LITMIR.BIZ

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in childish senility, would wander round and round the castle ruins in the early morning and late evening, wringing her hands and saying—"Who could have done such a wicked thing: oh! who could have done such a wicked thing, as to pull down this beautiful old place?" Then her daughters, Caroline and Marianne, walking beside her, would say—"Oh dear mamma, it was you who did it, it was you yourself who did it, you know"—and she would despairingly resume—"Oh no, that is impossible: it could not have been me. I could not have done such a wicked thing: it could not have been me that did it." My cousin Marcus Hare had at Abbots Kerswell a picture of Mrs. Henckel Hare, which was always surrounded with crape bows.

      

HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE.

      The second Francis Hare-Naylor and his brother Robert had a most unhappy home in their boyhood. Their stepmother ruled their weak-minded father with a rod of iron. She ostentatiously burnt the portrait of their beautiful mother. Every year she sold a farm from his paternal inheritance and spent the money in extravagance. In 1784 she parted with the ancient property of Hos Tendis, at Sculthorpe in Norfolk, though its sale was a deathblow to the Bishop's aged widow, Mary-Margaret Alston. Yet, while accumulating riches for herself, she prevented her husband from allowing his unfortunate elder sons more than £100 a year apiece. With this income, Robert, the younger of the two, was sent to Oriel College at Oxford, and when he unavoidably incurred debts there, the money for their repayment was stopped even from his humble pittance.

      Goaded to fury by his stepmother, the eldest son, Francis, became reckless and recklessly extravagant. He raised money at an enormous rate of interest upon his prospects from the Hurstmonceaux estates, and he would have been utterly ruined, morally as well as outwardly, if he had not fallen in with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was captivated by his good looks, charmed by his boldness and wit, and who made him the hero of a living romance. By the Duchess he was introduced to her cousin, another even more beautiful Georgiana, daughter of Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and his wife Anna Maria Mordaunt, niece of the famous Earl of Peterborough; and though Bishop Shipley did everything he could to separate them, meetings were perpetually connived at by the Duchess, till eventually the pair eloped in 1785. The families on both sides renounced them with fury. The Canon of Winchester never saw his son again, and I believe that Bishop Shipley never saw his daughter. Our grandparents went to Carlsruhe, and then to Italy, where in those days it was quite possible to live upon the £200 a year which was allowed them by the Duchess of Devonshire, and where their four sons—Francis, Augustus, Julius, and Marcus—were born.

      The story of Mrs. Hare-Naylor's struggling life in Italy is told in "Memorials of a Quiet Life," and how, when the Canon of Winchester died, and she hurried home with her husband to take possession of Hurstmonceaux Place, she brought only her little Augustus with her, placing him under the care of her eldest sister Anna Maria, widow of the celebrated Sir William Jones, whom he ever afterwards regarded as a second mother.

      The choice of guardians which Mrs. Hare-Naylor made for the children whom she left at Bologna would be deemed a very strange one by many: but gifted, beautiful, and accomplished, our grandmother was never accustomed either to seek or to take advice: she always acted upon her own impulses, guided by her own observation. An aged Spanish Jesuit was living in Bologna, who, when his order was suppressed in Spain, had come to reside in Italy upon his little pension, and, being skilled in languages, particularly in Greek, had taken great pains to revive the love of it in Bologna. Amongst his pupils were two brothers named Tambroni, one of whom, discouraged by the difficulties he met with, complained to his sister Clotilda, who, by way of assisting him, volunteered to learn the same lessons. The old Jesuit was delighted with the girl, and spared no pains to make her a proficient. Female professors were not unknown in Bologna, and in process of time Clotilda Tambroni succeeded to the chair of the Professor of Greek, once occupied by the famous Laura Bassi, whom she was rendered worthy to succeed by her beauty as well as by her acquirements. The compositions of Clotilda Tambroni both in Greek and Italian were published, and universally admired; her poems surprised every one by their fire and genius, and her public orations were considered unrivalled in her age. Adored by all, her reputation was always unblemished. When the French became masters of Bologna, the University was suppressed, and to avoid insult and danger, Clotilda Tambroni retired into private life and lived in great seclusion. Some time after, she received an appointment in Spain, but, just as she arrived there, accompanied by her monk-preceptor Dom Emmanuele Aponte, the French had overturned everything. The pair returned to Bologna, where Aponte would have been in the greatest distress, if his grateful pupil had not insisted upon receiving him into her own house, and not only maintained him, but devoted herself as a daughter to his wants. After the Austrians had re-established the University on the old system, Clotilda Tambroni was invited to resume her chair, but as her health and spirits were then quite broken, she declined accepting it, upon which the Government very handsomely settled a small pension upon her, sufficient to ensure her the comforts of life.

      With Clotilda Tambroni and her aged friend, our grandmother Mrs. Hare-Naylor, who wrote and spoke Greek as perfectly as her native language, and who taught her children to converse in it at the family repasts, naturally found more congenial companionship than with any other members of the Bolognese society; and, when she was recalled with her husband to England, she had no hesitation in intrusting three of her sons to their care. Julius and Marcus were then only very beautiful and engaging little children, but Francis, my father, was already eleven years old, and a boy of extraordinary acquirements, in whom an almost unnatural amount of learning had been implanted and fostered by his gifted mother. The strange life which he then led at Bologna with the old monk and the beautiful sibyl (for such she is represented in her portrait) who attended him, only served to ripen the seed which had been sown already, and the great Mezzofanti, who was charmed at seeing a repetition of his own marvellous powers in one so young, voluntarily took him as a pupil and devoted much of his time to him. To the year which Francis Hare passed with Clotilda Tambroni at Bologna, in her humble rooms with their tiled floors and scanty furniture, he always felt that he owed that intense love of learning for learning's sake which was the leading characteristic of his after life, and he always looked back upon the Tambroni as the person to whom, next to his mother, he was most deeply indebted. When he rejoined his parents at Hurstmonceaux, he continued, under his new tutor, Dr. Lehmann, to make such amazing progress as astonished all who knew him and was an intense delight to his mother.

      Hurstmonceaux Place was then, and is still, a large but ugly house. It forms a massy square, with projecting circular bows at the corners, the appearance of which (due to Wyatt) produces a frightful effect outside, but is exceedingly comfortable within. The staircase, the floors, and the handsome doors, were brought from the castle. The west side of the house, decorated with some Ionic columns, is part of an older manor-house, which existed before the castle was dismantled. In this part of the building is a small old panelled hall, hung round with stags' horns from the ancient deer-park. The house is surrounded by spacious pleasure-grounds. Facing the east front were, till a few years ago, three very fine trees, a cedar, a tulip-tree, and a huge silver fir. In my childhood it often used to be a question which of these trees should be removed, as they were crowding and spoiling each other, and it ended in their all being left, as no one could decide which was the least valuable of the three. The wind has since that time carried away the cedar. The tulip-tree was planted by our great-aunt Marianne, daughter of Mrs. Henckel Hare, and I remember that my uncle Julius used to say that its gay flowers were typical of her and her dress.

      For several years our grandparents carried on a most laborious contest of dignity with poverty on their ruined estate of Hurstmonceaux, where their only daughter Anna Maria Clementina was born in 1799. Finding no congenial associates in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Hare-Naylor consoled herself by keeping up an animated correspondence with all the learned men of Europe, while her husband wrote dull plays and duller histories, which have all been published, but which few people read then and nobody reads now. The long-confirmed habits of Italian life, with its peculiar hours and utter disregard of appearances, were continued in Sussex; and it is still remembered at Hurstmonceaux how our grandmother rode on an ass to drink at the mineral springs which abound in the park, how she always wore white, and how a beautiful white doe always accompanied her in her walks, and even to church, standing, during

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