“May 30.—On Saturday I was at a pleasant party at Lord Houghton’s, meeting scarcely any one but authors, and a very odd collection—Black, Yates, and James the novelists; Sir Francis Doyle and Swinburne the poets; Mrs. Singleton the erotic poetess (Violet Fane), brilliant with diamonds; Mallock, who has suddenly become a lion from having written a clever squib called ‘The New Republic,’ and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe with her daughter. I was introduced to Mrs. Howe, having asked Lord Houghton who was the charming, simply-dressed woman with the sensible face, and then found she was sister of my Roman friend Mrs. Terry. She wrote the hymn, singing which the troops took Pittsburg. We asked her about it. She said she could not help feeling the little annoyance so many felt on similar occasions—that she should be only known as the authoress of one thing, one little waif out of all her work, and that people should treat her as if she had only written that.”
“June 3.—I have dined several times with Miss Wright to meet the Charles Wilbrahams. She sings beautifully. He had much that was curious to tell about the project of a French engineer for deepening the course of the brook Kishon, so as to let in the Mediterranean. Kishon rises near Tabor, and if the Mediterranean could once pass the watershed, it would run down on the other side into the great hollow of the Dead Sea, which is now so far below its own level. The engineer, of course, had never thought of Ezekiel xlvii., in which the fishermen of Engedi, now some 3000 feet above the level of the sea, are described as casting in their nets.
“Mr. Wilbraham was amusing with some of his American experiences. He told of two young girls who were stopped going through a turnpike gate. ‘What are your charges?’—‘Half a dollar for man and horse.’—‘Well, then, just stand on one side, will you, for we are two girls and a mare, so we’ve nothing to pay.’ He said he had asked an American at Florence what he thought of the Venus de Medicis. ‘Wal, I guess I’m not so partiklar overpowered by stone gals,’ was the reply.
“I constantly meet Froude the historian at Miss Wright’s, a somewhat shy, sardonic, and silent man. His sphinx-like character, the very doubt about him, makes him interesting: one never really knows what he would be at.”[262]
“June 4.—Dined at Lord Egerton of Tatton’s. Old Mrs. Mildmay told a rather improper story there, which was received with shouts of merriment. She was at a country-house where there was a very pleasant man named Jones, and there was also a lady who had a maid called Jones: the people in the house knew this, because there was a confusion about letters. The lady’s husband went away for the day, and, as she was going to walk to the station in the evening to meet him, the mistress of the house asked Mr. Jones to walk with her. When the train came in, the husband was not there, but just then a telegram was brought in. ‘Oh,’ said the lady, ‘Oh-o-o, I’m sure my husband is dead: I can’t open it.’—‘Nonsense!’ said Mr. Jones; ‘if he is dead, he cannot have sent you a telegram.’—‘Well, I can’t open it; I know it’s something dreadful—I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ So at last, Mr. Jones opened it for her and read it aloud, not seeing at once what it contained. It was—‘I am all right, unavoidably detained. If you are at all nervous, get Jones to sleep with you!’”
“June 6.—Lady Manners and her daughters drove me down to Osterley. The great wide park looked dark and dull under a leaden sky, the house gloomy and ghostly as Bleak House. The old Duchess, stumping about with her inlaid ebony stick, seemed part of the place. I dined at Sir Edward Blackett’s, a beautiful house with Raffaellesque and pink tapestry decorations, prepared for the Duke of Gloucester on his marriage with the Waldegrave, but never lived in by him.”
“June 7.—Dined with George Lefevre. Mr. Bright was there, said to be the man who reviewed me so unmercifully in the Athenæum, and I was very glad to see the kind of man he is. He talked incessantly, never allowing a word to any one else; still after a time one found out he was interesting. He talked most of Miss Martineau, then of Hawthorne with great praise—‘the kindest, most generous of men and friends.’ Of his son, Julian Hawthorne, he said that he had ‘written a book which it took very long to read.’”
“June 13.—An excursion with the Lefevres to the Rye House, which I knew so well in my boyhood. It was like spending an afternoon in Holland, so very Dutch are those long expanses of rich meadow-lands, those streams with their boats and tall water-plants. We sat in burning sunshine to draw the old terra-cotta tower, and then had tea and eggs and bacon in the garden of the little inn, which was covered with scarlet geranium in full flower up to the attic windows.”
“June 19.—The news of poor old Cousin Susan’s[263] death. It is the glueing down of another much-read page of life, which can never be seen again. I feel ashamed of not grieving more for one whom I have known so well, but have always more feared than loved. The agent wrote desiring me to come down at once, but, backed by Lady Barrington’s decision that I had better keep out of the way till the will was decided, I excused myself. Yet I am sorry not to be at the funeral, and the old house of many associations, and the little Beltingham chapel with its view over the gleaming Tyne, are very constantly in my mind. All the cousins are quite sure that I am the heir, but I do not think that it is so. Cousin Susan knew that I did not wish it, and I have always urged the claims of the Strathmore boys.”
“June 20.—I have received from Milligan the news of Cousin Susan’s will. It is exactly the will I begged her to make—all to Mr. Bowes for life, then to the Strathmores. These pleasant boys deserve their good fortunes. I would only rather she had selected one of them to have more definitely preserved her memory.”