Lady Musgrave was a particularly lady-like woman, the marked elegance of whose breeding might, with advantage, have given the tone to many a London drawing-room. I have seen her surrounded by country neighbours, and though she was velut inter ignes luna minores, I never saw the country squire's or country parson's wife, who was not perfectly happy and at ease in her drawing-room, while unconsciously all the time taking a lesson in good breeding and lady-like manners. She was thoroughly a help-meet for her husband in all his care for his people. I believe that both he and she were convinced at the bottom of their hearts that Cumberland and Westmoreland constituted the choicest, best, and most highly civilised part of England. And she was one of those of whom I was thinking, when in a former chapter I spoke of highly educated people whom I had known to affect provincialism of speech. Lady Musgrave always, or perhaps it would be more correct to say generally, called a cow a "coo," and though I suspect she would have left Westmoreland behind if evil fate had called her to London, on her own hill-sides she preferred the accents of the native speech.
Sir George had, or affected to have, considerable respect for all the little local superstitions and beliefs which are so prevalent in that "north countree." And the kindness with which he welcomed us as neighbours, when we built a house and came to live there, was shown despite a strong feeling which he had, or affected to have, with regard to an incident which fatally marked our début in that country.
We bought a field in a very beautiful situation overlooking the ruins of Brougham Castle and the confluence of the Eden with the Lowther, and proceeded to build a house on the higher part of it. But there was a considerable drop from the lower limit of our ground to the road which skirted the property, and furnished the only access to it. There was some difficulty, therefore, in contriving a tolerable entrance from the road for wheel traffic, and it was found necessary to cause a tiny little spring that rose in the bank by the roadside to change its course in some small degree. The affair seemed to us a matter of infinitesimal importance, but Sir George was dismayed. We had moved, he said, a holy well, and the consequence would surely be that we should never succeed in establishing ourselves in that spot.
And surely enough we never did so succeed; for, after having built a very nice little house, and lived in it one winter and half a summer, we—for I cannot say that it was my mother more than I, or I more than my mother—made up our minds that "the sun yoked his horses too far from Penrith town," and that we had had enough of it. Sir George, of course, when he heard our determination, while he expressed all possible regret at losing us as neighbours, said that he knew perfectly well that it must be so, from the time that we so recklessly meddled with the holy well.
He was the most hospitable man in the world, and could never let many days pass without asking us to dine with him. But his hospitality was of quite the old world school. One day, but that was after our journey to Italy and when he had become intimate with us, being in a hurry to get back into the drawing-room to rejoin a pretty girl next whom I had sat at dinner, I tried to escape from the dining-room. "Come back!" he roared, before I could get to the door, "we won't have any of your d—d forineering habits here! Come back and stick to your wine, or by the Lord I'll have the door locked."
He was, unlike most men of his sort, not very fond of riding, but was a great walker. He used to take the men he could get to walk with him a tramp over the hill, till they were fain to cry "Hold! enough!" But there I was his match.
Most of my readers have probably heard of the "Luck of Edenhall," for besides Longfellow's[1] well-known poem, the legend relating to it has often been told in print. I refer to it here merely to mention a curious trait of character in Sir George Musgrave in connection with it. The "Luck of Edenhall" is an ancient decorated glass goblet, which has belonged to the Musgraves time out of mind, and which bears on it the legend:—
"When this cup shall break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Edenhall."
[Footnote 1: Subsequently to the publication of his poem Musgrave asked Longfellow to dine at Edenhall, and "picked a crow" with him on the conclusion of the poem, which represents the "Luck" to have been broken, which Sir George considered a flight of imagination quite transcending all permissible poetical licence.]
After what I have written of Sir George and the holy well, which we so unfortunately moved from its proper site, it will be readily imagined that he attached no small importance to the safe keeping of the "Luck;" and truly he did so. But instead of simply locking it up, where he might feel sure it could neither break nor fall, he would show it to all visitors, and not content with that, would insist on their taking it into their hands to examine and handle it. He maintained that otherwise there was no fair submission to the test of luck, which was intended by the inscription. It would have been mere cowardly prevarication to lock it away under circumstances which took the matter out of the dominion of "luck" altogether. I wonder that under such circumstances it has not fallen, for the nervous trepidation of the folks who were made to handle it may be imagined!