“We have been a long drive to a charming old house, Chastleton, belonging to Miss Whitmore Jones, who lives there alone, ‘le dernier rejeton de sa famille.’ It is in a hollow with fine old trees around it, manor-house, church, arched gateway, and dovecot on arches grouped close together, all of a delicate pink-yellow-grey. Inside is a banqueting hall with very fine old panelling and curious furniture, and upstairs a long gallery and nobly panelled drawing-room.”
“Sarsden, Oct. 5.—Last night Mrs. Stewart talked much of Hanover and her life there. Her daughter was lady-in-waiting to the Queen. She described how all the royal family might have their property back at once, but the King would make no concession—‘God has given me my crown; I will only give it back to Him.’
“Mrs. Stewart was with the Queen and Princess for five months at Herrenhausen after the King left for Langensalza, when ‘like a knight, he desired to be placed in the front of his army, where all his soldiers could see him, and where he was not satisfied till he felt the bullets all whizzing around him.’ The people in Hanover said he had run away. When the Queen heard that, she and Princess Marie went down to the place and walked about there, and, when the people pressed round her, said, ‘The King is gone with his army to fight for his people; but I am here to stay with you—to stay with you till he comes back.’ But alas! she did not know!
“All that time in Herrenhausen they were alone: only Mrs. Stewart and her daughter went out occasionally to bring in the news; the others never went out. At last the confinement became most irksome to the Princesses. They entreated Mrs. Stewart to persuade mama to let them go out. Mrs. Stewart urged it to the Queen, who said, ‘But the Princesses have all that they need here; they ought to be satisfied.’—‘Pardon me, your Majesty,’ said Mrs. Stewart; ‘the Princesses have not all they need; it is necessary for young people to have some change.’ ‘So,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘at last the Queen saw that it was well, and she consented. She said, “We will not take one of our own carriages, that would attract too much attention, but we will take Harty’s—that is, my daughter’s—carriage, and we will drive in that;” for the Queen had given Harty a little low carriage and a pony. So they set off—the Queen, Princess Marie, and only the coachman besides. And when they had gone some way up the hills, the pony fretted under the new traces and broke them, and, before they knew where they were, it was away over the hedges and fields, and they were left in the lane with the broken carriage. Two Prussian officers rode up—for the Prussians were already in Hanover—and seeing two ladies, beautiful ladies too (for the Queen is still very handsome), in that forlorn state, they dismounted, and, like gentlemen as they were, they came up hat in hand, and offered their assistance. The Queen said, “Oh, thank you; you see what has happened to us: our coachman has gone after the pony, which has run away, and no doubt he will soon come back, so we will just wait his return.” But the coachman did not come back, and the gentlemen were so polite, they would not go away, so at last the Queen and Princess had to set out to return home; and the officers walked with them, never having an idea who they were, and never left them till they reached the gates of Herrenhausen. So the Queen came in and said, “You see what has happened, my dear; you see what a dreadful thing has befallen us: we will none of us ever try going out again,” and we never did.
“‘We used to go and walk at night in those great gardens of Herrenhausen, in which the Electress Sophia died. The Queen talked then, God bless her, of all her sorrows. We often did not come in till the morning, for the Queen could not sleep. But, even in our great sorrow and misery, Nature would assert herself, and when we came in, we ate up everything there was. Generally I had something in my room, and the Queen had generally something in hers, though that was only bread and strawberries, and it was not enough for us, for we were so very hungry.
“‘One night the Queen made an aide-de-camp take the key, and we went to the mausoleum in the grounds. I shall never forget that awful walk, Harty carrying a single lanthorn before us, or the stillness when we reached the mausoleum, or the white light shining upon it and the clanging of the door as it opened. And we all went in, and we knelt and prayed by each of the coffins in turn. The Queen and Princess Marie knelt in front, and my daughter and I knelt behind; and we prayed—oh! so earnestly—out of the deep anguish of our sorrow-stricken hearts. And then we went up to the upper floor where the statues are. And there lay the beautiful Queen, the Princess of Solms, in her still loveliness, and there lay the old King, the Duke of Cumberland, with the moonlight shining on him, wrapped in his military cloak. And when the Queen saw him, she, who had been so calm before, sobbed violently and hid herself against me—for she knows that I also have suffered—and said in a voice of pathos which I can never forget, “Oh, he was so cruel to me, so very, very cruel to me.” And after that we walked or lingered on the garden-seats till daylight broke.
“‘The Queen was always longing to go away to her own house at Marienberg, and at last she went. She never came back; for, as soon as she was gone, the Prussians, who had left her alone whilst she was there, stepped in and took possession of everything.
“‘The Queen is a noble, loving woman, but she is more admirable as a woman than a queen. I have known her queenly, however. When Count von Walchenstein, the Prussian commandant, arrived, he desired an interview with her Majesty. He behaved very properly, but as he was going away—it was partly from gaucherie, I suppose—he said, “I shall take care that your Majesty is not interfered with in any way.” Then our Queen rose, and in queenly simplicity she said, “I never expected it.” He looked so abashed, but she never flinched; only, when he was gone out of the room, she fainted dead away upon the floor.
“‘The mistake of our Queen has been with regard to the Crown Prince. She has had too great motherly anxiety, and has never sent out her son, as the Empress Eugenie did, to learn his world by acting in it and by suffering in it.”
“To-day Mrs. Stewart has been talking much of the pain of age, of the distress of being now able to do so little for others, of being ‘just a creature crawling between heaven and earth.’ She also spoke much of ‘the comfort of experience,’ of scarcely anything being quite utterly irrevocable; that ‘in most things, most crimes even, one can trail, trail oneself in the dust before God and man.’