“Burghley, Nov. 29.—I have been glad to come to the place which is often called ‘the finest house in England’—a dictum in which I by no means agree. The guests are a row of elderly baronets of only hunting and Midland-county fame. An exception is Sir John Hay, a thorough old gentleman (an Admiral) and very agreeable. I took a Miss Fowke in to dinner, and complained to her of the number of old baronets. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they are old and they are numerous, and the central one is my father.’
“The house is immense, but has little internal beauty. There is a series of stately rooms, dull and oppressive, with fine tapestry and china, and a multitude of pictures with very fine names, almost all misnamed—a copy of the well-known Bronzino of the Medici boy being called Edward VI.; a copy of the well-known Correggio in the National Gallery being marked as an original by Angelica Kauffman, &c.[271] In a small closet is a number of jewelled trinkets, including Queen Elizabeth’s watch and thimble, and there hangs the gem of the picture collection—‘The Saviour Blessing the Elements,’ a very expressive but most unpleasing work of Carlo Dolci. It is the halo of the great Lord Burghley which gives the place all its interest. He lies on his back in a scarlet robe under a canopy in St. Martin’s Church at the entrance of the town, and close by is a cenotaph to his father and mother, who are buried at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. All the five churches of Stamford have merit, and the town is interesting and picturesque.
“Lord Exeter, with his lank black hair and his wrinkled yellow jack-boots high above the knee, looks like a soldier of Cromwell. In the evening he and the whole family dance incessantly to the music of a barrel-organ, which they take it in turn to wind.[272]
“The great idol of family adoration is ‘Telemachus’—the memory of Telemachus, or rather a whole dynasty of Telemachi, for they are now arrived at Telemachus X. The bull Telemachus I. gained more than £1000 at small county cattle-shows. His head is stuffed in the hall; his statue in silver stands in the dining-room (where there are also silver statues of Telemachus II. and III.), and his portrait hangs on the wall.”
“Dec. 6.—On Tuesday, at King’s Cross, I met Elizabeth Biddulph, Marie Adeane, Alethea Grenfell, and the Dalyells, and we came down together, a merry party, to Hertford, whither the Robert Smiths sent to fetch us to their picturesque new house of Goldings. Alethea is full of the story of Jagherds (near Corsham)—that ‘in the difficulty of finding a house there suitable for the clergyman, an old manor-house was suggested, which seemed to meet all requisites. The Bishop (Ellicott) himself went to see it, and was quite delighted with it, and the clergyman went to reside there. But his servants would not stay, his governesses would not stay; all said they were worried out of their lives by the figure of a lady in blue, which appeared all over the house and on all possible occasions; and at last the clergyman himself gave in and went away. With the next clergyman the same thing happened, and he appealed to the Bishop. The Bishop said he never could tell why he suggested it, but in his answer he said, “If the apparition comes again, I should advise you to throw as much sympathy as you can into your manner, and ask what you can do for it.” Soon after he heard from the clergyman that this had quite succeeded. The blue lady had appeared again, and the clergyman immediately, with an appearance of the utmost sympathy in his countenance, said, “Madam, is there nothing in the world I can do for you?”—upon which a seraphic smile came over the face of the spirit, and it vanished away and never appeared again.’
“Lately the Bishop had a letter from an old clergyman at Wisconsin in America, who wrote to him that an aged parishioner of his had sent for him on his deathbed, saying that he could not die happy without recounting the facts of a crime which he had witnessed in his boyhood. He had been taken by a gang of highwaymen who held their headquarters at Jagherds Court in Wiltshire, and while there was witness to many deeds of violence committed by them. Amongst others, they carried off a young lady, and in the row and quarrels which ensued, the young lady was murdered at Jagherds Court.
“The old clergyman, not knowing what to do with this confession, thought the best way was to write it to the Bishop of the diocese in which Jagherds was situated, and he wrote it to the Bishop of Gloucester, who verified the whole, finding his correspondent a veritable clergyman, &c. The Bishop of Gloucester told the story last week at Lord Ducie’s.”