When the evening of the ball arrived, I took care to reach "Wyatt's Rooms" very early. Only a number of men and a very few ladies were there, when "Miss Harcourt—Miss Amy Leighton" were shouted up the staircase, and I sailed up (with another undergraduate, who represented my somewhat elderly companion) in a white tulle dress trimmed with a little gold lace and looped up with blue cornflowers, a wreath (wreaths were worn then) of the same, and a blue opera-cloak. Mrs. Fortescue, an elderly handsome woman, quite on the retour, dressed in crimson satin, came forward to meet me and kissed me on both cheeks, and I was introduced to a lady—a real lady—by whom I sate down. It is impossible to detail all the absurdities of the situation, all the awkward positions we were thrown into (Mrs. Fortescue had engaged her servants, being then in morning toilette, days before). Suffice it to say that the guests assembled, and the ball and the supper afterwards went off perfectly, and gave boundless satisfaction. I only refused to dance, pretending to have sprained my ankle in coming down in the train some days before; but I limped round the room on the arm of my own doctor (who never discovered me) between the dances, and examined the pictures on the walls. Mrs. Fortescue was inimitable. The trick was never discovered at the time, and would still be a secret, but that a friend, to whom I had revealed the story on promise of strict secrecy, repeated it long afterwards to P.'s elder brother. In June my mother visited me at Oxford, on her way to West Malvern, where we had delightful rooms overlooking the Herefordshire plains, in the house of "Phœbe Gale," who had long been a valued servant in the family. We much enjoyed delightful drives with the Leycesters in the neighbourhood; also frequently we went to see the Miss Ragsters, two remnants of one of the oldest families in Worcestershire, who, in a great age, were living, very poor, in a primitive farmhouse, with their one servant Betty—"the girl" they always called her, who still wore a pinafore, though she had been in their service forty-seven years. Their life had never varied: they had never seen a railway, and had never even been to Little Malvern. They gave a curious account of the poet Wordsworth coming to luncheon with them.
From Malvern I went to the Wye with Willie Milligan. "Never," as I wrote to my mother, "was there a companion so delightful, so amusing, so charming and good-natured under all circumstances—and his circumstances were certainly none of the most brilliant, as he lost all his luggage at the outset, and had to perform the whole journey with nothing of his own but a comb and a tooth-brush." Wherever we went, he made friends, retailing all the local information gained from one person to the next he met, in the most entertaining way. Especially do I remember one occasion at Chepstow. I was drawing the castle, surrounded by about a hundred little children, and he made himself so charming to them, and was so indescribably entertaining, that one after the other of the little things succumbed, till at last the whole party were rolling on the ground in fits of uncontrollable laughter. On this visit to Chepstow I remember the touching incident of our walking in the churchyard late at night, and seeing a woman bring a number of glow-worms to put upon her child's grave, that she might still see it from the window of her cottage. We saw Tintern, Raglan, Goodrich (the great collection of "Meyrick's Ancient Armour" was there then), and Ross, with its old market-house, still standing, owing to the recent defence of the market-women, who had positively refused to enter a new one which had been built for them. A shorter expedition from Malvern was one which I made with Emma Leycester to Worcester, which resulted in a story I published in a magazine years afterwards—"The Shadows of Old Worcester." In one of the passages of the china manufactory we saw a figure of "Tragedy"—a magnificently handsome woman with a wreath of laurel on her head. Was it Mrs. Siddons? "No," said the guide, "it was modelled from a poor girl who used to work here, and who was murdered by her lover last night."
From Malvern we drove through the rose-fringed lanes by Ledbury to Hereford, and then went to stay at Tickwood, in Shropshire, with my uncle's old friend Mr. Hull, and Mrs. Butler, my mother's early instructress, who lived there to take care of his only child by his second wife (Miss Rowe)—Rowna—whose great wealth was her only fault in her father's eyes. Afterwards we went to meet our old friends, the Tayleurs of Buntingsdale, at the quaint old Raven Inn at Shrewsbury, and thence proceeded to Llangollen and Valle Crucis. Plas Newydd, the house of "the ladies of Llangollen,"[105] was still in existence—a very ridiculous little place; and "the ladies" had had successors, Miss Andrews and Miss Lolly!—of whom Miss Lolly still survived. A beautiful varied drive by Corwen and Bettwys y Coed took us to the Penrhyn Arms at Capel Curig, where my mother had often been in her childhood, and where, at the bottom of the garden, is the noble view of Snowdon across lake and moorland, so well known from pictures innumerable. From Llanberis I ascended Snowdon, which in my recollection is—from its innate picturesqueness, not its views—the only mountain in Europe worth ascending, except Soracte. Afterwards we went to the William Stanleys[106] at Penrhôs in Anglesea, and it was a very pleasant visit, as Mrs. William Stanley was a most kind and amusing person, good-natured to young people, and exceedingly pleased with my delight over all she showed me, especially over the rocks—so glorious in colour—near the South Stack lighthouse. It recalls oddly the extreme poverty as to pocket-money in which I spent my youth, when I remember that the sum of £2 which my Aunt Lucy gave me at Penrhôs was at twenty-one the largest present in money that I had ever yet received in my life. I spent it in the purchase of Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art."
After visiting Penrhyn Castle, we went to take lodgings near the Albert Ways at Conway, of which I recollect nothing remarkable except the exemplification of "cast not your pearls before swine" in the frantic eagerness the pigs at Towen showed to get at the mussels from which the tiny pearls found there (and sold at two shillings an ounce) were being extracted by the pearl-fishers. Our next visit was to Bodelwyddelan, the fine place of Sir John and Lady Sarah Williams. We went afterwards to Alton Towers, Ham in Dovedale, Matlock, and Rowsley—whence I saw Chatsworth and spent several days in drawing the old courts of Haddon Hall.
All through the past winter the Crimean War had been an absorbing interest, people had sobbed in the churches when the prayer for time of war was read, and even those not immediately concerned had waited in agonised expectation for the news from the Alma, Inkermann, the Redan. While we were at Lichfield came the news of the capture of Sebastopol, announced by the bells of the cathedral, followed by all the churches, and every town and village became gay with flags from every window.
In returning home this year, I felt even more anxious than before to improve and educate myself, and always got up for the purpose as early as I could, recollecting how Chevalier Bunsen, by always getting up four hours before other people, made his year into sixteen months instead of twelve. Beginning to think of colour in sketching now tended to make me even more observant than I had been of the wonderfully artistic elements of the scenery around our home—the long lines of the levels with their fleeting shadows, the delicate softness of the distant downs, the trees embossed in their dark green against the burnt-up grass of the old deer-park.
JOURNAL.
"Sept. 24, 1855.—We have had a visit from Miss Rosam, the last of the old Sussex family who once lived at Lime. She said when she was here as a little child the old convent was still standing. She remembered the deep massive Saxon (?) archway at the entrance and the large dark hall into which it led.
"'Were there any stories about the place?' I asked.
"'Nothing but about the fish; of course you know that?'