We had some very happy parties at Osterley during the succeeding summer. I have already mentioned Mr. Henry James’s description of the place. Our great friend Sir Herbert Maxwell, in his novel Sir Lucian Elphin, also adopted it under another name as the background of one of his scenes, and I have quoted Mr. Ashley’s verses written in 1887. I love the place and its memories so dearly that I cannot resist adding the testimony of another friend, Mr. Augustus Hare. He knew it well both in the days of the Duchess of Cleveland and after we had taken up our abode there, and mentions it several times in The Story of my Life, but he tells, in an account of a visit to us including the Bank Holiday of August 1890, of our last party before we went to Australia. From that I extract a few lines, omitting the over-kindly portraits of ourselves which he was apt to draw of his friends:
“I went to Osterley, which looked bewitching, with its swans floating in sunshine beyond the shade of the old cedars. Those radiant gardens will now bloom through five years unseen, for Lord Jersey has accepted the Governorship of New South Wales, which can only be from a sense of duty, as it is an immense self-sacrifice.
“The weather was really hot enough for the luxury of open windows everywhere and for sitting out all day. The party was a most pleasant one. M. de Stael, the Russian Ambassador; Lady Crawford, still lovely as daylight, and her nice daughter Lady Evelyn; Lady Galloway, brimming with cleverness; M. de Montholon, French Minister at Athens; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Parker, most amusing and cheery; Sir Philip Currie, General Feilding, etc. Everything was most unostentatiously sumptuous and most enjoyable. On Monday we were sent in three carriages to Richmond, where we saw Sir Francis Cook’s collection, very curious and worth seeing as it is, but which, if his pictures deserved the names they bear, would be one of the finest collections in the world. Then after a luxurious luncheon at the Star and Garter we went on to Ham House, where Lady Huntingtower showed the curiosities, including all the old dresses kept in a chest in the long gallery. Finally I told the Jersey children—splendid audience—a long story in a glade of the Osterley garden, where the scene might have recalled the Decameron. I was very sorry to leave these kind friends, and to know it would be so long before I saw them again.”
OSTERLEY PARK.
From a photograph by W. H. Grove.
STORY OF A PICTURE
Sir Francis Cook—Viscount Monserrate in Portugal—had a wonderful collection both of pictures and objets d’art which he was always ready to show to our friends and ourselves. I am not expert enough to know whether all the names attributed to the pictures could be verified, but I can answer for one which we saw on an occasion when we took Lord Rowton over with some others. It was a large circular painting of the Adoration of the Magi by Filippo Lippi. Lord Rowton expressed the greatest interest in seeing it, as he said that Lord Beaconsfield and himself had hesitated greatly whether to utilise the money received for Endymion to purchase this beautiful picture, which was then in the market, or to buy the house in Curzon Street. I should think the decision to buy the house was a wise one under the circumstances, but the picture is a magnificent one. I saw it not long ago at an exhibition of the Burlington Fine Arts Club lent by the son—or grandson—of Sir Francis Cook.