"Ford Cottage, Nov. 5.—This is a charming little house, nestling at the foot of the castle-hill, and it has been an amusement to Lady Waterford to fit it up temporarily with the most interesting contents of the castle. The walls are hung with beautiful pictures and the rooms furnished with ivory and ebony cabinets, quantities of old china, tall glasses piled with ferns and flowers, old-fashioned tables and deep velvet arm-chairs. She will be here for another year probably, and thoroughly enjoys the life, saying that she never knew what it was to have a garden before.
"Dear old Lady Stuart is here in her deep mourning, and Lady Waterford, now her only remaining child, has been more closely united to her mother than ever since Lady Canning's death.[222]
"Lady Waterford is indeed perfectly delightful—brimming with originality and enthusiasm, and with the power—which so few people have—of putting all her wonderfully poetical thoughts into words, and so letting others have the benefit of them. Sometimes she will sit down to the pianoforte and sing in the most thrilling way—Handel or Beethoven, or old Spanish ballads—without having the music or words before her. At others she will draw, suddenly and at once, the beautiful inspirations which come to her. Last night it was a lovely child crowned and sporting with flowers, and four other sweet little maidens dancing round her with garlands; it was from the childhood of Mary Queen of Scots and her four Maries. She is never tired of hearing of people; she says she sees so few and knows so little of them now—places she does not care to hear about.
"In the afternoon we went up to the castle, which is entirely changed since I saw it last, having gone back from a gingerbread gothic house to the appearance of an ancient building. The drawing-room is beautiful, with its ceiling and ornaments copied from that at Winton. Lord Durham was drilling his volunteer corps before the castle, and a mock siege was got up, with a storming of the new bridge over the dene. Then we walked to a new lodge which is building. All around are improvements—church restored, schools built, cottages renewed, gardens made, and then the castle."
"Nov. 5 (Evening).—The hard frost last night preluded a bright beautiful day. Lady Waterford let me have the pony-carriage with two white ponies to go where I liked, and I went to a ruined peel at Howtell Grange, and then through hollows in the Cheviots to Kirk-Newton, where Paulinus baptized his Northumbrian converts. 'Oh! if my Lady were only here, for it is quite lovely!' exclaimed the coachman, as we turned the corner of the mountains. He told me about Lord Waterford's death, how he was riding by his side over the mountain when his horse stumbled. He got up safely, and then somehow overbalanced himself and fell from the saddle upon his head. They could not believe that he was hurt at first, for he lay in his hunting-coat quite unbruised and beautiful; but when they raised him up, his head fell down, for his neck was broken and he was dead. 'Then there was an awful wail,' said the man, 'though we could none of us believe it. Dr. Jephson rode on to break it to my Lady, and he met her driving her two white ponies up to the door, all gay and happy, and told her at first that my Lord had broken his thigh-bone and was very much hurt; but she saw by his face that it was worse than that, and said so, and he could not speak to her. Then she went away to her own room and locked herself in. When my Lord had been brought home and night came on, she ordered every one away from her, and she looked on his face once more, but what my Lady did that night we none of us knew.'
"She cannot bear a horse now: she has only this little pony-carriage.
"This afternoon I have been with her to her school. She is covering it with large pictures which have the effect of frescoes. All the subjects are Bible stories from the lives of good children. In the first, of Cain and Abel, the devout Abel is earnestly offering his sacrifice of the lamb; while careless Cain, attracted by the flight of some pigeons, looks away and lets his apples fall from the altar. All the children are portraits, and it was interesting to see the originals sitting beneath the frescoes, slates and pencils in hand.
"It seems to me as if Lady Waterford had become strangely spiritualised this year since Lady Canning's death. She is just what she herself describes Miss Boyle to have become, 'A calm seeker after good, in whatever way she may find it.'"