“This afternoon I have been with Miss Dutton and charming Miss Ruth Bouverie to the old chase and the deer-park, in which there is a beautiful deserted hunting-lodge by Inigo Jones. Lady Sherborne wanted to make a garden in front of it, but was only allowed by her lord to have grass instead of potatoes. We also went into the church adjoining the house, which contains many family monuments. The most remarkable is that of John Dutton, who was ‘possessed of large estate and of mind æquall to his fortune;’ yet he lost a great part of his estates by gambling, and staked Sherborne too, and would have lost it if he had not been carried off to bed by his butler.
“Speaking of concealment of the whole truth, Miss Dutton related a story her uncle, John Dutton, used to tell of the French governess sliding on the ice, when one of the children said to her, ‘Mr. Lentil said, Mademoiselle, that he hoped the boys would trip you up upon the ice, and I really could not tell you what Mr. Davis said.’ Mr. Davis had said nothing, but the intended impression was conveyed.
“I forget how, apropos of Bible ignorance, Miss Dutton told of an American, who, entering a coffee-house at New York, saw a Jew there, and seized him violently by the throat. ‘What, wh—at do you do that for!’ exclaimed the nigh strangled Jew.—‘Because you crucified my Lord.’—‘But all that happened more than 1800 years ago.’—‘That does not matter; I have only just heard of it.’”
“Dec. 14.—Yesterday we went to Biberry, a beautiful old house of Lord Sherborne’s. Mr. and Lady Augusta Noel joined the party in the evening, she a Keppel,[248] the authoress of ‘Wandering Willie,’ and very pleasant. Several neighbours came to dinner. The astronomical conversation of Mr. Noel was very engaging. I deduced from it that the flames in the sun were 96,000 miles long, and that we were all liable to meet our end in three ways—i.e., by going fizz if a particle of the sun (‘as big as this room’) broke off and struck the earth in any direction: by being slowly consumed, the pools drying and the trees shrivelling up: or by being gradually frozen under an ice-wave. The earth has already perished once by the last-named contingency, and there are geological features, especially at Lord Lansdowne’s place in Ireland, which prove it.”
“Osterley, Dec. 16.—I came here about tea-time to what Horace Walpole calls ‘the Palace of Palaces.’ It is a magnificent house. Sir Thomas Gresham was the original builder, and entertained Queen Elizabeth here. Then it passed through various hands till it fell to the Childs, for whom it was partially rebuilt and splendidly fitted up by the brothers Adam. An immense flight of steps leads through an open portico to a three-sided court, beneath which is the basement storey, and from which open the hall and the principal rooms. There is a gallery like that at Temple Newsam, but much longer and finer, and in this case it is broken and partitioned by bookcases into pleasant corners—almost separate rooms. The walls and ceilings are ornamented with paintings (let in) by Zucchi and Angelica Kauffmann, but the great charm lies in the marvellous variety, delicacy, and simplicity of the wood carvings, each shutter and cornice a different design, but a single piece. In one room are exquisite pink Gobelins, the chairs quite lovely; one of them represents a little girl crying over the empty cage of her lost bird; on its companion a little boy has caught the bird and is rushing to restore it to her. There is a fine picture of Lady Westmoreland, Robert Child’s daughter. When Lord Westmoreland, whom he considered a hopeless ne’er-do-weel, asked for her hand, he had firmly refused it; but when Lord Westmoreland some time after took him unawares with the question, ‘Now, if you were in love with a beautiful girl, and her father would not consent to your marrying her, what would you do?’ answered, ‘Run away with her, to be sure.’ Lord Westmoreland took him at his word, and eloped with Miss Child in a coach-and-four from Berkeley Square; and when, near Gretna Green, he saw that the horses of his father-in-law, in hot pursuit, were gaining upon him, he stood up in the carriage and shot the leader dead, and so gained his bride.
“The Duchess Caroline (of Cleveland) was often here with Lady Jersey, and, when she sold her own place of Downham, determined to rent Osterley. Since then, though only a tenant, she has cared for it far more than its owner, Lord Jersey, and has done much to beautify and keep it up. Only Miss Newton and Mr. Spencer Lyttelton[249] are here, the latter with tremendous spirits, which carry him he knows not where. The Duchess is very amusing. Ordering a very good fire to be made up in church, she added drily to the servant, ‘Just such a fire as you make up on a very hot day, you know.’ She mentioned a clever mot of Count Nesselrode. Speaking of Sir William Wallace’s marriage he said, ‘Il avait une mauvaise habitude, et depuis il a épousé cette habitude.’”
“Dec. 17.—The Duchess is a most interesting remnant of bygone times. She is so easily put out by any one doing too much, that every one at luncheon was afraid to get up and ring the bell for her, till she was close to the bell herself, when a nervous young man jumped up and rang it before she could reach it. ‘Sir, officiousness is not politeness,’ she said very slowly and forcibly.
“To young ladies she frequently says, ‘My dear, never marry for love: you will repent it if you do; I did:’ and yet she was fond of her Lord William.
“Mr. Spencer Lyttelton rails at everything supernatural, so we spoke of the story in his own family, and he told us the facts of the Lyttelton ghost, declaring that everything added to them about altering the clock, &c., was absolutely fictitious.
“‘Thomas, Lord Lyttelton, my father’s first cousin, was at Peel House, near Epsom, when a woman with whom he had lived seemed to appear to him. He spoke of it to some friends—the Misses Amphlett—and said that the spirit had said he should die in three days, and that he believed that he should certainly do so. Nevertheless, on the following day—he went up to London, and made one of his most brilliant speeches, for he was a really great speaker—in the House of Lords. He was not well at the time. On the third evening, his servant, after the custom of that time, was in his room assisting him to undress. When the clock struck twelve, Lord Lyttelton counted the strokes, and when it came to the last, exclaimed, “I have cheated the ghost,” and fell down dead: he must have had something the matter with his heart.’”