“In the morning Mrs. Stewart sat for her portrait to Madeleine, in her picturesque square head-dress. She was pleased at being asked to sit. ‘Il faut vieillir pour être heureuse,’ she said. She talked much whilst she was sitting—much of Lady H.’s insolent and often unfeeling sayings. She spoke of a doctor who had the same inclination, and said to her, ‘Ça ne me repugne pas de dire les vérités cruelles.’ Talking of self-respect, she quoted the maxim of Madame George Sand—
‘Charité envers les autres;
Sincérité envers Dieu;
Dignité envers soi-même.’
And added, ‘But who should one be well with if not with oneself, with whom one has to live so very much.’
“This morning Lady Ducie’s pet housemaid gave warning, because, she said, Lady Ducie was not so sympathetic to her as she was six weeks ago. She said that as Lady Ducie was now not nearly so nice to her as she had been, she should be obliged to marry a greengrocer who had proposed to her.
“In the afternoon we drove to Daylesford—Warren Hastings’ so beloved home. It is a very pretty place, picturesque modern cottages amid tufted trees, and a very beautiful small modern church on a green. This church was built by Mr. Grisewood, and supplants a so-called Saxon church, restored after a thousand years of use by Warren Hastings. The inscription commemorating his restoration still remains, and ends with the text—‘For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday.’ The tomb of Warren Hastings, a yellow urn on a pedestal, stands in the churchyard just under the east window. He left the place to his wife’s son by her first husband, Count Imhoff. Lady Ducie remembers Countess Imhoff coming to visit her mother, always with a great deal of state, and always dressed in white satin and swansdown, like one of Romney’s pictures. Mr. Grisewood succeeded the Imhoffs, and, when his son became a Roman Catholic, sold the place to Mr. Bias. We drove to the house, which stands well—a comfortable yellow stone house in pretty grounds, with a clear running stream. Its reminiscences and the power of calling them up made Mrs. Stewart speak with great admiration of those who ‘could find the least bit of bone and create a mastodon.’
“In returning, Mrs. Stewart told the story of Miss Geneviève Ward, the actress. In early life she was travelling with her mother, when they fell in with a handsome young Russian, Count Constant Guerra. He proposed to her, and as the mother urged it, thinking it a good match, she married him then and there in her mother’s presence, without witnesses, he solemnly promising to make her his wife publicly as soon as he could. When he could, he refused to fulfil his promise; but the mother was an energetic woman, and she appealed to the Czar, who forced Guerra to keep his word. He said he would do what the Czar bade him, but that his wife should suffer for it all her life. To his amazement, when the day for the marriage arrived, the bride appeared with her mother, led to the altar in a long crape veil as to a funeral. Her brothers stood by her with loaded pistols, and at the door of the church was a carriage into which she stepped as soon as the ceremony was over, and he never saw her again. She is Madame Constant Guerra, and has acted as ‘Guerrabella.’
“When we came home, I told a story in Lady Ducie’s sitting-room. Then Lord Denbigh told how—
“‘Sir John Acton (whose son was Lady Granville’s first husband) was a great friend of Lord Nelson, who was at that time occupied in a vain and hopeless search for the French fleet.[220] One day Sir John was in his wife’s dressing-room while she was preparing for dinner. As her French maid was dressing her, a letter was put into her hand, at which she gave such a start that she ran a pin she was holding into Lady Acton. This caused Lady Acton to inquire what ailed her. She said the letter was from her brother, a French sailor, from whom she had not heard for a long time, and about whom she had been anxious. Sir John Acton, with great presence of mind, offered to read her the letter while she went on doing her mistress’s hair. As soon as he had read it he went off to Lord Nelson. The letter gave all the information so long sought in vain, and the battle of the Nile was the result of the prick of a pin.’”
“Prestbury, Oct. 6.—It poured so hard this morning that I put off leaving Sarsden till late. Mrs. Stewart again talked much of the Hanoverian Court, of the Guelph love of doubtful stories; how she saved up any story she heard for the blind King. One day she was telling him a story ‘about Margaret Bremer’s father’ as they were driving. Suddenly the horses started, and the carriage was evidently going to be upset. ‘Why don’t you go on?’ said the King. ‘Because, sir, we are just going to upset.’—‘That is the coachman’s affair,’ said the King; ‘do you go on with your story.’
“With the Greatheeds, in whose cottage I am staying, I went a long excursion yesterday up the Cotswold Hills, which have a noble view of the great rich plain of Gloucestershire. Winchcombe, on the other side, is a charming old town of quaint irregular houses. We passed through it to Hailes Abbey, a small low ruin now, of cloisters in a rich meadow, but once most important as containing the great relic of the Precious Blood, which was brought thither by Edmund, son of the founder, Richard, King of the Romans. Thirteen bishops said mass at different altars at the consecration, and three of the Plantagenets—the founder, his wife, and his son Edmund—are buried in the church. It is now a peaceful solitude, with a few ancient thatched cottages standing round the wooded pastures.