Part 11

The Duke of Norfolk was a friend of mine, for he sent me game at a time when he did not even know me, with his compliments; the only man who ever did so before or since. This good duke, this most high and puissant prince, resided in a pleasant, not pretentious mansion near Bury, from which he drove in an open carriage with one horse on a Sunday to his Catholic Church. It was said that neither he nor his predecessor, known as Jockey of Norfolk, were acquainted with their near relationship. The duke whom he succeeded was said to have once determined to invite all who were descendants of his house to a banquet at Arundel, but that when the number of claimants reached two hundred, he paused and abandoned his purpose. His next of kin, on whom I am now engaged, was a man of business in the City; had his office, and responded to orders for wine. While thus honourably occupied he had to be looked up, and was credibly informed that he was wanted, not by the law only, but to take over the lordship of Arundel Castle, together with the premier dukedom, besides earldoms enough, and over a dozen baronies; a number of peerages sufficient to constitute a full committee of the House of Lords.

This nobleman thus entered on many homes, but he preferred his own country seat, to which he had been accustomed, to castle and palace, and there, full of years and honours, he suddenly died. His heir had gone by the historical name of the Earl of Surrey, and his grandson by that of Lord Fitzalan; but the latter at the duke’s death assumed the earldom of Arundel and Surrey.

Lord Fitzalan, travelling in the Mediterranean, had fallen ill. He was the guest of Admiral Lyons, and became attached to the daughter of that heroic seaman. This lady, who only died lately, was justly beloved; her charity to the poor had no bounds. A priest at Lymington, who was one of her almoners, told me he could ask her for whatever he saw needed by the poor, and, no matter what the cost, it was given. The present duke is her worthy son.

The residence of the old duke, who lived there now three generations ago, was at Fornham All Saints, in a good park. After his death it was purchased for a young man named Lord Manners, the son of an Irish lord chancellor, and has been resold. This fortunate youth had all his work done for him beforehand. I met him at dinner often at Culford Hall, and I recall my amused state of mind at seeing him lean back in his chair and play with a feather from the dress of a lady at his side, which he peacefully blew up in the air.

In close vicinity to Fornham Park was another, where stood a mansion which, if anything can do so, must last for ever, not because of its strength, but its beauty. This is Hengrave Hall, a proud example, almost unique, of our domestic architecture. It is very fully displayed in Rookwood-Gage’s work, which I was once permitted to devour on the premises. Sir Thomas Gage was the owner, but he was very little there, preferring the society of Vienna to that of his eastern county home. He was of a knightly family, and himself an elegant man of fashion; he represented the elder branch of the Gages, the lord of that name notwithstanding. His ancestor conferred a benefit on his country as durable as sunshine and time, one that every Englishman profits by and enjoys from childhood to old age; he introduced the greengage from Vienna into this country, and it has ever since borne his name.

I was just now speaking of Culford Hall, which the press, no doubt on intimate terms with its present proprietor, Lord Cadogan, and acquainted with all his movements, calls Culford Abbey. It is a modern, monkless building, and the parish was once a lordship of Bury Abbey; nothing more. The place has an exemplary record; it was purchased more than half of this century ago, of Lord Cornwallis’s daughters, by Mr. Benyon de Beauvoir. For several years he spent the rental of the estate, some eleven thousand acres, in rebuilding all its farmhouses and cottages, which done he entailed it on his nephew, the Rev. Edward Benyon. It was, like most of the great dwellings in the county, the home of good company, hospitality, and sport: and for pheasant and partridge shooting Suffolk is not unfamed.

Mr. Benyon had no heir, and the estate went, with another vast property of sixty thousand acres, to the present Mr. Benyon, of Berkshire.

XLIII.

A family with which I was in close intimacy, indeed on affectionate terms, was the Wilsons, of Stowlangtoft Hall. Let those who from their disappointments in life have formed a bad opinion of mankind go among such people as these!

The father of Henry Wilson resided on his estate at Highbury; he had been a great merchant, a calling from which so many great things have emanated in our country, and one which will cease to exist when we reach our socialistic days; for who would give the energy of his commercial genius as a servant of the State, and pile up tens of thousands to enrich Cabinets whose members had better have remained prize-fighters and the like?

Mr. Wilson purchased two baronets’ estates in Suffolk—one of Sir George Wombwell, the historic seat of Stowlangtoft; one, Langham Hall, the property adjoining, of Sir Henry Blake. He also held lands in Norfolk.

Henry Wilson, his son and my kindest and best of friends, resided always at Stowlangtoft; at one time he represented the county in Parliament. He was educated at Oxford, where he made friends enough to last for a lifetime, all of whom, like himself, were thoroughly good men, and many of them fellow-students of Oriel. There was Rickards, who became his rector, a college-friend; and one of those who joined the set of Newman and Manning for a time. There was Porcher, Yarde Buller of Downs,[2] Kindersley, Mozley; nearly all these were guests from time to time of Rickards and Wilson; in fact, the only one I do not recall as having met at the hall or rectory was Newman.

It was a deadly surprise to Rickards when Newman and Manning kicked against the Reformation and became inceptor-candidates for the Papacy. The Church, from its own point of view, may have deemed it fortunate that these two gentlemen took their stroll from Oxford to Rome, or they might have become Anglican archbishops, and have looked the Holy City up later in life.

Sir R. Kindersley was a most genial man, quiet and sensible, like most of those who rise to eminence. He gave his daughter in marriage to Wilson’s eldest son, and Wilson gave one of his daughters to Kindersley’s eldest son, and a daughter by this marriage is now Lady Herschell. Miss Wilson had been long adopted by the Porchers, who wished her and young Kindersley to be their heirs.

Henry Wilson had a large family by his first wife, who was a Maitland. He married a second time, the daughter of Lord Henry Fitz-Roy, a son of the Duke of Grafton. This lady brought him several children. She was a devoted mother to both families; as conscientious a lady as was ever born to fulfil great duties. She not only treated her stepchildren exactly as she did her own, but acquired for them the same affection as she felt for those which she had brought into the world.

Those who knew her may think themselves happy if they ever see her like again.

My first acquaintance with Sir R. Kindersley was at a dinner at Trinity College, which I went to with Dr. J. W. Donaldson, the Greek scholar and philologer. Donaldson was then head-master at the Bury School. It was my good fortune on the same occasion to meet Professor Sedgwick, some of whose anecdotes have served my purpose ever since. A very good one was of a French general who visited England and enjoyed Sedgwick’s attentions, among those of many others. On taking final leave of the general he asked him how he liked the English ladies. After some hesitation the answer came. It was: “I like them very much. They are very beautiful, but they have one great fault; they are too virtuous. _Elles sont trop vertueuses._”

I reminded Kindersley of that pleasant dinner when I met him again, and he remembered it well.

Wilson was boundless in his hospitality to his neighbours, poor and rich. Could every parish be under the management of such a squire and such a rector, poverty would cease to be an evil. Wilson may have felt this organically; it may have been under its influence that he desired to establish his family on the soil during succeeding generations. He was an ardent admirer of enterprise and self-aid; he turned his own name into his motto—“Will soon will.”

He was bent on building a mansion on the Stowlangtoft estate, and this he did ultimately on a larger scale than had sufficed for the home of Sir George Wombwell or of Sir Simonds d’Ewes, his predecessors; but not before his father died, who left him a purse of twenty-four thousand pounds a year.

The old Wilson, the London merchant, told me that he met Sir George Wombwell at his bankers’ to pay him the ninety thousand pounds in notes which he gave for the Stowlangtoft estate, and that the baronet stuffed the money into his hinder coat pocket, and so walked away.

The old hall was a very comfortable one, commodious, picturesque. A man does no good to his family in replacing old mansions by new in country places, to which the owner resorts, often, only for the shooting season. This adding on to and rebuilding often ends in disappointment to those who follow later. I saw recently an advertisement in the paper—“To be let, Stowlangtoft Hall, with the shooting over seven thousand acres of land.” My friend Mr. Thornhill, of Riddlesworth Hall, Norfolk, enlarged his mansion, which had sufficed for his wealthy father; he wished his descendants to reside there for generations, but his son has thought differently. I saw an advertisement immediately under the above concerning Stowlangtoft, which ran thus—“To be sold, the property of Sir Thomas Thornhill, Bart., the well-known sporting estate of Riddlesworth Hall.” How little influence can the dead exercise over the living!

We must now speak of old Rickards, a name he had gone by all his life, with the many who loved him. His hair had always been white, his complexion red, and he always blushed heartily when he laughed. He had been a Fellow of Oriel till he wedded Miss Wilmot, a daughter of Sir Robert Wilmot, of Chadsden Hall, Derbyshire, the liveliest, brightest, tenderest, sweetest of women; a girl to the last; and I hope still alive, though all this was fifty years ago. But every one is dead nowadays. Time was when I saw in the paper the death of some acquaintance almost weekly, then it got to monthly, then perhaps once in a year, but never now, for every one I ever knew seems dead and gone. I have a brother left, and a school-fellow and friend;[3] all others appear children.

But how the newly dead who have lived in us half a century and much more still survive and perform their parts within us, still laughing, still blushing, still merry, still sensible and intelligent there, telling us all they ever told us over again: still glad at seeing us, still shaking us by the hand, still bidding us welcome. Yes, the obituary notices of them were premature; they live while we live, they die only when we die.

There is one soothing circumstance, however, attendant on death: we do not miss ourselves when we are dead; not so much even as we do a shirt-button when we are alive!

[2] Afterwards Lord Churston.

[3] H. W. Statham, since dead.

XLIV.

Mrs. Rickards was a pretty creature, her husband was plain, her daughter was plainer, but when one looked at them, in the magic of the moment, they all looked alike,—happy and good. One forgot that beauty existed elsewhere, save as an art.

They were of course constant guests at the hall. Miss Rickards herself painted, baked, and glazed every window in Stowlangtoft Church.

The Rev. Mr. Mozley, well-known as belonging to the Tractarian reformation, was an intimate friend of the Rickards and Wilsons. He was one of three or four who wrote the leaders for the _Times_. His account of the duty, told only in confidence to private friends, was that he and his colleagues attended at the office every night at twelve o’clock, one day excepted; and that a committee was there, at the same hour, to discuss the subjects of the articles for the day following, and to determine the line to be taken. Then a subject thus selected was handed to each of the writers who were in waiting, in separate rooms.

On one occasion when Mr. Mozley was staying at the hall, a _Times_ commissioner was present at the dinner. He was the bearer of introductions to the various landowners; his mission was to obtain information on subjects connected with the land. He was not what one calls refined, and he spoke with great freedom on the affairs of the journal, not knowing that Mr. Mozley was connected with the _Times_, but who was greatly amused at this gentleman’s pretended knowledge about the most secret details of the paper.

I was myself of the party, and, knowing the situation, was equally amused, with the rest of the company.

It occurs to me that the commissioner was named Foster. He was sent about the country at the time of the incendiary fires. The circumstance brings to my mind a character living at Ashfield, near Stowlangtoft—Lord Thurlow, grandson of the great chancellor. He was a very shy man, and at the same time very able, being a good chemist. He conversed well, but with diffidence; the researches of Liebig, then fresh, made a strong impression on his mind, and I was able to draw him out, being equally interested in them myself. He had a fire-engine, and whenever a fire broke out, he mounted his engine and took the direction of the flames.

I am chary of introducing the names and places of men who lived only for themselves. There are families without any link between them and the world at large who fill up certain gaps, but when they die they seem to have been even of less use than they were. These are not only in the majority, but they constitute the bulk of the social class.

I must not omit the name of Henry Oakes, the Suffolk banker, who, though not a public man himself, gave his son to the Parliament as a Conservative member. He lived at Nowton Court, the residence of his father before him.

Henry Oakes was of a generous, confiding character in proportion to his means. His son, the borough member, inherited a kindly disposition not only from him, but from his truly amiable mother, the daughter of a bishop; and she, like her husband, was well beloved.

The charming daughter of the house was married to the son of Sir Henry Blake, whose title she now shares, if, as I trust, she still lives.

I have not yet spoken of the Mills family of Great Saxham Hall, which I do now out of pure affection. They were connections of mine by marriage, as were also the Carrighans of the adjoining parish of Barrow. Mr. Mills and Mrs. Carrighan were brother and sister. The Rev. Arthur Carrighan had the rectory; it was in the presentation of St. John’s College, and was once held by Dr. Francis, the noted translator of Horace, and father of Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the “Junius Letters.”

Carrighan was a student and Fellow of St. John’s, under the name of Gosli—a name adopted by his father as a Sligo man, he reversing the syllables. The history of this singular proceeding is associated with a duel in which Mr. Carrighan, the father, was led to believe he had killed his opponent. He thereupon changed his name, and in an unhappy state of mind wandered over the Continent for twenty years more or less; when, one day, he met the very man whom he supposed had received a death-blow at his hands. On this important discovery he restored his true name to his family.

Carrighan had many charms, but it will suffice to say he was a gentleman and a scholar, which includes all that is good besides. Sir Thomas Watson, his fellow-collegian, was his attached friend; I received the hearty thanks of that great physician for my attention to Arthur Carrighan in his last illness.

When one has been long on the Continent, he no sooner reaches Dover than every woman looks beautiful. How would it have been with him if the first one whom his eyes fell upon had been Mrs. Mills? She had a daughter, Susan, as lovely as herself, who married Mr. Skrine, a considerable Somersetshire squire, whose estates are within a ride of Bath. Susan Mills had a most engaging expression. A neighbouring squire, in his simple way, said, “One can’t help falling in love with her, she holds her head on one side, so pretty!”

I took Mr. Borrow, who was my guest, to Saxham Hall with me to dinner once, but it was the black eyes of another daughter that played their conjuring trick on him. Long afterwards, his inquiries after the black eyes were unfailing. Saxham adjoins Ickworth, and Lord Bristol always found it a very pleasant place of call, on account of the charm which surrounded the family.

XLV.

George Borrow was one of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily frame is yet stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career, in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity, in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that made trifles significant.

Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike: he loved it that he might be pointed out and talked of; he hated it because he was not the prince that he felt himself in its midst. His figure was tall, and his bearing very noble: he had a finely moulded head, and thick white hair—white from his youth; his brown eyes were soft, yet piercing; his nose somewhat of the “semitic” type, which gave his face the cast of the young Memnon. His mouth had a generous curve; and his features, for beauty and true power, were such as can have no parallel in our portrait gallery, where it is to be hoped the likeness of him, in Mr. Murray’s possession, may one day find a place.

Borrow and his family used to stay with me at Bury; I visited him, less often, at his cottage on the lake at Oulton, a fine sheet of water that flows into the sea at Lowestoft. He was much courted there by his neighbours and by visitors to the seaside. I there met Baron Alderson and his daughters who had ridden from Lowestoft to see him, and I had a long talk with the judge on wine. Borrow, being a lion, was invited to accompany me to some of the great houses in the neighbourhood. On one occasion we went to dine at Hardwick Hall, the residence of Sir Thomas and Lady Cullum. The party consisted of Lord Bristol; Lady Augusta Seymour, his daughter; Lord and Lady Arthur Hervey; Sir Fitzroy Kelly; Mr. Thackeray, and ourselves. At that date, Thackeray had made money by lectures on the Satirists, and was in good swing; but he never could realize the independent feelings of those who happen to be born to fortune—a thing which a man of genius should be able to do with ease. He told Lady Cullum, which she repeated to me, that no one could conceive how it mortified him to be making a provision for his daughters by delivering lectures; and I thought she rather sympathized with him in this his degradation. He approached Borrow, who, however, received him very dryly. As a last attempt to get up a conversation with him, he said, “Have you read my Snob Papers in _Punch_?”

“In _Punch_?” asked Borrow. “It is a periodical I never look at!”

It was a very fine dinner. The plates at dessert were of gold; they once belonged to the Emperor of the French, and were marked with his “N” and his Eagle.

Thackeray, as if under the impression that the party was invited to look at him, thought it necessary to make a figure, and absorb attention during the dessert, by telling stories and more than half acting them; the aristocratic party listening, but appearing little amused. Borrow knew better how to behave in good company, and kept quiet; though, doubtless, he felt his mane.

Lady Cullum was a young woman of high principle; she became a firm friend of Borrow for many years after, looking him up in London when he moved to Hereford Square. Sir Thomas Cullum was a quiet, kind-hearted man; he was the father-in-law of Mr. Milner Gibson, who married his only daughter, born of a first marriage. Gibson was a man of pleasing manners; I remember his saying that parliamentary life enabled one to bear anything of an adversary with temper, except being touched by him.

But I am sorry to say Borrow was not always on his best behaviour in company. He once went with me to a dinner at Mr. Bevan’s country house, Rougham Rookery, and placed me in an extremely awkward position.

Mr. Bevan was a Suffolk banker, a partner of Mr. Oakes. He was one of the kindest and most benevolent of men. His wife was gentle, unassuming, attentive to her guests. In fact, not only they, but their sons and daughters were beloved on account of their amiable dispositions.

A friend of Borrow, the heir to a very considerable estate, had run himself into difficulties, and owed money, which was not forthcoming, to the Bury banking house; and in order to secure repayment, Mr. Bevan was said to have “struck the docket.” I knew this beforehand from Borrow, who, however, accepted the invitation, and was seated at dinner at Mrs. Bevan’s side.

This lady, a simple, unpretending woman, desirous of pleasing him, said, “Oh, Mr. Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!” On which he exclaimed, “Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?” On this he fretted and fumed, rose from the table and walked up and down among the servants, during the whole of dinner, and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passage, till the carriage could be ordered for our return home.

Mr. J. W. Donne, the librarian of the London library, and afterwards reader of plays, told me, while he was a resident at Bury, that Borrow had behaved in a somewhat like manner to Miss Agnes Strickland, who, hearing that Borrow was in the same room with her, at a reception, urged him to make her acquainted with her brother-author. Borrow was unwilling to be introduced, but was prevailed on to submit. He sat down at her side; before long, she spoke with rapture of his works, and asked his permission to send him a copy of her “Queens of England.” He exclaimed, “For God’s sake, don’t, madame; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them.” On this he rose, fuming, as was his wont when offended, and said to Mr. Donne, “What a damned fool that woman is!”

The fact is that, whenever Borrow was induced to do anything unwillingly, he lost his temper.

XLVI.

The Bullers, a political family, had a son who filled the rectory of Troston, and were often on a visit to him there. They were the parents of Charles Buller, Lord Durham’s secretary in Canada, afterwards member for Liskeard, and the pet of the House.

These Bullers were much of the Lord John Russell set; were friends of the Grotes, the Nussau Seniors, the Thackerays, the Sidney Smiths, the Walshams, and their like, not to mention the Bunburys, all more or less _philosophers_ of the advanced type.

I liked Charles Buller’s company. He was good-natured, moderate in his views, the friend of the opinionated without being conceited himself. He was a fine speaker, but afflicted with asthma, the greatest curse that can befall a rising statesman.

I heard much about Whigism in this circle, and always with disgust; they were too autocratic, too grasping, too well off to obtain the confidence of those who, at a glance, could see behind their scenes.