“Very earnestly and openly Mr. Gurdon talked with him, urging him to amend his ways, to go back to his old serious life. At first he urged it for his mother’s sake, then from higher motives. He seemed to make an impression, and the young man was touched by what he said, and said no one had spoken to him thus since his mother died. At last Mr. Gurdon said, ‘Why should you not begin a new life now? I might hear your confession, and then be able to give you absolution this very evening. But I should not wish you to decide this hurriedly: let me leave you for an hour—let me leave you perfectly alone for that time—you will then be able to think over your confession, and decide what you ought to tell me.’ The young man consented, but urged Mr. Gurdon not to leave the house again in the rain: there were a fire and lights in the library, would not Mr. Gurdon wait there?
“Mr. Gurdon willingly went to spend the time in the library, where two candles were lighted on the chimney-piece. Between these he placed the Host. Then he occupied himself by examining the pictures in the room. There were many fine engravings, and there was also the crayon portrait of a lady which struck him very much. He seemed to remember the original quite well, and yet he could not recall where he had seen her. On going back to the other room, he told the young man how very much he had been struck by the picture. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘that is the portrait of my dear mother, and it is indeed the greatest comfort I have, it is so very like her.’ At that moment Mr. Gurdon suddenly recollected where he had seen the lady: she it was who had come to fetch him to the house.
“Mr. Gurdon heard the young man’s confession and gave him absolution; he seemed to be in the most serious and earnest frame of mind. He could not receive the sacrament, because it must be taken fasting, so the evening meal they had had made it impossible. But it was arranged that he should come to the chapel at eight o’clock the next morning, and that he should receive it then. Mr. Gurdon went home most deeply interested in the case, and truly thankful for having been led to it; but when morning came, and the service took place in the chapel, to his bitter disappointment the young man was not there. He feared that he had relapsed altogether, but he could not leave him thus, and as soon as the service was over he hastened to his house. When he reached it, the blinds were all down. The old female servant who opened the door was in floods of tears: her master had died in his sleep.
“On the last evening of his life his mother had brought Father Gurdon to him.”
“Muncaster Castle, Oct. 30.—What a gloriously beautiful place this is!—an ascent from the station, and then a descent through massy woods, till the castle appears—infinitely picturesque in outline and in its red and grey colouring—on the edge of a gorge, wooded on both sides, and which now has every tint, from the dark blue-green of the hollies and the russet of dead fern, through crimson, scarlet, orange, to the faintest primrose colour of the fading chestnut leaves. Then behind are the finest of Cumbrian mountains, and in front terraced gardens, and the not far distant sea. The interior has almost an equal charm, in the thick velvet-pile carpets of the long passages hung with portraits, the fine collection of books in the (too dark) octagonal library, and the low hall, which has an organ, flowers, and books, and is the common sitting-room. I sleep in ‘the ghost-room,’ and in a red silk bed used by Henry VI. when he was here, and when he gave ‘the luck of Muncaster’ to the family—an old Venetian glass bowl, from which every child of the house has been christened since. Once it was thrown from an upper window: the owners never had the courage to hunt for and examine it, and it remained buried in the earth for some years: then it was dug up quite uninjured.
“We have driven up Eskdale—a delightfully wild mountain glen, with a clear, tossing river, and dark mountains of jagged outline, covered with brown bracken wherever a turfy space is left between the rocks.
“My host—‘Josceline’—is geniality itself, and very amusing, and Lady Muncaster excessively pleasant. Only her sister, pretty Lady Kilmarnock, is here with her little Ivan, and two young ladies, Miss Rhoda Lestrange and Miss Winifred Yorke,[471] whom her friends call ‘Frivolina.’ The Muncasters have lived here for six hundred years; then they came from Pennington, where a mound still exists which was crowned by their residence in ancient British times.”
“Alnwick Castle, Nov. 4.—Yesterday I left Muncaster at eight, and had two hours in the middle of the day to wait at Carlisle. Whilst I was sauntering round the cathedral, one of the Canons came up to me, introduced himself as a college acquaintance—son of Richmond the artist—and asked me to luncheon. He also showed me the cathedral, ‘restored’ out of much interest, with a miserable modern reredos and other rubbish, but with two fine old tombs, and the modern monuments of Paley and Law. Below the great east window Sir Walter Scott was married. A noble fragment remains of a beautiful renaissance screen, and at the back of the stalls are very curious early pictures of the lives of S. Anthony, S. Augustine, &c. Close to the cathedral is the Fratry—the refectory of the abbey—now used for lectures. Carlisle is a black and truly uninviting place.
“Lady Airlie and Lady Griselda Ogilvy were at the station, and I travelled with them as far as Naworth. On arriving here, it was pleasant to be met by the cordial welcome of Duchess Eleanor, always most genial and kind. The actual Duchess[472] did not appear till dinner, when she was wheeled into the room in a chair, very sweet and attractive-looking, but very fragile. The Duke[473] looks wiry, refined, rather bored, and some people would find him very alarming. Lord and Lady Percy seem to be two of the most silent people in the world—she pretty still in spite of her ten children. There are also here pleasant little Lady Constance Campbell, Miss Ellison, who goes about with Duchess Eleanor, and Lady Emma and Miss M’Neile—the former a violent Radical, who went to bed at once when the Primrose League became the topic of conversation. We played at whist in the evening, but it was broken at ten by going to prayers, which the Duke reads in the chapel. It is the only time I have seen evening prayers in any country-house for the last fifteen years.
“This morning Duchess Eleanor showed me the rooms—the magnificent Italian rooms, which owe their glory to her husband, Duke Algernon, who, when remonstrated with for thus changing a mediaeval fortress, said, ‘Would you wish us only to sit on benches upon a floor strewn with rushes?’ He purchased the whole of the great Camuccini collection at Rome, because of his great wish to have one single picture, which they would not sell separately. It is the so-called ‘Feast of the Gods’ by Gian Bellini, with a landscape by Titian. Other noble pictures involved in the purchase are a Crucifixion by Guido, singularly dark for the master; a splendid portrait attributed to Andrea del Sarto, but more like Franciabigio; and a little Raffaelle of SS. Mary Magdalen and Catherine. Bought from the Manfrini Palace at Venice are two noble works of Pordenone—one of them the picture of the father, mother, and son mentioned by Byron (in ‘Beppo’). From the Davenport collection are portions of a grand fresco of the ‘Salutation,’ by Sebastian del Piombo, once in S. Maria della Pace at Rome. The magnificent decorations of the rooms are by Canina. But the most lasting attraction of the castle is the library, with the really splendid collection of books formed by Duke Algernon.