The whole of this Basque country is full of memorials of the Peninsular War, the events of which in this district are wonderfully well described in the novel of "The Subaltern." There are deep woods and glens which ran down with blood; green lanes (as at Irogne) which were scenes of desperate combats; tombs of English officers, as in the churchyard at Bidart and in the picturesque mayor's garden between Bidart and Biarritz, where a flat stone commemorating three English officers is to be seen under the old apple-trees, overlooking a wide expanse of country. The most dreadful slaughter was near the Negressa Station, where the two armies, having occupied the ridges on either side the lake, suffered frightful carnage. It might have been spared, but in both armies it was then unknown that Napoleon had abdicated, and that peace was proclaimed. Between S. Jean de Luz and the Behobia is a picturesque old château, which was taken by the English after an easy siege, the inhabitants having been forced to fly with such precipitation that everything was abandoned, even the mail-bags which they had just seized being left behind and the contents scattered about on the floor. The first letter the English officer in command picked up was directed to himself and from his own father! He took nothing from the house but a Spanish dictionary from the library, but returning that way three weeks afterwards, found it completely pillaged by the Spanish camp-followers.
The peasantry of the Basque country are most interesting to talk to, and it is strange that more should not have been said and written about them, as their conversation is more full of ancient proverbs and folk-lore than that of the inhabitants of any other part of France. I remember an old Basque woman saying that her language was not only the best, but far the oldest in the world—in fact, it was that which Adam and Eve spoke in Paradise!
Twice, while we were at Biarritz, I made excursions into Spain, crossing the Bidassoa close to the Isle of Pheasants with intense interest. In all the Spain I have seen since, there is nothing more utterly Spanish than the tiny walled town of Fontarabia, with its wooden balconies piled one above another, and its lookout over a blue estuary. Most striking also is Passages—a land-locked bay of the sea with a very narrow opening, which is passed on the way to S. Sebastian.
Our return journey to England in the late spring was very delightful. My mother, in entire enjoyment of her marvellously restored health, and delighting to drink in the full beauties of nature and antiquity, was in no hurry to return to the turmoil of English life. We lingered everywhere, making short half-day journeys, and spending quiet afternoons sketching in the grass-grown streets of half-deserted cities, or driving out in little carriages to grand old châteaux. Thus we first saw S. Emilion, that marvellous place, where the buildings are so mingled with the living rock, that you scarcely can tell where the work of man begins, and where each sculptured cornice glows in late spring with a glory of crimson valerian. In one of the quietest streets of Poitiers, before a cottage door, we bought an old inlaid table, which is one of the pleasantest memorials of our journey. At Amboise we stayed several days in a most primitive but charming hotel, the vision of my dear mother in which often comes back to me, sitting with her psalm-book in a low room with white-washed walls and brick floor, and with a latticed window looking out over the great river glistening in the sunset. My mother liked and admired Amboise[266] more than almost any of our thousand resting-places, and she delighted in the excursions to moated Chenonceaux and to Chambord, where we and Lea had tea and bilberry jam at a delightful little inn which then existed on the outskirts of the forest.
On the 27th of May we reached Holmhurst. One of those curious incidents which are inexplicable had occurred during our absence, and was narrated to us, on our return, by our servants, neighbours, and by Mrs. Hale, the wife of our Hastings doctor. During my mother's illness at Pau, two of our maids, Alice and Jane Lathom, slept, according to their custom, in one of the spare rooms to the front of the house. In the middle of the night they were both aroused by three piercing terrible screams in the room close to the bed. Petrified with horror, they hid under the bed-clothes, and lay thus more dead than alive till morning. With the first streak of dawn they crept down the passage to John Gidman's room, roused him, and told him what had happened. He felt it was certainly an omen that the death they expected had occurred; took the carriage and drove down at once to St. Leonards toMrs. Hale. Dr. and Mrs. Hale were at breakfast when John Gidman arrived and sent in word that his mistress was dead. When they went out, they found he had received no letter, but had only an inward conviction of the event from what had happened.
It was the same hour at which my mother, waking from her second trance in her room at Pau, had uttered three long piercing screams in her wandering, and said, "Oh, I shall never, never see my dear Holmhurst again!"
There is no explanation to offer.