To W. H. Milligan, and Journal.
“Alderley Rectory, Oct. 5, 1894.—I left home on September 29, to visit the Townshend Marshams at Frognal—the place I have so often heard of and thought of, from Lord and Lady Canning having been there so frequently as the guests of Lord and Lady Sydney, who left it to the Marshams. No wonder they loved it, and that it was one of the places poor Lady Canning most looked forward to seeing again on her return from her long Indian exile. It is an enchanting old house!—its endless succession of small sitting-rooms, all lived in, all full of pictures, books, and flowers, and opening on to a sunny terrace and broad expanse of lawn, with pine-trees beyond it. In one of the rooms Lady Sydney still presides from her picture, but as few alive now can remember her, radiant in loveliness, with a coronet surmounting her abundant and beautiful hair. Upstairs there is an oak gallery, half library, half passage, but deliciously pleasant and quaint. The boy of the family is named Ferdinand, from Ferdinando Marsham, Charles I.’s esquire, upon whose tombstone it is said that ‘he was lamented by all gentlemen.’ Amongst the many curious pamphlets in the house is an account of Charles I.’s execution, printed whilst the king’s body was still lying at Whitehall, and mentioning his famous word, ‘Remember,’ as referring to his ‘George,’ which he had desired might be given to his eldest son. A sketch by Lady Sydney represents the drawing-room at Frognal, with both the Cannings and many other habitués of the house introduced, and easily recognisable as portraits.
“Through a most picturesque and lovely bit of primeval chase belonging to Frognal we walked to Chislehurst, to see the fine tomb of Lord Sydney by Boehm, surrounded by memorials of his family, and, on the common, the Prince Imperial’s Memorial Cross. Mr. Marsham Townshend, who recollected having seen the Empress in all her splendour at Paris, happened once to come upon her here, a widowed and lonely exile, in her deep mourning, attended by a single servant, sobbing alone before this memorial of her murdered son. Often, in the years she was at Chislehurst, while the family at Frognal were sitting at tea in the hall, a carriage would dash up, and the Empress Eugénie come in to stay for two hours. She loved the Sydneys.
“It was most delightful at Frognal having old Mrs. Sackville of Drayton there—‘still constant in a wondrous excellence.’
“A longish journey took me to Bromsgrove, where a carriage met me and an old Mrs. Laurence, who is apparently ‘a power’ in American society, with her nephew, Mr. Mercer, and brought us to Hewell, the great modern house which Bodley has built for the Windsors. It has an immense hall, with open galleries round it, never a comfortable arrangement, I think, but it is handsome, has two beautiful Italian chimney-pieces, and is divided by arches into compartments at the two ends. Lady Windsor is quite as beautiful and fascinating as before she married, and her mother, Lady Paget, is rather additionally embellished than otherwise by added years. Lady De Vesci was at Hewell also, supremely beautiful in her own—a poetical way.