The Story of My Life, volumes 1-3

by Augustus J. C. Hare

I think it must have been on leaving Southgate for the summer that I paid a visit of one day to "Italima" and my sister in a house which had been lent them in Grosvenor Square. It was then that my sister said, "Mamma, Augustus is only with us for one day. We ought to take the opportunity of telling him what may be of great importance to him: we ought to tell him the story of the 'Family Spy.'" What I then heard was as follows:—

For many years my sister had observed that she and her mother were followed and watched by a particular person. Wherever they went, or whatever they did, she was aware of the same tall thin man dressed in grey, who seemed to take a silent interest in all that happened to them. At last this surveillance became quite disagreeable and they tried to escape it. One spring they pretended that they were going to leave Rome on a particular day, announced it to their friends, and made secret preparations for quitting Rome a week earlier. They arrived in safety within a few miles of Florence, when, looking up at a tall tower by the side of the road, my sister saw the face of the Family Spy watching them from its battlements. Another time they heard that the Spy was ill and confined to his bed, and they took the opportunity of moving at once. As their vetturino carriage turned out of the piazza into the Via S. Claudio, in order to attain the Corso, which must be passed before reaching the gate of the city, the narrow street was almost blocked up by another carriage, in which my sister saw the emaciated form of the Family Spy propped on pillows and lying on a mattress, and which immediately followed them. Constant inquiries had long since elicited the fact that the Spy was a Sicilian Marquis who had been living at Palermo when my parents were there, and whose four children were exactly the same age as their four children. Soon afterwards his wife and all his children were swept away at one stroke by the cholera, and he was left utterly desolate. With characteristic Sicilian romance, he determined to create for himself a new family and a new interest in life by adopting the other family, which was exactly parallel to his own, and of which only the father had been removed—but adopting it by a mysterious bond, in which the difficulty of a constant surveillance should give entire occupation to his time and thought. When Italima heard this, after making inquiries about him which proved satisfactory, she sent to the Spy to say that she thought it much better this secret surveillance should end, but that she should be happy to admit him as a real friend, and allow him to see as much as he liked of the family in which he took so deep an interest. But, though expressing great gratitude for this proposal, the Spy utterly declined it. He said that he had so long accustomed himself to the constant excitement of his strange life, that it would be quite impossible for him to live without it; that if ever an opportunity occurred of rendering any great service to the family whose fortunes he followed, he would speak to them, but not till then.

When I had been told this story, my sister and Italima took me out in the afternoon to drive in the Park. As we were passing along the road by the Serpentine, my sister suddenly exclaimed, "There, look! there is the Family Spy," and, among those who walked by the water, I saw the tall thin grey figure she had described. We passed him several times, and he made such an impression upon me that I always knew him afterwards. My sister said, "If you look out at ten o'clock to-night, you will see him leaning against the railing of Grosvenor Square watching our windows,"—and so it was; there was the tall thin figure with his face uplifted in the moonlight.

In 1852 the extravagance of my two brothers Francis and William was already causing great anxiety to their mother. Francis, who had lately obtained his commission in the Life-Guards through old Lord Combermere, had begun to borrow money upon the Gresford estate. William, who was in the Blues, with scarcely any fortune at all, had plunged desperately into the London season. When winter approached, their letters caused even more anxiety on account of their health than their fortunes: both complaining of cough and other ailments. One day, in the late autumn of 1852, my sister, coming into the diningroom of the Palazzo Parisani, found her mother stretched insensible upon the hearth-rug, with a letter open in her hand. The letter was from the new Sir John Paul, who had not in the least got over his first anger at his sister's change of religion, and who wrote in the cruellest and harshest terms. He said, "Your eldest son is dying. It is quite impossible that you can arrive in time to see him alive. Your second son is also in a rapid decline, though if you set off at once and travel to England without stopping, you may still be in time to receive his last words."

Palazzo Parisani was at once thrown into the utmost confusion, and all its inmates occupied themselves in preparing for immediate departure. Owing to the great number of things to be stowed away, it was, however, utterly impossible that they should leave before the next morning. Italima's state of anguish baffles description, for Francis was her idol. In the afternoon my sister, hoping to give her quiet, persuaded her to go out for an hour and walk in the gardens of the Villa Medici, where she would not be likely to meet any one she knew. In the long arcaded bay-walks of the villa she saw a familiar figure approaching. It was the "Family Spy." He came up to her, and, to her amazement, he began to address her—he, the silent follower of so many years! He said, "The time has now come at which I can serve you, therefore I speak. This morning you received a letter." Italima started. "You are surprised that I know you have the letter, and yet I am going to tell you all that was in that letter," and he repeated it word for word. He continued—"I not only know all that was in your letter and the distress in which it has placed you, but I know all the circumstances under which that letter was written, and I know all that has happened to your sons since: I know all about your sons. Your son Francis was taken ill on such a day: he saw such and such doctors: he is already much better: there is no danger: you may be quite easy about him. Your son William is not in danger, but he is really much the more ill of the two. Dr. Fergusson has seen him, and a foreign winter is prescribed. It will not do for you to go to England yourself, but yet he is not well enough to travel alone. You have an old servant, Félix, who came to you in such a year, and who has been with you ever since. You must send him to fetch William, and here is a paper on which I have written down all the trains and steamers they are to travel by, both in going and returning." So saying, and having given the paper to Italima and bowing very low, the Family Spy retired. Italima went home. She acted entirely on the advice she had received. She unpacked her things and remained in her palazzo at Rome. She sent Félix, as the Spy had directed: he travelled according to the written programme, and in a fortnight he returned to Rome bringing William back with him. The Spy never spoke to any member of the family again.

It is anticipating, but I may mention here that when we went to Rome in 1857, I wondered if we should see the Family Spy. I spoke of it to my mother. As we passed through the Porta del Popolo, he was the first person who met us. I saw him very often that winter, and again when I was at Paris with my sister in October 1858. That winter my sister often saw him at Rome. The next year was marked by our great family misfortunes. My sister always expected that somehow or other he would come to the rescue of the lost fortunes, but he never did. Some time after she heard that he had died very suddenly about that time.

When I returned to my mother in the summer of 1852, she was at Eastbourne with Charlotte Leycester and very ill. It was the earliest phase of the strange hysteria with which I was afterwards so familiar—sudden flushings with a deathly chill over her face, and giddiness, sometimes followed by unconsciousness, occasionally by a complete apparent suspension of life, a death-like trance without breath or pulsation, lasting for hours, or even for many days together. It is a very rare illness, but it is known to doctors, and I believe it is called "Waking coma." In this summer I first began the anxious watchings of first symptoms—the swelling of my mother's fingers around her rings, and then by a kiss searched if the alarming chill had already taken possession of her face. Happily, the heavenly state of mind in which she always lived took away from her the terror of these illnesses; the visions which beset her waking and sleeping were of all things good and beautiful: the actual trances themselves were to her a translation into heavenly places and to the companionship of the blessed, and, for those who looked upon her, a transfiguration.

When my mother was able to move, it was decided that she must try foreign air, which then and often afterwards completely restored her to health for the time. It was settled that we should go to Heidelberg, and as her cousin Charlotte Leycester was to travel with her, I was able to precede her for a few days in the old Belgian towns, which, as I was then in the first enthusiasm about foreign travel, I looked upon as absolutely entrancing.

To MY MOTHER.

"St. Omer, July 15, 1852.—I shall never feel the day is properly over till it has been shared with my own dear mother. I have only left you a few hours, and yet, at an expense of one pound, how great is the change!... We embarked at Dover at one, with a cloudless sky and rippling waves, and an Irish lady near me was most amusing, telling anecdotes first in French to her neighbour on the other side and then in English to me. But half-way across the Channel the thickest of fogs came on, we made no way, and cries and whistles were kept up without cessation. Then it grew rough, the Irish lady's jokes became less vivacious, and at last she followed almost all the other passengers to the side of the vessel. At five o'clock sea and fog subsided and we went on, but then the tide had gone from the harbour, and when we were a mile and a half from Calais, all the passengers were transferred to open boats. As we were rowed in under the long pier, the beautiful fishing-nets were being drawn up out of the calm waters, and the old French faces with the high white caps and large gold earrings were looking down as last year.... The railway journey was delicious through the rich flat country, and the churches here, of the two missionary saints, Bertin and Omer, are most interesting."