Full text of "Lady de Rothschild : extracts from her notebooks : with a preface by her daughter Constance Battersea"

See other formats

Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD

, ^/s/r/y //' ■ //<>///■>' //f/s/

'!>/</ ' ///f

LADY DE
ROTHSCHILD

Extracts from her Notebooks

WITH

A Preface by her Daughter

CONSTANCE BATTER SEA

London

ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS

187 Piccadilly, W.

1912

PREFACE.

I have tried to collect and to put into some consecutive
form a number of extracts, taken from various authors,
often with her own comments, which were amongst my
dear mother's papers.

These extracts form a valuable index to forty years
of reading ! They are occasionally to be found
scattered through her diaries, but more generally
entered in small unpretentious note-books, which she
always kept by her side, where she could transcribe in
pen or pencil the passage that struck her fancy. Often
the marks of the pencil were faint, or the pen was
remiss in its duty, but if the instrument so employed
was at times faulty, her own exquisite literary taste
was never so.

Although, as far as possible, a continuity of dates
has been faithfully observed — from I860 to 1907 — for
a selection of extracts, still there occurs many a gap in
the notes on books during those years, for which it
would be difficult to find an explanation other than the
fact that some note-books were probably destroyed or
lost in the lapse of time.

I have every reason to conclude that the passages
in prose or verse, that were entered unsigned, and not

1 B

r-o «-* v? ■ - -

PREFACE.

between inverted commas, were by my dear mother's
own pen, in addition to those which bear her usual
signature : ' L. de R.1

The little note-books reveal a wide range of reading
and a great variety of authors. My mother was not
merely a comprehensive, but also a very discriminating
reader. Books were indeed her beloved companions,
from her earliest youth to within a few months of her
death, at the age of eighty-nine, and with them she
spent some of her happiest hours.

To a great extent they helped to keep her mind
fresh and young. She was never alarmed at critical
investigations either in Theology or in Science, and
eagerly accepted (if she thought them wise) new
methods of dealing with philanthropic work and with
social questions. Nor was she ever afraid of the
principles of a true liberalism.

Thus she read with warm interest the newest
books, making herself acquainted with the very last
results of research in many fields. But this love of
critical study did not prevent her from returning again
and again, with renewed pleasure and interest, to some
of her old and well-read favourites.

When quite young she became deeply engrossed
in the study of metaphysics, and was laughingly
taken to task by an older relative for wasting her
time and that of one of her cousins over such useless
and ungrateful literature. Many years afterwards
(1874) Mr. Matthew Arnold in writing to my mother
said : —

' You must read my metaphysics in this last " Con-

PREFACE.

temporary Vl — my first and last appearance in that field
where you, I know, are no stranger.1

At the age of nineteen, on the eve of her marriage,
in March 1840, she drew up the following some-
what austere plan for the days of the week, and when,
after a time, it had to be discarded, she embarked upon
further studies, preparing herself for the superin-
tendence of her children's education, and for the many
philanthropic schemes that occupied her mind and her
heart : —

' Sunday — Without any attempt at order : read as much
of new publications, newspapers, magazines
as possible.

Monday — Household and newspapers ... till £ past 10.
A chapter of Locke on the

Human understanding .. . „ 11.

Drawing ... ... ... „ 1.

New publications ... ... „ h past 1.

Geography ... „ 3.

Italian or German ... . . . „ 4.

Tuesday — Household accounts and news-
papers ... ... ... „ 12.

Drawing ... ... ... „ \ past 1.

Letters ... ... „ 4.

Wednesday — Household and newspapers „ \ past 10.

Locke ... ... ... „ 11.

Drawing ... ... ... „ \ past 1

History ... ... . .. „ 3.

Ancient Literature . . . „ 4.

PREFACE.

Thursday — Household and newspapers

till

| past 10.

1 A )CK 0 • • • • . • • . fl

11.

Drawing

\ past 1.

Ancient Literature

History

Friday — Household and newspapers ...

J past 10.

Locke

11.

Commentaries

Italian or German ...

Leisure hours, occasional intervals between various
occupations, to be devoted to reading new publications.-'

I cannot omit to make some mention of my mother's
methodical and business-like habits. She never employed
a secretary, but, during the long years of her married
and widowed life, she carefully kept her accounts in the
most perfect and beautiful order, and fulfilled all the
duties devolving upon the mistress of a large household
in a quiet but very remarkable manner.

No mention being made of Saturday on this plan, it
would be as well for me to state that my mother loved
to keep her Sabbath strictly. Although she could not
bear the physical fatigue of a long walk, followed by a
lengthy and somewhat tiring service in synagogue, she
insisted upon treating the day differently from the
other days of the week. All business and ordinary
duties were put aside, the carriage was not taken out,
and books other than those in daily use were read :
my mother, besides her usual Jewish works of devotion,
being very fond of Robertson's sermons, of Theodore
Parker's and of James Martineau's writings.

PREFACE.

All through her life she began the day by reading a
few verses from the Bible, and the many well-marked
passages that I have found are a proof of the care she
gave to this study, and of her predilection for the
Psalms and for the writings of some of the Prophets.

The following words were written after she had
made her plan of life : —

4 In order to regulate my conduct rightly, I must
diligently study the Word of God, and pray earnestly
for the knowledge of my duties and the strength to fulfil
them, and be vigilant in constant self-examination.
My present duties are to give an example of virtue and
piety ; to influence, if possible, the conduct of those
around me ; to make my husband as happy as lies in
my power, fulfilling his desires and in all things giving
way to his wishes ; to employ industry, attention, and
judgment in directing those persons and affairs which
are under my control. My first object now must no
longer be simply to know, but to make use, and the
best use, of that which I know ; to advance the happi-
ness and comfort of all those around us.''

Severe towards herself as she was indulgent to others,
my mother never allowed herself to read a work of
fiction until the studies and business of the day were
well over, and even then she regarded fiction as a
delightful amusement, a sort of dissipation of the mind,
of which to taste sparingly.

In her early days she read both Italian and German,
but as years crept on, the only language, other than
English, that attracted her was French. A governess to
whom she had been devoted — a native of Geneva, and

PREFACE.

a most cultivated and charming personality — had early
embued her with a taste for the French language, whilst
two years spent in Paris at the beginning of her married
life, before the upheaval of 1848, when social inter-
course was at its pleasantest and brightest, brought her
into contact with many distinguished men and women
of that period. It was then that she thoroughly enjoyed,
amongst other things, the unrivalled performances at
the Theatre Francais, the great actress Rachel being at
the very height of her fame.

To the last she was a constant reader of the Revue
des Deux Mondes, delighting in the crisp and lucid style
of French prose.

Although purely comic literature never could have
appealed to her, yet her keen sense of humour made her
appreciate much that was delicately humorous in litera-
ture, and some works of Dickens stood high in her
favour ; she did not care for his sentiment, but enjoyed
his fun and his humour.

She often spoke with happy pride of her earlv
friendship with Mr. Thackeray, and she would read and
re-read The Nezvcomes, Pendennis, and Vanity Fair,
always rinding fresh interest in their pages. In Pen-
dennis there occurs the following beautiful and touching
passage, which the great author wrote as a picture of my
mother : —

' What one sees symbolised in the Roman churches
in the image of the Virgin Mother, with a bosom bleed-
ing with love, I think one may witness (and admire the
Almighty bounty for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady
only yesterday with a child at her knee, and from whose

PREFACE.

face towards the child there shone a sweetness so angelical
that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I
protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in
her the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the
maternal " storge " which began with our race and
sanctifies the history of mankind/

The daughter of Mr. Thackeray, a writer herself of
much charm and tenderness — Lady Ritchie — was from
her very earliest days beloved by my mother, who in
another instance transmitted the warm feelings ot
friendship she had entertained for a writer of one
generation, to his children of the next.*

Mr. Matthew Arnold's acquaintance with my mother
sprang from their first meeting at the Jews1 Free School
in the East End of London, which Mr. Arnold used to
visit in his official capacity of School Inspector. The
acquaintance rapidly ripened into friendship, and the
happy days of Inspectorship remained unbroken, even
when the scene had changed from London to Bucking-
hamshire, where Mr. Arnold came regularly during
the ' sixties ' to inspect, amongst others, the schools my
parents had established in the village of Aston Clinton.

In 1863 Mr. Arnold wrote to his mother : ' Lady
de Rothschild I am very fond of.1 And her name
constantly appears in the collection of his letters, edited
by Mr. G. W. E. Russell. Alluding to a relation
of my mother's, he wrote : ' A very remarkable person,

* Lucy and Eleanor Arnold, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew
Arnold, married— Lucy, to Mr. Frederick Whitridge of New York,
Eleanor, to the late Honble. Armine Wodehouse. and now, the
wife of the present Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sandhurst.

PREFACE.

with a man's power of mind and with great enthusiasm,
but,1 he adds, ' my unapproached favourite is, and will
always be, Lady de Rothschild."'

As an author, Lord Beaconsfield was nearer to her
than as a politician. She had known him in the early
days as Mr. Disraeli, when he was a brilliant and most
amusing talker ; he often appeared at her mother's
hospitable table, and was greatly attracted by the charm
of his hostess's young daughter. It was on one of those
occasions that the lady he was about to make his
wife — Mrs. Wyndham Lewis — was present. The
engagement had not been announced, and my mother
and her sister, to their infinite amusement, surprised
many a nod, wink, and toast given and taken between
that happy pair. When the news was made public
within the next few days, the two sisters expressed
their astonishment that their young and brilliant friend
should marry a lady who, in their eyes, seemed to be
already quite elderly ; but until the end of their lives
both Lord and Lady Beaconsfield (Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli)
were, and remained, my dear mother's devoted friends.

The very first time that my mother consented to
accompany me on a motor drive, was to visit the
beautifully situated churchyard at Hughenden — within
fourteen miles of Aston Clinton — where she stood beside
the grave of her old friend, Lord Beaconsfield. She
talked of him and her acquaintance with him in early
days to the astonished sexton, who shook his head
unbelievingly at the fact that my mother's acquaintance
with the great statesman dated back to the years before
his marriage.

PREFACE.

Mr. Gladstone she knew less intimately ; but she
keenly enjoyed the two visits that he paid her at Aston
Clinton, during the Easter weeks of 1888 and 1 890, when
the great statesman was singularly alive to the clearness
of her understanding and the quickness of her grasp.

She had known Samuel Rogers; she had been intro-
duced to Guizot, and had dined by the side of Balzac ;
she had sat and listened to Macaulay*, and had enter-
tained Bulwer, Tennyson, Browning, Bernal Osborne,
Charles Villiers, John Delane, Lord Lyndhurst, Dean
Stanley — who mentioned her once in a letter as ' that
distinguished daughter of Israel,"1 — Bishop Wilberforce,
and his son the present Archdeacon of Westminster,
whose name is affectionately mentioned in the diaries,
and many others : authors, prelates, statesmen, &c,
of the great Victorian era. Indeed, although she was
deeply interested in men of letters she often maintained
that they gave of their best to their writings.

George Eliot's early novels appealed greatly to my
mother, Adam Bede and Silas Marner being her special
favourites, but unfortunately, the pleasure of a personal
acquaintance with that great author had been denied
her. On the other hand, she not only claimed acquaint-
ance with, but also the friendship of, Mrs. Humphry
Ward, whose name, most affectionately mentioned, occurs
again and again in the diaries.

Frances Power Cobbe attracted her by her strong
intellect, her brilliant penmanship, as well as by her
breezy humour, whilst my mother was greatly struck by

* Sir George Trevelyan, Lord Macaulay's nephew and bio-
grapher, was a favourite and frequent visitor at ray mother's house.

PREFACE.

the courage and steadfastness with which Miss Cobbe
fought a desperate and seemingly losing battle against
scientific research in the animal world.

Through all the years of her life, my mother found
constant companionship in her faithful dogs. She had
one of these affectionate creatures always with her, and
their devotion proved a great solace as the years crept on :
to her loving and tender heart vivisection was therefore
doubly abhorrent, and she could not bear to dwell
upon the painful facts that had been brought to her
notice.

Responsive as my mother was to the charm of
literature, she had a beautiful and refined style of her
own, with much originality of thought and grace of
diction. She had been repeatedly urged to allow some
of her writings to appear in print, but with very
few exceptions had always refused to publish them.
She wrote two of the chapters that appeared in a
book of Essays, called, ' A few words to the Jews by
one of themselves,1 which emanated from the brilliant
pen of her elder and only sister* ; also a story that
came out in one of the volumes of the Cheap Jewish
Library — a publication long extinct — and some other
contributions to a little collection of Sabbath Class
Addresses — all published without her name.

It was her custom to make a list of books in
advance that she intended reading, and she generally
kept to her purpose, and it was wonderful what she
accomplished. I hardly ever saw her without a book

* Mrs. Horatio Montefiore.
10

PREFACE.

in her hand. But she had not a good verbal memory,
so that she never could quote correctly, which caused
her much annoyance. How often she wished that she
could have beguiled sleepless hours by repeating
favourite passages from favourite authors. She used
greatly to enjoy reading aloud to us as children, and
was also a very good listener: when in after-years her
eyesight began to trouble her in the matter of reading
small print, I constantly read the Parliamentary
speeches in the Times aloud to her, and enjoved her
wonderfully discriminating and pertinent remarks. Her
judgment was never obscured by prejudice, nor was sh<
ever carried away by sentiment or personal interest
in the speakers.

In the year 1892 my mother spent three weeks with
us at the Pleasaunce, Overstrand, our Norfolk home ;
there she met daily and in the pleasantest intimacy
Lord Morley, or as he then was, Mr. John Morlev.
They soon became friends, and it was in answer to one
of her questions that Mr. Morley wrote for her his
definition of ' Holiness 1 — which appeared later in an
article that he published in the Nineteenth Century.
At the end of that brief summer holiday, when my
mother left us to return to her own home, Mr. Morley,
gazing sadly at her accustomed but then empty chair,
exclaimed : ' Your house has lost one of its chief charms
and attractions."'

I venture to quote a few lines from a letter written
to me by Lord Morley within a week after my dear
mother's death : —

'When we were all at Overstrand nineteen years ago

PREFACE.

I had a chance that I shall never forget of learning
something of her rare gifts and most admirable
qualities, her real love of truth and passion for justice,
her interest in the things that are worth being in-
terested in, her good taste and right judgment in books
and the spirit of literature ; her kindly yet firm views
of men and women and human life/

My mother was always very cosmopolitan in her
tastes ; she loved foreign travel and foreign languages
— perhaps the result of having spent six years of her
early life, from the age of ten to sixteen (1831-1837)
travelling in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, in the
company of her widowed mother, and for the benefit of
the health of her sister, to whom she was passion-
ately attached and whose death, at a comparatively
early age, brought her for the first time face to face
with a poignant grief. The only daughter* of this, her
only sister, claimed and always held a warm place in my
dear mother's affections.

Living abroad under very pleasant conditions, at a

most impressionable age, she enjoyed many advantages

denied to those who lead an entirely insular existence.

She made acquaintance with the celebrated pictures of

the Continent, and as she had great artistic taste —

indeed, she became a very good artist, devoting much

time first to portrait and later to flower painting — she

took special delight in visiting the foreign churches and

galleries.

* Helen Montefiore.

PREFACE.

My mother gave her heart to Italy at a very youthful
age, and loved it for the magic of its skies, its language,
and its people. Long afterwards, when we were entering
the Plains of Lombardy over the Simplon Pass, my
mother said she felt as if she were returning home.
When a child she took part in some winter festivities at
Naples, where one of her relatives had a palace on the
Chiaja, and she recalled a theatrical performance given
by amateurs, in which Pauline de la Feronnaye — so well
known in later life as Mrs. Augustus Craven, the author
of Le Recit d\me Sceur — acted most brilliantly, with
others of that gifted family.

My mother loved beautiful scenery from the days of
her childhood onwards, and she remembered, in an
astonishing way, places and scenes that had appealed to
her in her youth, and that she revisited later. She was
particularly fond of the Lake of Geneva, and the Villa
Diodati, sacred to the memory of Byron, where she had
passed some happy months of her girlhood. She used
to linger over the memories of the gay Christmas-times
she had spent in Berlin, of the crowded streets, the
Christmas-trees standing in every window, and the
general spirit of friendliness and good - comradeship
amongst the Germans of that date.

Yet she longed to put an end to the exile of six
years1 standing and return to her English home. There,
in 1837, an intensely happy life awaited her, spent
between London and the country, with her mother, a
very witty and clever woman, her gifted sister, and two
devoted and much-loved brothers, who shared many of
her occupations and pleasures.

PREFACE.

Worth Park, my grandmother's (Mrs. Montefiore's)
country home, once an old farmhouse, transformed
into a comfortable country residence, was the happy
scene of her girlhood life.*

It was there that she first showed her vivid interest
in the welfare of the labouring classes, in their educa-
tional and other needs. In those days schools in the
country districts were few and far between ; in fact, in
many places they did not exist.

The ignorance amongst the rural population being
appalling, the two young sisters set themselves a con-
genial task in starting and superintending a village
school, which they did with the help of a clergyman's
widow and her daughters, and which, owing to the
fostering care and energy of my mother and my aunt,
became a great success. My mother enjoyed herself
immensely in teaching the children, and this love of
teaching never left her. Thus, many years later, when,
as a young married woman, she began to interest her-
self in the rapidly-growing Jewish charities of the
metropolis, she took a very prominent and active part
in the management of the Jews'1 Free School, of which
my father was the very active President. From that
time for a period of more than forty years she would
most regularly attend the Committee meetings and
acquaint herself with all the working of that gigantic
institution. Even when she lived during so many
months of the year at Aston Clinton, she, who was

* My grandfather, the younger brother of Sir Moses Montefiore
(Abraham Montefiore by name), died when my mother was a child
of three years old.

PREFACE.

never physically strong, would travel up to and down
from London in the dark winter days, taking her ac-
customed place at the Committee table, hearing the
children repeat their lessons, and encouraging the army
of teachers.

Meanwhile it had not escaped her attention that
the Jewish working girls in the East End of London
were often in need of instruction, even of the most
elementary order, and it was in their interest that she
succeeded in starting evening classes for reading,
writing, and arithmetic, in the house of a capable and
warm-hearted woman who, with her daughters, gave
much of her time to the welfare of her co-religionists.*

Mrs. Harris not only supervised the educational
classes of the young working girls, but also, with my
mother's warm approval, inaugurated for their benefit
Sabbath Classes for religious instruction. It was for
these audiences that my mother wrote a number of
short addresses, which were faithfully read by Mrs.
Harris to her weekly congregation. The many excel-
lent Clubs for Jewish working girls of to-day, with their
long lists of subjects that are dealt with evening after
evening, with their singing and dancing classes, their
social evenings, and holiday homes, in a great measure
owe their existence to these her first attempts at bring-
ing a gleam of the spiritual and intellectual joy that
illumined her own life into the lives of her less-favoured
sisters.

* One of Mrs. Harris's daughters, Emily by name, was specially
interested in the work initiated by my mother, and to her untiring
efforts their lasting success was greatly due.

PREFACE.

Acquaintance with the Jewish school-children and
the Jewish working girls did not end there : my mother,
with my father's warm approval, sought them out
in their own small tenements, and joined a band
of ladies who were beginning to learn the value of
personal acquaintance with the poor, and also the
difficult lesson of how to bring order and method
into charitable work.

But her human and religious sympathies were wider
than any one form of creed, thus it was not only in
London, but also in the country in her Buckingham-
shire home that my mother never rested until edu-
cational advantages were placed within reach of the
village children, and it was entirely owing to the efforts
of my parents that excellent schools sprang into existence
in the villages of Aston Clinton and of Halton, fully
ten years or more before the great educational movement
of 1870. The autumn and winter months were in-
variably spent at Aston Clinton from 1853 onwards,
and there my mother threw herself heart and soul into
all that concerned the welfare of the people. Fortu-
nately my father also took a very lively and practical
interest in village and villagers.

Both my parents lived in friendly relationship with
many of the neighbouring clergy, and my mother
reckoned amongst her most esteemed friends, the rector*
who spent twenty-three years of his life at Aston
Clinton, and his successor, the present incumbent, j*

My sister and I began at an early age to visit the
schools of our village, which soon became the object of

* The Rev. Thomas Williams. t The Rev. J. R. Cohu.

PREFACE.

many a morning walk, where two very young teachers
might often have been seen solemnly holding their
classes, learning probably more than they taught.

May I be allowed to say here that from our earliest
age my dear mother made us realise that we should
learn to take our greatest pleasure in trying to help
others to a fuller and happier life ; indeed, we were
taught by her example, as well as by her words, that
the duties we had set ourselves should not be put on
one side for any pleasurable excitement that might
come in our way. She spared no pains to make us see
life as she saw it, and she never neglected the greatest of
all her duties — the education of her children — for any
other pursuit, however engrossing it might have been.

For nearly forty years my mother was assisted in
the furtherance of many philanthropic schemes for the
benefit of the village people by a very devoted and
most energetic German lady — Miss Molique* by name —
well known in the musical world, but who unselfishly
gave up a musical career for village work, undertaking
the initiation of a Village Library, a Domestic Training
Institution, a most successful Evening School for boys,
and many other organizations.

During all these busy years, my mother possessed the
rare quality of being able to combine with her absorbing
human interests, her love of literature, in which she found
unfailing delight ; her mind was thus attuned to great
things, and her standard both in art and authorship was
a very high one — only the best satisfied her, and when

* Daughter of the celebrated composer and violinist, Bernhard
Molique.

17 C

PREFACE.

she took the pen herself, it was held by a capable and
well -practised hand.

She was an excellent letter- writer — interesting,
humorous, original — but her correspondents were few.
To her daughters, when absent from her, she wrote
almost daily, and with her two brothers* — both ad-
mirable in their power of letter-writing — she freely
corresponded in the most charming and intimate
manner : also with a beloved cousin and sister-in-law —
her namesake and lifelong friend, a woman of rare
personal charm and ability — the mother of her niece,
Lady Rothschild, whose married and widowed life was
spent at Frankfort, f

My mother was of a reserved and shy disposition ;
it was with difficulty that she could express her deepest
feelings, and it is only from her note-books and diaries
that some idea may be gained of her spiritual nature.

She had no sympathy with any very pronounced
doctrine ; she hated the fanaticism of extreme dog-
matic belief, and she welcomed liberal thought in
religion as in politics. But she could not bear
irreverence, and clung with beautiful fidelity to many
old customs that belonged to the days of her youth.

Her Quaker friends, of whom she had several, paid
her, as she always said, the great compliment in telling
her that she might really have belonged to the Society
of Friends, so constantly was she seen dressed in the

* Joseph (the father of Sir Francis Montefiore) and Nathaniel
Montefiore, who lived respectively until 1880 and 1883.

t Baroness Chai-les de Rothschild, the youngest sister of my
father.

PREFACE.

soft neutral tints in which they delighted, and so un-
congenial to her were the excitements and noisy amuse-
ments of the world. In fact, as one of her devoted
friends, Dr. Kalisch* (to whose daughter she stood in
very friendly relationship),! once said : ' She was in the
world, but not of it.1

She was extraordinarily just and fair: generous by
nature and equally generous in all her judgments, she
had a strong sense of right and wrong. Gentle in
manner and in speech, she had, notwithstanding, a
very decided personality, that deeply impressed those
amongst whom she lived, and who sought and valued
her opinion.

Young in mind, she was very fond of young people,
entered readily into their feelings, loved them for their
gaiety, good spirits and enthusiasm. She had a keen
sense of humour, and enjoyed bright and witty con-
versation. Her sons-in-law, J both gifted with a happy
sense of fun and a flow of high spirits, were often struck
by her vivacity and ready response. In fact, one of the
two, who from his undergraduate days had loved and
deeply reverenced her, used laughingly to tease his wife
by declaring that she was not as young as her mother,
and that those of his friends, who had had the privilege

* A distinguished Hebrew scholar and critic of Biblical and
Talmudic literature. Died 1885.

t Mrs. Hoster.

X Lord Battersea (as Cyril Flower) — M.P. for the borough of
Brecon from 1880 to 1885 ; M.P. for South Beds, from 1885 to 1892 ;
also served in Mr. Gladstone's Government ; died 1907. The
Honble. Eliot Yorke, son of the 4th Earl of Hardwicke, equerry to
H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh; M.P for Cambridgeshire ; died
1878.

PREFACE.

of being admitted to the home life at Aston Clinton,
especially enjoyed the society of one older it might be
than they were in years, but full of sympathetic interest
in their aims and pursuits. Her presence evoked and
never repressed any happy nonsense that brought life
and merriment into the party.

Amongst the younger generation my mother greatly
valued the frequent and ever-welcome visits of many
beloved nephews and nieces on both sides of her family.
Thus she was warmly attached to Lord Rothschild and
his two brothers,* whilst some of her nieces regarded her
as a second mother, notably Lady Rothschild and her
sisters.

In her diary there is a mention of Lady Lindsayf
in terms of endearment, whose literary and artistic
gifts she held in warm appreciation. For her
nephew, Claude Montefiore,^ she entertained feelings
of deep affection and high admiration. She also cor-
dially welcomed the relations connected by marriage
with her daughters ; but it would be invidious, even if
it were possible, to enumerate by name all those who
claimed her friendship and who responded to her affec-

* Alfred and Leopold de Rothschild.

t Lady Lindsay, daughter of the Rt. Honble. Henry FitzRoy,
and the Honble. Mrs. FitzRoy, a sister of ray father. Mr. FitzRoy,
brother of Lord Southampton, served in Lord Palraerston's
Government, as Under-Secretary to the Home Office, Chairman
of Ways and Means, likewise to the Board of Trade.

X The son of Nathaniel Montefiore (my mother's youngest
brother), and of his wife Emma Goldsmid. Their eldest son,
Leonard, a man of rare promise and much charm, died in 1879 at
the early age of 26, deeply regretted by my mother.

PREFACE.

tionate hospitality. From old days her family had
been on the friendliest terms with many members of
the great house of Bedford. Lord Charles Russell
(1807-1894) was a frequent visitor at Aston Clinton,
and in his son, Mr. George Russell, she found a link
with those traditions of the past. He Mas her constant
visitor in London, and carried on a most charming and
original correspondence in prose and in verse with her
when she was in the country.

As she grew older the circle of her friends increased,
and her advent to London brought year after year
tried friends and pleasant acquaintances to her door.
Indeed, she was the centre of her family ; to both
young and old she extended a bright welcome, and
no one ever felt that her interests were limited to the
past, or that the present had no audible voice for
her ear.

She had no infirmities of age ; she never lost faith in
humanity, nor her hope and belief in a future life and in
the goodness of God. She was never bitter or despairing,
but, believing in the best, drew forth that which was
best in every human being with whom she came in
contact.

I feel compelled to admit that this short notice, or
preface to the ' Extracts,' is in no sense of the word a
complete biographical Memoir of my dear mother. It
is very difficult for a daughter to write her mother's
biography as it should be written, and I fear that, for
me, it would be an impossible task. But I have tried,
however inadequately, to give some slight picture of her

PREFACE.

personality, in youth as well as in age, and thus to
make the ' Extracts,' with the comments by her own
fascinating pen, more living and interesting.

I should like to conjure up her portrait as I recall
her best in late years, sitting, book in hand, pencil and
note-book by her side, in her favourite little blue
drawing-room at Aston Clinton. ' It seemed to me a
sort of shrine,1 wrote Lord Rosebery, ' and a centre from
which radiated goodness and sympathy.'' From her
chair she could see across the lawn, where the venerable
yew-tree spreads its heavy branches, and she could
watch the many birds, large and small, from the lordly
pheasant to the tiny tom-tit, that came hopping up to
her windows for their daily food. Then her gaze would
travel to an open space, purposely cleared for her in a
group of trees, dividing the lawn from the park, where
cows and sheep were placidly grazing, and still further
on she would get a glimpse of the ' grey, square
church tower ' and of ' the red roof of her own village
school.1

A homely scene, indeed, a quiet picture of English
country life — a scene, to quote my mother's own words,
that ' she had looked on for many a year, that she knew
as it were by heart, and yet that always presented itself
in some new aspect.1 Such a landscape as is not un-
common, but to her its quiet beauty meant a great deal.
It meant home life, in its fullest, deepest, most precious
sense ; it also meant village life — that is to say, outside,
wider interests. It meant pre-eminently work for others,
unselfish, constant work, that only ended when life on
earth ended.

PREFACE.

It will be seen that this book mainly consists of
extracts from my mother's favourite authors (some-
times merely titles of books), together with comments of
her own, to which are added a few short passages from
her diaries.

(1) A mention of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897 ;
and of a visit from King Edward VII., when he was
Prince of Wales, in the same year.

(2) Of personages connected with statesmanship,
literature, and art.

(3) Of politics, as showing that my mother retained
her liberal sympathies until the very end of her life.

(4) Of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870, and the
Boer War, 1899-1902, which called forth her expres-
sions of grave anxiety and distress.

I have also inserted a paragraph about a favourite
little dog of my mother's, showing her intense affection
for her constant companions. There are many other
such passages throughout her diaries, all very touching
to those who knew her.

Constance Battersea.

1912.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

I860.

Michelet's 'Louis XIV.'

A curious, but often most unpleasing volume. What
a picture of depravity, of bigotry and cruelty is the
great and generally considered most glorious reign in
the French history ! Neither indecent details of court
intrigues, nor horrible accounts of the relentless and
savage persecutions of the Protestants, are spared the
reader, who arises indignant and sickened by the
perusal of the horrible deeds committed under the rule
and often by the command of this great monarch.
Miehelefs style is eloquent, terse, but sometimes so
condensed as to be somewhat confused and difficult to
understand. June %8th.

Wolff's 'Travels and Adventures.'

Dr. Wolff is an honest enthusiast, excessively vain and
extraordinarily credulous. His adventures related by
himself, in the third person, are extremely amusing.

Aston Clinton, September QSrd.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Sainte Marie Madelaine. Par Lacordaire.

Very eloquent nonsense. Strange that such a book
should be written by such a man in the nineteenth
century. Aston Clinton, October.

The Arrest of the Five Members by Charles I. in
1641-42. By John Forster.

The work of a very prejudiced partisan. A good
article upon it in the Quarterly Review.

October Z8th.

The Professor at the Breakfast Table. By Oliver
Wendell Holmes.

Bold, quaint, but full of thought.
Letters, &c. of Lord Auckland.

Personal History of Lord Bacon. By Dixon.

The style of the author does not inspire one with much
confidence. Too flowery and dramatic and superficial
for a calm, historical investigation, but still from his
pages it appears to me that Bacon has been hardly
judged. Had he not been so great a man, intellectu-
ally so far beyond his age, his faults and shortcomings
would have been looked upon as merely examples of the
difference between our epoch and that in which he
lived. A man who not only left such a legacy of
wisdom to posterity, but was constantly employed in
doing good service to his country, cannot, because he
failed in some instances to rise above his contemporaries
be called the Meanest of Mankind.

January \§th, 1860.
26

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Motley's History of the United Netherlands.
Perhaps rather too long and detailed, but very in-
teresting. Elisabeth's fame is darkened and Leicester's
made rather brighter in these pages.

The Eastern Church. Lectures by Arthur Stanley.

Great Expectations. By Dickens.
The first and last volume written in his best style.

Buckle's second volume.

Nineteenth volume of ' L'Histoire du Consulat et
de PEmpire.' By Thiers.

The Early and Middle Ages of England. By
Pearson.

My Life, and what shall I do with it?
Addressed to very independent young and old maids,
consequently completely adapted to only a small circle
of readers ; but containing many good and useful things.
The last words of the book might often be pondered
over with advantage : ' Women of wealth, women of
talent, women of leisure, what are you doing in God's
world for God ? '

Elsie Venner. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Very clever, though very American.

Stanley's Canterbury Sermons.
The following extract, taken from the vi. sermon, is a
good example of the spirit of liberality which breathes
through all the volume : ' Ceremonies, customs, usages
change from country to country and from age to age.
They cannot be imitated, they cannot be adapted. But

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

good and gracious acts of love and of justice and of
truth, energy surmounting all difficulties, patience en-
during all hardships ; these and the like qualities of the
good neighbour of the Parable are always near us, can
always be repeated, can always be honoured. " Go "
on thy journey, "go" on thy business, "go" home
and " do " with all thy might whatsoever of good or
true, in times past or times present, at home or abroad,
thou hast seen or heard, " go and do likewise." '

Year by year changes gather round us. We shall
not be this year as we were last year. If we remain
the same the things around us change ; if things around
us remain the same, yet we see those around us change,
and our relative positions, thoughts, duties, feelings
change with them. But one thing changes not, and
that is the duty and privilege of keeping the Command-
ments of God. If we have kept them before, we can
keep them no less now. If the keeping of them, if the
striving to keep the Commandments of God has been
'a lantern to our feet and a light to our path,"' in
former times, rejoicing the heart and enlightening the
eyes, so we may humbly trust that it will be still,
whatever changes have befallen us, whatever changes
may befall us. — Sermon xiv.

Life of Pitt. By Lord Stanhope.

CEuvres et Correspondance in^dites d' Alexis de
Tocqueville.

Deeply interesting are the letters contained in these
volumes — displaying constant mental activity and pro-
found reflection, with warm, affectionate feeling.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

The one blemish in De TocquevihVs character
appears to me to be the contempt with which he looked
down upon mankind in general. The reception his
books vnet with should have proved to him how many
are capable of appreciating true excellence. Though an
enemy to all intellectual repute, he often enjoyed the
calm tranquillity of Tocqueville. In one of his letters
he mentions the happiness he finds in his country
retreat, and then says, * Cest encore avoir Fame agitee
que de jouir passionnement de la paix. Tel est en ce
moment mon cas."1

1862.

Chateaubriand et son Groupe Litteraire. Par
Sainte Beuve. Astm aint0Jh ^1^^,

Felix Mendelssohn's ' Reisebriefe.'

How simple, fresh, childlike, poetical and affectionate
must have been the spirit that dictated these letters !

London, May 31.

Gravenhurst ; or, Thoughts on Good and Evil.
By Smith.

A difficult, possibly an insurmountably difficult subject
eloquently treated, though perhaps in rather a superficial,
or, at least, in two brief a manner. The conclusion at
which the author arrives is the satisfactory one, that
good and evil are necessary ingredients in the progress
and happiness of the world, and that the latter, though
constantly changing and diminishing, must always co-
exist with what we can understand at present of freedom

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

of will, and will ever continue to be the greatest incen-
tive to the highest virtues, the noblest deeds and the
active energies of mankind. ' I think it well to see
that it is by overcoming evil, as well moral evil as natural
evil, that we rise in the scale of creation. This very fact
convinces us that evil was not brought here otherwise
than beneficently — is in fact part of the scheme of a
benevolent Creator. This may aid us, too, in supporting
manfully the unavoidable, and in combating manfully all
remediable evils. He who seeks truth and loves goodness
has God upon his side.1 London, July 27th.

Literary Remains of Mrs. Trench.

Another example of a good and clever woman being
the mother of a distinguished man.

The qualities and talents only half developed in the
woman, partially concealed perhaps in domestic life or
really shorn or clouded by delicate health and the daily
round of petty household cares — those qualities and
talents reappear in man, and, flourishing in a genial
soil, bring forth lasting fruit.

Aston Clinton, September \Sth.

Fifth volume of Guizot's ' Memoirs.'

Interesting as it relates to living characters and to
well-known incidents ; but how small do many events
now appear, that caused such agitation and labour only
twenty years ago. What an immense deal of writing,
talking and intriguing about the Syrian question !

England triumphed, but Turkey remained equally
weak and tottering. Aston Clinton, September 18th.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Correspondence of Leigh Hunt.

A vein of tender and even religious, as well as of poetical
feeling, runs through all Hunt's letters. How tender
and kind a husband and father they show him to be,
how faithful and good a friend !

September 28th.

One of the great uses of Art is to teach us how to
look into Nature.

Here is the same idea much better expressed from
the Cornhill Magazine, June 1862 : —

'Moreover the mere physical aspect of things be-
comes clearer to many of us in a picture than in the
reality. A man who has walked about his fields for
twenty years sees them painted by Gainsborough and
then begins to understand them. . . . The original,
whether in Nature or in Human Nature, is so vaguely
great : we want a neat precise translation without too
much of that restless, palpitating life, which distracts
our senses and makes our thoughts a dream.''

June \st.

A song, a song!
The dull to rouse, the sad to cheer,
To waken smiles, to chase the tear

A song, a song !

A song, a song !
Now full of glee, elf-like and wild,
Strange measure of some mountain child,

A song, a song !
31

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

A song, a song !
A simple, sweet, old-fashioned ditty
That gently pleads for love and pity ;

A song, a song !

No song, no song !
That tender voice, that artless lay
Are stealing fast my heart away :

No song, no song !

L. DE R.

Life of Washington Irving. First and second vol-
umes, composed principally of his letters.

They are the productions of a kind, generous and genial

man, and contain indications of the humour and pathos

found in his writings, more of the former than of the

latter. One must esteem and like the author of those

simple yet gracefully penned letters which abound in

good and affectionate feelings, but I do not think they

give evidence of much power or originality of mind.

October 12th.
Owen, a Waif.

One of the most interesting novels I have read for a
long time. The story is very, indeed most, improbable,
but the writing is simple and vigorous, the characters
are Avell drawn and the lessons conveyed, without any
preaching, by the tale itself, are great and pure.

October 28th.
On The Origin of Species. By Darwin.
A theory strange and ingenious with apparently, how-
ever, many cogent reasons on its side which fascinate,
at least, the unlearned reader.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

We follow the author with interest and pleased
surprise whilst he attempts to show how species grow,
as it were, out of varieties, the latter becoming more
and more distinct by the process of Natural Selection,
until, after the lapse of ages, they bear but a faint
resemblance to the ancestors from whom they sprang.
By inheritance or community of descent is explained
the similarity of pattern in members of the same class,
the natural system of classification being a genealogical
arrangement, and likewise the existence so often met
with of rudimentary or useless organs and the resem-
blance of the embryos of distinct animals.

We are, however, rudely startled when we find that
man can form no exception in Darwin's theory, that
he can boast no higher parentage than any other
Mammalia, and that his mind and reason have merely
been developed by the all-powerful effects of Natural
Selection. Aston Clinton, October %9tk.

Religio Chemici.

These Essays by George Wilson are extremely inter-
esting, written with much true religious feeling and
practical thought. They convey also considerable in-
struction in a clear, pleasant manner.

1863.

* Let no cry be heard. Crush the escaping groan on
the yet quivering lips of the desires thou hast strangled.
Uncover not the pale faces of thy departed. Utter not
their names aloud. Know thyself and bear to be

33 D

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

unknown. Strike down this beggar heart that prowls
for alms and stops men's pity in the public place.
Justify the whole endeavour in the perfect deed. Slay
thyself and hide the knife. Even so, and as, in large
compassion of fond eyes, young graves set grieving,
kind nature makes much haste to cast over the hillocks
of the recent dead her grassy carpet of the tender
green ; so silently and for others' sakes with such a
noble haste do thou, too, hide beneath the serenity of
a smiling face the sorrow of thine immortal soul ! ,
— The Ring of Amasis, by Owen Meredith.

Aston Clinton.
Life of Father Mathew.

Life of Burke.

Life of William Blake.

Seventh and eighth volumes of Froude's ' History.'

Less paradoxical and one-sided than his former volumes
— beautifully written and full of interest, but some-
what too long. His materials, foreign letters, des-
patches, &c. not sufficiently digested and made part of
the narrative.

Hard Cash. By Charles Reade.

Full of talent and of absurdity, of beauty and of hideous
exaggerations. Enough material for half-a-dozen

no\

els.

Life of Theodore Parker.
Rather too much spun out — the style of the author a
bad imitation of that of Parker himself.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

1864.

Perishes, Maximes et Correspondance de Joubert.

Still very interesting from the genius, the worth,
the nobility, the originality of the subject of the
Memoir. He was a great thinker and also great
in deeds of beneficence, kindness and mercy. Though
his words were often burning, and his indignation
and wrath against injustice, fanaticism and intolerance
full of bitter sarcasm, there was an immense deal of
tenderness in his nature displayed in a variety of ways
— in his love for children and his almost passionate
fondness for flowers — a nosegay always bloomed upon
the table from which he preached.

Aston Clinton, September.

Histoire Elementaire et Critique de J6sus. Par
A. Peyrat.

The very opposite of Renan, a sort of French Colenso.
Mr. Peyrat displays the same cold, pitiless good sense
as the Bishop of Natal, and proves how improbable,
nay, how impossible are the various narrations contained
in the Gospels. I naturally agree with his view of the
New Testament, but is it not strange that the world
should owe the greatest strides it has made in civiliza-
tion, morality, and, to use one of Parker's words, the
humanities of life, to a falsehood and an illusion ? what
great truth must not have been wrapped up in those
fables. Aston Clinton, September 3Qth.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Broken Light. By Frances Power Cobbe.

A disciple of Theodore Parker, Miss Cobbe follows
in his track with great power, eloquence and clearness.
The following is a sort of resume of her faith : Re-
ligious Faith, in its high, true sense, faith in the
presence of a Heavenly Father, is a thing which God
gives, not in answer to studies and researches, but to
prayers and deeds. It is a thing which the clearest
mind may lack, and the humblest heart possess in
fullest measure. It is a thing which we can only gain
by prayer, only keep by obedience. There is no
winning it by argument, no preserving it by force of
logic in a life of sin. ... Is it not fitting that the
highest and divinest of all gifts should be attainable to
all God's children, whether learned or ignorant, wise or
dull, if only they be upright, good and true of heart ?

September 30th.

Tractatus Theologico Politicus. By Spinoza.

A critical Inquiry into the History, Purpose and
Authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures.

This appears to me the fountain-head of all the
criticisms on the Bible, the arsenal from which present
free-thinkers have taken many of their weapons. Here
are some of the conclusions at which Spinoza arrives : —
' We have shown that Scripture does not teach philo-
sophy, but piety ; and that the whole contents of the
Bible are accommodated to the capacity and precon-
ceived opinions of the vulgar As in the nature

of things that dogma, which, to one is pious and profit-
able, is to another impious and profitless ; therefore are

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

all dogmas to be judged by their effects, by the works
they produce, by the lives and conversations to which

they lead Nor shall I now shrink from specifying

the heads of an universal faith, which are also the
fundamental dogmas of Scripture. They are these : —
There is a Supreme Being, who delights in justice and
mercy, whom, all who would be saved, are bound to
obey, and whose worship consists in the practice of
justice and charity towards our neighbour.1

Fireside Travels. By Russell Lowell.

A quaint, prettily written book, addressed to ' Story '
and somewhat in his style, but more thoughtful and
vigorous. November 21th.

Lectures on the Science of Language. Second
Series. By Max Muller.

'The names given by the early framers of language
repose chiefly on wit and fancy — thus " wheat " was
called " the white plant " (Sanskrit " sveta,11 white).
In Sanskrit "silver" is counted white and called
" Sveta.11 " Sarit,11 meaning " goer 11 from " sar 11 = to
go, became the name of "river.11 "Sara" was used
for " sap.11 The Latin " aevum,11 meaning " going,"
became the name of "time, age," and its derivative,
" aetemus," was made to express " eternity." That on
which a thing stands is called its " base," and " basis "
in Greek meant no more than going, the ground on
which it is safe to walk. The moon was called " luna "
from hmus = " the shining ; " the stars " stellse " from
Sanskrit " the strewers of light." '

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

1866.
On the Origin of Language. By E. B. Tylor. (F. R.)

' Every one recognizes the fact that certain expressions
of face, as well as certain inter jectional sounds, corre-
spond to certain feelings, but it is not thus generally
recognized that there is a real connection between the
expression of the face and the sound which comes from
it. The human body is, among other things, an instru-
ment for producing vocal sounds, and the different
attitudes of mouth, cheeks, &c, which belong to
different feelings of the mind, modify the position of
the vocal organs, and thereby the sounds uttered.1

The above might explain many interjectional cries
from which various words owe their origin.

The old and weary wish for the ' wings of a Dove '
to fly away and be at rest ; the young who are sad and
distressed, would rather be carried away by the wings of
the swallow to new scenes and sunny climes.

To the young there is Hope, to the old only Repose.

June 20th.

Les Apotres. By Erxest Renan.

Ecce Homo.

The Philosophical Works of Henry St. John,
Viscount Bolingbroke.

La Revolution. Par Edgar Qtjinet.

Ninth and tenth volumes of Froude's ' History of
England.'

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

The Gay Science. By Dallas.
Always suggestive, and brilliant at times. The ' Gay
Science1 leaves no very clear impression on the mind.

According to Mr. Dallas, the aim of Art is pleasure,
and the criticism of Art consequently, if it be a Science,
the Science of pleasure, but it is just in that Science
that he appears to me to be least explicit.

1867.

Memoirs of George III. By Jesse.

' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,

The soul that rises with us, our life's star

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar ;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home.''

Wordsworth.

Adam and the Adamite or the Harmony of Scrip-
ture and Ethnology. By Dominick McCausland.

Mr. McCausland has made for himself a theory, and, as
usual, finds what he looks for in the Bible. In the
Scripture account of the Creation and Deluge he sees
nothing that conflicts with Science. The Deluge was
but a partial flood, and Adam was not the first man,
but the first of a new race of men quite distinct from
that of the Negro or Mongol already in existence.

The Reign of Law. By the Duke of Argyll.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

1867.

The old year was rapidly approaching its end and
the bells rang merrily, but the wind mocked their joyous
notes and sighed and wailed. At one moment the glad
sound reached my ear — the next, it was lost in a dismal
chant — the angry shrieking and plaintive sobbing of
the wind — prophesying, as it were, wickedness and sor-
row, misfortune and disaster. But in the midst of the
wild mournful turmoil came again the merry chime ; did
it foretell the happy days that awaited us intermingled
with many dark and sad ones ? The golden threads that
fate was weaving upon a sable ground ? I tried not to
hear the wind and only listened to the bells, with a half-
superstitious dread of the former — but alas ! the wind
was near and around me, making the trees groan and
shake by its rough handling — and the bells seemed so
far away ! Still the hopeful peal rose ever and anon
above the blast, like the voice of human sympathy, or
the mercy of our God ! And the raging wind could not
completely drown it. For an hour I listened with an
aching heart to the war of the wind and the bells, then
the storm subsided, and the bells ceased likewise. The
overture had been played out, and the New Year began.

Aston Clinton, Jammry.

There is a light well known to us, for it is the
light which visits us at morning and evening, making
the day begin and end in beauty, which has the magic
power of imparting its own loveliness to all it shines
upon. It idealises the commonest things, and the
fairest look doubly fair under its soft yet glowing

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

radiance ; it turns the dull, grey clouds into gold, stone
into marble, it gives a brighter gleam to the jewel and
lends a glory to the little wayside flower.

How much death resembles this beauty-giving light !
Those it touches with its ice-cold hand lose in an
instant their earthly stains and imperfections, and
appear to us altogether good and beautiful, and every
incident, however trifling, connected with them, is taken
from the category of passing events and becomes full of
meaning and interest. A halo is thrown around them,
they are canonised by death. Whilst here they were
poor mortals like ourselves, but death has unfolded their
wings, and as, alas ! they soar away from us they be-
come transformed not only in the present but in the
past. They were angels then and now.

Time is like the policeman whose rude office it is to
make poor loiterers move on. The houseless wanderer
has found a sheltered nook, or a patch of warm sun-
light, or only a stone step where he would so willingly
sit down and rest were it only for a few moments, but
the inexorable policeman cries, ' Move on ; move on.1

And the stern necessity of ever moving on, of
constant change, is likewise the inexorable law of all
human beings, of all living things.

1870.

Lectures and Philosophical Remains of Professor
Ferrier.

Institutes of Metaphysic. By Ferrier.

Powerfully written and reasoned with great clearness.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Society we must have, but let it be Society and
not exchanging news or eating from the same dish.1 —
Society and Solitude, by Emerson. February.

We emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across
the astonished earth ; then plunge again into the Inane.
. . . But whence, O Heaven, whither? Sense knows
not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through Mystery
to Mystery." — Sartor Resartus, by Carlyle.

Reading 'The Cloister and the Hearth' and
Kingsley's ' Christmas in the West Indies.'

Full of beautiful and interesting descriptions of Nature.

September 15th.

'The benefits of affection are immense and the one
event which never loses its romance is the encounter
with superior persons on terms allowing the happiest
intercourse.1 — Society and. Solitude, by Emerson.

The country seems strangely quiet considering what
is going on abroad ; war more horrible in this en-
lightened, civilized age, than it has almost ever shown
itself.

The Emperor a prisoner ; the Empire a thing of the
past, and France a Republic.

Much alarmed for our relatives at Paris.

September.

1871.

Peace seems now about to be concluded ; but, alas !
how long will misery and mourning outlast the war that
has occasioned them !

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' La saintete de cette vie est dans le travail et dans
la peine.1 — Penseeft, par Boirdaloue.

Reading Hawthorne's Note Books.
Full of thoughtful and suggestive passages. He had
not much knowledge of art; but here and there his
deep poetic temperament seemed kindled by some
picture or statue, and he would describe them with
enthusiasm. The Venus de Medici and Michael Angelo's
statue of Lorenzo de Medici appear to have produced
more effect upon him than any other work of art.

' What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined for life to strengthen
each other in all labours, to rest on each other in all
sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one
with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the
moment of the last parting.1

Adam Bede, by George Eliot.

1872.

If you are descending a river with a strong current,
a little breeze blowing in a contrary direction will hardly
retard the progress of the boat, or be felt by the
passengers ; and so in life, if we are much engrossed
with one great thought or grief, with an ardent hope
or fear, a thousand little ills and pleasures, disappoint-
ments and vexations, will pass without affecting us in
more than a very slight degree ; the current is speeding
us on, and we hardly feel the wind that is playing
around us. To the really good man, that current is
Faith and trust in all that is good and holy, the love

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

of God leading him on to blessed deeds ; but often it is
some absorbing sorrow or regret, or maybe a ray of
hope, which, though far away, shines still on some
distant spot of our earthly horizon. Jidy 91st.

Made the acquaintance of Berthold Auerbach ; he
was extremely amiable and is very easy to get on with,
evidently a vain but kind and generous man ; common-
looking, with a stout, short figure, but a fine brow and
bright eye. He talked of himself, his works, his friends
from monarchs downwards, he repeated his bon-mots and
repartees ; but still he seemed interested in others and
anxious to give pleasure. Cadenabbia, September.

Finished • Deutsche Liebe.'
A truly charming little tale, prettily written with some
pretty thoughts, but rather thin and shadowy.

Bead a pretty story of Auerbaeh's, 'Die Stief-
mutter.'

1 Ueber alien Gipfeln

1st Ruh\

In alien Wipfeln

Spurest du

Kaum einen Hauch ;

Die Voglein schweigen im Walde,

Warte nur, balde

Ruhest du auch ! 1 — Goethe.

' What a blessing it is to mortals, what a kindness
of Providence, that life is made so uncertain, that death
is thrown in among the possibilities of our being ; that
these awful mysteries are thrown around us into which

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

we may vanish ! For without it how would it be
possible to be heroic ; how should we plod along in
common places for ever, never dreaming high things,
never risking anything ? 1

By Nathaniel Hawthorne.

1873.

Beading ' Memoirs of Baron Bunsen.'

A real German, hard-working, yet somewhat mystical ;
he was an excellent man, following through his busy,
well-filled life the highest and noblest aspirations. In
religious matters he tried to combine modern criticism
and ancient faith, perfect freedom with the Christian
dogma. Many-sided in his views and feelings, he
seemed to make friends among the good and great in
every camp. March Si-d.

Enigmas of Life. By W. R. Greg.
Very well written ; result of much thought, but the
Enigmas remain Enigmas still. The great riddles, the
mysterious perplexities of life are not — apparently cannot
be — solved or made clear. Fortunately, there is no diffi-
culty in seeing what we are required to do. Though
we cannot see God, the path He has marked out for us
is visible to us all. Though we cannot know Him, we
can read His will and His laws in conscience, history
and nature.

Literature and Dogma. By Matthew Arnold.
A remarkable book, showing, as the author says, the
powerful influence of the ' Zeit Geist ' which allows

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

him to write so boldly, and to attack without the least
reserve the long-received dogmas of religion. Experi-
ence and reason are his only guides to faith, and these
lead him to recognise an eternal Power that makes for
Righteousness — or more fully perhaps — 'the Eternal
Power, not ourselves, by which all things fulfil the law
of their being."'

There is, it appears to me, a want of clearness about
the 'Power not ourselves, which makes for righteous-
ness1— at times it is spoken of as all we can positively
know of the Deity — at times it seems to melt away into
a mere tendency, or a system of laws without any
lawyer. As such it is not what the Bible appears to
teach, to proclaim, the One Holy Spirit to be obeyed,
loved and worshipped.

Is it not, as presented by the author, too impal-
pable and shadowy to be our ' Refuge, our present
help in trouble,1 our Father, our Judge and our
Redeemer ?

Animals and their Masters. By the Author of
' Friends in Council.'

Very pleasant reading, like all the books of Helps. Per-
haps somewhat too discursive to leave any very definite
impression on the mind — or rather many definite ideas.
The author is quite right in what he says about cruelty
to animals being generally caused by want of knowledge
about them and defective power of imagination— two
defects, which should be specially considered, in the
education of the people.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Much interested in 'Die Kinder der Welt,' by
Auerbach.

It is beautifully written, and though a novel with a pur-
pose, not in the least dull. There are parts of it rather
too much spun out, and it has the fault which all novels
have — written to prove either a theory, or to destroy
one — that the story is moulded by the author to sub-
stantiate his views. Consequently one is always inclined
to take up the other side of the question, and instead
of enjoying the novel, dispute its truth.

In ' Die Kinder der Welt ' it is religious belief of
every kind which is attacked — not harshly or angrilv —
but calmly and coolly treated as being legendary and
imaginative, more or less hurtful to the human race,
which has now outgrown the age of fables ! The charac-
ters described in ' Die Kinder der Welt ' are with one
exception all not only excellent, but generally happy,
tho'' there is no Holy One that leads them to righteous-
ness— no hope of immortality to gild their hereafter ;
their religion is made to appear, if harmless, at least
perfectly useless to Mankind. May.

Just finished Mrs. Grote's ' Life ' of her Husband.
There is a want of tenderness and delicate affection in the
writer, but she has given us an interesting Memoir of the
Historian, who was as simple and courteous in his man-
ner as he was learned and profound. Devoted to his-
torical and philosophical studies, he had but little love
for the beauties of nature, and was eminently happy
when leading the life of a laborious student among his
books and a few congenial friends, such as J. S. Mill
and Sir G. C. Lewis. July 3rd.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Visitors : — Mr. Story,* Mr. Motley : f both very
pleasant as well as very clever — also Mr. Frederick
Locker. 1 July 6th, Sunday.

Head Lord Houghton's Essay on Walter Savage
Landor.

Very interesting and well written. Must read again
some of his (Landor's) magnificent prose and thought-
laden poetry. His love for flowers, which would not allow
him to pick them, appears in the following lines : —

' And 'tis and ever was my wish and way,
To let all flowers live freely, and all die —
Whene'er their genius bids their soul depart —
Among their kindred, in their native place.
I never pluck the rose, the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank,
And not reproached me. The tiny sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands
Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold.1

Finished the first volume of • R6cit d'une Scaur.' §

These, indeed, are the darkest of earthly shadows, but
they cannot dim the light of hope and love and religious
fervency which illumine its pages — a light borrowed
possibly from humanly-lighted fires, but God must have

* W. W. Story, the well-known American sculptor, also author
of Roba di Roma.

f John Lothrop Motley, the distinguished author of The Dutch
Republic, and the Life and Death of John Barneveldt, &c.

% Charming writer of verse, and very pleasant talker, author of
London Lyrics.

§ By Mrs. Augustus Craven.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

given the fuel and have made the flame possible though
the igniting spark may not have descended from heaven.
In self-forgetting love, in devotion, fervour and aspira-
tions towards the Eternal, the Perfect, the Ideal, there
must be something Divine, whether they spring from
Catholicism, Protestantism, or Judaism. July 19th.

Continued 'Le Rdcit d'une Soeur.'
One long description of death-beds — not the least
wearisome, however, because true, and after all what is
there in life that comes home to us so much and
interests us all so deeply as death ? August 1st.

Reading ' Bath Archives ' and Moscheles' ' Leben.'
Both gossipy and amusing books. Moscheles appear.^
in his wife's interesting Memoirs as a thoroughly kind,
amiable man, an excellent husband, father and friend.
The most interesting parts of the two volumes are those
which relate to Mendelssohn — the beaming, tender,
graceful genius — Moscheles1 early pupil and lasting
friend. August 6th.

Reading ' Life of Sterling,' by Carlyle,
which Henry Fitz Roy gave me more than twenty years
ago at Brighton. Strange that I should be reading it
here for the second time, as a guest of my dear niece
Blanche.* . . . Balcarres is certainly very romantic, the
old grey buildings, the grand trees, extended view and
Italian gardens give it a sort of poetical picturesqueness,
which the English places I know do not possess.

September, Balcarres.
* Lady Lindsay.

49 E

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Bead • Lucian ' in the ' Ancient Classics for English
Readers.'

A very entertaining little volume. It is curious that
writing more than a century after Christ — he was born
about a.d. 120 — he should hardly ever allude to
Christianity, particularly as in his Dialogues of the Gods
and other of his works, he satirises the various systems
of philosophy taught at that time. Once he mentions
Christians by name, and classes them with Atheists
and Epicureans. ... In another place, speaking of
Christians, he says : ' You know they still reverence
that great man, him that was crucified in Palestine for
introducing these new doctrines into the world.1

October.

Read the ' Autobiography of John Stuart Mill.'

Extremely interesting. There was much poetry and
feeling in the logician and Political Economist ; but I
was struck with one strange omission, in his Auto-
biography— the man who declared he owed not only
his happiness but so much of his mental culture to his
wife, and on her account respected and looked up to
woman in general, never even mentions the name of his
own mother !

Began Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations,'

which I find very interesting, though occasionally, to my
shame, I do not understand him. October 21st.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Read the first part of ' Sara Coleridge.'
Her letters are charming, full of thought, of clever
criticisms, and of sound sense, with occasional poetical
descriptions.

Finished the second and, I regret to say, last
volume of Sara Coleridge's Letters.

In the latter part of her life how much broader she
becomes in her religious, or rather theological views !
Here is one very liberal confession : — ' My own belief
is that the whole logical truth is not in the possession
of any one party , (I would substitute or add the
word faith), ' that it exists in fragments amongst the
several parties and that much of it is yet to be
developed.1 December 4<th.

Reading James Martineau's ' Endeavours after a
Christian Life.'

Much pleased with its fervent eloquence. This is true
and well said : ' How welcome would it often be to
many a child of anxiety and toil, to be suddenly trans-
ferred from the heat and din of the city, the restless-
ness and worry of the mart, to the midnight garden or
the mountain top ! And like refreshment does a high
faith, with its infinite prospects ever open to the heart,
afford to the worn and weary. No laborious travels
are needed for the devout mind, for it carries within it
Alpine heights and starlit skies, which it may reach
with a moment's thought, and feel at once the loneliness
of Nature and the magnificence of God ! 1 — From ' Great
Principles and Small Duties.''

December 9.0th.
51

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading with astonished admiration the ' Memoirs
of Mary Somerville.'

What an extraordinarily gifted and modest woman she
was — soaring in her scientific works far, far away from
the comprehension of us ignoramuses, and yet retaining
all her feminine graces, and not neglecting any of her
household occupations or motherly duties.

December 25th.
1874.

Read in James Martineau's ' Discourses ' :

* Sorrow no sin.1 How true is this ! ' You cannot
sever them : grief and love must stay or go together.1
— Endeavours after a Christian Life. January 3rd

Much interested in Lady Minto's ' Life of the
First Lord Minto.'

He was hard-working, kind, genial, patriotic, cheery,
without any great brilliancy, an adoring husband, a
very tender father. Besides his own letters, chiefly to
Lady Elliot, there are many interesting ones from
Burke and Wyndham, and many amusing ones from his
sister-in-law, Lady Malmesbury, and a few from Lady
Palmerston, whose good and social qualities reappeared
in her distinguished son, the * bright little Harry '
mentioned by Lord Minto.

St. Leonards, February.

Motley's 'Life and Death of John Barneveldt,'
the great Dutch Statesman.

The first volume rather long and heavy ; but the second,
containing the trial and execution of Barneveldt, and

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

the trial and imprisonment of Hugo Grotius, with the
dramatic story of his escape, very interesting. Barne-
veldt suffered through the religious intolerance of that
age — an intolerance quite as great on the side of the
Protestants as on that of the Catholics.

Certainly, the world has made some real progress
in the last two hundred years ! April.

Lord Roseeery* very pleasant, quite above the
young men of the day. Jnl'J 29M.

1880.

' L'homme est infiniment superieur a la nature, mais
la nature est toujours inepuisable dans sa monotonie.
On sait qu'elle reste, quelle doitrester cequ'elle est; on
n"eprouve en sa personne ce besoin d'aller en avant qui,
fait qu'on se lasse d'une societe, d'une conversation qui
ne satisfait pas. Qui a jamais trouve que les arbres
devraient devenir rouge, bleus, que le soleil d'aujour-
d'hui avait tort de ressembler au soleil d'hier. On
nMnvoque point la le progres de la nouveaute et voila
pourquoi la nature nous tire de Fenniii du monde en
meme temps qu'elle nous repose de son agitation. II
lui a ete donne d'etre toujours la meme, sans etre jamais
insipide.-1 — Guizot.

' Exalt the Lord my God, and worship at his holy
Hill ; for the Lord thy God is holy1 (Psalm xcix.) l The

* The Earl of Rosebery, connected with my mother through his
marriage with her niece, Hannah de Rothschild.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Lord our God is holy,1 that is the great blessed truth
which science cannot establish, but which is revealed to
us by conscience and which the prophet feels and sees,
tho1 it escapes the gaze and searching examination of
the acutist scientist. But though not among the truths
which illumine his field of vision, it fills the heart of
man and sanctifies his life, and it is his beacon and his
consolation.

' Le temps vous apprendra comme a moi, a ne pas
dedaigner les joies du second rang et a enjouir sans les
compter pour plus qu'elles ne valent.1 — Guizot.

London, June 6th.

' Prendre son parti, qu'est ce ? Chasser les pensees,
de regret, en substiteur d'autres organiser a nouveau ce
qui vous reste.1 — Pensees de Doudax. Jidy 9th.

' Nur ein enges Hertz wiichst nicht, aber ein weites
wird grosser ; jenes verengen die Jahre, dieses dehnen
sich aus.1 — Jean Paul. August 11th.

' The wise man says of the virtuous woman : " Her
hands hold the distaff.1' I could say much about these
words. Your spindle is a mass of good desires. Spin
every day a little ; carry out the thread of your wishes
into execution and you will do much.1 — Letters of Fran-
cois de Sales. Cromer, August %6th.

1884.

Read a well-written article in the Revue des Deux
Mondes by Caro, on the second volume of AmieTs
Journal. A sad account of a beautiful, but too sensible

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

and morbid mind. These, however, were consolatory
words after speaking of the deceptions and miseries of
this life, he says : —

' Le mystic et partout, lVimporte pourvu que le
monde sait Poeuvre du bien et que la conscience du
devoir ne nous ait pas trompes, donner du bonheur et
faire du bien voila notre aurore de salut, notre phare,
notre raison d'etre."1

This again, written when he was suffering from an
illness he knew was fatal : —

' La mort elle-meme peut devenir un consentement,
done un acte moral.

Caro finishes his article with these words to those
who, like Amiel, live too much merely a life of self-
examination and analysis : —

' Et maintenant, occupez-vous un peu des autres, sous
peine de trouver le chatiment de cette inclusive attention
a vous-meme dans une sorte d'incapacite, de vivre et
d'enervement. Quel est le moraliste qui a dit que, pour
retrouver son moi actif vivant, il faut savoir le perdre
ou tout au moins roublier.'' October 1st.

Reading the last two volumes of Carlyle's 'Life.'

What a strange compound of noble generous sentiments
and extraordinary insight and powers of description with
irritability, frequent incapacity of seeing talents and
worth, and coarse exaggeration ; but he was a genius
and had really a tender, loving heart, in spite of his
selfishness and sometimes really brutal conduct to the
wife who was so dear to him. October.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading Croker's • Letters and Papers.'

Find them interesting and amusing, while I expected
they would be rather heavy and dull. November 15th

A quaint description of age :—

* His limbs failing him, and his trunk getting packed
with the infirmities which mean that one is bound on a
long journey.1 — The Poet at the Breakfast Table.

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

1885.

Reading with great interest ' Letters of George
Eliot.'

Hamble Cliff, February lUh.

Read with much interest 'Autobiography of Henry
Taylor ' and Mahaffy's ' Greece.'

Aston Clinton, March.

I do not know who wrote this, but it is very true : —
' L'homme ne peut rien faire de mieux ; pour s'elever
dans Fordre des sentiments que de se rapprocher du
chien * October Mh.

Reading Greville's • Memoirs.'

Parts of which are very interesting, parts dull, but all
well written.

' Charles Darwin.' By Grant Allen.

Somewhat too wordy. I should have liked more of
Charles Darwin himself and his letters, and less of Grant
Allen. November.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading 'Vie intime de Voltaire' and 'Mrs. Keith's
Crime.'

The latter a well- written, clever, but horribly painful
story. Why write anything so distressing from the first
to the last line ? It certainly has the merit of complete
originality. Aston Clinton, November %3rd.

Rise of Silas Lapham.
Very original and clever. The following seems to me a
new and true way of looking at the possible effect of our
failings : —

' Nothing can be thrown quite away, and it can't be
that our sins only weaken us.1 December.

1886.

' Des pas infiniment petits et des periodes infiniment
longues, dit Strauss, tels sont les deux passe partout qui
ouvrent des portes accessibles naguere au seul miracle.''

January.

Reading the last chapters of Scherer's article on
Melchior Grimm.

What a soA finale to a prosperous career ! And a short
article on a sudden termination to a successful life —
that of poor General Grant. Aston Clinton, January.

Reading ' La Morte.' By Bourget.
According to the author, founded on fact, though
apparently written to prove the necessity of religion
to direct our conduct, and make our lives both good
and happy.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading with much pleasure ' Oceana.'

Though I do not always agree with Mr. Froude's political
or religious views, the following I thought very
good : —

'Do we really know in what a Nation's greatness
consists ? Whether it be great or little depends
entirely on the sort of men or women that it is pro-
ducing. A sound nation is a nation that is composed
of sound human beings ; healthy in body, strong of
limb, true in word and deed, brave, sober, temperate,
chaste, to whom morals are of more importance than
wealth or knowledge, where duty is first, and the rights
of men are second, where in short, men grow up and
live and work having in them what our ancesters called
" the fear of God." '

The realm of imagination is the realm of might-be,
our haven of refuge from the shortcomings and dis-
illusions of life ; it is, to quote Spenser :

'The world's sweet Inn from care and wearisome
turmoil.' — Lowell, On the Choice of Boohs.

February.

Reading Harrison's Essays.

Remarkably well written, but he has evidently ' Comte '
upon the brain. March.

' Only we'll live awhile as children play,
Without to-morrow, without yesterday.' —

Mary Robinson, Aston Clinton, March.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

* The Melancholy of Melancholies,'' Keats would say to
us, is that of the joy which must pass away and of
beauty which must fade and die ;

< She dwells with beauty, beauty that must die :
And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu.1 May.

Reading Legouve's ' Memoirs of Sixty Years.'

Much pleased with the following sentences — taken from
a letter of Beranger :

* Et bien, pauvre enfant, courez done apres lagloire,
e'est un mirage qui vient vous chercher du fond des
deserts ; prenez bien garde qifil ne vous y entraine ; un
seul moyen vous est offert pour eviter ce malheur ;
occupez vous d'etre utile — e'est la loi que Dieu impose a
tout homme. Ne faites pas comme tous ceuxqui se con-
tentent de Tart pour Tart. ... La nature a marque un
emploi a toutes les facultes qu'elle distribue, il ne faut
que chercher. . . . mais surtout occupez vous plus des
autres que de vous meme. May.

' It is great vanity to think any one will attend to a
thing because it is your quarrel.'' — Steele. July.

1 Methusaleh might be half an hour telling what
o'clock it was ; but as for us post-diluvians, we ought
to do everything in haste, and in our speeches as well
as our actions, remember that our time is short.-1 —
Steele.

Reading with much painful interest ' Children of
G-ibeon,' by Besant.

November.
59

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

1887.
Reading Shelley's 'Life.'
Hayward's Letters very commonplace.

Reading the last two volumes of Greville's
' Memoirs ' — chiefly political, and • Lectures on
History,' by Stubbs.

Suggestive and thoughtful, but rather one-sided.

February.
' How we got our Bible.'

A most interesting little book. The most faithful
copyists were the Jews.

Reading ' Emerson in Concord.'

Talking of Slavery, he says : ' They who help, and they
who hinder are all equally diligent in hastening its
downfall. " Blessed be the unbelievers.11 1

' Do the Duty of the Hour.1

'The Sabbath is my best debt to the past, and
binds me to some gratitude still. It brings me that
frankincense out of a sacred antiquity.1

' One should dignify, entertain, and signalise each
journey or adventure by carrying to it a literary
masterpiece and making acquaintance with it on the
way.1

' It is dainty to be sick, if you have leisure and
convenience for it.1

'The delight in another's superiority is my best
gift from God — for here the moral nature is involved,
which is higher than the intellectual.'

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' To me the difference of churches looks so frivolous
that I cannot easily give the preference that civility
should to one or another. To old eyes how supremely
unimportant the form under which we celebrate the
justice, love and truth, the attributes of the Deity and
the soul.''

His own last days were serene and happy. In
1864 his journal says : ' Within I do not find wrinkles
and used heart, but unspent youth.1 — Emerson.

1889.

* L'Ombre passe et repasse
Et sans repasser Thomme passe.

' Time flies, we say ; ah no !
Alas ! time stays, we go.'

Austin Dobson : Sundial Inscriptions.

' Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world.
It throws away that which is invaluable in respect of its
present use, and irreparable when it is past, being to be
recovered by no power of art or hand.-1

Jeremy Taylor : Holy Living and Dying.

1890.

Reading Justin McCarthy's ' George II.'

Amusing and useful in recalling what one has read to
one's (my) waning memory.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' This is the way physicians end or mend us —
Secundum Artem ; but though we sneer
In health, when ill, we call them to attend us
Without the least propensity to jeer.''
Very true. Don Juan.

* Into the Justice sempiternates
The power of vision that your world receives,
As eye into the ocean penetrates,
Which, though it sees the bottom near the shore,
Upon the deep perceives it not, and yet
It is there, but it is holden by the depth.1

Par. xxxi. 37, Divine Comedy, Dante.

' The time shall come when free as seas or wind
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind ;
Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,
And seas but join the regions they divide."1

Alexander Pope.

Reading the ' Correspondence of Princess Lieven
and Earl Grey.'

Interesting, but there is a want of humour, and a same-
ness of subject in Princess Li even's letters, which make
them sometimes rather heavy and wearisome reading.
She must have been a remarkably clever woman, with a
great deal of head, but not much heart. There is more
feeling in Lord Grey's letters, as well as great dignity
and sincerity.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Re-reading ' Obiter Dicta,'*

which I had quite forgotten ; only remembering that
I liked it very much. The article on Carlyle extremely
interesting.

Much pleased with this quotation from Goethe's
Faust. It is the Earth Spirit that speaks : —

' It is thus at the roaring loom of time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by.'

1890.

Reading ' The Jews under the Roman Rule,' by
Mobison, and ' Kingsley's Life and Letters.'

The former a somewhat drv account of bare facts, the
latter full of interesting and poetical details about a
most interesting and poetical individual.

Reading "Walter Scott's • Journal.'

How bravely he bore his financial reverses !

September.

Just finished two long, but still very interesting,
volumes of Kingsley's Life and Letters. Though too
violent and positive he was a delightful man, with a
loving heart and a true poetic feeling.

Much pleased with 'A Window in Thrums,' by
J. M. Babbie.

Full of humour and pathos. I like this : —

1 Let us no longer cheat our consciences by talking
of filthy lucre : money may always be a beautiful thing ;
it is we who make it grimy.'

* By the Rt. Honble. Augustine Birrell.
63

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading 'Coningsby.'

Much pleased with a good deal I had forgotten.

August %9th.

Reading the Memoirs of the ' Due de Nivernois.'
Most entertaining.

Looked over Lord Houghton's ' Life,1 and now plunged
into Darkest England — written powerfully and con-
vincingly. December.

1891.

Reading, with great interest, 'Physical Religion,'
by Max Muxler.

He tries, and I think succeeds in proving that :

' The human mind such as it is and unassisted by
any miracles, excepting the eternal miracles of Nature,
did arrive at the concept of God in its highest and
purest form, did arrive at some of the fundamental
Doctrines of Religion."1

' There is a God above all the gods, whatever their
names, whatever their concepts may have been in the
progress of the ages, and in the growth of the Human
Mind.'

(' He who above the gods was the one God."' — Rig
Veda.)

' The Commandment to overcome hatred by love is
an old rule in the eyes of Buddha, as it was in the eyes
of Confucius., — Max Muller. March.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

4 Bar thy door not to the stranger,
Be he friend or be he foe ;
For the tree will shade the woodman,
While his axe doth lay it low.1

I read with much interest the late Dean Church's
well-written book on the ' Oxford Movement ' and ' The
Publisher and his Friends ' — the amusing collection of
the correspondence and reminiscences of Murray's father
and grandfather, the Founder of the Firm.

' The flowers my guests, the birds my pensioners,
Books my companions and but few besides.''

W. S. Landor.

' I strove with none, for none were worth the strife ;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art.
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life ;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart."1

W. S. Landor.

Finished the ' Life ' of Laurence Oliphant.

Beading ' Coriolanus.'

' In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity.
To know the change and feel it,
Where there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme."'

Keats : Happy Insensibility.

65 p

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading the Life of Tait,

in two rather ponderous volumes. He was an excellent,
hard-working, though not brilliant man, and because he
was calm, moderate, and many-sided in his views and
judgments on Church matters, was always getting into
hot water with both parties of High and Low Church-
men.

Reading 'Felix Holt,' which I had almost for-
gotten.

Finished reading • Japanese Girls and Women,' by
Miss Bacon.

Very interesting and amusing.

Commenced ' Mungo Park.'
It is interesting now to turn from the present to the
past wonders and discoveries in Darkest Africa.

Reading : Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Little Minister. By Barrie.

David Grieve. By Mrs. Humphry Ward.

Lord Rosebery's 'Pitt.'

Esther Vanhomrigh. By Mrs. Woods.

The Lives of Palmerston and Lord Salisbury.
Edited by Traill.

Reading ' Boileau,' by Gustav Lauson.

Green's ' History of the English People.'

March 1st.

Just commenced ' The Prophets of Israel,' by
Robertson Smith.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

'The revelation recorded in the Bible is a jewel which
God has given us in a setting of Human History.''

April 16th.

* Every act we sow may come up a habit.1

Theodore Parker.

Monday, July 3rd.

An Armenian Monk's Legend :

* Craignant que fhomme ne fut semblable aux Dieux.
ainsi que le serpent Tavait promis, TEternal crea le vigne
afin qu1il devint semblable aux betes.'

This would be a good text for a Temperance
Lecture. July 19th.

Reading Morley's ' Voltaire ' and Caird's Essays.

September 29th.

Occupied myself by reading four volumes of
Morley's "Works.

October 20th.

1892.
Began Marbot's 'Memoirs.'

Reading Jenny Lind's Biography.
Much too long ; full of needless matter, tiresome repe-
titions, but still interesting, as the picture of such an
interesting, original being, and unlike any other cele-
brated singer or actress.

Finished ' Jenny Lind.'
How wonderfully she carried out all charitable, benevo-
lent wishes, fulfilling her earliest and dearest aspira-
tions !

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Sorrows are hard to bear
And doubts are slow to clear.
Each sufferer has his say,
His tale of weal or woe ;
But God has a few of us
Whom He whispers in the ear.
The rest may reason and welcome,
Tis we musicians know.1

Browning : Abt Vogler.

February.

1893.

Finished Claude's* (Mr. C. G. Montefiore) most
interesting Lectures.

I admire immensely his learning, modesty, his calm,
cultured, judicial tones, and the religious spirit with
which he treats his difficult subject. January.

Reading ' The Beauties of Nature.' By Sir John
Lubbock.

Full of interesting information, but given in rather too
detailed a manner.

' The great Ash Tree " Yggdrasil " bound together
Heaven, Earth, and Hell. The three Fates or Normas
sitting under it spinning the thread of Life."1

' The rich buttercup
Its tiny polished urn holds up,
Filled with ripe summer to the edge.1

Lowell.
* The Hibbert Lectures.
68

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' To the happy mixture of sunshine and rain we owe
the greenness of our fields/ — Hamerton.

February 16th.

' When I remember all
The friends so linked together
I have seen around me fall
Like leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.1 — Moore.

February 9\at.

I have been reading ' Venetian Studies,' by Brown.
Very interesting.

The Life of Wycliflfe.

An interesting subject — not, however, very well treated ;
still, it gives one many instructive glimpses into the
fourteenth century. April Wth.

I have been reading with much interest the two
somewhat over-bulky vols, of the ' Life and Letters
of Lord Sherbrooke '—our old friend, Robert Lowe.

He was very fond of animals — a trait in his character
which was new to me. The following lines, written

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

for a horse's epitaph, would suit our little Canine
Cemetery : —

' Soft lies the turf on those who find their rest
Beneath our common Mother's ample breast ;
Unstained by meanness, avarice, or pride,
They never cheated and they never lied.
They ne'er intrigued a rival to misplace ;
Thev ran, but never betted on the race.
Content with harmless sports and simple food,
Boundless in faith and love and gratitude.
Happy the man — if there be any such —
Of whom his Epitaph can say as much.''

May %Znd.

Heine's ' Family Letters and Writings.'

Witty, and still more, pathetic. May %4dh.

Reading Grant Duff's 'Renan.'
Very eulogistic and interesting.

Life of Keble.

Pearson's ' Fate of Nations.'
Full of knowledge of the past, but trust not of the
future. Cruelly pessimistic.

' Sleep, thou art named Eternal ! Is there, then,
No chance of waking in the noiseless realm ? '

Symonds. June 11th.

Reading Chalmers' 'Life,' by Mrs. Oliphant.
Very interesting and well written. Explaining what I
did not understand before, the rift in the Scotch
Church, which took place in 1834. June 19th.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Read ' Napoleon Intime.'

Essays. Horace "Walpole. By Dobson.

August 8th.

Reading 'Life's Greatest Possibility,' by Martin
Morris*.

A great subject for so young a man ; clever, thoughtful,
and somewhat original, though in style and mannerism
it often reminds me of Carlyle. August.

Reading the ' Life ' of Abraham Lincoln.
What a strange, interesting, original personality ! Full
of fun and humour, but also of sadness and pity !
The following lines by Charles Mackay he thought
much of: —

' Tell me, ye winged winds,
That round my path may roar,
Do ye not know some spot
Where mortals weep no more ?
Some low and pleasant vale,
Some valley in the West,
Where free from toil and pain
The weary soul may rest ?
The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low,
And sighed for pity, as it answered " No."

' Tell me, thou mighty deep.
Whose billows round me play,
Know'st thou some favoured spot
Some island far away,

* The present Lord Killanin.
71

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Where weary man may find

The place for which he sighs,

Where sorrow never lives,

And friendship never dies?
The loud waves rolling in perpetual flow
Stopped for a while, and sighed, but answered,
"No."

' And thou, serenest Moon,

That with such holy face

Dost look upon the earth,

Asleep in Night's embrace,

Tell me, in all thy round,

Hast thou not seen some spot

Where mortal man might find a happier lot?
Behind a cloud the moon withdrew in woe,
And a voice sweet, but sad, responded, " No.11

' Tell me, my secret Soul,

Oh ! tell me, Hope and Faith,

Is there no resting-place

From sorrow, sin and death ?

Is there no happy spot

Where mortals may be blessed,

Where grief may find a balm

And weariness a rest ?

Faith, Hope, Love, the best to mortals given,

Waved their bright wings and whispered, " Yes,

in Heaven.111

September 92nd.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Have been reading with great pleasure Stanley's
1 Lectures on the Scottish Church.'

What a beautiful mind he had, and how beautifully he
expressed his appreciation for what is good, true, and
noble. October 4>th.

Begun second part of William George (known as
1 Ideal ') Ward's Life.

Interesting, as he was such an original and strong
personality. It seems extraordinary that he should
have gone over to the Faith which requires such com-
plete submission of intellect and will. What an ex-
traordinary and logical intellect he had ! How much
humour and fun in his daily life.

Aston Clinton, Sunday, °Z%nd.

Have finished ' Ward ' and am reading with great
pleasure Lowell's Letters.

They are full of poetry and the love of nature, delight-
fully expressed ; he has much fun too, but I do not
think his humour equal to his serious moods and poetic
instinct ; he had also a kind and loving heart.

November 1st.

I have been reading some of Bacon's Essays and
his 'Life.'

I delight in his grand Elizabethan style, which pre-
sents so well his stately poetic thoughts. Alas ! why
were his acts not always as fine and noble as his
writings ! December 1st.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

'To My Old Yew Tree*. (By L. de R.)

4 Welcome, far-branching, sturdy old Yew Tree,
Through many years an unchanged friend to me
In summer days from blinding glare and heat,
Beneath your shade I find a sheltered seat.
In winter's gloom, when others"' stems are bare,
Your green boughs whispering, wave their banners fair,
On which can happ'ly feast dim eyes like mine,
Reading unwritten tales of " Auld Lang Syne."

December 4>th.

1894.

I am reading two volumes of hitherto unpublished
Letters of Walter Scott.

Full of interest — making one still more intimately
acquainted with the fine character and affectionate, lively
nature of the great author.

Aston Clinton, January 1th.

I have begun Stanley's 'Life.'
and am delighted with it. What a beautiful charac-
ter ! so truthful, tolerant, devoted, affectionate, simple
and modest ; he reminds me, in many respects, of my
nephew, Claude Montefiore. January 25th.

Just finished Lady Granville's Letters.

Very amusing, chatty writing and pleasant reading.

March %$.nd.

* The old yew tree standing in the grounds at Aston Clinton,
facing the windows of the drawing-room where my mother always
sat.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading the Duke of Marlborough's 'Life.' By
Lord Wolseley.

Lord Clive. By Sir Charles Wilson.

I do not know about personal morality, but certainly
political morality and conduct in general are very
different in the nineteenth to what they were in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

4 Un petit malheur, c'est presque un bonheur ; les
petits malheurs vainquent les grands."' — Victor Hugo.

Yesterday I went with Constance to pay Mr. Glad-
stone a visit on Dollis Hill. It was a strange, fine, some-
what sad picture to see the old venerable statesman
lying on a seat shaded by trees on the picturesque lawn,
looking well and cheerful, with the hope of soon being
able to see to write again. In the meantime talking
with his extraordinary enthusiasm and vigour of Homer's
genius, of Japanese talents, and of the hundred thousand
uses which can be made of paper. Was there ever such
a versatile mind ? July %nd.

Reading ' The Message of Israel.'

Extremely interesting and clever, but also rather dis-
turbing and upsetting. In these pages the Bible
assumes a new position and explanations which strike
out quite a novel view of its various authors. Compari-
son between Spartans and Israelites — Lycurgus and
Moses. September.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Rhoda Broughton* left us this morning after spend-
ing two days here : I find her no less bright and amusing
than when last I saw her.

The Pleasaunce, Overstrand, September 14th.

Reading with much pleasure a little book : Rus-
kin's 'Letters to a College Friend.'

' The object of all art is not to inform, but to suggest,
not to add to the knowledge, but to kindle the imagina-
tion. To put plain text into rhyme and make it easy ;
not so to write a passage which every time it is remem-
bered shall suggest a new train of thought, a new subject
of delighted dream. It is the mystic secrecy of beauty
which is the seal of the highest art, which only opens
itself to close observation and long study.-1 October.

Wrinkles are the frontlets that Time puts between our
e}7es to remind us of fleeting years and coming death.

L. de R. — October.

Reading Froude's ' Erasmus.'

October With.

The poor Tsarf died yesterday. How well I remem-
ber his stalwart form and good-natured face, when he
was shooting here more than twenty years ago.

Finished James Payn's amusing pages of auto-
biography or rather ' Memories ' as he calls thorn.

November 2nd.

* Author of 'Cometh up as a Flower,' 'Nancy,' and other
novels.

t The Tsar, Alexander III., when Czarevitch, accompanied by
the Duke of Edinburgh, visited my parents at Aston Clinton n
1874.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Beading Mrs. Augustus Craven's 'Life.'
A brilliant, clever, excellent, truly religious, though per-
haps rather a narrow-minded woman in matters of Faith.
Her thoughts, letters, and friends, extremely interesting.

' Cest par Pesprit que Ton s'amuse, c'est par le coeur
iju'on ne s'ennuie pas.' — Madame Swetchine.

December.

' That sweetest music — the praises of a friend.1

Maria Edgeworth.

' She did not keep me in the ante-chamber of her
mind, but let me go into the boudoir at once.1

Maria Edgeworth.

'Tring, Wing, and Ivinghoe,
Old Hampden did forego,
For striking the Black Prince a blow.1

4 Called on Mrs. Humphry Ward to-day. Found
her, as ever, very pleasant and sympathetic. Talked
over Mrs. Augustus Craven and Miss Edgeworth, &c,
&c/ December Tiih.

'The one or two immortal lights
Rise slowly up into the sky
To shine there everlastingly.1

Matthew Arnold.

1895.

' Les bons intentions ne sont pour rien dans les
ouvrages de TEsprit.1 — Madame de Stael. January.

' On ne se detache jamais sans douleur.1 — Pascal.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Beading ' Life and Letters ' of Dean Church.
Very interesting.

* All passes with the passing of the days,
All but great Death.
Death, the one thing that is
Which passes not with passings of the day.1

Finished ' Dean Church.'

Reading ' History of the English Novel,' by
Walter Raleigh.

Reading ' Grote.'
Vol. 4. Chapter 31.
Vol. 5. Chapter 45.
Vol. 8. Chapters 67, 68. January 20th.

' For manners are not idle, but the fruit
Of loyal nature and of noble mind.''

Guinevere. April lOtk.

' His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true/

Elaine.

Reading Tennyson's ' Idylls of the King,'
which I had half forgotten. How beautiful they are in
their purity, passion, and pathos !

Much interested in Jusserand's 'Literary History
of the English People.' . ..

Reading Coleridge's Letters. M fi ,

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading Dean Church's Letters.
Sensible, affectionate, tolerant ! Warmed by his intense
love of Nature ; but after Coleridge's extraordinary
effusions, they seem rather cold and commonplace.

Reading ' Degeneration.'
A great deal of truth in the author's severe and some-
times amusing criticisms ; but is he not occasionally
wanting so much in sympathy with views, ideas and
aspirations foreign to his own disposition and character,
that he becomes unfair and unjust ?

' So for the Mother's sake the child was dear,
And dearer for the mother was the child.'
(Much admired by Lamb.) Coleridge.

Reading 'The Life of E. A. Freeman,' by Stephens.

The Rise of Wellington. By Lord Roberts.

May.
Continuing 'Freeman.'

He is too one-sided and intolerant. June.

Read Queen Victoria's 'Life,' by Mrs. Fawcett.
A difficult task, extremely well executed. July.

' The scythe of Time has a blunt as well as a keen
edge, and has as much power to heal as to wound.'

September 16th.

' Alas ! what a city of the dead is the human heart ;
why go to the cemeteries ? let us open our reminiscences,
how many tombs ! ' — Flaubert.

' On se tire del'avenir comme des mauvais chemins—
on ne voit personne demeurer au milieu.'

Madame de Sevigne.
79

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Tous les details sont admirables quand l'amitie est
a un certain point.1

4 Dare a great thing : the thing thou triest
Lifts thy straining mind ;
Though thou mayst not reach the highest,
Something high thoult find.1

From the German by John Stuart Blackie.

* Angels holy, high or lowly,

Sing the praises of the Lord.
Earth and sky, all living nature,
Man, the stamp of thy Creator,

Praise ye, praise ye God the Lord.1

J. S. Blackie.

* On the deep sea's brim,

In beauty quite excelling,
White and tight and trim,

Stands my lady's dwelling.
Stainless is the door

With shiny polish glowing:
A little plot before

With pinks and sweet peas growing.
When a widow weeps,

She with her is weeping;
When a sorrow sleeps

She doth watch its sleeping ;
When the sky is bright

With one sole taint of sadness,
Let her heave in sight,

And all is turned to gladness.'

Miss Henrietta Bird.
80

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' The sun gives light and heat ; light for knowledge,
heat for love.1

' There is truth as well as beauty in that old con-
ception which finds the Divine rather in gentleness than
in violence.1 — Walker.

'In all primitive languages and cosmogonies the
moon takes its name from a root which signifies the
"measurer,11 while the sun is the "bright or shining one.11

Lang.

In primitive languages the moon appears as male
and the sun as female in the older mythologies, which
is still maintained in modern German.

' God's in His Heaven,
All's right with the world.1

Pippa Passes : Browning.

' Love thou thy land with love far brought,
From out the storied past and used,
Within the present, but transferred
Thro1 future time by power of thought.1

Tennyson.

' Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole,
Yet we her memory, as she prayed will keep,
Keep by this life in God and union there.1*

Matthew Arnold.

* The two last lines are on my dear mother's last resting-place.

81 G

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Aubrey de Vere asked Tennyson whether he were a
Conservative. ' I believe in progress,' said Tennyson,
' and I would conserve the hopes of man.1

' Falling with the weight of cares
Upon the great worlds altar stairs,
That slope through darkness up to God/

Tennyson.

' Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte pour le sot.
L'honnete hounne trompe, s'eloigne et ne dit mot."

'To have known him, to have loved him, to have
had a place in his regard is a part of our life's unalter-
able good."1 — G. R.* on Matthew Arnold.

Reading ' Life of Blackie.'

What a clever, original, energetic individual, always
hard at work on serious subjects, yet full of fun, song,
and humanity !

Just commenced ' Human Origins,' by Laing.

Not only interesting, but till now it seems to me that it
emphasises one's ignorance upon the origin of man.

Aston Clinton, October 20th.

Reading dear Matthew Arnold's Letters.

Thev are delightful to me, and must give great pleasure
to all who knew him well, recalling so vividly the
affectionate, modest, simple nature of the man ; but the
poet and the charming prose-writer is not so vividly
portrayed in these pages. Sunday, October 2,4th.

The Right Honourable George Russell.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Reading passages from Tennyson and Browning,
I am also getting slowly through the somewhat painful
pages of Haydon's Life. December 18th.

Reading Macaulay's 'Life.'

What an extraordinary memory and what a wonderful
untiring industry ! How terribly idle these delightful
passages make one feel ! December \§th.

Finished this morning Macaulay's 'Life.'

What a happy life and death ! What a contrast to
that of poor Haydon's ! December 9.2nd.

Reading three volumes of Haydon's ' Life.'
Becoming more interested in it. Christmas Day.

1896.

Reading with great pleasure and admiration my
nephew Claude's* ' Bible for Home Reading.'

Full of beautiful thoughts ; a real picture of his truth-
ful, kind, and religious spirit, but doubtless he will
shock the very orthodox. May 30th.

' Dieu a donne le Pretre au monde, la charge du
pretre est de donner le monde a Dieu.1 — Bourget.

Read with pleasure and interest ' The Life and
Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes ' ; and also with
interest and amusement 'Travel and Talk,' by the
Rev. H. R. Haweis.

London, January 96th.

* Mr. C. G. Montefiore.
83

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Truth in closest words will fail,
While truth embodied in a tale
Will enter in at open doors.1

Tennyson.
' Truth for ever on the scaffold, wrong for ever on the
throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the

door unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch
above His own.1 Lowell.

' For acuteness and valour the Greek,
For excessive pride the Roman,
For dulness the creeping Saxon,
For beauty and amorousness the Gaidhill.1

Old Irish Poem.
' L'illusion et la sagesse reunies sont le charme de la
vie et de Tart.1 — Joubert.

' Yes, I am proud, I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me ;
Safe from the bar, the pulpit and the throne,
But touched and scared by ridicule alone.1

PorE.
' When the wine goes in the man,
Then the wit goes in the can.1

4 Whosoever is not actively kind is cruel.1 — Ruskin.

' A righteous man studies his beast.1

Saying of a Rabbi.

' Shake an ass and go —
Chacun a son gout.1

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Youth cannot return : there are no birds, says the
Spanish proverb, in last year's nest.

' Love or friendship is only Fegoisme a deux.'

' II n'y a dans la vie que deux ou trois realites, et
Pamitie en est une.1 — Victor Hugo.

Charles Lamb used to call himself 'a matter of
fiction man.'

' Oh, the little more, and how much it is,
And the little less, and what worlds away.1

* Home : word so full of tenderness, a sound that is
so often sad because it hath been sweet.1 — John Nichol.

' But my soul from out that shadow which lies floating
on the floor
Shall be lifted nevermore.1

i Memory, the only fountain of perpetual youth.1

Lord Bowen.
'The Hebrews were right in having no present tense
in their grammar ; the present is so fugitive, only the
past and the future seem permanent.1

Longfellow, in a letter to Nichol.

4 We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our
little life
Is rounded with a sleep.1 — The Tempest.

i That time of life thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves or few or none do hang
Upon those boughs that shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Shakespeare.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

'The word advice changed from the French avis.
The French avis was the Latin advisum — from ad, to,
and visum, seen. Mon avis, my at sight or my view.
L'avenir, the future, that which is to come, ce qui est
a venir.1 — Max Muller.

' Painting and sculpture being forbidden for Israel,
those who vividly realised the unseen harmonies of
things, and felt within themselves a power coercing
them to give their thoughts vivid expression, were
forced to throw all their passion into psalms or pro-
phecies. The literature of the Psalms and the
Prophets represents the arts as well as the religion
of Israel.1 — Abbott, The Spirit on the Waters.

1897.

Almond-tree, called the wakeful tree in Hebrew,
because it is the first to wake from the sleep of winter.

4 Never let a day pass without making some one
happy."1 — Sydney Smith.

4 True poetry is the remembrance of youth, of love,
the embodiment in words of the happiest and holiest
moments of life, of the noblest thoughts of man, of
the greatest deeds of the past. Neither is the element
of pleasure to be excluded. For when we substitute
a higher pleasure for a lower one, we raise men in the
scale of existence.1 — Jowett.

' Utilitarianism is condemned by Jowett mainly
because it destroys the ideal meaning of such words
as truth, justice, honesty, &c. — words which have a

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

simple meaning and have become sacred to us, the
words of God written in the human heart. ' In the
future all things like the stars in heaven will shed
their light on one another.'' — Jowett.

' Le malheur est fait d'envie, quiconque admire de
tout son cceur n'envie pas. Le malheur est fait de
regrets, en admirant on oublie ; de rancunes, en admi-
rant on pardonne ; de doutes, en admirant on croft.1

Article on Ruskin by Robert de la Sizeranne.

Philosophy has been denned as the home-coming of
the soul.

' Our sensibilities are so acute,
The fear of being silent makes us mute.'

Poets Laureate.

Davenant, Dryden, under Charles II. and James II.
Shadwell under William III. Tate under Queen Anne.
Colley Cibber under George II., called by Pope the
King of Dunces. Johnson wrote of him :

' Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
For nature formed the poet for the King.1

Whitehead, Warton, George II. Pye, Southey, Words-
worth, George III. Queen Victoria : Tennyson, Alfred
Austen ! ! Both Wordsworth and Tennyson borrowed
their court dress from Rogers.

' Religion does not consist in the knowledge and
belief even of fundamental truths ; no, education and
religion consist mainly in our being brought by them to
a certain temper and behaviour.1 — Butler.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

'Now if we are to be brought to a temper and
behaviour, our affections must be engaged and a force
of beauty or of sentiment is requisite for engaging them.1

Matthew Arnold.

' Les sauvages sont Fantiquite moderne,
La vie est un devoir.1 — Joubert.

' Things are what they are, and the consequences of
them will be what they will be ; why then should we
desire to be deceived ? 1 — Butler.

' The maker of bows was termed a bowyer, of arrows a
fietcher (fleche) frequently met as surnames. Yew in
ancient British signifies existent and enduring, having
the same root as Jehovah.1

' The whole scene of man's visible life, no longer the
mere vestibule of an invisible futurity, has a worth and
dignity of its own which philosophy delights to honour
and only fanaticism can despise.' — J. Martineau.

' By fits the Lady Ash
With twinkling fingers swept her yellow keys.1

Tennyson.

' In 1716, two women were hanged for witchcraft : in
1736, penal statutes against witchcraft were repealed.'

Matthew Arnold.

' In this vale of Time, the hills of Time often shut
out the mountains of Eternity.'

' Till each man find his own in all men's good
And all men work in noble brotherhood.'

Tennyson.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Le coeur a ses saisons que la raison ne connait pas.'

Ren an.

' Memories of books, memories of places, they should
be our jewels, our garden of delight.' — Miss Clough.

' Take the little pleasures of life, watch the sunsets
and the clouds, the shadows in the streets, and the
misty light over our great cities, these bring jov by the
way and thankfulness to our heavenly Father.'

Miss Clough.

1897.

Reading Jowett's 'Life.'
Very interesting ; full of interesting thoughts.

April 16th.
Reading Countess Potocki's • Memoirs.'

Gossipy, but amusing notes. Napoleon figures among
them with many well-known characters.

Aston Clinton, June 16th.

Sixty years ago, about this time of day, I was
waiting with my dear sister, Charlotte, at a window in
St. James's Street to see the young Queen drive in her
State Glass Coach down to Westminster Abbey to be
crowned, and to-day here I am alone, with Elfie,* look-
ing out of my window at Grosvenor Place, to see the
crowds coming down to see the aged Queen. The guns
are firing, and soon the thrilling scene will commence.
I wish I could have witnessed it, but I do not feel

* Elfie, a tiny Yorkshire terrier, my mother's constant com-
panion.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

equal to the fatigue of the ceremony Every-
thing passed off brilliantly, and not a hitch or a
contretemps ; of course the elements were propitious

till the Queen had left London So ends the

great London Jubilee, and to-morrow I hope the sun
will shine on Portsmouth for the great Naval Review.

June 22nd.

Yesterday, the Prince of Wales* drove here from
Tring, with Emmy (Lady Rothschild), Lady Randolph
Churchill, and Lord Peel, f It was a sort of Rip Van
Winkle visit. I felt very stupid and half inclined to
cry. H.R.H. was extremely amiable, simple, and good-
natured, often alluding to his pleasing visit here 24*
years ago. Of course I find him much changed, grown
from a young man to a middle-aged one, but in expres-
sion rather improved than otherwise.

Aston Clinton, October 9,5th.

Reading Tennyson's ' Life,' with great interest
and pleasure.

October 21th.

Much regret having come to the end of Tennyson's
Life ; have read few books that interested and en-
grossed me so much ; and now I am reading In
Memoriam. November 8th.

Reading Renan's 'Life' and 'The House of
Blackwood.'

* King Edward VII.

t Viscount Peel, well known for many years as Speaker in the
House of Commons.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

1898.

4 La douleur lui echappe comme son plaisir.1

Joubert.

* II est impossible que Voltaire contente, et im-
possible qu'il ne plaise pas.1 — Joubert.

'Il faut faire du bien lorsqu'on le peut et faire
plaisir a toute heure, car a toute heure on le peut.1

Joubert.

' Il serait difficile de vivre meprise et vertueux, nous
avons besoin de support.1 — Joubert.

' Qui n'a pas Tesprit de son age
De son age a tout le malheur.1

Voltaire.

' Toujours occupe des devoirs des autres, jamais des
siens, helas ! — Joubert.1

* I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not,
As those that fear they hope, and hope they fear."

As You Like It.

Timocracy — first stage in the downward progress
when reason sinks to a lower level.

Oligarchy — when appetite becomes dominant love
of wealth.

Democracy — a war of appetites.

Tyranny — despotism of the lowest appetites, the
least compatible with the common life of society. The
tyrant is the exact counterpart of the philosopher
The philosophic king is at one with everybody and
everything around him. The tyrant, his personality

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

concentrated in one single dominant passion, is abso-
lutely alone — he is the enemy of his own better self,
of the human kind, of God.

Lectures on Plato's ' Republic ' by Nettleship.

' Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's
mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn
upon the poles of truth.1 — Bacon.

Giordano Bruno died at the stake in Rome in 1600.

' O give no waye to griefe
But let beliefe
Of mutual love

This wonder to the vulgar prove
That bodies not we move.1

Pembroke.

' Qu'est ce qifune grande vie ? Une pensee de la
jeunesse executee par Page mur.1 — Alfred de Vigny.

The Universal Register became The Times in 1788.
Walter remained editor and proprietor till 1810, when
Stoddart became editor, succeeded bv Barnes, 1817,
succeeded by Delane in 1841.

The Annals of Agriculture set up in 1788 by Arthur
Young, received contributions from Ralph Robinson,
Farmer of Windsor, and who was George III.

' Der Augenblick ist Ewigkeit 1 (Goethe), so let us
make the best use of der Augenblick, and not be always
thinking of the past or the future.

Wanhope — old English for despair.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Passing through a valley of weeping they make it
a place of springs ' (eighty-ninth Psalm) ; that is what
kind hearts do.

' He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small. '

Coleridge.

' Never to blend our pleasures to our pride
With sorrow to the meanest thing that lives."1

Wordsworth.

The Prussian royal family were the Burgraves of
Nuremberg, and the Emperor gave them Brandenburg,
the province where Berlin now stands, in the year of
the battle of Agincourt.

'Tis a great point in a gallery how you hang
pictures, and no less in society how you seat your
party.-1 — Emerson.

' Quand mes amis sont borgnes je les regarde le

profil.*1 JOUBERT.

' I am afraid of trusting myself far from home at
this season of the year, as one can be sick and cross
nowhere so comfortably as at home.' — Dr. Burney, 1791.

I quite agree. — 1898, L. R

' For there was never yet fair woman but she made
mouths in a glass.1 — The Fool in ' King Lear.'

Yesterday morning at five o'clock, the great states-
man passed away. All England is grieving for our
Gladstone.* Aston Clinton, May 20th.

* The Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone, four times Premier,
born 1809, died 1898.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Gladstone's Funeral. — I came up on the 26th,
and found London dark and sad, as befitted the City
mourning her great Statesman. May %8th.

Paid Watts a visit. Delighted with the great
artist, his noble works, and his gentle wife.

Claude's* portrait a marvellous likeness and magni-
ficent painting! How delightful for Watts and for
England that age should have no chilling, hurtful
effect upon the brain, hand, or eye of the aged artist.

Jtme 9&th.

' So obsequious is the vain woman to fashion, that she
would be ready to be reconciled even to virtue with all
its faults if she had her dancing-master's word that it
was practised at Court.1 — Letters of Lord Halifax to his
daughter.

Lord Halifax born 1633.

' A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat.'

Tennyson.

' The river is green and runneth slow ;
We cannot tell what it saith,
It keepeth its secrets down below,
And so doth death.' — Faber.

* O Lord ! where shall I find Thee ?
All hidden and exalted in Thy place ;
And where shall I not find Thee ?
Full of Thy glory is the infinite space.1

Halevy.
* Mr. C. G. Montefiore.
94

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' Glory,1 says Robertson, ' to intellect and genius,
but glory to gentleness and patience.1

4 Truth is perilous in proportion as it is not spoken
in love.1 — Manning.

' Arguments are the pillars of sermons, illustrations
are the stained-glass windows.1 — Fuller.

' Flowers laugh before Thee on their beds,
And fragrance in Thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong
And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh
and strong.1 — Wordsworth.

' What good is like to this ? To do worthy the
writing, and to write worthy the reading and the
world's delight.1

Daniels' dedication to Sidney's ' Angel Spirit.''

1899.

* Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.1 — King Lear.

' Her voice was very soft,
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.1

k Age cannot wither her nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.' — Antony and Cleopatra.

' For his bounty
There was no winter in it, and autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping.'

Antony and Cleopatra.

4 One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.1

Troilus and Cressida.
95

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' We have made peace
With no less honour to me.'

Coriolanus.
' The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind,
And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground.'

Titus Andronicus.
There was a Roman inland road from Clausentum,
a small shipping-place on Southampton Waters, now
called Bitterne, to Winchester.

' What a mania you have for improving everything
about you ; could you not spare a little of this reform-
ing energy upon yourself ? '

Companions of my Solitude, Arthur Helps.

' La force des choses 1 is only another word for ' La
faiblesse des homines."' — Quoted btj Mallet.

Ameer — the origin of admiral.

' Labour, so far as it is true and sanctionable by
the Supreme Worker and World-founder, may claim
brotherhood with labour ; the great work and the
little are alike definable as an extricating of the true
from its imprisonment amid the false.1

Carlyle, Letter to Sir Robert Peel, 1846.

' Horace says, "Where words abound sense is thinly
spread, as trees over-charged with leaves bear little
fruit." * — Letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

' The past is always secure.1 — Horace Greeley.

' So use present pleasures that thou spoilest not future
ones.1 — Sexeca.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' As when a painter poring on a face
Divinely, through all hindrancies finds the man
Behind it, and so paints him that his face,
The shape and colour of a mind and life,
Lives for his children, even at its Best.'

Watts'1 ideal put into verse by Tennyson.

' A little grave is mine beneath the Yew,
And in the Heavens a soul that God doth save ;
To me is given sweet rosemary and rue,
A little grave.

Yet, not to sorrow is my heart a slave,
For Love and Death keep a soft wee face in view,

And one hope makes my broken spirit brave,
For it is not here the life that is most true,

The life that breaks not like an ocean wave ;
And yet I love, as God's earth loves the dew,
A little grave.'

Reading Stevenson's Letters, with great interest.

Aston Clinton, February 25th.

Boer War. — Spent a pleasant couple of hours collect-
ing money for the wives and children of our fighting
soldiers and sailors ; I was received most amiably by all
the inmates of the cottages in Halton village,* who
seemed pleased to see me and to respond to my request.

Finished Stevenson's delightful Letters, and read-
ing 'The Newcomes,' by Thackeray.

* A very picturesque village in Buckinghamshire, belonging to
my cousin Alfred de Rothschild.

97 H

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Also finished reading Sir A. West's* ' Recollec-
tions.'

Pleasantly written — some parts very interesting.

December 11th.

A pleasant little visit last week from the two Miss

Cholmondeleys,+ Mr. Asquith,J and Mr. Haldane. §

Christmas Day.

1900.

Thk first piece of really good news from the war —
Kimberley relieved by French. February.

Cronje capitulated with all his force on the 25th.

This morning came the welcome, happy news of the
relief of Ladysmith. London, March 1st.

' It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say, he
is one who never inflicts pain."' — Cardinal Newman.

'Leave out the adjectives and let the nouns do the
fighting.'1 — Emerson.

Reading Rosebery's 'Napoleon: The Last Phase.'
How sad and dull must those last years have been after
such an eventful, dashing, brilliant life, to the prisoner
watching the fall of the Empire he had raised ! The two
last chapters particularly well written and interesting.

* The Right Honourable Sir Algernon West, G.C.B., late
Chairman of Board of Inland Revenue, and formerly Secretary to
Mr. Gladstone.

f Mary and Victoria Cholmondeley. Mary Cholmondeley.
author of Red Pottage, and other novels.

X The Prime Minister.

§ Viscount Haldane, Secretary of State for War, President of
the Army Council.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Commenced John Morley's* ' Oliver Cromwell.'
Enjoying the pleasant, inspiriting company of John
Morley's Oliver CromweU. I admire his [John Morley's]
large-minded toleration towards all sides of party and
of politics and all shades of religion and theology.

Just read a most interesting article in the Nineteenth
Century, by Max Miiller, on 4 Religion in China.1

How sad to think that we shall hear no more words
from that distinguished author ! November \Qth.

1901.

A pleasant little party stayed here during the last
days of the year and century : dear Annie Ritchie, t
reminding us of old days ; Mary and Victoria
Cholmondeley, Dr. \ and Mrs. Woods, Augustus Hare, §
Colonel Collins, || Sir Algernon West, and Mr. Benson. !i

Aston Clinton, January 1st.

What a terrible change has taken place sinee I last
wrote, after our pleasant little party had just broken
up. The dear Queen departed, the reign of Victoria
ended, that of Edward VII. commenced.

* Viscount Morley of Blackburn, Lord President of the
Council.

t Lady Ritchie, daughter of Mr. Thackeray.

t The present Master of the Temple.

§ Author of many books : Walks in Rome, Walks in London and
Two Noble Lives.

|| The late Lieut.-Col. Collins, for many years equerry to-
H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll.

IT E. F. Benson, author of many amusing novels.

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Several notabilities have also departed : Brooke
Lambert,* Mr. Haweis,f our friend Frederick MyersJ
— a melancholy commencement of the year and century.

February 3rd.

Reading nothing very interesting, though some
good articles in the magazines, and rather amused with
Gray's ' Letters."' March 6th.

Just finished an amusing volume containing the
Correspondence of: Madame, The Princess Palatine,
Madame Adelaide de Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne,
Madame de Maintenon. They give one a curious idea
of the customs that prevailed at the French Court
during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV.

March 18th.

Commenced ' Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks.'

Too long, but very interesting. He died at the early
age of 57. Religious, broad-minded and gifted, with a
kindly nature and happy sparkling humour.

March 20th.

Heading • The Letters and Life of the Countess
Granville.'

Composed of extracts from books, letters and Bible
texts, chiefly from the Old Testament. May 8th.

* The Rev. Brooke Lambert, well known for his philanthropic
work, a Broad Churchman, Rector of South Lambeth.

t The Rev. H. R. Haweis, a most original preacher, also author.

J Frederick W. H. Myers, a distinguished writer in prose and
poetry ; deeply interested in Psychical Research.

100

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Beading with much pleasure Herbert Paul's* ' Men
and Letters.'

Much instruction given in a vigorous, racy and amusing
style. May Mth.

1902.
Peace declared 1st June.f June 3rd.

1903.

' The hour of need
Shows the friend indeed.'' — Ennius.

Finished reading 'Isabella D'Este.'
Very interesting, though in parts rather exhaustive.

' Dickens taught us the duty of gaiety, and the
religion of mirth.1 — Lord Dufferix. June.

Finished reading John Morley's 'Life of Glad-
stone.'

A great biography, and how great a man !

' . . . . Nature hath assigned
Two sovereign remedies for human grief :
Religion, surest, firmest, first and best,
Strength to the weak and to the wounded balm ;
And strenuous action next.1

November 26th.

* Now one of the Civil Service Commissioners, author of
A History of Modern England, Life of J. A. Fronde, Stray
Leaves, §;c.

t End of the Boer War.

101

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

1904.

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.'1

' O ! never Star
Was lost here but
It rose afar."

But beauty in Nature is not ultimate ; it is a herald
of inward and eternal beauty : it must stand as a part
and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final
course of Nature/ — Emerson.

'Great talents are the finest peacemakers.' — Goethe.

July 12th.
4 Wanted, or forgot,
The last and greatest art,
The art to blot.' — Pope on Dry den.

( )x preaching : —

' As never sure of preaching again,
And as a dying man to dying men.1

Baxter.
' Learn to write slow, and other graces will follow
in their proper places/ October.

1905.

' Not Heaven itself upon the past has power ;
That which has been, has been, and I have had
my hour.'' Dryden.

Reading Lord Granville's 'Life,' and Lucas's
' Life of Charles Lamb.' November.

' Dessiner, c'est parler aux yeux, et parler c'est
peindre a foreiHe.1 — Joubert

102

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.
1906.

Yesterday, Thursday, 11th, I had a terrible shock.
My darling Elfie,* loved for her own sake as well as for
dear Ferdie's, met her tragic fate — cruelly, though of
course accidentally. I shall miss my dear little pet
constantly, for she was generally my constant, sweet
companion ; never a bore, but always ready to
respond to a word or caress. O ! my darling ! how
lonely many of my days and evenings will be with-
out you ! January 12th.

Monday. — My darling Elfie is to be put in her last
resting-place under the big yew-tree to-day. How I
do and shall miss her — that constant little friend.
Alas ! alas ! to know that I shall never see her again !

January 15th.

This morning polling for Mid-Bucks — great excite-
ment. I shall be very sorry if Walterf is not re-elected,
but my feelings are quite personal on this occasion, my
political views being just the contrary. January 25th.

This morning Walter was elected M.P. for Mid-
Bucks, by a majority of 1212 votes. January 26th.

* The little Yorkshire terrier, given to my mother by a very
favourite nephew— B'erdinand de Rothschild, M.P. for Mid-Bucks.,
a man of great intellectual distinction. Died December, 1 898. His
sister Alice was devotedly attached to my mother, who warmly
reciprocated her affection.

t The Hon. Walter Rothschild, eldest son of my mother's
nephew, Lord Rothschild, well known for his great knowledge of
Natural History and for the beautiful museum that he built in the
town of Tring, Herts., on his father's property.

103

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' He who studies the Law without spreading it,1 says
the Talmud, ' is like unto the myrtle in the desert.1

Nearly nineteen centuries ago Joseph us wrote :
' Our principal care of all is this, to educate our
children well.'

' By the breath from the mouth of school-children
the world is sustained.' — Rabbi Eleazer Ben Shamna.

' The quest of knowledge in old age is like drawing
on sand ; in youth, like engraving on stone.1

' Je comprends le rire, j'ai horreur de la grimace.1

Doudan.
Reading with great pleasure the interesting ' Life
and Letters of Canon Ainger.'

' A life of mere laughter is like music without a bass, or
a picture conceived of vague unmitigated light, whereas
the occasional melancholy, like those grand rich colour-
ings of old Rembrandt, produce an incomparable effect
and a very great relief.1

Reading now 'Essays and Lectures.' By Canon
Ainger.

' To Him my spirit I consign,

Asleep, awake, I will not fear ;

My body, too, I will resign,

And dread no evil — God is near."

Adox Olam. — An old Hebrew Hymn.

1907.

'The true wealth of a nation is finally and ulti-
mately the number of happy human beings which com-
pose it.1 — Oliver Lodge. January.

104

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

' But Babylonia had almost nothing to teach Israel
ethically, and it was from ethical sources within herself
that her Monotheism immediately arose.1— Old Testa-
ment Criticism, from the ' Jewish Quarterly Review?

February.

Burns's Lines about resisting Temptation.
' Then gently scan your brother, Man,
Still gentlier sister, Woman ;
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human :

One point must still be greatly dark :

The moving, why they do it,
And just as lamely can you mark

How far perhaps they rue it.

* * *- *

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone

Decidedly can try us :
He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias :

Then at the balance let's be mute,

We never can adjust it ;
What's done we partly may compute,

But know not what's resisted.

December.

105

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

A DREAM.*

1884.

I had been reading old letters from old friends ; some
of those whose words were written in half-obliterated
characters on time-soiled paper, were still alive ; others,
alas ! had passed away. One letter, full of kindness
masked in funny jokes, made my heart more heavy than
the others, for that laughter-loving friend had gone but
a few short years ago to the distant unseen shore, and
had left the world a darker, sadder, duller place to me.
And though I knew the contents of that letter so well
I read it over and over again till my eyes ached, perhaps
from poring over the crabbed writing, perhaps from
other causes ; however, I put the letters carefully back
into the box in which I kept them, a sort of holy of
holies to me, and looked out upon the quiet landscape,
at that moment tenderly lighted by the last rays of
the setting sun. Before me stretched cornfields and
pasture-lands, whilst here and there a group of trees
told darkly against the pale rose and orange tints of
the summer sky.

At a little distance, from the midst of a cluster of
red-roof cottages, rose the grey square tower of the

* This beautiful little Phantasy was written by ray mother to
commemorate the opening of a village Hall built by her in Aston
Clinton to the memory of my dear father, Sir Anthony de Roths-
child, who died, January 1876, and called The Anthony Hall.

106

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

village church. It was a scene I had looked on for
many a year, that I knew as it were by heart, and yet
it always presented itself in some new aspect. On that
evening the picture was gentle, soft, and sad, and, as I
gazed upon it, I mused upon that dear friend's words
whose letter I had last been reading.

By degrees, almost imperceptibly, the scene changed ;
figures appeared, I heard familiar voices, and — I had
fallen asleep and was dreaming. What a strange dream
it was ! though, like most dreams, it seemed to me quite
natural. I was sitting in my own room, with many of
my village neighbours around me. They all looked
grave, and spoke in hushed tones of the death of
the very friend I had been mourning. Rather to my
disgust, they began discussing his will.

' Listen,1 said one of the company and he then read
aloud, ' To my dear friends and neighbours I bequeath a
legacy, which I trust will be a boon to you all — men
and women, boys and girls, and little children of this
village — a boon, however, only so far as you make it
one for yourselves. You must decide whether it will
prove a useful, or a vain — nay, even a hurtful gift.
Look, and you will find it in the Fir-grove Dell.1

' What can it be ? 1 exclaimed the whole party.

' Maybe a round sum of money,1 said old Martin,
' which will bring a blessing or a curse, according as we
spend it.

' Na, na ; I fancy it's an organ for the church,1 cried
Barnes, our village musician: (he was mighty fond of
music, and often said 'twas wanted.1

' Perhaps it's a swimming-bath,1 ejaculated young

107

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Jack Forster ; ' that would answer the description, too,
for it might do us a world of good, or take us out of the
world altogether."1

' And / think it is a library,1 said our intellectual
shoemaker, ' which it will depend upon ourselves to use
or to neglect.1

' I should not be surprised if it were a clock for the
tower yonder,1 ci'ied John Evans, our silversmith and
watchmaker.

' I trust it may be a drinking-fountain,1 exclaimed a
staunch teetotaler ; ' of course we might even spoil that
gift, as the gentleman says, if we mixed the pure water
with spirits.

' I hope it is a sugar-loaf! ' piped out a little treble
voice, ' which would make us sick, you know, if we eat
too much of it.1

' Why not go at once to the Fir-grove Dell, instead
of staying here making stupid guesses?1 said the
matter-of-fact grocer, who had made no guesses at all ;
and then I saw them all move on, and I followed to the
dell. Ah, me ! it was his favourite haunt, and I
foolishly wondered in my foolish dream what I should
find there. Well, among the branches of the tall fir-
trees appeared a bit of red here and a dark beam there,
and when we got into the grove, instead of the empty
grass sward, we found a rustic building with a high-
pitched roof and gabled windows. The door, sheltered
by a porch, stood open, and slowly and silently we
entered a large, bright, airy room, with a platform at
one end and some plain but not uncomfortable-looking
benches, otherwise nothing.

108

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

Carefully we peered around, and then turned with
faces blank as the walls to each other.

' What are we to do here ? 1 ' What is this for ? '
was exclaimed with a sigh of disappointment by the
lover of music, the projector of the swimming-bath, the
teetotaler, the bookworm, and the fond anticipator of
gigantic sweets.

* I don't see what use this empty room will be to us
unless we turn it into a barn,1 said Farmer Jones. ' Or
a storehouse for goods,1 said the grocer : ' it seems well
built, and would keep the tea and sugar dry.1

Murmurs of discontent followed those observations,
and even in my dream I thought of the kind heart of
the donor of the building and felt hurt and distressed.

But suddenly my attention was diverted from the
complaints of my companions to the change which had
taken place on the pale grey walls. These were no
longer of one monotonous tint, but adorned with large
life-sized pictures : one picture represented long tables
covered with fruit, flowers, and vegetables, evidently a
village show of the good and beautiful things which care
and industry may help to produce. In another, groups
of children were playing at games, while through the
windows one saw the snowflakes falling on the wintry
ground. Another picture was composed of a crowd
of people listening to some musical performers playing
on various instruments, whilst in an adjoining painting
men and women were singing themselves, and I was
strangely thrilled by the harmonious voices, now loud and
stirring, now gentle and pathetic, that rang through the
hall.

109

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

In one of the painted scenes a man was earnestly
discoursing to eager groups of listeners, and in another
a party of women were busily plying their needles, whilst
a lady, sitting at the head of their table, seemed to be
presiding over their work, and raising happy smiles on
many a careworn face.

There were other pictures in this strange gallery,
but I turned from them attracted by a scroll which was
now slowly unfolding itself under one of the large win-
dows, and from it I read aloud the following words : —

' Dear friends I have built this hall for you, but you
must complete the work I have only begun. The
stones and bricks have been skilfully placed together,
but you must give it the vivifying breath of life. Into
these walls you must bring kind, loving hearts, bright
intellects, active and attentive brains. Then only, and
thanks to you, will this hall be able to fulfil its aim,
that of giving recreation to the weary toiler, instruction
and amusement to the young, of offering music, poetry,
and good words to all, to inspire you with good thoughts,
and help you to lead good and useful lives.

'The followers of all creeds and parties will be
equally free to enter here, but their bitterness and
intolerance must be left at the door. Here the Non-
conformist will occasionally lecture to the Churchman,
who, in his turn, will be listened to with respectful
attention by the Dissenter. The teetotaler will be
allowed— nay, requested — to preach temperance here, but
those who differ from him will not be refused a hearing,
and friendly discussions will be invited. Freedom of
speech, tempered by sympathy for the feelings of others

110

LADY DE ROTHSCHILD.

and a spirit of devout reverence, must find their home
and preside over all your gatherings in the hall of the
Fir-grove DeW

As I finished reading these words on the scroll, I
turned to see what effect they had produced on my
companions, but one and all had vanished. The pic-
tures grew indistinct, the walls became transparent,
showing the dark fir-trees behind them ; in another
instant their branches encircled again the empty space
where the strange building had stood, and I awoke.

My dream had only lasted a few minutes, but it left
a vivid impression on my mind. ' Yes, dear, departed
spirit,' I murmured to myself, as I gazed wistfully
towards the now dimly-lighted Fir-gi'ove Dell, ' the
love and kindness that had such deep root in your warm
heart and made you find your own pleasure in brighten-
ing the lives of young and old shall, if God will, go on
bearing fruit in this village you loved so well.1 And I
resolved on that very evening that my dream should
one day become a reality, thus reversing the usual order
of things, for how often do realities become dreams ?

L. DE R.

Ill

London: strangeways, printers.

University of California

SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388

Return this material to the library

from which it was borrowed.

Form

L'A 5 65, K7'i

3 1158 00217 40(

^SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY

AA 000 406 560

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Lady de Rothschild : extracts from her notebooks : with a preface by her daughter Constance Battersea"

See other formats