“‘When we were any ways contrairy, my father used to say, “Yes, it’s always too wet or too fine: it’s always too hot or too cold: that’s the way of the world.’”
“London, May 12.—To Mrs. Duncan Stewart, whom I found, after her severe illness, sitting in a picturesque wrapper reading old Figaros. ‘So much in them, you know, so much more than in any other newspaper.’ They called up reminiscences of Lady Blessington, whom she thinks Lady Airlie like, though without her perfect beauty: then of the trial of ... for forgery, she being a grand-daughter of Stephanie Lafitte, ‘whom I remember, not in her wedding-dress, but in one of her trousseau dresses, for it was velvet. All French girls—and I was a French girl then—are brought up to observe and think a great deal about dress, and it is terrible, quite horrible to them, that an unmarried girl should have a velvet dress: thus the remembrance clings to me.’
“Mrs. Stewart had been most alarmingly ill, but said she had rallied from the moment Alfred Denison paid her a visit. She had said to him that she had a presentiment she should not recover, and he had answered her that he had never been ill without such a presentiment, and that it had never come true.
“Yesterday I went to the Hollands to meet Princess Louise, and to tell her some stories which she had graciously wished to hear. I knew that I was to do this, but it was sufficiently formidable notwithstanding. The Princess felt that it must be so, and was very sympathetic, and as nice as she could be, talking first of my books, and saying that my Italian volumes were never out of her hands when she was in Italy, &c. I had been allowed to choose the rest of the audience, and the Childers, Northcotes, Goschens, Lady Taunton, and Mrs. Dundas were there.”
“May 18.—Luncheon with Catherine Vaughan at the Temple. She was very full of a story of Sir F. Gore Ouseley. He took a house near London, and a young man went to stay with him, an atheist and a reprobate. The next morning this man came down an altered person, saying that he had heard a supernatural voice in the night, which had so horrified him that it would change his whole life—the voice had blasphemed in the most awful language. That day was November 22. The young man went away, and he really did change his life.
“The following year, on November 22, Sir F. Gore Ouseley suddenly opened his door at night, and saw at the end of the passage a brilliant light, and in the light the figure of an old man in a dressing-gown—luminous, and all the rays of light issuing from his figure. Suddenly the light went out: there was nothing more to be seen.
“Some time after, Sir F. Gore Ouseley went to visit the owner of the house he had rented, who lived at a distance. Whilst waiting for him, he was attracted by the picture of an old gentleman over the chimney-piece, and recognised the very man he had seen. When the master of the house came in, he said, ‘Pray excuse me, but whom does that portrait represent?’—‘Oh,’ answered the owner, ‘that is no one you are likely to have heard of: it is a grandfather of mine, who was a very bad man indeed: so bad, that, in fact, we never mention him.’ Afterwards, Sir Frederick found that he had strangled his wife in the very passage where he appeared, and had then committed suicide.
“Mr. Austen, Rector of Whitby, was present when Catherine told this. He said that Professor Owen had gone to stay at a house in Essex, where the hostess apologised for putting him into the haunted room. The next morning he was asked if he had heard anything. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have heard something, but I should like to say nothing about it till I have slept in that room again.’ The second morning he said that each night he had heard loud cries of a child proceeding from the hearthstone, and begged that a mason might be sent for and the stone removed. This was done, and the skull of a child was found beneath the stone. They buried it in the garden, and the cries have never been heard since.”
“Holyrood Palace, May 27.—On the evening of the 14th, at Cleveland House, first Lady Aberdeen, and then Aberdeen, asked me to come hither with them as equerry, during their residence for the Lord High Commissionership. I stayed in London for Miss Beaumont’s wedding with Coplestone Bampfylde, and joined them on Friday, arriving at 9 P.M., when ninety guests were at dinner in the brilliantly lighted picture gallery, in which all the kings of Scotland were, painted to order by the same hand and from the same model. After dining by myself in a small room, I joined the party in the reception-rooms, where I entered at once upon my duties, which, for the most part, seem to be to talk right and left to every one I see. Each evening the Synods of the different districts dine, some eighty or a hundred clergymen, and I have generally found from my clerical neighbours that they regard it as their carnival, looked forward to throughout the whole year, and giving them much to talk of when they return home. Sometimes military, legal, or other classes are mixed with them. In the afternoons we have generally gone in state to visit institutions of one kind or other, the most interesting being the really beautiful Infirmary, built entirely by the people of Scotland, and the marvellous printing establishment of Messrs. Nelson. When we were at the latter, most hands were busy over the revised New Testament, in which there are 7000 alterations from the older edition, 2000 of them being important.”
“Holyrood Palace, May 28.—It is an interesting life here, but a very fatiguing one—the hours and hours of standing, as for real royalty; the etiquette of always addressing Aberdeen as ‘Your Grace,’ and getting up when he comes into a room; the whirlpool of invitations to be sent, in which one is always being swallowed up.