“Yesterday I came here by the ferry over the Severn. Lady Llanover’s old ramshackle carriage met me at the Nantyderry Station, and brought me to Llanover. I had received endless solemn warnings about what I was to say and not to say here, what to do and not to do; but with a person of whom one is not likely to see much in after life, one never feels any alarm. Lady Llanover is very small and has been very pretty. We have a mutual bond in our love for her sister, whose memory is enshrined in her inmost heart with that of her mother, Mrs. Waddington, to whom she was quite passionately devoted. Of the Bunsen family she talked from 4 till 10.30 P.M. ‘You see I have still the full use of my lungs,’ she said.
“At eight we had tea. There is no dinner, which I like, but every one would not. After tea she gathered up all the lumps of sugar which remained and emptied them with a great clatter into a box, which she locked up. With £20,000 a year, the same economy pervades everything. Her great idea is Wales—that she lives in Wales (which many doubt), and that the people must be kept Welsh, and she has Welsh schools, Welsh services, a Welsh harper, always talks Welsh to her servants, and wears a Welsh costume at church.”
To Miss Wright.
“March 24, 1877.—I may tell you now, as it is no longer a secret, that I have acceded to the wish of all her family in undertaking to write the Life and edit the beautiful letters of my dear old friend the Baroness de Bunsen. How perfectly great and noble her character was, and the intense interest of all she wrote, few know better than myself, and, beyond her own family, no one loved her more; so, when my ‘London’ is done, I shall give myself gladly to this sacred task, and trust that it may be, as her writings cannot fail to be, a blessing to many.”
Journal.
“Holmhurst, April 6, 1877.—I look back on my visit to Llanover as quite a bit apart in my life. It was important that I should please, as much of the success of the memorials of her sister, which I have undertaken to edit, must depend upon Lady Llanover’s favourable co-operation. It was equally important that I should assert my own absolute independence of will and action, and knock under in nothing. So it was a difficult course to steer. The very warnings I had received were enough to annihilate self-confidence. I was not to believe anything Lady Llanover said about different members of her family, for she was always guided by her own prejudices and sympathies. I was not to be guided by her opinion on any subject, yet was never to contradict her. I was not to make to her any one of the promises she was sure to attempt to exact from me: above all, I was never to leave any letter or paper about in my room, as there were always ‘tame panthers stealing about the house,’ who would master the contents and make it known to their mistress.
“I began by disregarding all this advice, and taking Lady Llanover as if I had never heard a word about her, and I am sure that it was the best way. I listened to all she had to say, and received part of it to profit by. I left all my papers about, and if the mistress of the house learnt what was in them, I hope it was beneficial to her. I found her difficult to deal with certainly, but chiefly because, with endless power of talking and a vocabulary absolutely inexhaustible, it is next to impossible to keep her in the straight conversational path along which she ought to be travelling: she will linger to pick all the flowers that grow in the lanes diverging along the wayside. Thus, though on an average we talked for six hours a day, not more than one of those hours could be utilised.
“There is a great deal to admire in Lady Llanover: her pertinacity in what she thinks right, whether she is right or not: her insistence on carrying out her sovereign will in all things; but chiefly her touching devotion to the memory of the mother from whom she, the youngest and favourite daughter, was scarcely ever separated. The whitewashed ‘Upper House’ in the park is kept fresh and bright and aired, as if the long-lost mother were constantly expected. In her sitting-room a bright fire burns in winter, and fresh flowers are daily placed on the little table by her old-fashioned sofa. The plants she loved are tended and blooming in the little garden; the pictures and books are unremoved from the walls; the peacocks she used to feed, or their descendants, still spread their bright tails in the sun under her windows.
“It is in the kitchen of the ‘Upper House’ that Lady Llanover’s Welsh chaplain performs service on Sundays, for to the church she and her people will not go, as the clergyman is—undesirable. Lady Llanover on Sundays is even more Welsh than on week-days. She wears a regular man’s tall hat and short petticoats like her people, and very becoming the dress is to her, and very touching the earnestness of the whole congregation in their national costume, joining so fervently—like one person—in the services, especially in the singing, which is exquisitely beautiful. I suppose it may be only from the novelty, but this earnest service, these humble prayers on the worn benches in the brick-floored kitchen, with the incidents of manual labour in the background, and farmhouse scenes outside the windows, seemed more of a direct appeal to God than any formal prayers I ever heard in a church—the building called a church. I feel more and more that I shall probably end my days—a Dissenter!
“We had more of the Welsh music in the evening. We went and sat in the armchairs in the hall, and the household filed in above, and filled the music-gallery, and sang most gloriously, especially the burial-hymn ‘It is finished,’ which was sung in parts all the way from the house to the churchyard at the funerals of Mrs. Waddington and Lord Llanover and his son. At other times, the blind harper attached to the house came in and harped to us, and four little boys sat in a circle on the floor and sang.