LITMIR.BIZ

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glad to see you, for I want to tell you such an odd thing that has happened to me. Last night I was in bed and the room was quite dark (this old-fashioned room of the inn at Lymington which you now see). Suddenly at the foot of the bed there appeared a great light, and in the midst of the light the figure of Death just as it is seen in the Dance of Death and other old pictures—a ghastly skeleton with a scythe and a dart: and Death balanced the dart, and it flew past me, just above my shoulder, close to my head, and it seemed to go into the wall; and then the light went out and the figure vanished. I was as wide awake then as I am now, for I pinched myself hard to see, and I lay awake for a long time, but at last I fell asleep. When my servant came to call me in the morning, he had a very scared expression of face, and he said, ‘A dreadful thing has happened in the night, and the whole household of the inn is in the greatest confusion and grief, for the landlady’s daughter, who slept in the next room, and the head of whose bed is against the wall against which your head now rests, has been found dead in her bed.’ ”[136]

      “Nov. 1, Sunday.—Lady Waterford has talked much of how few people in the world each person has to whom their deaths would make a real void; that she had scarcely any one—General Stuart perhaps, and Lady Jane; that others would be sorry at the time, but that it would to them make no blank; that somehow it would be pleasant to leave more of a void, but that even with brothers and sisters it was seldom so. I spoke of her own sister and of the great grief her death had been. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘a great grief, but still it is wonderful how little we had been together—scarcely three years, putting all the weeks together, out of the fourteen years we had been married. Of all my relations, Mama is certainly the greatest loss to me, we had been so much together latterly, and were so much to each other.’

“Lady Waterford talked much of her mother’s life in Paris as ambassadress, and of her own birth there at the Embassy. ‘I went many years after with Mama to Spa, and there was a very agreeable old gentleman there, to whom we talked at the table-d’hôte. He found out that we knew Paris and the people there, and then he talked, not knowing who we were, of the different ambassadresses. “Celle que j’ai preféré de toutes les ambassadrices,” he said, “c’était Lady Granville.” He saw somehow that he had not said quite the right thing, and next day he wanted to make the amende, and he talked of the Embassy again before all the people, of this room and that room, and then he said, “Est ce que c’était dans cette chambre, Miladi, que vous êtes accouchée de Miladi Waterford!” He was a M. de Langy, and was a very interesting person. His family belonged to the petite noblesse, and at the time of the flight to Varennes, after the royal family was captured, theirs was one of the houses to which they were brought to rest and refresh on the way—for it was the custom then, when there were so few inns. M. de Langy’s mother was a staunch royalist, and when she knew that the King and Queen were coming, she prepared a beautiful little supper, everything as nice as she could, and waited upon them herself. When they were going away, the Queen, who had found it all most comfortable, said, “Où est donc la maîtresse de la maison? j’ai ête si bien ici, je voudrais la remercier avant de partir.” Madame de Langy, who was waiting, said simply, “J’étais la maîtresse de la maison avant que votre majesté y est entrée.” ’

      “We went to church at Etal in the afternoon. Both there and at Ford, it being All Saints’ Day, the sermons were wholly in exaltation of the saints, church services, and salvation by works. Lady Waterford was pained by it: coming back she spoke of a simple rule of doctrine:—

      ‘Just before God by faith,

       Just before men by works:

       Just by the works of faith,

       Just by the faith which works.’

In the evening she talked much of her first visit to Italy, her only visit to Rome. ‘Char. was just married then, and I was just come out: we went pour un passe-temps. We travelled in our own carriage, and the floods had carried away the bridges, and it was very difficult to get on. It was the year of the cholera, and we had to pass quarantine. My father knew a great many of the people in authority, and we hoped to get leave to pass it in one of the larger towns. Mantua was decided upon, but was eventually given up because of the unhealthiness, and we had to pass ten days at Rovigo. We arrived at last at Bologna. The people were greatly astonished at the inn when we asked if the Cardinal Legate was at home: it was as if we had asked for the Pope: and they were more astonished still the next day when he came to call upon us. We went to a party at his palace. He was Cardinal Macchi. I shall never forget that party or the very odd people we met—I see them now. The Cardinal was in despair because the theatres were closed—“Je vous aurais preté ma loge, et je vous aurais donné des glaces!” The next day Rossini came to see us—“Je suis un volcan éteint,” he said. Afterwards we went to Rome and stayed four months there. I liked the society part best—the balls at the Borgheses’ and those at the Austrian Embassy: they were great fun.’

       Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford

       THE SECRET STAIR, FORD. [137]

      “On Saturday we went to Norham—the Lindsays and I. Even coming from Devonshire, the interest of this country strikes one excessively. It is bare, it is even ugly, but it is strangely interesting. There is such breadth and space in the long lines and sweeping distances, amidst which an occasional peel-tower stands like a milestone of history, and there is such a character in the strange, jagged, wind-tossed, storm-stricken trees. But it became really beautiful when we descended into the lovely valley of the Tweed with all its radiant autumnal tints, and sat under the grand mass of ruin, with great flights of birds ever circling round it and crying in the still air.”

      “Nov. 4.—Yesterday we went quite a round of visits, seeing different phases of Border family life. We lunched at the Hirsel (Lord Home’s)—a great Scotchy-looking house in a rather featureless park. There were two tables and an immense party at luncheon—Mr. and Lady Gertrude Rolle, Lord Romney, and others. I did not think it an interesting place, though it contains a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott by Raeburn; but Lady Waterford delighted in the happy family life, and says whenever she sees Lord Home she is reminded of the Frenchman who said, ‘Oh, mon Dieu! pourquoi est ce qu’il n’est pas mon père?’

“We went next to Sir John Marjoribanks of Lees. He was just come in from hunting, and his wife was fishing in the Tweed. We went to her there: she was standing up at the end of a boat which a man was rowing, and the whole picture was reflected in a river so smooth that it looked as if they were floating on a mirror.

       NORHAM-ON-TWEED. [138]

      “Then we went to the Baillie Hamiltons at Lenels, another and prettier place on the Tweed near Coldstream Bridge. The house contained much that was interesting, especially two enormous Chelsea vases representing ‘Air’ and ‘Water.’ Mrs. Baillie Hamilton was a daughter of Lord Polwarth—very pleasing, and her sister came in with the most perfect manners of good-breeding, &c. Then we went to the Askews.

      “Lady Waterford stopped to take our luncheon—prepared but not eaten—to a poor man in a consumption. She beguiled the way by describing her visit to Windsor, and the Queen showing her the Mausoleum.

      “She talked also of the passion for jewels: that she could understand it in the case of such persons as Madame Mère, who, when remonstrated with on buying so many diamonds, said, ‘J’accumule, j’accumule,’ for it had been very useful to her. Apropos of not despising dress, she gave me the quotation from Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey[139]—

      ‘A dignity

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