"Falloden, Nov. 7, 1862.—I have been most kindly received by Sir George and Lady Grey.... He has the reputation of being the most agreeable 'gentleman' in England, and certainly is charming, so cordial and kind and winning in manner.... We have been this evening to Dunstanborough—most lovely, the tall tower in the evening light rising rosy-pink against a blue sea."
"Roddam, Nov. 13.—I have been with Mrs. Roddam at Eslington, a large grey stone house on a terrace, with a French garden and fine trees. Hedworth Liddell received us, and then his many sisters came trooping in to luncheon from walking and driving. 'We are sure this is our cousin Augustus Hare: we saw you through the window, and were sure it was you, you are so like your sister.' ... They were much amused at my delight over the portraits of our ancestors."
"Chillingham, Nov. 14.—There is a large party here, including Captain and Mrs. Northcote, a very handsome, distinguished-looking young couple, and my hitherto unknown cousins, Lord and Lady Durham.[224] He has a morose look, which does him great injustice; she is one of Lord Abercorn's charming daughters—excessively pretty, natural, and winning."
"Nov. 15.—Each evening we have had impromptu charades, in which Lord Durham acts capitally. Yesterday we went to a review of his volunteer corps on Millfield Plain, and afterwards to tea at Copeland Castle, an old Border fortress on the Till, which the Durhams are renting. You would be quite fascinated by Lady Durham—'the little Countess,' as Lady Tankerville calls her. Lord Durham does not look a bit older than I, though he has seven children. They have given me a very cordial invitation to stay with them."
"Morpeth, Nov. 16.—We dispersed yesterday evening. Lord Tankerville wished me to have stayed, and it was very pleasant at the end of an enchanting visit to have one's host say, 'I am so very sorry you are going; and, though the Greys are very nice people, I quite hate them for taking you away from us.' They sent me in one carriage, and my luggage in another, to meet the coach at Lilburn. I had three-quarters of an hour to wait, and took refuge in a shepherd's hut, where the wife was very busy washing all her little golden-haired children in tubs, and putting them to sleep in box-beds."
"Morpeth, Nov. 19.—On Monday I got up in pitch darkness and went off at half-past seven by coach to Rothbury, a lonely little town amid moorland hills with sweeping blue distance. There I got a gig, and went far up Coquetdale to Harbottle, a most interesting country, full of peel towers and wild rocky valleys. Coming back, I stopped at Holystone, where a tall cross and an old statue near a basin of transparent water mark the place where Paulinus baptized three thousand Northumbrians. Then, in the gloaming, I saw the fine old Abbey of Brinkburn, close upon the shore of Coquet, celebrated in many old angling songs.
"To-day I have been with the Greys to Cresswell, the largest modern house in the county, with an old peel tower where an ancestress of the family starved herself to death after seeing her three brothers murder her Danish lover upon the shore."
Several more visits brought me home at the end of November, with an immense stock of new material, which I arranged in the next few months in "Murray's Handbook of Durham and Northumberland"—work for which neither Murray nor any one else gave me much credit, but which cost me great labour, and into which I put my whole heart.
XI
HOME LIFE WITH THE MOTHER
| "Golden years |
| Of service and of hope swept over us |
| Most sweetly. Brighter grew our home, more dear |
| Our daily life together. And as time went by, |
| God daily joined our hearts more perfectly." |
| —B. M. |