I have not been well for some days. The town air does not agree with me, and compels me to follow a ‘régime’ like that in your song:—
“un bouillon
d’un roguon
de papillon.”
C—— Hall, Feb. 2d.
Lord D——, to whose wife I had been introduced in London, invited me to visit him for a few days at his country house. I accepted his invitation with more pleasure because C—— Hall is the place of which Repton says that he had laboured at its embellishment, together with its proprietor, forty years ago. Indeed it does him the greatest honour; though, from all I saw and heard, it appeared to me that the admirable taste of its Lord was entitled to the largest share of the merit; especially in sparing old trees which Repton would have removed. Nevertheless an honourable feeling of gratitude has dedicated an alcove, commanding a wonderfully beautiful prospect, to the man to whom landscape-gardening is so much indebted. Repton’s son, who was with us, had told Lady D—— a great deal about M——; and as she is almost as good a ‘parkomane’ as myself, we had a very attractive subject in common, and walked about for some hours in the flower-garden, which is still more tasteful than splendid, and is adorned with some graceful marble statues by Canova.
I did not see the master of the house, who was suffering from gout, till we came down to dinner, when I met a large company; amongst others Lord M——, who had just been to inspect the ships of war lying in the Thames.
Lord D—— was lying on a sofa, covered with a Scotch plaid, and embarrassed me a little by his first address.
“You don’t know me,” said he, “and yet we saw each other very often thirty years ago.” Now as I was in frocks at the time he spoke of, I was obliged to beg for a further explanation, though I cannot say I was much delighted at having my age so fully discussed before all the company,—for you know I claim not to look more than thirty. However, I could but admire Lord D——’s memory. He remembered every circumstance of his visit to my parents with the Duke of Portland, and recalled to me many a little forgotten incident. What originals were then to be found, and how joyously and heartily people entered into all sorts of amusement in those days, his conversation gave me new and very entertaining proof of.
He mentioned among others a certain Baron, who believed as firmly in ghosts as in the Gospel, and held Cagliostro for a sort of Messias. One day when he went out alone, to skate on the lake near our house, the whole party dressed themselves in sheets and other things borrowed from the wardrobe of the theatre, and presented to the eyes of the terrified Illuminatus the awful appearance of a party of ghosts, in broad daylight, on the ice. In mortal terror he fell on his knees, spite of his skates; and with a volubility which the venerable Lord could not think of, even now, without laughing, uttered “Abracadabra,” and bits of Faust’s incantations, interspersed with fragments of quavering psalms. During this, one of the ghosts, who, with the help of a long stick under his sheet, made himself sometimes tall and sometimes low, slipped and fell, stripped of all disguise, directly before the knees of the praying Baron. His faith was too robust, however, to be shaken by such a trifle. On the contrary, his terror was increased to such a pitch, that he sprang up, fell again, in consequence of his unlucky ‘chaussure,’ but soon scrambled up, and with a dexterity no one gave him credit for before, vanished like the wind, amid the cheers of the whole company.
Even the confession of the whole joke by the actors in it never could convince him that he had been hoaxed, and no power on earth could ever induce him to see the frightful lake again as long as he remained at M——.
You know I cannot avoid the reflections which often fill me with melancholy even on the most joyous occasions. So was it with me now, as Lord D—— thus conjured up before me the picture of departed times;—as he eulogized my grandfather’s amiable character, described my mother’s high spirit, and what a wild child I was: ‘Hélas, ils sont passés ces jours de fête.’ The amiable man has long lain mouldering in his grave; the high-spirited young woman is old, and no longer high-spirited; and even the wild boy is more than tamed—nay, not very far from those days in which he will say, “I have no pleasure in them:” the mad-cap young Englishman who played the ghost on the ice, lay before me, an old man, tortured with gout, stretched helpless on a sofa,—the tale of the merry pranks of his youth interrupted by sighs extorted by pain; while the poor fool whom he so terrified as ghost has long been a ghost himself, and the good Lord would be not a little alarmed if his visit happened to be returned. “Oh world, world!” as Napoleon said.[42]