The Story of My Life, volumes 1-3

by Augustus J. C. Hare

A few days after her reception, Sir Peter Pole fulfilled his word with regard to his daughter Marguerite. He turned her out of his house, and he never would allow her name to be mentioned again. Not only to her father, but to my sister, and to her own sister, Alice Pole, every trace of her was lost. How my sister met Marguerite Pole again, and of her extraordinary history in after years, will be told later in these volumes.

I have been anticipating greatly, but it seems impossible to break up a connected story into the different years in which their events occurred. Meantime, without any romantic excitement and far removed from religious controversy, our quiet existence flowed on; though I was always fond of my sister and deeply interested in the faint echoes which from time to time reached me from her life.

Mrs. Alexander was now settled at the Rectory at Hurstmonceaux, and she ruled as its queen. Uncle Julius consulted her even on the smallest details; she ordered everything in the house, she took the leading part with all the guests, everything gave way to her. And the odd thing was that Mrs. Julius Hare (Aunt Esther), instead of being jealous, worshipped with greater enthusiasm than any one else at the shrine of the domestic idol. I have met many perfectly holy and egotistical women, but Mrs. Alexander was the most characteristic specimen.

In the summer of 1851, Arthur Stanley had been appointed to a canonry at Canterbury, which was a great delight to me as well as to him. "One of my greatest pleasures in going to Canterbury is the thought of Augustus's raptures over the place and the cathedral," he wrote to my mother. And truly I did enjoy it, and so did he. The eight years he spent at Canterbury were certainly the happiest of his life. We spent part of my winter holidays there with him and his family. Mrs. Grote used to describe Arthur truly as "like a sausage, packed so full of information;" and, with many peculiarities, he was the most charming of hosts, while his enthusiastic interest peopled every chapel, every cloister, every garden, with historic memories. Arthur Stanley's was now the most stimulating companionship possible. He had lost all the excessive shyness which had characterised his youth, and talked on all subjects that interested him (ignoring those which did not) with an eloquence which "se moque de l'éloquence," as Pascal says. His canonry was situated in its own garden, reached by the narrow paved passage called "the Brick Walk," which then intersected the buildings on the north-east of the cathedral. Just behind was the Deanery, where the venerable Dean Lyall used to be seen walking up and down daily in the sun in the garden which contained the marvellous old mulberry tree, to preserve the life of which a bullock was actually killed that the tree might derive renewed youth from its blood. The fact that a huge bough rent asunder[72] from this old tree had taken root, and become even more flourishing than the parent stem, was adapted as an illustration by Arthur Stanley in a lecture in which he likened the two trees to the Churches of Rome and England.

Enchanting indeed were the many ancient surroundings of the mighty cathedral—the Baptistery with its open arches and conical roof half buried in ivy; the dark passage haunted by "Nell Cook;" the Norman staircase, so beautiful in colour; the Pilgrim's Inn, down a narrow entry from the street; the many tombs of the archbishops; and most of all the different points through which one could follow Thomas à Becket so vividly through his last hours from his palace to his martyrdom. I made many drawings, chiefly in pencil and sepia, for my mother and aunt deprecated colour. "Until you can draw perfectly you have no right to it. Do one thing well, and not two badly," they said. Of course they were right; and though often abashed and distressed by Aunt Kitty's dictum—"Crude, coarse, harsh, and vulgar," after looking at my sketches, I always felt the slight meed of praise just possible from her lips a prize well worth striving for. I owe much to her (as to my mother's) constant inquiry, after I had done a drawing I was conceitedly proud of, as to what each line meant, and unless I could give a good account of its intention, desiring me to rub it out; thus inculcating the pursuit of truth, which she urged in drawing as in all else, instead of striving after unattainable excellence.

One great interest of this winter was going with Arthur Stanley excursions to Bozledeane Wood and tracing out on the spot the curious history of the so-called Sir William Courtenay, which is so strangely at variance with the usually matter-of-fact character of the present century. Briefly, the story is that of John Nichols Tom, son of a maltster at Truro, who ran away from his wife, and, going to Canterbury, announced himself as Sir William Courtenay, and laid claim to the title and rights of the Earls of Devon. His dress was most extraordinary—a scarlet robe with a crimson hanger. He was taken up, tried for perjury, and confined in a lunatic asylum, but, while there, contrived to interest Sir Edward Knatchbull in his behalf, and obtained his release by Sir Edward's influence with Lord John Russell. On his return to Canterbury in 1838, he gave out that he was not only Sir William Courtenay, but Jesus Christ himself. It was not so much his dress, as his long flowing hair, his beard, his perfect proportions, his beauty and height, which lent themselves to his story, and his wonderful resemblance to the well-known pictures of the Saviour. The rustics and tradesmen welcomed him, and really believed in him. With forty of his most devoted disciples he took up his abode in a village near Canterbury. He was always preaching, and the chief part of his doctrine was faith—faith in himself. He formed a plan of storming Canterbury and seizing the cathedral on Whitsunday, when all the people were at the service there. But this plan was frustrated and he lived in comparative quietude till Michaelmas. Then a constable was sent to arrest him. The constable found Courtenay with his forty disciples at breakfast at a farmhouse near Bozledeane Wood, and when Courtenay saw him approach, he went out, shot him, and leaving him writhing in agony upon the ground, returned, perfectly unruffled, to finish his repast. After breakfast "Sir William Courtenay" led his disciples down the path, which still remains, into a hollow by a little stream in the heart of the wood. Here his followers, under Colonel Armstrong, a fanatical leader from Canterbury, threw up an earthwork, behind which they entrenched themselves, and here they were surrounded by a body of troops sent out in three bands to encompass them. Lieutenant Bennet, who was in command, was sent forward to parley with the impostor. Courtenay, who stood under a tree, waited till he came close up, and then shot him through the heart! The troops then rushed forwards, but the fanatics, though greatly astonished at the death of Courtenay, who, in spite of his professed invulnerability, fell in the first onset, fought with fury, and defended themselves with their bludgeons against the muskets of the soldiers. At last seven of them were killed and the rest taken prisoners.

Mr. Curteis, the Principal of St. Augustine's College, who went with us to Bozledeane Wood, described the scene after the battle, the pools of blood, the trees riddled with shot, the bodies lying in the public-house, and the beautiful hair of Courtenay being cut off and distributed amongst the people. It was fourteen years afterwards that we visited the spot. We went to the farmhouse where the last breakfast was held and the gate where the constable was shot. The view was beautiful over the Forest of Blean to the sea, with the line of the Isle of Sheppey breaking the blue waters. A boy guided us down the tangled path to the hollow where the battle took place by the little stream, said to be now frequented by the white squirrel and badger. The "stool" of the tree under which Courtenay stood had lately been grubbed up. The boy described Courtenay and his forty men lying on a green mossy bank talking, the evening before they were attacked, and his giving "bull's-eyes" to all the children on the morning of the battle. Courtenay had great powers of attracting all who came in contact with him. A girl belonging to the farmhouse (who on a previous occasion had knocked his arm aside when he would have shot a magistrate) rushed about during the engagement to give water and help to the dying, perfectly regardless of the bullets which were flying around her. And after his death his wife turned up, "Mrs. Tom" from Truro, most deeply afflicted, for "he was the best of husbands!"

I liked better being with the Stanleys at Canterbury than in London, where they talked—as people in London do talk, and where my dearest mother, who had lived only in the narrowest groove latterly, and especially as to religious things, often felt it necessary to "testify to her religious profession" in a way which was even more a mortification than a pain to me. After we began to go abroad, and she was removed from the "mutual admiration society" at Hurstmonceaux, she took a wider view of everything,[73] and had a far better and more general influence in consequence. But there was a time when my mother, so infinitely tender and gentle in her own nature, almost seemed to have lost her hold upon the liberality and gentleness of the Christian gospel in her eager espousal of the doctrine of fire and worms beyond the grave. I think it is St. Jerome who says, "Desire rather to act Scripture than to write about it, to do rather than to say holy things."