“Well, the house was for sale, and the price asked was very small, and they decided at once to buy it. But when it was bought and paid for, the price had been so extraordinarily small, that they could not help a misgiving that there must be something wrong with the place. So they went to the agent of the people who had sold it and said, ‘Well, now the purchase is made and the deeds are signed, will you mind telling us why the price asked was so small?’
“The agent had started violently when they came in, but recovered himself. Then he said to Mrs. Butler, ‘Yes, it is quite true the matter is quite settled, so there can be no harm in telling now. The fact is that the house has had a great reputation for being haunted; but you, madam, need be under no apprehensions, for you are yourself the ghost!’
“On the nights when Mrs. Butler had dreamt she was at her house, she—her ‘astral body’—had been seen there.”
“Ashridge, Nov. 19.—I arrived here by tea-time, passing in the beech woods Lady Lothian, who reminded me of Lady Waterford, as I saw her in her long black dress and black hat, backed by the leafless trees against the golden sunset. Then Lady Brownlow came in, still radiant in her marvellous Bronzino-like beauty. There is much charm too in the guests—Mrs. Dallas Yorke, with her subtle refinement, Mrs. Norman Grosvenor, the Jerseys, pleasant Jack Cator, and many others. Before dark, Lady Lothian took me to the drawing-room, built entirely from designs of Lord Brownlow, and thoroughly Italian in its marble pillars, green hangings, and many fine pictures, a Mona Lisa which disputes originality with that at Paris, a beautiful Lo Spagna of a saint, and the sketch for the Tintoret of the Presentation of the Virgin. The dinner was lighted from brilliant sconces on old boiserie from a Flemish sacristy. In the evening ‘Critic’ was acted as a charade, led by Lady Jersey.
“Breakfast was at small tables. Lord Brownlow, at ours, talked of a neighbouring house where a Lady Ferrers, a freebooter, used to steal out at night and rob the pilgrims coming from St. Albans. She had a passage from her room to the stables. In the morning one of the horses was often found tired out and covered with foam: no one could tell why. At last the poor lady was found dead on her doorstep in her suit of Lincoln green. She constantly haunts the place. Mr. Ady, who lives there now, meets her on the stairs and wishes her good-night. Once, seeing her with her arms stretched out in the doorway, he called out to his wife who was outside, ‘Now we’ve caught her!’ and they rushed upon her from both sides, but caught—nothing.
“Lady Brownlow came over to our table. ‘I’ve come to join in your conversation.’—‘Well, you’ve stopped it,’ said Lord B. ‘However, I bring you this story. A man in a foreign hotel took a loaded pistol to bed with him. By-and-by he saw a terrible deformed hand brandished at the foot of the bed. “If you don’t go, I’ll fire,” he shouted. It did not go and he fired. It was at his own foot.’
“It was Sunday, but I did not go to church, and walked with Lady Lothian through the sunlit green glades and russet woods of autumn. The house is of immense length of frontage, and behind it rises the chapel like a great church. ‘Can you tell me in what part of this village Lord Brownlow lives?’ asked an American when he came to Ashridge. In the evening we went to service in the chapel through the splendid conservatory, with long falling festoons of Ipomea. There was a full congregation and singing. Two panes of Holbein glass recall that Ashridge was the palace of Edward VI. and Elizabeth when young, but she hated it.
“We knew what you would say if you found Lady Waterford’s drawings all lying about,’ said Lady Brownlow, ‘so we worked hard to hang them up the day before you came.’ And they looked grand together, and such a variety—the supreme desolation of the Hagar, the self-abandonment of the Prodigal’s repentance, the proud Othello, the lovely springing, leaping children.”
“Middleton, Dec. 9.—A very agreeable visit to Lord and Lady Jersey. The country is hideous, but the house pleasant and comfortable, and a large new ball-room is hung with many fine portraits—the first Duke of Buckingham by Mytens and by Van Somer; Frances, Countess of Jersey, beloved by George IV., who was sent to meet Queen Caroline and persuaded her to eat onions—‘There is nothing the king likes so much as the smell of onions’—and Sarah, Countess of Jersey, the queen of Almack’s, a huge noble picture by Lawrence. Joining the village church is the mortuary chapel which she built, with her tomb, a copy of the Scipio tomb at Rome, and lovely medallions of her daughters, Sarah, Princess Esterhazy, and Lady Clementina Villiers. The font is said to have been that of Edward the Confessor at Islip, but is of Gothic, not Saxon date.
“Conversation fell on Christine, Lady Saye and Sele, who had three husbands. When she married the first surreptitiously, she took the bull by the horns, and said to her father at dinner, ‘Father, I’m married!’—‘Well, my dear, but at least wait till Thomas has left the room.’—‘No, father, Thomas need not leave the room, for Thomas is the man I’ve married.’”