“A journey through the Fen country took me to Campsea Ashe, where the artistic party collected in the pleasant Lowther home spent a most pleasant week in drawing—studying—by the silent moats of old-timbered houses—Parham, Seckford, and Otley. We went also to the attractive old town of Woodbridge, where Percy Fitzgerald lived, who wrote so many capital articles. A characteristic story told of him is that he once spent the evening in the company of a bore who buzzed on incessantly about this lord and that till he could bear it no longer and left the room, but as he did so, opened the door once more, and, putting in his head, said, ‘I knew a lord once, but he’s dead!’
“I was at Felixstowe for a day afterwards, and made acquaintance—friends, I hope—with Felix Cobbold, a most attractive fellow, with a delightful house, and a garden close above the sea, which truly makes ‘the desert smile’ in that most hideous of all sea-places. Then I was a night at the Palace at Norwich, full of childish reminiscence to me, and most stately and beautiful it all looked—the smooth lawns and bright flowers, the grand grey cathedral and soaring spire, the old chapel and ruin; only the palace itself has had all the picturesqueness washed out of it. Its geography is entirely altered, but it was delightful to recognise old nooks and corners, and I almost seemed to see my Mother sitting by the old-fashioned chimney-piece in the Abbey-room. I spent a delightful evening with the Bishop (Pelham), who poured out a rich store of anecdote and recollection for hours. He spoke much of Manning, whom he had known most intimately—how his characteristic had always been his ambition. He wanted in early life to have gone into Parliament; then, when that failed, he wished to have entered diplomacy; then his father’s bank broke, and he was obliged to go into the Church. ‘Your uncle Julius and he,’ said the Bishop, ‘were once with my brother (Lord Chichester), and Manning had been holding forth upon the celibacy of the clergy. “At least you will agree with me,” he said, turning to my brother, “that celibacy is the holier state.” “Then of course you think,” said my brother, “that matrimony is a less holy state than celibacy.” And he started, with a reminiscence of his own happy married life, and said, “Oh no!”’
“The Bishop talked much of Jenny Lind’s visit to Norwich when he was here with the Stanleys; how the Duke of Cambridge had spoken to her of the wonderful enjoyment her noble gift of voice must be, and how she had answered, ‘I do enjoy it, and I thank God for giving it to me, and I feel that in return I ought to use it first for His glory, and then for the raising of my profession.’ When her great concert took place, Mr. Thompson, a Norwich doctor, who had the management of the town charities, ventured to put the best of the workhouse school-girls under the orchestra, where no one could see them, whilst they could hear everything. But Jenny was sometimes greatly overcome at the end of one of her own songs, and it was so then, and when her song was over, she retired to her own room; but, to reach it, she had to pass under the orchestra, and there she saw a number of girls in tears, and asked who they were. Mr. Thompson came to explain with some diffidence, for he did not know how she would take it; but she was much interested, and asked, ‘Is there any one of your charities especially to which I could be of any use?’ And he thought a minute and said, ‘What we really want is a children’s hospital; there has never been one in Norwich.’—‘Then that is just what I will give a concert for,’ said Jenny Lind; and of course every one was delighted, and so the hospital was started. Afterwards she sent down some one incognito to see how it was managed, and the report was so favourable that she said she would give another concert, and that set it up altogether. It is now the ‘Jenny Lind Hospital.’
“Talking of the late event at York led to the Bishop’s saying, ‘I heard a fine thing of Archbishop Musgrave. I was not meant to hear it, though. I was at Bishopthorpe to preach a consecration sermon for the Bishop of Ripon. It was before I was a bishop myself, and I knew nothing about precedence, and did not take my proper place in the procession as was intended, though I was all ready, and I let them all pass out before me. Only the Archbishop and Mrs. Musgrave remained. The Archbishop had had a stroke of apoplexy then, from which he was only just recovering, and it was his first appearance since, and they were all very anxious about him. Just as they were leaving the house, the Archbishop said to his wife, “My dear, take this key: it will unlock that box, in which you will find a commission ready signed and sealed for the three bishops present to take my place if anything happens to me during the service: whatever happens to me, the service must not be stopped.” And they went on quietly to the church. I did not know which to admire most, the Archbishop for making the speech, or Mrs. Musgrave’s perfect calmness in hearing it and in taking the key. I spoke of it to Mrs. Bickersteth (the Bishop of Ripon’s wife) afterwards, and she said, “That explains what the Archbishop said to me last night—‘I am afraid you may be anxious about the service to-morrow: set yourself quite at rest: everything is quite settled, so that, whatever happens to me, the ceremony of to-morrow will be carried out.’”
“The Lowthers joined me at Norwich, and we went together to Woodbastwick, and for a delightful visit to the Locker-Lampsons at Cromer. What an enchanting place it is! All the society meets on the beach. Two bathing-machines were drawn up side by side, and their inmates were in the sea. ‘I hope you will kindly consider this as a visit,’ said one of them to his neighbour, with his head just above the water. ‘Oh, certainly,’ said the neighbour, ‘and I hope you will kindly consider this as a visit returned.’
“Mr. Locker is delightful. He says, ‘I suppose what makes a bore is a man’s perpetually harping upon one subject, not knowing what details to leave out, and insisting upon making his voice heard at unsuitable times. But certainly a bore is a bore in accordance with what he is talking about: if, for instance, a man went on talking for hours of my “Lyra Elegantiarum,” I should never think him a bore.’ ‘My dear,’ he says to Mrs. Locker-Lampson, ‘are you not sometimes of rather too rigid a disposition? You know, at railway stations you often point out to me a man as eternally damned because he wears trousers with rather a broad check, and has an unusually large cigar in his mouth.’
“In Lady Buxton’s pretty house are a whole gallery of Richmond portraits—a stately full-length of (her aunt) Mrs. Fry, most speaking likenesses of her benignant father, her beautiful mother, of Sarah and Anna Gurney, the ‘Cottage Ladies’—of her father-in-law, Sir Fowell of the Slave Trade—of her sons and brothers-in-law. Yellow tulips, like those at Florence, grow wild in her fields in abundance, and the cows eat them.”