“From Sydenham I went to see the Elphinstones[484] at their beautiful Government House at Plymouth, and on the same evening to Whiteway, where I paid a delightful visit to the dear Dowager Lady Morley, who is still as genially kind and as sharply truth-exacting as ever. It was comically characteristic that when the foolish Bishop of Exeter (Bickersteth) came over to Whiteway, Lady Morley, with innocent pride, showed him the improvements she had made. ‘You should not take a sinful pride in your possessions,’ said the Bishop; ‘all God’s works are beautiful, and all these are the works of God.’—‘That is all very well,’ answered Lady Morley, ‘but I made this walk.’ It was sad to see Lady Katherine, the companion of many happy mountain excursions long ago, laid up as a permanent invalid; but she is indescribably brave and cheerful.
“A child at Whiteway, being asked where the eggs were laid, answered, ‘On an average.’—‘What do you mean? who told you so?’—‘Father; he said the hens laid, on an average, twenty eggs a day.’
“With the Lowthers and Listers we one day met the Halifaxes and their two eldest children at Bovey, and we all went a delightful excursion over Dartmoor to several of the great tors, which rise above the russet wastes of moor, like castles in the south of France, and to Tecket Falls, near which Lord Devon has a cottage. Hence, after ascending through the mazes of a wood, Charlie H. insisted on our being taken blindfold till we reached ‘Exclamation Point,’ where the present Archbishop of Canterbury had fallen on his knees from the beauty of the view. We did not return till eight, when the Halifaxes stayed to dine, and went home at eleven, walking miles over the moors by night in true Charlie Halifax fashion.
“Endless was the amusing talk of Devonshire quaintnesses. ‘How did you break your arm?’ said Lady Katherine to an old woman. ‘Well, ‘twere all along of gathering apples; ‘twere first the apples and then the fall: I were like Eve, I reckon.’ ‘Blow your nose,’ she said to a child. ‘Yes, mum, but her won’t bide blowed.’”
To Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Holmhurst, Nov. 1889.—I have been far too long without writing, life ripples by so quickly: it seems every day more different from the years before I was grown up, when all was so long.... My ‘outing’ to the North was very enjoyable. I was nearly a week at Tatton, where the host and hostess were boundlessly kind. The party there had admirable elements—Lord Savile, Lord and Lady Knutsford, Lord and Lady Jersey, Lord and Lady Waldegrave, Lord and Lady Amherst, Sir Redvers and Lady Audrey Buller, Mr. and Mrs. Piers Warburton, Mrs. Percy Mitford, Mrs. Legh of Lyme, Sir Charles Grant, and Dick Bagot. We were all taken to see the Ship Canal in a royal way, with special trains, luncheon sent on, and tea at the mouth of the Canal in ‘Bridgewater House,’ where the old Duke of Bridgewater spent his later years, and where his picture still presides in the seldom-used dining-room.
“I left with Mrs. Legh, whose ponies met us at the Disley station, and took us a wild drive over moor and fen, rock and fell—a drive of glorious views, but no road whatever—before returning to Lyme. Lady Lovelace came in the evening and was most agreeable, especially in her reminiscences of India and Lady Canning. With her and Mrs. Legh I went to draw the old hall at Marple, an interesting house of the Usherwoods, who inherited it from the Bradshaws: the regicide’s chamber has its original furniture and tapestry.
“Next, I went to Ingmire, a fine old place of Mrs. Upton Cottrell-Dormer, beautifully situated amongst the Westmoreland fells, though geographically in Yorkshire. John Way, the vicar of Henbury, was there, who said that when the boys in his school were reading of Jezebel, how she ‘painted her face, tired her head,’ &c., he asked, ‘Why do you suppose she did that?’—‘She wanted to get married,’ promptly answered a boy—true, probably, too. He described how his great-grandfather, Sir Roger Hill, and his son lay dying at Denham at the same time. It was of the most vital importance to the son’s wife to keep her husband alive beyond his father, just sufficient time to enable him to sign a will, and this she did by killing one pigeon after another, keeping his feet immersed in the body of the hot steaming bird, and, as soon as it chilled, changing it for another. The pigeons conquered, and the Hedgeley property was left away to the son’s widow. The Denham property went to the daughter, Mrs. Lockey, whose daughter Abigail married Mr. Way, and was mother of Benjamin Way and Lady Sheffield.
“From Ingmire I went to Muncaster, which I thought even more beautiful and delightful than before. With Lady Muncaster and Lady Kilmarnock I had one lovely day at Wastwater—glorious in the last coruscations of Nature. The Bishop of Carlisle had just been at Muncaster, who said that a boy in a Board-school examination, being asked one of the foolish Catechism questions of ‘Why is a boy baptized when by reason of his tender age?’ &c., wrote, ‘Why indeed?’
“Another child in a higher class, being asked to define faith, said it was ‘the power of believing absolutely what was utterly incredible.’”