“In returning, we turned aside to Sudeley Castle, the old Seymour house, where Katherine Parr is buried. It is a picturesque and grand old house, partially restored, partly now a green courtyard surrounded by ruined walls and arches. The Queen’s (modern) tomb has a touching sleeping figure[221] guarded by two angels. As we were coming out of the chapel, Mrs. Dent[222] pursued us—a picturesque figure in a Marie Antoinette hat—and brought us in to tea. The Dents made their fortunes as glovers, and, in their present magnificence, a parcel of their gloves, as from the shop, is always left in a conspicuous place in the hall, to ‘keep them humble.’”
“Tettenhall Wood, Oct. 12.—Whilst with the Corbets at Cheltenham, I visited Thirlstone, a curious house which belonged to Lord Northbrook. It was afterwards bought by Sir J. Philipps, the bibliomaniac, and contains the most enormous and extraordinary collection of books and pictures imaginable; a few gems, but imbedded in masses of rubbish, which the present possessor, Mrs. Fenwick, daughter of the collector, is forbidden to sell or destroy.
“I have been working hard for Mrs. Moore at the Memoir of her husband the Archdeacon (the object of my visit), and have read through all his speeches, &c. I see, however, how impracticable it is to help in work of this kind. Mrs. Moore implores me to cut out what should be omitted. I select what seems to me utterly trivial and commonplace, and she is annoyed, saying it comprises the only matters of real importance. She implores me to correct her diction and grammar: I do so, and she weeps because her pleasure is destroyed in a work which is no longer her own.”
“Donington Rectory, Oct. 13.—This is a pleasant place in itself, and any place would be pleasant within view of the beloved Wrekin.[223] On arriving, I went on at once to Boscobel, and saw the oak which grew from an acorn of the tree that sheltered Charles II., and in the ancient half-timbered house, the hiding-place under the floor at the top of the turret-stairs, where the Prince is said to have crouched for forty-eight hours, with his trap-door concealed by cheeses. Well smothered he must have been, if Staffordshire cheeses smelt then as they do now. There is a good portrait of Charles, which he presented to the house after the Restoration. I went on with Henry de Bunsen to White Ladies, now a low ruin of red walls in a meadow, but entered still by a fine Norman archway. Inside is a quiet burial-ground for Roman Catholics, amongst whose lichen-tinted headstones is that of ‘Mistress Joan, who was called friend by Charles II.’—being one of those who assisted in his escape. Beyond, in Hubble Lane, is the ruin of the Pendrill house. The Pendrills[224] were seven brothers, common labourers, but went up to London and had a pension after the Restoration.
“We went on to Tong—a glorious church, quite a church of the dead, so full of noble tombs of Stanleys and Vernons. Near it, in low-lying lands with water, is Tong Castle, the old house of the Durants. The last Mr. Durant brought in another lady to live with his wife, which she resented, and she left him. There was a long divorce suit, which they both attended every day in coaches and six. Owing to some legal quibble, he gained his suit, though the facts against him were well known, and he was so delighted at the triumph over his wife that he erected a monument in honour of his victory on the hill above the castle. The sons all took part with their mother, and when Mr. Durant was lying in his last illness, they set barrels of gunpowder surreptitiously under the monument, and had a match and train ready. They bribed a groom at the house to ride post-haste with the news as soon as the breath was out of their father’s body; and the news of his death first became known to the county by the monument being blown into shivers. The Durants sold Tong to Lord Bradford.”
“Bretton, Yorkshire, Oct. 30.—I have been here for a very pleasant week with a large party of what Lady Margaret (Beaumont) calls her ‘young men and maidens.’ ... There has been nothing especial to narrate, though our hostess has entertained the whole party with her never-failing charm of conversation and wit.
“One day I went with Henry Strutt,[225] whom I like much, to Wakefield, to draw the old chapel on the bridge. What an awful place Wakefield is—always an inky sky and an inky landscape, and the river literally so inky that the Mayor went out in a boat, dipped his pen, and wrote a letter with it to the Commissioners of Nuisances.”
“Raby Castle, Nov. 1.—I came here on Monday, meeting the delicately humorous Mr. Dicky Doyle at Darlington, yet with much fear that there were few other guests; but I was relieved to find ‘Eleanor the Good,’ Duchess of Northumberland, seated at the five-o’clock tea-table, and have had much pleasant talk with her. She spoke of her absorbing attachment to Alnwick and the pain it was to leave it; that the things which make the greatest blanks in life are not the greatest griefs, but the losses which most affect daily life and habits.... Frederick Stanley and Lady Constance[226] came in the evening, he very pleasant, and she almost more full of laughs than any one I ever saw. Other guests are Colonel and Mrs. Duncombe, young Gage, who will be Lord Gage,[227] and just before dinner a good-looking youth came in, who turned out to be Peddie Bennet.[228]
“Yesterday Lord and Lady Pollington came, and old Lord Strathnairn, looking thinner and more of an old dandy than ever.”
“Nov. 3.—Yesterday, while I was walking with the Pollingtons through the beech-woods deep in rustling leaves, the castle bell announced the advent of guests, and returning, we found the Warwicks and Brooke arrived.”