“Hinchinbroke, Dec. 26.—Lord Sandwich is a charmingly courteous host, and Lady Sandwich a warm, pleasant friend. The three sons, Hinchinbroke, Victor, and Oliver, are all cheery, kindly, and amusing. ‘You see what a set you’ve landed amongst,’ said Lord Sandwich; ‘it will take you some time to know them.’ Agneta Montagu is here with her charming children; Lady Honoria Cadogan; Miss Corry, a handsome, natural, lively lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Edinburgh; and the kind old Duchess Caroline, with relays of walking-sticks, which she changes with her caps for the different hours of the day.
“Yesterday I went with Miss Corry and Hinchinbroke to Huntingdon, a picturesque old town on the sleepy Ouse. In the market-place, opposite the principal church, is the old grammar-school where Oliver Cromwell was educated. Mr. Dion Boucicault, of theatrical fame, is going to restore it in memory of his son, killed hard by in the Abbots Repton railway accident, and is going to destroy the one characteristic feature of the place—the high gable front of twisted and moulded brick, which recalls Holland and records the Flemish settlers in the Fen country.”
“Christmas Day.—The damp, sleepy weather is far from an ideal Christmas, but I have liked being here in spite of a miserable cold, and being accepted as a sort of relation by this warm-hearted family.”[250]
“Ascot Wood, Jan. 22, 1877.—I have been working quietly at home for nearly three weeks—a halt in life as far as the outer world is concerned; and how good these silences are, when, from the turmoil of the living present, one can retire into the companionship of a dead past—past associations, past interests, passed-away friends, who, though dead, are living for ever in the innermost shrines of one’s heart, of which the general world knows nothing, at which very few care to knock; which, even to those who knock, are so seldom opened.
“I have almost a pang when one of these breaks comes to an end, and the outside world rushes in. ‘On ne se détache jamais sans douleur.’[251] But it was a great pleasure to come here again to the companionship of this perfectly congenial cousinhood. Sir John Lefevre, as usual, is full of interesting conversation—not general, but with the one person next him, and that one is generally myself! He described a visit in Sussex at Sir Peckam Micklethwait’s (‘a man with other and more wonderful names’).[252] When the Princess Victoria was at Hastings with the Duchess of Kent, their horses ran away. They were in the greatest peril, when Mr. Micklethwait, who was a huge and powerful man, stood in the way, and seized and grappled with the horses with his tremendous strength, and they were saved. One of the first things the Queen did when she came to the throne was to make him a baronet.
“Sir John said how few people there were now who remembered the origin of the word ‘fly’ as applied to a carriage. In the last century people almost always went out to parties in sedan-chairs—a great fatigue and trouble to their bearers. Gradually the sedans had wheels, and were drawn. Then it began to dawn upon people to substitute a horse for a man. At that time the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was being acted and very popular, and, in allusion to a line in it, the new carriages were called ‘Fly-by-Night.’ Then the sobriquet was abridged—‘by night’ was omitted, but ‘fly’ remained. Sir John remembered, when flys were first invented, meeting a man who said he had just ‘encountered’ a fly with a wasp inside and a bee (B) outside. It was Lord Brougham’s carriage.
“We went this afternoon to Lady Julia Lockwood’s.[253] Her odd little house is quite full of relics of her sister, the Duchess of Inverness—the Queen’s ‘Aunt Buggin,’ wife of the Duke of Sussex.
“To-night, talking of my little diaries, Sir John said that he had a name for them—‘Seniority’—adapted from Nassau Senior’s journals. When Senior went about, however, people knew that what they said would be taken down, so acted accordingly, and produced their sentiments and opinions as they wished them to be permanently represented. The Khedive was told what Mr. Senior would do before he was admitted to his interview. ‘Oh, yes, I quite understand,’ said the Khedive; ‘Mr. Senior is the trumpet, and I am to blow down it.’
“Sir John described how in the Upper House of Convocation the members amused their leisure moments by suiting each of the bishops with texts. That for the Archbishop of York[254] was, ‘And she was a Greek;’ for Bishop Wilberforce, ‘She brought him butter in a lordly dish.’”
“Jan. 24.—When I arrived at the Ascot station, a little lady was there, with glistening silver hair, waiting to go up to the house. It was Mrs. William Grey. She was here two days and very pleasant—a bright, active, simple mind, which finds its vent in excitement for the superior education of women.