XXVIII
A KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
“Let us try to see, try to do, better always and better. No honourable, truly good and noble thing we do or have done for one another, but will bear its good fruit. That is as true as truth itself, a faith that should never fail us.”—Carlyle’s Letters.
“What I must do is all that concerns me, and not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
“It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what your duty is better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion: it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”—Emerson.
“On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled:
So live, that, sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou may’st smile while all around thee weep.”
—Sir W. Jones, from the Persian.
THE summer of 1892 was full of quiet pleasures. Visits to Cobham, Chevening, and to Mrs. Rycroft at Everlands, leave little to be remembered except the pleasant parties and the extreme kindness of hosts and hostesses everywhere. I am indeed glad that my visiting-lines are cast in such pleasant places, that I so seldom have to consort with the drearier part of human nature—the “Hem-haw, really, you don’t say so” sort of people. In these houses, where the conversation is perfectly charming, yet where no evil is spoken of any one or by any one, one sees truly how a christian spirit will christianise everything it touches, and one learns—as, indeed, when does one not learn?—that the best shield against slander is to live so that nobody may believe it.
In September I was at gloriously picturesque Montacute in Somersetshire, a noble house of yellow grey stone, where all the surroundings, terraces, vases, flowers, chime into the most harmonious whole. With its charming owner, Mrs. Phelips, I made an excursion to Ford, a grand old abbey altered into a luxurious dwelling-house by Inigo Jones, and where Time has blended the new work with the old, till they are equally picturesque. The great hall has its gothic roof of abbatial times, and in the stately saloon are noble Mortlake tapestries, said to have been presented by Charles I. to his Chancellor, but more probably the gift of Anne. Then I was with Lord Zouche, a pleasant friend of late times, at his fine old haunted house and ferny deer-park at Parham, meeting, with others, Lord Robert Bruce, called “the King of Hayling Island,” where he lives and brims over with fun and anecdote. I saw from Parham the new castle at Arundel, magnificently uncomfortable and containing little of interest. But there was something touching in looking into the open grave in which Cardinal Howard was to be laid in a few days, and remembering the different phases in which I had known him well—as the smartest of young Guardsmen, as a priest, where he seemed so unnatural, and finally as Cardinal. The recollection came back of how, when the other cardinals were shuffling along St. Peter’s, Cardinal Howard marched along in stately complacency, holding back his train on one side as a lady does her dress. “E troppo soldato,” said the other cardinals.
At Petworth I saw the magnificent Vandykes, Turners, and Reynoldses in the waste of its dreary saloons. Then with Mary Hare I went to Woolbeding, a drive through loveliest lanes, across an open common covered with fern turned brown by the early frost, and then down an avenue of magnificent Scotch firs, to where lines of gorgeous flowers led up to the house, like a French château with high roof and dormer windows. I had always wished to see its charming owner, Lady Lanerton, who was just what I expected—a beautiful old lady, quite unable from rheumatism to move out of the chair in which, put upon wheels, she can be taken to the services in the little church in the garden, filled with memorials of those she has loved and outlived. In her face was the satisfied and restful expression of one waiting in grateful patience and humblest hope upon the borderland. She seemed to say, what I have just read as amongst Mrs. Stowe’s last words, “I feel about all things now as I do about the things that happen in a hotel after my trunk is packed to go home. I may be vexed and annoyed—but what of it? I am going home soon.” In the garden, amongst the splendid profusion of old-fashioned flowers, I was glad to find Lady Bagot, linked with many memories of my long ago.
To the Hon. G. H. Jolliffe.
“Nov. 1.—I have had an interesting and most pleasant visit to Sir John Lubbock, one of the most delightful of men, so entirely captivating in his simplicity of true wisdom, that no one could fail to be fond of him. His home of High Elms, near Orpington, is a beautiful place, quite near London, but with glorious woods and an entirely country aspect. Professor Forster and many other clever men were there, all far too learned for me, but I did not even try to ‘live up to them,’ and so enjoyed myself thoroughly. I went on from High Elms to Sir George Higginson’s at Great Marlow, and he—a very dear old friend—with all the manly straightforwardness of a splendid soldier and the chivalry of the most refined gentleness, is almost as attractive as Sir John, doing far more than many cleverer people to make life pleasant, and verifying Madame Swetchine’s words, ‘C’est par l’esprit qu’on s’amuse, c’est par le cœur qu’on ne s’ennuie pas.’ Thence, I was taken to see my Dashwood cousins at West Wycombe House, which is full of curious pictures and furniture, recalling a French château of the beginning of the eighteenth century, even in the peculiarly refined and delicate loveliness of its chatelaine.”