“March 28.—Dining at Mrs. Quin’s, I met Mrs. Ward, who was very amusing.
“She described the airs of Frances-Anne, Lady Londonderry.[401] One day she was extremely irritated with her page, and sent him to Lord Londonderry with a note, in which she had written in pencil, ‘Flog this fellow well for me: he has been quite unendurable.’ But the page read the note on the way, and meeting one of the great magnificent flunkeys, six feet high, said, ‘Just oblige me by taking this note in to my lord: I am forced to do something else.’ The flunkey brought out the answer, and met the page, who took it in to his lady. She was rather surprised, for it was—‘I’m afraid.’ Mrs. Ward was in the house when this happened.
“Mrs. Ward recollected, in her own childhood, when she was not three years old, sitting on the floor in her mother’s sitting-room cutting up a newspaper with a pair of blunt scissors. A lady came in to see her mother, and brought with her two very fat children, with great round staring eyes. The children were told to sit down by her on the floor, and she was bidden to amuse them. It was impossible: they only stared in hopeless irresponsiveness. Soon her mother began to talk as loudly as she could. It was to drown the voice of her own little girl, whom she heard repeating aloud a verse of the psalm she had been learning that morning, ‘Eyes have they, but they see not: ears have they, but they hear not: neither speak they with their lips.’
“In the afternoon I went with a crowd to see Herkomer’s portrait of my friend Katharine Grant—a magnificent tour de force, white upon white.”
On the 1st of May 1885 I set off on the first of a series of excursions in France for literary purposes, oftentimes of dismal solitude, and always of weary hard work, though full of interest of their own. I found then, as I have always done, how different seeing a thing with intention is to ordinary sight-seeing. A dentist at Rome once said to me, “Mr. Hare, you do not brush your teeth.”—“Yes, indeed I do,” I answered, “every night and morning.”—“Ah! yes; you brush them from habit, but not from motive;” and I discovered the result from my many past tours in France had been just the same. As usual, I found that the ordinary English travellers, who are always occupied in playing at “follow my leader” all the time they are abroad, had missed the best part of France, and that the churches and abbeys of the Correze and Creuse—almost unknown hitherto—are absolutely glorious; and some places in that part of France—Rocamadour, for instance—worthy of being compared with the very finest scenes in Italy. I described much of this tour in a series of papers in the Art Journal, as well as in my books on France. In the central provinces the accommodation was very good in its way, and the food always excellent, but in some of the places in the Eastern Pyrenees the dirt was scarcely endurable. The excellent hotel at Montpelier came as a real respite. Whilst there, I made some acquaintance with a banker of the place, who had a poetic Ruskin-like way of describing the wildness of the Cevennes, the grey rocks, desolate scenery, long lines of russet landscape. This so took hold of me, that I went to Lodêve and engaged a carriage for several days to explore the Cevennes thoroughly. It was wild enough certainly and rather curious, but an unbroken monotone; every view, every rocky foreground, even each dreary ruinous village, repeated the last, and after eight or nine hours I was utterly wearied of it; thus it was an intense relief when my driver came in the evening, with no end of apologies, and said he had received a telegram, bidding him return at once to Lodêve; and I was free to jump into the first diligence and reach the nearest station. Railway then took me to Mende, an exceedingly beautiful place, and afterwards to Rodez. Hence I went south again by S. Antonin and Bruniquel, whence beautiful recollections of the spring verdure and clear river come back to me. I made a little tour afterwards to Luchon and other places in the Pyrenees which I had not seen before, and returned straight home from Bordeaux. During this two months’ tour I do not think I ever once saw an English person, even in the railway, and I made no acquaintances.
I found Lourdes entirely changed since I was there last by its enormous religious pilgrimages, and no doubt, whether from the healing waters or the power of faith, many wonderful cures had taken place. It was strange, on nearing the miraculous fountain, to read the inscription, “Ici les malades vont au pas,” &c. A story was told of an officer who had a wooden leg and came to the fountain. When he put in his legs (he put them both in, the wooden leg and the other), as he did so he uttered a little prayer—“Faites, Seigneur, O faites que mes jambes soient pareilles.” When he drew them out, they were both wooden legs!
To Miss Leycester.