LITMIR.BIZ

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train left the station, and hearing his shouts, stopped the train, and he was removed by force.

      We went to stay at Haslar with Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic voyager, whose first wife had been my mother's early friend Bella Stanley. He was now married again, and had three more children, and his wife had two daughters by her first husband, Mr. Hoare. The three families lived together, and in the most wonderful harmony. The eldest son, Edward, afterwards Bishop of Dover, was several years older than I, yet not too old for companionship. But I never could feel the slightest interest in the dockyards or the ships at Spithead. My only pleasure was a happy tourette round the Isle of Wight—the mother, Lea, and I, in a little carriage. During the latter part of our stay at Haslar, cholera broke out in the hospital, and our departure was like a flight.

      While I was at Lyncombe in the autumn, my step-grandmother Mrs. Hare Naylor died, very soon after the marriage of her daughter Georgiana to Mr. Frederick D. Maurice, whose first wife had been her intimate friend. She was married during what was supposed to be her last illness, but was so pleased with her nuptials that she recovered after the ceremony and lived for nearly half a century afterwards.

      My dear old uncle Edward Stanley had always said, while making his summer tour in Scotland, that he should return to Norwich when the first case of cholera appeared. He died at Brahan Castle, and his body was brought back to Norwich just as the cholera appeared there. Tens of thousands of people went to his funeral—for, in the wild Chartist times of his episcopate, he had been a true "chevalier sans peur et sans reproche," and had become beloved by people of every phase of creed and character. My mother met Aunt Kitty in London as she came from Scotland, and went with her to Norwich. It was perfect anguish to me not to see once more the place which I had most delighted in, but that was not permitted. Only two days after leaving her home in the old palace, my aunt heard of the death of her youngest son, Captain Charles Edward Stanley, at Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land. He left a young widow, who, in her desolation, derived her chief comfort from the thought of joining her husband's eldest brother, Captain Owen Stanley, at Sydney, and returning to England in his ship, the Rattlesnake. When she reached the ship, she learned that he had been found dead in his cabin only a few days after receiving the tidings of his father's death. The news of this third loss reached Lime just after Aunt Kitty and Kate Stanley had left it to take possession of their new London home—6 Grosvenor Crescent. I remember my mother's piercing shriek when she opened the letter: it was the only time I ever heard her scream. It was only a few months after this that Kate was married to Dr. Vaughan, her brother's friend and my late head-master.

      In 1850 I detested my life at Lyncombe more than ever. Mr. R. was increasingly neglectful in teaching, and the food and everything else was increasingly bad. Temple Harris and my other elder companions went away, and their places were taken by a boy "with flaxen hair and spectacles, like a young curate," but inoffensive, and "an atrociously vulgar little snob;" while the ill-tempered rathunter, who had been at Lyncombe with the old set, was the only one of them that remained. I was now, however, more anxious than ever to learn something, and I made much progress by myself. Most of the external consolations of this year came from the residence in Bath of my maternal cousin Mrs. Russell Barrington, a rather gay young widow, and an eccentric person, but very kind to me at this time, incessant in her invitations, and really very useful in her constant lectures upon "good manners." She might truly have written to my mother in the words of Mme. de Sévigné—"Je me mêle d'apprendre à votre fils les manèges des conversations ordinaires, qu'il est important de savoir; il y a des choses qu'il ne faut pas ignorer. Il seroit ridicule de paraître étonné de certaines nouvelles de quoi on raisonne; je suis assez instruite de ces bagatelles."

      Up to this time, as ever afterwards, no preparation for social life had ever been thought of as far as I was concerned. I was never encouraged to talk at home; indeed, if I ever spoke, I was instantly suppressed. I knew nothing of any game; I was never taught to ride or swim, and dancing was absolutely prohibited as an invention of the evil one. Other boys must have thought me a terrible ass, but it was really not quite my own fault. Oh! how heartily I agree with Archbishop Whately, who said that "the God of the Calvinists is the devil with 'God' written on his forehead."

      There was another of my real relations with whom I made acquaintance this year, and with whom I was afterwards very intimate—namely, Henry Liddell, Rector of Easington, and one of the trustees of Bamborough Castle, who was the brother of my great-uncle Lord Ravensworth, and had married Charlotte Lyon of Hetton, daughter of the youngest brother of my great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson. Mr. Liddell was one of the kindest of men, with all the genial courtesy of a race of country gentlemen now almost extinct, and his wife was a beautiful old lady, with much that was interesting to tell of past times and people. Their eldest son, who was afterwards Dean of Christ Church at Oxford, was at this time head-master of Westminster, and was a clever and cultivated person, though inferior to his parents in natural charm of character. In the summer my maternal grandfather, Sir John Paul, came to stay at a hotel at Bath and I saw him frequently, but never found anything in common with him, though he was an exceedingly clever artist. In my daily letters to my mother, I see that I described his first reception of me with "How do you do, sir"—just like any distant acquaintance. He was at this time married to his third wife, who was a daughter of Bishop Halifax, and presented a very youthful appearance. Her step-children, who never liked her, declared that on the day after her marriage one of her eyebrows fell off into her soup. But to me she was always very kind, and I was fond of her, in spite of her many ancient frivolities. With Lady Paul lived her sister Caroline Halifax, a very pretty pleasant old lady, who adored her, and thought "my sister Bessy" the most beautiful, illustrious, and cultivated woman in the world.

      It was in April 1850 that a happy missing of his train at Bath produced a visit at Lyncombe from Arthur Stanley, who was horrified at my ignorance, and at the absence, which he discovered, of all pains in teaching me. His representations to my mother at last induced her to promise to remove me, for which I shall be eternally grateful to him in recollection. Nevertheless I was unaccountably left at Lyncombe till Christmas, nine wretched and utterly useless months; for when he knew I was going to leave, after my return in the summer, Mr. R. dropped even the pretence of attempting to teach me, so that I often remained in total neglect, without any work whatever, for several weeks. In their anger at the distant prospect of my escaping them, the R.'s now never spoke to me, and my life was passed in total and miserable silence, even at meal-times. If it had not been for the neighbourhood of Bath, I should often have been many weeks together without speaking a single word. My mother in vain remonstrated over my sickeningly doleful letters, and told me to "catch all the sunbeams within reach;" I could only reply there were no sunbeams to catch—that "you would think at meals that you were in the Inquisition from the cold, morose, joyless, motionless faces around the table." Then Aunt Esther would make my mother urge me to accept all these small trials, these "guidings," in a more Christian spirit, which made me furious: I could not express religious sentiments when such sentiments were quite unborn. Besides, I might have answered that "when St. Paul said we were to put off the old man, he did not mean we were to put on the old woman."[53] I also wrote to my mother—

      "We are in the last extremities as regards food. I will give you a perfectly correct account of the last few days. Saturday, dinner, boiled beef. Sunday, breakfast, ditto cold with bread and butter. Luncheon, a very small portion of ditto with dry bread and part of the rind of a decayed cheese. Dinner, a little of ditto with a doughy plum-tart. Monday, breakfast, ditto with two very small square pieces of bread. Luncheon, ditto with bread and … butter! Dinner, ditto and a rice-pudding. Tuesday, breakfast, ditto; luncheon, a very small fragment of ditto and one potato apiece doled round. Dinner, ditto. Wednesday, breakfast, scraps of ditto; luncheon, fat and parings of ditto. We all have to sit and do our work now by the light of a single bed-candle. Oh! I am more thankful every day that you will at last let me leave this place. Any change must be for the better, and I should not mind if it was to the centre of the desert, if I could only feel I should learn something, for I am learning nothing here, and never have learnt anything. … Would you very much mind giving me an umbrella, for I have got wet through almost every day: on Sundays it is especially inconvenient. Mr. R. asked me the other day how I liked the thoughts of going away!—but I was very good, and only said 'I should not mind it very much!'"

      My

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