My home life this year was very quiet and uneventful, only marked by my books. The Edgeworth family had placed Maria Edgeworth’s letters in the hands of Lionel Holland, now a publisher, and desired him to find an editor. He asked me to accept the office—certainly not a remunerative one, as I only received fifty pounds for it, the whole large profits of the book falling to the publishers. I demurred at first, but eventually undertook it, and became interested in the work, and the simple, high-toned, unselfish character of the lady whose letters I was selecting; and the book at once became popular, and had a very large circulation.
But “The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth” was rather a by-play. Most of my time was given to “The Gurneys of Earlham,” which gave me plenty of very hard and anxious work. I could not help feeling, as I attacked the mines and mountains of self-introspection in the form of religious journals which each one of the Gurney brothers and sisters left behind them, how unsuited I was for the task, how little I could enter into their feelings. Indeed Catherine Vaughan had written to me—“You are unworthy even to unfasten the shoe-latchets of those saints,” and I quite agreed with her. Still, into the beauty of their actions, of their devoted and unselfish lives, I could fully enter, and when the peculiar shibboleth of those times is sifted from their words, they said a great deal that was most beautiful and touching. The work has brought me into contact with many good people. And the Gurneys are still, as they were in the early days of Earlham, most liberal to all who do not agree with them, if only they are trying to follow the same Lord and Saviour—the dearest friend of the Gurneys of old time, and I think of most of those of present date.
At Christmas I was with the Halifaxes.
To W. H. Milligan.
“Hickleton, Dec. 28, 1894.—Can it be I? I say to myself, when I am called in pitch darkness in these winter mornings, and hurry in the dawn through the still dark shrubberies to the brilliantly lighted church, where, amid clouds of incense and the chanted salutation of the Blessed Sacrament, I receive ‘the mass,’ kneeling under the shadow of a great crucifix. Then, after breakfast, there is matins, what we should call early morning service, at which there are few worshippers; but when it is over, and you think you are going away, not a bit of it; there is a sound like the sea rushing in, and instantly the church is filled—thronged with people—and these come, not to receive the Sacrament, but to adore it! Charlie Halifax says, ‘How strangely things come round. My uncle, a lawyer—who had his home here with my father and mother, and died when I was five years old—used to be a great friend of Newman and Lord Devon, and others who thought as they did, and his beautiful spiritual letters and his religious sonnets remain to us. He longed for what he thought was the impossible; he longed to have it here, and now here it is. At that time there was only celebration here four times in a year; he never hoped it could be otherwise, and yet what he so longed for—what I, too, so longed for as a boy—has been all realised.
“‘Do you know that when Miss Margot Tennant (Mrs. Asquith) said to Jowett, “What do you really think of God?” he said nothing for a moment, and then answered, “I think all that signifies is what God really thinks of me.”’
“I have had many delightful talks with Charlie. When I am with him I feel imperceptibly lifted heavenwards. I do not agree with him in everything, but oh! I love him always. With him, as indeed with every one else, even where I most disagree, I am careful never to speak slightingly of anything he holds sacred. If it made any difference at all, it would only cause him to hold the cloak tighter.”
“Hatfield, Jan. 30.—After a visit to Lord and Lady Knightley at Fawsley, in bitter cold and snow, I came here to meet a huge party—Cadogans, Iveaghs, Hampdens, and very many others. Most of the company have skated in the morning, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the equably warm passages and rooms of this immense house. Arthur Balfour is here, with charming manners, quite unspoilt. He stays in his room and does not appear till luncheon-time, so getting many quiet hours for work. Lord Warkworth was here for one night, a most promising youth, who breaks the silence of the Percies. Lord Rowton also is here, and most agreeable in his natural ripple of pleasant talk. He says that he once asked Disraeli what was the most remarkable, the most self-sustained and powerful sentence he knew. Dizzy paused for a moment, and then said, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’
“Disraeli used to say that, apropos of history, he should always remember going to a breakfast at Lord Houghton’s, and, as the door opened, hearing the loud voice of Bunsen exclaim, ‘Modern history! why, modern history begins with Abraham!’
“He described how the Duke of Wellington would always arrange everything for a battle—he did before Waterloo—and then would sleep soundly for an hour. ‘How could you sleep so soundly?’—‘Why, I had arranged everything.’