“Powderham, June 9.—I found the door open last night and walked straight into the hall. Charlie Wood and Lady Agnes were there at tea, and people kept dropping in—a very pleasant party.... Lord Devon[200] is the kindest of hosts, full of small courtesies; but he is a great deal away, flying up to London after dinner and returning next day: they say he performs the circumference of the globe every year, and chiefly on his own lines of railway.
“Lord Devon’s only son, Lord Courtenay, is seldom here, but when he is, amuses every one. One evening ‘Mademoiselle Bekker’ arrived late at Powderham, coming in the hope to obtain a chairman for a meeting which was going to be held at Exeter in favour of the Rights of Women. There was a very distinguished party in the house—the Bishop of Winchester, Lord Halifax, the American Minister (Motley), &c., and they each, while refusing, made a speech in answer to hers, which was most eloquent. Eventually Mademoiselle Bekker declared herself so indignant as to be led to unsex herself: she was Lord Courtenay.”
“June 12.—On Saturday we were called at daybreak, and went to Totness by rail, and thence in waggonettes eighteen miles through deep bosky lanes, and then over breezy uplands to the Moult, Lord Devon’s enchanting little place near Salcombe. Here the blue-green transparent sea glances through the thick foliage deep below the windings of the road, and the quiet bay is encircled by rocky hills tufted with wood, which in parts feathers down into the water. We rested at North Sands Cottage, a lovely wee place of Lord Devon’s, and then walked through the grounds of his larger place of the Moult. Aloes grow and flourish here to an immense size. Beyond this a path—‘Lord Courtenay’s Walk’—runs half-way up the steep precipices above the sea.
“It was an enchanting day, white wreaths of cloud drifting above in the blue, deep below the sea gloriously transparent, with all its weed-covered rocks visible through the waters, great white gulls swooping around with their wild outcries, and the pathlet winding up and down the cliff, bordered by cistus and thrift in masses of pink luxuriance. On the steep descent to a cove, we were met by a welcome luncheon, and ate it high above some rock caverns which are very curious at that point.
“One of the principal farmers belonging to an agricultural club near this lost his wife lately, and in his kind way Lord Devon alluded to her at the annual club dinner,—speaking of her as an admirable, kind, and industrious woman, and saying how he could feel with such a loss, having had himself a bereavement which was ever present to him. But at last the farmer interrupted him—‘I doan’t know what his Lordship be a talking about; but I du know that she was an awful cranky, tiresome old woman, and God Almighty’s very welcome to she.’
“Yesterday was Sunday. I went to the service at Powderham with Lord Devon and Lady Mary Fortescue in a chapel opposite the white recumbent marble figure of Lady Devon. The afternoon was spent in the ‘plantation garden,’ where an Australian gum-tree was in full flower. In the evening there were prayers—‘Compline,’ they called it—a very living, earnest service in the chapel.... Truly I felt, as I took leave of Charlie, that above the door of every house that is his home might be inscribed the words of S. Bernard engraved over the threshold of many Cistercian houses—‘Bonum est nos hic esse, quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius, purgatur citius, praemiatur copiosius.’”
“Abbots Kerswell, June 15.—Yesterday Sir Samuel and Lady Baker dined here. He is most agreeable, and possesses ‘l’art de narrer’ to perfection. He told a ghost-story in the evening, without either names, dates, or any definite material, and yet it was quite admirable, and kept the company breathless for three-quarters of an hour.”
“June 16.—Yesterday we paid a long visit to Sir Samuel Baker. He has bought and made his place with the money he received from the Khedive for his African discoveries.[201] The house is full of skeleton heads, horns, &c. Many others were destroyed in the African depot by an insect which forces out the bone as with a gimlet, but fortunately it will not live in England.”
“Charlton Hall, June 17.—I spent several hours in Bath on my way here. It was an exquisite day, and everything was in great beauty. Bath seems a town exclusively intended for the rich. Everything being built of stone gives it a foreign character, and the height of the surrounding hills causes you to see green down every street. I felt age in the way in which everything looked so small in proportion to my recollection.
“At Chippenham a dogcart from Lord Suffolk’s was waiting for me, and we rolled away down the dull lanes to Malmesbury. It was curious in one day to revisit, as it were, six years out of my former life. At Bath I had walked up the hill to where I could look down upon Lyncombe, and what memories it awakened of miserable longings after a fuller, more interesting life, which lasted through the whole of two years and a half of wasted, monotonous, objectless time. Now in my full life, looking down upon that richly wooded glen, it seemed quite beautiful; but in the wretched bondage of those weary years, how hideous it all was!