly terms with my neighbours, though not quite of their faith; excellent are many of them, and I am glad to number such among my friends, specially as on neither side we meddle with each other's peculiar opinions. I have known nearly all their twelve apostles, men of mark and learning (especially John Tudor, a great Hebraist, and who was skilled even in Sanscrit and the arrow-headed characters), and eleven of them are among the dead, one only surviving in a vigorous old age to meet (may it be so) the Lord at His coming.