“From Burwarton I went on to my pleasant cousin’s, the Francis Bridgemans, close to that beautiful church at Tong, and we spent a day with Francis’s kind old father, Lord Bradford, at Weston, and he showed us all the pictures and treasures in the house, and drove us about in his sociable to the ‘Temple of Diana’ and other points of interest in the park of a very comfortable well-to-do place.
“Next, I visited Lady Margaret Herbert (daughter of my dear Lady Carnarvon) as châtelaine at Teversal manor in Notts, a smoky wind-stricken country, but with Hardwicke and other fine houses to see. The charming aunt of my hostess, Lady Guendolen, was living with her as chaperon, none the worse in body for being a strict vegetarian, and in mind the sunniest of the sunny, delightful to be with.
‘And scarcely is she altered, for the hours
Have led her lightly down the vale of life,
Dancing and scattering roses, and her face
Seems a perpetual daybreak.’[582]
I was glad to be taken to spend the day at Bestwood, the Duke of St. Alban’s modern place, its woods an oasis in the wilderness, and its honours were charmingly done by Lady Sybil Beauclerk and her good-looking brother Burford. In the Duchess’s room were a series of albums with all the original drawings for Dickens’s works. All the best pictures were burnt in a fire.
“The Ladies Herbert sometimes, but in a far-away sense, remind me of their mother, who was quite the most perfectly brilliant person I have ever known. I have always heard that she was this even as a girl, and that it was a perpetual surprise to her parents, who were very inferior people. Lady Dufferin used to say that they were like savages who had found a watch.
“Taking stern dismal Bolsover—its delicate carvings utterly ruined by ‘trippers’—on the way, I came on to meet a large party here at Thoresby, which is in more than usual autumnal forest glory. We have just been spending the afternoon at Welbeck, shown all the improvements by Mrs. Dallas Yorke, in the absence of the tall handsome Duchess, who, however, returned before we left. One did not wonder that she is such a special joy to the old people of the place, because they had ‘been so long without a duchess, and when there was one long ago, it was only such a little one.’ She has built a delightful gallery—Florence-fashion—between the old house and the new, and hung it with a galaxy of old prints, and has made fascinating little terrace-gardens, and edged their beds with dwarf lavender, so that ‘when the ladies’ dresses brush against it, its scent may be wafted into the house.’
“And meantime my thoughts have been much at Llandaff, with the cousin[583] who was the dearest friend of my boyhood, seeming to pass with her through the closing scenes of the good Dean’s life, and to see him as she did, lying in his cathedral, dressed in his surplice, in the majesty of eternal repose.”
To Mrs. C. Vaughan.
“Holmhurst, Nov. 16, 1897.—Here I am again in quietude, thinking of you very much in your last days at Llandaff; busy over the building of which I am architect, overseer, a hundred things at once, and planting a great deal, with a reminiscence of Dumbiedykes in Walter Scott—‘Be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, while you’re sleeping.’ My only companions now are the pleasant Hospitallers in the little Hospice, whom I constantly meet in the garden and wood walks. I wish you could see their little house, and the late roses lingering on their porch.
“I have been away for a week. Lady Stanhope took me from Chevening to see Lullingstone Castle in Kent, the old house of the Dykes, with a good brick gateway, a richly ceilinged upper gallery, and a chapel with interesting tombs. Two days afterwards, Lady Chetwynd took me to a finer place—Chawton in Hants, where the Knights, of Godmersham, live now, representing several old extinct families, especially the Lewknors, with whom I am very familiar through their tombs scattered all over Sussex, and who are commemorated at Chawton by many portraits and fine tapestried needlework. A little bookcase with a globe outside and a series of Elzevir Histories of the World within, was very attractive.