“‘He was very fallible,’ she said, ‘and yet capable of becoming that greatest of all things—a good man.’
“‘I think it was a bishop who said, “Most people now go to seek their ancestors at the Jardin des Plantes; for my part, I am content with the Garden of Eden.”’
“‘Mr. Pigott is a finished critic, but with the innocence of a child picking daisies.’
“‘It was one of the cases in which the highest and the lowest motives combine, and oh! in life there are so many of those cases.’”
“January 12.—Mrs. Stewart has been talking of the cases in which a lie is justifiable. Of herself she said, ‘There was once a case in which I thought I ought to tell a lie, but I was not sure. I went to Dr. and Mrs. Bickersteth, and I asked them. They would only answer, “We cannot advise you to tell a lie;” they would not advise it, but they did not forbid it. So when a husband came to question me about his wife, I equivocated. I said, “She was certainly not seduced by that man.” He said to me very sternly and fiercely, “That is no answer; is my wife innocent? I will believe you if you say she is.” And I said, “She is.” I said it hesitatingly, for I knew it was false, and he knew it was false; he knew that I had lied to him, and he did not believe me in his heart; but he was glad to believe me outwardly, and he was grateful to me, and that husband and wife lived together till death. I believe that was one of the cases in which it is right to tell a lie. You will say that it might lead me to tell many others, but I don’t think it has. Stopford Brooke once said that strict merciless truth was the most selfish thing he knew.”
“Mrs. Stewart also told us—
“Dudley Smith, as a very young man, went out to China, and was employed in the opium trade. He then married and had several children. When he was thirty-three his conscience began to work, and he felt the abuses of opium. He left the trade and became a wharfinger, in which profession he made some money, though it was not nearly so lucrative as the occupation he had given up, in which he had made £12,000.
“When he was thirty-five, though he had then a wife and several children, Dudley Smith brought the £12,000 to his man of business, saying that it burnt a hole in his pocket, and desiring him to so invest it as to realise £500 a year for a mission to the Chinese, from whom it was taken. This story is delightful to me. It reminds me of a saying of old Mr. Planchet’s, which meant, though I cannot remember the exact words—
‘Of heroes and heroines I am sick grown;
The only real ones are those that are unknown.’
We have been to luncheon at Berkeley Castle to-day. Lady Fitzhardinge, fat to a degree, is charming, and has the most wonderful knowledge of all the delicate finesses of form and colour, and the application of them to furniture. Her rooms are quite beautiful, everything composing the most harmonious picture, down to a string of blue beads suspended from a yellow vase. Lord Fitzhardinge came in to luncheon with Lord Worcester, Lord Guildford, and another man—four statues! Not one of them spoke a word, I believe because not one of them had a word to say, except about racehorses, about which we none of us could say anything. The castle relics are most interesting—Sir Francis Drake’s furniture, Queen Elizabeth’s plate, bequeathed to her cousin Lord Hunsdon, and the last prayer of Edward VI., written out by his sister herself, in the tiniest of little jewel-embossed volumes.”