The country is black but always interesting. Little Knutsford was sanded all over in patterns (as in India) for a wedding: it is a custom which dates from King Alfred, who met a wedding-party as he was passing through the town and threw down some sand, saying that he hoped the descendants of the marriage might be as numerous as its grains. The patterns of sand—flowers, love-knots, &c.—are made through the spout of a teapot. One day the conversation fell upon the little hamlet of Flash in the Cheshire hills. Pedlars from Manchester used to waste their time there in drinking on their way to London, whence the term ‘flash-goods!’ We drove to Holford Hall, passing on the outskirts of Tabley many of the brown many-horned sheep, which are said to have descended from some washed ashore from the Armada. I was glad to go again with Lady Egerton to Arley, where the beautiful gardens, really modern, have all the picturesqueness of antiquity. It is typical of the kindness which old Mr. Warburton shows in everything that all round the roads on his estate he leaves open spaces with plenty of brambles for blackberry gatherers.
“Lord Donington told Lady Egerton that when he went to live where he does now, his two young boys were taught by an admirable English governess. One day, having observed the housekeeper carefully locking the door of a spare bedroom, she casually said, ‘Do you always keep the doors of the unused bedrooms locked?’—‘No,’ said the housekeeper, ‘only this one;’ and she invited the governess to look into it, saying that there was a mystery about it. Some one always seemed to come to sleep there, whom she could not imagine, and she believed some trick was being played upon her. As an experiment, she said she would be very much obliged if the governess would take away the key after the room was locked, and keep it till the following morning. The next day they went together to the room, which showed every appearance of having been slept in, yet the window was carefully fastened inside, and there was no other possible entrance.
“Some time after, a young man came to shoot with the boys, and was put into that room. In the morning he came down with a very scared look, and said he was very sorry, but he must leave. Being much pressed, he allowed that he had been dreadfully frightened. He had kept his candle by his bed to finish a book he had been reading, and, looking up, he saw an old man sitting by the fire, who eventually rose, came, looked into the bed, and seeing him there, walked away. ‘And,’ said the visitor, ‘that is the man!’ pointing to a picture on the wall of an ancestor who had died centuries before.
“Amongst the guests at Tatton were a Mr. and Mrs. Crum, most delightful people. He had made a fortune as a manufacturer, and they now live at Broxton Old Hall, a dower-house and beautiful old black and white manor of Sir Philip Egerton’s, whither I went to visit them. Thence I saw Mr. Wolley Dodd’s wonderful garden, the most interesting herbaceous collection in England. Mr. Wolley, well known as an Eton master, married Miss Dodd, the heiress of Edge, and of a family which has lived there from Saxon times, and of which a member was knighted at Agincourt; and he has turned a farmyard, a quarry, a pond, a wood, &c., into the most astonishing of gardens, in which each genus of plants is provided with the exact soil it loves best, and grows as it never does elsewhere. Near Edge we saw the noble old black and white house of Carden. We also saw the once splendid church of Malpas, utterly ruined by its so-called ‘restoration’ under a Chester architect named Douglas—old pavements, old pews ruthlessly destroyed, and a vestry by Vanbrugh only spared for want of funds to pull it down. A miserable window commemorates Reginald Heber, once rector, and a lime avenue leads to his rectory. I was several days at Drayton as I returned—most beautiful and interesting.
“C. writes to me for advice, but I feel more and more diffident about giving any. I found such a capital bit about this in a novel called ‘Margaret Maliphant,’ the other day. The old servant Deborah says, ‘What you think’s the right way most times turns out to be the wrong way; and when you make folks turn to the right when they was minded to turn to the left, it’s most like the left would have been the best way for them to travel after all. I’ve done advisin’ long ago; for it’s a queer tract of country here below, and every one has to take their own chance in the long-run.’
“How tiresome the shibboleth which many clergymen talk in church is! Mr. —— has been dwelling upon the exceeding sinfulness of sin. We may find a meaning for this, but is it in fact different from the beautifulness of beauty, which we should call nonsense?”
To Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Nov. 30, 1890.—I had a pleasant visit at St. Audries, Sir A. Acland Hood’s beautiful place. It is a red sandstone house, enfolded amongst green hills, chiefly covered with golden or russet woods or rich growth of arbutus, and in front is the sea. In the morning-room are Turner’s water-colour pictures of Sussex (including one of Hurstmonceaux), executed for Mr. Fuller of Rosehill, of whom, with two other fortunes, Lady Hood was the heiress. In a corner of the hall are baby-clothes of three boys beneath the portrait of another remote ancestor, Edward Palmer of Ightham Mote. One Whitsunday morning a servant came in and said, ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with a son.’—‘The most joyful news you could have brought me!’ said Mr. Palmer. The following Sunday the servant came again: ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another son.’—‘Oh, God bless my soul! you don’t say so?’ exclaimed Mr. Palmer. But the third Sunday the servant came in with ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another son.’ It seemed quite too much; but the babies all lived, and grew up to be very distinguished men, being all knighted for their valour by Henry VIII.[494] I was delightfully taken about—to Crowcombe, where the Carew heiress has married Cranmer Trollope, and where there are noble Vandykes and a fine Titian portrait: to Quantockshead, with a delightful old hall and carved chimney-pieces: and to Nettlecombe, where the old hall of the Catholic Sir Alfred Trevelyan nestles close to the parish church. Sir Alfred described how the ‘church restorers’ at Bideford had turned all that was worth having out of the church. A figure of a man was bought by an old woman, but she thought it was too undressed and kept it—in bed! There it was found with its head comfortably laid on the pillow, a figure of St. John Baptist. The old woman had some notion of its value, as she asked £600 for it; but it was well worth that, as it was a priceless Donatello!
“All about this neighbourhood it is the same thing. Sir A. Hood had been to see a friend of his, and remarked, ‘What a pretty and peculiar flower-stand you have.’—‘Yes,’ said the friend, ‘and an interesting one too, for it is the font of Ongar church, in which Gunthran the Dane was baptized, and by which King Alfred stood as his sponsor.’
“Mr. W. Neville, who was one of the guests at St. Audries, had been to hear Dr. Parker, of the Congregational Hall, preach. He began his sermon by saying, ‘My brethren, I have received a letter from a gentleman saying that he intends to be present to-day and to make a philosophical analysis of my discourse to you. I am sure you will all sympathise with me in the embarrassment and nervousness which I must experience on such an occasion, though certainly I may derive some little comfort from the fact that my correspondent spells “philosophical” with an f.’