“July 13.—Luncheon with Sir C. Trevelyan, who showed me Macaulay’s library, and then drove me to see the remnant of the house of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in Villiers Street. Peter the Great lived there when in London, and David Copperfield is made to lodge there by Dickens.
“Dined at Lord Cardwell’s, where I sat by George Otto Trevelyan, the author of Lord Macaulay’s Life. At Lord Sherborne’s in the evening I found Irving, with all the three hundred nights of his Hamlet written on his face. I was introduced to Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, a little dapper man in a violet coat.”
“July 14.—Luncheon at Mrs. Lowe’s. She was most amusing about her pets. ‘Mr. Lowe, you know, is always going out and bringing home a new animal: he does like pets so. He went and he bought a dog, and then he went and bought a parrot, and then he bought a cockatoo and a cat, and I said, “Mr. Lowe, if you go and buy any more pets, I will go out of the house, because I will not bear it,” and then Mr. Lowe went and bought Bow-wow, the little white dog, and it had not cut its teeth, and it was so dreadfully ill, and we had to nurse it, and it gave us more trouble than all the other pets put together; and I like Bow-wow the best of them all, and Mrs. Scutt (that’s the housekeeper) is just the same.
“‘I said to Mr. Lowe, “If you will go downstairs with that cockatoo on your shoulder, it will fly away out of the window, and you’ll lose him,” but Mr. Lowe would do it, you know, he’s so obstinate; and it was just as I said, and the cockatoo flew out of the staircase window, and Mr. Lowe was in a fine way about him. There are a lot of boys watching for him now, and he’ll come back some day, for every one knows Mr. Lowe’s cockatoo: but he won’t come back yet. And finely he’s enjoying himself, that bird is; he’s never had such a fine time in his life; he’s finished all the cherries in Eldon Grove, and he’s just beginning upon the gooseberries.
“‘When we drive down to Caterham, Bow-wow and Elfin, the two dogs, sit upon the back-seat, and the cat sits in the middle. They look out of the windows and amuse themselves wonderfully, and finely the people stare.
“‘When I first married Mr. Lowe we lived at Oxford. It was quite delightful: we had all the interesting society of the University, and Mr. Lowe was a tutor and taught all the clever young men. When we went up to London, we hired a coach, and had six first-class men inside, all Mr. Lowe’s pupils. Then Mr. Lowe’s eyes failed, and we threw it all up and went to Australia, and were away six years; but it answered to us, for I had some money left to me at that time, and Mr. Lowe had some money left to him, and we invested it there in houses, and they pay us 60 per cent., and we made our fortunes.
“‘How sad the Duchess of —— going away is! She cried so dreadfully when she went, that I am sure it’s for ever. Don’t you think, if I had had a dreadful quarrel with Mr. Lowe, and we had parted for ever, that I should cry too? It is a very different thing when it is not for ever. I go off to Wiesbaden for six weeks, and I wish Mr. Lowe good-bye, and I say, “Well, good-bye, Mr. Lowe; in six weeks you’ll have me back again,” and if we have quarrelled, it does not signify; but it would be very different if it was for ever. Why, I should cry my eyes out.’
“One day, however, when Mrs. Lowe was inveighing against the absurdity of the marriage service—of the bridegroom’s statement, ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow,’ even when he possessed nothing and it was just the other way, and when she was saying, ‘Now when I married Mr. Lowe, he had nothing whatever but his brains’—a deep voice from the end of the room growled out, ‘Well, my love, I certainly did not endow you with those.’
“‘Why contend against your natural advantages?’ said Mr. Lowe one day to a deaf friend who was holding up an ear-trumpet to listen to a bore.
“In the afternoon I drove down with Lady Sherborne, Miss Dutton, and Miss Elliot to see Lord Russell at Pembroke Lodge. It is a beautiful place; not merely a bit of Richmond Park, but a bit of old forest enclosed, with grand old oaks and fern. The Queen gives it to Lord Russell, who, at eighty-four,[209] was seated in a Bath-chair in the garden, on a sort of bowling-green, watching his grandsons play at tennis. Though he no longer comprehends present events, he is said to be perfectly clear about a far-away past, and will converse at any length about Napoleon, the escape from Elba, &c. When I was presented to him, by way of something to say, I spoke of having seen the historical mound in his garden, and asked what it was that Henry VIII. watched for from thence as a death-signal, ‘was it a rocket or a black flag?’