Chapter 405

Strawberry Hill, Saturday night, Sept. 27, 1794. (page 558)

I have been in town, as I told you I should, but gleaned nothing worth repeating, or I Would have wrote before I came away. The Churchills left me on Thursday, and were succeeded by the Marshal and Mr. Taylor, who dined and stayed all night. I am now alone, having reserved this evening to answer your long, and Agnes's short letter; but in this single one to both, for I have not matter enough for a separate maintenance. I went yesterday to Mrs. Damer, and had a glimpse of her new house; literally a glimpse, for I saw but one room on the first floor, where she had lighted a fire, that I might not mount two flights; and as it was eight o'clock, and quite dark, she only opened a door or two, and gave me a cat's-eye view into them. One blemish I had descried at first; the house has a corner arrival like her father's. Ah, me! who do not love to be led through the public. I did see the new bust of Mrs. Siddons, and a very mistressly performance it is indeed. Mrs. Damer was surprised at my saying I should expect you after you had not talked of returning near so soon. another week; she said. "I do not mention this, as if to gainsay your intention; on the contrary, I hope and beg you will stay as long as either of you thinks she finds the least benefit from it: and after that, too, as long as you both like to stay. I reproached myself so sadly, and do still, for having dragged you from Italy sooner than you intended, and am so grateful for your having had that complaisance, that unless I grow quite superannuated, I think I shall not be so selfish as to combat the inclination of either again. It is natural for me to delight in your company; but I do not even wish for it, if it lays you under any restraint. I have lived a thousand years to little purpose, if I have not learned that half a century more than the age of one's friends is not an agr`ement de plus.

I wish you had seen Canterbury some years ago, before they whitewashed it; for it is so coarsely daubed, and thence the gloom is so totally destroyed, and so few tombs remain for so vast a mass, that I was shocked at the nudity of the whole. If you should go thither again, make the Cicerone show you a pane of glass in the east window, which does open, and exhibits a most delicious view of the ruins Of St. Anstin's.

Mention of Canterbury furnishes me with a very suitable opportunity for telling you a remarkable story, which I had from Lady Onslow t'other night, and which was related to her by Lord Ashburnham, on whose veracity you may depend. In the hot weather of this last summer, his lordship's very old uncle, the Bishop of Chichester,(889) was waked in his palace at four o'clock in the morning by his bedchamber door being opened, when a female figure, all in white, entered, and sat down near him. The prelate, who protests he was not frightened, said in a tone of authority, but not with the usual triple adjuration, "Who are you?" Not a word of reply; but the personage heaved a profound sigh. The Bishop rang the bell; but the servants were so sound asleep, that nobody heard him. He repeated his question: still no answer; but another deep sigh. Then the apparition took some papers out of the ghost of its pocket, and began to read them to itself. At last, when the Bishop had continued to ring, and nobody to come, the spectre rose and departed as sedately as it had arrived. When the servants did at length appear, the bishop cried, "Well! what have you seen?" "Seen, my lord!" "Ay, seen; or who, what is the woman that has been here?" "Woman my lord!" (I believe one of the fellows smiled; though, to do her justice, Lady Onslow did not say so.) In short, when my lord had related his vision, his domestics did humbly apprehend that his lordship had been dreaming; and so did his whole family the next morning, for in this our day even a bishop's household does not believe in ghosts: and yet it is most certain that the good man had been in no dream, and told nothing but what he had seen; for, as the story circulated, and diverted the ungodly at the prelate's expense, it came at last to the ears of a keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed, that a female lunatic under his care had escaped from his custody, and, finding the gate of the palace open, had marched up to my lord's chamber. The deponent further said, that his prisoner was always reading a bundle of papers. I have known stories of ghosts, solemnly authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested by a father of our own church.

Sunday night, 28th, 1794.

I have received another letter from dear Mary, of the 26th; and here is one for sweet Agnes enclosed. By her account of Broadstairs, I thought you at the North Pole; but if you are, the whales must be metamorphosed into gigs and whiskies, or split into them, as heathen gods would have done, or Rich the harlequin. You talk of Margate, but say nothing of Kingsgate, where Charles Fox's father scattered buildings of all sorts, but in no style of architecture that ever appeared before or has since, and in no connexion with or to any other, and in all directions; and yet the oddity and number made that naked, though fertile soil, smile and look cheerful. Do you remember Gray's bitter lines on him and his vagaries and history?(890)

I wish on your return, if in good weather, you would contrive to visit Mr. Barrett's at Lee; it is but four miles from Canterbury. You will see a child of Strawberry prettier than the parent, and so executed and so finished! There is a delicious closet, too, so flattering to me: and a prior's library so antique, and that does such honour to Mr. Wyat's taste! Mr. Barrett, I am Most sure, would be happy to show his house to you; and I know, if you tell him that I beg it, he will produce the portrait of Anne of Cleve by Holbein, in the identic ivory box, turned like a Provence rose, as it Was brought over for Henry the Eighth. It will be a great favour, and it must be a fine day; for it lives in cotton and clover, and he justly dreads exposing it to any damp. He has some other good pictures; and the whole place is very pretty, though retired.

The Sunday's paper announces a dismal defeat of Clairfait; and now, if true, I doubt the French will drive the Duke of York into Holland, and then into the sea! Ora pro nobis!

P. S. If this is not a long letter, I do not know what is. The story of the ghost should have arrived on this, which is St. Goose's-day, or the commemoration of the ignoble army of martyrs, who have suffered in the persecution under that gormandizing archangel St. Michael.

(889) The Right Rev. Sir William Ashburnham, Bart, his lordship died at a very advanced age, in September 1797. He was the father of the bench, and the only bishop not appointed by George the Third.-E.

(890) Entitled "Impromptu, suggested by a view, in 1766, of the seat and ruins of a deceased Nobleman, at Kingsgate, Kent." See Gray's Works, vol. i. p. 161, ed. 1836.-E.