“Pau, Villa Salusbury.
“We have an opera here this season. The prima donna and the tenor are good; the rest so-so. The orchestra and chorus bad; the basso execrable: when he doesn’t bellow like a bull, he neighs like a horse; however, he does his best. I don’t know how you feel, but to me a mediocre opera is an unmitigated bore. I would rather by half hear a good French play. There was a scene at the opera the other night. The conductor of the orchestra is the amant of the contralto. Just before the opera began, the conductor in a jealous fit tried to strangle the contralto: whereupon the basso profundo knocked the conductor down: whereupon the conductor ran off towards the river to drown himself: whereupon he was knocked down again to save his life: whereupon he threatened to cut everybody’s throat: whereupon he was locked up in prison, and there remains. So there is no conductor, and the contralto can’t sing from the throttling.”
The violoncello soon grew to be a resource, and I believe he played really well, though he used to groan to me as to the impossibility of adapting adult fingers to the work, and to mourn over the barbarism of our school days, when no one ever thought of music as a possible study for boys. Soon, however, other objects of deeper interest began to gather round him. His eldest boy was born in 1853, his second in 1855, during their summer in England.
“The young one,” he writes to his sister, “is like his mamma, they say, and is going to be dark, which will be a good contrast to Herbert, who is a regular Saxon. I want his (Herbert’s) yellow hair to grow long that it may be done into a pigtail; I think it would look quaint and create a sensation among the Cockneys, but I’m afraid I shan’t get my own way. To return to the new arrival, you will be happy to hear that he inherits your talent for music; he is always meandering with his hands as if he was playing the violoncello; it is a positive fact, I assure you, and makes me laugh to bursting point. A—— must have been more struck with my performances than I had credited. I feel quite flattered to possess an infant phenomenon who played (or would have played) the violoncello, if we had let him, from his birth. In the meantime that instrument has been somewhat neglected by me. A——, the baby, and the partridges (what a conjunction), divide my allegiance. However, my music mania is as strong as ever, in spite of the rather excruciating tones which all beginners draw from the instrument: they tell me that the sounds resemble the bellowings of a bereaved cow; luckily the house is a large one.”
He took to farming also, as another outlet for superfluous energy, but without much greater success than generally falls to the lot of amateurs. Indeed, his long winter absences from England kept him from gaining anything more than a superficial knowledge of agriculture, such as is disclosed in the following note to his mother, in answer to inquiries as to crops and prospects:—
“Farming is better certainly this year than the last, but we farmers always grumble, as you know, and I don’t like to say anything until the new wheat is threshed. You ought to sow your tares and rye immediately, and they will do very well after potatoes; they ought to be well manured. If you mean by ‘rye’ Italian rye-grass, I don’t exactly know when it is best to sow it; in the spring I believe, but I have never had any yet, and you must ask about it. One thing I know, that it ought to have liquid manure, to be put on directly after cutting; this will give you a fresh crop in a little more than a month.”
When the Volunteer movement began, he threw himself into it at once; for no man was more impatient of, or humiliated by, the periodical panics which used to seize the country. He helped to raise a corps in his own neighbourhood, of which he became captain, and went to one of the first classes for Volunteers at the School of Musketry, to make himself competent to teach his men. As to the result he writes:—
“Undercliff, 1860.
“Our schooling at Hythe terminated on Friday last, on which day 100 lunatics were let loose upon society. I say lunatics, because all of us just now have but one idea, and talk, think, and dream of nothing but the rifle (call it Miss Enfield) morning, noon, and night. Colonel Welsford, the chief instructor, is a charming man and a delightful lecturer, and withal a greater lunatic than any of us—just the right man in the right place. I shot fairly, but did not distinguish myself as Harry did.”
I spoke of his “vers de société” just now, and in this connection will here give you a specimen of them. The expenses of the corps of course considerably exceeded the Government grant, and the deficiency had to be met somehow. My brother started a theatrical performance in the Town Hall, Hitchin, as a method at once of making both ends meet, and of interesting the townspeople in the corps. The last piece of the entertainment was one of his own. The characters were played chiefly by members of his own family. He himself acted the part of a pompous magistrate, and at the close spoke the following