“Altogether, it was a very interesting visit, and I was glad Mr. Gladstone said he wished it had not been such a short one. He and Mrs. Gladstone were both most cordial.
“Here, at Tatton, is a number of pictures set into panels round the staircase, full-lengths of Cheshire gentlemen, moved hither from Astbury Hall, where the originals met to decide whether they should rise for Prince Charlie, and finally elected not to risk their estates. In the dining-room is a picture of a hand shaking out an empty purse by Rubens, signed; it was sent to Charles V. when he had forgotten to pay the painter for his work, to remind him. Lord Egerton has many charming miniatures in his room, and—a gift to one of his ancestors—Queen Elizabeth’s ‘horn-book,’ being the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer set in a frame of silver filagree and covered with talc (horn). He told us of some one who, wishing effectually to protect his land from poachers, put up—‘Aspleniums and Polypodiums always on these premises.’”
“Dec. 6.—Yesterday we drove to Wythenshawe.[246] It is a most engaging old house, very well restored, all the historical points retained—the low narrow door inside the other, through which the defenders forced the conquerors to pass as their condition of surrender after their siege by the Commonwealth, when the family was heavily fined: the ghost-room, where a soldier shot in the siege still appears: the difference in the panelling of the oak drawing-room, where the panels were smashed in by a cannon-ball. There is another ghost—a ghastly face of a lady, who draws the curtains and looks in upon a bride on the first night she sleeps in the house after her marriage: the late Mrs. Tatton saw it.”[247]
“Betton House, Dec. 9.—Wednesday morning was lovely. We drove to Rostherne Manor, Lady Mary Egerton’s charming modern house, with a lovely view over the wide shining mere to the Derbyshire hills; on the right, the church tower on a wooded hill, and in the foreground the terraced garden with an old leaden figure of Mercury.
“I came away to Hodnet, where the great new house perfectly swarmed with Heber Percy cousins, and next morning I went with Ethel Hood to Stoke. There is nothing but the ghost of our memories there now—even the church pulled down, all that made the place touching or beautiful to us swept away.”
“Betton, Dec. 10.—It has been a great pleasure to go to church with the Tayleurs at dear old Market Drayton, and to sit in the great green baize room in the family gallery, with a large fire burning in an open hearth—a pleasant contrast to the wretched open seats which are the fashion now, though it might recall the exclamation of a Frenchman on seeing a similar pew—‘Pardi! on sert Dieu bien à son aise ici.’ Yet even at Drayton the respectable red-cloaked singers have given place to bawling choristers.
“I always feel, in the neighbourhood of the winding Terne, as if I were carried back into my child-life with my dear adopted grandparents, the one happy part of my boyhood, so different from the many bitter days at Hurstmonceaux.”
“Sherborne Park, Dec. 12.—At Bourton-on-the-Water were many people waiting. In the dark I recognised Lord and Lady Denbigh, and then a young lady came up with her husband and spoke to me. ‘I cannot see in the least who you are.’—‘Oh, then I shall leave you to guess, and you will find out by-and-by.’ It was Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley. With him and Lord Powerscourt, and a fat old gentleman much muffled up, whom I took for Sir Hastings Doyle, and who turned out to be Mr. Alfred Denison, I travelled in a carriage to Sherborne. It is a very fine house of Inigo Jones, of rich yellow stone, with short fluted columns between the windows; but in effect it is overwhelmed by the church, which is close upon it, and crushes it with its spire. The living rooms are delightfully large, airy, and filled with books, flowers, and pictures.
“I had a pleasant dinner, seated by Mr. Denison, who told me much about his curious collection of books on angling, of which he has some of the early part of the fifteenth century, and about 500 editions of Izaak Walton. He has even a Latin treatise on the Devil’s fishery for souls. He was just come from Chatsworth, and had seen there a volume for which £12,000 had been refused, the original of Claude’s ‘Liber Veritatis.’
“Lord Sherborne is both very fond and very proud of his wife, but her music he pretends to detest, though her singing is quite lovely—not much voice, but intense pathos and expression.