“Dec. 24.—The dreary Christmas season of damp and dyspepsia, bills and bother, is less odious than usual this year, as the day itself is swallowed up in Sunday. I have, however, also had a real pleasure in a present from the Duchess of Cleveland of her Life of Everard Primrose, only printed for his friends. It is most beautifully, touchingly, really nobly done, and the most perfect memorial of a high-minded single-hearted young man’s life. I think I never read so perfect a biography. The story is entirely told in Everard’s own admirable letters, but the Duchess has not shrunk from her own part, and the little touches from her own life, the Duke’s, &c., are indescribably simple, graceful, and sincere. The book gives one a far higher opinion of her (of Everard I had always the very highest), and makes one regret many hasty judgments. I have been quite engrossed with the book, so perfectly delightful is it.”
After a busy six weeks of work, I spent the New Year again at Cobham, always charming in its quiet home life, but was glad to return soon again to work.
Journal.
“Holmhurst, Feb. 10, 1888.—The news of Lady Marian Alford’s sudden death removes from the cycle of life one whom I had felt to be a true friend for more than thirty years. Our meetings were at long intervals, but when we met, it was as more than mere acquaintances. With a grace which was all her own, she often unfolded beautiful chapters in her own life to me, and she was one of the very few persons who have read in manuscript much of these written volumes of my past. She was a perfect grande dame, unable to harbour an ignoble thought, incapable of a small action. Regal, imperious, and extravagant,[474] she was generous, kind, and personally most unselfish, and, had the real greatness and goodness that was in her been regulated and disciplined by the circumstances of her early life, she would have been one of the noblest women of her century. Alas! only yesterday she was! How soon one has to school oneself to say ‘would have been.’ Thus, however, it will certainly be with oneself. The day after one dies people will say—and how few with even a pang—‘He would: he might have been.’”
“March 14.—Met Lady Fergusson Davy (née Fortescue). She told me that when Lady Hills Johnes, the friend of Thirlwall, was twenty-four, she was once in society with the late Lord Lytton, who was talking of second-sight, and of his own power of seeing the future of those he was with. She urged him very much to tell her future, but he was very unwilling to do so. Still she urged it so much that at last he did. He did it after the manner of the Chaldees—told it to her, and wrote it down at the same time in hieroglyphics. He said, ‘You will have a very great sorrow, which will shake your faith in man: then you will have another even greater sorrow, which will come to you through an old and trusted servant: you will marry late in life a king among men, and the close of your existence will be cloudlessly happy.’ All the first part of the prophecy has come true—the breaking off of her first engagement; the terrible murder of her father by his servant; her marriage with Sir James Hills; all that remains now is happiness.”
“Holmhurst, May 14.—I have just returned from an interesting month in London, seeing many people delightfully and making some pleasant new acquaintance. At Lady Delawarr’s I was presented to the young Duchess of Mecklenbourg, very pretty and full of life and animation. No one else came up to talk to her, and I was left to make conversation from five till a quarter to seven! by which time I think we had both exhausted all possible topics, though she was very charming. At last she said, ‘I always go at six to read to the Duchess of Cambridge.’—‘Well, ma’am,’ I answered, ‘you will certainly be terribly late to-day.’—‘What very odd things you do say to me!’ she said. The next day I sent her my ‘Walks in London,’ and as her speaking of the Duchess of Cambridge convinced me of her identity, I directed to the ‘Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenbourg-Strelitz.’ The next time I saw her I had found out, and said, ‘I am sorry, ma’am, that I have made three mistakes in one line in directing to you—that you are not ‘Hereditary,’ not ‘Grand,’ and not ‘Strelitz;’ for she was the Duchess Paul of Mecklenbourg-Schwerin; but she laughed heartily.
“In going to London, I first saw, on a placard at the station, that Matthew Arnold was dead. It seemed to carry away a whole joyous part of life in a moment—for I have known Matthew Arnold ever since I remember anything, though I did not know till I lost him that his happy personality and cordial welcome had made a real difference to me for years, especially in the rooms of the Athenaeum, where I have spent so much time of late years. He had an evergreen youth, and died young at sixty-six, and he was so impregnated with social tact and courtesy, as well as with intellectual buoyancy, that he was beyond all men liveable with. Herman Merivale has written some lines which seem to express what I shall always remember—