I went with the Provost to dine at New Lodge (Mr. Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister's), and found there the Dean of St. Paul's and Mrs. Milman, he most bright and animated, she "icily bland and coldly amiable as ever." I was quite delighted with the Van de Weyers, especially the second son Albert (who afterwards died young). M. Sylvain Van de Weyer, through life the trusted friend and representative of Leopold I. of Belgium, had the expensive hobby of books, collecting rare editions and the earliest printed classics, a taste inherited from his father, who kept a circulating library at Louvain. When he showed us two shelves of books in his library he said, "I have read all these whilst waiting for dinner. I am always down punctually, and my guests are always late. From my library I see them arrive, and never join them till a good many are come: thus I have got through all these." Madame Van de Weyer was immensely fat. She had lately been with her husband to a concert at Windsor, and been much jostled, at which she was very indignant. "Why, they take us for pages," she said to her husband. "No, my dear," he replied; "they take me for a page, but they take you for a volume."
On the last occasion on which I saw the Provost Hawtrey before his death, he said to me that he knew I collected curious stories, and that there was one story, intimately connected with his own life, which he wished that I should write down from his lips, and read to him when I had written it, that he might see that it was perfectly correct.
Here is the story as he gave it:—
"In the time of my youth one of the cleverest and most agreeable women in Europe was Madame de Salis—the Countess de Salis—who had been in her youth a Miss Foster, daughter of the Irish Bishop of Kilmore. As a girl she had been most beautiful and the darling of her parents' hearts, but she married against their will with the Count de Salis. He was a Swiss Count, but he took her, not to Switzerland, but to Florence, where he hired a villa at Bellosguardo. There the life of Madame de Salis was a most miserable one: she had many children, but her husband, who cut her off from all communication with her friends, was exceedingly unkind to her. She was married to him for several years, and then she was mercifully released by his death. It was impossible for her to pretend to be sorry, and she did not pretend it: she hailed it as the greatest mercy that could have befallen her.[186]
"Madame de Salis went back to Ireland, where her parents, the old Bishop of Kilmore and Mrs. Foster, were still alive, and welcomed her with rapture. But she had left them a radiant, beautiful, animated girl; she returned to them a haggard, weird, worn woman, with that fixed look of anguish which only the most chronic suffering can leave. And what was worst was that her health had completely given way: she never slept, she never seemed able to rest, she had no repose day or night: she became seriously ill.
"All the best advice that could be procured was hers. There was a great consultation of doctors upon her case, and after it had taken place, the doctors came to the Bishop and said, 'The case of Madame de Salis is an extraordinary one; it is a most peculiar, but still a known form of hypochondria. She cannot rest because she always sees before her—not the horrible phantom which made her married life so miserable, but the room which was the scene of her suffering. And she never will rest; the image is, as it were, branded into her brain, and cannot be eradicated. There is only one remedy, and it is a very desperate one. It will probably kill her, she will probably sink under it, but it may have happy results. However, it is the only chance of saving her. It is that she should see the real room again. She can never get rid of its image: it is engraven upon her brain for life. The only chance is for her to connect it with something else.' When Madame de Salis was told this, she said that her returning to Florence was impossible, absolutely impossible. 'At any rate,' she said, 'I could not go unless my younger sister, Miss Foster, might go with me; then possibly I might think of it.' But to this Dr. and Mrs. Foster would not consent. The happiness of their lives seemed to have been extinguished when their elder daughter married Count de Salis, and if their beautiful younger daughter went abroad, perhaps she also would marry a foreigner, and then what good would their lives do them? However, Madame de Salis grew daily worse; her life was evidently at stake, and at last her parents said, 'Well, if you will make us a solemn promise that you will never, under any circumstances whatever, consent to your sister's marrying a foreigner, she shall go with you;' and she went.
"Madame de Salis and Miss Foster went to Florence. They rented the villa at Bellosguardo which had been the scene of the terrible tragedy of Madame de Salis's married life. As they entered the fatal room, Madame de Salis fell down insensible upon the threshold. When she came to herself, she passed from one terrible convulsion into another: she had a brain fever: she struggled for weeks between life and death. But nature is strong, and when she did rally, the opinion of the Irish doctors was justified. Instead of the terrible companion of her former life and the constant dread in which she lived, she had the companionship of her beautiful, gentle, affectionate sister, who watched over her with unspeakable tenderness, who anticipated her every wish.... The room was associated with something else! Gradually, very gradually, Madame de Salis dawned back into active life. She began to feel her former interest in art; in time she was able to go and paint in the galleries, and in time, when her recovery became known, many of those who had never dared to show their sympathy with her during her earlier sojourn at Florence, but who had pitied her intensely, hastened to visit her; and gradually, as with returning health her brilliant conversational powers came back, and her extraordinary gift of repartee was restored, her salon became the most recherché and the most attractive in Florence.
"Chief of all its attractions was the lovely Miss Foster. When, however, Madame de Salis saw that any one especially was paying her sister attentions, she took an opportunity of alienating them, or, if there seemed to be anything really serious, she expressed to the individual her regret that she was unable to receive him any more. But at last there was an occasion on which Madame de Salis felt that more stringent action was called for. When a young Count Mastai, in the Guardia Nobile, not only felt, but showed the most unbounded devotion to Miss Foster, Madame de Salis did more than express to him her regret that untoward family circumstances prevented her having the pleasure of seeing him again; she let her villa at Bellosguardo, she packed up her things, and she took her sister with her to Rome.
"The reputation of the two sisters had preceded them, and when it became known that the Madame de Salis who had had so romantic a history was come to Rome with her beautiful younger sister, all that was most intellectual and all that was most remarkable in the old Papal capital gathered around them. But now the scene had changed. It was no longer Madame de Salis who was the invalid. Miss Foster grew pale and languid and unable to occupy herself, and gradually she became so pale and so changed, and the cause of it was so evident, that Madame de Salis felt that she must choose between two alternatives: she must either break her word to her parents and save the life of her sister, or she must keep her promise to her parents and see her sister sink into the grave.
"And she decided on the former course. She wrote two letters—one letter to Count Mastai, telling him that he might come back and see her sister again, and the other letter to the Bishop of Kilmore and Mrs. Foster. She said to her parents that she knew they measured a foreign marriage by her own dreadful life with Count de Salis: that in Count Mastai they must imagine the exact opposite of Count de Salis: that he was honourable, noble, chivalrous, generous, disinterested—in fact, that had she to seek through the whole world the person to whom with the greatest confidence she could commit her sister's happiness, she could not do otherwise than choose Count Mastai. This letter she sent too late to have the refusal which she knew it would bring. Count Mastai flew to the feet of the beautiful Miss Foster, and was accepted at once. The wedding-day was fixed, the wedding-dress was made, the wedding-feast was prepared.[187]