“I came last night to the Locker-Lampsons at Cromer, finding Julia, Lady Jersey, Brandling, Lady Kathleen Bligh, and Rollo Russell here. To-day we have been to Blickling, where we found Lady Lothian and Lady Pembroke walking in the radiantly beautiful garden of the grand old house. Lady Lothian showed it all delightfully—the staircase, with its carved figures on the banisters; the tapestried rooms; the long library with a very rich ceiling, the room itself in exquisite harmony with its ranges of wonderful old books. At tea in the dining-room Baroness Coutts appeared, and many other unexpected persons dropped in.”
Journal.
“Salisbury, Sept. 28.—A very delightful visit to Canon Douglas Gordon[461] and Lady Ellen, full of old-fashioned peculiarities and brimming over with real excellence. One son, George, is at home, a successful young architect, and two daughters, of whom the eldest is a good artist. The Canon is interesting in his recollections—amongst many others, of the Queen Dowager, whom, as Rector of Stanmore, he saw constantly; and a portrait of her with the last words she ever wrote beneath it—her gift to him—hangs over the drawing-room chimney-piece. Near it is a very old oil-picture of Balmoral, interesting because the sight of that picture first decided the Queen to buy the place, which she had not then visited: it also shows how exactly her large modern house follows the main lines of the old Scotch castle.
“Canon Gordon says that instantly after the Queen Dowager’s death, when they were all in tears, and all the servants were waiting in the hall for the last news of their mistress, they were startled by a tremendous knocking at the door and a trumpet blowing, and three men entered with the announcement, ‘We are the royal embalmers, and we are come to perform our duty!’ They had actually been waiting outside—waiting for the first announcement of the death. In this case, however, they were sent away, as Queen Adelaide had left especial orders that her body was not to be embalmed.
“In the Canonry garden here is a fine mulberry-tree. The only fact remembered about the old Canon who planted it is that whilst it was being placed in the ground the cathedral bell rang for service, and the gardener said, ‘You’ll be late for church, sir: the bell is ringing.’ To which the Canon rejoined, ‘Church be d—d; but I’ll see this mulberry planted.’ A lesson to be careful of what one says.
“Yesterday I went to Wilton in the pony-carriage with Miss Gordon, who left me there. Lady Pembroke[462] soon came in in her riding-habit, and took me at once through the beautiful brilliant gardens ending in the old building still called ‘Holbein’s Porch,’ though it is now far away from the house to which it once belonged. Then we walked on the sunny lawns swept by the massy branches of grand old cedars and intersected by three rivers, over one of which is a beautiful Palladian bridge like that at Prior Park.
“Somehow Lady Pembroke is a person with whom one begins to talk intimately very soon, and her own conversation is most original and delightful. But she spoke much of her wish that religion was ‘not so very odd,’—of her intense craving to know something, anything tangible, about a future state. She had been seeing the Roman Mr. Story lately, who has been much amongst spiritualists, had heard speaking spirits, and had the very utmost faith in them. The spirits all confirmed faith in a future state. Once a bad spirit came; its language was perfectly horrible: in life it had been a pirate!
“Returning to the house, we saw the Vandykes, which are most glorious. There is a very curious contemporary picture of the coronation of Richard II. in the presence of his patron saints and of the heavenly host. Lady Pembroke talked on and on, and when I got up to go, kept me: but it was most interesting, and I would willingly have listened for many hours more. Eventually she went with me to the end of the grounds, and let me out at a postern-gate in the wall.
“To-day we have been to tea with the Pigott family, who live in George Herbert’s rectory (which he built) at Bemerton. It is a lovely spot, with the little church (vulgarised inside by glazed tiles), beneath the altar of which he is believed to rest. The garden reaches to the clear rushing Madder, full of trout and grayling, and has a beautiful view of the cathedral across the water-meadows. We saw the register with the notice of the burial of ‘Mr. George Herbert, Esquire, parson of this place,’[463] and his old study with its very thick walls: but he was only at Bemerton two years, leading a life ‘little less than sainted, though not exempt from passion and choler,’ as his brother, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, tells us in his memoirs. Americans come in crowds to see the place, and can often repeat half his poems. Mr. Pigott asked one of them to spend the night there, and in the morning inquired how he had slept. ‘Sleep,’ he said, ‘do you suppose I could sleep in George Herbert’s house? Why, I sat up all night thinking of him.’”[464]
“Oct. 2.—Again at Highcliffe with Lady Waterford, whose conversation is as charming as ever.