“Holmhurst, May 23.—I found a very large party on Saturday at hospitable Mr. Astor’s, and Cliveden in great beauty, entrancing carpets of bluebells under the trees. A telegram from the Queen of Sweden took me to Roehampton on Monday. It was twenty-two years since I had seen the King, and I thought him even handsomer and more royal-looking than of old. The Queen is not less fragile, and as full of good thoughts and words as ever. I had luncheon with the royal pair and their household, and a long talk with the Queen afterwards, who told me much of my especial Prince, now Regent in his father’s absence.”
XXXI
FAREWELL
“Pleasure to our hot grasp
Gives flowers after flowers;
With passionate warmth we grasp
Hand after hand in ours:
Now do we soon perceive how fast our youth is spent.”
—Matthew Arnold.
“Oh, He has taught us what reply to make,
Or secretly in spirit, or in words,
If there be need, when sorrowing men complain
The fair illusions of their youth depart,
All things are going from them, and to-day
Is emptier of delights than yesterday,
Even as to-morrow will be barer yet:
We have been taught to feel this need not be,
This is not life’s inevitable law;
But that the gladness we are called to know
Is an increasing gladness, that the soil
Of the human heart, tilled rightly, will become
Richer and deeper, fitted to bear fruit
Of an immortal growth from day to day,
Fruit of love, life, and inefficient joy.”—R. C Trench.
“Lord, I owe thee a death: let it not be terrible: yet Thy will, not mine, be done.”—Hooker.
“When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!”—Herrick.
I mUST close this book. Printers are calling for its last pages. It is like seeing an old friend go forth into a new world, and wondering if those who inhabit it will understand him and treat him well. Perhaps no one will read it except the intimate circle—a large one certainly—who have loved Hurstmonceaux, Stoke, and little Holmhurst at different times. But I can never regret having written it, and it has been so great an enjoyment to me, that perhaps others may like it; for I have concealed nothing, and Coleridge says, “I could inform the dullest author how he might write an interesting book. Let him relate the events of his own life with honesty, not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.”[597]
Most people will say two volumes would have been enough, but the fact is I have written chiefly for myself and my relations, and not for the general public at all. They may read the book if they like, but it was not intended for them, and, as Walter Scott describes it—
“Most men, when drawn to speak about themselves,
Are moved by little and by little to say more
Than they first dreamt; until at last they blush,
And can but hope to find secret excuse
In the self-knowledge of their auditors.”[598]