“Raglan Somerset is here, unspeakably funny, so décousu in his conversation, which never stops for an instant. I like also Lord and Lady Rayleigh: he is learned, but perfectly simple, and she, née Balfour, is thoroughly pleasant and unsophisticated. Miss Mary Egerton, very handsome, with her grey hair and youthful animated countenance, is a delightful addition to the party. But the great, the real pleasure to me, has been finding Derek Keppel (Lord Bury’s second son and brother-in-law of the only daughter of the house) almost domesticated here: I like him so very much, certainly better than any one I know in the same degree. It is Sunday, and we have been to the new church at Aston, built by Lord and Lady Egerton without an architect, and so pleasant to look upon inside that an old man said, ‘Why, sir, one can be cheerful in it, even when one is saying one’s prayers.’”
“Woodlands, Glassbury, Sept. 7.—I came here through the lovely Church Stretton country, stopping at picturesque Shrewsbury on the way to stay with the Bishop of Lichfield and Augusta. Yesterday we went by rail through the beautiful but drippingly wet valleys to visit the Venables near Builth. Our host was the well-known and severe critic in the Saturday—a pleasant old man to visitors, but evidently awful to the younger members of his family.
“Augusta had many interesting reminiscences of Lord Beaconsfield. One day, at luncheon, she offered him the mustard. ‘I never take mustard,’ he replied in his sepulchral voice. ‘Oh, don’t you?’ she said airily. ‘No,’ he continued in solemnest tones. ‘There are three things I have never used: I have never touched mustard; I have never had a watch; and I have never made use of an umbrella.’—‘Well,’ said Augusta, ‘I can understand the mustard—that is a mere matter of taste; but surely going without the other things must have been sometimes rather inconvenient.’—‘And why should I want them?’ continued Disraeli more sepulchrally than ever. ‘I live under the shadow of Big Ben, and there is a clock in every room of the House of Commons, so that I cannot possibly require a watch; and as I always go about in a close carriage, I can never want an umbrella.’ Disraeli was always full of these small affectations.”
“Woodlands, Sept. 8.—This is a charming visit, and the place is delightful—close to the glistening Wye, with green hills—‘mountains’ in Welsh—folding around, exquisite in the soft haze of early morning.
“Augusta has been giving an interesting account of Champlatreux in France, belonging to the Duc d’Ayen, a representative of the De Noailles family. In the château is preserved the precious volume of the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ which the young Duchesse de Noailles used in the prison of the Luxembourg, where she devoted herself to keeping up the courage of her mother-in-law and daughter. When the three generations of the House of Noailles were summoned together to the scaffold, the Duchesse was reading aloud to her fellow-prisoners from the chapter of the ‘Chemin de la Croix.’ She turned down the page at that point and gave the book to one of her companions in prison, begging her, if she ever escaped, to convey it, as a memorial, to the De Noailles family.”
“Sept. 10.—Two pleasant days with Graham Loyd in his charming cottage at Sketty near Swansea, and a great cementing of friendship with him. The first day he took me by a terrible path overhanging an unprotected chasm opposite the Mumbles. All the population of Swansea seem to pour out to drink in the neighbourhood of the Mumbles. ‘You want to close the public-houses at Swansea, that men may get drunk at the Mumbles,’ said Judge Bradwin, in opposing the Sunday-closing movement. At the same time he said that he did not see any more reason why men should call beer a ‘pernicious liquor’ than that they should call water a ‘drowning fluid.’
“We have been to luncheon at Clyne, where Graham Vivian has an unkempt but beautiful place, full of fine Italian treasures, and have dined at Singleton with Lady Hussey Vivian.[460] Besides this, we have had a wonderful drive, by heath, sandhill, and precipice, through the strange district of Gower, where all the houses are whitewashed, and where there are constant wrecks on the rock-girt coast, though a great bell tolls eerily through the night on a sandbank, with the waves for its ringers.”
“Sept. 12.—Two days at the Deanery at Llandaff, where family furniture and pictures—familiar from Alderley, Norwich, Canterbury, Oxford days—give a homelike aspect.
“Kate said that when she was in Madeira last year, a Mr. Husband, a dentist from Hull, was staying in the same hotel. She had heard that he had seen a ghost there, and she asked him about it. It was only on being very much pressed that he told how that one night, when he was in his bed in the hotel, a young man in lawn-tennis dress came in, stood at the foot of the bed, and pointed with his finger at the pillow. Mr. H. was not frightened, only annoyed, and asked the young man what he wanted. He did not speak, and continued to point at the pillow. At last Mr. Husband was so irritated that he said, ‘Well, if you will neither speak nor go away, take that,’ and dealt him a blow, but his hand only seemed to sink into cold icy vapour, and the apparition vanished.