“There is a melancholy in sunbright fields
Deeper to me than gloom: I am ne’er so sad
As when I sit amid bright scenes alone.”
—George Darley, “Sylvia.”
IT was on the 11th of July, after I had returned to London, that I was drawing in the cloisters of Westminster with Alethea Grenfell, when Miss Johnes (the charming correspondent of Bishop Thirlwall) passed by, and told me that Arthur Stanley was ill. I thought little of it at the time, as he was so often sick, and I had lately seen him looking better and happier than he had done since his sister Mary’s death. On Thursday 14th there was a great dinner-party at the Deanery. Catherine Vaughan dined, and as, at the last moment, Arthur was not well enough to appear, she went in to sit with him after dinner, and finding him very dispirited and unwell, gave up her intention of going to Llandaff next day, and moved to the Deanery instead. That day erysipelas came on, and she was prevented seeing him till 3 A.M. on the morning of Monday the 18th, when the doctors called her, saying that an alarming change had come on. Canon Farrar was then summoned, and administered the Sacrament, but when he came to the blessing, Arthur motioned him to silence, and gave the words of the longer Benediction himself, with the same solemnity with which he spoke them at Augusta’s funeral. Then also Arthur spoke some farewell words—of grateful affection for the Queen, of trustful exhortation for his successor in the Deanery, of thankful appreciation of the fidelity of his housekeeper, Mrs. Waters, and the services of his butler and Charlotte the housemaid. Those who surrounded him then thought that he was sinking, but he rallied, and in the morning all the symptoms were favourable.
At 10 A.M. on Monday, I broke through the cordon which surrounded the Deanery, and made my way up to Catherine, who was glad to have me with her. The large rooms were silent and hushed, though many persons, chiefly Bruces and Baillies, were moving in and out. It was the dead heat of July, not a leaf stirring. In the afternoon, Arthur was so much better that I went away, and even kept an engagement to dine out. But next morning came the shock of his death—Arthur—the “Cousin Arthur” of my childhood. He had become worse at 9.30 P.M. The Archbishop read prayers in the room; they all knelt around; he never spoke more; and before midnight it was over.
Catherine and I both took leave of the Deanery for ever the next morning, but I went back to Westminster for the sad services of Sunday and Monday. The funeral sermons were much more affecting than the funeral itself; that was far less touching than Augusta’s, for he was not there to be felt with and for; and yet the number and the unusual variety of true mourners made it a very remarkable sight.
To me it was a reopening of many beloved memories, and then a sealing them away for ever. On the day after his death his sister and Hugh Pearson, his dearest friend, wrote to me, asking me to undertake his biography, to which I gladly assented, feeling sure that I could do it well, and that no one could possibly know his life as well as myself. But Sir George Grove, one of his literary executors, did not permit my undertaking it.
The following weeks at Holmhurst were occupied on an article which I wrote upon Arthur in Macmillan[359] (Sept. 1881), or rather in hunting up material for it amongst the few papers I myself possessed, as the literary executors allowed me access to nothing else. Yet, in doing it, I could feel that, though somewhat estranged from him in late years, there was no other who knew all his life, its surroundings, motives, and interests as I did. I went afterwards to Catherine, but first paid a short visit in Suffolk to the ever-kind and pleasant Mrs. Paterson and her husband at their charming Rectory of Brome. I extract from my journal.
Journal.
“Brome Rectory, Sept. 15, 1881.—On Tuesday I came here ... into thickly wooded Suffolk, which thoroughly needs its shelter of trees from its exposure to the north-east winds, for they say there is not a hill between it and the Ural Mountains. I only just missed meeting two Mr. Tyrrells, who have been building a church, not uncalled for, they said, as an expiatory offering, for one of their ancestors murdered William Rufus, and another the Princes in the Tower. We saw Eye, with its fine church and pretty black and white grammar-school. The magnates of this neighbourhood are Sir Edward and Lady Caroline Kerrison, who possess two places, of which Brome Hall has delightful old gardens, while Oakley contains the trunk of the tree under which St. Edward was said to have been shot by the Danes, and in which, when it was cut down, an arrow-head was found imbedded. Sir E. Kerrison has just demolished a fine old wooden bridge, the successor of that under which the king concealed himself, and where he was discovered to a newly married couple by the light gleaming on his spurs. They betrayed him to the Danes, who shot him. Dying, he cursed all persons who should cross that fatal bridge over the Waveney on their way to or from a marriage, and on such occasions the country people will always go two miles round to avoid it. Close by is a spot where the discovery of flint weapons in a pre-historic stratum has compelled an entire re-arrangement of geology, as proving the existence of the world some millions of years before it was supposed to have been created.
“Yesterday I went to Norwich, and how many memories were awakened by the first sight of its beautiful spire! The river, the gateways, the ferry, the cathedral were the same: only the beautiful palace was turned into a common fifth-rate house. All who met there have now passed away except Catherine Vaughan and Lea; but one seemed to see them all—the venerable white head of my uncle the Bishop in his stall; Sedgwick emerging from his house; Aunt Kitty in the broad garden-walk; my dearest Mother in the Abbey Room; Sarah Burgess[360] in her still existing little room down the steps; Arthur and Mary, Owen and Charlie—all gone!”
