VII
OXFORD LIFE
A few souls brought together as it were by chance, for a
short friendship and mutual dependence in this little ship of
earth, so soon to land her passengers and break up the company
for ever." - C. KINSGLEY.
To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night
the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." -
SHAKSPEARE, Polonius to Laertes.
"If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally
and others sparingly."-CONFUCIUS.
IT was the third year of our Oxford life, and Milligan and I
were now the "senior men" resident in college ; we sat
at one of the higher tables in hall, and occupied stalls in
chapel. We generally attended lectures together, and many are the
amusing tricks I recall which Milligan used to play-one
especially, on a freshman named Dry - a pious youth in green
spectacles, and with the general aspect of "Verdant
Green." An undergraduate's gown is always adorned with two
long strings behind ; these strings of Dry, Milligan adroitly
fastened to mine, and, inventing one excuse after another, for
slipping round the room to open the door, shut a window, &c.,
he eventually had connected the whole lecture in one continuous
chain; finally, he fastened himself to Dry on the other side; and
then, with loud outcries of "Don't, Dry, - don't, Dry,"
pulled himself away, the result being that Dry and his chair were
overturned, and that the whole lecture, one after another, came
crashing on the top of him! Milligan would have got into a
serious scrape on this occasion, but that he was equally popular
with the tutors and his companions, so that every possible excuse
was made for him, while I laughed in such convulsions at the
absurdity of the scene, that I was eventually expelled from the
lecture, and served as a scapegoat.
I think we were liked in college - Milligan much better than
I. Though we never had the same sort of popularity as boating-men
and cricketers often acquire, we afforded plenty of amusement.
When the college gates were closed at night, I often used to rush
down into Quad and act "Hare" all over the queer
passages and dark corners of the college, pursued by a pack of
hounds who were more in unison with the general idea of Harrow
than of Oxford. One night I had been keeping ahead of my pursuers
so long, that, as one was apt to be rather roughly handled when
caught after a very long chase, I thought it was as well to make
good my escape to my own rooms in the New Buildings, and to
"sport my oak." Yet, after some time, beginning to feel
my solitude rather flat after so much excitement, I longed to
regain the quadrangle, but knew that the staircase was well
guarded by a troop of my pursuers. By a vigorous coup d'état
however, I threw open my "oak," and seizing the
handrail of the bannisters, slipped on it through the midst of
them, and reached the foot of the staircase in safety. Between me
and the quadrangle a long cloistered passage still remained to be
traversed, and here I saw the way blocked up by a figure
approaching in the moonlight. Of course it must be an enemy!
There was nothing for it but desperation. I rushed at him like a
bolt from a catapult, and by taking him unawares, butting him in
the stomach, and then flinging myself on his neck, overturned him
into the coal-hole, and escaped into Quad. My pursuers, seeing
some one struggling in the coal-hole, thought it was I, and flung
all their sharp-edged college caps at him, under which he was
speedily buried, but emerged in time to exhibit himself as - John
Conington, Professor of Latin
Meantime, I had discovered the depth of my iniquity, and fled
to the rooms of Duckworth, a scholar, to whom I recounted my
adventure, and with whom I stayed. Late in the evening a note was
brought in for Duckworth, who said, "It is a note from John
Conington," and read - "Dear Duckworth, having been the
victim of a cruel outrage on the part of some undergraduates of
the college, I trust to your friendship for me to assist me in
finding out the perpetrators," &c. Duckworth urged that
I should give myself up - that John Conington was very
good-natured - in fact, that I had better confess the whole
truth, &c. So I immediately sat down and wrote the whole
story to Professor Conington, and not till I had sent it, and it
was safe in his hands, did Duckworth confess that the note he had
received was a forgery, that he had contrived to slip out of the
room and write it to himself-and that I had made my confession
unnecessarily. However, he went off with the story and its latest
additions to the Professor, and no more was said.
If Milligan was my constant companion in college, George
Sheffield and I were inseparable out of doors, though I often
wondered at his caring so much to be with me, as he was a capital
rider, shot, oarsman - in fact, everything which I was not. I
believe we exactly at this time, and for some years after,
supplied each other's vacancies. It was the most wholesome, best
kind of devotion, and, if we needed any ennobling influence, we
always had it at hand in Mrs. Eliot Warburton, who sympathised in
all we did, and who, except his mother, was the only woman whom I
ever knew George Sheffield have any regard for. It was about this
time that the Bill was before Parliament for destroying the
privileges of Founder's kin. While it was in progress, we
discovered that George was distinctly "Founder's kin"
to Thomas Teesdale, the founder of Pembroke, and half because our
ideas were conservative, half because we delighted in an
adventure of any kind, we determined to take advantage of the
privilege. Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, was
Master of Pembroke then, and was perfectly furious at our
audacity, which was generally laughed at at the time, and treated
as the mere whim of two foolish schoolboys; but we would not be
daunted, and went on our own way. Day after day I studied with
George the subjects of his examination, goading him on. Day after
day I walked down with him to the place of examination, doing my
best to screw up his courage to meet the inquisitors. We went
against the Heads of Houses with the enthusiasm of martyrs in a
much greater cause, and we were victorious. George Sheffield was
forcibly elected to a Founder's-kin Scholarship at Pembroke, and
was the last so elected. Dr. Jeune was grievously annoyed, but,
with the generosity which was always characteristic of him, he at
once accorded us his friendship, and remained my most warm and
honoured friend till his death about ten years afterwards. He was
remarkable at Oxford for dogmatically repealing the law which
obliged undergraduates to receive the Sacrament on certain days
in the year. "In future," he announced in chapel,
"no member of this college will be compelled to eat and
drink his own damnation."
In urging George Sheffield to become a scholar of Pembroke, I
was certainly disinterested ; without him University lost half
its charms, and Oxford was never the same to me without
"Giorgione" - the George of Georges. But our last
summer together was uncloudedly happy. We used to engage a little
pony-carriage at the Maidenhead, with a pony called Tommy, which
was certainly the most wonderful beast for bearing fatigue, and
as soon as ever the college gates were opened, we were "over
the hills and far away." Sometimes we would arrive in time
for breakfast at Thame, a quaint old town quite on the
Oxfordshire boundary, where John Hampden was at school. Then we
would mount the Chiltern Hills with our pony, and when we reached
the top, look down upon the great Buckinghamshire plains, with
their rich woods; and when we saw the different gentlemen's
places scattered about in the distance, we used to say,
"There we will go to luncheon" - "There we will go
to dinner," and the little programmes we made we always
carried out; for having each a good many relations and friends,
we seldom found we had no link with any of the places we came to.
Sometimes Albert Rutson would ride by the side of our carriage,
but I do not think that either then or afterwards we quite liked
having anybody with us, we were so perfectly contented with each
other, and had always so much to say to each other. Our most
delightful day of all was that on which we had luncheon at Great
Hampden with Mr. and Lady Vere Cameron and their daughters, who
were slightly known to my mother; and dined at the wonderful old
house of Chequers, filled with relics of the Cromwells, the
owner, Lady Frankland Russell, being a cousin of Lady
Sheffield's. Most enchanting was the late return from these long
excursions through the lanes hung with honeysuckle and clematis,
satiated as we were, but not wearied with happiness, and full of
interest and enthusiasm in each other and in our mutual lives,
both past and present. One of the results of our frequent visits
to the scenes of John Hampden's life was a lecture which I was
induced to deliver in the town-hall at Oxford, during the last
year of my Oxford life, upon John Hampden - a lecture which was
sadly too short, because at that time I had no experience to
guide me as to how long such things would take.
It was during this spring that my mother was greatly
distressed by the long-deferred declaration of Mary Stanley that
she had become a Roman Catholic.1 A burst of family indignation
followed, during which I constituted myself Mary's defender,
utterly refused to make any difference with her, as well as
preventing my mother from doing so ; and many were the battles I
fought for her.
A little episode in my life at this time
was the publication of my first book - a very small one,
"Epitaphs for Country Churchyards." It was published by
John Henry Parker, who was exceedingly good-natured in
undertaking it, for it is needless to say it was not remunerative
to either of us. The ever-kind Landor praised the preface very
much, and delighted my mother by his grandiloquent announcement
that it was "quite worthy of Addison!"
At this time also my distant cousin Henry
Liddell was appointed to the Deanery of Christ Church. He had
previously been Headmaster of Westminster, and during his
residence there had become celebrated by his Lexicon. One day he
told the boys in his class that they must write an English
epigram. Some of them said it was impossible. He said it was not
impossible at all; they might each choose their own subject, but
an epigram they must write. One boy wrote –
"Two men wrote a
Lexicon,
Liddell and Scott ;
One half was clever,
And one half was not.
Give me the answer, boys,
Quick to this riddle,
Which was by Scott
And which was by Liddell?"
Dr. Liddell, when it was shown up, only
said, "I think you are rather severe."
As to education, I did not receive much
more at Oxford this year than I had done before. The college
lectures were the merest rubbish; and of what was learnt to pass
the University examinations, nothing has since been of use to me,
except the History for the final Schools. About fourteen years of
life and above £4000 I consider to have been wasted on my
education of nothingness. At Oxford, however, I was not idle, and
the History, French, and Italian, which I taught myself, have
always been useful.
To My MOTHER.
"Oxford, Feb. 19, 1856. -
Your news about dear Mary (Stanley) is very sad. She will find
out too late the mistake she has made: that, because she cannot
agree with everything in the Church of England, she should think
it necessary to join another, where, if she receives anything,
she will be obliged to receive everything. I am sorry that the
person chosen to argue with her was not pne whose views were more
consistent with her own than Dr. Vaughan's. It is seldom
acknowledged, but I believe that, by their tolerance, Mr. Liddell
and Mr. Bennett2 keep as many people from Rome as
other people drive there. I am very sorry for Aunt Kitty, and
hope that no one who loves her will add to her sorrow by
estranging themselves from Mary - above all, that you will not
consider her religion a barrier. When people see how nobly all
her life is given to good, and how she has even made this great
step, at sacrifice to herself because she believes that good may
better be carried out in another Church, they may pity her
delusion, but no person of right feeling can possibly be angry
with her. And, after all, she has not changed her religion. It
is, as your own beloved John Wesley said, on hearing that his
nephew had become a Papist – 'He has changed his opinions
and mode of worship, but has not changed his religion: that is
quite another thing.'"
JOURNAL.
"Lime, March 30, 1856. - My
mother and I have had a very happy Easter together - more than
blessed when I look back at the anxiety of last Easter. Once when
her bell rang in the night, I started up and rushed out into the
passage in an agony of alarm, for every unusual sound at home has
terrified me since her illness; but it was nothing. I have been
full of my work, chiefly Aristotle's Politics, for 'Greats' - too
full, I fear, to enter as I ought into all her little thoughts
and plans as usual: but she is ever loving and gentle, and had
interest and sympathy even when I was preoccupied. She thinks
that knowledge may teach humility even in a spiritual sense. She
says, 'In knowledge the feeling is the same which one has in
ascending mountains - that, the higher one gets, the farther one
is from heaven.' To-day, as we were walking amongst the flowers,
she said, 'I suppose every one's impressions of heaven are
according to the feeling they have for earthly things: I always
feel that a garden is my impression - the garden of Paradise.'
'People generally love themselves first, their friends next, and
God last,' she said one day. 'Well, I do not think that is the
case with me,' I replied; 'I really believe I do put you first
and self next.' 'Yes, I really think you do,' she said."
When I returned to Oxford after Easter,
1856, my pleasant time in college rooms was over, and I moved to
lodgings over Wheeler's bookshop and facing Dr. Cradock's house,
so that I was able to see more than ever of Mrs. Eliot Warburton.
I was Jmost immediately in the "Schools," for the
classical and divinity part of my final examination, which I got
through very comfortably. While in the Schools at this time, I
remember a man being asked what John the Baptist was beheaded for
- and the answer, "Dancing with Herodias's daughter!"
Once through these Schools, I was free for some time, and
charades were our chief amusement, Mrs. Warburton, the Misses
Elliot,3 Sheffield, and I being the
principal actors. The proclamation of peace after the Crimean War
was celebrated - Oxford fashion - by tremendous riots in the
town, and smashing of windows in all directions.
At Whitsuntide, I had a little tour in
Warwickshire with Albert Rutson as my companion. We enjoyed a
stay at Edgehill, at the charming little inn called "The Sun
Rising," which overlooks the battlefield, having the great
sycamore by its side under which Charles I. breakfasted before
the battle, and a number of Cavalier arms inside, with the
hangings of the bed in which Lord Lindsey died. From Edgehill I
saw the wonderful old house of the Comptons at Compton-Whinyates,
with its endless secret staircases and trap-doors, and its rooms
of unplaned oak, evidently arranged with no other purpose than
defence or escape. We went on to Stratford-on-Avon, with
Shakspeare's tomb, his house in Henley Street, and the pretty old
thatched cottage where he wooed his wife - Anne Hathaway. Also we
went to visit Mrs. Lucy (sister of Mrs. William Stanley) at
Charlecote, a most entertaining person, with the family
characteristic of fun and good-humour; and to Combe Abbey, full
of relics of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her daughters, who lived
there with Lord Craven. Many of the portraits were painted by her
daughter Louisa. A few weeks later I went up to the Stanleys in
London for the Peace illuminations - "very neat, but all
alike," as I heard a voice in the crowd say. I saw them from
the house of Lady Mildred Hope, who had a party for them like the
one in Scripture, not the rich and great, but the "poor,
maimed, halt, and blind;" as, except Aldersons and Stanleys,
she arranged that there should not be a single person "in
society" there.
JOURNAL.
"Lime, June 8, 1856. - I had
found the dear mother in a sadly fragile state, so infirm and
tottering that it is not safe to leave her alone for a minute,
and she is so well aware of it, that she does not wish to be
left. She cannot now even cross the room alone, and never thinks
of moving anywhere without a stick. Every breath, even of the
summer wind, she feels most intensely. '"The Lord establish,
strengthen you," that must be my verse,' she says."
"June 15. - I am afraid I
cannot help being tired of the mental solitude at home, as the
dear mother, without being ill enough to create any anxiety, has
not been well enough to take any interest, or have any share in
my doings. Sometimes I am almost sick with the silence, and, as I
can never go far enough from her to allow of my leaving the
garden, I know not only every cabbage, but every leaf upon every
cabbage."
DRAWING-ROOM, LIME.
"June 29. - We have been for
a week with the Stanleys at Canterbury, and it was very pleasant
to be with Arthur, who was his most charming self."
Early in July, I preceded my mother
northwards, made a little sketching tour in Lincolnshire, where
arriving with little luggage, and drawing hard all day, I excited
great commiseration amongst the people as a poor travelling
artist. "Eh, I shouldn't like to have such hard work as that
on. Measter, I zay, I should'na like to be you."
At Lincoln I joined my mother, and we
went on together to Yorkshire, where my friend Rutson lent us a
charming old manor-house, Nunnington Hall near Helmsley, the
centre of an interesting country, in which we visited the
principal ruined abbeys of Yorkshire. My mother entirely
recovered here, and was full of enjoyment. On our way to
Harrogate, a Quakeress with whom we travelled persecuted me with
"The Enquiring Parishioner on the Way to Salvation,"
and then, after looking at my sketches, hoped that "one so
gifted was not being led away by Dr. Pusey!" At Bolton we
stayed several days at the Farfield Farm, and thence drove
through Swale Dale to Richmond. On our way farther north, I paid
my first visit to my cousins at Ravensworth, and very alarming I
thought it; rejoining my mother at Warkworth, a place I have
always delighted in, and where Mrs. Clutterbuck4
and her daughters were very kind to us. More charming still were
the next few days spent with my kind old cousin Henry Liddell
(brother-in-law of my Aunt Ravensworth) in Bamborough Castle.
We visited Dryburgh and Jedburgh, and the
vulgar commonplace villa, with small ill-proportioned rooms
looking out upon nothing at all, out of which Sir Walter Scott
created the Abbotsford of his imagination. Charlotte Leycester
having joined us, I left my mother at the Bridge of Allan for a
little tour, in the first hour of which I, Italian-fashion, made
a friendship with one with whom till her death I continued to be
most intimate:
To MY MOTHER.
"Tillycouttry House, August
12, 1856. - My mother will be surprised that, instead of writing
from an inn, I should date from one of the most beautiful places
in the Ochils, and that I should be staying with people whom,
though we met for the first time a few hours ago, I already seem
to know intimately.
"When I left my mother and entered
the train at Stirling, two ladies got in after me; one old,
yellow, and withered; the other, though elderly, still handsome,
and with a very sweet interesting expression. She immediately
began to talk. 'Was I a sportsman?' - 'No, only a tourist.' -
'Then did I know that on the old bridge we were passing, the
Bishop of Glasgow long ago was hung in full canonicals?' And with
such histories the younger of the two sisters, in a very sweet
Scottish accent, animated the whole way to Alloa. Having arrived
there, she said, 'If we part now, we shall probably never meet
again: there is no time for discussion, but be assured that my
husband, Mr. Dalzell, will be glad to see you. Change your ticket
at once, and come home with me to Tillycoultry.' And . . . I
obeyed; and here I am in a great, old, half-desolate house, by
the side of a torrent and a ruined churchyard, under a rocky part
of the Ochils.
"Mr. Dalzell met us in the avenue.
He is a rigid maintainer of the Free Kirk, upon which Mrs. Huggan
(the old sister) says he spends all his money - about £ 18,ooo a
year - and he is very odd, and passes three-fourths of the day
quite alone, in meditation and prayer. He has much sweetness of
manner in speaking, but seems quite hazy about things of earth,
and entirely rapt in prophecies and thoughts either of the second
coming of Christ or of the trials of the Kirk part of his Church
on earth.
"Mrs. Dalzell is quite different,
truly, beautifully, practically holy. She 'feels,' as I heard her
say to her sister to-night, 'all things are wrapt up in Christ.'
The evening was very long, as we dined at four, but was varied by
music and Scotch songs.
"The old Catholic priest who once
lived here cursed the place, in consequence of which it is
believed that there are - no little birds!"
"Dunfermilne, August 13. -
This morning I walked with Mr. Dalzell to Castle Campbell - an
old ruined tower, on a precipitous rock in a lovely situation
surrounded by mountains, the lower parts of which are clothed
with birch woods. Inside the castle is a ruined court, where John
Knox administered his first Sacrament. On the way we passed the
little burial-ground of the Taits, surrounded by a high wall,
only open on one side, towards the river Devon."
"Falkland, August 14. -After
drawing in beautiful ruined Dunfermline, I drove to Kinross, and
embarked in the 'Abbot' for the castle of Loch Leven, which rises
on its dark island against a most delicate distance of low
mountains. . . . There is a charming old-fashioned inn here, and
a beautiful old castle, in one of the rooms of which the young
Duke of Rothesay was starved to death by his uncle."
"St Andrews, August 15. -
This is a glorious place, a rocky promontory washed by the sea on
both sides, crowned by Cardinal Beaton's castle, and backed by a
perfect crowd of ecclesiastical ruins. The cathedral was the
finest in Scotland, but destroyed in one day by a mob instigated
by John Knox, who ought to have been flayed for it. Close by its
ruins is a grand old tower, built by St. Regulus, who 'came with
two ships' from Patras, and died in one of the natural caves in
the cliff under the castle. In the castle itself is Cardinal
Beaton's dungeon, where a Lord Airlie was imprisoned, and whence
he was rescued by his sister, who dressed him up in her
clothes."
"Brechin, August 17. - The
ruin of Arbroath (Aberbrothock) is most interesting. William the
Lion is buried before the high altar, and in the chapter-house is
the lid of his coffin in Scottish marble, with his headless
figure, the only existing effigy of a Scottish king. In the
chapter-house a man puts into your hand what looks like a lump of
decayed ebony, and you are told it is the 'blood, gums, and
intestines' of the king. You also see the skull of the Queen, the
thigh-bone of her brother, and other such relics of royalty. Most
beautiful are the cliffs of Arbroath, a scene of Scott's
'Antiquary.' From a natural terrace you look down into deep tiny
gulfs of blue water in the rich red sandstone rock, with every
variety of tiny islet, dark cave, and perpendicular pillar; and,
far in the distance, is the Inchcape Rock, where the Danish
pirate stole the warning bell and was afterwards lost himself;
which gave rise to the ballad of 'Sir Patrick Spens.' The Pictish
tower here is most curious, but its character injured by the
cathedral being built too near."
I have an ever-vivid recollection of a
most piteous Sunday spent in the wretched town of Brechin, with
nothing whatever to do, as in those days it would have made my
mother too miserable if I had travelled at all on a Sunday - the
wretched folly of Sabbatarianism (against which our Saviour so
especially preached when on earth) being then rife in our family,
to such a degree, that I regard with loathing the recollection of
every seventh day of my life until I was about eight-and-twenty.5 After leaving Brechin, I saw the noble castle of Dunottar,
and joined my mother at Braemar, where we stayed at the inn, and
Charlotte Leycester at a tiny lodging in a cottage thatched with
peat. I disliked Braemar extremely, and never could see the
beauty of that much-admired valley, with its featureless hills,
half-dry river, and the ugly castellated house of Balmoral. Dean
Alford and his family were at Braemar, and their being run away
with in a carriage, our coming up to them, our servant John
stopping their horses, the wife and daughters being taken into
our carriage, and my walking back with the Dean, first led to my
becoming intimate with him. I remember, during this walk, the
description he gave me of the "Apostles' Club" at
Cambridge, of which Henry Hallam was the nucleus and centre, and
of which Tennyson was a member, but from which he was turned out
because he was too lazy to write the necessary essay. Hallam, who
died at twenty-two, had "grasped the whole of literature
before he was nineteen." The Alfords were travelling without
any luggage, and could consequently walk their journeys anywhere
- that is, each lady had only a very small hand-bag, and the Dean
had a walking-stick, which unscrewed and displayed the materials
of a dressing-case, a pocket inkstand, and a candlestick.On our
way southwards I first saw Glamis. I did not care about the
places on the inland Scottish lakes, except Killin, where our
cousin Fanny Tatton and her friend Miss Heygarth joined us, and
where we spent some pleasant week-days and a most abominable
Sunday. We afterwards lingered at Arrochar on Loch Long, whither
Aunt Kitty and Arthur Stanley came to us from Inverary. We
returned to Glasgow by the Gareloch, which allowed me to visit at
Paisley the tomb of my royal ancestress, Marjory Bruce. At
Glasgow, though we were most uncomfortable in a noisy and very
expensive hotel, my mother insisted upon spending a wretched day,
because of - Sunday! We afterwards paid pleasant
visits at Foxhow and Toft, whence I went on alone to Peatswood in
Shropshire (Mr. Twemlow's), and paid from thence a most affecting
visit to our old home at Stoke, and to Goldstone Farm, the home
of my dear Nurse Lea. Hence I returned with Archdeacon and Mrs.
Moore to Lichfield, and being there when the grave of St. Chad
was opened, was presented with a fragment of his body
- a treasure inestimable to Roman Catholics, which I possess
still.
During the remaining weeks of autumn,
before I returned to Oxford, we had many visitors at Lime,
including my new friend Mrs. Dalzell, whose goodness and
simplicity perfectly charmed my mother.
We passed the latter part of the winter
between the Penrhyns' house at Sheen, Aunt Kitty's house of 6
Grosvenor Crescent, and Arthur Stanley's Canonry at Canterbury.
With Arthur I dined at the house of Mr. Woodhall, a Canterbury
clergyman, now a Roman Catholic priest, having been specially
invited to meet (at a huge horseshoe table) "the middle
classes" - a very large party of chemists, nurserymen,
&c., .and their wives, and very pleasant people they were. I
used to think Canterbury perfectly enchanting, and Arthur was
most kind and charming to me. While there, I remember his
examining a school at St. Stephen's, and asking the meaning of
bearing false witness against one's neighbour - "When nobody
does nothing to nobody," answered a child, "and
somebody goes and tells."
FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY.
In returning to Oxford in 1857, I
terribly missed my constant companions hitherto - Milligan and
Sheffield, who had both left, and, except perhaps Forsyth Grant,
I had no real friends left, though many pleasant acquaintances,
amongst whom I had an especial regard for Tom Brassey, the
simple, honest, hard working son of the great contractor and
millionaire - afterwards my near neighbour in Sussex, whom I have
watched grow rapidly up from nothing to a peerage, with only
boundless money and common-sense as his aides-de-camp. The men I
now saw most of were those who called themselves the dwdeka - generally reputed "the fast
men" of the college. but a manly high-minded set of feflows.
Most of my time was spent in learning Italian with Count Saffi,
who, a member of the well-known Roman triumvirate, was at that
time residing at Oxford with his wife, née Nina Crauford
of Portincross.6 I was great friends with this
remarkable man, of a much-tried and ever-patient countenance, and
afterwards went to visit him at Forli. I may mention Godfrey
Lushington (then of All Souls) as an acquaintance of whom I saw
much at this time, and whom I have always liked and respected
exceedingly, though our paths in life have not brought us often
together since. It was very difficult to distinguish him from his
twin-brother Vernon; indeed, it would have been impossible to
know them apart, if Vernon had not, fortunately for their
friends, shot off some of his fingers.In March (1857) I was proud
to receive my aunt, Mrs. Stanley, with all her children, Mrs.
Grote, and several others, at a luncheon in my rooms in honour of
Arthur Stanley's inaugural lecture as Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, in which capacity his lectures, as indeed
all else concerning him, were subjects of the greatest interest
to me, my affection for him being that of a devoted younger
brother.I was enchanted with Mrs. Grote, whom De Tocqueville
pronounced
"the cleverest woman of his
acquaintance," though her exterior - with a short waist,
brown mantle of stamped velvet, and huge bonnet, full of
full-blown red roses - was certainly not captivating. Sydney
Smith always called her "Grota," and said she was the
origin of the word grotesque. Mrs. Grote was celebrated for
having never felt shy. She had a passion for discordant colours,
and had her petticoats always arranged to display her feet and
ankles, of which she was excessively proud. At her own home of
Burnham she would drive out with a man's hat and a coachman's
cloak of many capes. She had an invalid friend in that
neighbourhood, who had been very seriously ill, and was still
intensely weak. When Mrs. Grote proposed coming to take her for a
drive, she was pleased, but was horrified when she saw Mrs. Grote
arrive in a very high dogcart, herself driving it. With great
pain and labour she climbed up beside Mrs. Grote, and they set
off For some time she was too exhausted to speak, then she said
something almost in a whisper. "Good God! don't speak so
loud," said Mrs. Grote, "or you'll frighten the horse:
if he runs away, God only knows when he'll stop."
On the . occasion of this visit at
Oxford, Mrs. Grote sat with one leg over the other, both high in
the air, and talked for two hours, turning with equal facility to
Saffi on Italian Literature, Max Müller on Epic Poetry, and
Arthur on Ecclesiastical History, and then plunged into a
discourse on the best manure for turnips and the best way of
forcing Cotswold mutton, with an interlude first upon the
"harmony of shadow" in watercolour drawing, and then
upon rat-hunts at Jemmy Shawe's - a low public-house in
Westminster. Upon all these subjects she was equally vigorous,
and gave all her decisions with the manner and tone of one laying
down the laws of Athens. She admired Arthur excessively, but was
a capital friend for him, because she was not afraid of laughing
- as all his own family were - at his morbid passion for
impossible analogies. In his second lecture Arthur made a capital
allusion to Mn Grote, while his eyes were fixed upon the spouse
of the historian, and when she heard it, she thumped with both
fists upon her knees, and exclaimed loudly, "Good God! how
good!" I did not often meet Mrs. Grote in after life, but
when I did, was always on very cordial terms with her. She was,
to the last, one of the most original women in England, shrewd,
generous, and excessively vain. I remember hearing that when she
published her Life of her husband, Mr. Murray was obliged to
insist upon her suppressing one sentence, indescribably comic to
those who were familiar with her uncouth aspect. It was -
"When George Grote and I were young, we were equally
distinguished by the beauty of our persons and the vivacity of
our conversation!" Her own true vocation she always declared
was that of an opera-dancer.Arthur Stanley made his home with me
during this visit to Oxford, but one day I dined with him at
Oriel, where we had "Herodotus pudding" - a dish
peculiar to that college.
JOURNAL.
"Lime, Easter Sunday, April
12, 1857. - I have been spending a happy fortnight at home. The
burst of spring has been beautiful - such a golden carpet of
primroses on the bank, interspersed with tufts of still more
golden daffodils, hazels putting forth their fresh green, and
birds singing. My sweet mother is more than usually patient under
the trial of failure of sight - glad to be read to for hours, but
contented to be left alone, only saying sometimes - 'Now,
darling, come and talk to me a little.' On going to church this
morning, we found that poor Margaret Coleman, the carpenter's
wife, had, as always on this day, covered Uncle Julius's grave
with flowers. He is wonderfully missed by the people, though they
seldom saw him except in church; for, as Mrs. Jasper Harmer said
to me the other day, 'We didn't often see him, but then we knew
he was always studying us - now wasn't he?'"
A subject of intense interest after my
return to . Oxford was hearing Thackeray deliver his lectures on
the Georges. That which spoke of the blindness of George III.,
with his glorious intonation, was indescribably pathetic. It was
a great delight to have George Sheffield back and to resume our
excursions, one of which was to see the May Cross of
Charlton-on-Ottmoor, on which I published a very feeble story in
a magazine; and another to Abingdon, where we had luncheon with
the Head-master of the Grammar School, who, as soon as it was
over, apologised for leaving us because he had got "to
wallop so many boys." All our visits to Abingdon ended in
visits to the extraordinary old brothers Smith, cobblers, who
always sat cross-legged on a counter, and always lived upon raw
meat. We had heard of their possession of an extraordinary old
house which no one had entered, and we used to try to persuade
them to take us there; but when we asked one he said, "I
would, but my brother Tom is so eccentric, it would be as much as
my life is worth - I really couldn't;" and when we asked the
other he said, "I would, but you've no idea what an
extraordinary man my brother John is; he would never
consent." However, one day we captured both the old men
together and over-persuaded them (no one ever could resist
George), and we went to the old house, a dismal tumble-down
building, with shuttered windows, outside the town. Inside it was
a place of past ages - old chairs and cupboards of the sixteenth
century, old tapestries, and old china, but all deep, deep in
dust and dirt, which was never cleaned away. It was like the
palace of the Sleeping Beauty after the hundred years' sleep. I
have several pieces of china out of that old house now -
"Gris de Flandres ware."
In June I made a little tour, partly of
visits, and from Mrs. Vaughan's house at Leicester had an
enchanting expedition to Bradgate, the ruined home of Lady Jane
Grey, in a glen full of oaks and beeches of immense age.
In my final (History and Law) Schools I
had passed with great ease, and had for some time been residing
at Oxford as a Bachelor, having taken my degree. But as one
friend after another departed, the interest of Oxford had faded.
I left it on the 13th of June 1857, and without regret.
