“In the evening at Ampthill I told the story of Mary-Eleanor, Lady Strathmore, to which Lady Wensleydale added her reminiscence of having been told, at four years old, of Stoney Bowes having ‘nailed his wife’s tongue to a table.’”
“August 30.—Yesterday I drew with Miss Lowther at the ruins of Houghton Hall, the old home of the Russells, where Philip Sidney wrote verses under the trees. It is a very stately though not a large house, and beautiful in colour, from the mixture of red brick and yellow-lichened stone. A great avenue, now utterly ruined, leads away from it direct to Bedford, which lies six miles away in the elm-lined plain. It was deserted because Lord Tavistock, returning from hunting, was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot in the presence of his wife, who was waiting for him on the doorstep: the family could never bear to live there again.[215]
“After luncheon, I walked with the old Duchess in the avenue. She described being couched. ‘Did you take chloroform?’—‘Oh, certainly not: no such thing: I should not have thought of it. Don’t you know that couching is a very dangerous operation? the very slightest movement might be fatal to it. I did not know what might happen under chloroform, but I knew that I should never flinch if I had my senses, and I never did: and in three weeks, though I was still bandaged up, I was out walking.’
“‘What was worse than becoming blind in my case,’ said the Duchess, ‘was breaking my knee-pan, for then, you know, one bone goes up and the other goes down, and you never really have the use of your knee again.’
“‘And yet here you are walking, Duchess.’
“‘Yes, certainly I am. Prescott Hewitt said I never should walk again, and I said “Yes, I should,”—and he answered, “Ah! well, with you perhaps it is different; you belong to a family that have got a will;” and I walk, but I walk by the sheer force of will.’
“The Duchess said she remembered old Lady Penrhyn and her pugs, and their being dressed like children, and keeping a footman, and having a key of Grosvenor Square.
“In the evening I drove with Mr. Lowther to Haynes, till lately written Hawnes, the fine old place of Lord John Thynne (Sub-Dean of Westminster), which he inherited from his uncle, Lord Carteret. We met the old man riding in his park, and so much taken up with a sick cow that he almost ignored us. But when we had walked round by the charming old-fashioned gardens, we found him waiting for us on the garden doorstep, all courtesy and kindness. Several sons and daughters-in-law dropped in to tea in a kind of passage-room, but Lord John took me to see all the curiosities of the house himself, and warmed up over them greatly. There is a most noble staircase and a very fine collection of family portraits. In the drawing-room is that of Lady Ann Carteret in a white satin dress, which she always wore, and is always remembered still as ‘The White Lady.’ Her husband was Jack Spencer, of whom there is also a fine picture. His grandmother, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, one day said to him suddenly, ‘Jack, you must marry, and I will give you a list of the ladies you may propose to.’—‘Very well, grannie,’ he said, and he proposed to the first on the list. When he came back with his wife from their wedding tour they went to pay their respects to the old lady. ‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘I am the root and you are only the branches, and therefore you must always pay me a great deal of deference.’—‘That is all very well,’ said Jack impertinently, ‘but I think the branches would flourish a great deal better if the root was under ground.’
“There is a great collection of small treasures at Haynes—snuff-boxes of royal persons, of Lord Chesterfield, &c., and one with a portrait of a lady ancestress,—‘not a good woman, she had nothing but her beauty,’—which takes off and puts on a mask. But the great relic of all is, in its own old shagreen case, the famous Essex ring—a gem beautifully set. With it is a most interesting letter from Weigall, the famous jeweller, explaining a great number of reasons why it must be the ring. There is also the pedigree of the ring, which came through the hands of a great number of females—heiresses.
“To-day the Duchess (Dowager of Cleveland) has been talking much of the wicked Duchess of Gordon, her ancestress. She married all her daughters to drunken Dukes. One of them had been intended to marry Lord Brome, but his father, Lord Cornwallis, objected on account of the insanity in the Gordon family. The Duchess sent for him. ‘I understand that you object to my daughter marrying your son on account of the insanity in the Gordon family: now I can solemnly assure you that there is not a single drop of Gordon blood in her veins.’