“We have been to-day to Felbrigge, the fine old house of the Windhams, sold to a Norwich tradesman named Catton, whose daughters have adopted the older family as if it were their own, and are quite worthy of the old pictures, MSS., &c., all left in the house, nothing having been taken away when the place was given up. ‘Mr. Windham comes every night to look after his favourite books in the library,’ said Miss Catton; ‘he often comes, and he goes straight to the shelves where they are: we hear him moving the tables and chairs about: we never disturb him though, for we intend to be ghosts ourselves some day, and to come about the old place just as he does.’ In the hall there is a grand bust of the statesman by Nollekens. Formerly it was on his monument in the church, but after some years the family put a copy there, and moved the original into the house. The church, however, still retains the most glorious brasses. One is that of a lady in waiting who came over with Anne of Bohemia, and whose daughter was herself invited to share the throne. But the man she really married was one of the early owners of Felbrigge.”
“Sept. 24.—We have been with the Dick Gurneys in their fleet waggonette to Blickling, quite glorious, so perfect in colour, with an exquisite entrance, and a splendid herbaceous garden. In the church is the tomb which Lady Lothian has erected to her husband,[410] a most grand one, with the head of the reclining statue turned to one side, and the long beard drifted over the pillow.
“The innumerable Gurneys, Buxtons, and Hoares who populate Cromer come in and out of this house, as of each other’s, whenever they like, without ringing the bell.
“Last night Mrs. R. Hoare dined here. She says the people here always address their superiors in the third person, as in French. They always say ‘I’m very much fatagued,’ for bothered. ‘Well, Mrs. Smith, are you going to take the blue dress or the brown?’ she said when keeping a charity shop. ‘Why, ma’am, I’ve not fairly averdupoised,’ replied the woman; and it is a common expression for balancing.
“There are many remnants here in Cromer from Danish occupation. The ghosts, as in Denmark, are always without heads. There is great faith in the story of ‘Old Strop,’ a Danish dog who was washed ashore with the bodies of two Danish sailors, one of whom was buried at Overstrand and the other at Cromer. Every night the dog, headless, is believed to run from one grave to the other, and fishermen will always go round by the shore at night rather than by the shorter lane, which the dog is supposed to take.”
“Sept. 25.—Mrs. Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) is here, most charming and interesting, as I have always thought her. She describes Tennyson and Mrs. Kemble as the noblest man and woman she knows.
“Mrs. Kemble found, when in England, that her husband was going to take advantage of an American law which allowed him to obtain a divorce if she was away from him two years. For her children’s sake it was imperative that she should prevent this. She hurried back, and just arrived in time by two or three days. Afterwards she herself quietly obtained a divorce in some way which gave her the charge of her children.... One of her daughters is Mrs. Leigh, whose husband, the Vicar of St. Mary, Bryanston Square, she is always trying to persuade to go out to the family plantations in Georgia. The other, Sarah, is the wife of a merchant in New York, and a replica—a much feebler replica—of her mother.
“Now, Mrs. Kemble is generally to be found knitting by her fireside. One day Mrs. Ritchie took her little girl to see her. ‘Here I am,’ Mrs. Kemble said to the child, ‘an old woman who never allows another person to put in a word when she is talking; and now, what do you think of me?’ The little girl, who was shy, did not know what to say, and looked as if she was going to cry. Mrs. Ritchie, to fill up the gap, said, ‘Oh, she thinks, Mrs. Kemble, that no one could possibly wish to put in a word when they could listen to you.’ ‘Ma fille, ne dites pas des choses comme ça,’ cried Mrs. Kemble furiously; and then, more quietly, ‘You should not say such things before the child: it is not right to teach her to be artificial.’
“‘Right is right,’ she said one day, ‘and wrong is wrong, but God forbid that I should judge of another whether he is right or wrong.’
“‘One day,’ said Mrs. Ritchie, ‘I found Mrs. Kemble sitting by her fireside looking rather disconsolate, and asked her what she was doing. “Oh, I’m knocking my head against the wall, my dear; that man who was here was so dreadfully stupid, I’m obliged to knock it out of me.”’