To Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Cadland, Sept. 21.—This comfortable house stands in a park, which is a piece of enclosed forest full of noble oaks and hollies, with glints of blue sea and shipping between. The passages are entirely clothed with fine prints and drawings, and in the rooms are many fine portraits, especially that by Zoffany of the Drummond who founded the Bank. The collection of autographs is priceless, and includes many by early kings of France, letters of Marie Antoinette, a charming one of the little Dauphin, and the execution-warrant of Madame du Barry. Amongst the drawings is the touching sketch which Severn made ‘to keep himself awake’ sitting by the death-bed of Keats.... We have driven to ‘the Cottage,’ a charming house where Lady Elizabeth Drummond lived, in woods of ilex and fir above the Solent.... The company has included Valletort; Harry Forster, a very good-looking fellow; Robert Scott, Lord Montagu’s second son; and Christopher Walsh, a very nice son of Lord Ormathwayte.”
“Malshanger, Sept. 25.—I came here on the 22nd to visit Mr. Wyndham Portal, and (in her grandmotherhood) his most beautiful as well as charming wife. After luncheon we drove to the Vyne, admirable in the rich colour of its old red brick and grey copings, and greatly beloved by Horace Walpole, who used to stay there with his friend John Chute, to whom he gave many pictures, and whose ‘Chutehood’—depression of spirits and gout—he often deplored. It was to him that Gray wrote ‘suavissime Chuti.’ The house has always been cared for and never allowed to ‘run down,’ and there is much of interest in its fine old rooms, especially in its two stories of ‘gallery,’ lined with busts and portraits. Four of these were brought hither by Lady Dacre of Hurstmonceaux, upon her second marriage with Challoner Chute of the Vyne, and include a portrait of Chrysogona Baker, afterwards Lady Dacre; of the widow of the Lord Dacre who was executed, with his picture hanging behind her, and two of the Chute Lady Dacre herself, one of them copied from a picture now at Belhus, the place of the Lennards. The present owner of the Vyne, who married Miss Eleanor Portal, showed it all admirably, and has written a capital book on the place.[480] He educates his own beautiful boys, making scholars of them before they are ten years old.
“This district—‘Portalia,’ as people call it—is quite peopled with Portals and their connections. They were a French Protestant family, greatly persecuted under Louis XIV., when they took refuge at La Cavalerie in the Larzac. Jean François de Portal escaped to Holland, and his eight children, concealed in barrels and smuggled out of the kingdom by faithful nurses, reached England. The eldest of these became tutor to George III., and the second, Henri, obtained the monopoly of the manufacture of bank-notes, which the family have enjoyed ever since. The last Portal left his vast landed estates to his eldest son, Melville, and his mills to his second son, Wyndham: now the land is only a burden, but, police-guarded, the mills at Laverstoke constantly increase in value, and turn out daily 50,000 Bank of England notes, 12,000 Indian notes, and 100,000 postal orders. By the process of one beautiful machine, the linen rags (nothing but new rags of the best linen being used) are reduced to pulp, the pulp is flattened into paper, stamped, drained, dried, and behold! before it leaves the machine, a bank-note ready for the printer. All the machinery is turned by the transparent Teste, which is full of trout almost up to its source. The workmen, who live in comfortable cottages near the mills and receive high wages, are hereditary, and always fulfil their quota of duty from father to son. Mr. Portal throws open his fine gardens here every Saturday to the people of Basingstoke, who play tennis and generally enjoy themselves, and do no harm whatever.”
Journal and Letters to Miss Leycester.
“Ford Castle, Northumberland, Nov. 23.—I set out to come here on Wednesday evening, after attending Miss Higginson’s wedding at Marlow. When we—two other guests, Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs, and I—reached the desolate station amongst the bleak moorlands, we found only one little gig in waiting, and no chance of anything else. Mrs. B. and I struggled into it, and came through the howling raging storm for seven miles here; Mr. B. walked; but our reception in these fine old rooms made us forget all else, and to-day has been like all days at Ford and Highcliffe—drawing, reading aloud with talking at intervals, and walks in the glen and gardens.”
“Nov. 26.—A delightful walk, combating with the wind, to the Devil’s rocks, ‘where,’ say the Northumbrians, ‘the devil hanged his grandmother.’ Mr. Neville (the rector) dined. He says the old rectory here was haunted. His sister came to stay with him in the spare room that looked out on the castle. The second day she said very quietly but firmly that she could not sleep in that room again; another must be given her or she must leave. Then she described that, on two successive nights, the curtain of her bed had been drawn, and a strange voice had distinctly said to her, ‘This is not a spare room.’
“Mr. Neville said—
“‘I belong to the Neville-Rolfes of Hitcham in Norfolk. After my cousin, Charles Neville-Rolfe, who was beloved by every one, died, his boxes were all found to be fastened with letter-locks, and the family were a long time before they were able to get them undone, as he had not left the clue. My cousins suggested to me afterwards that I should ask Crisp the carpenter how he had discovered it at last; so, as I was rubbing an inscription on a stone in the church, I got him to come and move part of a pew which covered it, and I asked him about it. He said, “Whilst we were puzzling over those locks, I heard in a dream the voice of Mr. Charles, and he said, ‘Crisp, come and walk and talk,’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir, gladly;’ and then he turned to me and said, ‘Crisp, guess!’—and I woke, and ‘guess’ was the word we wanted.” I told my cousins afterwards what Crisp had told me, and they said, “Yes, but the really curious part was that only three letters were wanted. Crisp thought ‘guess’ was spelt ‘ges,’ still we acted on what he said, and it was right.’”
“Lady Waterford says—‘My maid is very good, very good: her only fault is that she has three hands, she has a right hand and a left hand, and a little behind-hand.’