“Sept. 25.—We went from Brome to see Roydon. Mr. G. E. Frere is squire there, an eccentric man of old family, who has planted the churchyard with flowers appropriate to each of the graves near them. One is covered with wormwood: it is that of two old sisters in the parish, horribly ill-tempered, who both became bedridden, but each was provided with a stick that she might whack her companion as she lay in the bed near her. We met Mr. H., an ugly man, intensely. proud of his worthless pictures. Warren, the son of ‘Ten Thousand a Year,’ the clergyman who preached such a capital sermon on the single word ‘but,’ dined with him, and when Mr. H. pointed out what he calls a Murillo, said, ‘Really a Gorillo—a family portrait, I suppose!’ We also went to see Wingfield, an interesting old fortified manor of the De la Poles, and their magnificent tombs in the church. One of them married Chaucer’s grand-daughter and was murdered at Calais in the time of Henry VI.; another married the sister of Edward IV.
“On leaving Brome, I made a tourette into Norfolk—to dilapidated Walsingham, once the most celebrated shrine in England: to Lynn, with a custom-house worthy of Flanders: to Castle Rising, a Norman tower almost hidden in its green ballium: to Wymondham, with a splendid semi-ruined church, perpendicular outside, but Norman within: and to the glorious ruins of Castle Acre. The Coke of Elizabeth’s time bought so much land in Norfolk, that the Queen ordered him to be told that he must not buy any more, he would own too much for a subject. He petitioned, however, that he might just buy three acres more, which would complete his estate. The Queen said, ‘Yes, he might certainly do that;’ and he bought Castle Acre, West Acre, and South Acre, three huge properties, only the nucleus of which has descended to Lord Leicester.
“On the 20th I came to Llandaff.... We have been to see the ruins of a deserted manor-house which belonged to Sir George Aubrey. It was abandoned on account of a family tragedy. Sir George’s only son, a little boy, one day refused to eat his pudding. ‘You must,’ said the father. The child said he really could not, and implored with strange anguish to be excused, but the father insisted. Three hours after the child died in frightful agonies. That day the cook, by mistake, had put arsenic into the pudding instead of sugar.
“Yesterday Lord and Lady Romilly[362] fetched me to their pretty little house of Porthkerry, overhanging the Bristol Channel, and to-day we have driven through pouring rain to visit Fon Mon (pronounced Fun-Mun), a very curious old house of the thirteenth century.”
“Penrhos, Anglesea, Oct. 9.—From Llandaff I went to Tenby, an indescribably delightful place, with its varied coast, its wonderful caves, its rich festoons of clematis hanging over the cliffs, and its sapphire and chrysoprase seas. A girdle of old castles and abbeys surrounds the place, affording an endless variety of excursions. I saw something at Tenby of many members of the kindly respectable family of Allen, and the Dean of the same name welcomed me to St. Davids, which is truly marvellous in charm and interest—the cathedral, richly, exquisitely beautiful; the ruined palace and college; and the village, with its fine old cross, isolated in the solitude of a hollow in the vast swooping hills, sixteen miles from a railway, almost from any other inhabited place. It is said that if you take a sod from the churchyard and stand upon it on the shore of the neighbouring sea, you look across the mist of waters into all the glories of fairyland; and truly this seems almost the case without the assistance of the churchyard sod, all is so wondrously, uniquely, weirdly beautiful.
“On my way to this Stanley home of many memories, I went to visit the Williams’s of Parcian, in central Anglesea, where the very savageness of the country gives it an interest, and the desolate coves of its sea-shore, in one of which, with the beautiful name of Moelvra, the Royal Charter was lost.
“Mr. (William) Stanley[363] is very kind, and has a great deal of shrewd cleverness of its own sort; but a great deal has been written about the charms and moral advantages of the life of a country gentleman who never leaves his own place; nothing of its still more evident disadvantages. Surely no life has so strong a tendency to generate self-importance, exclusive possession, tenaciousness of authority, jealousy of interference, hatred of independence in others.”
“Kinmel, Oct. 14.—A kind invitation from Lord and Lady Penrhyn took me from Penrhos to Penrhyn Castle, which is a very stately building outside, though the huge stone corridors and richly decorated Norman rooms are very unsuited for home comfort. A regiment of young ladies, Miss Pennants—daughters, step-daughters, and step-grand-daughters of Lady Penrhyn[364] appeared at every meal. The lady of the castle herself is one of the most natural and unworldly women in the world; and Lord Penrhyn[365] was most agreeable with his personal reminiscences. He described the coronation of George IV., where he stood close to Queen Caroline as she entered the carriage to drive away, and he said the expression of her countenance was the most diabolical thing he ever looked upon. Lord Penrhyn rode after Lord Anglesea, the Waterloo hero, when he was followed by a hooting mob through St. James’s Park. Lord Anglesea backed his horse between the trees, set his teeth, and hissed back at the yelling people. Then he said, ‘If every man of you were a hundred men, and each of them had a hundred hands, and a bayonet in each hand, I should still do my—duty!’ Then the people cheered him.