"Through the open door of the drawing-room I saw all the bearers come in, in their white smock-frocks and crape bands, and go out again, carrying him for the last time over his own threshold. On, on they passed, into the snowy drive, with the full sunshine falling upon the pall, while the wind caught its white edges and waved them to and fro. Then some one called us, and I followed with Uncle Gustavus Hare immediately behind the coffin, six clergy who had been especially valued by Uncle Julius carrying the pall, and Arthur Stanley, Orby Shipley,[103] the Bishop of St. David's, and a number of other friends following, and then a long procession—clergy, schools, parishioners.
"On, down the shrubbery, with the snow still glittering on the evergreen leaves, to the gate, where many more people fell into the ranks behind. The wind was shrill and piercing, and, fresh from a sick-room, I felt numbed with the cold and fatigue. At Gardner Street all the shutters were shut, and the inmates of every house stood at their doors ready to join the procession. Amongst those waiting in front of the blacksmith's was old Edward Burchett. Strange to think that he should have known my great-grandfather, and lived in Hurstmonceaux Castle (where he was 'clock-winder') in its palmy days, and that he should be living still to see the last Hare 'of Hurstmonceaux' carried to his grave.
"More crowds of people joined from Windmill Hill and Lime Cross; it was as if by simultaneous movement the whole parish came forward to do honour to one who had certainly been as its father for twenty-two years. As the procession halted to change bearers at the bend of the road, I knew that my mother was looking out and could see it from her window. An immense body of clergy joined us at Hurstmonceaux Place, and many very old and familiar people—old Judith Coleman led by a little girl, old Pinnock on his crutches, and others. At the foot of the church hill three black-veiled figures—Aunt Esther and her sisters—were waiting.
"The effect was beautiful of passing through the churchyard with a pure covering of untrodden snow into the church lighted by full sunshine, and looking back and seeing the hill and the winding road filled with people as far as the eye could reach.
"The coffin was laid before the altar; the clergy and people thronged the church. I seemed to hear nothing but the voice of Arthur Stanley repeating the responses at my side.
"Then we went out to the grave. There, around the foot of the yew-tree, by the cross over the grave of Uncle Marcus, were grouped all the oldest people in the parish. Mr. Simpkinson read, the clergy standing around the open grave responded; and, as with one voice, all repeated the Lord's Prayer, which, broken as it was by sobs, had a peculiar solemnity, the words 'Thy will be done' bringing their own especial significance to many hearts."
The weeks which succeeded my uncle's funeral were occupied by hard work at the Rectory for his widow, chiefly making a catalogue of the fourteen thousand volumes in the library, which she gave for the most part to Trinity College. Uncle Julius had intended them as a provision for her, to whom he had very little money to bequeath; but she chose thus to dispose of them, and it was useless to contend with her. In the same way she decided upon giving away all the familiar pictures and sculptures, the former to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. My mother felt parting as I did with all these beautiful inanimate witnesses of our past lives—the first works of art I had known, the only ones which I then knew intimately. They have not been much valued at Cambridge, where the authorship of most of the pictures has been questioned; but whoever they were by, to us, who lived with them so much, they were always delightful.
JOURNAL.
"Feb. 14, 1855.—Mother and I were standing on the steps of the Rectory greenhouse when the carriage came to take me away (to return to Oxford). I shall always remember that last moment. The warm air fragrant with the flowers: the orange-trees laden with golden fruit: the long last look at the Roman senator and his wife sitting in their niche: at the Raffaelle, the Luini, the Giorgione—and then the place which had been the occasional interest and the constant misery of my childhood existed for me no longer."