To Miss Leycester (æt. 94).
“Holmhurst, Sept. 2, 1891.—You will imagine how your birthday makes me think of you, and how much I give thanks for the blessing which your love and kindness has been to us for so many years. I like to think of you on your peaceful sofa, and I know you are like John Wilson Croker, who, when some one remarked in his presence that death was an awful thing, said, ‘I do not feel it so. The same Hand which took care of me when I came into this world will take care of me when I go out of it.’”
To W. H. Milligan, and Note-book.
“Holmhurst, Oct. 1891.—I have returned from my autumn visits, which have been delightful. The Watsons, who live at Rockingham, the old royal palace of the Midlands, are well worthy of its noble rooms and its brilliant gardens, relieved against the quaintest of yew hedges.
“At Hovingham, in Yorkshire, I found Mrs. Lowther, and we sketched together very happily. It is an unusual great house, approached through a riding-school and a sculpture gallery, which contains a huge work of Giovanni da Bologna and the loveliest little Greek statue in England. Genial Sir William Worsley, the adopted uncle of all the nicest young ladies in the county, is a centre of love and goodness, and his saint-like wife, crippled and utterly motionless from chronic rheumatism, is the sunshine of all around her. Most quaint are some of the old-fashioned dependants. The old coachman seriously asked his master, ‘Is it true, Sir William, that Baron Rothschild was refused when he offered to pay the whole of the natural debt if he might drive eight horses like the Queen, instead of seven horses and a mule?’
“We saw Gilling, the fine old Fairfax castle, and spent a delicious day at Rievaulx. Sir William has oratorios(!) annually performed in his riding-school.
“I arrived at Bishopthorpe the day before the Archbishop’s enthronement, and found a large party of relations assembling; but it would be difficult to crowd the house, as there are forty bedrooms and the dining-room is huge. The palace lies low, and out of the dining-room window you could very nearly fish in the Ouse, which often floods the cellars, the only part remaining of the original house of Walter de Gray. The rococo gateway is imposed by guidebooks upon the uninitiated as that of Wolsey’s palace at Cawood: perhaps a few of its ornaments came from thence. The ceremony in the Minster was very imposing, the more so as a military escort was given to the Archbishop, as having been an old soldier. Most moving was his address upon the responsibilities, and what he felt to be the duties, of his office. The ebb and flow of processional music was beautiful, as the long stream of choristers and clergy flowed in and out of the Minster. The Archbishop’s brothers—one of them, Sir Douglas-Maclagan, being eighty—made a very remarkable group.
“Most happy and interesting were my four succeeding days at Hickleton, where I met one of the familiar circles of people I always connect with Charlie Halifax—Lady Ernestine Edgecumbe, Lady Morton, Canon and Lady Caroline Courtenay, the Haygarths. More characteristic still of the host was the presence of a nun in full canonicals—Sister Caroline—‘this religious,’ as Charlie called her—who appeared at meals, though only to partake of a rabbit’s diet. In the churchyard a great crucifix, twelve feet high, is being erected, and the people of Doncaster do not come out to stone it; on the contrary, the crucifix and its adjuncts attract large congregations of pitmen, who would not go to church at all otherwise; and the neighbourhood is beginning to wonder how long the Church of England can dare to deny its Lord by condemning the crucifix, the vacant cross being but the frame of the picture with the portrait left out, and in itself an eloquent protest against the omission. Another smaller crucifix commemorates the three dear boys who have ‘gone home.’ The shadow of their great loss here is ever present, but it is truly a sanctified grief: their memory is kept ever fresh and the thought of them sunny, and thus they still seem to have their part—invisible—in the daily life, upon which their beautiful pictured semblances look down from the walls of their home. Only a deep sudden sigh from the father now and then recalls all he has undergone. The short morning services in the house-chapel, with its huge crucifix from Ober-Ammergau, where the household sing in parts, are very touching. Still more so are the Sunday services in the beautiful church, close to the house, the low mass, then the full surpliced choir and the blazing lights, and the holy rood above the reredos glittering through them in a golden glamour. In the darker aisle where we sat were the sleeping alabaster figures of the late Lord and Lady Halifax upon their great altar-tomb, and near me the dearest friend of my long-ago was kneeling—a stainless knight—in a rapt devotion which seemed to carry him far into the unseen. I could only feel, as Inglesant at Little Gidding, the presence of a peace and glory utterly unearthly, and as if there—as nowhere else—Heaven took possession of one and entered into one’s soul.