“Oct. 29.—A charming visit to Broadlands, Lord Mount-Temple’s—the people so full of genial goodness, the house most comfortable and gardens lovely. Lady Mount-Temple—in whom, as Miss Tollemache, Ruskin saw such statuesque severity with womanly sweetness joined—a marvellous union of beauty, goodness, and intelligence. The grounds, with fountain, river, well-grouped trees, and a Palladian summer-house, are like a beautiful Claude-Lorraine picture. The same landscape—of a river, winding amongst cedar-shadowed lawns—forms the predella to Rossetti’s picture of ‘The Blessed Damozel.’”
“Holmhurst, Nov. 13.—Mr. and Mrs. Paterson have been here for the day. He told me two stories:—
“A lady was awoke in the night with the disagreeable sense of not being alone in the room, and soon felt a thud upon her bed. There was no doubt that some one was moving to and fro in the room, and that hands were constantly moving over her bed. She was so dreadfully frightened that at last she fainted. When she came to herself, it was broad daylight, and she found that the butler had walked in his sleep and had laid the table for fourteen upon her bed.
“A lunatic, who had escaped for some time from his asylum, was eventually captured. When he came in and saw the keeper who was accustomed to take care of him, he said, ‘Well, I’ve been very much occupied since I went away: I’ve been occupied in being married.’—‘Well, and whom have you married?’ said the keeper. ‘Oh, I’ve married the Devil’s daughter.’—‘Well, I hope it’s a happy union?’—‘Oh, very, thank you,’ said the lunatic; ‘only I don’t much like the old people.’”
“Holmhurst, Nov. 24.—Last week I was for two days at Cambridge as the guest of Jock Wallop, the best and kindest of hosts, under whose popular auspices I saw the present undergraduate life to perfection. There is a most charming set of fellows there now, all delighted to be young, and not aiming at juvenile senility, as was the fashion in my day at Oxford.”
“Dec. 16.—Several Midland county visits afford nothing to recollect. Certainly country-house visits are a lottery. One old lady said, ‘My dear, I am so glad to see you. It is so delightful to see any one at all pleasant. In London one can have any agreeable company one likes, but you know God Almighty fills one’s house in the country.’
“I have, however, been to George Curzon at Oxford. He is most delightful, and sure to become distinguished. At the meeting of the Conservative ‘Canning Club’ I heard a most capital paper on Ireland by young Edward Arnold. Afterwards I was three days at Sherborne, meeting, amongst other less interesting elements, the ever-charming Dowager Lady Craven. Lady Sherborne sang in a way which would move the heart of a basilisk. The country around Sherborne was the scene of innumerable battles in Saxon times, commemorated in the names of the fields and farms, which are supposed to owe their fertility to the carnage with which they had been covered. This supposition makes the peasants eager for the use of bone-dust, which they believe to be imported from the plains of Waterloo. If a field, after having been thus manured, still yields no crop, they say ‘Waterloo bean’t no use here!’”
I spent the Christmas of 1880 again with the kind Lowthers at Ampthill, meeting, as before, Louisa, Lady Ashburton, and going, as before, to spend a day at Woburn. In January 1881 I was at Bretton with the Beaumonts, meeting Julia, Lady Jersey, and a large party.
We went to see Nostell, a very grand but little known house of the Winns, full of splendid things, glorious tapestries, china, Chippendale furniture, but, most remarkable of all, a doll’s house of the last century, with miniature fairy furniture, exquisitely carved and painted, a doll trousseau with point lace, and a Liliputian service of plate.
We also went a long drive to Stainborough (Wentworth Castle), through a country which may be pretty in summer clearness, but which is hideously black in winter. The house is a great Italian palace, half Queen Anne, half older, with little temples in the grounds, the building of one of which is described by Evelyn. Inside there are fine tapestries, and many pictures of the Stuarts, ascribed to Vandyck, but probably copies. Lady Harriet Wentworth, who showed us everything herself, gave us the characteristic of her life when she said “I do so hate the thraldom of civilisation.” Her stately rooms have no charm for her, and, though they are so immense, she declares she cannot breathe in them, and she lives entirely and has all her meals in the conservatory, with a damp, warm, marshy climate, from which she does not scruple to emerge through the bitter winds of the Yorkshire wolds (for the conservatory does not join the house) with nothing extra on. From Bretton I went to Tortworth—Lord Ducie’s—in Gloucestershire.