“When the minister was changed, Miss Farquharson asked an old woman if she liked the new one as well as the old. ‘Eh, I like him weel eneuch, but he’s na sae frolicsome in the pulpit.’
“I made great friends with all the family at Buckhurst, down to the little Margaret of three, who peoples all the forest with imaginary bears and elephants, and talks to them, and of her adventures with them, exactly as if they were realities. We picnicked on an island in the lake, dreadfully damp, but it was very merry and pleasant.”
“Burwarton, Shropshire, Oct. 23.—This is a beautiful place of Lord Boyne’s, high in the Clee hills, with glorious views of the Welsh and Malvern ranges, beyond exquisite wooded scenery. The house is modern, but has good pictures, several representing members of the Medmenham brotherhood, and one a Lady Paisley, an ancestress, who declared that she did not wish to go to heaven if poor people went there. Many pleasant people are here, especially a Mr. Bankes, who is very amusing about the primitive ways of the Isle of Purbeck. At one time the people of Corfe had been very good for some time, so that the lock-up had not been used, and the Mayor, one Robert Taylor, had filled it with his potatoes after they were dug up. But at last there was a man who was very naughty indeed, and he had to be put in the lock-up, though there was scarcely room for him even to stand in it, it was so full of the Mayor’s potatoes. Late that night, some people going past stumbled over a great heap lying in the middle of the road—quite a huge heap. It was the Mayor’s potatoes, which the prisoner had amused himself by throwing through the bars of the window: so then the Mayor was obliged to compromise matters, and to let his victim out on condition of his picking up all the potatoes and putting them back again.
“This Mayor, Robert Taylor, used to say, ‘I shall have to adjudicate upon such and such a case to-morrow.’ He kept a shop where he sold hats. One day he saw a neighbour walking by with a very smart shiny hat, and called out, ‘Thomas, good-day, Thomas; you’ve got a new hat, may I ask where you got it, Thomas?’—‘Well, I bought it at Wareham, Mr. Taylor.’—‘Oh, you bought it at Wareham, did you? Very good, Thomas.’ Some days afterwards Thomas was set upon by a man in a lonely road and very badly beaten, really very much hurt. He went to the Mayor and said, ‘Really, Mr. Taylor, I think I must take out a summons.’—‘A summons! must you, Thomas? Well, you may just go and take it out where you bought your hat.’
“The ignorance of the people in Purbeck is intense. A clergyman preached about Zachaeus climbing into the fig-tree, &c. An old widow woman, who had stayed at home, asked her son if he could tell her what the sermon was about. ‘Yes, that he could,’ he said, ‘for it was all about Jack Key (a bad character in the village), who had been up to summut, and was to have to give half of all his goods to the poor.’
“Here, at Burwarton, witchcraft is generally believed in. A tenant said the other day that his pig was bewitched by an old woman, and that it would certainly die, unless he could have her blood; by which he meant nothing murderous—a prick of a pin would do. Many of the neighbouring clergy are bad. At a small hill-parish near this an old woman asked the clergyman what he did for his rheumatism. ‘Well, I swear like hell,’ he said.”
“Oakley Park, Oct. 17.—A lovely place, with glorious old oaks mentioned in Domesday Book. Ludlow is only 2½ miles off. Its castle, which stands grandly opposite the entrance to the drive, is associated with Prince Arthur, ‘Comus’ was acted there, and it was thence that the Princes were taken to the Tower. It was also from Ludlow that the pilgrims came who were met in the Holy Land by St. John when he gave them the ring to take back to Edward the Confessor, and this story is represented on the windows of the grand old church. Stokesay, which we have been to sketch, is inimitably picturesque. Nothing can be kinder than my present hostess, Lady Mary Clive, so considerate of all that can interest or amuse one,[412] even whilst talking incessantly of her two hobbies—Conservatism and Church matters. In the latter she is just now in her glory, as the house is full of clergy for the Church Congress at Ludlow, where all the ecclesiastics in the county are delighting, like dogs, to bark and bite. There is table-d’hôte for them here at every meal, and the house is like a clerical hotel.”
To Miss Leycester.
“Nov. 22, 1885.—Mother’s birthday! on which for so many years we have been through the Catacombs (lighted up this one day of the year) to visit the grave of S. Cecilia. My pleasant holiday and happy visits are already becoming dreamlike, and it is as if my last time alone here going on still, as I sit in my hill-set solitude. The wind whistles in the fir-trees; a cow lows in the meadow for a lost calf; Rollo snorts with fat, but is always ready to play with Selma the cat, though greatly annoyed at her having given birth to a numerous progeny in his bed; new pigstyes are built, and a Lawsoniana hedge is planted round the little garden up the steps. ‘The Holmhurst muffin-bell,’ as St. Leonards calls it, already rung for a tea-party next Tuesday; and ‘the boys’ (now Heddie Williamson and Freddie Russell) are due for their half-holiday on Wednesday; George Jolliffe is coming to stay on the 4th; and for myself, there is constant work to be done on ‘Paris,’ where, as I labour down the highways, a thousand by-ways of interest and instruction are ever opening up.
“I have, however, a little disappointment in Smith and Elder’s account, nearly £300 to the bad again this year, and no gain whatever: so much for the supposed riches of ‘a very successful author.’