“Yesterday we went to Windsor for the day. We went to the castle library, where Natalli, the sub-librarian, showed us everything. It is very interesting regarded merely as a building—not one room, but a succession of rooms, irregularly added as space allowed and comfort dictated, by a succession of sovereigns. Queen Elizabeth’s library (the only part of the castle unaltered outside) has an old chimney-piece of her time, into which the Prince Consort cleverly inserted a bust from her figure by Cornelius Cure, and it once had a ceiling painted by Verrio, which was destroyed by William IV., who put up a stucco ceiling instead. Of Anne there is the charming little boudoir, where she was sitting with the Duchess of Marlborough when a letter (a facsimile of which is preserved there) was brought in from the Duke telling of the victory of Blenheim. The later rooms are of George III. and William IV. We saw Miles Coverdale’s Bible, all the early editions of Shakspeare, Charles I.’s Prayer-book, Elizabeth’s Prayer-book, Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ with his corrections and alterations; but better far was the view from the end window, with the terrace and its final tower standing out in burly shadow against the misty and flooded country.”
“Thorpe, Jan. 26.—We went to-day to St. Anne’s Hill. Lady Holland was sitting in the innermost of the richly furnished bright warm little rooms, but was bandaged up still from a frightful fall she had received by mistaking a staircase for a passage in the dark. One always feels one’s own talk on waggon-wheels with a person who has the conversational reputation she has, and I was glad when Madame de Jarnac came in and undertook to show us the house. Lady Holland followed, and took us to her bedroom, which is charming, with a view towards Chobham. Then we went to the gardens, with a temple to Friendship (i.e., to Lord Holland’s friendship), and the summer-house in which the preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens were signed. Other summer-houses are paved with encaustic tiles from Chertsey Abbey.”
“69 Onslow Square, Jan. 27.—Mr. Byng preached a capital sermon to-day upon ‘religious hypochondriacs’—people who say, ‘You know I was always so spoilt when I was a child, you must make allowance for my being a little selfish now,’ &c.”
“6 Bury Street, Feb. 13.—Last night I dined with the Haygarths, to meet the Woods and Leslies. The Dowager Lady Spencer[255] was there, who gave an amusing account of her Irish experiences, when her stepson was Lord Lieutenant. One day he was hunting, and had just leapt a hedge into a lane, when he was aware that a funeral was coming up. He thought it might hurt the feelings of the mourners if he passed them hunting, so he hid himself. But as the funeral came by the hounds appeared, and instantly, setting the coffin down in the road, mourners, pall-bearers, and all started in hot pursuit, and Lord Spencer found himself left alone with the body.
“Lady Spencer talked of one Irish gentleman, a Master of Hounds, who, being very much puzzled by the two Lady Spencers, and how to distinguish them, settled the matter by calling them, like dogs, one ‘Countess,’ and the other ‘Dowager.’ ‘The absurdity never struck me much,’ she said, ‘till the last day of all, when Charlotte’s eyes were so red with crying, and he, coming in, exclaimed, “Dowager, Dowager, what can we do to comfort Countess?”’
“I have just been with Lady Halifax and the Corrys to see the Duke of Suffolk’s head at the church in the Minories—a most awful object.
“Mr. Bodley[256] told us last night that when he was staying at St. John’s College, Oxford, he saw a ghost. He could swear to it. He was in a room which was in the broad moonlight of a summer’s night, for it had no shutters. Suddenly he heard a movement like that of a man under the bed, and then something thrown on the floor like a stick. He jumped up, but there was nothing. He then went to bed again, when out of the floor in the moonlight rose the head and shoulders of a man. He saw it against the chest of drawers. It hid two of the handles of the drawers, but not more. Farther than that out of the ground it did not rise. He is quite certain that he saw it, and quite certain that he was awake.”
“Feb. 14.—Luncheon at Miss Davenport Bromley’s to meet Mr. Portal. Lord Houghton and his son and daughter were there. Mr. Portal has a scheme for educating the unfortunate Americans of gentle birth who have fallen from wealth to poverty owing to the changes on the cessation of the slave trade in South Carolina, and he has been eminently successful. He described the South Carolina reverses of fortune as most extraordinary. One of his friends died in his house who had once possessed an estate worth £300,000; yet, when his will was opened, it only contained these words—‘I leave to the old and tried friend of my youth, the Rev. —— Portal, my only son!’ He had nothing else whatever to leave except £9 towards his funeral expenses. Mr. Portal described how the ‘darkies’ had been ‘done’ since the change by those who had too much of the theory of religion to have any power left for the practice of it. Being at a place on the border, where some of the greatest battles were, he asked some of the ‘darkies’ why, when they saw the Northerners gaining the upper hand, they did not join them. A ‘darkie’ said, ‘Mossieu, did you ever see two dogs fighting for a bone?’—‘Yes, very often.’—‘But, Mossieu, did you ever see the bone fight?’
“The conversation fell on Philadelphia, ‘the most conservative place in America, with its narrow streets and narrow notions.’ Lord Houghton said that his son Robin had been shocked by the non-observance of Sunday in the native city of Moody and Sankey. Mr. Portal said that Moody and Sankey were utterly unknown, entirely without influence in their own country; that it could only be the most enormous amount of American cheek which had enabled them to come over to England, ‘exactly as if it was a heathen country, to bring the light of the Gospel to the English;’ that America had heard with amazement and shock how they were run after; that they owed their success partly to their cheek, and partly to their music.
“Mr. Portal described his feeling of desolation when he first arrived in England—‘not one soul he knew amongst all these millions;’ that the next day a lady asked him to conduct her and her child to a pantomime. He consented, without understanding that a pantomime meant Drury Lane Theatre, and his horror was intense when he ‘found himself, a clergyman of forty years’ standing,’ in such a place. This, however, was nothing to what he felt ‘when a troop of half-naked women rushed in and began to throw up their legs into the air;’ he ‘could have sunk into the ground for shame.’ ‘Was not the mother of our Lord a woman? was not my mother a woman? is not my wife a woman? are not my daughters women? and what are these?’