During this visit to London I frequently saw, at the house of Lady Franklin (widow of the Arctic voyager) the gentle and pleasing Queen Dowager (Emma) of the Sandwich Islands.[269] Her complexion was copper-coloured, but she was very good-looking, and simply but handsomely attired in the dress of an English widow lady. She had greatly looked forward to the fogs of England, having been used to nothing but the blue or copper-coloured sky of the Pacific, and was dreadfully disappointed when she saw the resplendent blue sky of the glorious day on which she arrived at Southampton. "Why, I might just as well have been in the Sandwich Islands." She went over Westminster Abbey with far more knowledge of the tombs and persons they commemorate than I have seen in European royalties with whom I have visited the Abbey in later days. In stepping back to allow the Queen to inspect the Coronation Chair, my mother had a bad fall on the pavement of Edward the Confessor's Chapel, and the concern and amiability she showed made her very attractive.
Mr. Evans, of St. Andrew's, Wells Street, preached in Westminster Abbey at the evening service whilst we were at the Deanery. He preached on the destruction of the Temple, applying it to Westminster—that we were not to be taken in by "the grandeur of the building, the solemn distances of the choir, the misty shadows of the roof, the windows by painters who dipped their pencils in the rainbow," &c. He described the different Jewish temples; the first, rising from the heart of David and the hand of Solomon; the second, of Zerubabel; the third built by Herod, and "certainly he was no saint."
After the sermon was over I rushed upstairs, and was preaching it to the family with all its quaintnesses, when I saw Mary Stanley making most unaccountable faces, and turning round, I found Mr. Evans close behind me. The little dark figure had hirpled itself into the room and was listening all the time.
Madame Mohl (whom I have described at Paris in 1858) was staying at the Deanery, where Arthur and Augusta were very fond of her, and always called her "Molina." She was most amusing.
"When I was leaving Paris, I asked my friend M. Bourdon whether I could take anything to England for him, and he said that he was obliged to me, and that if I would take a very valuable Indian shawl, he would avail himself of my offer. However, before I left Paris, my little friend Barbara was starting for England, and she said to me that part of her box was empty, and that she could take anything I wanted, so I was very glad to give her M. Bourdon's Indian shawl. Now Barbara was in that dreadful accident at Staplehurst, and so were all her boxes, and when the train went over, the boxes went down into the water, and all the things were spoilt. At first I hoped it was not so bad, but 'the fact is that the shawl is spoilt,' wrote Barbara to me, and ever since that M. Bourdon and I have been en froid, which I am very sorry for, as we used to be such good friends."
"Oh, that will soon pass," I said.
"No, I am afraid it will not," said Madame Mohl, "for remember we are en froid, not merely en delicatesse. Being en delicatesse is easily remedied. 'Je suis en delicatesse avec maman,' said a young lady to me.... A little while ago I went to see the famous author Jules Janin. He could not attend to me. He was sitting at a table covered with papers and was writing notes. Messengers went off with the notes, and almost immediately came back with the answers, which were evidently written a very short distance off. This went on for some time, till at last Jules Janin looked up and said, 'Je vous demande mille pardons: faites bien d'excuses, Madame: c'est que je suis en delicatesse avec ma femme.'"
One day Madame Mohl told me:—
"There was a handsome young woman married to a man who was in her own, which was a very lowly station of life, but after her marriage she consented to go a journey by sea with a family which she had previously lived with. On the way the ship was wrecked, and she was one of the few persons saved. It was a desolate coast, and one of the officers who was saved with her fell in love with her—she was a very pretty young woman—and married her. Eventually they returned to England, and he died, leaving her a very fine place and a large fortune. Some years after, her favourite maid told her that she was going to be married, and, being attached to her maid, she desired her to bring her betrothed that she might see what he was like. When he came in, she recognised her own first husband. He did not know her again, but going upstairs, she put on an old shawl, and coming down said, 'Do you remember that shawl?'—'Yes,' he said, 'it is the shawl which I gave to my wife on our wedding-day.' Then the lady revealed herself and took her husband back; but he was a low man, and led her an awful life and drank dreadfully; but on the whole that was a good thing perhaps, for it soon brought on delirium tremens, so that he died and she got rid of him. 'What a fool she was ever to let him know who she was!' was what I felt when I heard the story."