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Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

PAGES FROM
A PRIVATE DIARY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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PAGES FROM
A PRIVATE DIARY

" L'hofnme qui a le temps d'icrire tin journal
intime nous parait ne pas avoir suffisamment
compris combien le ?nonde est vaste." — Renan,
Feuilles Ddtache'es.

NEW EDITION

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1903

Printed by RAM.AKTYNX, Hanson &• Co.
At the Rallantyne l'rcss

mv very good friend

J. St. LOE STRACHEY, esqr-

THE ONLY BEGETTKR OK THESE ENSUING PAGES

PREFACE

A new edition of this book being called for, I
have been asked to write a few lines explaining
how it came into existence. There is little
enough to tell. My friend, Mr. St. Loe Strachey,
when in May 1896 he became editor of the
Cornhill Magazine, commissioned me to con-
tribute to its pages a monthly diary of events
and reflections. The conditions he laid down
were, first, that the diary should be a real diary,
not in the sense that the events it chronicled
need have taken place in any known world,
but that it should be written day by day, not
" written up " as the phrase goes ; secondly, that
it should be written in the country out of ear-
shot of the clubs ; and thirdly, that it should
be anonymous. Of these conditions, the first
and second only lay in my own power, and from
the circumstances of my position I was able to
fulfil them ; the third was at the mercy of any
one who could surprise the information. For
two years and a half the diary continued to run,

Vlll PREFACE

and then a paragraph appeared in the Atltenceum
giving my name as the writer. Now obviously
it was one thing for an unknown person, who
might turn out to be the Commander-in-Chief
or the Lord Chancellor, to make remarks in
public on things in general, and quite another
for plain Mr. Sylvan to do so. And so the
diary stopped. I was curious at the time, and
am still curious, to know how my name escaped.
The information did not come from my own
village, where the Comhill was read every
month without any suspicion that part of it
was written within the parish boundaries ; and
perhaps this fact may suffice as an answer to
those good-natured persons who have since con-
gratulated me on the skilful portraits I have
given of my friends and neighbours. The secret,
if I may dignify it by that name, became known,
possibly by second sight, to Mr. Bam of the
Hayniarkct, whose shop is the rendezvous of the
literati of London ; and from that centre it dis-
tributed itself to all whom it might concern :
and to the press.

I may confess to some chagrin at the dis-
covery. Not only did I lose the daily pleasure
of writing a tew lines which other persons were
good enough to read, and the occasional satis-

PREFACE IX

faction of hearing my nothings monstered by
attribution to distinguished people ; but I suf-
fered serious inconvenience of a more positive
sort. One must have lived a good part of one's
life in the country to appreciate the distrust
that attaches to a person who is understood to
" write." He is secretly regarded by his neigh-
bours— even though they subscribe to Mudie —
as the world in general regards the common in-
former or the professional interviewer. I recall
at this moment with a shiver the lowered tem-
perature of the house in which I happened to
be staying, when some one newly returned from
town communicated to one and another the fact
of my indiscretion. People began to speak to
me as if they were on oath, and as if every
word might be used against them. I sat late
that evening with an old gentleman, who was
telling stories to which I had often listened
with pleasure, and we said good-night outside
my bedroom door. In a minute I heard him tip-
toeing back along the corridor. "Of course,"
he said, " you understand that what I have told
you to-night is strictly between ourselves."

As I am writing a preface, it would be un-
grateful not to take the opportunity of acknow-
ledging the kindness of the many correspondents

X PREFACE

who, during the past seven years, have sent me
assurances of their favour or information on
particular points. It has been especially plea-
sant to discover how great is the interest taken
by the colonies in the home life of the mother-
country. I must express my thanks also for
more material expressions of good-will. I do
not recollect that any correspondent went so far
as to send me game, fearing perhaps the danger
of the circuit through the publisher's office ; but-
one sent a fine bush of lavender, another a bunch
of violets, and not a few have sent their own
poetical works, by which, when leisure serves, I
shall hope to profit.

URBAN US SYLVAN.
Novembt r 1903.

These " Pages from a Private Diary " are
reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine with
a few alterations and omissions.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE
DIARY

May 7th, 1896. — My birthday, and so as good
a day as any and a better day than most for be-
ginning these extracts from my journal. I had
thought of compiling a history of the parish by
way of "Typical Developments," but it turns
out that the new vicar is setting out on the
same enterprise ; and it is perhaps more in his
way than mine. Besides, there is very little
history to tell.

" Our village is unhonoured yet in story,
The present residents its only glory,"

as Sophocles says in the Coloneus (11. 62, 63).

The house-martins have begun to think about
building on the north side of the house. I had
the old nests taken down for the pleasure of
seeing these " amusive " little creatures, as Gil-
bert White would call them, once more at their
loved masonry; and this year I nailed boards
across the corners of the windows for cleanliness'

sake. At first they were rather puzzled, and sat

2 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

on the cross-pieces looking out on the world
like tiny Dominicans ; then a pair began build-
ing in one of the obtuse angles below ; then they
took themselves off to a window on the east side
which had not been tampered with ; finally, as
there was not enough accommodation here for
several families, the rest have swallowed their
feelings and begun to build as usual. The
nightingales are staying longer in the garden
than in any- year I can remember. There is a
tradition that they used to build in the hedge
overhanging what was once a more or less public
road, but have not done so since the road was
added as a shrubbery to the garden. I suppose
now that we have a parish council they feel at
liberty to withdraw their protest. Swinburne
and Matthew Arnold are the last poets who have
dared speak of the nightingale as Philomela.
We all know now that it is only the cock-bird
who sings, and poets have had to note the fact.
Indeed the only virgin source of inspiration left
for modern poetry is Natural Science. She is
Lhf truth muse. There must have been some
people who backed the Faun in his contest with
Apollo, and I confess that in the .daytime the
blackbird affects me more than the nightingale,
and in ;ill moods. Sometimes it has all the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 3

jauntiness of the Pan's pipe heralding a Punch
and Judy show, at other times the plangent
note, " the sense of tears " which is Pan's con-
tribution to serious art. I think it is partly
John Davidson's interest in blackbirds that
attracts me to him above the other sixty or
seventy young gentlemen who make modern
poetry. In the "Thames Ditton" passage of
the first " Fleet Street Eclogues," he speaks of
their " oboe -voices," and again of their song
as " broken music " — one of his cleverest adap-
tations of a Shakespearean phrase.

8th. — My old gardener has at last conde-
scended to retire. He has been on the place,
I believe, for sixty years, man and boy ; but for
a long time he has been doing less and less ; his
dinner-hour has grown by insensible degrees
into two, his intercalary luncheons and nunch-
eons more and more numerous, and the state
of the garden past winking at. This morning
he was rather depressed, and broke it to me
that I must try to find some one to take his
place. As some help, he suggested the names
of a couple of his cronies, both well past their
grand climacteric. When I made a scruple of
their age, he pointed out that no young men of
this generation could be depended upon ; and

4 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

further, that he wished to end his days in his
own cottage (i.e. my cottage) where he had lived
all his life, so that there would be a difficulty in
introducing any one from outside. I suppose I
must get a young fellow who won't mind living
for the present in lodgings. I make a point as
far as possible of taking soldiers for servants,
feeling in duty bound to do so ; besides, I like
to have well set-up men about the place. When
they are teetotalers they do very well. William,
my coachman, is a teetotaler by profession, but,
as the phrase goes, not a bigot. He was a
gunner, and the other night — I suppose he had
been drinking delight of battle with his peers —

he brought me home from , where I had

been dining, in his best artillery style, as though
the carriage were a field-piece.

9th. — C, who is just home from Cairo, came
to dine, and we had much talk about things
military which need not be recorded. It seems
ill.' Sphinx's cap has been discovered, but one
cannot imagine this increasing his majesty ; hats
arc such local and temporal things. C. remarked
thai some of the papers had been speaking of
the Sphinx as "sin;"; confusing it with the
Greek sphinx that asked riddles and made short
work of the unfortunates who failed to answer

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 5

them. But is not his beard in the British
Museum? The Egyptian sphinx has far too
much serenity to play cither the poser or the
cannibal. But there is a riddling sphinx of the
Nile, a very modern and undignified personage ;
and the Egyptian question, one may hope, has
at last found an GEdipus in England, one might
almost say in Lord Cromer. For Lord Cromer
typifies, even to exaggeration, in the eyes of
native and European, our characteristic quali-
ties, strength of hand, and strength of purpose,
devotion to athletics and distrust of ideas. His
memorial is written in Milner's book, and no
praise can be too high for his exhibition of the
" Justum et tenacem propositi virum " ; the man
who knows his mind and won't be bribed. It is
curious to notice the new type that is being
created by young England in Egypt. The
usual British alertness, not to say menace, of
manner is soothed down into an Oriental
dreaminess, as though time had never been
called money, and there was no such super-
stition as free-will ; but of course the Oriental-
ising is only superficial.

Uth. — To-day falls our customary beating of
the bounds. But the new vicar is for still
older customs, and wants to revive the Koga-

6 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

tion-tide procession with a litany, especially in
view of the present drought. Tom, who is
patron of the living and parson's warden, re-
fused to take part and "make a guy of him-
self," as he expressed it; and Farmer Smith,
his colleague, said very bluntly that he would
have no papist nonsense in his fields, and
" besides, there couldn't be any rain till the
wind shifted." So, as the substantial men
stood aloof, the vicar had to content himself
with the choir-boys, who celebrated the new
forms with too much of the old spirit. I
suppose my wandering life has purged me
from a good deal of insular and Protestant
prejudice, for I confess there seems more sense
and present advantage in the religious rite
than in the civil, when boundaries are all
registered in maps. But we have lost what-
ever instinct we ever had for picturesque cere-
monial. The other day I saw the town council

of turn out to meet a Royal Princess; the

majority wore gowns which were much too
short for them, and their hats were the various
hats of every day. In short, they were ridicu-
lous, and seemed to know it.

This Jingoism in America is too silly. A
Little while ago it, was England, now it is Spain.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 7

A schoolboy translated Horace's " Dulce et de-
corum est pro patria rnori " by " sweetness and
decency have died out of the land." Jingoism
is the schoolboy's version of patriotism.

ISth.—lt was to-day, how many years ago,
that I put a certain serious question to Sophia.
The crisis came as we stood by the lily-convally

bed in the old Manor House garden at .

There was only one lily with any of its bells
fully out, and I gave it her, and now I reckon
any year normal which brings its lilies into
flower by the 13th, to let me pay my annual
tribute. This year they came a few days too
soon.

The copses and commons — our Berkshire

commons are little forests — seem this year

more beautiful than ever. The bloom of all

the flowering trees, thorns, chestnuts, &c, even

the elms and oaks, has been abnormal. The

primroses are yielding place now to the wild

hyacinths, which show through the trees in

broad belts, and smell almost as strong as a

bean-field. Soon the bracken will supersede

both. My poet Davidson speaks somewhere of

these hyacinths as —

. . . " like a purple smoke
Far up the bank."

8 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

The description is very just. I have a notion
that this is what Fletcher meant by " harebells
dim," if we accept that emendation,1 for what
we now call the harebell comes too long after
the primrose to be connected with it. The
beeches are in their full spring beauty, but
the oaks are devoured by caterpillar, and too
many of them are lying all abroad and naked,
like giants stripped of their armour. The depres-
sion of agriculture, which town Radicals affect
to disbelieve in, is having this result amongst
others, that every stick worth cutting is being
cut, except in the parks of the big landowners
or on the glebes of the clergy, who are debarred
from " waste " by law. Old philologers used to
explain Berkshire to mean Bare-oak-shire ; and
the nakedness of the land will soon justify the
aame.

14th. — To-day is the centenary of the vac-
cination of James Phipps by Jenner, which
Gloucester, his birthplace, has been celebra-
i ing in so becoming a fashion. " No prophet is
accepted in his own country." A stranger
giving himself out as from Gloucester, pro-

1 " Primrose, first-born ohild of Ver,

Merry Sprin^l imc's harbinger
With her bells dim."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 9

bably some wag who knew our nervousness,
called a few days ago at the village shop, and
the excitement in consequence among the well-
to-do has been extraordinary. Tom's wife at
once issued a placard appealing to all mothers
to set a good example by being revaccinated.
It appeared in the shop window next the new
muzzling order, and seems to have got mixed
up with it, for the postman carried about the

news that in village " all the women were

to be muzzled and all the dogs vaccinated."
Yesterday was fixed for the doctor's attendance,

and old Widow , who is eighty-eight, was

the first voluntary victim. This morning I
offered my wife and children and slaves. The
cook, I am told, ripped up her sleeve with a
pair of scissors, and then went off into hysterics ;
the ruddy David turned the complementary
colour, but remembered the story of the Spartan
boy in the " Sixth Standard Reader," and did
not scream or struggle. Rumour brings in
momentarily fresh stories of heroism.

Why did Mr. Austin receive the laurel ?
Tom, who thinks that to love Lord Salisbury
is a Conservative education, is annoyed when
I put the question; but I am convinced it
arose from a confusion between Swinford and

10 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Swinburne, very natural to one more familiar
with scientific than literary distinctions. Our
arguments, however, never become really serious,
as Tom is not concerned to defend the honour
of any poets but those who belong to the
county, and these, so far as we know, are only
two, Chaucer and the laureate Pye. Chaucer's
connection with Donnington is doubtful ; but
the Pyes are a Farringdon family, and the poet
Pye planted that conspicuous clump of trees
above the town on the west known as Farring-
don Folly.

loth. — The wave of Conservatism seems to
have brought with it a revival of interest in
heraldry. Or is this merely due to the savage
mania for collecting book-plates ? I bought
to-day Miss Austen's " Persuasion " in a rather
pretty edition, and found her coat-of-arms
printed inside the cover by way of ex-libris.
The publishers seem to carry this piece of folly
through all their reprints, Shakespeare, by way
of eminence, having his achievement treated
in two styles. Perhaps the new taste may
spread in time to the upper classes, and pre-
vent ladies printing their family crest on en-
velopes wit hiii a shield. One observes, too, that
I nil iters and publishers are reviving their old

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 11

signs ; Longmans publish " at the Sign of the
Ship " ; the new poetry is sold " at the Bodley
Head," or "the bodiless head" as a humorist
called it, and I have heard the suggestion made
that the new type of "evil and adulterous"
novel should not be procurable except " at the
sign of the prophet Jonah." This would be a
useful guide to us country bumpkins. But
to return to Miss Austen. I notice that the
first page of this last edition of " Persuasion "
piously preserves the awkward misprint of a
full-stop in the middle of the description of
Sir Walter Elliot and the Baronetage : — " There
any unwelcome sensations arising from domestic
affairs changed naturally into pity and con-
tempt. As he turned over the almost endless
creations of last century," &c.

lGtJi. — Read debate on Navy Estimates. Vir-
gil has put our foreign policy into a single line,
" Pacem orare manu, prasfigere puppibus arma,"
which one might translate, after Dryden, " Pro-
voke a peace and yet pretend a war."

The Spectator, surfeited for the moment of
cat and dog stories, has been opening its
voracious columns to a collection of Irish bulls,
very curious wildfowl. Many of them present
no recognisable bullish features ; others are

12 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

bulls in appearance only, and for the most part
confusions of metaphor that happen to be
amusing, of the type of the familiar " he never
opened his mouth without putting his foot in
it " (which is not a bull, because it does not
refer to the mouth, though it seems to). The
story about " never being able to keep an emetic
on the stomach " is in the same way a bull
only in appearance ; for the remark has no
sense at all if the man knew what an emetic
was, unless he meant it humorously; and in
neither case would it be a bull. It is of the
essence of a bull that it should be nonsense in
form only, not in matter. One of the best of
those in the Spectator is the following: —
" When one counts the accidents, dangers, and
diseases which beset the journey of life, the
wonder is a man lives till he dies." The Irish
have no exclusive property in mixtures of
metaphor, though their greater imaginativeness
makes them more figurative in speech than
the common run of Englishmen, and their
impetuosity tends to confusion. The following
passage is from the carefully written memoirs
of one of the greatest English scholars of the
century, Mark Pattison: — "Even a1 this day
a country squire or rector, on landing with

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 13

his cub under his wing in Oxford, finds himself
much at sea as to the respective advantages or
demerits of the various colleges" (p. 16); and
of course Shakespeare mixes his metaphors
freely.

18th. — I notice that household tempers get
tinder-like in a prolonged drought, from the
commander-in-chief downwards. Add to this
that all the servants' arms have " taken." Time
and a few drops of rain will allay these fevers.
But meanwhile the rain does not come. " Why
don't you let David " — the ruddy buttons —
" help you with that, Laura ? " " Please, sir,
me and David hates each other." " My love,
why is Proserpine all blubbered ? " (Proserpine
is so styled because she works upstairs in the
morning and downstairs in the afternoon.)
" Oh, John, she has broken Uncle George's
Venetian glass, and I have been speaking to
her. I never saw such a careless girl; but
there, they're all alike."

19th. — At luncheon, Miss A., the Scotch
governess, asked me if I liked buns. I replied
that I liked them if they were made with
sultana raisins and not currants. She blushed,
and explained that she meant the poet " Buns."
This, it seems, is the patriotic manner of pro-

14 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

nouncing Burns. Or let me say a patriotic
manner. For I recollect being taken to hear
a lecture in Edinburgh by a Scotch friend, who
when it was over inveighed against the speaker's
accent. " Why," said I, " I thought it was
Scotch ! " " Scotch," said he, " it was Fifcshire,
man." Miss A. may hail from Fife. Well, I
pleaded to an enthusiasm for certain verses of
the poet, and asked for her favourite passage.
It was this : —

" To catch dame Fortune's golden smile,

Assiduous wait upon her ;
And gather gear by every wile

That's justify'd by honour.
Not for to hide it in a hedge,

Nor for a train attendant,
But for the glorious privilege

Of being independent."

Poor Miss A. ! She showed me the Burns
number of a Scots journal in which persons of
importance gave their pet quotations. No one
seemed to care for the best things. I suppose
in the case of songs that are actually sung, it
soon becomes impossible to criticise the words.
I find even Dr. Service mentioning as the
best of Bnrns's songs, "Mary Morison," "My
Nannie O," and " Of a' the airts the wind can
blaw." Now, unhappily, 1 am no songster,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 15

and do not know the tunes of any of these;
but I should unhesitatingly assert that to men-
tion the first two in the same breath as the third
is " to unstop the string of all degree." In
" Mary Morison " the only lines that deserve
saying as well as singing are the final couplets
of the second and third stanzas —

and

" I sigh'd and said amang them a',
Ye are na Mary Morison."

"A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o' Mary Morison."

But these are not sufficient to compensate
the insipidity of the rest. "My Nannie O"
opens well ; after that there are irreproachable
sentiments ; but for " the golden cadence of
poesy, caret." " Of a' the airts " is a creature of
another element. The first verse, perhaps, comes
as near the border-line where simplicity joins
tameness as is safe for a great poet, and the last
two lines are not good ; but what amends in the
second stanza ! Even here I should not like to
pin my faith to the fourth line, but the rest is
as perfect as a song can be, both in pathos and
imagination. It is an interesting study to com-
pare the two versions of" Ye banks and braes of
bonnie Doon." The extra two syllables in the

16 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

even lines of the later version seem to me to
give the sorrow weight; the shorter line is jerky
in comparison.

" Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fair !
How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae f u' o' care !
Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird,

That sings upon the bough :
Thou minds me o' the happy days

When my fause luve was true.

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair !
How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary fu' o' care !
Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,

That wantons thro' the flowering thorn ;
Thou minds me o' departed joys,

Departed — never to return."

Burns never wrote anything so "simple, sen-
suous, and passionate " as the first four lines of
the amended version, the epithet " little " seems
to me exquisite; but the second quatrain is
spoilt, the last line being as bad as anything in
his English songs. This inequality is a curious
point about Burns; where he is equal through-
out, as in " Auld Lang Syne " and" John Ander-
son, my Jo," neither of which has a word one
could wish other than it is, it is because the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 17

pitch is not very high ; in the poems where he
touches sublimity, the pitch is never maintained
throughout. Few people would wish a line away
from " My luve is like the red, red rose," but few
would deny that the first two stanzas are better
than the last; and in the "Farewell to Nancy,"
which contains his finest as well as his best
known verses — and surely the love lyric in
England has never so perfectly crystallised a
tear —

" But to see her was to love her ;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met — or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted ! "

there occurs what is perhaps the worst couplet
he ever wrote —

" Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee.
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee."

And he actually repeats these lines to end with.
Of course, Burns was a superb satirist, and to
enjoy his satire one is content to make ac-
quaintance with the Scotch Kirk, and the
Scotch de'il, and even with Scotch haggis.

21st. — Rain at last, but too late and too little
to save the hay. My wife and daughter have

18 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

for a long time been involving me in a bicycle
controversy. In vain have I repeated that my
prejudices are against the exercise for women ;
they fixed upon the word " prejudice," and called
for reasons. I appealed to custom; Sophia
thought it enough to point to the fashion;
Eugenia, knowing how penetrable I am to a
quotation from Shakespeare, overbore me with
" What custom wills, in all things should we
do't,"&c, from " Coriolanus." So I yielded, and it
was arranged they should take lessons, and this
morning I was permitted to accompany them to
see their progress. E. was decidedly graceful,
and carried herself well ; but what shall I say of
my dear wife ?

22nd. — To Oxford ; wandered through the
Bodleian gallery and looked at the old curi-
osities, and many new ones, such as the Shelley
papers. How like Lord Salisbury is to the por-
trait of his great ancestor riding on a mule!
Has Mr. Gould allegorised this ? Walked about
and told the towers. Probably St. Mary's spire
will satisfy nobody. Why lias \). X. C. put so
monstrous a lion and unicorn over its new
porch? Magdalen looked beautiful, but not
so beautiful as before the bridge was widened
for the tramway. Somehow the narrow bridge

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 19

helped the height of the tower. But the
modern spirit hates privilege, even the privi-
lege of beauty ; and only Radicals may job.
rrhere was much talk at luncheon about the
admission of women to degrees. It seemed to
be the married dons who had led the attack.
Possibly they have lived so long on terms of
insipid equality with the other sex that they
do not realise the effect of mixed lectures upon
impressionable undergraduates. Courtship is
like " hunt the whistle " ; you can't play at
it with any interest after you know the game.
But there are always fresh generations coming
up to whom the whole thing is new ; and, let
dons say what they please, the universities,
no less than the public schools, exist for the
training of youth. Happily, the undergradu-
ates so far take the Conservative side. The
Radical party forget, too, that if it became
as much the fashion for girls as for men to
reside at a university, they would no longer
be all " reading girls," as at present, but a
smart set, and what the effect would be Ouida
alone could prognosticate. In the afternoon
strolled round the Parks, but was driven by
weather into the Museum. The anthropological
collections seem well arranged, and very inter-

20 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

esting, especially the musical instruments.
Who would have guessed that the guitar is
a development from the bow-string ? The new
Professor of Art was lecturing in the theati^
to a few, but doubtless fit, ladies. Of the matter
I could not judge, but the style was excellent —
simple, dignified, and finished, without the
over-elaboration usually affected by art-lec-
turers. One passage especially struck me —
upon the splendid audacity of pigments in
attempting to render human character, and
succeeding. Went to the service at Magdalen

Chapel, and afterwards dined with , and

had dessert in common room ; vintage and
anecdotes were both old and sound, so that
no one desired new ; " across the " chest-
nuts " and the wine " renewed my friendship

with .

23rd. — This morning's Standard celebrates
the close of the session by a leading article,
in the conventional three paragraphs, on the
Beauties of Nature. But the new wine retains
;i strong constitutional smack from the old
bottles. The " golden tassels of tho laburnum"
overhang " hundreds of villa residences," each
" a typical English home," and when we escape
from the suburbs it is to contemplate the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 21

" county scats and splendidly timbered parks,
through which run rights of way preserved
for the public from generation to generation."
It always Avas the landlords who preserved
rights of way, and commons too. But it is
not only the striking features of the landscape,
it is the inscrutable spirit of the Universe itself
that is to be whipped into the Government
lobby. " Nature is a Conservative force, ad-
monishing us all to keep together, to act to-
gether," by joining her flocks of sheep or
leagues of primroses ; her method is " a wise,
slow continuity, evolving and revolving," like
the Great Wheel, no doubt, and " patient under
passing disappointments," as, for example, when
it gets stuck. It is a great faith, and ennobles
politics with a religious sanction. But it is
a game that two can play at ; and it strikes
me that the Radicals could make out a better
abstract case for themselves as followers of
Nature. Take, for instance, the following
passage from a scientific writer ; what a capital
text it would make for a dithyrambic leader
in the Daily Chronicle ! — " Physical life may
be said to be the continual struggle every
moment against surrounding and imminent
death ; the resistance of an undiscoverable prin-

22 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY

ciple against unceasing forces ; and it holds
its own and lasts by replacing waste, by repair-
ing injuries, by counteracting poisons."

25th. — Whit -Monday is a high day with
many of the Benefit Clubs in our neighbour-
hood. It has, in fact, taken the place of the
old Berkshire feast or " revel," which was
already fast decomposing when Hughes de-
scribed it in " Tom Brown's Schooldays." There
is only one old man in the village, so far as
I can learn, who ever took part in a " back-
swording" contest, and he only once. His
story is that an " old gamester " asked him
to make play for him, promising to let him
off easily ; but the incessant flicker of the
single-stick before his eyes so roused his bile
that, being a brawny fellow, he beat down the
old gamester's guard by sheer force and " broke
his head." He has no sentimental regret at
the disappearance of backswording, which, as
he describes it, must have been brutal enough ;
and he insists that the wrestling was as bad,
the shoes of the wrestlers being often full of
blood from cuts made by the sharp leather.
A degenerate age is content with cricket and
football, which arc vastly better civilisers both
of thews and temper. All the morning on

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 23

Whit-Monday, the purveyors of amusement,
mostly gipsy, are getting their stalls, and cocoa-
nut pavilions, and merry-go-rounds into place ;
then the town band arrives a little before noon
and plays the members into church. Dinner
follows in the big barn, the gentlemen inter-
ested in the club carving the joints. When
everybody is well wound up, the annual meet-
ing is held, the honorary secretary makes an
inaudible report, new officers are elected, the
Queen's health is drunk, and everybody pro-
poses a vote of thanks to everybody else. Then
the whole company migrates into Tom's park
and gardens to watch the cricket-match, or
sing or loaf as their fancy leads them, except
a few thirsty enthusiasts who prefer playing
skittles at the Blue Boar for a cheese to make
them thirstier. In time comes dancing, and
in time the band marches out of the park
drawing the youths and maidens after it.

29th. — The scythes have begun in the bottom
meadow; there is no more cheerful sight and
no more delicious sound, when the grass is
worth cutting, but this year it is all " bennets."
" It shall be called Bottom's Dream, because
there is no bottom." Turned over Bacon's
Essays. He is not Shakespeare, but he is

24 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

often as surprisingly modern, sentence after
sentence seems written with an eye to current
events. Take this, for instance : " To be master
of the sea is an abridgment of a monarchy [i.e.
a monarchy in miniature]. Surely at this day,
with us of Europe, the vantage of strength at
sea (which is one of the principal dowries of
the kingdom of Great Britain) is great ; both
because most of the kingdoms of Europe are
not merely inland, but girt with the sea most
part of their compass ; and because the wealth
of both Indies seems in great part but an
accessory to the command of the seas."

And here is our Armenian policy. Among
unjustifiable wars Bacon ranks those "made
by foreigners under the pretence of justice or
protection to deliver the subject of others from
tyranny and oppression."

And here is a judgment on the Transvaal
Government : " All States that are liberal of
naturalisation towards strangers are fit for
empire."

Here, too, is one side of the Colonial Secre-
tary : "Wonderful is the case of boldness in
civil business: What first? Boldness. What
second and third ? Boldness. It doth fascinate
and bind hand and foot; therefore wo see it

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 25

hath done wonders in popular states, and more
ever upon the first entrance of bold persons
into action." This is, of course, the passage from
which Danton stole his " II nous faut de l'audace,
encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace."

Here is a good criticism on the Drink Com-
mission : " In choice of committees for ripen-
ing business for the Council, it is better to
choose indifferent persons than to make an
indifferency by putting in those that are strong
on both sides."

Finally, the following judgment of a great
soldier on duelling might well be commended
to the notice of the German Emperor: "It
were good that men did hearken to the saying
of Consalvo, the great and famous commander,
that was wont to say ' a gentleman's honour
should be de tela crassiore — of a good strong-
warp or web, that every little thing should not
catch in it.' "

SOtJu — The post this morning has more waste
paper than ever. There are six prospectuses of
joint-stock companies, most of them offering
gold mines. Will Africa never cease blowing
bubbles ? It is not insignificant that money-
lenders' letters are increasing in proportion.
There are a couple to-day. One gentleman

26 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

suggests "remunerative but not exorbitant
interest," and writes in a boyish hand that is
very frank and engaging. Indeed, I opened
the letter first, thinking it was from Harry.
The other fellow puts a crest on his envelope,
a hound's head with the motto, " Fides in
adversis," which is even more touching. It
strikes me that " a crocodile's head, the eyes
distilling tears, all proper," with for motto
" Beati pauperes," or " Dare quam accipere,"
would be much more appropriate. Then there
is an enormous circular from a gentleman who
is urgent that I should go with him on an
educational tour to Jericho, or a co-operative
cruise to shoot polar bears. And then there
are the wine-lists. There is no such good read-
ing to be had, if you lunch alone, as an ad-
vertiser's wine list ; to a person of imagination
and gouty tendency it is more stimulating
and far more innocuous than the wine itself.
Indeed, I suspect that what these vintners sell
is not half so precious as their description
of it.

June 1st. — The pitiful accident reported this
morning, that befell the Russian crowd in the
Khodinsky Plain waiting for their coronation
mugs — between three and tour thousand being

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 27

crushed to death — impresses one with the vast
size of modern nations. The description in
Matthew Paris, which I have just been reading,
of the crowd at the coronation of our Henry III.
presents an almost ludicrous contrast. We are
told that the citizens of London went out to
meet the king in holiday attire, and vied with
one another in trying the speed of their horses ;
and that the Constable of Chester attended the
king and kept the people back with a wand
when they pressed forward unduly.

2nd. — Came to visit Aunt Julia at Barchcster.
The ecclesiastical atmosphere of the Close is
somewhat rarefied and hard to breathe ; but
for a few days I rather enjoy it. And the
cathedral music is capital. The factions seem
in a flourishing condition. The Dean has put
down a Turkey carpet in the sanctuary, which
the Archdeacon's party resent as an unspeak-
able outrage, considering what has been going
on among the Christians in Anatolia and Crete.
On the other hand, the Archdeacon's daughter
has become engaged to a minor canon. Aunt
Julia, who is a staunch supporter of the Dean,
told me of the engagement with a light in her
eye and a deprecatory movement of the hands
that meant, " What could you expect ? " I

28 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

asked if she knew the gentleman. Her reply
was, " My dear, I have seen the young man
going backwards and forwards to his duties." She
went on to say that of course she should call
after the wedding, but it would make a great
deal of awkwardness, as it was her custom to
do no more than leave cards on the wives of
the minor canons. This phrase of "leaving
cards" always reminds me of a story, which
may be in Joe Miller, but we tell it of a dis-
tinguished ecclesiastical neighbour. He had
a new groom, fresh from one of the racing-
stables, who was to accompany him one day
in a long round of leave-taking calls, and was
sent into the house before starting to get some
cards. When they reached the last house, the
order came, " Leave two cards here, James," and
the reply followed, " I can't, my lord ; there's
only the ace of spades left."

4t1i. — The papers are enthusiastic about the
victory of Persimmon, or rather the Prince of
Wales, at the Derby. Nothing succeeds like
success, and the Prince is popular, so that even
we who for local reasons wished " Tueful " (as
we call him) to win, take our beating philo-
sophically. But why should the Stock Ex-
change burst out into singing " God bless the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 29

Prince of Wales"? Could it be that these
gentlemen were interested in Turf reform, and
foresaw in the Prince's good fortune, with a
horse of his own breeding, a good time coming
in which everything should be straight and
aboveboard? It is not racing, however, so
much as betting and the misery it leads to,
that offends thoughtful people. Everybody
has read "Esther Waters," with its scenes of
sordid tragedy. If the Prince of Wales were
to discountenance heavy betting, a great deal
of good might be done. For betting, like drink-
ing, though a natural taste, is much under the
influence of fashion. The " Paget Papers " con-
tain a letter from the last Prince of Wales who
won the Derby, in which he speaks of drunken-
ness in these engaging terms : " The rest were
bad enough, God knows, except myself, though
my every glass was a Bumper to your health.
I can safely swear I never flinched one, dear
Arthur, and you well know I am not even upon
indifferent occasions a shirker. Since that day
the old girl has never ceased being tipsy twice
a day," &c.

We have moved away from those days, and
not long ago one of the Royal princes spoke of
drunkenness as " the only enemy that England

30 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

had to fear." If the Prince of Wales would only
say that now of gambling !

"Lordes may finden other manner play
Honest enough to drive the day away,"

said Chaucer, and he was brought up at court.

Gtli, — Old Juniper is dead. He called in the
village carpenter last night to receive directions
about his funeral and to make his will. The
poor here are very cautious not to employ the
gentry in these testamentary matters, as they
fear the knowledge of their little savings might
impede the flow of charity. Tom, who is pre-
centor and wears a surplice in church like
Sir Thomas More, whom he much respects,
used to make a point of the choir being present
at all funerals. But one spring an epidemic so
increased the mortality that he got tired, and
the sixth corpse was condemned to be buried
plain. So now the vicar summons a few boys
from the school; and certainly singing the
Psalm very much lightens and seems to chris-
tianise the service. One has to see a country
funeral to appreciate the real luxury of woe.
The deceased may have been all that Avas dis-
agreeable and degraded, and Lis death may be
acknowledged on all hands to be a good riddance,
but the conventions must be respected. The

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 31

mourners walk behind the bier in a longer or
shorter procession of pairs, a man to the right
with a woman on his left arm, and a handker-
chief in his free hand. The exact position of the
handkerchief varies with the locality ; here it is
pressed to the right cheek. In church they
remain seated, leaning forward in an ecstasy of
uncontrollable grief during the whole service ;
then the procession is re-formed. This is Bacon's
" custom copulate and conjoined," and a mighty
power it is, and perhaps in a dim way it makes
for righteousness. On the Sunday following
the burial all the mourners that have not
scattered to distant homes come to church,
where they expect some pulpit reference and
an appropriate hymn.

9th. — Sophia's birthday. It is desperate work
finding presents in the country. However, at

I picked up a rather pretty piece of mosaic

binding, which I have filled with writing-paper
to make an album.

I have long meditated keeping an album
myself of another sort, a commonplace book,
what Milton calls a " topick-folio." This is one
of those resolutions that come with every first
of January, and too often go with it ; though a
very fat volume lying here on the table has its

32 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

first few pages filled with the harvest of several
new beginnings. Laziness has something to do
with the irresolution ; the habit of reading in
the Balfour position perhaps more ; more still
the conviction at the moment that if a passage
is very good there is small risk of forgetting it
(a terrible mistake !) ; but most of all that para-
lysing sentence in Marcus Aurelius, " No longer
delude thyself; thou wilt never read thine own
notes, nor the extracts from books which thou
wast reserving for thy old age" (iii. 14).

lOtli. — The cuckoo to-day has a decided hic-
cough. Saw some young partridges as I drove

in to . The barber was more interesting

than usual. He has received a commission
from some distinguished person to count how
many light and how many dark-haired people
he operates upon in a month. The theory, as
he propounded it, was that the dark-haired
people were clever, but weak, and the light-
haired strong and foolish, and that having been
for centuries oppressed by superior force, the
aboriginal black-haired folks are now coming
to the front again. He called them Hibernian
(query Iberian). " Shy- traffickers, the dark
[berians come." Lunched at club. Talk turned
on eccentric wills. Dr. had a friend who

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 33

picked up an old gentleman's hat in Piccadilly,
and, before returning it, wiped off the dirt, which
so delighted the old gentleman that he asked
for the young man's card, and left him his
fortune. The legatee was killed in the Soudan
three months after. The moral seems to be,
have polite relations, and inherit the con-
sequences of their virtue.

11th. — Went to P.'s wedding. Everything
went happily, and everybody seemed contented.
There was an extempore sermon, which began
by dividing itself into three heads ; and this a
little frightened me, but the heads proved to be
without tails. The service itself is one of the
best in the Prayer-Book, being short and to the
purpose ; but it would be better still for a few
slight changes. For example, the officiating
clergyman emphasised a distinction between
the man's " plighting " his troth and the woman's
"giving" hers, which is surely a distinction
without a difference. Then what does "With
my body I thee worship " mean ? And might
not the wife's promise be brought a little more
up to date ? New women, new promises. In
older days the woman had to promise to be
" bonnair and buxom in bed and at board." We

like them to be so still; but we "hold it not

34 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

honesty to have it thus set down." Might not
the " obey " follow the " buxom " into limbo ?
My wish for P. and his wife is that they may
hit the mean, as in other things so in their con-
jugalities, between the extravagant complacency
that Lamb ridicules and some people's brus-
querie. Of the latter I heard an amusing in-
stance the other day. B. said to his wife, " Why
arc your dresses half an inch longer than any
other woman's ? " To which she replied, " Be-
cause I am your wife. Otherwise the other
women's dresses would be half an inch shorter
than mine." And a new sting has been intro-
duced into connubial controversy by chatter
about heredity. Two youug friends of mine
were overheard wrangling the other day as to
which was to blame for their very much spoilt
daughter's wilfulness. On second thoughts I
am not sure that we have done altogether well
to get rid of that old promise. The unsoured
Milton found in it his youthful ideal:

" Conio, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth,

So buxom, blithe, and debonaAr."

All moral novelists agree that conduct al

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 35

board is nine-tenths of wedded life. Is it not
Anthony Hope who says, " Her eyes looked as
if they would expect too much of me at break-
fast " ? and there is the same feeling, heightened
to mania, in Q.'s "You are too fat, Lydia."
Yes, " to be buxom at board " is to be perfect,
and of all boards none is so difficult as the
breakfast-table. The old conventual practice
of having a person to read some dull book or
an office during the meal might be introduced
with advantage into country houses where the
post comes in late. But for the " obedience " ?
No doubt all males must hold Milton's theory
that obedience is their due, but the un-success
of Milton's practice is strongly in favour of dis-
guising the claim :

" Therefore God's universal law
Gave to the man despotic power
Over his female in due awe ;
Nor from that ri^ht to part an hum,
Smile she or lour :
So shall he least confusion draw
On his whole life, not sway'd
By female usurpation, or dismay'd.
But had we best retire ? I see a storm."

The same chorus in "Samson" enumerates,
not without surprise and chagrin, all the fine
male qualities to which the other hex can be

36 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

impenetrable, and gives up the puzzle of affinity

as hopeless :

" It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
That woman's love can win or long inherit ;
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit."

Ladies, I am told, find it no less puzzling to
account for the fascination exercised by many
of their own sex who are neither beautiful nor
witty. Mrs. 's drawing-room is the rendez-
vous of all the bachelors and married men in
the countryside, of whom I am the least. Why
do we go there ? Let me examine myself. I
go because she makes me feel comfortable and
contented ; because she seems to say always the
right thing, the thing I want said to me. She
moves like a goddess in a magical atmosphere
of sympathy. I go in bruised and battered and
resentful, and feeling all my tale of years, and
come out like ^Eson from Medea's tub, young
and sleek and self-satisfied. I was there when
Major Ursa himself, the biggest bear in the
country, was lugged in by his wife against his
will, all bristles, to pay some social debt, and
saw him take leave in less than twenty minutes,
purring like a pussy. And now he comes with-
out Mrs. Ursa.

PAGES FROM A TRTVATR DTARY 37

15th. — There has been thunder about all day,
and this afternoon some twenty good flashes of
lightning, but no rain. After dinner I was
reading, over my cigar in the garden, Dr. Gar-
nett's selection from Coventry Patmore, which
seems to contain that poet's salvage. After
enjoying my favourite poems, I turned once
more to the very spirited but to me incompre-
hensible piece called " To the Unknown Eros,"
and found it no more luminous than usual.

" It is a Spirit though it seems red gold ;
And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.
Refuse it, though refusal be despair ;
And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair."

As I reached that line, though I was uncon-
scious of any wilful act of refusal, red gold not
being much proffered in these parts, I felt the
phantom in my hair — just at the nape of the
neck — and a very unpleasant sensation it was.
When I recovered my presence of mind, the
phantom proved to be a very big moth, which
had settled there and was flapping its wings.
I do not suppose this is altogether what Pat-
more meant, but it was an apt illustration.
It is an annus mirabilis for Lepidoptera.

19th. — Went to town for several days. We
have been reading aloud in the evenings lately

38 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Doughty's " Arabia Deserta," which is a power-
ful piece of writing, though mannered ; and a
passage in praise of precious stones has taken
such hold of the feminine mind that I have
been afraid to act as escort in shopping
thoroughfares. This is what D. says : " The
Oriental opinion of the wholesome operation
< >f precious stones, in that they store the mind
with admirable beauties, remains perhaps at
this day a part of the marvellous estimation
of inert gems amongst us. Those indestructible
elect bodies, as stars, shining to us out of the
dim mass of matter, are comfortable to our
Huxuous feeble souls and bodies; in this sense
all gems are cordial, and of an influence re-
ligious. These elemental flowering lights al-

D Oct

most persuade us of a serene eternity, and arc
of things (for the inestimable purity) which
separate us from the superfluous study of the
world" (i. 315). Certainly pearls are very
beautiful objects, and their wearers as certainly
find them "comfortable" and "cordial"; and
the two or three thousand pounds one has
to pay for a necklace may be an exceedingly
good investment into the bargain if it persuades
ns of a serene eternity. Conscience would be
for on* n 1 he side of the expense. The 1 : 1 < I \

PAGER FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 39

at the Royal Academy whom Sargent has
painted in her pearls does look to have a very
tranquil soul, as though separated from the
superfluous study of the world. What pearls
they are, and what paint ! But if I had the
money to spend I should buy my immortality
directly of Mr. Sargent rather than of Mr.
Spink. How good the Chamberlain is too !
People may grumble that there is not much
revelation of character in the face beyond keen-
ness and will ; but is there in the living face ?
And to make the eyes big and yearning, as
Watts too often does, by way of "divinely
through all hindrance finding the man " behind
them, is not to paint a portrait.

20th.— Sunday. Went to Church. Ser-
vice Gregorian, preacher Gorian. At least he
thought he was, but what he really resembled
was an earwig endeavouring to extricate him-
self from a filbert, and frantically waving his
flippers. The matter was what that shrewd
judge, Mr. Pepys, would have called "un-
necessary." What a bore it must be to have
foolish imitators ! In the afternoon to St.
Paul's, where the service is said to be the best
in Europe ; but ah, the rcredos ! How awful
for three or four venerable clergymen to have

40 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the responsibility of decorating a cathedral !
The days of bishop builders are gone by, and
probably the professional architect has it all
his own way, except for the occasional pressure
of public opinion. I could not get near enough
to the choir to judge of the new ceiling, but
the general colour effect seemed good.

21st. — Stood for some time on the doorstep
drawing in the electrical force of London, and
feeling like a mouse in oxygen. It is only we
country cousins who really enjoy London, just
as it is only Londoners who really enjoy the
country, and the enjoyment on both sides
may be a good deal due to misunderstanding.
A little chap from Seven Dials is said to have
called a lark "a bloomin' cock-sparrow in a
fit," and I may be doing even greater injustice
to the passers-by when I fancy them pulsing
with the high fever of existence. I am glad
London has found singers of late. Some very
genuine poets have not been kind to it ; " that
tiresome, dull place," says Gray ; and Cowper
is more impolite still; but then he was mad.
In Kensington Gardens I met K. for the first
time since our disagreement. He treated mo
very civilly, like a stranger, though wo had
I "tin close friends for ten years. That is tin-

PACER FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 41

worst of your idealist ; all his friends are

angels and all his opponents ; so that to

cross him is to experience, in his estimation,
the fall of Lucifer. He sadly lacks humour, or,
what comes to the same thing, a sense of pro-
portion. To console myself I walked round
the Albert Memorial, and found Hiram and
Bezaleel an excellent tonic. Tom met us in
the afternoon at the Academy, and took us, as
usual, to criticise the construction of the hay-
ricks. He was much impressed by a picture
called " Whoa, steady ! " wherein were repre-
sented two plough-horses, the one capering while
the other stood impassive : he vowed he had
never seen so steady a horse in his life, and was
determined to purchase it, if he could find out
from the painter where it lived. I could not
get him to admire Clausen's " Crow- boy," who
was evidently, he thought, one of the present
soft generation, spoilt by too long keeping at
school, even if he had not got, as he suspected,
St. Vitus's dance; La Thangue's ducks, too,

very much puzzled him. We dined at 's,

and talked about ghosts. L. gave us the only
true and genuine account of the Glamis ghost,
in whoso room he had slept since its happy
decease. I told the story of my grandfather

42 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

and the headless horseman, and of the ghost
who rolls my lawn every 29th February. F.
had seen too many ghosts to believe in them.
She told us how, when the clock struck twelve,
a party consisting of an old gentleman and
three girls used to appear nightly in her bed-
room. Once she determined not to open her
eyes, but a strange rustling all round the room
roused her curiosity, and when she looked
there were ears of corn mixed with poppies
thrusting themselves from behind each picture
frame. The old gentleman seemed much
amused.

22nd. — To my dentist, who gave me the
laughing-gas, and " charmed ache with air " ;
dreamt that I was being dragged down through
a sea of blood. Went to the Club to write
letters and lunch, and recover tone ; then
walked through the Park to make calls. How
rare it is to find ladies in society who know
what they think about anything ! They hand
on opinions like counters, all of which are
of equal conversational value. 1 1 your ears
are long enough, you may hoar the judgments
you have just expressed, original as you in.i\
think them, being passed on to Mr. X. as the
unrest, commonplace. One pleasure of on

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 43

excursion to town is the sight of pretty dresses.
In the country the dress of the upper class
becomes plainer and plainer year by year as
that of the classes below waxes in flainboyancy.
Perhaps some ladies push the principle to an
extreme. One of my neighbours while waiting

for the train at station, where she is not

known, was accosted by a farmer and asked,
" How many did her master keep ? " (i.e. how

many servants); and the photographer

pronounces it impossible nowadays to obtain
an artistic picture of any county lady, because
their dresses fit so ill. Ladies whose husbands
have made a fortune recently, and buy a country
" cottage with a double coach-house," should be
clever enough to take the hint.

2ord. — Came down in the train with Arch-
deacon . One of Smith's newspaper boys

amused me very much by pressing on him the
sporting journals. He told me of a very sharp
lad who once offered him the World, and when
he shook his head, explained " Christmas Num-
ber, sir." I have no doubt our Berkshire breed
is very virtuous, and it is far from stupid, but
one does sometimes wish for a little of the
Cockney smartness. It strikes mo that " paiper,"
lor " paper," which must have come to London

44 PAGES FROM .A PRIVATE DIARY

from Essex, is less fashionable along the line
than it used to be, and may quite go out, like
the v for w, of which Dickens made so much.

2Qth. — Q. has reprinted some of his Speaker
" causeries," and delightful table-talk they are.
Q.'s criticism has the flavour of first principles
that one associates with Oxford scholarship
and philosophy. For the honour of Oxford
I am glad to see a protest against Mr. Hardy's
system of the universe, and also an additional
paragraph on Davidson's " Ballad of a Nun,"
a poem that, with all my admiration for D.,
I have never been able to read a second time.
Q. explains that the style on a first reading
blinded him to the sense. In that misfortune
he was not alone. On a certain Monday morn-
ing late in '94 a queue of respectable middle-
aged ladies thrust its way along Vigo Street
into the " Bodley Head," asking for copies of
the " Ballad of a Nun " by a Mr. Davidson.
When the pressure was a little eased, the
publisher ventured to inquire the causo of the
sudden demand, as the Saturday papers had
not contained any remarkable review. Tho

answer was that the Archdeacon1 of W

had charged them on their souls' health to

i 'i

The late A.rchdeaoon.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 45

procure it. Dear Archdeacon ! He knew the
story from the Gesta Romanorum or from Miss
Procter's version, and too carelessly assumed
that D. meant the same thing. The one of
Q.'s papers I incline to regret is that upon
Samuel Daniel, and for an entirely selfish
reason. Loving Daniel, I should be sorry if
he were "boomed." My feeling about him is
very much that excusable jealousy which made
Q. himself refuse Gigadibs the explanation of
a certain " Troy " custom. (See the preface to
" The Delectable Duchy.")

27th. — The roads are execrable. This year
they should have been better than usual, us
the District Council has taken them over, and
the contractors have no inducement, as the
farmers had, to delay mending them till too
late for the flints to work in ; so the metal was
put on in good time, but the drought has made
them thoroughly rotten again. Down in the
vale they use granite instead of flints, and if
the parsons and farmers who compose the
council would only take to cycling, we should
soon see flints discarded here also. We should
see also the hedge-clippings swept up. I have
been learning to bicycle ; what I especially dis-
like about it is the second or hind- wheel jolt

46 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

after one has kept one's temper over the first.
What I especially enjoy is the exhilaration of
running downhill. I find, too, that my ideas
flow more easily when in rapid motion, — this
may be a sign of decrepitude, — but if I descend
to register them they are gone. Some scientific
genius should invent a bicycle-phonograph into
which one could talk.

To bicycle amongst country villages is a very
good way in which to test their ethos. In some
places the traveller is laughed at, or tripped up,
or stoned, or the children spread tacks across
the road ; in others, perhaps only a mile or two
distant, he is as safe from molestation as in a
London suburb. I have noticed — and the ex-
perience is not palatable to my Radical friends,
but it is this — that where the natives are bar-
barous it is a sign that there is no resident
squire or no competent parson.

July 1st. — The young wry necks, alas ! are
dead, no doubt killed by their parents through
my folly in taking one out of the nest. They
are very uncommon birds in the neighbourhood,
hence my wish to examine them. They dug
their hole in an old apple tree just below where
it had lost a branch, so that the wood was
rotten; and not more than live feet from the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 47

ground, so that I could watch them easily. Of
course, I had to widen the orifice before I could
remove the youngster. The snake-like twist
they can give to their neck, and their snake-
like hiss, make them rather uncanny birds, and
may account for their use in divination by
Greek wizards. They were spread-eagled on
a wheel, and turned, or perhaps whirled, round.
Simsetha, in Theocritus, uses such a wheel to
charm back her faithless lover Delphis. The
poor birds must have rejoiced at the advent
of Christianity, modern Christian witches pre-
ferring to conjure with robins and other birds
of bright plumage.

2nd. — The Agricultural Rating Bill passed its
third reading by two county Radical votes over
the Government majority. The Committee de-
bates have slowly exhibited, or perhaps evolved,
the Government position, at last clearly stated
by Mr. Balfour in his concluding speech, that
the Bill is meant not only to relieve a greatly
distressed industry in redemption of election
pledges, but also as a contribution towards
remedying the present monstrous injustice in
the assessment to local rates. It is to be hoped
that the Government will sooner or later over-
haul the whole bad business, but not without

48 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

more deliberation than they thought necessary
before overhauling our educational system. The
Janus-faced contention of the Opposition that
the proposed relief is, as regards the landowners,
an enormous subsidy, but as regards the agri-
culture interest generally a drop in the bucket,
reminds me of an ancient story about a little
girl and a piece of cake :

Little Girl : Is that large piece of cake for grandfather ?

Mamma : No, dear, for you.

Little Girl : What a small piece of cake.

The new vicar, who is not so good a Con-
servative as we could wish, is indignant with
the Government for not allowing the relief to
the clergy on Tythe Rent Charge. At present,
he tells me, he pays half as much rates as Tom ;
and when the Act comes into operation he will
pay exactly the same amount, for Tom, who
farms his own land, will get the reduction.
This certainly seems preposterous in regard, for
example, to the road rate, for Tom wears the
road much more with his carriage horses and
plough teams than the vicar with his one pony
and "humble vehicle." I noticed in the Rate
Book to-day that Tythe Rent Charge is now
entered as " buildings." It was "land" for the
sake of being rated, and ceases to be "land"

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 49

when rates on land arc reduced. But how can
it be " buildings " ?

Mh. — A curious example presented itself this
morning of our growing sensitiveness to criti-
cism, and also of our ready invention in the
manufacture of scandal. A person who makes
mineral water at some distance from here sent
in his card and asked to see me, and on being
shown into the library began this catechism : —

" Sir, did you pay a visit to last Friday

week ? Did you stop to lunch ? Did you say
at lunch that my soda-water was enough to give
everybody typhus fever ? " I endeavoured to
persuade the little man that he was mis-
informed, that I did not so much as know that
he existed ; still less, if possible, that he made
mineral waters; that I could not, therefore,
have censured them ; and that so far as my
memory served the topic did not arise ; so that
his friend the footman must have confused two
people and two occasions. I then warned him
that perhaps the circulation of such a report
was not the most advantageous form of self-
advertisement, because a man's mineral water
should be not only pure, but above suspicion.
He left in some excitement, generously accept-
ing my disclaimer, but determined to find the

50 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

truth somehow. I was tempted to suggest that
he might find the truth at the bottom of his
well, but he would not have understood. Poor
lady ! No wonder Lucian thought her a/j,vSpa
koI aaafyrjs to y^pCofjua — wan and washed out in
complexion ; but it would be a pity she should
have typhus.

6th. — The garden sun-dial came unriveted
from its pedestal some months ago, and has
been laid aside ever since, as it seemed to the
ladies a pity to lose the opportunity of deco-
rating it with a motto. We are all gone crazy
about mottoes in this part of the world. Every
new house that is built must have its motto,
and the selection gives a good deal of entertain-
ment both to the house-builders and their
neighbours. Well, fashion must be followed,
so this morning I have been reading through
Mrs. Gatty's collection of sun-dial mottoes,
being stimulated to industry by my stop-gap
gardener's inquiry whether he might not put
a pot of hydrangeas on the pedestal. So I ex-
plained its purpose. The best mottoes seem to
be the best known, such as — " Non nisi cu;lcsti
radio," " Horas non numero nisi serenas," " Porc-
unt ct imputantur," but one cannot use these.
A favourite device was to print "we shall," and

PA(JES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 51

leave " di(e) — al(l) " to be supplied by the local
wits ; but that is too macabre. I remember an
uncle of mine choosing " Sensim sine sensu "
from the Be Senectute, and being very indignant
with a friend of his, a fine scholar, who tried to
convince him that he had pitched upon an
interpolation. On the whole, I doubt if I shall
find anything better than my first idea of
" Cogitavi dies antiquos " (" I have considered
the days of old "), from the 77th Psalm. It is
dignified, and to a reflective mind monitory
without being impudently didactic, and I am
fond of the Vulgate. The seventeenth-century
preachers and essayists were fortunate in being
able to quote it, " to saffron with their pre-
dicacioun," but it should be kept for sober
occasions. Matthew Arnold was something too
liberal in his use : it became a mere trick of
style with him.

7th. — I notice that one of the papers in a
report of the Queen's Review of her Jubilee
Nurses, says, " The nurses curtsied thrice simul-
taneously, which had a novel and pleasing
effect."

8th. — Made our annual excursion to White
Horse Hill. We lunched, as usual, at the
" Blowing Stone." Five minutes' practice once

52 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

a year for half a century has not taught me the
trick of blowing it, and Sophia remains the one
member of the family who can rouse the fog-
horn blast by which Alfred is said to have
gathered his forces. It was almost too warm
for the climb, but we persisted, and were re-
warded at the top by the breeze over the
downs. I drove Sophia in the light pony-cart
along the Ridgeway to Uffington Castle, and (to
quote the words of a recent Spectator) " enjoyed
the sensations of a British chief driving his
springless car to the fortress of his tribe." But,
more fortunate than this writer, we did not
smash our chariot in effecting an entrance into
the camp. The vale lies stretched out below in
vast and level panorama, " like the garden of
the Lord," and there is no such lovely sight, to
my thinking, anywhere. It is a little sad, too,
for all the towns one sees are slowly decaying,
largely through their own folly in refusing the
Great Western Railway. Reading had more
foresight, and in the half-century lias more
than trebled its population. Perhaps it is not
so sad after all, for Wantage remains what it
was to Bishop Butler if not quite what it was
to King Alfred, and Farringdon has still its
memories of Saxon kings (not to mention Pye),

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 53

while Reading is like a strong ass couching
down between the two burdens of Sutton's
seeds and Palmer's biscuits. After tea we drove
on to Uffington village for the sake of Hughes's
memory. But the church is a splendid speci-
men of Early English architecture, and well
worth a visit for its own sake, as our American
cousins are sure to find out soon, and make it a
shrine of pilgrimage. The vicar should open a
subscription list for some memorial, as they are
doing at Rugby. The school-house still stands
as it did when Tom Brown and Jacob Doodle-
calf were caught at the porch by the choleric
wheelwright, only the date over the door is not
1671, as you see it in the illustration, but 1617.
The inscription just indicated in the picture is
as follows : —

" Nil foedum dictu vitiiq ; htec limina tangat
Intra quae pueri. a.d. 1637."

The " pueri " is emphatic, and is explained by
one of the rules of the founder on the walls
within : —

' Whereas it is the most common and usual
course for many to send their daughters to com-
mon schools to be taught together with and
amongst all sorts of youths, which course is by

54 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

many conceived very uncomely and not decent,
therefore the said schoolmaster may not admit
any of that sex to be taught in the said
school."

The room is now used as a village reading-
hall. Tom Hughes's " Scouring of the White
Horse" describes with a wonderful vividness,
which was one of his gifts as a writer, the
" pastimes " that used to be held on occasion of
the scouring, and it remains their memorial.
For now the old idol is kept clean by the tenant
without ceremony. It is a quaint notion — an
ancient idol scoured by a muscular Christian.
People who write in the papers are not old
enough to remember the hideous Clapham
School religion, from which " muscular Chris-
tianity " helped to deliver us. There is a good
sketch of it in Laurence OliphantV' Piccadilly."
Its outward symbol was black kid gloves, and
its passwords were many, perhaps the most
odious being the word "engage." When a
clergyman called, it was quite customary for
him to say, " Shall we engage ? " and then and
there you were expected to let him hale you
into the presence of your Maker. Its organ in
the press was a paper called the; Record, which
ruled the religious world with a rod of iron.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 55

Any parson caught thinking for himself was
noted, and

" Without reprieve condemned to death
For want of well-pronouncing shibboleth ; "

the " death " in question being not only pro-
fessional, the disfavour of Lord Shaftesbury and
loss of preferment, but " the second death " as
well, with quarters assigned in the disciplinary
department of paradise. The persecution of
that good man Frederick Maurice, the prophet
of the musculars, the memory of which has
been preserved, like a fly in amber, by Tenny-
son's delightful ode to him, helped to disgust
moderate people ; and meanwhile the Oxford
school was growing in influence. Of course
" muscular Christianity " could never have be-
come really popular with the clergy, as it
reduced them to the position of second-rate
laymen.

10th. — There was a nut-hatch very busy in
one of the limes this morning. The bees are
also busy there ; but listening to them as they
" improved the shining hour " made me less
and less inclined for business myself. In fact,
I fell asleep. A modern poet notes " a hum
of bees in the queenly robes of the lime" as
one of the most delightful noises in nature,

56 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

and so it is; though his line, when I quote

it, makes Sophia shake her petticoats. On

my way to , to consult my lawyer about

a boundary dispute, I met a party of three

magpies, which should bode good fortune.

Prosit ! The hedges are in their full summer

glory—

" lovely to see
With mullein, and mallow, and agrimony,
With campion and chicory handsome and tall,
And the darling red poppy that's gayest of all,"

to quote a very old-fashioned poetaster. In-
deed, such is summer's pomp and prodigality,
that many things slip by without being enough
enjoyed. That ancient allegory of the pursuit
of pleasure, which still eludes the pursuer, is
wonderfully true even of such a mild delight
as the enjoyment of summer ; one cannot really
set to work to enjoy it; the enjoyment comes
when it wills in chance waves ; but I have ever
an absurd feeling that, while I am occupied
with business indoors, flowers are wasting their
sweetness, and birds their melody, and summer
is growing old. But to go out is not necessarily
to find enjoyment.

The visit of the Artillery Company of Massa-
chusetts to their elder brethren in England

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 57

should help to patch up the sentimental alli-
ance between the two countries. But senti-
ment will not last unless it is supported by
courtesy and tact. Now it is a curious and
unfortunate thing that while individual Ameri-
cans often excel Englishmen in these qualities
(one need go no further for an instance than
Colonel Walker of the H.A.C., and that fine
phrase of his about her Majesty, "her queen-
liness as a woman and her womanliness as a
queen ") — the bulk of those prominent in politics
seem singularly destitute of both, and there is
no diplomatic tradition. There is an interesting
Tatler (No. 41) about the Artillery Company,
describing a sham fight in the streets of London
on June 29, 1709 ; which shows that the H.A.C.
was to the wits of two centuries ago what the
Rifle Volunteers were to Punch in the sixties.

11th. — There seems a chance of the Parish
Council meetings becoming more lively. Both
Tom and his wife are on the council, Tom being
chairman, and they regard it as a highly useful
means of registering their benevolent ukases.
But the vicar, who has been elected this year,
is full of notions and wants to democratise it.
As a first step, to ensure publicity for the dis-
cussions, he has persuaded a few old women

58 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

to attend the meetings, all the men being too
busy in their gardens and not very keenly in-
terested. Last night there was a debate about
housing. The vicar maintained that certain
cottages (not Tom's) were a disgrace to the
village, and that the people who live in them
were very respectable people who had a right
(ominous word !) to decent houses if they could
pay for them. Tom replied that if he or any
one else built new cottages for these people,
other people aDything but respectable would
be only too glad to come into the empty ones.
That is true enough. The solution, of course,
is for Tom to buy the cottages in question, and
either reconstruct or pull them down ; and this,
if no one suggests it to him, he will probably
do. But such debates as last night's will soon
bring up the council to the level of interest of
Lord Salisbury's circus.

15th. — St. Swithin's: just enough rain for the
" apple christening."

H.M. Inspector paid a ''visit without notice"
to the school. At least it was without notice
so far as the school-master was concerned ; I
had known the awful secret for three days past,
us he had proposed himself for Luncheon. So
I happened to call at the school and found

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 59

him there. He is a good inspector, if a trifle
" tarrifyiog," as we say here. Most inspectors
are terrifying; so much depends upon their
verdict, and it is difficult for them to keep
the sense of their importance out of their
manner. One inspector I know exercises a
quite extraordinary and basilisco-like fascina-
tion by virtue of a rather stony blue eye. and
a lapis-lazuli in his finger-ring of the same tint.
These in a remarkable way react upon and re-
duplicate each other. He, too, is a good fellow,
but full of fads, and the worst of these is gram-
mar. I heard him once take a class in grammar.
He asked, amongst other useless things, the
meaning of "intransitive." Happily no child
knew, so he proceeded to explain. " Intransitive
means not going over ; an intransitive verb ex-
presses an action that does not go over to an
object. For example, the verb jump is intran-
sitive; if I say, 'the cat jumps,' I describe an
action that doesn't 'go over.' ' O mad inspector !
I fear your teaching proved more intransitive
than your cat's jump. At luncheon H.M. In-
spector amused us with professional anecdotes.
At a remote village school he had surprised the
infant mistress watering the children with a
<?arden rose before the examination began to

60 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DrARY

keep them fresh. Another story was of a
child whom he asked to explain the word
" pilgrim." " Please, sir, a man who travels
about." "But I travel about. Am I a pil-
grim ? " " Please, sir, a good man." As an
example of what is meant by " visualising " in
children (and the want of it in inspectors), he
told us of a small boy who could not add nine
to seven. The inspector, to make the sum easy,
put it thus : " Suppose you had nine apples in
one hand and seven in the other, how many
would you have altogether ? " "I should have
two jolly good handfuls."

IQth. — The papers report this morning the
unveiling of three monuments : a bust in the
Abbey of Thomas Arnold, a statue to Newman
at the Brompton Oratory, and a granite column
crowned by a bust of Shakespeare in the church-
yard of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, to the editors
of the first folio, Heminge and Condell. It was
interesting to notice as characteristic of our
tolerant age that several distinguished persons
passed from the first of these celebrations to
the second. The names of Heminge and Con-
dell are less rtpandus ; but their servico to
literature cannot easily bo exaggerated, and it is
pleasant to think that the great public should

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 61

recognise who it is they have to thank (under
Shakespeare) for eighteen of his thirty- six
dramas. " We have but collected them," they
say, " and done an office to the dead to procure
his orphans guardians, without ambition either
of self-profit or fame ; only to keep the memory
of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was
our Shakespeare." Fellow implies that they
were players — Heminge a poor one, " Stuttering
Hemmings," he is called ; but besides being
players, they were the leading proprietors and
managers of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres,
and so the owners of the plays they allowed to
be published. In Shakespeare's will there is
an item interlined : " To my fellowes, John
Hemynges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cun-
dell, xxvjs viijd a peece to buy them ringes."
The commentator Steevens has some amusing
remarks on the greasy condition of most copies
of the first folio that have come down : —

"Of all volumes those of popular entertain-
ment are soonest injured. It would be difficult
to name four folios that are oftener found in
dirty and mutilated condition, than this first
assemblage of Shakespeare's plays, 'God's
Revenge against Murder,' ' The Gentleman's
Recreation,' and ' Johnson's Lives of the High-

62 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

way men.' Though Shakespeare was not, like
Fox the Martyrologist, deposited in churches to
be thumbed by the congregation, he generally
took post on our hall tables ; and that a multi-
tude of his pages have ' their effect of gravy '
may be imputed to the various eatables set out
every morning on the same boards. It should
seem that most of his readers were so chary of
their time, that (like Pistol, who gnaws his leek
and swears all the while) they fed and studied
at the same instant. I have repeatedly met
with thin flakes of pie-crust between the leaves
of our author. These unctuous fragments,
remaining long in close confinement, communi-
cated their grease to several pages deep on each
side of them. It is easy enough to conceive
how such accidents might happen — how Aunt
Bridget's mastication might be disordered at
tin sudden entry of the Ghost into the Queen's
closet, and ln>\v I he half-chewed morsel dropped
nut of the gaping Squire's mouth when the
visionary Banquo seated himself in the chair
-■I' Macbeth. Still, it is no small eulogium on
Shakespeare that his claims were more forcible
than those of hunger. Most of the first Mios
dow extant arc known to have belonged to
anoienl families resident, in the country."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 63

Would that our ancient family possessed its
copy, how succulent soever !

18th. — Met some people who have long lived
at Woodbridge, and tried to glean a few fresh
stories about Edward Fitz-Gerald, but with no
success. All they could tell me was that he
never entertained and rarely accepted invita-
tions ; that he walked about a great deal, always
wearing a plaid, always apparently lost in
thought and recognising nobody, being indeed
also short-sighted. He seems to have been
regarded by the neighbours with a certain awe
as a student and man of letters, though no one
quite knew what he wrote or studied. The
story lingers in the place that he once in-
structed his boatman to sew him up in a
hammock when he died and pitch him over-
board. But I am told that his tomb is now
a place of pilgrimage, I suppose to young
gentlemen who think the quatrains of Omar
Khayyam the last word in the criticism of life.
The pity of it, that Fitz-Gerald should have
sacrificed so exquisite a literary gift to refur-
bishing such antique pessimism, and the irony
of it, for a man who was always censuring
Tennyson for his effeminating sentiment, and
calling on him for trumpet-blasts. I suppose

64 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

if a man will live alone in the country and
dine daily on vegetables and his own heart,
there is no resisting pessimism. But Fitz-
Gerald would himself have recognised that
the quatrains were the poem of a mood. C.
gave me lately E. F. G.'s Sophocles, with his
autograph, and the funny churchwarden-Gothic
book-plate designed for him by Thackeray. I
remember being once told by the late W. B.
Scott that Fitz-Gerald and Charles Keene were
friends for a long time on the ground of a
common attachment to the bagpipes before
either knew the side of the other that the
world now cares for.

19th. — Sunday. Megrims, so did not go to
church. Who was it said that the one pleasure
that never palled was the pleasure of not going
to church ? I have a notion that it was the

Bishop of . Anyhow it could only be by

reference to a constant type that the aberration
would interest. Having Fitz-Gerald in my
mind, I took down the first volume of "Wes-
ley's Journal," a book of which E. F. G. thought
highly, to read by way of sermon. It covers
i lie years <»f Wesley's missionary expedition to
the m m colony of Georgia. Ono does not
know which to Wonder at most, his toughness

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 65

of body or his toughness of mind. Both were
extraordinary. What would one of even our
hardest - worked London clergy think of the
following Sunday programme : —

5-6.30 a.m. First English prayers.
9. Italian service for the Vaudois.
10.30-12.30. English service and sermon.
1 p.m. French sermon.

2. Catechising of children.

3. English evensong, followed by prayer meeting, &c.
6.30. German service, at which, however, Wesley at-
tended only.

For another proof of his very remarkable
physique, one might take this account of a
travelling adventure, which was by no means
unparalleled in his Colonial experience : —

" Mr. Delamotte and I, with a guide, set out

to walk to the Cow-pen ; when we had walked

two or three hours, our guide told us plainly,

' He did not know where we were.' However,

believing it could not be far off, we thought

it best to go on. In an hour or two we camp

to a cypress swamp, which lay directly across

our way; there was not time to walk back to

Savannah before night, so we walked through

it, the water being about breast high. By

that time we had gone a mile beyond it, we

were out of all path, and it being now past

66 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

sunset, we sat down, intending to make a fire
and to stay there till morning ; but finding our
tinder wet we were at a stand. I advised to
walk on still, but my companions being faint
and weary, were for lying down, which we
accordingly did about six o'clock ; the ground
was as wet as our cloaks, which (it being a
sharp frost) were soon froze together ; however,
I slept till six in the morning. There fell a
heavy dew in the night, which covered us over
as white as snow. Within an hour after sun-
rise we came to a plantation, and in the evening,
without any hurt, to Savannah." (Wednesday,
December 23, 1736.)

Every page of the journal testifies to the
scholar no less than the gentleman. He quotes
obscure Greek epigrams ; he reads to his
Savannah fiock exhortations of St. Ephrem
Syrus. Fancy a Wesleyan Evangelist reciting
the rhythms of this saint to a congregation at
St. James's Hall! On his voyage back to
England he reads Machiavelli to see what, can
be made of that political dissenter, and comes
to a deeided conclusion: —

. " In my passage home, having procured a celo-
brated book, the works of Nicholas Machiavel,
I Bet myself carefully to read and consider it.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 67

I began with a prejudice in his favour, having
been informed he had often been misunder-
stood, and greatly misrepresented. I weighed
the sentiments that were less common ; tran-
scribed the passages wherein they were con-
tained ; compared one passage with another,
and endeavoured to form a cool impartial
judgment. And my cool judgment is, that if
all the other doctrines of devils which have
been committed to writing since letters were
in the world were collected together in one
volume, it would fall short of this : and that
should a prince form himself by this book,
so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery,
lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom,
and murder of all kinds, Domitian or Nero
would be an angel of light compared to that
man." (January 26, 1737.)

227bd— Read at the Club Mr. Gladstone's
attack on the minor poet in Henley's New
Review. "He may write if he likes, but he
must not print." The advice has an air of
wisdom, and it may be offered with even more
urgency to translators of Horace. For transla-
tion, though undoubtedly a useful exercise,
cannot deserve printer's ink and paper unless
the translator be a poet of equal genius with

68 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

his author. And poets do not, as a rule, think
it worth while to translate each other. Why
is it that Horace appeals so irresistibly to the
prosaic mind — even of good men? Why, for
instance, should the venerable hand that gave
us an annotated Psalter give us also a version
of Horace ? For my part, I sympathise strongly
with the poet, still happily living, who, on being
asked to English an ode of Horace, replied, " I
should as soon think of doing Moore into Greek
anapaests or Tupper into Greek elegiacs." Mr.
Gladstone suggests that when a man discovers
he is not a great poet he should cease to
print. But how is this simple-sounding dis-
covery to be made ? The poet does not, like
the orator, appeal to the crowd, and estimate
his greatness by the poll. He knows that if
his gift is original it must at first be vocal only
to the understanding few, for the crowd read
only what their demagogues bid them. It was
Bright who made Sir Lewis Morris's vogue,
and for how many reputations is not Mr.
Gladstone responsible! The recent competi-
tion for tho Laureateship, which to thoughtless
people seemed so ridiculous, meant no more
than that poets, like other authors, prefer a
large to a small sale, and so wished to secure

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 69

the great public that buys only what has the
cachet. But Mr. Gladstone would reply, let the
young poet consult the critics.

Alas ! who are the critics ? His critic may be
the man he snubbed yesterday at the Club ; or
some 3'oung puppy fresh from the university
bent on using his milk-teeth at all costs; or
some editor, with a bee in his bonnet, deter-
mined that Bilson shall be the greatest living
poet, and every other father's son, Tomson.
Dickson, and Harrison nowhere. Austin Dob-
son has an interesting apologue, called "The
Poet and the Critics," in " At the Sign of the
Lyre." If, on the other hand, the young poet
gets praise, it will probably be because he
is himself a member of the press-gang. The
public, then, being uninterested, and the critics
interested, the young poet must fall back on
himself. But if he understands how bad his
first book is, it will only be because he has the
power to make the next better, and so he will
try again. Similarly he will try again, if he
thinks his book good. So that the situation is
really hopeless, and must be left.

2Uh. — Stayed in town to attend the presenta-
tion of the statuette of Sir Thomas More to the
Chelsea Library. It is curious that London

70 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

should be content with such a meagre memorial
of one of her greatest sons.

Went afterwards to a meeting of a little
society to encourage the employment of men
who have served their time with the colours.
Could not a similar society be started to find
occupation for retired officers ? Surely we are
as a class the most pitiable people in the world.
A day arrives when we lose our chief interest
in life. The routine work of duty, the slave
that bore the burden and heat with a lkrht
heart and easy conscience falls dead ; and we
must look about for a successor. Sometimes
the by-work is set to the mill, and loses much
of its zest in consequence. L. turns his lathe
now all the morning, instead of at odd moments,
and his house is fast filling with useless little
pots; H. scours the country collecting grand-
father's clocks for the sake of the brass corners
<>it their faces; M. has taken up with the
Church Association, and pesters the bishops
with resolutions againsl Rome. They are fairly
happy; hut how many I know at Eastbourne
and Southsea and other watering-places, who
arc sorely conscious, except for a month or two
in autumn, of the passage of lime — "time's
discrete How," us the psychologists call it — the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 71

odious now, now, now. " A man's life's no
more than to say one," said Hamlet; but that
was his hopelessly unpractical turn of mind, or
possibly his fulness of matter. To many it is
to say one, one, one, as the clock ticks.

27th. — Went to the sale at Manor.

Fuller long ago remarked that Berkshire land
was skittish and apt to throw its rider ; but
since the great fall in prices it has been chang-
ing hands very rapidly. The old yeoman of
whom the county has long made its boast —
Mavor attributing to Mr. Pitt the saying " that
no minister could command ten votes in Berk-
shire " — are finding it impossible to go on farm-
ing at a loss, and are selling their land to rich
strangers from town. The old manor-houses
are pulled down and mansions take their place.
It is a sad change for the yeomen and their
friends, and perhaps for the country, but profit-
able for the peasantry, who will get better
paid and housed.

28th. — What a topsy-turvy sort of vanity is
that which takes pleasure in being like dis-
tinguished people. I met a curate this after-
noon at our Member's garden party who is the
very twin of the Archbishop of Canterbury,1
1 Archbishop Benson.

72 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

only that he ' is of course " less consequential
about the legs." He had the archiepiscopal
carriage and look, even to the smile, which is
a good smile, though not quite so good as the
Pope's;1 — that seems to have more centuries
behind it. I know, too, several middle-aged
gentlemen who are not unlike the newspaper
pictures of the Prince of Wales. But how can
the resemblance in any reasonable way feed
vanity, as it certainly does ? There is more
interest in being like the mighty dead, because
one may cherish a mild Pythagoreanism. For
example, my own nickname at school was
Socrates, and I have recently discovered that I
might have sat for the portrait of Ravaillac.
Sophia often asks me why I keep a picture of
the poet Gray on my mantelpiece; the reason
is that it is so very like her, especially about.
the chin; but I do not like to say so, as she
might not be Mattered.

August 1st. — I am not happy. The cause of
my unhappiness is nothing very great, but, od
the contrary, something very small indeed ; so
small that it might be deemed below the dignity
of a journal were I not able t<> record it in
classical phrase. 'There is an insect with us,

1 Leo XIII.

PACES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 73

especially in chalky districts, which is very
troublesome and teasing all the latter end ol
the summer, getting into people's skins and
raising tumours, which itch intolerably. This
animal (which is called a harvest-bug) is very
minute, scarce discernible to the naked eye,
of a bright scarlet colour, and of the genus
of acarus." (White's " Selborne," Letter 35.)
Everybody has his pet specific; in past years
I have employed the oil of cajeput ; but the
success is indifferent, and the aura one moves
in undeniably pungent. My wife has endea-
voured to convince me that I should resent it
in my neighbours.

2nd. — It is no longer the fashion to relate
one's dreams at breakfast, but last night's
dream, as much as I can remember of it, is
worth recording. It was an episode in a police
case. I was in a well-lighted train half-asleep
when another train flared by and roused me.
Looking in its direction I saw reflected in the
windows of the passing carriages a scuffle, gag-
ging, and robbery that was being transacted in
the next compartment to mine ; and at the end
of the journey I identified the criminal. I do
not remember that this possibility has been used
by any writer of detective fiction. The idea is

74 PAGES FROM A TRIVATE DIARY

of no use to mc whatever, and I should be glad
to exchange it for something more serviceable.
My more usual dreams are dialogues. It seems
an extraordinary thing that one should be able
to converse with oneself and enjoy all the excite-
ment of expectation as to what is to come next.
I ask a searching question or deliver what seems
a crushing retort, and wait anxiously for the
reply just as if the interlocutor were another
person. But probably this is the ordinary ex-
perience of the novelist or dramatist — the sort
with imagination, I mean ; only they see visions
while I but dream dreams. At least, I know

whenever I meet , he is sure to say, " Isn't

that a magnificent thing so-and-so says in my
new piece? it is so like him;" whereas his
natural modesty would prevent his calling at-
tention to his own good things. I have always
regretted that the ingenious author of " Happy
Thoughts " got so little way with his " Handbook
of Repartee;" it would have been invaluable to
me in waking hours when my wit is always
Vesprit de I'escalier. But failing this, it would
!„• useful to have an historical handbook — not
"what to say to an Abbe* or Fakir," but what
actually lias been said in the wa\ of repartee to
or by distinguished Fakirs and A 1 >l «>s. The book

TAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 75

would naturally begin with the best things of
the Abbe de Talleyrand. Not the least interest-
ing pages would be those devoted to Bus-drivers
and Policemen ; for the wit in these cases is
sometimes as subtle as in the more polished
examples, and I heartily sympathise with Burton,
author of the " Anatomy of Melancholy," whose
one amusement was listening to the wit en-
counters of Oxford bargees. The other day I
overheard the following : —

A . — Does your mother take in washing ?

/,'. — Yes, and she ain't particular to having a gentle-
man-lodger, but he must know how to behave hisself
like a gontleman, yer know.

I thought this excellent in several respects ; it
did not take umbrage at the suggestion of the
laundry, but accepted it, and went even further
into biographical particulars, and then produced
the sting, where the sting ought to be, in the
tail. As some help to the future author of the
Handbook, I note that one useful form of re-
partee depends upon Paronomasia, another upon
looking closely at Metaphors, a third upon Quo-
tation. A good example of the first is the reply
of Sir Robert Walpole to Sarah, Duchess of Marl-
In •rough, who was indignant at being offered
the revived Order of the Bath, and would take

76 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

nothing but the Garter : " Madam, the Bath
must come before the Garter." 1 Of the second,
this is the best instance that occurs to me at
the moment : —

Ritualist. — At least you will own that Art is the hand-
maid of Religion ?

Protestant. — Yes, and I wish Religion would give her a
month's notice.

The third I will illustrate from the same witty
scholar, whose praise is in the University. An
[bsenite was running down Shakespeare, and
saying his characters were not " alive." To
which my friend replied: "Oh yes, they're
alive, but not kicking ; certainly not kicking."
In many cases a repartee is helped by a stam-
mer. Of this use Charles Lamb is the classical
example, but my Oxford friend runs him hard.

■\l/i. — To-day the ladies set off by train to
Southsea, and I followed on my bicycle. I ran
first to Farnham, so as to spend a few hours at
the Volunteer Manoeuvres. The Imps in the
neighbourhood looked well. Some were shown
me that had grown in the same field for three
hundred years, but it will soon not pay to grow

them. After tea I resumed my journey, and

1 This story proves Incidentally thai washing did not, like
Christmas Trees and Crystal Palaces, oome in with the late
Prince Consort.

PAUES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 77

joined the Portsmouth road at Potcrsfiold. I
noticed on the way that Woliner Pond was
nearly dry. In such a drought a hundred and
fifty years ago search was made in the bed, and
there was a great find of Roman coins. It
might be worth while to try again.

bth. — I strolled after breakfast to see who of
my old acquaintance might be here. For a
time the pageant of bright faces was singularly
attractive ; then I longed for some one to chat
with or, at least, nod to — apothecary, plough-
boy, thief. I mused with Bacon, " Little do men
perceive what solitude is and how far it ex-
tendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces
are but a gallery of pictures." Which meant
that my liver was beginning to show its distaste

for the seaside ; luckily I soon met Colonel ,

and in talk over old times forgot my melancholy.
The roads were all crowded with bicycles, and
their smoothness justifies the exercise. Ladies
outnumber men and are more dangerous to
pedestrians, being too careless in turning corners
without ringing their bells. It seems the fashion
to read as one wheels. Some enterprising pub-
lisher should start a Bicycle Library, on light
paper with big type. So far I have escaped
injury, but Bob, the fox terrier, was run over

78 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

this morning. No doubt he was a good deal
to blame. This is his first visit to a town, and
he has been trying to maintain the country
etiquette of speaking to every dog he meets —
which is dangerous among so many vehicles.
There is a grand parade of bicyclists before
dinner, when the skilful exhibit their tricks.
Some enthusiasts appear again in the evening.
And certainly the gliding motion of so many
lamps, the noiseless noise of the machines, and
the half-seen passage of ambling nymphs and
caracoling cavaliers has a very pleasing effect.

7th. — A correspondent is good enough to in-
form me that the story I entered in my journal
on July 2 about the groom's confusion between
playing and visiting cards was told him at
Constantinople in 1847 by a Turk whom he met
ut table in the Hotel de l'Europe, but he told
it of a lady. The Turk proved to be a certain
Seyd Ali, well known at thai date as an inter-
preter, in which capacity he served in Colonel
Chesney's Euphrates Expedition. The tale is
probably told in every society which uses both
sorts of cards and speaks of them as '• cards "
without a qualifying epithet.

11/7/. — It is astonishing thai the Admiralty
do not take more pains to interest our inland

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 79

villages in seafaring. Only one boy has in my
recollection gone from us for a sailor, and he
did not get further than Portsmouth, being
obliged to return as he had no certificate of
good conduct. He was one of Tom's under-
gardeners and had a soul above cabbages. So
the next time vegetables irked him he went to
Reading, and took his shilling in the ordinary
way. He was much above the average yokel in
intelligence — I fancy he had a dash of gipsy-
blood in him — and is now a clarionet player in
the band. Cheap excursions will do much good
in breaking down the old horror of the sea. I
remember a sick boy of my old gardener's being
sent to a Convalescent Home, and charged by
his mother on no account to go near the water.
After his first day he wrote home a post-card,
which his mother showed me in fear and
trembling ; this was its audacious message :
" There is nothing to be afraid of, it comes up
like a snale."

14£h. — Whenever there is likely to be work
with the House of Lords, I read the Daily
Chronicle, as in old days we used to read the
Star — " for sweetness and charity," as Matthew
Arnold said. It has hardly been up to its best
vituperative form over the Irish Land Bill.

80 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

" Splendid fatuity " and " unutterable farce " are
not epoch-making phrases ; they lack discrimi-
nation ; and " three ridiculous old gentlemen,"
as the description of a quorum, is unworthy
even of the Star of to-day. Possibly the editor
of the Chronicle has discovered the elixir, and
secured perpetual youth ; but even so, " old " is
ungracious ; and why " ridiculous " ? So many
peers in the present House have been made and
not born, that their intellect and manners are
probably yet pretty much those of commoners.
But it takes indignation to make satire, and
though a landlord is an evil beast enough (while
a " proprietor " — subtle distinction — is an angel),
none but a spiritual peer can rouse the Chronicle
to a really fine frenzy. I have never forgotten
a sentence that closed the story of the rejection
of the Home Rule Bill. " Thus the Bishops
completed the work which their ancestors, the
Scribes and Pharisees, began eighteen hundred
years ago." I have often thought that this
st utence had something to do with the Radical
collapse at the polls. Of course the Chronicle
is not without virtues, not the least being its
enterprise; and I have been shown once or
twice, a piece of literary criticism that it would
be hard to overpraise.

ta<;es from a prtvate diary 81

15th. — The news that to-day is Hospital
Saturday in Southsea was broken to us at
breakfast by the maid bringing in a collecting-
box.

" The veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then
Wo pout upon the morning, are unapt
To give."

However, we had plenty of opportunity, when
our souls were suppler, to amend our benefi-
cence. The streets were crowded with young
women dressed like nurses and wearing a red
cross, who smiled and smiled, and pushed a box
into one's waistcoat. For a time I smiled and
put them by ; but at last was driven to my
bicycle. Even then they lay waiting at the
thievish corners of the streets, and bade one
stand and deliver. The young men seemed to
like it, but my seat is perhaps not so good as
theirs, and I took to a country road. I see one
of the papers has an apposite article on bazaars
and other church leeches, on the whole con-
demning them. They seem to me as justifiable
as the smiles of these engaging damsels. Both
are an attempt to divert by cajolery certain
sums from the milliner and cigar merchant to
the sick and needy. Good churchmen, of course,
tythe their incomes for charity, but there are

82 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

churchmen and church women who do not, and
it is for these that bazaars exist. In old days
such were dealt with firmly by the priest at the
deathbed ; if we substitute the love of pleasure
for the fear of pain, we employ no higher, but
certainly no lower, motive. It does not seem in
any sense fair to class bazaars with gambling
hells ; there is no question of doing evil that
good may come ; it is a fact that Flavia,1 now
as much as a century ago, requires some stronger
stimulus than pure benevolence before she will
put her silver penny in the alms-dish, and the
fact must be taken account of. Goldsmith tells
a capital story of the method Beau Nash em-
ployed to extort a subscription from a reluctant
duchess for the hospital at Bath : —

" The sums he gave, and collected for the
hospital, were great, and his manner of doing it
was no less admirable. I am told that he was
mice collecting money in Wiltshire's room for
that purpose, when a lady entered who is more

1 " If any one asks Flavia to do something in charity, if
she likes the person who makes the proposal, or happens to
be in a right temper, she will toss him kulf-u-crown or
a crown, and tell him if he knew what a long Milliners
hill she had just received, he would think il a great deal for
her to give' (Law's "Seriou.s Call." p. 96; but see the
whole witty description of this modish lady.)

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 83

remarkable for her wit than her charity, and not
being able to pass by him unobserved, she gave
him a pat with her fan, and said, You must put
down a trifle for me, Nash, for I have no money
in my pocket. Yes, madam, says he, that I will,
with pleasure, if your grace will tell me when
to stop : then taking a handful of guineas out
of his pocket, he began to tell them into his
white hat, one, two, three, four, five. Hold,
hold, says the dutchess, consider what you are
about. Consider your rank and fortune, madam,
says Nash, and continued telling, six, seven,
eidit, nine, ten. Here the dutchess called
again, and seemed angry. Pray compose your-
self, madam, cried Nash, and don't interrupt
the work of charity ; eleven, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen, fifteen. Hero the dutchess stormed
and caught hold of his hand. Peace, madam,
says Nash ; you shall have your name written
in letters of gold, madam, and upon the front
of the building, madam. Sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen, nineteen, twenty. / won't pay a
farthing more, says the dutchess. Charity
hides a multitude of sins, replies Nash. Twenty-
one, twenty - two, twenty - three, twenty - four,
twenty - five. Nash, says she, I protest you
frighten me out of my wits, L — d, I shall die !

84 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Madam, you will never die with doing good :
and if you do, it will be the better for you,
answered Nash, and was about to proceed ; but
perceiving her grace had lost all patience, a
parley ensued, when he, after much altercation,
agreed to stop his hand, and compound with
her grace for thirty guineas. The dutchess,
however, seemed displeased the whole evening ;
and when he came to the table where she
was playing, bid him stand farther, an ugly
devil, for she hated the siglit of him. But her
grace afterwards, having a run of good luck,
called Nash to her. Gome, says she, i" will be
friends with you, though you are a fool ; and
to let you see I am not angry, there is ten
guineas more for your charity. But this I
insist on, that neither my name nor the sum
shall he mentioned!' ("Life of Richard Nash,
Esq.," p. 121.)

18th, — It would be an astonishing thing, but
for the known laziness of human nature, that
parents should allow their children to attend
revivalistic meetings on the beach at seaside
places. The religion of children should be
simple and home-made, enthusiastic, if you
please, bul breezy and lull of ozone: the reverse
of morbid, Now t.ho spiritual methods of these

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 85

beach-combers are about as healthy as their
physical methods. They collect a vast array
of children together, and seat them cheek by
jowl, dirty by clean, on a hot August day, in
circles of an inferno, with a double row of
nurses behind to keep out any stray whiffs of
fresh air ; and then instead of telling them, as
our Catechism does, that they are Christians
and should behave themselves as such, they
call them sinners, who will probably die young,
and then — the preacher will not answer for
the consequences. In some cases, too, that I
know of, the preacher has told children to
come against their parents' wishes ; a pretty
religion, surely, that begins with the breach
of the first ethical commandment. Parents
that I have remonstrated with for allowing
their children to attend these services defend
themselves by saying that it may do the
children good ; a plea that shows the import-
ance of the Johnsonian precept to free one's
mind from cant.

19th. — My term of patience at the sea having
reached its period, we have come for a foAv

days' visit to the B 's, near Guildford, to fill

the interval before we are expected at P 's

place in Norfolk. I took train to Petersfield,

86 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

as it seemed unnecessary to labour up the south
slope of the downs, and then followed the Ports-
mouth road through Liphook, &c. The heather
was in brilliant beauty, and a Scotsman whom
I boarded on the road confessed that it put
him in mind of his own country. I vowed that
should I ever become a potentate, I would be
" Sowdun of Surrye." l My friendly Scot, by
his pleasant society, more than halved the toil
of climbing Hindhead. He pointed out the
objects of interest on the road, such as the
" Seven Thorns " Inn, telling me how the land-
lord resented Mrs. Oliphant's use of it in the
" Cuckoo in the Nest." When we reached the
t<>p he showed me all the counties of England
:uk1 the glory of them. The run from Hind-
head down to Godalming will remain long in
memory. The road was perfect ; it was about
midday, and exceedingly hot; but the rapid
motion made a breeze, which seemed to insulate
me from the flames. There was no one else on
the road for the seven miles of descent; and
this was perhaps as well, for my spirits were so
much raised thai I could not help shouting.
I thought of Elijah going to heaven in a chariot
of tin:, and extinguished a scruple about the

1 Obauoer, " Bfao <>f Law's Tale."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 87

downward direction by a vague reference to
Antipodes. Every now and then the wind
brought a hot whiff of the bramble. In the
valley there was shade once more, and the
aromatic smell of firs; but what ointment is
not spoilt by flies ? I was so much cheered
by the journey that I conceived a tenderness
for any bicyclists I met, and would have
accosted them had they not looked strangely
on me. There should be (perhaps there is)
some formal salutation for the road, or better
several, ono for meeting on a level, one of
encouragement to the bicyclist going up hill,
one of congratulation to the fortunate brother
going down.

21st.— Was Mr. Watts present at Millais'

funeral ? The Daily , in one column, tells

me that " conspicuous among those, &c, was
the venerable form, &c," and in another, that
" in accordance with his habitual practice, Mr.
Watts did not attend the ceremony." It must
be very difficult for an editor to maintain con-
sistency among so many picturesque writers. I
remember at the end of the Ashanti War that
the same paper honoured Prince Henry as a
patriot who gave his life for his country, and
applauded the withholding of rewards from the

88 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

survivors who no less had to face the dangerous
climate. " It would be a remarkable arrow
that should pick out only the brave," said the
Spartan prisoner in Thucydides ; so these
gentlemen attributed too much discrimination
to the malaria.

25th. — The papers report that the Pope has
included Zola's " Rome " in the Index Expurga-
torius. Was it not Pio Nono who, being asked
by an author to do something for a book of
his, after long reflection, replied, " I will tell you
what I can do ; I can put it on the Index " ?

September 5th. — A chronicle of sport — so
many guns and such and such a bag — is not
lively reading for any but the particular sports-
man, and it takes a meteorologist to find interest
in a chronicle of bad weather; so for the early
days of September I leave the record of birds
and rain to the exuberant imagination. We
travelled into Norfolk leisurely at the end of
last, month, taking Cambridge and Ely on our
way. Sometimes we journeyed by rail, some-
times on our own wheels, and in the lattor
mode of progress seemed to renew the golden
age when folks were content to ride on horse-
back, and bad time t<> look about them. I>m
even behind the horseman rode " black Care " ;

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 89

nor docs that Fury desert the bicyclist, though
forced by the exiguity of the saddle to shift
her position to one or other tyre, where she
stands, like Fortune, on the ever-rolling circle,

" Allowing vis a breath, a little scene,
Inspiring ns with self and vain conceit,

and humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin ..."

Cambridge was just emptying itself of what
arc called "Extension students," many of them
school-mistresses, who take the opportunity of
enlarging the range of their interests, or hearing
the latest theories on some pet hobby. Without
being in the least what Peacock calls a " Panto-
pragmatic," one may allow that lectures in
this way fulfil a useful function; and probably
there has never been since the days of the
sophists so well-considered an attempt on the
part of those who know to share their know-
ledge and spread enthusiasm. The ladies had
not seen Cambridge before, and were becomingly
impressed with its characteristic glories — the
rosy-brown brick of Trinity and St. John's
and Queen's; the "backs"; King's Chapel;
and not least the marvellous statue of Newton
" with his prism and silent face." We plucked a
few mulberries, too, from Milton's tree at Christ's.

90 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Corning from the undulations of a down
country, we were much struck by the peculiar
beauty of the eastern counties, the beauty of a
flat landscape — the long stretch of meadows to
a dim horizon, broken by clumps of trees, an
occasional windmill, or the glimpse of a white
sail on a hidden stream. Even the geometrical
canals had perspective.

6 th. — Last Sunday and to-day we drove into
Norwich for the cathedral service. The English
Matins and Evensong are sui generis ; how dif-
ferent they are from the corresponding Roman
services, out of which they have been evolved,
any traveller knows who has heard the choir
office gone through in a foreign church, "en tuned
in the nose full seemely." They are English to
the core, and arc excellently fitted to express or
suppress, to half reveal and half conceal, what,
the average Englishman calls his religious feel-
ings. The double chant is a kind of symbol of
the whole, and those Italianate clergy who hold
by Gregorians deny their birthright. I could
wish it were the custom not to begin singing
till the "O Lord, opon Thou our lips"; the
Exhortation on G, as usually rendered, is about
as silly and unimpressive a piece of oeremonial

:is u:is ever devised, anil the General Confession

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 91

is only a little better. I sympathise in this
point with the hot-heads who are for getting
back to Edward's First Prayer Book, which
opened admirably with the " Our Father." More
attention might be given in cathedrals as well
as parish churches to the reading of the lessons.
A style is required midway between the dull
monotone sometimes affected by the High
Church school and the over-dramatic manner
of others. At Norwich last Sunday a very ex-
alted dignitary thundered out St. Paul's advice
about buying your meat at the butcher's with-
out asking too many questions, as though it
were a matter of eternal spiritual import to
all present, instead of a mere piece of anti-
quarianism. We lunched in Norwich, as I
wished to hear Tom Mann, who was advertised
to address a meeting in the afternoon. He had
not much voice and strained it painfully, but
he was impressive from the nervous energy
and the air of conviction with which he
spoke; and I was agreeably surprised at his
moderation.

1th. — I have a great respect for the Standard
newspaper ; it maintains, as a rule, a dignity and
a self-restraint which in these last days are be-
doming rare. P>ut, too often, when an article

02 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

is required on the British aristocracy, it puts the
pen into the hand of our old friend Jeames de
la Pluche. There is no mistaking his style this
morning. The Duke of Marlborough has been
feasting Conservative associations — a circum-
stance that would have inspired Theognis, who
said, "You should eat and drink with the
nobility, for from the good you will learn what
is good." Twenty-five centuries pass, and the
spirit of Theognis takes flesh again in Jeames.
" It is well," he says, " that these great gather-
ings should sometimes be held in the grounds
belonging to members of the aristocracy whose
ancestors have helped to make the history of
England. For there is nothing better calculated
bo make men Conservatives in the best sense of
the word than a knowledge of our national
history, and the steps by which its glory grew.
1 1 may be true enough thai the celebrated man,
the founder of the ducal House of Marlborough,
had his weak points. Addison's famous simile
of the angel has often been laughed at, but there
is quite as much truth, in it as in most simile*}
and it is well that the people should be from
time t" time reminded of the fact that a/risto-

' What does thii mean I The TatUr o£ the daj (N<>. 43)
pi.-n pari from Its "sublimity," on the ground that ii

PAOES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 93

cracy tends to develop qualities not less valuable
in the domestic arena [' domestic arena' is good],
than on the field of battle. The ' calmness '
imputed to Marlborough at the most trying
moments of his career is one of these." The
party press is generally secure in appealing
to popular ignorance. Still, to tell them that
aristocracy tends to develop calmness of the
Marlborough type, however true it may be, is
not wise ; it is not calculated to make them
Conservatives in any sense of the term. Nor is
it wise generally to encourage much investiga-
tion into the title-deeds of "our old nobility."
Lord Verulam (than whom none knew better)
says very pregnantly, " Those that are first
raised to nobility are commonly more virtuous
[i.e. capable],1 but less innocent, than their

complimented "the general and his queen at the same

time."

" So when an Angel by Divine Command
With rising Tempests shakes a guilty Land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious Blast ;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's Orders to perform,
Rides in the Whirl-wind, and directs the Storm."

1 Cf. Winter's Talc, iv. 3 :

"Autolycus. I cannot tell for which of his virtues it-
was, but he was certainly whipped out of the court.
" Clown. His vices, you would say.
" Autolycus. Vices, I would say, sir."

94 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

descendants ; for there is rarely any rising
but by a commixture of good and evil arts."
Lord Wolseley spoilt his apology for Marl-
borough by printing the Duke's portrait in
the book, a portrait with sui ainans written
in every line of the " calm " and handsome
face.

Sth. — I spent a day looking at the best of the
forty churches that Norwich can boast, but
made no discoveries not already made in the
guide-books. In St. Andrew's Church I visited
the tomb of Sir John Suckling for the sake of
his poet son, who is figured kneeling by it. The
porter who showed me over what was once the
church of the Dominicans, and is now two
public halls, had the true ecclesiological in-
stinct, and should have been a verger. " It is
quite vexing," said he, "when I read the old
histories to see there used to be a high altar
here, with stalls all round it, and you could look
the whole length from choir to nave. Now
thero's nothing to see" (with a wave of his arm
to the civic pictures) " but these old celebrities
— very interesting, no doubt, for the costumes
of the period." 1 felt Bympathy as well as pity
t'-.r tin' old-fashioned fellow, who did not know
thai our masses are now evangelised by picture

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 95

exhibitions.1 I made my way also to Borrow's
house and the site of Sir Thomas Browne's.
They have recently been marked by tablets.
The inmates of the former — a very pre
house, standing back from the main street and
approached by a narrow entry — seemed amused
at my interest in Borrow, of whom they had
naturally never heard till the tablet made their
house a shrine of occasional pilgrimage.

10th. — Rain. I found on the library table
the Romanes lecture by Dr. Creighton on the
English National Character." It is specially
interesting at the present moment from its main
thesis, which is that from the first England has
shown " a tendency to withdraw cautiously from
the general system of Europe and go its own
way. ... Its dominant motive seems simply to
have been a stubborn desire to manage its own
affairs in its own way, without any interference
from outside." The Bishop illustrates this from
England's relation both to the Empire and the

1 I once saw an example of sudden conversion. Arrius
and Arria were strolling along the galleries at Hampton
Court, looking very much depressed. At last Ames saw a

word that pierced home to him. It was ' ' landing at

Margate." He turned round to his companion and said,
••Good old Margate, good old 'all by the sea! lefa go and
have a dxi

96 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Papacy. Some of the national characteristics
are very happily sketched. " Who does not
know the travelling Englishman aggrieved be-
cause he may not argue the rights of his
particular case as against some general rule,
which the native finds no difficulty in dutifully
obeying ? His grievance lies in the sense that
the rules never contemplated his particular

case." Never shall I forget the picture of

swearing: in choice Italian at a station-master,
because he would not let us have our luggage
after office hours. The trunks lay behind a
glass-door, conspicuous to all, and it needed but
a turn of the key to release them, and there
were excellent reasons why they should not
remain there all night, but — rules were rules.
The Bishop tells a good and characteristically
English story of Robert Tomson of Andover,
vim sailed from Bristol to Cadiz with the pur-
pose of making his fortune, learned Spanish,
sailed to Mexico, suffered shipwreck and plague,
reached bis desl inal ion, found a Scotsman ' there

1 [a this not also characteristic, both as to the friendliness
and the enterprise? In the dark days before the gospel of
Free Trade «;i- preaohed, we English were a little jealous
of our northern brethren, ae Boswell abundantly testifies.
Among the reoentlj printed Dartmouth papers is a letter

written when George 111. was king, which contains the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 97

who befriended him, talked theology, was de-
lated to the Inquisition, sent back to Seville and
imprisoned for three years, married a fortune,
and lived happily ever after.

IStk. — We came for a few days to this hotel
at Lowestoft for a final breath of the sea air.
There must be people who like hotel life, as
thoy stay here for months together ; but it is
impossible to say of it, as Johnson said of taverns
in his day, that " there is a general freedom from
anxiety." On the contrary, the ladies seem
anxious to outshine each other in their dresses,

following amusing paragraph: — "I am certainly the most
unfortunate man in the world. Two Scotsmen, the only two,
I am persuaded, who are not in ollice and employment, have
plundered the house in Hanover Square. I wish the Admini-
stration had provided for them hefore. If I had been
pillaged with the rest of the nation, or persecuted with the
rest of the Opposition, I could have been contented, but
these private pilfering* are very unfair. However, by the
vigilance of Sir John Fielding, and notwithstanding all the
endeavours of Lord Mansfield and the rest of the Cabinet
Council, the thieves are taken, and now my mother is much
more alarmed at the thought of their being hanged than she
was with the robbery ; but I tell her she may be perfectly
easy, that they are very safe, and will be in place and in the
House of Commons next Parliament." It is undoubtedly a
great advantage to belong to a little clan, if its members are
vigorous and patriotic, and if I were an author I should cer-
tainly turn Scotsman or else Koman Catholic. Then I should
be sure that my merits would not fail of recognition in the
Press.

98 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the incn in their vintages. In my youth cham-
pagne was reserved for festival occasions ; here
it is drunk like beer. This is good for the
exchequer, but it strikes me as ungentleman-
like. After dinner last night some singers came
on to the lawn, and I had an opportunity of
hearing: the current comic songs. The one
most applauded celebrated the cheap chicanery
of some rascal who left his cabman in the lurch,
&c. ; the chorus was, " He's waiting there for
me." This would seem to lend colour to Sir
Edward Fry's indictment of our commercial
morality. I had some talk with a literary lady,
or rather she had some talk with me, but to me
it was disappointing, being for the most part
personal gossip. I did not see how she differed
from any ordinary matron who gives away her
"friends" with a cup of tea, except that the
friends were people who write books. This
reminds me that I met this morning young

, whose novels are coming into notice.

Be asked my felicitations on his approaching
marriage, which I gave with sincerity, and
offered a piece of advice into the bargain — not
bo formulate his wife's faults should he ever
discover any. It is my experience that faults
are less easily pardoned when "set in ;i note-

PAGES B^ROM A PRIVATE DIARY 99

book," and this is the business of the novelist.
I regard this sage counsel with some com-
placency as the "something attempted, some-
thing done " that has earned my night's repose.
For at the seaside I behave very much like the
exquisite who " made a point of never doing any
work between meals."

14^/i. — It is a long time since I have stayed
in a house fronting a public road, and either my
nerves have become case-softened with age or
the children of this generation are noisier than
their predecessors. Hawkers and street organ-
ists I do not complain of; they have a use in
the commonwealth, though I am far from be-
lieving they do not take a savage joy in wreak-
ing what amounts to a revenge upon society.
The noises that anger me are such as have no
use. At this instant a girl, aged about twelve,
is riding her bicyele up and down the street,
ringing her bell furiously all the time for sheer
delight in the din ; a small boy, not to be out-
done, is drawing a stick along the railings ; a
second hoyden is being dragged by her com-
panions in a little cart, shuffling her feet on the
pavement as she goes ; and a very small child
is making daylight sick with a bladder whistle.
" Eating strawberry jam to the sound of a

100 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

trumpet " was a child's x notion of heaven. One
comprehends why the celibate schoolmen as-
signed as many babies as possible a limbo to
themselves.

" Continuo audita; voces, vagitus et ingens,
Infantumque aniiiue iientes."

Had they lived in these days of emancipated
children, they would have extended its hos-
pitality to noise-makers of riper years.

\7th. — This morning I watched the fishing-
boats being tugged out of the harbour — a very
picturesque sight. They were roped together
in a long chain, and by their bobbing motion
suggested a caravan of camels. The sails were
red and weathered for the most part to beautiful
tints. There have been two fatal accidents
lately in hydraulic lifts; the last victim bore the
distinguished but ill-omened name of Richard
Plantagenet. The earliest reference I remember
to a lilt for people comes in the Grcville
• Memoirs"; it was constructed for Victor Em-
manuel at Genoa. "For the comfort of their
bodies be has had a machine made like a car,
which is drawn up by a chain from the bottom
t<> the t"|> of tin' bouse; it holds about six

1 The child waa adapting a /<">/ of Sydney Smith's about
./. foit gnu.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 101

people, who can be at pleasure elevated to any
storey ; and at each landing-place there is a
contrivance to let them in and out " (March 18,
1830). The description is a little wanting in
precision.

21st. — The weather cannot be better described
than by our Berkshire phrase "wunnerl'ul
cas'alty." For several days the glass had been
slowly rising, and no rain fell here all Sunday.
By mid-day the oats that remained out were
dry enough to carry, and the ricks were opened
to receive them, when lo ! a waterspout for
some four hours.

The Vicar and his wife came to dine for the
rirst time, and we had a small party, chiefly
clergy folk, to meet them. He seems a good
fellow at bottom, despite his curious and in-
consequential streak of Socialism. He has a
little the air of a disappointed man ; the fallentis
semita vitae is, I suspect, neither his courage nor
his choice, but his necessity in being married.
He took a good degree at Oxford, and was ex-
pected to do something considerable, but his
great book is still to write, and being something
of a poet and little of a partisan, no politician,
and not even a nephew of the Lord Chancellor,
he has not attracted public patronage ; and, as

102 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

his children are growing numerous, he was glad
to accept Tom's offer. I was a little afraid at
one point in the meal that conversation would
be stranded, and I heard Sophia open a discus-
sion on the difference between a "pie" and a
•tart." which is with her a signal of distress:
but by introducing a clerical topic we got into
deep water again. Some one referred to the
rimes' letters on the poverty of so many country
livings, expressing strong resentment at the ir-
relevant irruption of grumbling laymen headed
by a gentleman whom I blushed to hear de-
scribed as " Giant Grim." It is odd that
Churchmen should lag so far behind Dissenters
in the matter of providing for their ministers.
I noticed in church a few Sundays ago. that a
full quarter of the offertory sentences enforce
this duty, but these are seldom read : I suppose
the parson can hardly be expected to read them.
In the country farmers and even squires feel
they are being generous in simply paying their
tythe. forgetting that they inherited, or bought,
<>r Leased the land subject to that charge, so that
it docs not come out of their own pocketa
I's wnn't be prosperous," said <>ne tine old
kshiiv farmer, • till us have fewer of they

black parsons, and ! 1 1 < • r« ■ of they black pi'_rs."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 103

Happily for the Vicar. Tom redeemed his tythe
before the great fall in prices. My neighbour
T., who makes his money out of starch and
farms for pleasure, sets a good example by pay-
ing his tythe at par instead of seventy per cent.
Some one mentioned the cartoons in the West-
minster Gazette dealing with the Armenians ;
and from that the talk drifted to the unpopu-
larity of the clergy, which that paper had lately
discussed. It is difficult in the country to ar-
rive at a judgment on the matter. " Murmur-
ing in their tents" is and alwa}Ts was the peculiar
vice of the wilderness, and the parson comes in
for even a bigger share than the squire. He
visits too seldom, or too frequently, or at awk-
ward hours ; he is inquisitorial in distributing
alms, or lets himself be hoodwinked by im-
postors : his preaching is too short or too long,
commonplace or over people's heads. The older
parsons professed to remark little change in the
attitude of their parishioners to them, but the
younger men complained that their advice was
apt to be resented as interference. This is what
one would expect : the new sense of independ-
ence would feel a little deplacd and ashamed
<>t' itself before old gentlemen who did not re-
eognise its existence, especially if they were

104 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

humorous and dictatorial, of the Menenius
Agrippa type, like so many country parsons of
the old school. While the port was going round,
I ventured a few remarks about my sermon
experiences while away from home. I had
found the sermons as a rule good, but badly
delivered. I quoted Byrom for a similar judg-
ment last century, and suggested that each
rural deanery should acquire the services of an
elocution master for a number of lessons. A
clerical neighbour, who has an irritating trick
in the pulpit of connecting his clauses by the
interjection urrer, demurred, on the ground that
their congregations would prefer them, as at
present, to speak " as a man to men." I ex-
plained that my suggestion implied nothing
more than a little coaching in voice-production.
22 iid. — I had a curious shock this afternoon.

In the bookseller's at I had been turning

over Ruskin's " Ariadne Florentina," looking at
ilic reproductions of the so-called Botticelli
sibyls, and by way of contrast Michael Angelo's
aged Cumsean sibyl, which, with characteristic
tumour and unfairness, Iluskin labels "The
Nymph beloved of Apollo." The inevitable
law of association brought hack to mind the
place in Petronius (48), "Sibyllam quidem

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 105

Cumis ego ipse oculis mcis vidi in ampulla
penderc, et cum illi pueri dicerent HifiuWa, tl
deXeis ; respondebat ilia airoBavelv 6eXoy," } which
must mean, " At Cuma3 I saw with my own
eyes the sibyl hanging in a bottle." The idea
this conveys to one is of those shrivelled
organisms that are preserved in spirits on
museum shelves. While I was walking through
the streets and musing how the sibyl came to
be in so awkward a plight, I saw staring me in
the face in an Italian warehouseman's window
the startling announcement, " Respectable girls,
about 18, wanted for bottling." I rubbed my
eyes incredulously, but there seemed to be
no mistake. Presently, of course, I saw I had
been misled by an ambiguous use of the verbal
noun.2

24:th. — I am sometimes glad to be old, and
never more so than when I come across advice
to parents on the education of their children.
Eugenia was brought up on no scientific prin-
ciple ; " I 'spect she growed ; " and I do not
believe she is any the worse for that. Nowadays
there are reviews edited by old maids to teach

1 [And when the boys called to her, "What do yon want,
sibvl ? " she replied, " I want to die."]

" A friend sends me an interesting parallel from an adver-
tisement of his brewer : " Knniilics supplied in casks."

106 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

parents their business ; associations of parents to
encourage each other and exchange experiences ;
worst of all, syndicates to spy upon children and
tabulate their little ways. I hope the children
do their best to puzzle these too curious ob-
servers ; one would judge so from some of the
stories the professors collect. I am satisfied
that what parents want is common sense and
not psychology. Neither the mother of the
Gracchi nor the mother of the Wesleys had
psychology, but the latter, at any rate, abounded
in common sense. These important reflections
arise from a story just told me by a very young
mother who yearns to be scientific, and make
the punishment, in the words of a great
moralist, " fit the crime." A few Sundays ago
she had arranged a water party, and as her
little Tommy had told a lie he was not to be
allowed to join it, but was to go to church
instead. The retribution struck her as most
artistic; Tommy would get good and yet he
would be miserable. What more could be
desired in any punishment ? I was sorely
tempted to inquire why, if ono was certain to
get good in church, she sacrificed herself by
arranging a picnic; however I could not resist
telling her of the effect such :> retributory

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 107

worship had upon a little girl of my acquaint-
ance. She showed no sign of contrition or
rebellion till the Creed, when she curtsied
elaborately and ostentatiously at the name of
Pontius Pilate.

29th. — I went this morning to the funeral
of my dear friend H. S. I had seen her several
times lately, and I saw her also after death.
The change is always striking. Sometimes the
individual merges in the family type ; some-
times it is only the care that seems wiped out
in a great calm. In this case the calm had
given place to care. The smile that had made
light of suffering was quite gone; and one
understood what a triumph the spirit had for
so long been celebrating over the flesh, by the
naked anguish of the flesh when the spirit had
departed. That beautiful phrase of Jeremy
Taylor's, " weeds and outworn faces," came into
my mind ; and I saw its truth as I had not
seen it before. I was never less moved at a
funeral ; the poor coffined body seemed exactly
expressed by a word I had always disliked,
" the remains " ; and I could not lament that
it should be buried. For once I came near
an appreciation of the splendid scorn in the
familiar words, " O grave, where is thy victory ? "

108 PACES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Since her death I have not been able altogether
to suppress a regret that on the last occasions
of our meeting the conversation was on no
higher than its ordinary level ; but it seemed
at the time right that it should be as it was,
and her sense of fitness was impeccable. More-
over the art of not saying things is more difficult
than that of saying them, and its success pro-
portionately great. " None but a tragedian can
die by rule and wait till he says a fine thing
on his exit. In real life this is a chimera ; and
by noble spirits it will be done decently, without
the ostentation of it." Qucvre, Does not this of
Steele show him a finer gentleman than his
friend Addison, with his "Come and see how
a Christian can die ? "

ZOth. — George S. writes this morning: "My
ni"t her always thought of everybody but herself,
and the least return we can make for her unsel-
fishness is to be glad for her sake that the long
nailing is over. As you would guess from your
knowledge of her, she was remarkably cheerful
io the last, and it was difficult on the Saturday
morning, in the intervals of her paroxysms, to
believe the doctor that she could not last out
the day. The only hint she gave us of being
herself aware how near the end was, was to look

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 109

round with a queer little smile when the doctor
had left the room, and say, ' Do you know I
fancy he's at the end of his tether.' Of course
we understood, and respected her reticence. She
passed away under the morphia, and we were
all glad she should have been spared leave-
takings. I still find myself nursing things to
tell her ; and one of my sisters had run upstairs
to show her a very beautiful wreath sent for
her funeral before she remembered. So impos-
sible is it to realise the loss."

October 1st. — All one's letters to-day are bills ;
these are the angelic messages of comfort that
our modern Michaelmas brings us. They sing
an ever new song, an elegant and simple
melody, which shapes itself somewhat differently
in the ears of each, but to which none can be
deaf. This is how Macaulay heard it :

" Taxes, runt, sisters ; carriage, wages, clous,
Coals, wine, alms, pocket-cash, subscriptions,
treats ;
Bills weekly these, and miscellaneous those,
Travel the list completes."

■Itk. — William Morris is dead and the genera-
tion is poorer by a most virile and versatile
type. Johnson's epitaph on Goldsmith, with
the change of a word, would well become

110 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Morris. " Nullum fere ornandi genus non
tetigit, nullum quod tetigit non ornavit." When
a great man dies it is impossible not to forecast,
idly enough, the judgment of posterity. His
name, certainly, one would say, must live with
those of Sheraton and Adam and Chippendale.
It may live with Aldus and Stephanus and
Pickering ; but I question whether our grand-
children will think his types so good as his
designs; and at best they are reactionary.
What will be his place in poetry ? " Virgil,"
says R, " will live as long as the race, but he
was content to write but twenty lines a day.
Morris could write seven hundred." Yes ; but
how many did Homer write ? There is un-
doubtedly something in Morris that is not of
:li i age, or, at any rate, not of our age, even

it' it be not for all time. My neighbour at ,

who is the only soul for miles round to be called
a soul considers Morris more primitive even
than Homer or Herodotus, who have already
the reflective man's melancholy, whereas the
BO-called melancholy of Morris is more in-
stinctive, being a straightforward recognition
of the facts of life and death untainted by
philosophy. He comparts him in this respect,
and in the fact that an extreme simplicity of

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 111

sentiment is accompanied by an infinite refine-
ment of the senses, with Pierre Loti, whom
Lemaitre has spoken of as "la plus delicate
machine a sensations que j'ai jamais rencon-
tree." To this conjunction of a most compli-
cated sensitive apparatus with the reflective
powers of a child my friend would attribute
Morris's socialism, which is always sentimental,
not theoretic. It would help to explain also
his want of humour and of dramatic power,
which were real wants in his nature, despite
Nupkins, G. B. S., and Mr. Watts-Dunton. My
own favourite volumes are " The Defence of
Guenevere " and " Sigurd," the latter for Sun-
days because of its excellent moral ; but one
cannot take up any of his verse anywhere with-
out feeling in it the inexplicable magic. In-
ferior artists have copied his designs, but they
cannot copy his poetry. They may have the
seed, but they cannot raise the flower. He saw
the world with his own eyes, and this is what we
mean by genius, not any capacity for taking
pains. Some one has told us that Morris could
not " polish or refine " ; that if a thing did not
please him it was not corrected, but done over
again The only correction I know of is in the
" Song of the Nymph to Hylas," which was re-

112 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

printed in " Poems by the Way," with the two
best lines spoiled. Any comparison, therefore,
with a poet like Virgil is beside the mark.
Morris gives us, as a rule, not quotable lines,
but a light in which we see things — an
atmosphere. The verse oftenest in my mind
is one printed in the Oxford and Cambridge
Magazine:

" Christ keep the Hollow Land
All the summer tide !
Still we cannot understand
How the waters <^lide,

< >nly dimly seeing them

Coldly slipping through
Many green-lipped cavern-mouths,
W here the hills are hlue."

That is Morris in quintessence, a drop distilled
from his peculiar and inestimable murex.

11///. — Lord Kosebery has resigned, and the
Press, which used to scoff, is like a running
river of tears, meant, of course, to drown Sir
William. Thus an emancipated party gets rid
ol two leaders at <>nce; and yet it does not
seem happy. Tacitus, who has phrases for
everything, puts the ease in a pretty epigram :
Magis sine domino quam in libertate." How
I rue that is of lb,: Liberal party! It is master-
leSfl rather than free because for freedom one

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 113

must not only be able to do what one pleases,

but know what it pleases one to do. Mr.

Asquith at the Edinburgh meeting figured as

the faithful lieutenant — " miles alacer," to quote

Tacitus again, "qui tamen jussa ducum inter-

pretari quam exsequi mallet " — a prompt soldier,

but with a turn for putting a gloss of his own

on the commands of his general. Mr. Gladstone

meanwhile comes in for a big share of the blame.

Why must he be making speeches ? " Retire men

cannot when they would; neither will they

when it were reason, but are impatient of pri-

vateness even in age and sickness, which require

the shadow; like old townsmen, that will be

still sitting at their street door, though thereby

they offer age to scorn."

Sir William Harcourt has been discussing

agriculture in Wales this week in a speech

which would make every landlord's heart of us

rejoice if only we did not know better. The

speaker proves all landlords to be exceedingly

well off by leaving out of count the working

expenses of the property, say some thirty per

cent. Sir William is only a younger brother,

and Malwood is not a big estate, but even a

younger brother might have some inkling of

so elementary a truth as this. His ignorance

114 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

— wilful, I fear — is on a level with that of the
town curate who, on being preferred to a
country living, urged his parishioners to be
content with milking their cows once on the
Sunday ; or that of the town poet who said to
his country hostess at breakfast : " This is
capital honey ; may I ask, do you keep a bee ? "
loth. — Bob is growing into rather a good shot,
as becomes his father's son, and, I may add, his
uncle's nephew. He told me when we were out
together to-day a curious tale of something that
happened as he was taking a stroll on Sunday
afternoon. Two pheasants rose some distance
off", and he pointed his stick at them, and to his
amazement down they came. When he got to
the spot he found f.he solution of the mystery :
they had flown against some barbed wire. Tom
was abroad last autumn and did not shoot his
covers, so that many of the birds are old and so
untender. In such a case the prudent housewife
cooks i licin with an onion inside. Bob gave me
also some odd experiences of his in pursuit of
relations. He has a strong clannish instinct,
.mil Bpenl some part of his holidays bicycling
in i he neighbourhood where our family used

lo \n\ Bottled In one of the villages he was
amused losee his name over the grocer's shop,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 115

and went in to buy a bun, hoping to get the
name on a paper bag. But they were too
primitive to have advertisements. He saw,
however, on the shopman's face a nose so like
his own that it seemed to stamp him of the
same stock. Bob's nose had always been a
rather sore subject with him ; at times he has
meditated recourse to the nose-curer's, for it is
not in itself beautiful, and it does not resemble
any family nose we know of. But now it looked
as if his own despised organ were really the
aboriginal nose, and all others not genuine. He
asked the man how long he had lived in the

village, and was answered : " Mr. , my

master, has been here these twenty years ; I
am only his foreman." So the mystery of the
nose was no nearer being solved. In another
village, seeing the name on a gravestone, he
asked the sexton, who happened to be in the
churchyard, whether there were any people of
that name still about. " Nobbut one," said the
sexton, " who comes here in the summer." " In
the summer? why in the summer?" "Oh,
because he isn't out in the winter." " Is he so
delicate, then ? " " No, he's in the workhouse."
This a little cooled Bob's zeal. He is a good
boy and pleasant company, and I miss him

116 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

greatly when the holidays are over. I am
always amused at the cleverness of boys who
are clever at all. They seem to know as much
about most matters as their elders, and to be
even more keenly interested. What is it we
grain in yrowini' older besides the " orbis veteri-
bus notus," — the globe known to the ancients —
as the Oxford orator1 in my day used to call
what tailors hint at as " the lower chest " ? Let
us hope the improvement is ethical ; we learn
perhaps a little more self-restraint, or at least
concealment, unless we are great geniuses. The
geniuses keep the lamb's heart among the full-
grown flocks, to the no little discomfort of the
flocks.

14/A. — Tom and I went up with Robert to-day
to matriculate him at College, and I Re-
lieve we enjoyed the outing more than he did,
being without arriere-jpensde. The Warden was
exceedingly civil, as Tom remarked, adding thai
ii was as will some few heads of houses should
be old enough to remember the Crimean War.
Tom does not share the new feeling about
Russia. He had not been at Oxford for many
years, and what mosl struck him was the en-

1 I am told thai the jest may be braced through l>r. Merrj
t.n Biihop Ooplestom .

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 117

croachmcnt of the town upon the University.
At Cart*; ix he could hardly restrain his indig-
nation ; turning now to the municipal buildings,
which seem to flaunt over "the House," and
then to the blank where Carfax Church used to
stand. Fortunately, the one offence served as a
counter-irritant to the other, or I fear he might
have been taken with an apoplexy. When we
came opposite the new building of B.N.C.,
and saw the gigantic lion and unicorn, " That, I
suppose," said he, " is where my old tailor has
moved to out of St. Aldate's ; he used to be ' by
appointment to the King ! ' However, he was
put in good temper presently by the sight of
a few young horsemen coining over Magdalen
Bridge. " I should have thought," he said,
" that so modern-spirited and ingenious a Uni-
versity as Oxford would have invented a new
method of hunting adapted to the bicycle ! "
(this with a look at me and a marked paroxy-
tone accent) ; then, after giving Robert a caution
against wasting his time and money over horses,
he launched out into anecdotes of his own youth,
which bore a very pink complexion.

19th. — St. Luke is allowing us a second sum-
in '.t this year; the roads arc drying famously ;
the farmers have got to work at their wheat

118 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

sowing, and the ladies to their pleasant chatter
about the " autumnal tints." It is a remarkable
season for hedge fruit, hips and haws and holly,
and this, say the local weather-prophets, be-
tokens a hard winter. The yew berries — those
coral lamps in a green night — have been espe-
cially numerous and beautiful ; in fact, our
solitary commons have become like the sacred
grove at Colonus — rav aftarov deov <pv\\d8a
ILvptoKapTTov. Walnuts, too, are plentiful. How
much were walnuts a dozen in Queen Anne's
reign ? Here is the answer in a letter of
Steele's :

" Dear Prue, — I send you seven pen'orth of
wallnutts at five a penny, which is the greatest
proof I can give you at present of my being
with my whole Heart yrs,

"Richd. Steele."

Outside the letter is written, " There are but
29 Waluutts;" but the " passionate lover and
faithful! husband" made ample amends for the
six he hud diverted to his own use by a present
the Qexl day of "half a hundred more." To
know what ;i walnut should be one must have
travelled in Persia; in our northern latitudes it
remains, us its name denotes, the " foreign nut,"

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 119#

never properly ripening, and even when molli-
fied by port presenting a grave problem to the
digestion. The rooks seem very fond of them.
Several times lately, as I have been driving, a
sparrow-hawk has risen from behind the hedge,
lying in wait, I suppose, for partridges. I saw
yesterday three long-tailed tits, and to-day a
kingfisher; and a few days since six magpies.
What does that portend ?

22nd. — By way of reaction from talking about
Nelson and Trafalgar, and singing the glorious
day's renown, I kept last night a very peaceful
centenary in reading over again Jane Austen's
" Pride and Prejudice," which, though not pub-
lished until 1813, was begun in the October of
1796, as we learn from Mr. Austen Leigh's
memoir. How real the characters remain ! The
proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Miss Eliza-
beth Bennet are naturally the liveliest. The
portrait of the former especially is painted with
the finish of a miniature in a number of very
delicate touches. We know his stare, his
height :

" ' I assure you,' cried Bingley, ' that if Darcy
were not such a great tall fellow in comparison with
myself, I should not pay him half so much deference.'
Mr; Darcy smiled; but Elizabeth thought she could

120 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

perceive that he was rather offended, and therefore
checked her laugh."

This characteristic indisposition to be laughed
at, in one who was so great a critic of others, is
emphasised again in the final scene :

" Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley
had been a most delightful friend — so easily guided
that his worth was invaluable ; but she checked her-
self. She remembered that he had yet to learn to
be laughed at, and it was rather too early to begin."

Everybody who can is allowed to make a con-
tribution to our knowledge of* the hero's char-
acter — Mrs. Gardiner, the old housekeeper, even
the wicked Wickham :

" Mr. Darcy can please where he chuses. He can
be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth his
while. Among those who are at all his equals in
consequence, he is a very different man from what
he is to the less prosperous. His pride never deserts
him; but with the rich he is liberal-minded, just,
sincere, rational, honourable, and perhaps agreeable

allowing something for fortune and figure."

Change the words rich and h'sss frroxpevous,
and yon have Miss Austen's judgment as well
as Hingley's. Again :

" Lady Catherine has the reputation of being re
markably sensible and clever; l>nt I rather believe

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 121

she derives part of her abilities from her rank and
fortune, part from her authoritative manner, and the
rest from the pride of her nephew, who chuses that
every one connected with him should have an under-
standing of the first class.

The two most carefully elaborated scenes in
the book are Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth
ami his aunt's visit to Longbourn. Both seem
to me quite perfect. In any one less accus-
tomed than Darcy was to look at everything on
the side on which it concerned himself, without
imagination to see how it would strike others,
or less unable, from long habit,1 to dissimulate
his feelings, the opening declaration would have
been impossible, but in him it is in character.
Equally well drawn are his surprise at Eliza-
beth's refusal of his suit, his shock at being
called " ungentlemanlike," his dispassionate view
of Bingley's courtship of Jane, and his frank,

1 Elizabeth Bennot'.s remarks over the pianoforte at Ros-
irjos about the duty of practising social virtues are quite a
revelation to Darcy. " I certainly have not the talent which
some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with
those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone
of conversation or appear interested in their concerns, as I
often see done." "My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not
move over the instrument in the masterly manner which I see
so many women's do. But then I have always supposed it
to be my own fault— because 1 would not take the trouble
of practising."

122 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

surprised defence of what was called incivility.
" Could you expect me to rejoice in the in-
feriority of your connections, to congratulate
myself on the hope of relations whose condi-
tion in life is so decidedly beneath my own ? "
It is interesting to remark that Miss Austen,
whether she studied Darcy from the life or built
him up from suggestions, understood exactly
how such a character would be produced.
During the conversation on that famous walk
to the Lucases, Darcy says :

" I have been a selfish being all my life, in
practice, though not in principle. As a child, I was
taught what was rigid; but I was not taught to
correct my temper. I was given good principles,
but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Un-
fortunately an only son, I was spoiled by my parents,
who, though good themselves, allowed, encouraged,
almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing — to
care for none beyond my own family circle, to think
meanly of all the rest of tho world, to wish, at least,
to think meanly of their sense and worth compared
with my own."

The other dialogue — that between Elizabeth
and Lady Catherine de Burgh— is still more
finely imagined. Her ladyship's insufferable
rudeness is always df the well-bred variety; it

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 123

is that of a feminine Darcy, sm amans sine
rivali, but without cultivation, and never
crosses the line into vulgarity. It keeps its
end steadily in view with great self-possession,
and when finally defeated hurls none but social
thunderbolts. " I take no leave of you, Miss
Bennet ; I send no compliments to your mother ;
I am most seriously displeased."

Of the minor characters I confess to admiring
Mrs. Bennet most. To be witty the author had
but to be Jane Austen, but to be foolish and
inconsequent required no little imagination ; and
though Mrs. Bennet is not always equal to her-
self— as which of us is ?— she never quite sinks
to caricature. Her high-water mark is, perhaps,
her famous contribution to the old wrangle
between town and country life :

" ' The country,' said Darcy, ' can in general supply
but few subjects for such a study [i.e. of character].
In a country neighbourhood you move in a very con-
fined and unvarying society.'

" ' But people themselves alter so much, that there
is something new to be observed in them for ever.'

" ' Yes, indeed,' cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by
his manner of mentioning a country neighbourhood.
' I assure you there is quite as much of that going on
in the country as in town.' "

Inimitable, too, is the new light on the

124 PACiES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

question of entail. " Such things I know are
all chance in this world. There is no knowing-
how estates will go when once they come to be
entailed."

Lydia Bennet, also, for the same reason that
I admire her mother, inspires me with un-
I m winded respect. Mary alone I confess myself
unable to believe in, and even to be told that
she married " one of her Uncle Philip's clerks,
and was content to be considered a star in the
society of Meryton," does not convince me. I
have no doubt the fault is in myself, because on
the only other point in which I ever doubted
Miss Austen, a prolonged residence in a coun-
try neighbourhood has persuaded me of my
error.1 It was a point in the character of the
Rev. William Collins. In one of his apolo-
getic speeches to Mrs. Bennet (which, like his
complimentary epistles, ought to supply a word
i<> ihr Language ; we should speak oi"ma>hb7ig"
as well as " sending a Collins"), he says :

" Resignation to inevitable evils is the duty of us
all : the peculiar duty of a young man who has been

1 Sophia will have it that all through " Pride and Pre-

judioe," which is the author's first bonk, the note is a little

forced, and points oat thai .lain' Austen showed herself hall'

• i this bj describing it as "wanting shade."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 125

so fortunate as I have been in early preferment, and
1 trust I am resigned. Perhaps not the less so from
feeling a doubt of my positive happiness had my fair
cousin honoured me with her hand ; for I have often
observed that resignation is never so perfect as when
the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its vattie
in our estimation."

I used to think that the voice here was the
voice of Jane Austen, for once breaking in and
not inexcusably laughing at our reverend friend.
But experience of life has convinced me I was
wrong; and certainly the logic is the same as
that of the famous dictum about dress : " I
would advise you merely to put on whatever
of your clothes is superior to the rest — there is
no occasion for anything more." For the rest,
Mr. Bennet is admirable, Charlotte Lucas is a
very careful study of a very ordinary girl, and
her little brother has expressed for all time a
deep human sentiment when he declared he
would not care how proud he was if he was as
rich as Mr. Darcy. Of Jane Austen's heroines,
Miss Thackeray said once in Comhill that they
were distinguished by a certain " gentle self-
respect and humour and hardness of heart "
from those of to-day, when " we have gained in

126 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

emphasis what we have lost in calm, in happi-
ness, in tranquillity." Miss Austen has suffered
more than most authors at the hands of her
illustrators. How delightful it would have
been if her novels had first appeared in Corn-
hill with Walker's or Millais's pictures ! For
though it is undoubtedly a bore to read a
novel for the first time in sections, nothing
is pleasanter than to go back upon it in this
way, tasting it like old wine. Mr. Cooke's
persons are devoid of any character whatever,
almost of expression ; Mr. Brock's are not much
1 »etter ; and Mr. Thomson's, though they are
more like real people, are not Miss Austen's
people. Look at the conceited boy, for instance,
who does duty for Darcy ; Darcy was thirty.
The name of the novel was borrowed from the
following passage at the end of Miss Burney's
"Cecilia" :

"The whole of this unfortunate business,"
said Dr. Lyster, " has been the result of Pride
and PREJUDICE . . . ; yet this remember, that
if to Pride and Prejudice you owe your
miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil bal-
anoed thai to Prdde and Prejudice you will
also owe their termination." In the old editions
the words glare at you in big capitals as they

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 127

are here printed, and look to us like a reference
to Miss Austen's novel — they are really a pro-
phecy before the event. I note finally that a
book-lover (whose name I know but will not
say) burrowing the other day in the heaps of
a London bookseller (whose name I know also
but refrain also from saying), unearthed a nearly
complete set of Miss Austen's novels in the
original edition, which he bought for as many
shillings as they usually cost guineas. The
bookseller discovered his mistake before the
buyer had left the shop, but, being a man of
his word, stuck to his first price. Tell that in
Gath !

23rd — Lord Rosebery at Colchester made a
political allegory of the oyster. He spoke of
him as " an eminently self-contained character.
His shell is his castle, his house is attached to a
rock, and within that shell and attached to that
rock he is absolutely aloof from the storms and
catastrophes of the world." The moral is not
difficult to draw. In politics let us be — not
selfish, oh dear no, but — self-contained. Being
an old-fashioned person, I prefer the old-
fashioned word selfishness ! but, call it what you
please, I prefer the old-fashioned moral of the
oyster allegory as it is drawn in that delightful

128 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Buddhist sermon in Mittbrd's "Tales of Old
Japan" (ii. 153):

" There is a certain powerful shellfish called the
Sazaye, with a very strong operculum. Now this
creature, if it hears that there is any danger astir,
shuts up its shell from within with a loud noise, and
thinks itself perfectly safe. One day a Tai and
another fish in envy at this said —

" ' What a strong castle this is of yours, Mr.
Sazaye ! When you shut up your lid from within,
nobody can so much as point a finger at you. A
capital figure you make, sir.'

" When he heard this, the Sazaye\ stroking his
beard, replied : 'Well, gentlemen, although you are
so good as to say so, it's nothing to boast of in the
way of >at'ety, yet I must admit that when I shut
myself up thus I do not feel much anxiety.'

"And as he was speaking thus, with the pride
that apes humility, there came the noise of a great
splash ; and the shellfish, shutting up his lid as
quickly as possible, kept quite still, and thought to
himself, what in the world the noise could be.
Could il lie a nel ? Could it be a fish-hook? What
a bore it was always having to keep such a sharp
look OUl ! Were the Tai and the other fish caught,
he wondered : and he felt quite anxious about them ;
however, al anj rate lie was safe. And so the time

passed ; and when he thought all was safe, he

t. ah Ink opened bis shell, and Looked all round him,
and there seemed t.i be something wrong, something

with which liewa- qo1 familiar. As he Looked a

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 129

little more carefully, lo and behold, there he was
in a fishmonger's shop, and with a card marked
' sixteen cash ' on his back."

1UK — I saw at the club in one of the weekly
papers an announcement of the death of the
sister of Thomas Lovell Beddoes. I confess
that, great as my interest in Beddoes has always
been, I did not know that any sister was still
surviving ; I do not recollect any reference being
made to her at the time it was deemed requi-
site to publish the sad story of his suicide.
This was in 1890, when the poetical remains
were printed from papers given to Robert
Browning by Beddoes' life-long friend and bio-
grapher, T. F. Kelsall. Beddoes' poetry will
always be caviare to the general, but two or
three things, such as " Dream -Pedlary," are
creeping into anthologies. In my library I have
a copy both of the " Improvisatore " and the
"Bride's Tragedy," bound in that straight-
grained morocco with stamped Gothic orna-
ment which was then orthodox ; they be-
longed to Beddoes' college friend, T. G. H.
Bourne, and the former of them contains
Beddoes' book-plate. I have also his Shake-
speare, which is interesting from the passages
marked ; though they are not of any re-

130 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

condite beauty, nor especially concerned, as
one might have expected, with "graves and
worms and epitaphs." They are such as the
following :

" Most choice, forsaken ; and most lov'd, despised."

" Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well
When our deep plots do pall."

I am happy also in possessing a copy of the
" Posthumous Poems " of Shelley, which Beddoes
financed, and Leigh Hunt published, and Sir
Timothy suppressed. But probably this is not
so scarce as Beddoes' own books.

November 2nd. — There was a curious demon-
stration in the farmyard this morning, suggest-
ing to the philosophic mind that men are but
chickens of a larger growth ; at least proving
that the commonwealth of fowls contains an
el i ii< ni which we in our vanity are apt to con-
sul, r especially human, for human and humane
are the same word. Two cocks were taking
Bteps bo Bettlo a dispute in the fearless old
fashion with beak and spur; all the prelimi-
naries of the duel had been gone through
punctiliously, and the principals were about to
engage, when a bevy of fair guinea-hens, some
twenty in number, rushed again and again be-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 131

tween the combatants, and at last succeeded in
frustrating their purpose. The manners of
guinea-fowl repay attention ; at the first blush
they appear foolish birds — indeed, as witless as
a guinea-hen is one of our family proverbs — but
this is a vulgar error ; and perhaps some day I
may collect into a letter to the press some ana
upon the subject, to which the touching story
of the dove's laying one immortelle on the
bosom of his dead mate will be as moonlight
unto sunlight. Here I note that they are the
Quakeresses of their society. Observe their dress,
how low in tone — the familiar slate-colour —
but how rich in substance. Observe how they
segregate themselves from the other barn-door
fowls, and prefer to roost in a tree, from which
in winter they sometimes fall down frozen,
rather than sleep in a Gothic building with
their fellow - Christians. I have mentioned
above a remarkable instance of their distaste
for bloodshed; they carry this so far that it
is a matter of great difficulty to catch and
kill them. In one point only would they have
displeased George Fox, — they are extremely
loquacious; but then so is the new school of
" Friends."

7 th. — I journeyed to Reading to spend a few

132 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

hours in the bookshops, for since Mr. Saints-
bury went north to profess in Edinburgh, there
is a little more chance of picking up there
some unconsidered trifles. But in Broad Street
I encountered the High Sheriff's coach taking
the Lord Chief Justice to the Assize Court, and
not having yet seen Lord Russell on the bench
I joined the Hogarthian crowd and followed
him in. Two or three things struck me ; first,
and most conspicuously, the utter boredom of
the poor High Sheriff, who has to sit next the
judge in a tight uniform, and look wiser than
he feels ; secondly, the good nature of the police,
who handle the prisoners as if they loved them ;
then the half-stupid look of the prisoners, as if
they had come by a dark stair into a great light,
and the villainous look they have, due to the
want of linen round the throat ; but what struck
me most was the very evident effort made by the
. 1 1 1 < 1 V_r « * to say something that might impress each
offender who came before him. With counsel
he was a good deal less patient, taking them in
snuff in more senses than one. The cases were
disgusting, and I did not sit long, but turned
into tin. IJisciiit, Faetory to see my favourite
sight, the oiaking of oracknels. It is the very
type of hell. First the poor flakes of souls are

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 133

thrown into the boiling waves of Pyriphlege-
thon and disappear ; presently they rise to the
surface, and are skimmed out and dashed into
the biting lymph of Cocytus —

" And feel the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce."

Since first I saw the sight — and I never go to
Reading without seeing it, if it is to be seen
— I cannot eat a cracknel, and they are my
favourite biscuits, without calling to mind those
mediaeval pictures in which lost souls are being
crushed between the jaws of a monster I will
not name. It is not altogether an agreeable
reminiscence. The Reading shopkeepers are an
amiable set of men who display their wares with
something of the enthusiasm more common
among vendors of curiosities, taking an interest
in the things it would seem for their own sake ;
though the curiosity-mongers sometimes carry
their indifference to custom a little far. For
instance, old A. showed me an enamelled snuff-
box given by Napoleon to one of his generals,
and all I could £et out of him about it was,
" Ah ! I have refused a price for that ; " what
price I couldn't bring him to say. Perhaps he
was on intimate terms with my banker, and

134 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

knew it could not concern me in any practical
sense. The jeweller, on the other hand, to
whom I had to go about some repairs, brought
out a magnificent peridot with the remark,
" For this I am only asking 800 guineas."
" Ah ! " I said, " really, is that all ? " I suspect
this engaging habit of taking a customer's
wealth for granted arises from their experience
that " imputation " is a force in the market no
less than in morals. People discover they can
afford things because the dealer assumes that
virtue in them. Possivnt quia posse videntur.
How many and how cunning are the excuses
one considers it necessary to make to oneself
for purchases ! Now that a thing is cheap ;
now that it is so much more satisfactory to buy
a really good thing for a five-pound note than to
!"• always squandering crowns. It is the price
we pay for keeping a conscience, that it will
still be talking and must be cajoled! The
oddest excuse ever devised for violent biblio-
mania is surely this of Col< ridge's, which I came
n]i' mi yesterday : —

" In case of myspeedy death, it would answer
to l>n\ ;i CHID worth of carefully chosen hooks,
in order to attract attention to my library and
to ._riv.' accession to the value of books by their

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 135

CO -existing with co - appurtenants " ( " Anima
Poctse," p. 183).

Alas ! to most of us that thought of speedy-
death is rather a deterrent. There are a few-
heroes who put Nunc mihi, mox aliis on their
book-plates ; just as there are a few philosophical
poets like Lucretius who take a pride in the
thought that all concourses of atoms (and books
are, in a way, atoms) are but fortuitous, and will
soon dissolve ; but who, except a philosopher,
would buy books with his own auction catalogue
before his mind's eye? And books are such
a bad investment. " I was at a sale the other
day," said a bookseller to me, " it was Lord C.'s,
and if it had not been for an Italian, I could
have bought at my own price." " Bless the
Italian ! " said I. I make it a religious duty to
attend all the book sales within reach, just to
help up the price for the sake of " the fatherless
children and widows," but if ordinary book-
collectors were wise they would stipulate in
their wills, as I have done, that their books are
not to be sold by auction, but valued by two
trustworthy booksellers independently, and the
larger offer accepted. The only book of any
special interest I found in Reading to-day was a
miscellaneous volume of first editions of Byron's

136 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

poems with the autograph of Helen Shelley;
and I bought little else, though I was haunted
all day by that phrase of Coleridge's about "co-
existing with co-appurtenants." Folios, quartos,
dumpy duodecimos, seemed to be putting out
forlorn hands to me, and entreating that I should
end their exile and let them co-exist with some
co-appurtcnant on my happy shelves. And
here at home I am conscious, as never before,
of great gaps ; lacunce valde deflendce. But
that way madness lies ! I suppose every one
has a grain of malice in his composition some-
where, and if he is a book-collector it is apt to
show itself there ; perhaps as harmless a vent
as it can take. Mr. Lang tells a moral tale of
a certain Thomas Blinton who suffered a ter-
rible purgatory for collecting the early amorous
poetry of Bishops and Cabinet Ministers. My
wricked passion is for presentation copies of
I "inks (not being minor poetry or otherwise
uninteresting) by living authors; and it has
usually been no1 the gratitude of men but the
high prioe asked lor the autograph that has left
up mourning. A catalogue bo-day advertises
a oopy of " Modern Painters," with the inscrip-
tion: "Coventry K. Patmore, Esq.,1 with the

sntn en Nov. 27.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 137

author's sincere regards, 15 Jan. 1856," but
the price demanded is exorbitant. I am par-
ticularly sorry to lose it because my secret
cabinet already contains a presentation copy of
a poem of Mr. Patmore's to another living and
distinguished man of letters. Only once did I
ever mention such a purchase to the donor of
the book ; it was in the early days of my zeal,
and not being a maker of books I did not under-
stand all the forces involved ; but I received
a severe lesson. I had gone up to town for a
night, had found the book in a shop, and by a
curious chance was dining with the writer, who
was, and is, a great friend. Both my friend and
his wife have a remarkable gift of silence, and
the announcement of my discovery, made too
light-heartedly, was received in a polar still-
ness that froze the blood. Both looked at their
plates steadily while a man could count fifty ;
then my friend said, " For the time of year
we are remarkably free from fog." Of course,
being after all a man and no worm, I was obliged
to recur to my topic, but I have never repeated
the experiment.

IQtlt. — One of the greatest charms of autumn
is the opportunity it offers for improvements in
the house and garden and estate. I think even

138 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Tom feels this new spirit in the blood, and in
the intervals of hunting roams round his fields,
planting hedges and making fences, and perhaps
can be brought by the woodman now and then
to cut any tree that is palpably noxious to a
neighbour — a neighbouring tree, that is, not a
human being ; Tom has no sympathy with the
modern notion that trees can prejudice health.
The medical officer may tell us we shall never
be without a spring epidemic till a whirlwind
gets in and has a good game of ninepins ; but
Tom inherits my father's taste for planting
and distaste for cutting, so that medical officers
preach to deaf cars. And certainly the Hall
stands well above the village, and out of harm's
way. My "improvements" this year will be
simple enough: a door knocked through a blank
wall, a new flower border in the kitchen garden,
a tree felled to open a view, and the Gothic
porch taken down from the doorway, which is
Grei irgian. This last alteration has cost me some
Bearchings of heart; for the porch itself is of
some antiquity. Sophia points oul that on wet
days our callers will have to stand in the ram
till the door is opened; but a little rain hurts
do one, and besides on wet days people do not
i -all. or, if they do, they carry umbrellas. I

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 139

suppose the passion for making improvements
rests at bottom on the law of self-preservation,
our surroundings being really a part of our-
selves. It is a way of giving freshness to worn
impressions, of bringing into notice again what
is ever tending to slip below the level of con-
sciousness. Even Eugenia, I have observed,
though inclined to parsimony in matters of
toilette, manages to vary her dress with con-
siderable skill; and at least once a season
Sophia rearranges the drawing-room furniture,
and rehangs some of the dining-room pictures.
We are all more or less obliged by nature to
say with Nebuchadnezzar, " Is not this great
Babylon, that I have built ? " If we did not,
we should lapse, not only into vegetarianism,
like that unfortunate monarch, but into vege-
tables.

19th. — Fogs are not pleasant even in the
country, but they are clean, and sometimes
they are beautiful. To-day, for instance, the
plough teams were at work in the field called
" Lynches " (I believe from its terraces), and the
broadening purple-brown bands and the fallow
between them were filmed over with a velvety
opalescence very like the tender bloom on cold
gravy.

140 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

I made a note the other day of my scepticism
as to the civilising influence of picture galleries
upon uneducated people. I had occasion to-day
to show myself no less sceptical about another
fashionable form that modern philanthropy takes,
namely, to collect a savage horde of London
roughs and take them to spend an afternoon in
a friend's grounds. What good result is aimed
at ? Not fresh air, for that can be as well en-
joyed in the public parks ! If the parties were
under the patronage of the Fabian Society I
could understand them, and I should applaud
their policy, for nothing could be so well con-
trived to make people envious. But what good
object do they serve ? It is difficult by your
smiles, however gracious, to persuade a hundred
people whom you have never seen before that
you arc pleased to see them; they are not de-
ceive 1. and thoy arc not in the least pleased to
Bee you; tiny come frankly for what thoy can
get. A Lady who has been in the habit of con-
duoting Buoh parties, and to whom this after-
noon I opened these views, was horrified at first
by their " cynicism," as she phrased it; but pre-
sently sh«- told me not a few stories which on
reflection may perhaps lead her t<> spend ber
lime and talents mere profitably. On one oc-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 141

casion she had been remonstrating with some
factory girls for picking their hostess's apples ;
they were quite small and green, for it was
early summer ; and the girls turned on her with
indignant surprise. "Why, if we don't take
them now, we shan't get another chance." If
good ladies who practise such hospitality would
extend it to unfortunate members of their own
class, it would be appreciated. But it is far easier
to wash the feet of ten beggars than entertain
one poor relation. Speaking of the Fabian
Society has put me in mind of an amusing cir-
cumstance relating to William Morris, that be-
fell a year or two ago. We were paying our
first call upon a newly-married pair, the hus-
band (call him Mr. John Bull) being a typical
country squire. Mrs. Bull has an inclination
towards art, or perhaps I should say art-in-the-
home. Some patterns of chintz had just arrived
and were being inspected, and as we were old
friends the examination was not stopped by our
visit. Presently Mr. B. had an inspiration : " I
suppose they're not from that Socialist fellow,
who says I mustn't have a glass of sherry, be-
cause my fogger can only afford beer; what's
his name ? — Morris ; because, if they are, I
won't let him drink his sherry at my expense."

142 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Alas, they were Morris's ! The discussion was
not continued in our presence, but we were
pretty sure remonstrance would be unavailing ;
and so Sophia consoled pretty Mrs. B. by saying
she knew of a place where they made the most
delightful copies of really old things for ridicu-
lously low prices, &c. &c. I respect a man who
carries his political principles into domestic
life. I heard the other day that this same
young gentleman had ransacked a whole toy-
shop to find something for his heir-apparent not
" made in Germany." But no one is absolutely
consistent, and I know by pleasant experience
that even Mr. Bull is not a stickler for British
wine and tobacco.

27th. — The papers to-day announce the death
of Mr. Patmore. The great poets at the begin-
ning of the century died young, at the end they
are living to full age; I say "great poets" be-
cause, if the quality of his best work be con-
sidered, tlnre seems no reason why Patmore
should no1 rank as such. Take away his five-
o'clock tea verses, his political verses, his Roman
Catholic verses, with their mystical and some-
what nauseous Mariolatry, and there still re-
mains a considerable volume that will live as
long as any of the later verse of* the century,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 143

because it lias something to say and says it
exquisitely. To mention " A Revelation " and
"The Spirit's Epochs" from "The Angel in
the House," "A Farewell," "The Departure,"
"Winter," and " The Toys," is to enumerate half-
a-dozen poems that the world — unless it very
much alters — will not willingly let die ; but it
is not to exhaust the list of successes. Many
of the " Preludes " in " The Angel in the House,"
besides those already referred to, all written in
the octosyllabic metre over which he attained
such mastery, are excellent. An old favourite
of mine is " The Wife's Tragedy," which mounts
in pathos verse after verse till it reaches its
height in that single-line simile; perhaps the
best, certainly the most unforgettable, thing in
Patmore.

" Man must be pleased : but him to please
Is woman's pleasure ; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities

She casts her best, she flings herself.

And whilst his love has any life.

Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time she's still his wife,

Dearly devoted to his arms ;
She loves with love that cannot tire ;

And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,

As grass grows taller round a stone."

144 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

It marks the accomplished artist that after
achieving such success and popularity in one
style, Patmore should in " The Unknown Eros "
have achieved equal success, though not equal
popularity, in verse of an entirely different
stamp — a kind of choral ode, imitated probably
from Drummond of Hawthornden. To take a
specimen, from a passage where a poet for once
speaks well of his critic:

" How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of

mood;
But not all height is holiness,
Not every sweetness good ;
And grace will sometimes lurk where who could

guess ?
Tho critic of his kind,
Drilling to each his share,
With easy humour, hard to bear,
May not impossibly have in him shrined,
As in a gossamer globe or thickly-padded pod,
Some small seed dear to God."

Will, one hopes so, especially when one praises.
28///. — In turning over a chest of old books I
found an album t lwil had belonged to my mother
in early youth, made about the years 1816-22.
There were prints of many Berkshire towns and
great houses, a vast collection of newspaper cut-
tings, and 1 1 i mli manuscript verse. The cuttings
were largely from poets' corners, the poets being

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 145

Haynes Bayley, Mrs. Hemans, L. E. L., Barry
Cornwall, and other extinct meteors ; but some
were anecdotes and some were conundrums — a
form of merriment now happily restricted to
children's parties. The main interest lay of
course, and the only remaining interest lies, in
the original contributions of the author's friends.
Warren Hastings appears to have been much
worshipped, and his retirement at Daylesford is
sung very tropically —

" Naught invades
The still unbroken twilight of the shades
Save the cool whisper of the tumbling rill,
Which from the shelvy side of yon hoar hill,
Now caught, now lost amid th' obtruding leaves,
Foams down the craggy channel which it cleaves,
Then through the vale with mitigated force
Glides unperceived, forgetful of its source ;
As one by ceaseless persecution worn,
Beset with ills, yet proof to fortune's scorn,
Greatly retires, collected and resigned,
Nor casts one look of self-reproach behind."

What a pity that Gray had anticipated that last
line ! I know a young poet who has written a
very pretty ode which opens, " Let us go hence,
she will not hear my songs ! " which probably
seems to him a considerable improvement on
Mr. Swinburne's " Let us go hence, my songs,
she will not hear ! "

146 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

On another page of the album I came upon
some doggerel which would seem to have been
penned with a view to giving as exactly as
possible the current pronunciation of certain
words, the spelling of which was even more
unhelpful than usual.

" Once in merry Berkshire there 1-
-ived a charming little girl,
With a charming dog called Smut,
Tan as tan, and black as soot,
Who could draw a cart, and fetch
All he wanted, beg, and catch.
Once, alas ! poor Smut was lost ;
It was winter, and the frost
Nipt his little chest, which was
Most susceptible, because
Bred so delicately, which
Is not good for dogs and such.

All, they found him on the moor,
Oil and wine in haste thoy pour,
Wrap liim safe as any man in
Mother's best and warmest flannen,
W bile t < • case his racking cough he
lias to suck the finest toffee;
But in vain came comfort then :

Poor Smut never smiled again."

•B"

This effusion is nol Bigned. 1 cannot believe
thai my grandmother composed it; probably
it is the work of seine preoisian of the school-
room. To be really useful, however, the vowels
ould be repre ented by more accurate symbols

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 147

Are we meant, for example, to give the vowel in
"toffee" the sound in of or in off? Probably
the latter, for 1 was brought up to say coff-ee,
and I so spoke the word without shame till my
marriage, when the breadth of my vowel offended
Sophia. A man who could exchange tobacco
for snuff to please his mistress is not likely to
stick at a vowel, and " cof-fee " it became ; but
alas ! the very first day on which I aired my
new accomplishment to a guest — it was the late

Duke of , who honoured us by a call at the

old Chobham camp — he replied to my "Will
you have tea or cof-fee?" with "Thank you, a
cup of coff-ee would be very pleasant ; " and
coff-ee it has remained for me. It is pitiful to
remark what havoc the Board schoolmasters
and railway porters are making among place
names. Even at Lowestoft and Kelvedon, as
I noticed in October, you hardly hear now the
old-fashioned Lestoff and Keldon ; and Edward
Fitz-Gerald would turn in his grave to hear
Boulge pronounced Bowlge instead of Bowidge.
December 1st — Punch has struck a new vein
this week in a comic armoury. Some of the
charges are witty enough, but it is a pity not to
make the thing a little more heraldically correct
by mentioning in every case the tincture of the

148 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

field, &c. Those persons who play pencil and
paper games after dinner will find it an amusing
pastime to concoct achievements of the sort.
Having a family party last night we made an
experiment at such a game, and led off with
the Sultan of Turkey. Almost everybody gave
him for crest " a Saracen's head couped at the
neck proper," which showed good feeling. An
alternative was: a savage from the middle gules
holding in the dexter hand a scimitar gutte de
sang, in the sinister a paper of reforms reversed.
For supporters, dexter : a bear sejant afrrontee
imperially crowned or, holding in its paws a
bezant ; sinister : a bull counter rampant re-
gardant, or. One of the suggested shields was :
Purpure, a cross im-potent ermine, surmounted
by a decrescent sable. In explanation of this
it should be noted that Du Cange derives
"ermine" firom "Armenian." I may add that
I was given for my own crest by a long- suffering
family "a King Charles' head wreathed about
the temples ermine."

A' the curiosity shop in yesterday, among

the highly-priced rubbishy books I came upon
the autobiography of a last-century bookseller,
and in turning the Leaves found the following
sentence on small causes leading to great

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 149

results, which no one but a bookseller could
have penned : —

" Sir Isaac Newton would probably never
have studied the system of gravitation had he
not been under an apple-tree when some of the
fruit loosened from the branches and fell to the
earth ; it was the question of a simple gardener
concerning a pump that led Galileo to study
and discover the weight of the air ; to the tones
of a Welsh harp are we indebted for the bard of
Gray; and Gibbon formed the design of that
truly great work, his ' History of the Decline of
the Roman Empire', while viewing the ruins of
the Capitol"

An apple, a pump, a Welsh harp, and —
Rome !

2nd. — A Devonshire district council has been
mending its roads with Druidical remains, there-
by proving itself as Christian and iconoclastic as
any cathedral chapter. Still more far-reaching
changes have been made in our own council by
a mere stroke of the pen, and have excited no
protest. In future no trees are to be planted
in the hedges by the roadsides, and no cottages
are to be roofed with thatch. The bicyclist
will rejoice at the first of these orders, because
undoubtedly the dripping from trees makes

150 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

urire; but the lover of the picturesque may
well wring his hands. The second order seems
to be made in the interest of the infernal
machines that snort down the roads scattering
sparks and frightening your horses. But why
should not motor-engines of the new type re-
place them ? Berkshire (headed by Thatcham)
should get up a monster petition against this
piece of folly.

9th. — Village concerts have taken a new
development hereabouts. The old-fashioned
penny-reading, where the choir tenor used to
warble " The Lass of Richmond '111," and the
vicar's son break down in "The Night before
Waterloo," has gone " where Orpheus and where
Homer are," and we have instead Christy Min-
strels, with Bones, Tambo, and Mr. Johnson all
complete, and all as black as your hat. Bones
is Tom's groom, and no doubt the blacking
helps to give him confidence. I believe he
Bubmits lb'' joke-list beforehand, so that there
□nay b<: no offence in it. For the most part
the jokes derive, from those comic papers that
one Bees people buy at railway-stations and read
in the train without a smile But a few are
home-made and topical Tho vicar came in for
a rap last evening l'<>r not Lighting the church-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 151

yard lamp on week nights ; and the parish
council is a standing dish. A village Pasquin
might find it worth while to get hold of some
less dependent Bones, and write the jokes.

12th. — Winter seems to have come at last —
not " the weeping winter all whose flowers are
tears," which has been here too long already,
but the winter

"When bicycles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail "

instead of his tyre. I made a short experiment
this morning, but the ruts were frozen hard, and
the snow hid the flints, so that I had a rough
journey, and once or twice I was near falling.
But anything is better than slush and south
wind. A Berkshire poet (for we still have poets)
has lately published an ode to this wind — per-
haps really liking it, perhaps as a peace-offering,
just as Kingsley tried to conciliate the north-
easter, which, nevertheless, proved implacable
and killed him. In this matter, as in others, I
am content to be on the side of Shakespeare,
who never alludes to the south wind but in
disparaging terms. His characters curse by it.
" All the contagion of the South light on you,"
says Coriolanus ; " a south-west blow on ye,"
says Caliban, " and blister you all o'er ; " and

152 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Thersites, who is less of a gentleman than these,
and has less reticence, expands the curse into a
dozen lines of diseases. The " sweet south "
that many editors read in the famous opening
lines of " Twelfth Night " is a quite impossible
conjecture of Pope's for " the sweet sound."

lQth. — I read after dinner Dr. Birkbeck Hill's
" Talks about Autographs," which the publisher
pro singulari sua humanitate has lent me.
Dr. Hill I knew for a vivacious talker when he
lived at Burghfield, and I love an autograph but
even too well, so that I turned the pages with
lively expectation. The autograph letters here
presented are naturally of very various degrees
of interest, and collectors will contrast them,
now with a smile, now with a sigh, with their
own specimens. For example, I prefer my own
letter from Miss Martineau, lamenting the death
of her prophet, Mr. Atkinson, to the one here
given about the slave trade; my Newman, too,
is more characteristic1 But I grow gloomily
0OVetOUJ3 over the Sir Thomas Browne and the

1 I print it pro bono publico : —

"THE Okatoky: March 29, 1*7'.).

"MS DBAS BIB, You must not think I have willingly
delayed my answet to so kind a letter as yours. 1 thank
you very much lot it, ami feel the value of such, though I
should not myself allow that I was driven outof the Anglican

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 153

famous Cowpcr letter about Mr. Bull, the dis-
senting minister with every virtue and only one
vice — tobacco. The Matthew Arnold on the
deceased wife's sister question is interesting ; it
is an answer to a gentleman who complained
that owing to the prohibition he had been
married eight years only out of his eighty.
The letter is dated from a Methodist training
college where Arnold was examining. One
wonders whether in a Socialist state — the
Merry England of the future — a great poet will
be relieved from such intolerable drudgery, or
whether even in that millennium he will only
be allowed to write his poetry and his essays if
he can prove himself of substantial use to the
community by making chairs and wall-papers.
Arnold's reports are very good reading, but his
methods of examination were sometimes highly
poetical. I remember a tale told by a fellow
inspector of a class of girl pupil-teachers that
he asked Arnold to examine for him. Arnold

Church, instead of leaving it because the Truth was else-
where. But I know what your meaning was, and it was a
kind meaning to me.

" Thank you also for your congratulations on my elevation.
It has, as you may suppose, startled and even scared me,
when I was of the age when men look out for death rather
than any other change. — I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,

"John H. Newman."

154 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

gave them all the excellent mark. " But," said
the other inspector, " surely they are not all as
good as they can be ; some must be better than
others." " Perhaps that is so," replied Arnold ;
" but then, you see, they are all such very nice
girls."

There is a letter from Mr. Ruskin, dated 1858,
sending a message to Jones [Sir Edward Burne-
Jones] that his stained-glass windows would not
quite do, a message not delivered until nearly
forty years after.

Dr. Hill's book is written for the American
market, and therefore should not be judged by
too English a standard. Moreover, it is pro-
fessedly talk and not literature ; but occasionally
the talk is irritating. I do not refer to the
irreverent squibs and crackers that are let off
with boyish enjoyment at what are my own
idols in Church and State; that is fair enough,
and I ;ini I lu; last person to resent either a
swingeing blow or a rapier thrust, administered
in gentlemanlike fashion, by Radical or Non-
conformist. It is Dr. Hill's irrelevant morality
thai distresses me. Why must poor Hartley
I loleridge's weakness be dragged in by the head
and ears i And why because Lamb is men! ioncd
must -in be mentioned too? A furniture broker

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 155

had recently for sale Lamb's spirit case ; and if
I could have afforded the sacrifice I would have
bought it to burn.

18th. — I was roused from sleep last night about
half-past five by hearing Sophia strike a match
and address some one in a very excited tone, to
the effect that she could see him, and he needn't
hope to escape, and that her husband was a
magistrate, with other threats. When I was
fully awake, I gathered that she had heard a
man walking up and down in the room. But if so
he had disappeared, so I took a poker and went
downstairs for further search. I have a great
dislike to enter rooms before the evidences of
the last night's occupation have been removed ;
everything looks uncanny ; and this morning the
curtains seemed to bulge a great deal as though
they were hiding very substantial burglars. We
had been warned once or twice lately by our
blue-nosed policeman that a little party of old
offenders had come into the neighbourhood, and
yesterday the terrier disappeared, so that we
were in a suspicious humour. However, I found
no one, and imagined that Sophia had been
dreaming, or that our friendly ghosts had been
at their tricks again. For they have a queer
habit occasionally of rushing across the drawing-

156 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

room floor and flinging up the window — at least
that is what the noise sounds like. Later in the
day we heard there had been a slight shock of
earthquake, and several of our neighbours had
imagined that the tremor, which ran east and
west, was caused by a person hurrying across
the room.

21st. — We came to London for a couple of
days' shopping ; that is to say, Sophia came for
shopping and I for the pleasure of coming. Not
that the country even in winter gives me the
spleen, but after a few months in the wilderness
of mid-Berkshire it is exhilarating to look in
the faces of some apparently intelligent human
beings. We started in a fog which promised
fine weather in town, and we were not dis-
appointed. London was as full as it could
bold; the streets were full, the shops over-full;
to buy a penny stamp at the Post Office it was
necessary to take your place in a long queue.
Bui everybody seemed in good spirits; matronly
dames, puffing papas, tall serious sisters were
Letting themselves l>e tugged down every street
by apple-checked schoolboys ; nursemaids smiled
as tiny pushed their perambulators through
the thiokesl of the crowd; the poor tired shop-
girls smiled under the fostering eye of the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 157

shop-walker ; even the sombre pavement artist
chose subjects that smacked of the season, high-
coloured roast beef of Old England, plum pud-
ding crowned with no mortal holly; and the
mechanical people who touch their hats at street
corners and give five sweeps if you drop in a
penny were keeping holiday, and cheerfully
overlooked the mud at their crossings. Having
no business myself but that of Chremes in the
old comedy, I took great interest in watching
the crowds, and let my imagination work on
the waifs and strays of conversation that floated
by. I spent as usual a good deal of time in the
bookshops, as much for the sake of the buyers
as the books. It is pretty to observe ladies to
whom a book is but a Christmas present make
their way into the terra incognita of Bain or
Hatchards or Bumpus, look vaguely round, make
a despairing plunge or two, and then throw them-
selves on the mercy of the benevolent despot,
who assigns them what will best suit Tom and
Jack and Margaret. The great bulk of the new
books seemed to be reprints of classic authors,
which is a sign at least of healthy taste ; but it
seems the public will not buy them without a
certificate prefixed from some modern critic.
So Scott is patted on the back by Mr. Lang,

158 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Johnson by Mr. Birrell, the rest of the eighteenth
century writers by Mr. Dobson, females in general
by Mrs. Ritchie, Job by Mr. Jacobs, and the world
at large by Professor Saintsbury. We were stay-
ing with our friend X., who is so good-natured
that he does not resent our using his house as an
hotel. He was civil enough to invite a few in-
teresting people to meet us. He is master of the
simple secret that a great dinner-party is a great
evil unless all the company are bores. If there
is a humorist at the upper end, and the table is
long, and you are in your proper place below
the salt, it is vexing, especially if you are as
dull a dog as I am, to see the signs of merri-
ment in which you cannot share. At home I
have an old-fashioned round table, which holds
no more than eight people, so that the talk
must be general, and under these circumstances
I find talk improves, because the wits have the
stimulus of an audience, and the audience of
the wits.

25th, — A bright day, which made the Christ-
mas salutation more easy and natural. But
why do some folks wish me "a happy" in-
stead of "a merry Christmas"? Is it spiritual
refinement i Ik> they think because they arc
virtuous there shall be no cakes and ale? Not

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 159

being able to go to church, I read Stevenson's
" Christmas Sermon,'''' reprinted from Scribner
in " Across the Plains." Most laymen could, I
imagine, write one good sermon, into which
they would put all their theology ; but though
good such homilies would not be gay. When
laymen of literary genius mount the pulpit it
is a different matter. Matthew Arnold's "Christ-
mas Sermon " was excellent reading ; and
though too full of his pet heresies, it said a
plain word for Christian morals. Stevenson
preaches to us the lesson he had so successfully
taught himself, the duty of cheerfulness. The
older I grow, the greater value I set on this
virtue, and, considering the increase in suicides,
I should judge there was never more need for
it. I have known a wife (to put the matter
from a man's point of view) who by her resolute
cheerfulness enabled her husband to keep heart
and head when skirting the precipice of bank-
ruptcy ; and I have known a wife who by her
curst1 shrewishness made even a crumpled
rose-leaf as agonising as a crown of thorns.
Years ago I travelled many months together
with a friend, who was the most cheerful com-
panion in the world, and I had no suspicion
that there was another side to his temperament

1 I use the word in its Shakespearean sense.

160 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

until once at Lucerne we slept for a couple of
nights in adjoining rooms with but a thin par-
tition between. He is now dead, so I may tell
the story. Both mornings I was amazed to
hear a long soliloquy all the time he was dress-
ing to this effect : " Oh, I am the most unhappy
man alive ! Oh dear ! oh dear ! what is the use
of going on living ? Oh, the wearisomeness of
it ! How I hate and despise myself ! Wretch ! "
and so forth. It was just Carlyle's old wheez-
ing clock : " Once I was hap-hap-happy, but
now I am meeserable ! " And each morning he
came down to breakfast with his usual gaiety,
so that I could but assume he had, perhaps
unconsciously, come to adopt this remarkable
means of purging his melancholy ; and I felt a
little ashamed of having penetrated his secret.

The post-bag, when at last it arrived, was full
of letters for the servants' hall ; Christmas
curds, I presume. I hope this means that the
custom of sending these picturesque souvenirs
is sinking in the scale, prior to disappearing
altogether, as valentines did. It may mean
only that no cards come to us because we never

■ « 1 any to others. All such social habits soon
Income a tyranny, from which it is wise to keep
as free as possible.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 161

2Uh. — The " Feast of Stephen " has long been
materialised into Boxing-day ; and even the
well-meant efforts of Dr. Neale and "Good
King Wenceslas" have not restored it to the
protomartyr. A measure of the poverty of
taste in matters poetical is afforded by the
popularity of that very tame carol. For weeks
before Christmas we suffer it, and reward our
persecutors with nuts and apples. I made an
attempt one year to substitute the old Stephen
carol printed by the Percy Society from a MS.
of Henry VI.'s reign ; but the old vicar objected.
And perhaps from his point of view he was
right ; for the legend is entirely independent of
the story in Acts. It opens unblushingly :

" Saint Stephen was a clerk

In King Herodes hall,
And served him of bread and cloth

As ever king befall.
Stephen out of kitchen came

With boares head on hand ;
He saw a star was fair and bright

Over Bethlehem stand.
He cast adown the boares head

And went into the hall :
' I forsake thee, King Herod,

And thy workes all.
I forsake thee, King Herod,

And thy workes all ;
Thore is a child in Bethlehem born

Is better than we all.' "

162 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

King Herod naturally remonstrates, and asks
Stephen if he has gone mad, or is striking for
higher wages. Stephen replies shortly, and
keeps to his point :

"Lacketh mo neither gold or fee
Ne none riche weed ;
There is a child in Bethlehem born
Shall helpen us at our need."

This is too much for Herod, who gives his
retainer the lie symbolical :

" That is all so sooth, Stephen,
All so sooth, I wis,
As this capon crowe shall
That lioth here in my dish."

Three vigorous verses complete the episode:

"That word was not so soon said.

That word in that hall,
The capon crew, Gfwistus natus est,

Among the lordi;s all.
Etiseth up, my tormentors,

By t wo ami all by one,
Ami Leadeth Stephen out of this town,

And Btoneth him with stone.'
Tooken they then Stephen

And stoned him in the way.
And therefore is liis even

I >n Christes own day."

"Therefore"! It is unblushing, as I said.
Din as a carol it bakes the colour out of " Good
King Wenoe las."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY loo

To-night the mummers came round. For
old sake's sake one does not refuse to see them,
hut the glory has long ago departed. At least,
I seem to remember that in my youth the per-
formance was hetter ; certainly it was the best
of the village hoys who used to act, now it is
the tag, rag, and bobtail, and they do not take
the trouble to learn all the verses. The prin-
cipal characters are King George and a French
officer, who fight, both get wounded, and are
cured by a doctor; Molly, who acts as show-
man and chorus, and Beelzebub, who comes in
at the end, dressed like Father Christmas, to
collect the pennies. All the characters announce
themselves in the manner of the old miracle
plays, thus:

" I be King Gaarge, a nawble knight,
I lost some blood in English fight,
I care not for Spaniard, French, or Turk,
Where's the man as can do I hurt P
And if before me he durs stan'
I'll cut un down with this deadly han',
I'll cut un and slash un as small as Mies,
And send un to the cookshop to make mince
pies," &c. &c.

January 1st, 1897. — "And the new sun rose
bringing the new year." The glass also has
risen, and we may anticipate a couple of days

164 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

of dry weather. But our new weathercock, in
the exuberance of youthful spirits, is engaged in
an endeavour, by more and more rapid gyra-
tions, to hit that point of the compass which
Feste calls the "south-north." Now for good
resolutions. I find, as age creeps on, I spend
too much time on the hearthrug with hands in
pockets and coat-tails over arms, while letters
remain to write and books to read. What is to
be done ? I knew an author once who printed
a placard with begin upon it in giant letters,
and hung it in his study ; but, not to speak of
the disfigurement and the publicity, I doubt
the effectiveness of any such memento. I can
say " begin" to myself as often as I like without
budging an inch. It is far more efficacious to
set up an independent train of thought, and, by
becoming interested in something else, leave tho
old attraction unconsciously. Mr. James (I
mean Mr. William James the humorist, who
writes on Psychology, not his brother the psy-
chologist, who writes novels) has an amusing
dissertation on the art of getting out of bed :

" We know what it. is to get out of bed on a
freezing morning in a room without a tin', and how
tlh' very vital principle within 08 protests against the

ordeal. Probably most persons have lain on certain

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 165

mornings for an hour at a time, unable to brace
themselves to the resolve. We think how late we
shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer ; we
say, ' I must get up ; this is ignominious,' &c. ; but
still the warm couch feels too delicious, the cold out-
side too cruel, and resolution faints away and post-
pones itself again and again, just as it seemed on the
verge of bursting the resistance and passing over
into the decisive act. Now, how do we ever get up
under such circumstances ? If I may generalise
from my own experience, we more often than not
get up without any struggle or decision at all. We
suddenly find that we have got up. A fortunate
lapse of consciousness occurs ; we forget both the
warmth and the cold ; we fall into some reverie con-
nected with the day's life, in the course of which
the idea flashes across us, ' Hullo ! I must lie here
no longer ' — an idea which at that lucky instant
awakens no contradictory or paralysing suggestions,
and consequently produces immediately the appro-
priate motor effects."

The problem for me seems, then, to resolve
into this — how to secure a " fortunate lapse of
consciousness" soon after breakfast. I must
engage Eugenia to come into the library every
morning with an interesting piece of news ; or
I must have the post-bag placed on the writing-
table away from the tire. And I will begin
to-morrow.

On December 19th I made a note of having

16G PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

met a troop of six magpies, and wondered what
it portended. A correspondent is good enough
to send me a Cumbrian version of the old
rhyme : —

" One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a wedding,
Four for a birth ;
Five for Heaven,
Six for Hell,
Seven for the Divol's own sel'."

In Berkshire, not being theologically minded,
we recognise only the first four lines.

2,1(1. — I went yesterday with Sophia on a
new-year's visit to my aunt at Barchester. We
had, as usual, much talk about dignitaries au
ijrti ,,il serirax, relieved by one or two anecdotes
told by a clergyman more reverend than re-
verent. One was of the late Bishop , who

Lost bis train through pacing sedately down the
platform in the serene confidence that he would
!>•■ waited tor. Another was of the present

Bishop of and his Conference. If seems

that bis lordship is a good chairman, in the
sense thai bo keeps himself to bis chair and
Leaves the meeting to manage itself. The whole
business of wrangling over aoademic resolutions,
which there is no power to make practical, is

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY L67

so transparently futile, that a bishop may ho
readily excused for treating a Diocesan Con-
ference as a lesser Convocation and going to
sleep — especially at the after-lunch sitting.
When it came to votes of thanks, the proposer
remarked that his lordship certainly deserved
one, because the business he had been engaged
in was so obviously distasteful. The Bishop
rose twinkling with humour. He was at a loss
to divine how the kind proposer of the vote of
thanks could have come to such a conclusion.
As a matter of fact it was quite true. It re-
minded him of an answer given in an examina-
tion to the question, " Wherein lay the great sin
of Moses at the striking of the rock ? " The
answer was, " I don't know ; but I conclude it
must have been something in the expression of
his countenance." One repartee I will note
because it told against me. An old-fashioned
canon was inveighing against his lordship of

for wearing a mitre. " But surely," I said,

" there is more sense in putting a mitre on your
head than on your notepaper and carriage
panels ! " " Then why don't you go about," said
he, " on state occasions in a helmet with your
crest atop ? "

5th. — A second sleepless night, and there is,

1G8 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

unhappily, no help for it. For I am cutting a
wisdom tooth, and have been engaged in the
business for more than a twelvemonth. The
process is inoffensive enough, unless I catch
cold, as I did yesterday, and then it becomes
"tarrible tarrifying and pertickler 'nights," as
we say here. One tooth came through a few
months ago, and had to be at once extracted.
So I imagine it will be with the other —

" Ostenrient terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra
Esse ainent."

11th. — During my convalescence I have been
reading the early volumes of Miss Burney's
diary. I found my old friends as diverting as
ever. What company could be better than
Daddy Crisp, or those excellent young men,
Mr. Seward the vain and Mr. Crutchley the
proud, or the S.S. who wept at will, or the Lady
Say and Sele of that epoch, who went about
quoting .»nc sentence from her sister's imprinted

novel,' The Mausoleum of Julia," or Mr. B y,

who lost four years of the happiness of his
life— let's see, 71, 72, 73, 74— ay, four years,
sir. and all that kind of thing;" or Mrs. Vesey,
who " thought it such a very disagreeable thing,
when one has just made acquaintance with any-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 169

body and likes them, to have them die," not to
speak of the greater names, Burke and Johnson,
and Reynolds and Garrick; Carter, Chapone,
Montague, and Thrale, and all the humours of
the Court. Of course there are bores, too. The
name of " sweet Mrs. Delany " is a signal for
skipping, so is Colonel Fairly (i.e. Digby), whom
F. B. somewhat affected, recording for hundreds
of pages his talk about " longing to die," and
how he read her a volume of " Love Letters,"
and elegant extracts from Akenside and Beattic,
and who then accepted a fat sinecure and
married a Miss Gunning. I thought it a good
opportunity, while the book was fresh in
memory, to look at Macaulay's essay, one of
his latest, and see how far it would save his
declining reputation. Its unfairness and in-
accuracy struck me as extraordinary. Nor
were they due solely to political prejudice.
For instance, he has a very rhetorical paragraph
suggesting and rejecting all sorts of impossible
reasons why the Queen should have offered
Miss Burney a post at court. The explanation
is quite simple. Neither George III. nor his
consort were such fools as Macaulay makes out ;
they were both — the Queen especially — much
interested in literature, and wished to have so

170 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

distinguished a literary lady about them. More-
over, Dr. Burncy had just been refused the post
of conductor of the King's Band, and this place
for his daughter was meant as compensation.
But it is too late in the day to review Macaulay's
review. One particularly glaring mistake is
perhaps worth noting. Macaulay says : " We
have not the smallest doubt that Johnson re-
vised ' Cecilia,' and that he retouched the style
of many passages." Again, after quoting a
passage, " We say with confidence either Sam
Johnson or the devil.'' Now hear Miss Burney : —
" Ay," cried Dr. Johnson, " some people want to
make out some credit to me from the little
rogue's book. I was told by a gentleman this
morning that it was a very fine book, if it was
all her own. ' It is all her own,' said I, ' for me,
I am sure, for I never saw one word of it before
it was printed"' (ii. 172, ed. 1842). Thus a,
categorical denial to his theory conies in the
V&ry book Macaulay was reviewing !

13th, — Whai is a gentleman? The question
has l.cen raised in the Mornimg Post by a corre-
spondent, who proposes to found a club open to
none bul genl 1* -i 1 1 1 -l i of coat-armour, or, as he
prefers to say, " armigerous" persons. One would
have thought a man's armigerous instincts

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 171

hardly his most clubable side; it was his own
page in Dcbrctt that interested Sir Walter
Elliot, of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire,1 not
the rest of the Baronetage. Probably if this
bold gentleman founds his club he will find
lie has sown a crop of (heraldic) dragons' teeth —
"armigerd proelia sevit Jtumo," to quote Pro-
pertius. For A, who is the tenth transmitter
of a coat-of-arms, will look coldly upon B and
C, who can only count five generations ; C, who
reckons twelve, will snub A; the vanquished
will retire from the field, and soon the founder,
who no doubt has the longest pedigree out of
Wales, will be left alone in his glory. The
correspondence called forth by the proposal is
amusing. One person writes to expose it as a
very palpable attempt of Heralds' College to
raise the wind ; surcoats, according to this testy
witness, being on sale there, new or second-hand,
surprisingly cheap, and not much in demand ;
being, in fact, reach-me-downs, " things which
take the eye and have their price," as Browning
says. Another writer follows him with the
lament that this has been the sad case for four
centuries. But why draw the line at four cen-
turies ? People have been dubbed knight "on

1 See Mi^s Austen's " Persuasion."

172 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

carpet consideration " ever since dubbing was
invented. Some coats-of-arms or augmentations
really represent achievements, as they are all
styled, and were won on the field of battle ; but
these are very few. All through the fourteenth
century it was the custom for families to adopt
what " achievements " they pleased, quite in-
dependently of any doughty deeds, though
pr Jbably not without payment ; and if one
family happened to take a fancy to a coat that
had already been adopted, there was a pretty
row, as in the Scrope and Grosvenor controversy
about azure, a bend or, in which Chaucer was a
witness. But where in such cases is glorying ?
No, " these things must not be thought on after
these ways." If Jones or I receive some dis-
tinction— a coat-of-arms, or an augmentation,
or a V.C., or a Turkish Order, or a baronetcy —
it, is best to accept the fact for what it is worth,
and be as proud as we can, without raising any
question of why and wherefore, and the same
wise maxim applies to ancestral distinctions.
I am exceedingly proud of the fact (whenever I
remember it) that an ancestor of mine sealed a
thirteenth-oentury deed of gift with an e'toile of
six points: but the glory is simply "from its
being far"; be may have been himself "some

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 173

bright particular star," but tho chances arc he
was not; and I have no doubt either he or his
grandfather paid the Earl Marshal 2d. for the
privilege. When there are no wars new families
have no alternative but to buy their decorations.
Elizabeth, for a consideration, made many hun-
dreds of " armigeri," by no means most of them
warriors ; one was Shakespeare, who would have
jumped at the chance, one feels sure, of joining
an armigerous club for the sake of hob-nobbing
with Sir Thomas Lucy. Of course, if besides
being a new man, you had the luck to bear a
common name, you could save your pocket and
your countenance by hooking yourself on by
imaginary links to some family already "gentle"
(a Mr. Dawkins in 1597 lost his ears for concoct-
ing some hundred false pedigrees, for which see
Debrett, passim) ; or, if you thought this course
too risky, you might simply "convey" their
shield, and trust to no questions being asked,
as most new people seem to do now. I know
of one gentleman who couldn't make up his
mind between two very pretty coats borne by
different families of his name, and so used them
both, and the effect on his plate, which is the
final cause of a coat-of-arms, was very magnifi-
cent. Persons in a lower rank of life are gene-

174 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

rally content with a crest and motto for their

notepaper. But what is there in all this to

enrage ? No one worth deceiving is deceived.

And why should any one be jealous of new

men? Every family was new once, and they

became new, then as now, by becoming- wealthy.

This is a commonplace of satire right back to

the time of Euripides (see Frag. 20), and no

doubt earlier.

But at bottom the question, " What is a

gentleman ? " is a serious one, and could not

have been raised in a more pointed manner

than by the proposal to found an armorial club.

It comes to this : Is the word " gentleman " to

be allowed to mean what in fact it has come to

mean in England — a man of a certain type of

education and manners — or is it to revert to its

original sense of " gcntilis homo," a man of a

certain type of family ( William of Wykehani

answered the question deliberately in the former

sense by his lamous motto, " Manners makyth

man," and the tradition of the English schools

and universities has consistently set in the same

direction.1 The old story about the French

1 Contrast what Queen Charlotte told Miss Burnej of ;i
certain German Protestant nunnery, where the candidates'
coats-of-arms were put up several weeks to be examined, and

it any Haw was found i hey wnc ikii eleoted (ii. 102),

PACES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 175

Marquis, who opined that the Almighty would
think twice before damning a gentleman of his
quality, doubtless finds an echo in all genuinely
" armigerous " bosoms ; but there is another tale
in Evelyn's Diary which puts what I believe to
be the English position as pointedly as the other
does that of the ancien regime: "March 10,
1G82. — Vrats told a friend of mine who accom-
panied him to the gallows, and gave him some
advice, that he did not value dying of a rush,
and hoped and believed God would dcale with
him like a gentleman ; " i.e. with courtesy and
consideration. Everybody would admit that
breeding has not a little to do with gentle
instincts, but three generations may be trusted
to do as much as thirty.

ISth. — A perfect winter's day. The light
thrown up from the snow makes all the indoor
colour vividly brilliant. I went to help the
Vicarage boys build a Grecian temple. With
groat foresight they had rolled enormous wheels
of snow on Sunday afternoon while it was
wet, from which to-day they carved glistening

blocks. At I found a handsome piece of

red morocco binding, lettered " Trial of Warren
Hastings, Esq., 1788." 1 suppose it had been
one of the note-books supplied to the peers.

176 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

But the person to whom it had fallen had given
it for an album to his daughter, who had copied
in " Paradise and the Peri !"

20th. — I find myself somewhat indisposed, and
through my own fault. I make it a rule when
dining out to drink no wine unless I am quite
sure of the cellar, especially if my host is a
clergyman ; for the great fall in tythes has made
economy in the port wine bill generally necessary,
even among those who can still afford to dine.
I find that not a few of my neighbours follow

the same custom. Last night at every one

sat as if at a teetotal festival — vfacov aolvois —
until the cloth was drawn. But something in
my host's expression struck me as he helped
himself to port and sipped it critically, so that
at the second round I flung away discretion and
helped myself and sipped. Then I understood.
What 1 had taken for pride in his port was
defiance in bis eye; with just such a face
Socrates sipped bis hemlock. " Any port in a
storm. " says the proverb; but it is a proverb
tor young men Eveu Tennyson, when he grew
into years, became more cautious, and no longer
bade tin' plump bead-waiter at the "Cock,"
"Go fetoh ;i pint of port," without specifying
ili>' rintage. Nay the story goes that even at

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 177

the tables of the wealthy he would not drink
till his son had " tasted " for him. In that
excellent book, Law's " Serious Call," there is
some serious and excellent advice on this
point : —

" Octavius is a learned, ingenious man, well vers'd
in most parts of literature, and no stranger to any
kingdom in Europe. The other day, being just re-
covered from a lingering fever, he took upon him to
talk thus to his friends :

" ' My glass,' says he, ' is almost run out ; and
your eyes see how many marks of age and death I
bear about me : But I plainly feel myself sinking
away faster than any standers-by imagine. I fully
believe one year more will conclude my reckoning.'

" The attention of his friends was much rais'd by
sucli a declaration, expecting to hear something truly
excellent from so learned a man, who had but a year
longer to live. When Octavius proceeded in this
manner : ' For these reasons,' says he, ' my friends,
i have left off all taverns, the wine of those places is
not good enough for me in this decay of nature. 1
must now be nice in what I drink ; I can't pretend
to do as I have done ; and therefore am resolved to
furnish my own cellar with a little of the very best,
tho' it cost me ever so much ' " (1st ed. p. 210).

24ith. — Robert came to luncheon before going
back to college, and we had a long chat about

Oxford. I judge the prevailing philosophical

178 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

lone there to be utilitarian, for the highest
praise Robert gave to anything was that it was
" useful," and the word seemed always in his

mouth. Dr. , who is a young Cambridge

graduate, happened to come in, and they must
fall to abuse of each other's university. I en-
deavoured to mediate, quoting Q.'s ballad,1 which
neither knew ; also Seidell's grave judgment :
" The best argument why Oxford should have
precedence of Cambridge is the Act of Parlia-
ment by which Oxford is made what it is, and
Cambridge is made what it is ; and in the Act
it takes place." I suppressed the last sentence,
in which Selden shows himself a true son of
Oxford: "Besides, Oxford has the best monu-
ments to show." At last the doctor said to
Robert, " How strange it is that the only man in
Oxford who does anything should be a Cam-
bridge man." Upon this I resolutely closured
the subject. It is a curious controversy.2 Some
people profess to bo able to tell at sight to which
University a man owes his education. The old
epigram says, "The Oxford man looks as if the

1 "Green Bays: Anecdote £01 Fathers."
Biaoanlaj makes a characteristic contribution to i(. in his
/'■.■hi on Bacon "Cambridge bad the honour of educating
those celebrated Protestant bishops whom Oxford bad the
honour df bni mi

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 179

world belonged to him; the Cambridge man as

it' he did not care to whom it belonged." I
have myself seemed to remark a certain pre-
cision of outline and want of atmosphere about
the Cambridge training, and perhaps a certain
atmosphere and want of precision about the
Cambridge toilet and manners; but I fear 1
take even less interest in the debate than I do
in the annual boat-race. I own it is a defect.
I remember that the only time Mr. Gladstone's
eye brightened during his delivery of the
Romanes lecture a few years ago was when he
recited the old Caroline epigrams.
February 1st. —

" February till dyke
With black or white,"

runs the rhyme, if it can be called a rhyme. It
does not say that the dykes need be filled with
both black and white on the first day of the
month ; but that is what has happened. We
had a steady fall of snow the greater part of the
night, and all day it has rained as steadily. I
omitted to note at the beginning of last month,
when we visited Barchester, that we had from
my aunt less praise than usual of her own
bishop, and I learned the reason from one of the
canon's wives. The wave of Socialism had at

180 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

last mounted to the Palace, which had been
giving a number of dances to domestic servants,
but none to the young people of the Close, who
were a little indignant, but not so indignant as
the servants in each household who had been
passed over. They had clubbed together and
hired the Assembly Rooms for a Twelfth-Night
I 'all, and every house in Barchester was divided
as to the policy of letting their servants go.
What if a respectably-dressed burglar should get
introduced to Caroline and learn all about the
customs of the house, where the safe is, whether
our diamonds only pretend to be paste, whether
we dine off gold or electro-plate ? In the first
part of each day, as I heard, fathers of families
were resolute against yielding to any such absur-
dity, I nit dinner brought more sombre thoughts.
[f cook should give notice! To lose a girl who
could make soup like this! Was not Henri IV.
politic who thought a kingdom worth a mass?
After all, one might sit up oneself for a night to
let the maids in, and get on with that Charge
or that University sermon ; and then morning
again would bring more sober reflection. Hero-
dotUS tells of a wise race who debated all
important questions both night and morning to
give both reason and passion their due. One

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 181

feels they must have found it difficult to come
to conclusions. But whether the ball was held,
and whether, in consequence, the Barchester
cooks and housemaids have all moved on one
place like the guests at the Mad Hatter's tea-
party, I have not heard.

otli. — It is still raining, and does not seem to
know how to stop, like crying children. All the
ponds have overflowed, and in one or two places
the roads have to be forded. It would take Mark
Tapley to be cheerful under the circumstances,
or Matthew Green ; but that last-named worthy
seems to have visited his farm

" Twenty miles from town,
Small, tight, salubrious, and his own,"

<»nly in fine weather; for on wet days his pre-
scription for the spleen is —

" To some coffee-house I stray,
For news, the manna of a day."

We have a coffee-house, but the villagers prefer
the tap-room at the " Blue Boar " ; and the news
there is not to-day's manna.

8th. — The glass is going up at a great pace,
but the wind has shifted from NW. to S. I
went to look at the lambs, and the old shepherd,
who has a whole meteorological department in

182 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

his head, shook it at the weather. " We shall
have a fall 'fore this time to-morrow." Aristotle
bids us respect the opinions of the aged, even
when unaccompanied by reasons; but their
reasons are often ver}' entertaining. So I
pressed him : " Gentle shepherd, tell me why."
" Well," said he, " did you see the moon last
night lying on his back ? I know'd he meant
summat by that ; he means a fall 'fore this time
to-morrow, snow or rain however."

" Saint Valentines day,
When every fowl cometh to choose his mate."

And for once the day is worthy the occasion.
One tastes in the air the first freshness of spring,
and there rise in the memory forgotten scraps
of the early poets, who seem somehow to have
Found i lie world fresher than we find it to-day;
though even Chaucer complained that every-
thing was used up. A few birds have been told
off, as in '/'A* Ass, mill a of Fotdes, to sing the
cant Lole of Nature : —

•• N"U weloome Bummex with thy sunne softe

That hast thia winter weather overshakon."

I hope n 1 1 1 : i \ ool prove a premature flourish.

The unusual depression <>(' this winter is sig-
nalised by the lad that OUT rooks, for the first

PACKS FROM A TRIVATE DTARY 183

time I can remember, made -no attempt to build
at Christmas.

The vicar is away to-day preaching at Cam-
bridge before his University. Dr. Merry (vero
quern nomine dicimt) has described the country
parson's experience on such occasions at Oxford
in a very humorous poem printed in " More
Echoes from the Oxford Mayazine ; " and 1
suppose it is much the same at Cambridge.
Meanwhile, we poor silly sheep are left " en-
combred in the myre," at the tender mercies
of a " mercenarie." I must own I felt some
curiosity as to whether the vicar would discover
some new brand of locum tenentes ; his pre-
decessor's substitutes I used to suffer gladly,
until he fell ill and they came too often. There
was the gentleman who compared the Cross to
a lightning-conductor, and recommended us to
embrace it; there was another who preached
from Jude on the contest for the body of Moses,
and speculated in a very entertaining manner
on the purpose for which Satan required it ; and
there was a third who made a substantial dis-
course of St. Peter's shadow, pointing out, first,
that it was an everyday shadow, so that we
ought never to despise the commonplace ;
secondly, that it was an unemployed shadow,

184 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

and everything should have a use ; with a
whole hydra of heads besides, which I have
forgotten. The young gentleman to-day was
of a more modern school, a sort of Anglican
dervish, who pirouetted in the pulpit, and
occasionally nearly shut himself up like a
clasp-knife. What impressed me most was his
personification of Septuagesima, in this way:
11 Septuagesima comes to us, and lays a hand
on our shoulder and insists with us, and is
urgent and shrill and vehement, and intercedes
and coaxes and persuades. She besets us and
inveigles and adjures and implores," &c. He
had, too, a disagreeable trick of emphasising
not, against all idiom, in the Commandments,
e.g. " 'l'h. in shall not steal," as if we had said we
should; and again in the Second Collect at
Evening Prayer, 'which the world cannot give."
Of course, the English negative is enclitic; the
very form cannot proves this, as do such con-
tractions as doesn't, sh<>ti/<l n't, can't, &0. To
emphasise //<</, except in an antithesis, is to
coin in it a vulgar error; or rather, it isn't, for
ordinary folks would not, dream of doing so ; it
is lo fall a victim to that disease of pedants
which the old physician of Norwich would have

styled Paeudodoxia Hieratioa. 1 have long

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 185

wondered where locum tenentes are bred, for
they are a distinct species of parson ; the ordi-
nary sort, one knows, hails from Oxford or
Cambridge, and I remember hearing that a
friend's gardener once gave as his reason for
not going to church, " I've lived in Oxford
where the parsons are made, and I don't think
much of 'm." A catalogue from a Birmingham
curiosity dealer this morning may throw some
light on the problem, for an entry runs : —

" Clergymen. — A fine collection of 200 clergy-
men, consisting of Protestant Ministers, Roman
Catholics, Wesleyan Methodists, Unitarians,
and Presbyterians, nice clean lot, 5s."

That sounds almost too cheap, even in this
depressed state of the market. Perhaps it is a
misprint for £5, 5s.

20th. — A long letter came this morning from
Eugenia, who has reached Cairo, to her mother,
from which I have leave to transcribe a few of
the more general passages : —

All the family met us in the hall and wel-
comed us most heartily. They are most
charming and delightful people, and they talk
very good English, with plenty of idioms to
make us feel at home, such as, "the weather

186 PAGES FROM A TRIVATE DIARY

is briskish," " rather qucerish for Cairo." The
house is large, and we have a suite of rooms to
ourselves, including a bath-room. The decora-
tions are mostly Eastern, except a stuffed cotton
cat which sits on the back of the sofa. The
children of the house talk Arabic, French,
Greek, German, and English, as occasion re-
quires. At present I feel like a person in the
"Arabian Nights"; the servants are Afreets,
and we clap our hands for them to appear. The
major-domo waits at dinner in white gloves,
after first holding a magnificent basin and ewer
for the Pasha to wash his hands ; and the things
to eat are kabobs and pilafs. Of course, to
break the spell we have only to go to tea on
Shepheard's balcony on Saturday afternoon
when the English band plays. That is pure
West, even transatlantic, as the other is pure
Bast, but they are curiously mingled everywhere
• lso: electric tramways and camels, bicycles
and donkey boys, American heiresses and black
bundles with two eyes near the top. We see
Aladdin playing with his little friends, and
hopeless-looking bronze babies sitting astride on
one shoulder of their mothers, holding by the
top of their bead. It used to be the fashion to
let them tumble, bo as to disable them for

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 187

military service, until we took over the army.1
The blues and yellows are very fine ; but the
dirt beggars description, and the smells are
overdone. There is occasionally a spicy, peppery,
Eastern smell that is rather good, but some are
pure typhus. Of the sights, I think I like the
Sphinx best, then the running sais, then the
camels, then the donkey- boys ; the Barrage,
too, is very wonderful. I will copy a few days
from my diary.

Tuesday. — The Pasha took us to the big-
mosque, El Azhar, which is a university, the
oldest in the world. There are about 8000
students, and they do much the same work as
when the university was founded. Each pro-
fessor sits by his own column (the professor-
ships are called columns instead of chairs) and
addresses his class in a sing-song. Last year,
in the cholera times, the students resisted the
sanitary orders of the police, and some were
shot. After lunch we went on an expedition

to old Cairo with Mr. X , in an electric

tramcar full of natives. The prix fixe is a great
mystery to them, as it is also on the railway,

1 I think Eugenia is mistaken about this ; no doubt mothers
occasionally let their babies fall, but to disable them for
service they used to maim the trigger finger.

188 TAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

where they lose their tempers and sometimes
their trains because the clerk will not bargain.
There was a disturbance at one point because
the guard gave a man rather less change than
his due ; one of the company said, " This guard
is often short of farthings ; it is a case for the

police." Of course Mr. X was our interpreter ;

it is so much more amusing going about with
him than with a dragoman, as he tells us what
the people say. We saw, amongst other things,
a Coptic church, full of beautiful inlaid work in
ivory and mother-o'-pearl, and the mosque with
3G0 pillars of marble and porphyry. The sac-
ristan was a potter, so we went afterwards to
see him at work. His pace was four pots in five
minutes. On the way back somothing went
wrong with the electrical, communication; a
cord caught in one of the wires, so the guard
stui id on the roof and poked it with a piece of
sugar-cane.

Friday. — Dervishes — we saw both the dancing
ones ami the howling ones. Crowds of people,
mostly tourists, were looking on, and it was
difficult to think of it as a religious service.
Tin- dancers were just like the pictures one
sees; the bowlers were more dreadful, as every
trace of intelligence went out of their faoes as

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 189

they rocked themselves backwards and forwards,
grunting "La iUdha it AUah." At Rho< la Island,
where we went to see the ancient Nilometer, a
little boy, who showed us the precise spot where
Moses was found amongst the bulrushes, amused
us by giving his own age as two days old.
When we showed surprise, he raised it to three
days. We suggested years, but ho said it was
all the same. And so it is in Egypt, at least as
far as monuments and institutions are con-
cerned. The Greek nurse went out to buy us
some helvas (I think that is the word), a some-
what greasy sweetmeat made of butter and
sugar in the shape of a Cheshire cheese, and the
boy in the shop asking how he should cut it,
his father replied with a frown, " As if you were
cutting off the head of a Christian." This shows
how high feeling runs. I wonder what people
who talk about " Egypt for the Egyptians "
really mean! Who are the Egyptians — the
Turks, or the Armenians, or the Greeks, or the
Arabs, or the Copts ?

We dined with the at the Ghezireh

Palace Hotel, a beautiful palace built by Ismail
for the Empress Eugenie when she came to the
opening of the Suez Canal, and in which she
slept one night. At another table we saw the

190 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

most interesting sight we have seen yet, Slatin
Pacha. Afterwards we looked on at the " Petits
Clievaux " in the Casino ; no one may stake more
than two shillings at a time, but you may bet
what you please.

Wednesday. — Lady Cromer's ball, which I am
bold is the biggest thing in the year. The
dancing-room was very full, so I only danced
once, and came away very virtuously, like
Cinderella, at twelve o'clock. The next event
of importance is the Khedive's ball. It is usual
for each Consul-General to send in a list of
suitable visitors to the Khedive's Secretary.
The American list this year was returned with
the remark that the Khedive invited only the
nobility, to which the Consul replied that all
Americans were "kings in their own right,"
ami, when no notice was taken, returned his
own card. The end of the story is that they
have all gol their invitations — "tout Sh&p-
hea/rd."

Saturday. — This morning I went to the
bazaars with an American lady who wanted to
buy some Zouave jackets. She made a very
good bargain with the man, and heBaid,"You
want to lm\ a oamel, an elephant, and you offer
in- a monkey, a sparrow;" finally, In; took 11

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 191

instead of the £7, 10s. he had asked at first.
What 1 like about shopping is the backsheesh.
It' you buy a hundred cigarettes, they give you
one to smoke on the spot. Did it ever strike
you that of the " Thousand and One Nights,"
the odd one was backsheesh ? To-niyht there
was a performance of " Our Boys " by English
amateurs for the Armenian fund. Of course
not a single Turk was present, but the house
was quite full. You must excuse the discon-
nectedness of this letter, as I have been obeying
father's commands to keep a diary. I fear it is
not a very full one; in fact, the spirit of the
Nile has quite possessed me, and I have adopted
for a motto temporarily the word one hears
forty times a day, " Mallcsch," which means
literally " Nothing on it," and practically
" Never mind." I am sure the Pyramids have
lasted so long because they do not worry. I
know, so far, about fifty Arabic words alto-
gether, most of them learnt while driving ; for
the coachman shouts all the time, "To the
right ; to the left ; open your eye, 0 woman ;
listen, my uncle; mind your legs, O lady," and
the people follow his instructions without look-
ing round.

192 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

'11 ih. — I came upon a passage a few days ago
in Gower's Confessio Amantis (book iv.) describ-
ing the "happy warrior," which, though not
amusing in itself — for Gowcr inherited none of
his master's literary gifts— has a footnote that
made me smile : —

" Ho may not then himselvii spare
Upon his travail for to serve
(Whereof that he may thank deserve)
Where as those men of armes be
Sometime over the groato sea,
And make many hasty rodes,"

;ii id the note remarks, " rodes = raids."

March 1st. — I went up to town to see my
dentist. By an odd chance Tom was also going
to I own, and by the same train, and we narrowly
escaped meeting on the platform. Tom has a
deeply-rooted distaste to travelling with people
whom he can meet every day at home; on the
rare occasions when he makes a journey he
likes to pack as much novelty into the enter-
prise as possible, and I sympathise with the
feeling. If you are a story-teller, and have a
chance for an hour of an entirely new audience,
ii is heart breaking to have it spoiled by the
presence of some one who knows all your para-
doxes and anecdotes, and sits bored. So when
I saw the dog oart approaching I retired to the

PAGES FROM A 1'RIVATE DIARY L93

waiting-room till tlio train oamo in, and then
got into a smoking-carriage. I came back by
an early train. Paddington was full of Eton
boys, it being St. David's Day. Though the
pavements in town were absolutely dry, I re-
marked that every young gentleman had his
trousers tucked up some three inches. I must
tell our yokels this, as they like to be in the
fashion on Sunday. They have already dis-
carded the walking-cane in deference to Oxford
opinion.

I have heard in a roundabout way that Tom
went to town to have his photograph taken. I
am more than ever pleased we did not meet, as
he has always expressed himself in good set
terms against the vanity of being photographed,
and I should not have liked to make him blush.
I wonder how he stood the ordeal. Perhaps we
shall hear ; for if you have broken away from a
principle there is nothing like making a com-
plete volte-face and ignoring your old position.
What is the explanation of the something
ridiculous that attaches to the photographer's
art ? No one feels absurd in sitting to a
painter. Is it the under breeding of the pre-
siding genius that gives one shame — his airs
and graces, his injunctions to " look pleasant,"

194 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

or " moisten the lips," or "let the light flash in
the eye," his twisting of one's elbow and spread-
in- of one's fingers ? I am inclined to think it is
not altogether this, for even a Royal Academician
must pose you; nor, again, is it the mere inter-
position of the mechanical camera, but rather
the fact that everything depends upon the ex-
pression of a moment; and the attempt to
choose a decent expression and maintain it on
one's face, even for ten or twenty seconds, is
disgusting. And then, too, the production of so
many copies has the same banal effect as the
hackneying of a phrase; so that a photograph
is fitly styled a "counterfeit presentment."

2nd. -Mr. Birrell in one of his essays men-
tions the rareness of the works of our Berkshire
laureate Pye. If he does not possess the " Sum-
mary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace
out of Sessions," I should like the opportunity
>! presenting him with it. It has a few poetical
entries, <.</., "Carrots, sec Turnips." And this
under Settlements: " It would be unpardonable
in //-' uol to riic an authority on this ease, re-
ported m rhyme I hclicve the only one in the
hooks :

" \ woman having set I li'inont

Married a man wit h Done j
The question wraa, li" being dead,

If thai In' bad was gone P

PACES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 105

Quoth Sir John Pratt, 'Her settlement

Suspended did remain
Living tho husband — but him dead
It doth revive again.'

Chorus of Puisne Judges.

' Living the husband — but him dead
It doth revive again.' "

Under tho article "Pawning" comes this
anecdote: — "A soldier in the Guards came to
me in Queen's Square to swear to his having
lost his duplicate. I looked at the affidavit to
see if it were military accoutrements, &c, that
he had pawned, when to my surprise I found
that he had pawned a £2 bank-note for 10s. 6d.
On asking an explanation of this odd circum-
stance, he said he received the £2 note, and was
resolved to pass a jolly evening, but not to
spend more than half a guinea; and to ensure
this he pawned the note for that sum, and de-
stroyed the duplicate afterwards, that he might
not be able to raise the money on it in case his
resolution should give way while he was drink-
ing with his companions."

Let me note here a curious specimen of old-
fashioned law jargon from one of the year-
books : " Richardson Ch.Just. de C.B. al assizes
at Salisbury in summer 1631 fuit assault per

196 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

prisoner la condeuine pur felony que puis son
condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit Justice
que narrowly mist & per ceo immediately fuit
indictment drawn per Noy envers le prisoner
& son dexter manus ampute & fix al gibbet sur
que luy inesme immcdiatement hange in pre-
sence de Court."

3rd. — Yesterday's storm is still raging, a re-
markable event on Ash Wednesday; Nature on
that day doing her best as a rule to make Lent
ridiculous by a prodigality of sunshine. The
poets who speak of learning lessons from Nature,
ought to warn us to pick and choose very care-
ful ly. Matthew Arnold in his "Discourses in
America," having to praise Emerson, quoted
with approval the following sentence : — " Nature
does not like our benevolence or our learning
much better than she likes our frauds and wars.
Win 11 we come out of the caucus, or the bank,
or the Abolition Convention, or the temperance
meeting, or the Transcendental Club into the
fields and woods, she says to us. ' So hot, my little
sir : ' It, must have been the list of monstrous
illustrations, rather than benevolence and learn-
ing, that Matthew Arnold joined in condemn-
ing, for lie has supplied the antidote to all such
silly twaddle aboul conformity with Nature in

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 107

his own sonnet, which begins, " ' In harmony
with nature ? ' Restless fool," and contains the
fine lines :

" Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good."

I suppose when Wordsworth wrote the well-
known verse in the " Tables Turned " —

" One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can " —

he had in mind the impulse to aspiration, as in
his poem about the Rainbow, " My heart leaps
up," &c. But other impulses are not unknown
in vernal woods, bird's-nesting, for instance.
Certainly Eve's impulse from the famous apple-
tree in the perpetual spring of Paradise, taught
her more " of moral evil and of good " than her
sage husband knew before, and according to
South, " Aristotle was but the rubbish of an
Adam." The only creatures that seem to enjoy
the gale are the rooks, who make head against
it for the pleasure of sailing back again.

8th. — Sophia seems to have taken an extra-
ordinary fancy to Mrs. Vicar, who is certainly
as sprightly as her sposo is the reverse. I over-
heard S. explaining, as we walked through the

108 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

glass-houses to-day, that it was by a mere acci-
dent that my vines were not at the vicarage.
I wish she would not wear her heart so ver}^
prominently on her sleeve before newcomers.
" These violent delights have violent ends," and
the time of grapes is not yet. Probably she
has taken so decided an attachment because
there is a slight coolness between her and my
sister-in-law, whose personal motto is, " Dixi,
custodiam," and who is apt to take into her
custody things beyond her proper province.
And it is a rule of the game in country villages
not to be " out " with everybody at once, or there
could be no gossip.

\0th. — Another letter has come from Eugenia
in Cairo, from which I make a few detached
exl racts: —

A curious misunderstanding occurred on one
of our first days at dinner. 1 admired the dress
of the footmen, who were waiting, and asked if
it belonged to the occupation. My host re-
plied, "Oli, in., they have always worn it." I
found that be bad taken "occupation" in its
technical sense for the English occupation.
Shier theD I am always hearing the word SO
used, and DOW, even if it conies in a book, it
eem to jump OUt at me. In the "Tempest,"

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 109

to-day— for I still road my daily Shakespeare
lection — Gonzalo says that in his ideal "Com-
monwealth " there should be " no occupation ;
all men idle, all." How many Turkish pashas
wish the same ! 1 Another phrase one is always
hearing is Shughl Ingl'lzl, which means "English
work," or, as we should say, "just like an
Englishman." It might be paraphrased by a
phrase of Louis Stevenson's " quite mad, but
wonderfully decent." It is very comforting to
find we have still left something of our old
national reputation for honour. In the bazaar
the other day, I protested I had spent all my
money ; but the Hindoo replied, " Take the
things, and send me a cheque next year." I
said, "Would you say that to a Greek." He
smiled and said, "You also, then, have had
business with Greeks." 2 Our pasha, who is a
great friend to the occupation, told us of a man
who had some business to arrange between here

1 To cap Eugenia's quotation, the French may rerneml" r
with satisfaction the phrase in " Henry IV." : " As odious as
tlu! word occupy, which was an excellent good word before it
was ill-sorted."

2 How different is this from the old Athenian character :

t6 y evaefHes
fxbvois Trap' iip.lv rjvpov avdp&Trwv iytl)
Kal TouirieiKte Kal rb pj] if/evooffTOfxelv.
[Among you above all other men 1 have found religion and
a temper of fairness and a habit of speaking tin truth.] The

200 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

and Constantinople. Here it took him, to his
amazement, only five days, and did not cost a
penny : whereas, at the other end, he had spent
three months and £200 besides in baksheesh to
oil the machine. One hears plenty of stories
concerning our national want of tact. A young
soldier is said to have remarked to the Consul-
General for Austria-Hungary, "Hungary isn't
much of a place, is it ? " and then, by way of
plastering the sore, "I suppose Austria is better."
Another young Englishman, who was in the
street police, arrested the coachman of a Consul-
General for not moving away from the front of
Shepheard's Hotel when another carriage drove
up (which, as you know, is the rule for ordinary
folks), and had to ba dismissed to a higher post
in another department. I fear, therefore, that
we are thought to be honest because we are not
clevei enough to be anything else; and the ex-
planation of any voluntary surrender of profit
or reputation is that stupidity in that case has
risen to mania. A typical instance of ShugM
IiiijIi-.i was Sir Colin Scott Moncric'fl"s finding

ypl are among other things village usurers, and
•rii .-ill the drink .-him hasheesh, It is considered a good
that, according u, the latest census, tiny are nut in-
One wishei they would all emigrate to Crete I

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 201

out Moughil Bey, the engineer who hadn't
succeeded with the Barrage, and making the
Government give him a pension. . . .

The pasha told us to-day a story of a judgment
he ^ave, which reminded me of the Cadis in the
" Arabian Nights." He had imported an English
coachman and groom, and these did not agree
with the Moslem servants, who complained that
the Englishmen cursed their religion. " In
what language did they curse ? " " In Arabic."
" How long have they been here ? " " Six
months." " Have they had lessons in Arabic ? "
" No." " Then they learned the phrase from
you. I will tell them to curse you in English."
" But we don't want to be cursed at all." " Then
why do you curse them ?" And so, having ex-
tracted a promise from each party to abstain
from curses, he dismissed them. . . .

One must not expect too much from Orientals.
In the East, as you will have noticed, the sheep
and the goats are very much alike.

l?>th. — I went to Cherry Orchard to get some
wild daffodils to take with me to town, "in their
yellow petticoat and green gown." Everything
about daffodils is interesting. The name is one
of the prettiest corruptions possible ; it ought

202 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

to be " affodil," as it comes through the French
from " asphodel " ; but the parasitic d is a great
improvement. For some time both forms were
in use, affodil for what we now call " asphodel "
or " king's spear," and " daffodil " for the nar-
cissus. The poets have liked both the word
and the flower. Amongst their encomiums,
Autolycus's song and Perdita's few lines —

" Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The- winds of March with beauty " —

have never been equalled. I wonder how many
of the people who have quoted this lately know
what "take" means! Herrick's popular verses
are a puzzle. Why does he say " we weep to see
you haste away so soon"? The daffodil does
qoI haste away before noon, and if it did, nobody,
not even Rousseau, would drop the tear of
sensibility. As usual, when there is a difficulty
the oracles are dumb. Popular plant- names
were very vaguely and loosely applied in old
days, and Eerrick may have mean! some other
plant. Wordsworth's poem on the daffodils he
dancing on the margin of Dllswater belong

I" his poetical prime. They Were written ill ISO I,

the same year as " The Affliction of Margaret,"

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 203
and "She was a Phantom of Delight." The

most Wordsworthian lines in it, however —

" They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude " —

were contributed by the poet's wife ; and his
sister celebrated the scene in a bit of prose no
less beautiful : " They grew among the mossy
stones : some rested their heads on these stones
as on a pillow, the rest tossed and reeled and
danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed
with the wind, they looked so gay and glancing."
I wonder how Tennyson came to think it
legitimate to speak of March as a " roaring
moon of daffodil and crocus ; " probably he
liked the sound of the broad vowels, and people
quote it as a fine phrase instead of one of his
failures.

lhtlc. — Dentist. Then I took an omnibus
down Oxford Street, and through the zeal of
the authorities in repairing the asphalt we were
compelled to make a detour, so that I was de-
posited at the very door of my destination, the
British Museum, for which, considering the rain,
I was grateful. It was what some people call
an " almost providential " circumstance. I was
much interested to notice on my way to the
MSS. room how many people of the shabbier

204 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

classes were reading the autograph letters of
celebrated people exhibited in the show-cases.
The spring fashions in the bonnet shops are
very wonderful. One never sees men looking
into hat shops — our peculiar vanity is boots.

20th. — I suppose the hunting season may be
supposed at an end now, as the barber did not
trim my eyebrows this morning. I noticed also

the first adder sunning himself by copse.

Larch rhymes with March, and the poets have
noted the fact ; but the larch is not careful, as
a rule, to bud in March in our prosy gardens.
There was, however, a rosy plumelet some ten
days ago on the old tree at the bottom of the
orchard, and to-day it is covered with them,
thanks to the mild weather, and each streamer
looks like a fibre of sea-weed stuck over with
diminutive sea-anemones. But meanwhile the
" peck of March dust worth a king's ransom "
has not arrived, and the sowers are beginning
to despair. I read "The Thackerays in India,"
ui interesting account of many civil and mili-
tary servants of .John Company. Sir W. W.
Hunter is an accomplished penman, with per-
haps just a thought too much style and senti-
ment, bo licit ho occasionally drops such a
dower of pathos as the following: "On the first

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 205

anniversary of his death she followed him to her
own grave " (p. 177).

April 2nd. — Yesterday the lawn was mown
for the first time this year. There is no such
delightful smell as that of fresh grass. To-day
the ivy has been cut on the house front, and
the perfume is as eminently disgusting. I had
shut myself up in the library with a book-
catalogue, but was driven forth by Brown's
putting his hook through a pane of glass and
letting in the poison. So I went bouquinant
in earnest.

My friend the bookseller at told me an

amusing story about public spirit as it is un-
derstood by provincial ladies. The widow of a
clergyman had sent for him to inspect her late
husband's library. She wished it divided into
two parts; the books of any value she would
sell, the rest she would present to the free
library. He showed me one of the books he
had bought — an unopened copy of " Horace
Walpole's Letters," the nine-volume edition. I
had known the husband ; his conversation was
far from lively, and for all those years he had
dwelt by the side of this fountain of wit without
tasting.

3rd. — Bob came to luncheon before departing

206 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

on his first reading-party. He told me the only
amusing contribution made by the under-
graduates to the Nansen honorary degree fes-
tivity was the cry, " What, no soap ! " I wonder
if it was explained to the hero that the phrase
is classical, and what he thought of the marvel-
lous piece of improvisation from which it comes.
Bob produced also some new nonsense verses.
I have a great fondness for the Lear type of
nonsense verse. One of the best 1 know is
a little old-fashioned now, but it deserves re-
run ling: —

" There was a young girl called Amanda,
Whose novels were thoroughly fin-de-
Sncle, but 1 deem
"I'was her jowrnal intime
That drove hor papa to Uganda. "

I say that to myself on fast-days, and I add this
sentence from Kenan by way of Antiphon :
'The man who has time to keep a private
<liar\ h;is never understood the immensity of
I ho universe" (FeuiUes DStachdes, 359). What
interested me most in Bob's budget was the
piece of news that the Magdalen authorities
propose erecting a memorial chapel to Gibbon
which is to eclipse the Shelley pantheon at
University College opposite. There would seem
from his story bo have been considerable dif-

I'AUES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 207

ference of opinion as to the form the memorial
should take. Some of the more old-fashioned
members of the committee advocated the clas-
sical tradition that a hero should be represented
in his habit as he died (cf. the Dying Gladiator,
all the St. Sebastians, &c), especially as the
University College people had put up a drowned
Shelley. But a reference to the Biographical
Dictionary showing that Gibbon had died of
dropsy, their idea was overruled. The next
suggestion was that the monument should be
allegorical : Gibbon should be figured in Roman
armour — the lorica, it was thought, would be
excellently fitted to his somewhat gibbous per-
son— and by a general slackness, or an appear-
ance of unstable equilibrium, the statue might
be made to indicate that it represented the
historian of the Empire in its decline. An
alternative proposal was that a model of the
ruined Temple of Concord should be erected in
the meadow encircled by Addison's Walk, in
which should be placed a sitting statue of
Gibbon at the moment when the idea of his
great book occurred to him.1 On every loth

] "It was at Rome, cm the 15th of October 17(54, as I sat
musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted
fry. us were saying vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that
the idea of writ Log the decline and fall of the city started to
my mind." (Autobiography.)

208 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

October — which would naturally be the first
day of term — the choir might go in procession
round it to represent the friars, and if thought
advisable a little judicious clockwork might be
introduced to help the illusion. Bob had not
heard whether any decision had as yet been
taken upon these various proposals.

5th. — The Diamond Jubilee Procession looms
bigger than ever now that Parliament has risen,
and all nature seems to have become infected.
The hedgerow elms, the scarlet and yellow tulips
along the garden walks, the park palings, all
si ■cm in procession. Where one used to meet
one timber waggon or traction-engine one seems
ii"\v to meet half-a-dozen. And the processions
of sheep arc endless! These last are like a
nightmare. The first surprise at meeting your
bicycle carries about a third of them past at a
gallop. Then the Leading dowagers forget you,
and look over the hedge as though they were
not the procession but the spectators; and if
it were in it for the sheep-dog you would be
crushed into mutton by the block. Having

aped this late to-day 1 got sale to ,

where I met a circus procession. It was ex-
hibiting a masque of English queens, such of
them at least as fall within the popular purview.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 209

There was Queen Elizabeth and Mary of Scots,
and Queen Anne, and, high on a throne of royal
state which far outshone the wealth of Ormuz
and of Ind, her present gracious Majesty. The
height served not only to enhance the dignity,
but to get over the difficulty of the likeness.

6tli. — In town to-day I was introduced to a
very intelligent young French anthropologist,
who is at work upon our manners and customs ;
he very good-naturedly showed me some proof-
sheets of one of his chapters. The English, he
considers, lack the genius for ceremonial, and
are always trying to invest what ceremonial
habits they inherit with a utilitarian meaning.
Ho illustrated from washing, which as origin-
ally practised was purely ceremonial. This
primitive use is still retained in baptism, though
not without protest from a section even of the
religious world (there followed here an account
of the " Gotham " (? Gorham) controversy, and
of the sect who insist on deferring baptism till
it can be combined with a swimming lesson).
Relics of the old ceremonial feeling he discovers
in the phrase " to perform ablutions," which is a
newspaper synonym for washing ; in the Order
of the Bath ; and in the thence derived point of

honour among English gentlemen to bathe ; but

210 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

he regards the frequency of this bathing as en-
tirely due to the modern worship of Hygeia, and
points to the annual dipping at Margate, still
traditional among the lower classes, as a genuine
survival from the more general practice. He
notices incidentally as points elucidating his
contention, that the theatre of so many affairs
of honour in the last century was Cold Bath
Fields, and that the sedans in which persons of
quality used to be drawn to their annual immer-
sion are still known as Bath-chairs, though they
arc now used only for invalids.

In Chelsea I came across a remarkable hand-
bill, which I transcribe as a " document " for the
historian of nineteenth-century morals : —

Night Tours through Whitechapel and
Darkest London.

The West End Agency, in organising these tours
through Whitechapel and the East End, has been
careful to select men of well-known character and
experience to conduct them, and under their guid
ance do danger need be apprehended if their advice
is Followed,

The party starts from the Agency's Offices at 8.30
r.M. a ad i ei urns by 12 p.m.

Tlir charges are One Guinea each, or for a party
of five, Pour Guineas. The party is limited to live
in Qumbei

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 211

Two clear days' notice is required of an intended
visit, to avoid disappointment, and the fee must be
paid on booking the tour.

Tall hats must not be worn.

Ladies who wish to see this neighbourhood can be
conducted round in the day, but under no circum-
stances by night.

The places visited are varied — the resorts of the
poorest of the poor — and in no city in the world can
such sights be seen.

9th. — I called at the vicarage to take my good
friend for a walk. We talked chiefly of Jowett,
whose Life has just appeared, and the vicar pro-
mised to lend it me. He mentioned that he
had at length summoned courage to dismiss his
predecessor's "odd man," and taken a young
fellow who showed at present more taste for
gardening than stable-work. Returning from
a few days' visit, he found a mushroom-bed in
one of the stalls, and the coach-house doors
quite blocked by a nursery of young cabbage
plants. The odd man is a curious study : vicars
may come and go, but as a rule he goes on for
ever, getting crustier and crustier with age. If
the parson stops many years in the same living,
and the odd man stops with him, they grow to
resemble each other. There may be some art in
the process, but there is more nature. The odd

212 PACxES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

man shaves or shapes his beard like his master,
and acquires his expressions ; but he also ac-
quires his expression, his gait, his manner ; and
not only so, but his very features seem to re-
shape themselves to the parson's type, so that
the odd man might often pass for a poor re-
lation. Such growing likenesses are, of course,
matters of common experience in people who
live much together — in husbands and wives,
for example. My own father and mother,
when they travelled, were constantly taken
for brother and sister : so that one need not
lie surprised that Abraham, from the longer
life of patriarchs then, found it very easy to
assume that relationship with Sarah when he
visited Abimelech. One sees the same thing
in young people: schoolboys catch more from
their schoolmasters than their handwriting:
and Eugenia used to astound us by the rapidity
with which she became the "model" of the
reigning nurse. But the odd man's resemblance
t<» Ins master is an odder case than any of these.
A mere creation of art is much less interesting.
My barber, for instance, by virtue of an orange-
lawny beard onl into a particular shape, lias
made himself a recognisable caricature of the
Lord-Lieutenant; but the best specimen of the

PAGES FROM A I Ml IV ATE DIARY 213

art-product I ever saw was in Sheffield, when I
paid a visit years ago to Mr. Ruskin's museum
at its old home. Inside the door I found a
middle-aged man on a low stool — no, it was not
Mr. Ruskin, but the generally neglige style of
hair and dress was a very careful study after his
pattern, and many of the superficial tricks of
manner had been successfully caught. This
worthy was sitting with the " Seven Lamps of
Architecture " on his knees, following the lines
with his finger, like the blind beggars who read
the Bible at the corners of the streets to be seen
of men. He looked up at me presently, by an
apparent effort disengaging his attention from
the book, and asked what I should like to see —
for nothing was exposed to the casual eye — and
I suggested missals. " Are you interested," said
he, " in the subject-matter of them, or only in
the decoration ? " I thought that an excellent
parody of not a little that Mr. Ruskin has written
about Art.

12th. — The first brood of thrushes fledged in
the garden. Yesterday, coming out of church,
I overheard a lady remark to her neighbour
about the Easter decorations : " How very
appropriate all these primroses are to Lord
IVaeonsfield ! " It recalled another naive

214 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

saying that fell in my hearing from the wife
of an M.P., who, on going to church one Sunday
morning during a visit to their borough for
speech-making purposes, and finding it fairly
full, exclaimed : " I declare they are giving us
quite an ovation." Such is the dignity of states-
manship in a democracy. Is it not somewhat
sinister that of all the Prime Ministers of the
Queen's reign, it should be the most un-English
who is thus honoured with an annual commemora-
tion ; that the inventor of household suffrage
should be accounted the champion of the Con-
servative cause ; and the most flamboyant of
personages be symbolised by the simple prim-
rose ? It is the most mysterious of cults, and
perhaps serves the useful purpose of keeping
one from taking party politics too seriously.
Of course, Mr. Greenwood may be right, and
Lord Beaconsfield be an entirely misunderstood
nius in politics as in letters. " I write in
irony," be is said to have sighed, " and they call
it bombast;" so his politics, too, may have been
ironical. Turning over tho leaves of that re-
markably clever day-book of Mr. Bowyer
Nichols's, which, by a quip upon Hesiod, he
lias called " Words and Days," I find Primrose
hay commemorated in the most appropriately

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 215

ambiguous manner. There is a quotation from
'• Lothair," the only reference, I believe, to
primroses in any of the novels : —

" ' These are for you, dear uncle,' said Clare
Arundel, as she gave him a rich cluster of violets ;
' just now the woods are more fragrant than the
gardens, and these are the produce of our morning
walk. 1 could have brought you some primroses,
but I do not like to mix violets with anything.'

" ' They say primroses make a capital salad,' said
Lord St. Jerome."

And this is followed by the very apposite lines
from " Peter Bell " :—

" A primroso by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

The story is told — I know not on what
authority — that the Queen, when she called
the primrose " his favourite flower," meant not
Lord B.'s, but Prince Albert's.1 If so, it would
be but one absurdity the more. Has any
Wordsworthian commentator analysed the atti-
tude of Peter Bell in regard to primroses ? If
a primrose was a primrose to him, he must at
least have taken note of it : primroses must
have existed, so to say, in his world. For

1 See page 245.

216 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

logicians are emphatic in asserting that no
man ever yet made an identical proposition.
To say A is A (e.g. a primrose is a primrose)
means far more than it seems to mean. There
must be more in the predicate than in the
subject, or the statement would not be worth
making. And Mr. Bell went even further than
this; he gave evidence of a definite, though not
very exact, eye for colour. In short, there seems
reason for regarding him as a misunderstood
person, and in this respect also he sorts well
with Lord Beaconsfield. Miss May Kendall, in
her poem " Education's Martyr," has shown us
what depths of inappreciation, far below Bell's,
there may be in this matter of primroses : —

" Primroses by the river's brim,
Dicotyledons were to him,
And they wero nothing more."

Shakespeare, who lived before eestheticism,
seems to have considered the primrose an
anemic (lower. Sec " Winter's Tale," iv. 4, 125.

20th. — I dined with , who invited me to

meet a few literary people come from town for
Easter, to see a primrose and hear the nightin-
gale. There was much talk about books. I
happened bo say of Gibbon's stylo that he had a
remarkable fondness for concluding sentences

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 217

with a genitive case, when my vis-a-vis turned
very red and addressed the company as follows : —
" I made that remark twenty years ago, and "
(with a glare at me) " I have made it in print ;
and " (with a bow) " I am delighted to have
my observation confirmed by so much more
distinguished a person." I fear this was the
expression of a pungent irony, as I am not
distinguished, and the speaker did not even
know my name. Perhaps I showed annoyance,
for our host hastened to interpose : " The re-
mark was made long ago by Rogers." I took
this at the time for a gentle Virgilian dust-
throwing : " Hi motus animarum," &c. But
on turning up the "Table Talk" I find this
passage : —

" It is well known that Fox visited Gibbon at
Lausanne ; and he was much gratified by the visit.
Gibbon, he said, talked a great deal, walking up and
down the room, and generally ending his sentences villi
a genitive case ; every now and then, too, casting a
look of complacency on his own portrait by Sir
Joshua Reynolds, which hung over the chimney-
piece, that wonderful portrait in which, while the
oddness and vulgarity of the features are refined
away, the likeness is perfectly preserved " (p. 77).

Presently the talk fell upon Shakespeare's

218 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

sonnets, and one of the company defended
Malone's theory that the famous line—

" A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,"

must refer to a person called Hughes, and could
not otherwise be paraphrased. I ventured to
surest that the imagined difficulty came from
taking " controlling " as a verbal noun governed
by in, instead of a participle agreeing with man ;
supply " hue " after " his," and the sense be-
comes — that the young gentleman's beauty
controlled the complexion of all who were in
his presence, making them blush, turn pale, &c.

The discussion continued for some time, and
found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

2lat. — From the hollow imitations of the
school-children on every side I have no doubt
tli.it the voice of the cuckoo has been heard in
i -ur Land ; mid Sophia tells me she heard it yester-
day. Riding home last night with Eugenia 1

had reached the top of Hill about seven

o'olook, when from the bushes on my right
came two ur three faint notes — faint, but un-
mistakably the nightingale's. " Listen, Eugenia,"
I cried, but tin' notes were not repeated. We
have it on pseudo ( Miaueerian authority, sup-
ported by a long tradition, thai it is fortunate

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 219

in love to hear the nightingale before the
cuckoo.

" And as I lay this other night waking
I thought how lovers had a tokening,
And among them it was a common tale
That it wore good to hear the nightingale
Rather l than the lewde cuckoo sing."

But if, as in this case, the lover hear the nightin-
gale first and his lady the cuckoo, how then ?
Pseudo-Chaucer being dead, I must consult
Professor Skeat, who is supposed to inherit
something of his spirit. One cannot be thank-
ful enough that the cuckoo has in these last
days purged himself of his old Tudor associa-
tions. Perhaps Wordsworth attempted to carry
the whitewashing a little far ; a Berkshire poet
comes nearer the mark with the epithet " ribald."
For the cuckoo is not a nice character; he
always reminds me of Lord Byron bearing
about ostentatiously the pageant of his bleeding
heart, filling the air with clamorous self-pity,
and occasionally dropping an egg into some one
else's nest.

I went into school to hear the "general in-
telligence " lesson. Our master has a great idea
of culture, and gives out questions on Monday
in each week for the children to cut their wisdom

1 i.e. earlier.

220 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

teeth upon ; on Thursday he hears what infor-
mation they have gathered. Some of the ques-
tions I have, on chance visits, seen written up on
the black-board have made me smile : Who is
Grant Allen ? who is Hall Caine ? Others have
made me weep: What is optimism? what is
pessimism ? This week the questions were not
so far-fetched. We had an explanation of
Eboracum, and were told that the other arch-
bishop signed his name E. Cantab. ; we learned
that Sir Henry Irving was the greatest living
actor, and Marie Corelli the greatest living
novelist; that Lord Coleridge was the present
Chief-Justice, and Mr. Macnamara a great " edu-
cationist." We heard, too, about Stonehenge
and the White Horse, and what an M.P. is,
and a Bart, (we keep a Bart, a few parishes off),
and what the vicar wears round his neck in
church, and how much her Majesty has a year
i" live on. Our schoolmaster is a perfect mine
of information, conveyed in sesquipedalian words.
May 1st. — "I come to her and cry 'mum,'
sliu cries 'budget,' and by that wo know one
another." A good many of us accost the Ex-
ohequer in tho simple and hopeful temper of
Master Slender, but not unfrequently that lady's
budget " does us as Little good as sweet Ainu-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 221

Pago's did him. This year, however, the Chan-
cellor has really thought it worth while to pay
us poor country folks a little attention. It is
at last admitted on behalf of Government that
we have as much right to letters and telegrams
as people in town, and Jubilee Day is to in-
augurate our new citizenship. People who are
accustomed to the business-like promptitude
of the young men and maidens in town offices
have little idea of the casual way in which
things are managed with us. A month or two
since, having to register a letter containing a
small present for the golden wedding of an old
friend, which had reached me too late for our
own despatch, I drove to a village on the rail-
way where the mails leave two hours later. The
following dialogue ensued : — Postmaster : " Do
you know how old I am ? " I : " No ; are you
seventy-live ? " P. : " Seventy-five ! I'm as old
as Mr. Gladstone. Don't look it, don't I ? No,
I mayn't look it, but I am. I've been post-
master here for fifty year and more. Yes, I
ain't so young as I have a-been. Good day,
sir." I : " But I want a letter registered." P. :
" Registered ! Well, I hardly know. You see,
I'm an old man now. Oh yes, I've registered
'em in my day ; but I don't somehow like the

222 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

responsibility. No, I don't feel as if at my age
I ought to take the responsibility. You see,
I've been postmaster here, man and boy, for

" &c. &c. One sympathised with the old

man's sense of irresponsibility, which certainly
suited with his age and Mr. Gladstone's — but
what was to be done with the letter ? In the
end I had to take it home again. The promised
reduction in porterage on telegrams will be wel-
come. Thoughtless friends make this a con-
siderable item in the year's finance. Just lately
I asked a man down to take pot-luck for the
week-end. "Don't trouble to answer," I said,
" but come if you can." But his manners would
not consent to this. Back came a telegram:
" Delighted to come " (porterage, two shillings).
In another hour came a second : " So sorry ;
detained by important business" (porterage,
two shillings). In another hour a third: "Can
come after all" (porterage, two shillings).

2nd, — By sitting in shelter on the south side
ot the house it is possible to give a guess to-day
at what spring was meant to be, but hardly ever
is. The sun is lighting up the fresh green of
t In' I rees and grass : —

" No white DOr red was ever seen

s.. amorous as this lovely green."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 223

And the birds are singing after their kind.
There is a spirit of youth in everything, and in
the very air

" Aetherium sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem."

Be tempted to go round a corner, and the north-
east cuts like a knife ; but be content not to do
so, and you may exclaim with the poet : —

" It were a most delightful thing
To live in a perpetual spring."

The Elizabethan writer of this charming
couplet, who, to use a vile phrase, "remains
anonymous," was not brought up, as I was, on
the " Looking-Glass of the Mind" — a series of
highly-didactic stories borrowed from the French
of Armand Berquin, and adorned with sculptures
by John Bewick — or he would have known
better. For there is a tale in that volume en-
titled " The Absurdity of Young People's Wishes
Exposed," telling how Master Tommy exclaimed
one day, when taking the air with his father,
"Oh, that it were always spring!" and was at
once desired to write that wish in his pocket-
book. It chanced that when summer came,
Thomas and his parent were abroad again in
each other's company on one of the bright
days that diversify an English summer. " Oh,"

224 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

cried Thomas, " that it were always summer ! "
•• Write that wish, my dear boy," said his father,
" in your pocket-book." The same circumstances
recurred in both autumn and winter, the same
wish that the present might last, and the same
direction to make a note of it. And then the
absurdity of young people's wishes was exposed.
One does not know which to admire more — the
far-sightedness and long memory of the parent,
or the tidy habits of the son, who kept the same
pocket-book going through four seasons. It
was the latter fact that almost drove my infant
mind into scepticism, and perhaps might have
done so had I not liked to admire the piety of
the child who would not spoil his parent's bon
mot by stopping his exclamations with autumn.
Our nightingales have been more numerous
and in better voice this spring than I ever
remember them; probably they have liked the
sun and not disliked the wind. It has been
a pleasant object for an evening's walk to go
from concert-brake to concert-brake — for each
bird keeps bis own station — and compare their
voices; for they differ not unlike human
ingers and poets, one excelling in art, another
in oatural gilts, another in tenderness. By day,
unless beard at a distance, their music has too

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 225

much " execution," even something of the
stridency of a mechanical pianoforte. Besides
nightingale and blackbird, the chaffinch has
been almost the only songster. The thrush
seems to be growing rarer, and we have no
linnets or goldfinches. Bullfinches there are
in abundance ; and if they could pipe, they
might be tolerated ; but then you must sacri-
fice your gooseberries. Hazlitt once described
in The Liberal a visit he paid to Coleridge in
1798, in the course of which he says : " I got
into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth,
while Coleridge was explaining the different
notes of the nightingale to his sister, in which
we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves
perfectly clear and intelligible." There was so
much of the nightingale about Coleridge's own
music that we cannot but lament that Hazlitt
wasted his time over Wordsworthian meta-
physics, instead of listening to and reporting the
other conversation. But it was not improbably
the same conversation as that which formed the
basis of the so-called " Conversation poem " on
the nightingale, written in April 1798, and
printed in "Lyrical Ballads"; for in it the
poet addresses " my friend, and thou our sister."
This is the poem in which Coleridge, first of our

220 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

poets, departs from the Philomela convention
(to which he himself had previously given in),
allows the singer his true sex, and denies his
melancholy : —

" Tis the merry nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music

Never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many nightingales ; and far and near
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
They answer and provoke each other's songs,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug-jug,
Ami one low piping sound more sweet than all." 1

Let me note here (a propos of Wordsworth
and Coleridge) a curious mistake that has been
pointed out to me in Matthew Arnold's book of
"Selections from Wordsworth." The " Stan/as
written in Thomson's Castle of Indolence" are
always understood to contain portraits first of
the poet himself and then of his friend. But
Arnold puis a foot-note (S. T. Coleridge) to the

1 Tlii.s description may not be so brilliant as the famous
one of Orashaw's, but it is closer to nature. Compare the
ne low piping sound more v.. i than all," with Orashaw's
" Trails her plain dittj In one long-Bpun note"

TAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 227

first line of the poem, "Within our happy
Castle there dwelt One," &c. Can this be any-
thing but a slip or a printer's blunder ? Could
Arnold have thought that Wordsworth must
have meant Coleridge by the lines —

"Ah, pitoous sight it was to see this man
When he came hack to us, a withered flower —
Or like a sinful creature, pale and wan ? "

No doubt in " The Leech-gatherer," written a
lew days before, Wordsworth had his friend in
mind when he said —

"We poets in our youth begin in gladness ;
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madn<

for Coleridge had just written his ode on " De-
jection." But as Coleridge had drawn in that
ode a flattering picture of Wordsworth (to whom
it was first inscribed under the name of Ed-
mund x) and an unflattering picture of himself,
it is unlikely that Wordsworth, in returning the
compliment, should not have tried to rouse his

1 How thankful we ought to be that poets have sometimes
second thoughts ! Edmund is a good name, but it lacks the
ideality of "Lady." It would not be easy to wax tender
over " 0 Edmund, in this wan and heartless mood," or "O
Edmund, we receive but what we give," or "Joy, virtuous
Edmund 1" In short, the banishment of Edmund can only
be paralleled in its miraculous effect on the poem with
Wordsworth's banishment of "my brother Jim " from " We
are Seven."

228 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

friend from his melancholy by putting his best
side forward and dwelling on Coleridge's natural
joyousness, as Coleridge had dwelt upon his.
The stanza, " Noisy he was and gamesome as a
boy," &c., is borne out by such passages as this
from Dorothy Wordsworth: — "Coleridge did not
keep to the high road, but leapt over a gate and
bounded down the pathless field." And then as
to the portrait, " A noticeable man with large
grey eyes," &c. It is not quite inconceivable
that Wordsworth should have spoken of him-
self as " noticeable" ; but the "large grey eye,"
"pale face," and "low-hung" lip are certainly
Coleridge. The lines about the " withered
flower" and the "sinful creature" seem to mean
only that Wordsworth would sometimes go for
very long walks, and come back exhausted.

Ml>. — These morning frosts are a little dis-
concerting, but, the weather being dry, no harm
has yet been done to the fruit-trees. Dined

at 's. I sat by a lady who talked not amiss

about Spinoza, but by some mischanco always
called liim "Spinola." I suppose one day's
acquaintance with one book about him had
hit him still something of a stranger. I know
no reason why Ladies should not try to be
philosophers, but I BUSpeOt thai- in most eases

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 229

they find "cheerfulness is always breaking in."
After all, it need only be for one season.1 But
for my own part, as I cannot go from house to
house and pick up the phrases, but must dig in
my mind for thoughts and recollections, I
prefer to discuss my philosophy in the smoking-
rather than the dining-room. Nature abhors
a divided concoction. And so when my fan-
partner, after despatching Spinola with her
entree, turned on me with a " Tell me now, do
you honestly think Green has added anything
to Marsilio Ficino ? " I replied, " Well, not more
than Gray has added to Guido Cavalcanti, or
Black to Jacopo Sannazzaro." How odd it is
people will be pretentious ! Perhaps it is as
well, for, if all had the courage of their ignor-
ance, the world would be a much duller place.
The heavy plunger is a joy for ever ; but ladies
should be more cautious. There is a story I
once heard in Oxford, that hot-bed of apocrypha,
about a literary gentleman from town who was

introduced to Professor , and fell on his

neck with " I have so longed to know you ever
since I read your cltarming edition of Hera-
clitus." Unfortunately, when Heraclitus was
named, his father did not know he would have

1 " Nee cultura placet longior annua." — Hor.

230 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

to run in double harness with Democrltus ; and
the weeping philosopher himself did not an-
ticipate so " charming " an Isis as the Oxford
Professor to collect his scattered fragments, or
he would have endeavoured to make them
charming too. As it is, they consist of dark
sayings which, when emendation has done its
utmost, are conjectured to mean things like
" Dry light is the best."

1 3th. — A fall of snow at breakfast ; along the
<l<>\vns it lies an inch thick. This is cheerful
tor the farmers. The cause of my sudden
retreat from my wife and daughter at the sea
has worked itself off, and the bachelor feeling
of emancipation which succeeded has gone too,
and 1 must confess to feeling lonely. The true
bachelor's solace is champagne. "When a
button comes off," said my friend, "I open a
bottle of champagne and fasten it on with the
wire, which is both needle and thread in one."
Ilni my doctor will not let me drink champagne ;
so the buttons of my bachelordom cannot be so
conveniently attached.

The} a\ the Duchesse d'Alencon would not

i|"' from tic terrible fire at the Paris Charity

Bazaar, on the ground that it washer duty ami

privilege to go last. Why is it always of French

PACES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 231

women, not of French men, that one hears these

stories of high-bred heroism ? told me the

other day of an ancestress of his, at a French
convent school, who was saved from the guillo-
tine during the Terror by her French companions
insisting, though with most courteous apologies,
upon preceding her to execution, so as to give
her a chance of an expected reprieve, which at
last came.

16th. — The Jowett biography, which I finished
to-day, seems a capital piece of work. It keeps
the best side of its hero prominent, without
obscuring the fact that there were other sides.
Perhaps most readers will rise from its perusal
with the conviction that Jowett was at once
more kind, more pious, and more heterodox
than they had imagined ; a man to love and
revere and burn. Most great heretics have been
persons of singular piety and charm. Jowett
was not definite enough in his positions to have
disciples', or if he may be allowed one, still he
has no disciple. But he cannot be acquitted of
an influence upon his young men like that for
which the wise Athenians got rid of Socrates.
Whether Jowett believed any religious truth
that was not held by Plato seems doubtful.
When he was Vice-Chancellor he walked home

232 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

one Sunday with the University preacher (who
told ine the story) and gave him many reasons
against the doctrine of immortality, which the
preacher had, in his poor Christian way, been
urging in the pulpit. After luncheon the
preacher started for his train to town, but his
conscience pricking him that he had been silent
under Jowett's attack, he returned in haste to
the Master's lodgings and delivered his soul :
" Master, I ought to have said that I did not
agree with the views you expressed this morn-
ing." To which the Master chirruped : " I
know ; good-bye ; you'll lose your train." It
is curious to observe that the Quarterly, once
so savage and tartarly, vies in eulogy with the
Edinburgh, and spends its strength in hammer-
ing out thin Mr. Abbott's comparison between
Jowett and Johnson. Jowett, who knew his
Shakespeare, would have paralleled it in its
Quarterly form with the comparison between
Macedoii and Monmouth; " for there is figures
I" all things." One point of comparison has
escaped this reviewer. Boswell remarked of a
ual visit. .r that he •' thought him but a weak
man.'' JOHNSON : "Why, yes, sir. Here is a
man who has passed through life without ex-
perience; yet I would rather have him with me

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 233

than a more sensible man who will not talk
readily. This man is always willing to say what
he has to say." "Yet," continues Boswell,
" Dr. Johnson had himself by no means that
willingness which he praised so much, and I
think so justly ; for who has not felt the painful
effect of the dreary void, when there is a total
silence in a company, for any length of time ?
Johnson once observed to me, ' Tom Tyers
described me best. " Sir (said he), you arc like
a ghost ; you never speak till you are spoken
to." " * Johnson, however, was not shy, like
Jowett, who attached an exaggerated import-
ance to being able " to speak across a dinner-
table" from the effort it cost himself. His
other " moral malady," at which also he is always
tilting, was sensitiveness ; but, like most shy
and sensitive people, he had very little realisa-
tion of these qualities in other people. Is it
the publication of Jowett's sermons that has
filled all the pulpits with attacks on " sensitive-
ness " ? Wherever I go I hear nothing else :
it seems the new sin. Jowett's biographers arc
generous of his letters, and more are to follow.
This is right, for he was a writer far more than
a talker — unlike Johnson again— .and put his
1 iii. 307, Hill's edition.

234 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

best things into his books and letters. Hence
there are not many good things to be gleaned
from his table-talk here recorded ; the best is
that the inscription over the gate of Hell may
be "Ici on parle francais." Moreover, he had
more care for exact truth than to allow himself
to slog like Magee. A criticism of his prose
style would be interesting. Mr. Abbott well
remarks that he excels in the phrase rather than
in the paragraph. I should like to see a dis-
sertation on his use of rhetorical figures —
especially meioxis and batlios. To the first I
should refer the charge often alleged against
him, of taking low views of things in his ser-
mons ; it was a trick to catch the undergraduate
ear, and it succeeded. As an example of the
second, I remember a sentence from a letter of
congratulation : " Marriage not only doubles the
joys of life, it quadruples them." Nobody but
Jowet t would have dared to write that. He was
fond of taking well-known sentences and giving
them ;i twist or an inversion. An authentic ex -
ample does Dot at, the moment occur to mo ; but
I may illustrate by a parody. "It is often said.
The child is father of the man: shall we not
rather saj Tin- man is father of the child?"
His lectures were sure to contain good tilings.

PAGES FROM A TRTVATE DIARY 235

He delighted in the exact epithet. I recall a
course of lectures on " Subjects connected with
Thucydides " (which discussed incidentally the
Homeric theory, the relations of the Synoptic
Gospels, Herodotus, &c), in one of which he gave
each nation of antiquity an appropriate epithet,
but had nothing ready (or so he feigned) for the
Egyptians, and looked for several minutes out
of the window. Then he gently smacked his
lips once or twice, and continued : " That <xm-
hij/itous people living on the shores of their
ancient river." I can't say this taught us much
political history, but it gave me a lifelong re-
spect for style. Once, being by chance in
Oxford when he was giving what proved to be
his last lectures as Greek professor, I heard him
turn his own reputation to good use. The
matter of the lecture, if true, was not new,
and the Greek dons who were there for polite-
ness' sake had begun to whisper to each other.
Jowett heard this, and laid a trap for them,
which he baited with an expected epigram.
" And now we come to Aristarchus, whom per-
haps we may call . . . (dead silence) . . .
the great Aristarchus." (Peals of laughter, in
which Jowett joined as heartily as any one.)
The volumes contain several portraits. The

236 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Watts picture, stiff as a poker, with a head like
an acidulated drop, and a most uncharacteristic
sneer on its thin lips, is properly ignored. Lady
Abercromby's portrait is not unlike him in the
face, but the face does not fit the head. I do
not remember Jowett in quite such cherubic
you tli as the Richmond drawing exhibits, but
that probably does not much exaggerate his
charm. For a true picture of him in later life
we must go to the despised art of photography.
The Cameron photograph printed in Vol. II. is
excellent ; it is not only a good likeness, but it
stives the ideal man. This cannot be said of
Mr. Onslow Ford's cenotaph exhibited in the
Academy. Jowett assisted at the opening
of Mr. Ford's Shelley Memorial at University
College — as he puts it himself, " I was one Sir
Topas in this interlude;"1 and we may con-
tinue the quotation, "Thus the whirligig of
time brings in his revenges;" now he is more
personally interested in the question of Pytha-
goras'a opinion concerning wild-fowl. For a
fearful wild-fowl it is ! First of all, why is it so
liny >. It looks like a miniature model, but the
precious materials prove it to be the thing itself.
But why should Jowett, bo represented tho size
1 "Twelfth Night," v. 880.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 237

of a doll ? Is it some conspiracy of the Pusey
House ? And what does the emblem mean on
the sarcophagus ? What is the significance of a
winged cockle-shell ? Is it an artistic rendering
of Highcockalorum ? It is no excuse that the
artist has bagged it from the Carlo Marsuppini
monument at Santa Croce in Florence, for
symbolism was not the strong point of the
fifteenth-century artists. I wonder what Jowott
would have said ? Perhaps only, being a kind
man, that it was more appropriate to Shelley
than to himself, and had better be sent across
to University College with his compliments.

20th. — London has had not a few poets ; and
even politicians occasionally fall under the spell,
and "in metaphor their feelings seek relief."
Yesterday it was Lord Salisbury. " One of our
most extraordinary delusions [as young men]
was the imagination that the dominant opinion
of London in all its parts was much more
Radical than Conservative. It was the sort of
delusion that a man might feel when looking
upon a dry plain, and imagining that it is a
waterless country, till he has pierced the sur-
face, and finds that refreshing and abundant
streams gush forth." To-day Sir William also
is among the prophets, and takes up the burden

238 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

of London : " There was a time when the metro-
polis was a fertile Liberal soil. By the accident
of Nature (cheers) it has become covered with
thorns and briers; but that is no reason why
with intelligence and energy it should not be
restored to its pristine fertility." Of all the
ornaments of style, as Aristotle long ago pointed
out, metaphor is by far the most valuable, being
the product of original genius, and so having a
creative influence.

21st. — There was some interesting evidence
given yesterday before the Select Committee on
Money Lending. One question and answer were
vast ly entertaining :

Chavrmam : Who is the money-lender?
Witness : Wilberforce.
Chxwrma/n : But what is his real name ?
Witness: Pocket.

Brutus, it seems, will not start a spirit as soon
.is Caesar.

From the advertisement-sheet I cull "Bull-
dog for sale; will eat anything; very fond of
children."

25th. The ladies have been badly beaten at
Cambridge, the unchivalrous undergraduates
have made bonfires in honour of the event, and
the question of feminine bachelors may now go

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 239

to sleep — at least for a decade. The question is
one that cannot be argued in the abstract, for
abstraction is sure to be made of some very
important element in the problem. My sister-
in-law looks at the question from a matrimonial
point of view. " I am told," she says, " that
some first-class girls marry, some third-class, no
second-class, and all the failures. You must
consider, therefore, whether you wish to attract
more frivolous girls to Cambridge, and so in-
crease their chances of marriage by diminishing
your son's chances of taking honours." To me
it seems sufficient to say that when the Oxford
or Cambridge degree comes to mean simply
attending lectures and passing examinations, it
will be time to put it on a level with that of
London, and grant it to women. At present it
means having lived in a certain society for h
certain length of time, and having learnt certain
things, the most important of which are not
taught in lecture-rooms.

29th. — The house-martins have at last begun
building.

June 1st. — We are now not only in the year,
but in the month of Jubilee, and the word is
on every one's lips. One squire reports unto
another how he is going to celebrate the groat

240 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

event ; by a dinner or a tea, by mugs round or
medals, by fireworks, or by some new edifice.
Though a little hesitating as to our own plans,
we can each give a shrewd guess at our neigh-
bours' duty. My own idea (for all whom it may
concern) is that private possessors of property
once public should take this opportunity of
allowing it to revert to "the original owners.
This was assuredly the way they had of cele-
brating jubilees "down in Judee." Country
gentlemen who have enclosed commons, lords
who have impropriated tythe, antiquaries whose
private museums are decorated with church
fonts or registers or monumental brasses, should
at once follow the excellent example of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who has just re-
si .>red the log of the Mayflower to America,
and purge themselves of ill-gotten gains. One
case of spoliation I have greatly at heart. In
Wulpolo's "Anecdotes of Painting" is figured
l»y way of frontispiece a fine window which was
presented t.> him by the then Earl of Ashburn-
ham for i he ( tothic chapel al Strawberry, having
been begged or bought or purloined from the
ohurch of Bexhill, in Sussex.1 It. was bought

1 II i Walpole writes to George Montagu (November
24, L760): •• I have found In a US. thai in the ohurch of

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 241

at the Strawberry sale by a Mr. Whitaker for
£30. Where is it now ? I love Horace Wal-
pole, and should be glad if at last his ghost
might obtain repose by the return of the glass.
The excellent Sussex Antiquarian Society would
have no difficulty in ascertaining the where-
abouts of the window, and might start a sub-
scription list for its repurchase.1

2nd. — One of the most interesting social
phenomena to watch is the retreat from a
position taken up by some mistake or inad-

Beckley, or Becksley, in Sussex, there are portraits on glass
in a window of Henry the Third and his Queen. I have
looked in the map, and find the first name between Bodiham
and Rye, but I am not sure it is the place. [It was not.
Bexeley was the old name of what is now Bexhill.] I will
be much obliged if you will write directly to your Sir
Whistler, and beg him to inform himself very exactly if
there is any such thing in such a church near Bodiham.
Pray state it minutely ; because if there is I will have them
drawn for the frontispiece to my work " (iii. 365). At
first, then, it is clear, Walpole did not contemplate sacrilege.
On October 3, 1771, he writes to the Rev. William Cole : " I
am building a small chapel in my garden to receive two
valuable pieces of antiquity, and which have been presents
singularly lucky for me. They are the window from Bexhill
with the portraits of Henry III. and his Queen, procured for
me by Lord Ashburnham ; the other is," &c. (v. 346).

1 The librarian of the Brassey Institute, Hastings, gives
me the name of the present owner, but suggests that the
window came from Beckley, near Rye. Walpole, however,
in the second letter quoted above, calls it " the window
from Bexhill."'

242 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY

vertence. Ladies are often great adepts in
such strategy ; the art, I suppose, for ordinary
mortals lies in a gradual retirement through a
sufficient number of insensible degrees. This
afternoon I was privileged to view a superb per-
formance in my own drawing-room. We had
a small party, and a writer of some celebrity
was expected. At one point I overheard a
leader of our local society pour out an effusion
of civilities over the excellent and flattered but
somewhat surprised doctor's lady of a neigh-
bouring parish, who, from a certain similarity of
name, was plainly being mistaken for the lioness.
By the simple method of accosting her as I
passed,, and inquiring somewhat particularly
after her husband, I exposed the error, and then
retreated to watch the process of " drying up,"
which was magnificent, but quite indescribable.
Men <1" those things with much less grace. The
vicar and I were fellow guests, he being a com-
plete stranger, at a house whose front door
opened into an old-fashioned hall, where coin-
pany was assembled ; and when the hostess said
to a young and rather well-set-up servant out of

livery. "Sidney, will you take Mr. 's coal '

the near understood this as an introduction to
Sidney, presumed the son of the house, and

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 243

wrung his hand with the heartiest how d'ye do ?
but not finding his greeting returned, subsided
into a cough. A more awkward contretemps of
the same sort happened once to myself. I was
in , and saw my dear friend Mrs. B.'s pony-
carriage outside a shop, with a very pretty girl
holding the reins, whose face I knew perfectly,
though I could not recollect her name. So I
made my bow and some comments on the
weather and the ponies, and while I stood chat-
ting, out came Mrs. B. and seemed much sur-
prised ; and then I remembered the young
damsel was her parlour-maid, whom, as I
afterwards learned, she was driving in to the
dentist. All which misadventures show that
we live in a highly artificial society. I will
conclude these reminiscences with one of a
somewhat different nature. The scene was ;i
drawing-room meeting convened by Mrs. Tom ;
our local dignitary, who is the modern Avatar
of Menenius Agrippa, was bringing a very witty
speech to an end with an anecdote which threw
the meeting into a paroxysm of laughter, when
it flashed across his mind (and his face) that he
had been asked to dismiss the assembly with
the benediction. Luckily he could on occasion
produce a first-rate stammer, and this he at

244 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

once summoned to his assistance. " I have
. . . been . . . asked ... to conclude . . .
with the b-b-b-enediction . . . which . . . I . . .
will . . . now . . . endeavour ... to give."
The time this sentence was made to occupy in
delivery cannot be adequately represented by
dots and dashes ; it gave us ample leisure to
compose our features. We all felt the "en-
deavour " to be a master-stroke.

3rd. — The rain came in the very nick of time
to save the hay ; and farmers are jubilant. " If
I had had the sun in one hand and a watering-
pot in the other," said old to me, " I could

not have mixed 'em better." What a flight of

imagination! The photographer from

came over to take a picture of some fine old
barns that have to be improved away. As
there was no train back for several hours, I
was compelled to put at his service a good deal
of time and tobacco. Amongst other compli-
ments he said, "I wonder, sir, you do not take
to amateur photography." I replied modestly
that I feared I had no skill that way. "Oh!"
sai<l he, "amateur photography is easjr enough ;
it's :i very different thing from professional
photography. Bui what I was thinking was
you have SO much leisure for it." Such is the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 245

gratitude of men. They waste our time and
then charge us with idleness !

I am glad to see that scholars like the Bishop
of Salisbury and Professor Skeat are protesting
against the insipidity of the term "Diamond Jubi-
lee." The right expression is " Great Jubilee."

Strawberries are very good this year. I agree
with the Dr. Boteler whom Walton quotes that
"doubtless God might have made a better berry,
but doubtless He never did." For tarts, how-
ever, there is nothing to equal bilberries till
damsons are ready.

5tJt. — A lady writes to me about Beacons-
field's affection for the primrose : —

" I see that doubt is again thrown on the late
Lord Beaconsfield's love for primroses. How-
ever incongruous such an affection may appear,
he certainly felt it. There is an old man in my
little country town, a very, very commonplace
old labourer, who once, long ago, did rough
digging work at Hughenden, and he declares
that from the earliest garden primrose to the
latest to be found in the woods, Lord Beacons-
field was never to be seen without a primrose in
his buttonhole — one blossom and no more —
which struck the man who would have pre-
ferred a posy."

246 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

8th (Whit-Tuesday). — We should have begun
cutting the big meadow to-day but for the re-
turn of rain. And yet I hardly resent the rain,
as it will make the village clean and sweet after
yesterday's revel. Our village is unluckily the
rendezvous of the district benefit club ; I say
unluckily, for many of its members give us
little pleasure froin their company, and less ad-
vantage, unless it be on the doubtful principle
of the " drunken helot." It is the ancient cus-
tom of the society to begin the festival with
a church service, which is attended by the
neighbouring clergy, with their wives and
daughters, to whom a sermon is preached by
some distinguished stranger upon the duty of
brotherly love. Meanwhile the club-men are
refreshing themselves after their dusty walk
at the " Blue Boar," and by the time their
vicarious devotions are over they are fresh
enough for dinner, and when dinner is over
lively enough to discuss the club balance-
si loot. A Berkshire labourer's speech is a
thing w<»rlh hearing. The action is that of a
reaper. Tropes abound, borrowed for the most
part, from the meeting-house, and it is difficult
to pieroe through them to the point at issue.
Yesterday ;i Bpeaker began in biting accents:

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 247

" I likes church an' chapel " — (long pause and
dead silence) — " I say, I likes church an' chapel,
'cos I wants t' go t' 'eaven." (Slight expres-
sions of assent and sympathy, after which the
sentiment is repeated ; then new ground is
broken.) " Passon tells I to love one another ;
and so I does, 'cos why ? I wants t' go t'
'eaven. I likes church an' chapel; an' I goes
t' church an' chapel, and I 'ears passon tell I
to love one another." But at this point several
members, thinking it would be well to have
"more matter and less art," interrupted with,
" What be maunderin' about, Tom ; what do
'ee want ? Stop thee gab — 'tain't a matin',"
and the orator had to blurt out his grievance
without more circumstance at all.

9th. — Cook has given warning, and I am
not surprised, considering the provocation.
She had become engaged to a young fellow

in the Regiment, while he was on a visit

home, but, bitterly disliking the service, had
insisted upon devoting twenty guineas of her
savings to buy him out. As soon as I heard
of the arrangement I told the boy, whom I
had known from his cradle, not to be a fool
and as his commanding-officer told him so too,
he made up his mind to finish his seven years.

248 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DrARY

But cook is not unnaturally exasperated, and
is determined to cast oft' for ever both her
ungrateful swain and her interfering master.
I shall regret the cook, but not the interference.
It is always worth while to try at making silk
purses out of sows' ears ; and with the cavalier
the attempt has had some success. He has
learned old Lovelace's lesson : —

" I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more."

With the lady, of course, the attempt was fore-
doomed to failure. The occurrence throws a
queer light on the love affairs of domestic
servants.

10th. — My sister writes inviting us to stay
with her for the Jubilee week. She adds that
even if we do not care to see the procession,
we shall be glad to have seen it, which seems
odd reasoning. However, I am not a superior
person like Tom, who has begun to express
himself in quite Miltonic fashion about not
i rou Ming to cross the road to see

"The tedious pomp that waits
( )n princes, when their rich retinae Long
< >f horses led and grooms besmeared with gold

I > i/zles I lie 0rOWd| :ui(l Sets tliem all agape."

For m\ part I think few sights so splendid as

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 249

the fluctuating movement of a body of well-
drilled troops seen approaching down a gentle
slope. Moreover, something must be conceded
to loyalty. We reckon ourselves as a rule a
very loyal family. My uncle Tom used to
think it lese-majeste to stick a " queen's head "
upon a letter the wrong side up. But he was
a sailor, and had romantic notions about many
things ; even considering it unchivalrous to
profane with his feet the slippers fair hands
had worked for him. I will write to Caroline
accepting her invitation, and suggesting that
the seats she secures shall not be on a stand
in the eye of Phcebus, or at the back of a
room with a view like that of the lady of
Shalott, who

" Through the mirror blue
Saw knights come riding two and two."

A procession to be enjoyed must be seen in
great reaches, if possible round a curve, and
from not too great a height. We must be
home again for the village celebration on
the 24th.

12tlt. — I see in a catalogue this morning
Lord Byron's copy of Horace advertised as
"his lordship's favourite poet." The reference

250 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

must be to the famous verse in "Childe
Harold":—

" Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so."

I have long dreamed of a collection of such
" favourites " among contemporary poets, to in-
clude Byron's copies of Wordsworth's " Excur-
sion " and Southey's " Vision of Judgment,"
Wordsworth's copy of "Peter Bell the Third,"
Coleridge's copy of the " Lay of the Last
Minstrel" (with marginalia), and so on, down
to our own day, and the Laureate's copy of
" Pacchiarotto." My catalogue contains also a
Bodoni folio Horace. Did any one ever read
I Eorace in folio ? The right Horace for reading
is the Baskerville 12mo, a beautiful book. It
was a true instinct that led Baskerville to
publish his Bible in royal folio, his Virgil in
4to, and his Horace in 12mo. Later, he printed
Horace in 4to, and proceeded with a series of
the other Latin poets — the world of collectors
loving sots — but his first instinct was the right
one.

1 'Ml/. — There has been a great discussion in
i lie. Tillage :is to whether " God save the Queen "
shall be sung to-morrow in church; and if so
whether it. should he BUDg in its entirety, or
in a BeleotioD, or in a revised version. Wo

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 251

managed to convince the vicar that the revised
versions were all intolerable, and as he objected
on principle to confounding anybody's politics,
it was an easy compromise to agree to sing the
first and last stanzas. In time of peace the
second may lie on the shelf; but if we have
to go to war again, it will be through other
people's politics, which will be all the better
for a little confounding. I never thought so
well of Henry Carey's verses as to-day when
we compared them with their would-be substi-
tutes. As we are to have a good deal of " Rule,
Britannia," next week, I have asked the school-
master to sec that the children sing the words
correctly —

" Rule, Britannia — Britannia, rule the waves,"

not rules as one so often hears it.1

22nnd. — I need not labour a description of
to-day's show. It will be enough to put away
a copy of to-morrow's newspaper. It was

1 I have received not a few remonstrances against this
dictum ; but surely " the charter of the land " requires the
imperative mood. Anyhow, Thomson wrote " rule," as the
reader may satisfy himself by consulting the original edition
(17-10) of the masque (" Alfred") in which the song occurs.
I do not know who is responsible for the corrupt reading
"rules"; I see that it runs through all the editions of the
"Golden Treasury. "

252 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

interesting to observe the coolness of Lord
Wolseley's reception as he passed along —

" Without more train
Accompanied than with his own complete
Perfections "

— compared with the surprised shouts given
when Lord Roberts appeared at the head of the
colonial troops, for his name was not in the
programme. But what can the crowd know of
the merits of either commander ? The specta-
tors were as interesting, though not so pictur-
esque, as the pageant. It was just such a crowd,
though on a larger scale, as Shakespeare saw
watching the progresses of Elizabeth, and de-
scribed in " Coriolanus " : —

" All tongues speak of her, and the hleared sights
Are spectacled to see her : your prattling nurse
hit i' a rapture lets her baby cry
While slic chats her: tho kitchen malkin pins
Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck,
Clambering the walls to eye her: stalls, bulks, windows,
\ie smothered up, leads fill'd, and ridges horsed
Willi variable complexions, all agreeing
In earnestness to see her: sold-shown flamens
I >. > press anions tho popular throngs, and puff
To win a vulgar station: our vuil'd dames
Commit bhe Wax Of White and damask ill
Their nicely gawded cheeks to tho wanton spoil

( if Phoebus' burning kisses."
The Bam ens were very conspicuous to-day

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 253

too ; many of them had left home so early that
they had to offer their morning incense as they
stood in the press. Shakespeare's description
makes no mention of the police who are so
essential a part of our modern triumphs. They
kept the crowd to - day in good humour as
cleverly as if they had been supplied from
Drury Lane. One interlude made us merry for
a good half-hour. Two long-legged youngsters
had climbed a lamp - post and were sitting
"horsed" on the projecting bars. First one
policeman, and then another, and then two
together, tried to swarm up and pull the cul-
prits down. Then we were regaled with " the
lost child," " the dog on the course," " the
imaginary pickpocket," and " the temptation
of St. Robert " (with a pocket pistol) and all
the good old pieces, which were received, as
the phrase goes, " in the spirit in which they
were offered." The sun most considerately
kept out of the way till eleven o'clock, but
the next throe hours made it hard work for
the troops lining the route, and not least for
the officers in their dress uniforms. Henry
Erskine used to say : " At the last day, when
the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, it
will be known why people wear tight boots."

254 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Some people have complained that the pro-
cession was not expressive of our great com-
mercial enterprises. But why should it have
been ? It was a royal progress with an escort,
not a Lord Mayor's Show. As long as we retain
u monarchy, we must allow the monarch to be
something more than our picturesque represen-
tative. But the fashionable Radical doctrine
seems to be that the Royal family are merely
puppets for the amusement of Hob and Dick,
who may pull the strings at their pleasure.
The Daily Chronicle, yesterday, was indignant
with the Prince of Wales for staying in St.
Paul's on Sunday till the service was over,
whereas its reporter was anxious to get away
after the sermon. " Some misunderstanding
must have arisen as to the time of their Royal
1 1 ighnesses' departure from the cathedral. No-
body could have expected than to stay for the
Holy Communion which somciclmt avneces-
8arily followed the Thanksgiving Service. . . .
The service was not over till a quarter-past one,
and the royal pa/rty might well have been out of
the cathedral am hour soon, r." What delicious
impertinence '

2Zrd. — To-day we were taken to the Victorian
Era Exhibition in order thai we might gauge

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 255

the immense improvements that had charac-
terised the reign. In many cases, however,
models had been erected of things as they used
to be, and this spoiled the pleasant dream ; for
they looked so much finer in every way than
what had taken their place. " The spinsters
and the knitters in the sun" were specially
charming, and I lingered for quite a long time
in their neighbourhood, hoping to hear them
sing " Come away, death " ; but I was not fortu-
nate. In the tea-room, whose walls were com-
pletely covered with framed advertisements, I
overheard a girl remark to her companion,
" Why, you could think you were in a picture-
gallery, if you shut your eyes." At night we
chartered an omnibus to view the illuminations.
I sat by the driver, who good-naturedly pointed
out the objects of interest. His talk was very
vivacious, and he made use of many remarkable
expressions ; but I could not well jot them down
at the time, and I have forgotten most of them
since. Of some rather brilliant transparencies
in the West End, which I praised, he said,
" Oh, they're only paraphernalia ; wait till we
get to the City." And certainly the City was
very splendid. The marble above St. Paul's
dome looked richer than I have ever seen it,

256 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

with the search-light upon it. My driver was
frequently indignant at the inefficient driving
of vehicles that got in his way, and though he
plainly was holding himself in, he could not
restrain an occasional " Other hand, matey," or
" Now then, gardener." He said the average of
driving was much lower since the cab strike.
24//,.—

" Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day," &c.

The village is very gay with flags ; it would be
.still gayer if last night's rain had not made
some of them "run." This jest in many forms,
with or without reference to " fast " colours, or
to the flags that run having been "made in
Germany," has served the village wits the
whole day. The Caterpillars have done their
best to festoon all the oaks; the "Blue Boar"
lias got a new coat of paint; the roadsides
have been cleared of grass; a triumphal arch
has been erected in front of the park gate; and
we are all feeling very loyal and happy — except
Buch of us as have still to get rid of our after-
« I inner speeehes. A thunderstorm has threat-
ened for several hours, and it seems doubtful if
hull he able to let oil' tin; fireworks.

I 1 I'.M. — The storm has passed down the
valley without interfering with us. The fire-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 257

works were superb, especially the rockets. With
what alacrity they rise, and with what dignity
they fall !

2Gth. — I saw to-day, at our small garden-
party, a sight too rarely seen — a girl walking
quite beautifully. Her motion was the perfec-
tion of natural movement, and breathed for me
a new meaning into the old classical poetry
that speaks of goddesses being recognisable by
their walk — vera incessu patuit dea. English
girls do not as a rule walk finely, and so Eng-
lish poetry takes no heed of walking except
when it copies the antique as Shakespeare
does in the " Tempest " Masque : " Great Juno
comes, I know her by her gait," and Milton,
speaking of Eve —

" Soft she withdrew, and like a wood-nymph light,
Oread, or Dryad, or of Delia's train,
Betook her to the groves ; but Delia's self
In gait surpass'd and goddess-like deport."

It is a pure pleasure to have one's eyes opened
to a new grace, but then its withdrawal is a
pure pain, and Miss A.'s departure filled me
with regret.

July 3rd. — I am spending a few days in

Surrey, at my old friend K.'s, for bicycling.

The roads are far better than ours in Berk-

258 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

shire, and the scenery is more diversified. I
have visited Norbury, and Juniper Hill, and
Chesington, and the other spots made inte-
resting by Fanny Burney. At Leatherhead I
looked in vain for the old glass which an old
vicar, the celebrated antiquary, Dallaway, had
brought from France. It must have been re-
moved lately, as Murray still speaks of it. I
;u u a friend to the clergy on their sacerdotal
side, but I think them as a rule but careless
custodians of Church property. To give a
curious instance. I wished some years ago to
verify the date of a marriage, and called upon
the rector of the church where the marriage
had taken place. He assured me that the
register I wanted was lost, but I might see the
"i hers. It was cold comfort; but my good
genius led me to assent, and I was taken to the
vestry, the chest was unlocked, and the books
exhibited. " Is there nothing else in the box ( "
1 asked. "No," said the rector, somewhat
nettled ; "J have; been here forty years, and I
should know what, registers there are." "Of
course,' said 1, " hut one side of the chest looks
a different colour from the other." '' Non-
Bense!" said he. "Well," I said, "you must
forgive my presumption, but will you allow me

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 259

to feel ? " And without waiting for leave I felt,
and Hat against one side of the chest was the
missing register.

That is an instance of oversight rather than
neglect. But look at our own church ! What
has it not suffered from fashion and from
heedlessness! It was fashion that made my
great-grandfather put in the beautiful panelled
ceiling, and fashion that made my father pull
it down, the vicar acquiescing. It was fashion
that sent our old plate to the melting-pot, and
our old font goodness knows whither, perhaps
to some pigsty ; and then ignorant indifference
came in to devour what fashion had spared,
blocked up the old rood-loft staircase, pulled
up the old tombstones and cut them into
lengths for flagging, turned out the old helmets
and hatchments, and made itself generally busy
with axes and hammers. Of course, occasion-
ally you do get a vicar who is a bit of an
antiquary, and takes an interest in his trea-
sures. I knew one once who used to skip up
his chancel like a priest of Dagon, for fear of
treading on the precious brasses that were
inlaid in the floor. This was, perhaps, carrying
caution to an extreme.

5th. — There is such a large family of children

260 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

here that one grows young again oneseli.
Dorothy came to me this morning, and asked
if I knew the words she liked best. They were
- lack " and " Mazawattee." She will, I suppose,
be the poet of the family. Sybil (a Sybil of the
second generation, for Lord B.'s novel appeared
so long ago as 1845) is the eldest, and the censor
of morals. " I shouldn't call her a beast, Rosa-
lind," she was heard say to her sister ; " it is a
vulgar word ; I should call her a devil." How
well that illustrates the discrepancy of the two
ideals, between which even their elders are
tossed ! You get it again in that story of the
Highland and Lowland servants of one of the
Bamiltons. Said the latter, " I wuss I had an
assurance that Mr. Hamilton was a converted
Christian." To which his indignant fellow:
"Mr. Hamilton a converted Christian! Mr.
Hamilton is a pair-r-fet gentleman !"

7th.— It is worth while at this moment to
look at the past history of Phil-Hellenism.
Mommsen has an interesting sketch of Greek
history under the Empire in his "Roman
Provinces," in which he shows how Greece was
always the spoilt child of the Powers. For in-
stance, after the battle of Pharsalia, in which
the Athenians had taken the side of 1'ompoy,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 261

Caesar contented himself with asking them
" how often they would still ruin themselves,
and trust to be saved by the renown of their
ancestors." x Mommsen inclines to the opinion
that " the considerate treatment of the Greeks
in general, and the special kindness shown by
the Government to Hellas proper, did not re-
dound to the true benefit either of the Govern-
ment or of the country." But Mommsen's a
German.

9th. — To-day is the centenary of Burke's death,
but I hear of no commemorative speeches. And
yet it was only the death of his son that pre-
vented Burke's being Lord Beaconsfield ! In
that case I should certainly have joined the
Primrose League. I do not care much for the
" Reflections on the French Revolution," but
the " American Speeches " and the " Present
Discontents" are full of the first principles of
politics. On every page one meets a phrase or
a paragraph that applies itself to modern times.
How wise he is about the Colonies : " I look
upon the imperial rights of Great Britain, and

i Cf. also what Plutarch relates of Sulla after the capture
of Athens. When he was entreated to stay the slaughter,
"after that he had somewhat said in praise of the ancient
Athenians, he concluded in the end to give the greater number
unto the smaller, and the living to the dead." (North's Transla-
tion, p. 474.)

262 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the privileges which the colonists ought to en-
joy under these rights, to be just the most re-
concilable things in the world. The Parliament
of Great Britain sits at the head of her exten-
sive empire in two capacities : one, as the local
legislature of this island ; the other, and I think
her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial
character." (Surely Burke must have been
Lord Beaconsfield after all !) " My hold of the
Colonies is in the close affection which grows
from common names, from kindred blood, from
similar privileges, and equal protection. These
are ties which, though light as air, are as strong
as links of iron."

What a pity it was that the element of to
irepiTTov so often marred his practical effective-
ness ! The best example I know (though in
that case we cannot regret the ineffectiveness)
will be found in Miss Burney's diary, where she
describes her emotions during the speech against
Warren Baal ings: " His opening had struck me
with the highest admiration of his powers, from
the eloquence, the imagination, the fire, the
diversity of expression, and the ready How of
language with which he seemed gifted in a
most superior manner for any and every pur-
pose i" which rhetoric could lead. And when

PAGES FROM A PUT V ATE DIARY 263

he came to his two narratives, when he related
the particulars of those dreadful murders, he
interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered
me ; I felt my cause lost. I could hardly keep
on my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance
towards a man so accused as Mr. Hastings ; I
wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be
saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he
could clear himself; not another wish in his
favour remained. But when from this narra-
tion Mr. Burke proceeded to his own comments
and declamation — when the charges of rapacity,
cruelty, tyranny were general, and made with
all the violence of personal detestation, and
continued and aggravated without any further
fact or illustration, then there appeared more
of study than of truth, more of invective than
of justice ; and, in short, so little of proof to so
much of passioD, that in a very short time I
began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer
uneasy, my eyes were indifferent which way
they looked or what object caught them, and
before I was myself aware of the declension of
Mr. Burke's powers over my feelings, I found
myself a mere spectator in a public place, and
looking all around it with my opera-glass in my
hand"(iv. 119).

264 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

\\th. — A slight bicycling accident kept me
from church, and I took down the third volume
of " Donne's Sermons." I went by preference
to the third volume, not because it contains my
favourite sermon, for that is the seventy-sixth
of vol. i., with its magnificent close, but (let me
confess) because my copy is printed on large
paper to match the first two volumes, and is, so
far as I know, in that state unique.1 My choice
to-day justified itself by coming upon a State
Sermon with which one's new-tuned loyalty
proved to be in key ; a sermon, moreover, con-
fining a panegyric on the Great Queen; a fact
sufficiently remarkable considering the sermon
was preached at St. Paul's Cross before the
Council on the anniversary of James's acces-
sion. For James did not love Elizabeth, or
love her praises.

" We need not that Edict of the Senate of
Rome, Ut sub tilulo gratiarum agendarwm ;
That upon pretence of thanking our Princes
for that which, we say, they had done, Boni
prvnaipes qu& J'acerent recognoscerent, good
Princes should take knowledge what they were
bound bo do, I hough they had not done so yet.

i Lord M'lc nh.iin Informs me thai there is a copy in his
Library presented to lii^ anoestor by Donne's son.

PACES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 265

We need not this Circuit, nor this disguise;
for Gods hand hath been abundant towards us
in raising Ministers of State, so qualiiied, and
so endowed : and such Princes as have fastned
their friendships, and conferred their favors,
upon such persons. We celebrate, seasonably,
opportunely, the thankful acknowledgment of
these mercies this day: This day, which God
made for us, according to the pattern of his
first days in the Creation ; where Vesper et
mane dies unus, the evening first and then the
morning made up the day; for here the saddest
night and the joyfullest morning, that ever the
daughters of this Island saw, made up this day.
Consider the tears of Richmond this night, and
the joys of London at this place, at this time,
in the morning ; and we shall find Prophecy
even in that saying of the Poet, Node plait t<>/<t,
showers of rain all night, of weeping for our
Soveraign ; and we would not be comforted,
because she was not: And yet, redeunt spec-
tacula mane, the same hearts, the same eyes,
the same hands, were all directed upon recog-
nitions, and acclamations of her successor, in
the morning: And when every one of you in
the City were running up and down like Ants,
with their eggs bigger than themselves, every

260 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

man with his bags to seek where to hide them
safely, Almighty God shed down His Spirit of
Unity, and recollecting, and reposedness, and
acquiescence, upon you all. In the death of
that Queen, unmatchable, inimitable in her sex ;
that Queen, worthy, I will not say of Nestors
years, I will not say of Methusalems, but worthy
of Adams years if Adam had never fain ; in her
death we were all under one common flood and
depth of tears. But the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of that depth : God took pleasure,
and found a savor of rest in our peaceful chear-
fulness, and in our joyful and confident appre-
hension of blessed days in His Government,
whom he had prepared at first and preserved
so often for us.

" As the Rule is true, Cum de Malo principe
posteri tacent, manifesttim est vilcm facere
pnesentem, when men dare not speak of the
vices of a Prince that is dead, it is certain that
the Prince that is alive proceeds in the same
vices ; so the inversion of the Rule is true too,
Cv/m '/' bono principe loqwuntV/r, when men
may speak freely of the virtues of a dead Prince,
ii is an evident argument that the present
Prince practises the same vertucs ; for, if he
did not. lie would not love to hear of them.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 207

Of her, we may say (that which was well said,
and therefore it were pity it should not be once
truly said, for so it was not when it was first
said to the Emperor Julian), nihil humile aut
abjectum cogitavit, quia novit de se semper
loquendum ; she knew the world would talk of
her after her death, and therefore she did such
things all her life were worthy to be talked of "
(p. 351).

There have been three deans who stand out
from the decanal multitude as ideal occupiers
of the metropolitan stall, men at once of broad
culture, fine eloquence, and passionate piety —
Colet, Donne, and Church. They had much in
common, despite the differences proper to their
different periods, and one point especially, that
though living in the heart of the great city,
they pursued the fallentis semita vitte. It was
a maxim of Colet, and may well have been the
maxim of his like-minded successors, Si vis
divinus esse, late ut Deus. I was glad to see
on my last visit to St. Paul's that Donne's
monument, in which he is figured in his shroud,
had been restored to the south aisle. (See
Walton's Life.)

By the way, I observe an appeal to men of
wealth in the newspapers, bidding them come

268 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

forward with subscriptions to decorate in St.
Paul's what still needs decorating. The appeal
is feathered with the promise to find room in
the scheme of decoration for the donor's coat-
of-arms. Certainly heraldic shields are highly
decorative, but except on monuments they seem
a little out of place in a cathedral. But the
custom is, of course, ancient and well established.
Savonarola records it in one of his Lenten
sermons just four centuries ago. " How is it
that if I were to say, Give me ten ducats to
one in need, thou wouldst not give them ?
but if I tell thee, Spend a hundred for a chapel
here in St. Mark, wouldst thou do it ? Yes !
in order to have thy coat-of-arms placed there.
Look through all convent buildings, and thou
wilt find them full of their founders' armorial
bearings. I raise my head to look above a door,
thinking to see a crucifix, and behold there is a
shield : I raise my head again a little further on,
and behold there is another shield. I don a
vestment, thinking that a crucifix is painted on
it; l'ut arms have been painted even there, the
better t<> l>e seen by the people."

I I ih. I i linn I yesterday with to meet a

few of his Irish friends. They had all been, as
it turned nut, at Trinity College together, and

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 269

there is no such college for camaradt rie. " I
am so glad you think so," one would say, "for
your opinion on a point like that is worth
having." " I have never forgotten," the other
would presently take occasion to remark, " the
admirable way you put that objection in
Kottabos." To the mere outsider, who had
been bred but at an English university, the
utmost compliment they would allow was, " I
see your meaning." We had many anecdotes.
One was of Dr. Henry, the eccentric physician
and Virgilian commentator, who in his former
capacity refused to charge more than a five-
shilling fee, and wrote " Strictures on the Auto-
biography of Dr. Cheyne," the fashionable
practitioner of the day ; and in the latter
wandered over Europe on foot, crossing the
Alps seventeen times, in search of illustrative
matter for his " yEneidea." On his deathbed,
what troubled him was the view he had pre-
viously expressed about Dido; "with his last
gasp he said, " Dido was never married to
Sichaeus."

Another anecdote with the right Irish flavour
was of a Roman deacon sent to baptize a baby.
In the cabin he could find no water, but there
was a pot of tea. " Tea," he reasoned, " contains

270 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

water, the rest is but accident," and proceeded
to pour out a cup. But it was strong, even to
blackness, so he went in search of water, and
having found some watered the tea down to a
more reasonable colour, christened the baby
with it, and reported the circumstance, as a
case of conscience, to his superior. It had not
occurred to him, having found the water, to use
it by itself. Other stories were donnish. One
was of an undergraduate's telegram : " I have
missed my train ; what shall I do ? I will come
by the next." Another, of a tutor's letter of
condolence sent to a bereaved parent. This
was unkindly attributed to Oxford. The tutor
wrote : •' I am sincerely grieved to hear the sad
news of your son's death. But I must inform
you he would have had to go down in any case,
as he had failed to satisfy the examiners in
classical Moderations."

23rd. — Bob is anxious to collect something
that no one else collects, and I have suggested
"dictionaries." It will last him a year, cost
<»nly a i rifle, and give him a good deal of amuse-
ment into the bargain. Cotgrave will enlarge
his vocabulary of slang. I should like to have
known Cotgrave; his conversation must have
been highly nervous and picturesque. Open

PAGES FROM A 1*111 V ATE DIA11Y 27 1

the book anywhere. Take, for instance, his
explanation of niais. "A neastling; hence, a
youngling, novice, cunnie, ninnie, fop, noddie,
cockney, dotterell, peagoose; a simple, witlesso,
and unexperienced gull." What a man to
quarrel with ! I wonder what Mrs. Cotgrave
was like! Under so tame a word as journee
you find an entry like this : " Journee des
Esperons. The battell of Spurres, woon in the
year 1513 by the English upon the French,
possessed with a sudden feare, and preferring
one paire of heeles before two paire of hands."
That in a French-English dictionary ! And
history is not the only subject in which he
shows himself proficient. This is what he has
to say s. v. Haricot : " Mutton sod with little
turneps, some wine, and tosts of bread crumbled
among ; 'tis also made otherwise, of small pecces
of mutton first a little sodden then fried in
seam, with sliced onions, and lastly boiled in
buefe broath with Parsley, Isop, and Sage : And
in another fashion, of livers boyled in a pipkin
with sliced onions and lard, verjuice, red wine,
and vinegar, and served up with tosts, small
spices, and (sometimes) chopped hearbs." Per-
haps the most racy of all are his versions of
French proverbs. For vogue lagallere he gives :

272 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

" Let the world wag, slide, goe how it will ; let
goe, a God's name: not a pin matter whether
we sinke or swimme." Occasionally he offers a
metrical version.

Then there is Bullokar, who, as befits a Doctor

of Physick, devotes himself chiefly to scientific

terms, as science was then understood ; that is

to say, he gives elaborate descriptions of the

Phenix and Scolopendra, &c, and of such famous

trees as the Sethim, "which never rotteth,"

from which the Ark was made. Cockeram is

even more interesting, for he supplies not only

easy words for hard, but hard words for easy ;

so that a would-be gallant like Sir Andrew

Aguecheek could garnish his speech with picked

I )h rases. Thus, for "to vex" is given yyeras-

perate; for "to spurn" apolactise; for to "put

• >lV your bat," vail yov/r bonnet. Occasionally

our gallant might be misled, as when he is told

I bat the fine word for " false witness" is pscudo-

ma/rtyr. Then there are Palsgrave and Min-

sheu, whose "Guide into Tongues" contains

the first known list of subscribers, and a very

interesting list it is. And from the Stuarts one

.-.in ;_,ro bark to the Proin/ilori a in Parvidomm,

CathoUcon AngUcv/m, &c, or on to Johnson and

bis successors.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 273

Bob also asks for a motto for his book-plate.
I have suggested Optimi Consiliarii Mortui,
as appropriate to a collector of old books. It
might not be amiss for the bulk of new books
as well.

30th. — We have had Lord Mayors who quoted
Latin, and Lord Mayors who talked French ;
now comes a Lord Mayor who lectures upon
English. You should not say " Where do you
come from ? " " Where are you going to ? " his
lordship is reported as urging upon the boys of
the City of London School. " Such phrases are
a misuse of your magnificent English. Above
all, you should never say It's awfully jolly.
What is awful is not jolly, and that which is
jolly is never awful." The that which of the
last sentence looks like a desperate effort of the
Lord Mayor to bring himself up to his own
magnificent standard of seventeenth-century
idiom. But do people in the City really talk
Old English, or is it confined to the Mansion
House ? There is an alderman approaching
the chair for whose prelections on history I
wait with an awful joy,1 if the Lord Mayor will
allow the expression. For the alderman's
history, like the Lord Mayor's English, is

1 " And snatch a fearful joy." — Qray.

274 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

seventeenth centmy, as the following veracious
anecdote will show. He was exhibiting to a
gentleman some famous pictures in the Hall of
his Company, portraits of George I. and his
consort, which had been mysteriously lost, and
which he by good luck had found in a bric-a-
brac shop. " But how," said my friend, " could
such treasures — a royal gift — have been taken
so slight care of?" "Ah," said the alderman,
" I have a theory about that, and I give it you
for what it is worth : I think they must have
disappeared in the confusion caused by the
Great Fire ! "

August 1st. — To Cambridge through Oxford
and Bletchley — a most tedious journey. I
travelled third-class, not because there is no
fourth, as the wits say, but hoping the unstuffed
carriages would be cooler, as they proved. Be-
sides, I enjoy in certain moods, the humours
of "the masses"; and to-day I was not dis-
appointed. A woman got in presently with
two chili Iron, the skin of all three being con-
cealed beneath a mask of dirt. But though
filthy, she knew her manners. When one of
ilir children sniffed, she sharply reprimanded
her and bade her use her handkerchief; and
the dear child produced from her pocket a rag

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 275

as black as ray hat. A party of workmen who
entered later extinguished their pipes Avith com-
plimentary references to this good woman, and
laid themselves out to amuse the children ; one
who had red hair putting it out of window for
a danger signal, &c.

(jfh. — Bal . We are to spend three weeks

here with , who still shoots over his an-
cestral moor instead of selling the privilege to
some wealthy Saxon. We travelled by the
night train, Tom and Bob and I in a corridor
compartment, the ladies in the wagon-lit. I
fear I was but poor company. I had just been
reading "Les Aveugles," for culture comes
slowly up this way ; and the portentous gloom
of that work of imagination " garr'd me grue,"
as folk say up here. So completely had it
hypnotised me that I found it impossible to
contribute anything to the conversation but a
repetition of the most insignificant of my neigh-
bours' remarks, as though they were full of
profound meaning. With growing sleepiness
the conversation became still more Maeter-
linckian, till it altogether dropped into silence.
When we were roused at Carlisle by the official
coming to examine tickets, the sight of my
neighbours fumbling hopelessly about them.

276 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

and the strange, impassive face of the collector
between the two rows of us so startled my
dazed senses, that for a moment I thought
with horror that we were all ourselves in the
play. We had a ten-mile drive from the rail-
way terminus, and I sat on the box by the
coachman, who gave me the names, with more
or less scorn, of the owners or occupiers of the
rlniteaux we passed.

9th. — Among some tea-party guests to-day
we were presented to a lady who credits herself
with "second sight." Though Southron-bred,
and not prone to this particular superstition, I
confess to having felt some uneasiness in her
presence, as part of her quality is to see people's
faces more or less covered with a grey veil,
according as their death is nearer or further off.
Sophia kept her own veil resolutely down, and
I did not happen to interest her. Tom did, and
though he avoided the good lady to the best of
his power, and even at last took refuge in the
Bmoking-room, she tracked him thither; and
from what. I could afterwards glean amongst
his frequent exclamations of "Fudge!" the
s i I » \ I had given him a date on which he would
be ni peri] of a watery grave. It will be in-
teresting to Bee if ho will give up his cruise to

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 277

Norway. Another odd power possessed by this
lady is that of seeing one's head in an aura of
other heads, these being the people who have
most influenced one. I was delighted to learn
that my own cloud of witnesses was so nebulous
as to be indistinguishable. Others may lay this
to my bad memory; I prefer to impute it to
original genius. Eugenia's most prominent
ghostly companion was a young person with
what seemed to be a halo. Him she claimed as
Si. Aldato, the saint for whom she has peculiar
devotion. But I tell her St. Aldate has been
exploded by the young Oxford historians ; and

the wraith is probably the new curate at

in his soft felt hat. We were greatly pleased at
the sibyl's success with Tom. " Only one head,"
said she, " is very plainly marked ; and that is
furnished with a stubby chin-beard ; and has
something odd about the eyes, not a cast, nor a
squint. . . ." " It is a glass eye, ma'am," said
Tom, " if, as I infer, you are describing my
gamekeeper." Surely this is a new thing even
in ghosts, the ghost with a glass eye !

In the evening we sat round the fire in the
hall and told ghost stories, beginning with the
ghost of the house, of whom I then learned for
the first time. It haunts the corridor, which is

278 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY

perhaps considerate ; though if I were a ghost
I should haunt the dining- or smoking-room,
not of course for the creature comforts, but for
the society. Scotland has this great advantage
over England, that in any company there are
sure to be one or two persons who have seen a
ghost themselves. One lady had seen several,
but the particulars were not especially remark-
able, except in the case of one which she saw
in a street in Dresden pointing to a scaffolded
house, which fell the next day, killing several
persons. Another lady was more sensitive with
the car than the eye. She was sleeping in a
room at a girls' school opening into a large
dormitory ; at the door came several raps, and
opening it suddenly, she found nothing at the
other Bide. By the post she heard that her
ed laihur had been picked up fainting outside
her bedroom door at home, at which he had
knocked, forgetting her absence. In another
bouse, tlio lower part of which had once formed
pari of a monastery, she was nursing her mother
who was ill with heart disease; and hearing
suddenly the cellar doors being unbarred, and
suspecting burglars, she hurried downstairs with
the plate thai was brought to her mother's
room every night, to bribe the thieves to depart,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 279

fearing that the shock of their appearance would
kill the old lady. But the doors were all fast.

12th. — A fine day in every sense. But, ad-
miring Goldsmith's art in leaving his famous
" Grouse in the gun-room " story to the imagina-
tion, I shall follow his example.

lbtJi. — Now that the first fierce zest of
slaughter has been satiated, I have begun to
explore the beauties of this romantic neigh-
bourhood. The brown - watered river flows
through the strath, and there is fascination
enough in hanging upon the bridge or walking
along the side to watch the water swirling
under. We came this morning upon a little
dell with a cascade dashing down through it,
and on the banks here and there among ferns
and thistles a rich poisonous - looking plant,
which, not being botanists, we named "Agla-
vaine." It was a picture out of the " Faery
Queene," and if Una had appeared with her
lion we should hardly have been surprised. A
little higher, we found ourselves in Beulah,
with the Delectable Mountains full in view.

In the afternoon we made an excursion to

in a waggonette, indulging by the way in

a form of reciprocal torture, each side calling
the attention of the other to the beauties at its

280 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

back. At the best of times one resents having
the obvious beauties of the landscape pointed
out to one; even the transports of the judicious
are somewhat boring. Coleridge tells a story
of how at the Falls of Clyde he was unable to
find a word to express his feelings. At last a
stranger at his side said, " How majestic !" It
was the precise term, and Coleridge turned
round and was saying, "Thank you, sir; that
is the exact word for it," when the stranger
added in the same breath, "Yes, how very
pretty ! " One sight much impressed me. As
we were nearing a bridge with a single span,
arching considerably, a flock of Highland sheep
with black twisting horns appeared suddenly
crowding the ridge in face of us. It was quite
beautiful.

11th. — This duel between the French and
Italian princes is a godsend to the newspapers,
and, taking tale and moral together, tills many
columns. The moral of the matter is really
very simple. Sulden in the Tal>/< Talk is re-
ported as having said: "War is lawful, because
(!<)d is I lie only Judge betwixt two that are
supreme. Now, if a difference happen betwixt
two subjects, and it cannot be decided by
human testimony, why may thoy not put it

PAGES PROM A PRIVATE DIARY 281

to God to judge between them by the per-
mission of the prince ? Nay, why should we
not bring it down, for argument's sake, to the
swordmen ? One gives me the lie; 'tis a great
disgrace to take it, the law has made no pro-
vision to give remedy for the injury, why am
I not in this case supreme, and may therefore
right myself?" We have only to remember
that modern law has made provision to remedy
such injuries to see that duelling is therefore as
indefensible in these days as the old " wager of
battle," of which indeed it is a survival.

IStk. — A misty morning; what we English in
our violent idiom call " raining cats and dogs."
The books of the house did not, at the first
blush, look alluring. " Saurin's Sermons," " The
Scottish Biographical Dictionary," The Edin-
burgh Review from the commencement, Bos-
well's "Tour in the Hebrides"— I noted that
for use if better books failed — and then my eye
lighted on " Sir Charles Grandison." It was just
the book for the situation. At noon it cleared
suddenly, and we ventured out to the Highland
sports at . Of the party was a French pro-
fessor, a member of the Franco-Scottish League,
who considered it necessary to pay Eugenia
compliments, the very elaborateness of which

282 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

would have rendered them innocuous, even if
they had not been addressed to the company at
large. He compared the colour of the heather
to her hair, at which she did not look enchanted.
I fancy the compliment was a classical remi-
niscence, and I fancy too they were not both
looking at the same patch ; for the colour
varies greatly under so cloudy a sky. The
smoke from a cottage chimney which showed
blue against the firs gave him a better oppor-
tunity. " To think, Mademoiselle Eugenie, that
so much beauty — the exquisite blue of that
smoke — should depend upon the turbidity of
the medium. Is it unnatural that the blue of
so beautiful eyes should in their turn mediate a
turbidity ? " I don't think Eugenia quite under-
stood the theory of turbid media or the point of
the application. But the professor proceeded.
" It is a grand pity our poets know so little. I
am full of ideas, but the expression I can give
them does not satisfy. You know our poet
Sully Prudhommo. He asks a question which
draws tears.

' Partout scintillont los coulours,
Mais d'oii viont cette force fii riles:
II eziste an blou dont jo incurs
Paroe qu'il est dans 1 < • .- prunelle i.'

How much more tears should ho draw, if liko

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 283

me he knew the answer ! " At this point we
reached the field. The sports did not differ
from those of other places in the Highlands.
Our professor grew very eloquent over " tossing
the caber." He had no doubt that the sport,
like the word, was originally Norman, and had
come to Scotland with other essentials of civil-
isation, such as " napery " and " carafes," in the
days when French and Scotch were brothers-
in-arms. I confess I have my doubts about
this.1 We Southerners very much resented the
intrusion of hornpipes into the dancing com-
petitions. But on reflection I don't see why
Highlanders should not be sailors as well as
soldiers.

25th. — Our party, leaving the Toms behind,
returned by Edinburgh and York. Sophia left
the hospitable roof, according to her custom,
with a monstrous bunch of heather, a root or
two of tropseoiuni, a basket of ferns, and a
recipe for scones, begged from the cook.

1 I quote the description of " Tossing the Caber " from the
" Voces Populi " of Mr. Anstey, a gentleman whose pen is
as accurate as it is facile. "The caber — a rough fir-trunk
twenty-one feet long — is tossed, that is, is lifted by six men,
set on end, and placed in the hands of the athlete, who after
looking at it doubtfully for a time, poises it, raises it a foot
or two, and runs several yards with it, after which lie jerks it.
forward by a mighty effort, so as to pitch on the thicker end,
and fall over in the direction furthest from him."

284 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

On our way to Perth, whom should we
meet but our young friend H. and his bride
honeymooning. They were occupied, when we
took them by storm, in reading Maeterlinck's
" Aglavaine and Selysette." I could not help
congratulating H. on finding his Aglavaine,
without first declining upon any Selysette with
a range of lower feelings. I confess I forgot at
the moment that he had been engaged before ;
but as he seemed to have forgotten it too, no
harm was done. Sophia, when his present
engagement was announced, had been over-
joyed, because, as she said, "now neither of
thorn can spoil another pair." I am afraid
they both have just a touch of the prig in
their constitution. When they had left the
train at the little station where they are fleet-
ing the time carelessly, Sophia, always tender-
hearted, upbraided me with my unkindness in
comparing them to " those horrid creatures."
But it was plain they took my speech for a
compliment, as I knew they must. And I
protested I had said nothing nearly so unkind
,is a remark that fell from her. 1 was saying
to the bride, " I suppose, when you get home,
you will be setting up B salon?" And when
she blushed and bridled, Sophia put in, " Take

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 285

my advice, my dear, and set up a salle a man-
ger." Sophia undervalues Maeterlinck's play
through a feminine distaste for irony, which does
not allow her to recognise that the author of the
prigs knows how priggish they are, even better
than the reader. When the book came from
Mudie's we had quite a warm discussion over
it. " Now," Sophia began, " in the first scene of
all ; look at this description of Aglavaine : ' Her
hair is very strange . . . you will see ... it
seems to take part in every one of her thoughts
... as she is happy or sad, so does her hair
smile or weep ; and this even at times when
she herself scarcely knows whether she should
be happy or whether she should be sad.' What
twaddle is that ! " " My dear," I said, " a most
unfortunate place to choose for censure. Living
here in the retirement of the country you have
never chanced to meet a case of emotional hair,
that is all. Now I have. At school there was
a boy whose hair used to play all sorts of pranks.
We used to make him eat marmalade, which he
hated but his hair liked, just to make it sit
up. That is what the poet means here; both
were cases of uncertainty between conflicting
emotions." " Well, then," said Sophia, " what
does this mean ? ' So long as we know not

286 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

what it opens, nothing can be more beautiful
than a key.' ' " My love," I replied, " it means
just what it says. I have always admired your
• chatelaine, and I have not the most distant idea
which key fits the jam cupboard. In fact," I
continued, "you must accept an author's re-
marks in the spirit in which they are offered,
and if he likes talking about hair and keys, he
is not to be blamed because you think these
subjects beneath mention. And as to the play,
you, my dear, must like Meligraine, and you,
Eugenia, cannot help loving Selysette ; and, for
my part, I can find a sentiment to echo even
in that prince of prigs, Meleander : ' I wonder
what it is that Heaven will exact in return for
having allowed two such women to be near
inc." "And I, too," said Sophia, "can find
something to echo even from Aglavaine: 'How
beautiful of you ! you grow more beautiful
every day; but do you think it is right to be
so beautiful?'"

At Perth, Sophia started the idea that the
luggage had not arrived, although these eyes
had seen it labelled and put into the van.
So after debating the question we started in
nvh. Certainly it was not to bo seen, and
the guards knew nothing of it. At last a

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 287

porter advised us to look if it had not already
been transferred to the train for Edinburgh,
where we found it. What guerdon Sophia
gave to that porter is between themselves.
From having been brought up by her grand-
mother, who flourished in the time of " vails "
— a word which, curiously enough, still survives
in Berkshire for any kind of gratuity — Sophia
has an idea that every servant who is reason-
ably civil to her should be lavishly fee'd ; and,
despite the injunctions of the railway com-
panies, she saps the altruistic instincts of every
guard and porter by the most extravagant tips.
At Edinburgh we paraded Princes Street and
saw the usual sights. By a wise provision the
bonnet shops and book shops are arranged so
that husbands and wives may stare at what
best pleases them without losing each other.
In one shop I had the pleasure of hearing a
lady with an American accent ask for a portrait
of Charles III.; but the bookseller was no
Jacobite, and did not know whom she might be
meaning. At the corner of a street we came
upon a young prophet preaching to about
thirty people. He was good-looking and care-
fully dressed, his camel's hair being shaped
into the frock coat of ordinary civilisation.

288 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

When we came up, he was proving from the
Apocalypse that it was foretold the whole
Church would lapse into error as a prelude
to his re-discovery of the truth. But Sophia
does not like standing, and the prophet took
so long over the preliminaries that we were
forced to pass on without hearing the new
revelation.

I cannot leave the train at York without re-
membering the ancient tale of a sleepy traveller
going North, who, knowing his weakness, begged
the guard to see that he was put out at this
station, willy-nilly ; but to his disgust found
himself at Edinburgh, and " swore consum-
edly." " Well, sir," said the guard, " you can
swear a bit, but nothing to the gentleman I
put out at York." Some publisher might do a
good turn to himself and to an impoverished
"nler if he would commission a few clergymen
in each county to collect the humorous tales of
their district before they lose all their original
brightness. Yorkshire is especially rich in such
stories, the prevailing quality being dry. The
following was given me recently by a York-
shiremac as as example of " red-tape." A man
is lying i/n extrern/U, while bis daughter takes
lY the pot B tine ham. The "I<1 man asks

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 289

for a slice, and is met by the rebuff: "Thee get
on with thy deeing ; t' ham's for t' funeral."

27th. — Home. We left summer behind and
find autumn here ; for raspberries, blackberries.
Bicycles have once more to take heed to their
ways, for the hedges are being clipped, and the
stone walls of Scotland had encouraged us to
ride carelessly.

30th. — The value of local tradition was well
illustrated this morning by a speech of my
neighbour, old John Brown. I was showing a
visitor what few traces are left us of antiquity,
and especially a field called " England's piece,"
which I have no doubt, from its neighbourhood

to an old camp called Castle, was the scene

of some battle or skirmish between the English
and Danes. Old Brown was leaning over the
fence at the time, and I asked him if he had
heard about any battle fought there. " It were
the battle of Waterloo, sir," said he, "so they
say, 'wever; and I thinks they're right, becos
ye can see the bullut marks in the fence."

Speaking of Castle reminds me of another

curious piece of antiquarian intelligence. The
gentleman whose property it is has built a
keeper's lodge there in the castellated style;
and once, when putting up for a picnic, I asked

290 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the keeper by way of pleasantry whether that
were the castle, and was thunderstruck and
delighted to hear his answer : " Well, sir, some
says it is, some says it ain't : for myself, I rather
think it must be, and I'll tell you why : there's
so much more room inside than you'd think
from looking at it."

olst. — A pfopos of my remarks on the some-
times conflicting ideals of religion and gentle-
manliness, a lady sends me an amusing anecdote
of a friend who bewailed to her the loss of a
somewhat ill-bred but extremely wealthy neigh-
bour, who had been very liberal in his help to
her countiy charities. " Mr. X. is dead," said
she ; " he was so good and kind and helpful to
11 ie in all sorts of ways ; he Avas so vulgar, poor
dear fellow, we could not know him in London ;
but we shall meet in heaven."

Sept&mb&r 3rd. — Birds are plentiful, so are
hares. There was once a Major Cartwright, a
friend of H. C. Robinson's, who used to give his
friends an invaluable piece of advice : "Always
roast your hare with the skin on." The Doctor
told me :i tale this morning of a young novice
in his profession who was also somewhat of a
novice with the gun, and, after he had missed

Beveral ooveys, the old keeper said to him, "Let

PAGES FKOM A PRIVATE DIARY 291

me have a shot. I'll doctor 'em." This is the
best story so far this season.

Eugenia has been bringing a little colour
into the drab complexion of our village life
by driving her donkeys tandem. The result
has justified the experiment, for both donkeys
go better together than apart. The reason is
simple. The leader trots his best because he
thinks he is not in the cart, and the wheeler
always goes well when there is a horse or
another donkey on ahead.

I had an odd dream last night. For some
reason I was attending a law lecture, and when
I first woke I could remember a good deal of
it. All I can now recall is one sentence. " This
is known as Statellion's case. Ho was servant
to Robert Burns, and was stabbed by him at a
Highland wedding. In this case it was ruled
that esse in law is to be understood to mean
esse ni jailor. Thus 'I am stiff' is to be con-
strued, ' If I mistake not, I am stiff.' " Sophia
used to keep a book of my bed-talk, but she
once showed it me, and I entreated her to
destroy it. I may not be a brilliant converser
at the best of times, but I am not such a fool
as my sub-liminal personality, nor am I such a
humbug. For my s. 1. p. has, it seems, a way

292 PAGES FROM A TRIVATE DIARY

of pulling up and feigning sleep just when its
remarks should begin to get interesting. Thus,
a few weeks since, according to Sophia, I roused
the darkness with the following important
observation : — " The exact difference between
Whistler's etching and Seymour Haden's is . . ."
(snore). On another occasion — this was on a
Sunday night — I recited an original hymn,
becoming inaudible at the end of the lines,
where the rhymes ought to have been. The
only scrap Sophia got hold of was —

"Do thy duty without works :
It gives theo grace beyond thy will " —

which is sufficiently mystical, not to say Anti-
nomian.

\lh (Saturday). — I was on my way to the
christening of T.'s child at - — . The day was
c>ld, and the rector's wife is a motherly person.
As wo stood round the font, the rector took up
the ewer and poured in the water. It was
boiling, and the steam ascended to the roof.
As the rector is tall and dignified, the action
had a very solemn air, and reminded me of the
pictures of patriarchal sacrifice in the old family
Dilile. There was no cold water to be had, so
there was nothing for it but to sit down and
wait. 1 noticed that the village inn is called

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 293

the " Angel," but exhibits on its signboard an
infant Bacchus wreathed with grapes and sitting
on a cask. I suppose he has been christened.

A few friends to dinner. Talk fell on Tenny-
son. Some one mentioned that one of his best
poems, the ode " To a Mourner," was very little
known, because it had been slipped in amongst
the 1842 poems in a late edition. As an artist
everybody was disposed to rank him very high.
I mentioned that one of the most convincing
proofs of his consummate skill was the leaving
one line unrhymed in the " Break, break, break,"
and " Oh that 'twere possible ! " — to gain the
effect of spontaneity. S. had a fling at " In
Memoriam," but I defended it, and especially
the metre, which always seems to me excellently
chosen. The best proof of that is the fact that
Whewell accidentally fell into it in writing a
very emphatic sentence :

" And so no force, however great,
Can strain a cord, however fine,
Into a horizontal line
That shall he [absolutely] straight."

I have seen the passage, and the word is not
" absolutely," but I cannot remember what it is.
Talking of sonnets, some one praised E. C. Le-
froy's as the best written of late years, and I
should agree. There is an interesting memoir

294 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

of him just appeared, with a collected edition of
his poems. Old General X. was very anxious
to show us how the great Duke of Wellington
used to eat figs. But it turned out to be the
ordinary way — quadrisection down to the stalk,
and then four licks.

7th. — I was amused by receiving through the
post a curious request from a blushing bride-
groom, whose father is a very old family friend,
for advice as to taming a shrew. He had read
Shakespeare's play in his secret chamber, but
thought the method rather violent, and not easy
to put in practice. In reply I have told him
that I am happily without experience, but as
pure matter of theory I think Shakespeare's
principle excellent, though its application in
these days would have to be Victorian, and not
Tudor. The principle is to have the worse
temper of the two, and if an occasion of dispute
presents itself, to begin first and finish last.
People of original genius would no doubt be
able to devise methods of their own proper to
llic special case. Thus, I have heard of a
literary man who let it be understood ho was
preparing an essay on the Unreasonableness of
Women, and whenever Ids writ sposa became

shrewish, b<' would pull out his pocket-book

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 295

and make notes with an affectation of absorbed
interest ; which was not without effect — his wife
having brains and some humour — upon the
volume and brackishness of the stream. But it
is, as a rule, your unreasoning and unhumorous
woman who makes your shrew, and, notwith-
standing the spread of education, few women
care to reason, and still fewer have imagination
enough to see things from any point of view
but their own. And yet men, forgetting this
elementary fact of psychology, go on putting
things to their wives in a clear and convincing
light, which is like pouring oil on a fire. The
only safety for those who feel the method of
Petruchio beyond them lies in flight to some
coward's castle, club, or biiliard-room, or library.
Sophia, to whom I have communicated these
sentiments for criticism, thinks them unworthy
of me, and insists that all shrewishness comes
either from bad health or confined interests. If
a young husband, she says, would choose his
house with some reference to his wife's neuralgia
as well as his own fishing, and would play chess
or picquct, or read Dante with her in the even-
ings, and not be always praising his sisters, there
would be no shrews to be tamed. But Sophia
was always an optimist.

296 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

The local paper contains once more the adver-
tisement of a secluded residence in a " remote
part of the county," that unmistakably means

. We welcome every change, but every

change so far has been for the worse. Within
the last ten years the house has been occupied
by a fraudulent bankrupt : a major who had a
sunstroke in India, and if you crossed him
would bite — not his thumb at you, but your
thumb at him ; a gentleman " with no visible
means of subsistence," except a very rough pony
that he rode about, and a piece of wood that he
carved as he went ; a widow with seven virgin
orphans, who would talk nothing but peerage ;
a chicken farmer whose chickens were im-
pounded by the Cruelty to Animals Society;
and at present by a person who eloped with his
neighbour's wife. Who will succeed ? The
house is so near that it is next to impossible
not to be affected by its occupants. It is thai
word " secluded " that does all the mischief. I
wish Tom would buy the place and let it to a
decent tenant.1

]()///. — A cold in the head lias confined me to
the house for two (lays. These days indoors

1 As I have been written to about this house, I take the
opporl unit] "I s;i\ lug that it is Dot at present to let.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIAPY 297

ought to be so profitable, but are so useless.
What could one not read if only one's eyes and
spirits would permit one to read at all ! I have
found it impossible to do anything more intel-
lectual than paste book-plates into recent pur-
chases, and sort through letters. The last task
is penitential. I have so great a reverence for
the written word that I find it hard to destroy
any but the most trivial notes. And then the
accumulation " cries on havoc." Some day I
must sort the old piles, but from such an
heroical adventure nature shrinks. "Some-
times the friend is dead, sometimes the friend-
ship." And one must let sleeping friendships
lie.

People are disposed to blame the penny post
for the decay of letter- writing, but they forget
that there was a penny post last century for
letters in London, while for others there were
franks. So that cheapness has little to do with
it. I suspect the fact that letters were known
to be preserved had not a little to do with the
pains taken about writing them. Other people
besides Miss Jenkyns experimented on a slate
before seizing the last half-hour before post
time to put their mature thoughts on paper.
I remember still, though it was a good many

298 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

years ago, the shock I received from seeing a
friend crunch up a letter of mine and throw it
into his waste-paper basket. He did it me-
chanically, and the epistle deserved no better
fate. But since that time, though all my letters
are too careless, those to him have been mere
scribble. Were I ever to write the one sermon
which all good laymen yearn to write, it should
be on the power of faith, or expectation, to
create the qualities, good or bad, with which it
credits people. Posswnt quia posse videntur ;
but also non possunt, quia non posse videntur.

19th. — At the Harvest Festival to-day the
Vicar was badly stung by a wasp, attracted to
him by the ripe fruits with which the pulpit
had been lavishly decorated. It chose his leg
for attack. I have not yet received my annual
sting, and feel like Damocles whenever I think
of it. What happens is this. A wasp comes
in at the window, and gets warm and sleepy.
When the lamps are lit it wakes up, crawls along
the bright edge of a piece of furniture or the
under side of a door-handle, and you press it
with unsuspecting hand. Or else it crawls up
your coat on to your neck ; your collar squeezes
it., and it "sits down."

20th. - 1 called al the Vicarage this afternoon

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 299

to inquire, and found the wasp forgotten in a
more serious sting. " One fire drives out one
fire." It is an odd thing about the Vicar that
his nose swells and reddens when he is angry.
He ought to be told this, as the knowledge
would make for peace. I found he had been
discussing with Tom a proposal to cut down a
tree on the glebe, to open a view, as the Vicar-
age is pretty much shut in; to which Tom
would by no means consent, on the ground that
the next vicar might prefer not to have a view,
and that it was easier to take trees down than
put them up again. The Vicar was feeling
righteously indignant, and spoke of appealing
to the Archdeacon ; but I dissuaded him, as
the lay and clerical authorities are at present
sufficiently embroiled. " Why not," I said, " if
you want a view, walk over every morning and
enjoy Tom's ; or, better still, cut your tree up
instead of cutting it down ? " On our walk the
Vicar described to me Mr. Caine's new story,
which he had felt bound to read in the interest
of his profession. " He proposes to us," said he,
" a homicidal maniac, and worse, for a typical
Christian, and shows his intimate knowledge of
Church affairs by blundering over so simple a
matter as the Marriage Service." He went on

300 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

to suggest getting some rich member of the
House of Laymen to endow a lectureship to
literary men and women on the clerical office
and character. "Just look," he said, '-at the
parson of fiction ; he is a priest pour rire.
Whether he is dressed up as a Cowley father,
or sits in his rectory garden cracking up his
creed ' into nuts and shells mere,' did you ever
meet anything like him in real life ? Look at
Mr. Hope's 'Father Stafford'! Look at the
young gentleman in Stevenson, who, though he
had been in orders several years, had not yet
obtained his first curacy." I thought the idea
of the lectureship a good one, especially if an
occasional lecture were given to poets and
pressmen on clerical vestments and ritual.
Poets think a stole a sufficient covering for any-
body in all sorts of weather. Milton even sends
out Morning in nothing but an amice, which is
the priest's neckcloth to keep his macassar from
soiling tin' chasuble; it survives also (if it does
survive) in what are called "bands."

" Thus passed the night so foul, till morning fair
('.uiic forth with pilgrim steps in amice grey."

Tin: Tress is improving, but is still capable of
much, as any one may see from I he Times'
account <>f the recent doings ;it Ebbsfleet —

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 301

Roman, I regret to say, but still deserving a
skilled reporter.1

Later in the day I came across Tom, who was
very amusing about the Vicar's view. " He
says to live in a ring-fence suffocates him, and
he thinks to fell a tree would relieve his oppres-
sion. It reminds me of the man at an inn who
woke up in the night and thought he couldn't
sleep till he had opened the window ; but he
couldn't find the fastening, so he smashed a
pane, and then went to sleep again like a top.
In the morning he found he had broken a pane
in the bookcase. Besides, I know this mania
for views and cutting grows on a man : in ten
years there wouldn't be a stick on the glebe."
" Speaking of stories," I said, " do you remem-
ber the amusing old woman who, when her
servants overslept themselves half-an-hour on
Monday morning, called upstairs, ' Girls, it is
six o'clock ; to-morrow's Tuesday, and the next
day's Wednesday; here's half the week gone,
and no work done ' ? "

For my own part I sympathise with both
Tom and the Vicar : with Tom because I in-

1 Lord Beaconsfield in "Endymion" speaks of "an aggrega-
tion of lands baptized by protocols and christened by treaties."
1 wonder what he took the difference to be.

302 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

herit my father's distaste for the axe, and with
the Vicar from an experience of our early
married life. When we came to our present
home, which was then a farmhouse, there was
on the lawn a gigantic horse-chestnut tree.
For the first year we let it stand, and pointed
out to all our guests what a magnificent creature
it was, as we drank our tea beneath its " spread-
ing " branches. And then Sophia said one day :
" My dear, this is a very beautiful tree — it al-
ways reminds me of Longfellow, and makes me
feel poetical ; but wouldn't it be well to make
a few windows in it to let in a little air ? And
perhaps it would be nice now and then to see
what the sun was doing. I sometimes think
it may have something to do with the maids'
anaemia." So after a little more talking the
colossal vegetable was doomed, and as limb
after limb was severed we felt very miserable
and wicked. Eugenia, who was just four years
old, burst into tears, and said, "I shall sit down
on the grass ; " — I suppose in self-abasement,
but I never quite understood what she meant;
— and then suddenly a gust from the north-
west came through. It was a sparkling Sep-
tember day, much like this, and t<> have real
wind in our own garden was so intoxicating an

pages from a private diary 303

experience that we laughed and played idiotic
gambols. The tree, in fact, was a fiend ; it had
for years absorbed all the fresh air like a mam-
moth sponge, and left the garden stagnant.

21st. — We are having a St. Matthew's summer.
To Oxford. We took the new guide-book, and
explored some of the colleges we less frequently
visit. Coining out of the lovely chapel at Trinity,
I glanced at a notice on the door in a familiar
hand, when an American remarked, "It is in
Latin," as who should say, "You're bit." I
thanked him for his information, and then he
asked whether, as he supposed this was the
chief college in the University, his son might
try to enter, and if he failed, whether he might
try somewhere else ; on which points I satisfied
him as well as I could. We peeped into Balliol,
but the modern spirit was too much for us.
Time being money at this college, the grass-plot
in the front quad had been cut up into triangles
by gravel paths seeking the shortest distance
between every two doors. Wadham gave us a
great deal of pleasure, especially the garden
front, but the paths would be all the better for
a little of the Balliol gravel. The porter at All
Souls' was very sympathetic, and after sending
us into the chapel, which was open, while

304 PACxES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

he finished his newspaper, took us round,
and showed us many things of which guide-
books make no mention. For example, in the
magnificent Codrington Library he aroused a
curious echo by clapping his hands at a par-
ticular spot, rapped a marble table till it rang
like metal, and pointed out a peculiar expres-
sion on the face of the great Blackstone statue,
which on the hither side smiled and on the
further frowned — true emblem of the law, from
the point of view of us litigants. If I were a
bachelor, and had the necessary qualifications,
and could live in the physical and spiritual
atmosphere of Ox lord, I should choose to be
a Fellow of All Souls', as was an ancestor of
mine in Henry VIII. s time. There nothing
can disturb the mind bent on study, and there
;ire no undergraduates to vex the spirit; and
if the cook, as may happen in any earthly para-
disc, is unequal to himself at any meal, why
one's

" Choler would be overblown
By walking unci' about tho quadrangle,"

;is Shakespeare says.

L'l///. — I have received a letter from a young
lady at Wycombe who is kind enough to say
she dotes on my Diary, but asks, why don't I

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 305

write a " day-book " instead, like Bethia H.
(name illegible), because then I could bring
in the dear old-fashioned names of flowers,
and give funny recipes from old cookery-books,
and mix some original poetry in with it about
morality and hellebore, and so on, in those
lovely Herricky verses, don't I know? (I fear
I don't). And I am not to forget some astro-
nomy, because they are doing astronomy at
school, and the names of the constellations
are so delightfully poetical. I fear neither
cookery nor morals are much in my way; but
I put the matter to Eugenia, and though she
disavowed any deep knowledge of botany, she
promised to do what she could, and brought me
the following verses on a dandelion : —

" The peeping botanist, with glee,
Murmured ' perfection,' eyeing me ;
' Nature,' he said, ' devise ne'er shall
A finer ligulifloral.'
The smug physician, for a sum,
Prescribed me as taraxacum
When Giles and Norman, seeking cherries,
Had surfeited of arum-berries.
Bethia, who in ancient books
Hunts quaint receipts to tease her cooks,
While meditating some now ballad,
Pulled my fresh leaves to make a salad.
The garden-boy, whoso soul is mud,
Hath dug me up with ruthless spud,
And on his tumbril borne, I come
To slow and smoky martyrdom."

306 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

I told Eugenia that the verses could not,
with the widest construction of the term, be
considered " Herricky " ; I thought, too, they
lacked freedom of movement, and so advised
her to try again. Take, I said, something you
remember from any conversation we have had
about flowers, in the garden or on a walk, and
put it into a six-line stanza. This was the
result : —

" To Bethia, who had called attention to a re-
markably fine Plant op Chicory or Succory.

" ' How rarely,' quoth Bethia, ' cloth one see
The chic- or succory with flowers so many !
Too often sprawleth it right lazily

By the wayside, with too few flowers, if any !
For once the plant hath soared to his ideal.'
Quoth I, ' Some chance hath sent it a full meal.' '

1 was uncertain whether my correspondent

wished the morality to be mixed with the

botany, or kept separate. However, I lent

Eugenia the "(Euvrcs morales do M. lo due

do la Rochefoucault," and this is what she

brought mo : —

"A Question Rksolved.

•' JVhat is youth ' you bid me guess.
Tis a nat ural drunkenness.
"I'is a fever, slow io oure,
Yet without distemperature.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 307

'Tis the folly of the reason,
'Tis a constitutional treason ;
Or, if this Bethia shocks,
'Tis any other paradox."

"Another Question.

" 'Twixt pride and amour propre the difference say ?
Pride hates to owe, and amour propre to pay."

"To Memory, Mother of the Muses.

" Blest Memory ! thy sacred nine
Could ne'er have babbled half a line
If thou, their mother, from thy lore,
Had not said much the same before."

Eugenia says she finds the morality easier to
do than the botany ; but she will try again
at the latter if my correspondent will state a
little more circumstantially what she wants,
or, better still, send a pattern. The astronomy,
she fears, is beyond her ; but then, most of the
poetical names have already been used up.

October ±th. — The old debate between the
advantages of a town and country life could
not but incline, one must think, to the latter
when the season comes round for planting and
replanting. And yet I do not know that those
who have handled the question in poem or
essay have made anything of this most impor-
tant factor in it ; which helps to persuade one
that the whole problem is academic, and that

308 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the writers on both sides have composed their
eclogues in Fleet Street. The only reference I
recollect even in Marvell comes in the coup-
let—

" Transplanting flowers from the green hill
To crown her head and bosom fill " —

which looks as if the word " transplanting "
bore no real significance to him. I suppose
the old " formal " garden when once made left
little scope for improvement. Cowley would
have sung these joys in Pindaric strain had he
but known them, but he sadly confesses in
dedicating his great garden poem to Evelyn,
" I stick still in the inn of a hired house and
garden, among weeds and rubbish, and without
the pleasantest work of human industry, the
improvement of something which we call (not
very properly, but yet we call) our own." And
in the next century Gray takes up the same
lament, writing to Norton Nicholls : " And so
you have a garden of your own, and you plant
and transplant, and are dirty and amused ; are
not you ashamed of yourself? Why, I have no
such thing, you monster; nor ever shall be
either dirty or amused as long as I live! My
gardens arc in the window like those of a
lodger up three pair of stairs in Petticoat Lane
or Camomile Street, and they go to bed regu-

PAGES FROM A TRIVATE DIARY 309

larly under the same roof that I do : dear, how
charming it must be to walk out in one's own
garden, and sit on a bench in the open air with
a fountain, and a leaden statue, and a rolling
stone, and an arbour ! " (June 24, 1769).

That is so often what happens: the singers,
the Cowleys and Grays, lack experience, and
those who have experience cannot sing. This
year the rage for improvement has set in with
more than common severity, owing to the publi-
cation of a very delightful book on gardening,
by Mrs. Earle, called " Pot-pourri from a Surrey
Garden." I first heard of it one day at break-
fast in the following manner. Eugenia began,
" Wouldn't it be nice to make a Dutch garden
in the middle of our lawn ? " I was so much
taken aback by this outlandish proposal that
I forbore to deprecate the slang use of the
word " nice," and could only repeat " a Dutch
garden ? " " Yes," said Eugenia ; " you sink a
wall four or five feet all round it, and lay it out
with beds and nice tiled walks, and have steps
down on each side, and a fountain in the middle
and a few statues, and plant tea-roses against

the wall " "Stop," I cried, "for mercy's

sake ; may I ask if you have made an estimate
of the probable cost of this Dutch paradise ?

310 PAGES FROM A TRIYATE DIARY

Imprimis, bricklayer; shall we make the en-
closure twenty yards square and six feet high ?
That will come, with bricks at 30s. a thousand,

to about £25, and then time at 6 id. an hour

But dare I ask, first, whence this Batavian in-
spiration ? " And then I heard of Mrs. Earle,
and how she had pronounced against lawns.
Nothing more was heard for a week, and I
hoped the infection would pass, but it had
bitten too deep ; and seeing the book lying-
in every house I visited, and seeing, too, the
furrowed brows of most fathers of families, I
had serious thoughts of becoming a second
Lord George Gordon and starting a " No Pot-
pourri riot." Then I. too, had an inspiration.
" Why," I said, " copy the Dutch ? If the lawn
is too large for croquet under new rules, why
not make at the end of it a bowling-green, or
rather a bovMngrin, as it used to be called?
You will save your bricklayer's bill, as the sides
are sloped and turfed ; and you will have the
satisfaction of doinsr something a trifle more
original than your neighbours, The fountain
must wait till water will run uphill ; but I
know «>f a aoseless stone bust in a curiosity
simp that will do for a garden god just as
w.ll as for Marcus Aurelius, whose name it

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 311

now bears." 3 it was agreed, and I lent
Eugenia from the library James's translation
of le Blond's book,1 which is full of the most
elaborate plates of formal gardens. I took the
opportunity last night,, when the ladies had re-
tired, to borrow Mrs. E.'s precious volume, and
I have found much in it that seems to me true,
much that is arguable., and much that, tho\ _
true, I hold it not discreet to have thus

1 " The Theory and Practice of Gardening : wherein is
fully handled all that relates to fine gardens, comm
called pleasure gardens, consisting of Parterres, Gr
Bowling-Greens, <fcc. ; conta: I plans and general

dispositions of gardens, new designs of pa
grass-plots, mazes, bat _- rooms, galler:

and summer-houses of arbour- work, terras* - stairs, foun-
tains, cascades, and other ornaments of use in the decora
and embellishment of Garde: .. :.der

Le Blond. Done from the late edition printed at Parl-
John James of Greenwich. 1726.v Among th
ments at the end of the book is one worth copying : " E
land's r in all sot and all

Pickles that are fit to be used. Adorned with Copper P.

.ng forth the Manner of placing I - les.

And the - Fashion By Henry Howard,

k of London, and late Cook to his Grace the Du>
md. and since to the Earl of Salisbury, and Earl of !".
chiltea. To which are added the best - for malring

Cak read, French-Bread ; as

also for preserving, conserving, candying and dr
Confectioning and making of Creams, Syllabubs, and Marma-
lades of several B -. Likewise Additions of Beautifying
Waters and other Cariosities; as also above £: Re-

ceipts are added- Which renders the whole Work compleat.
Price 2s. &£"

312 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

down, such as the advice to buy second-hand
furniture. Why drive good taste into a mere
fashion, and so quadruple the price of pretty
things for those who can appreciate them ?
There was a time when silver of a good pattern
could be bought cheap because it was old ; now
it is dear for the same reason, just because old
silver has become fashionable. So with old
Sheffield plate. So with old furniture. I deeply
offended some young friends the other day by
saying of a very beautiful piece of Chippendale
in their new-furnished house, " Why, that must
have cost ten pounds," when it had cost twenty ;
so much have prices risen since I furnished.
How well I recollect the horror of the new
domestics when what little furniture we had
arrived after our marriage ! The Persian rugs
were sent up to the servants' bedrooms ; and
the housemaid at once gave warning, on the
ground, as she told a fellow-servant, that " there
was not a stick in the house that wasn't second-
hand." I remember also, though it is nothing
to the point, my old aunt's paying her first call,
mid saying to Sophia, "Now, my dear, I am
sure there are many things you must want in
coming to it new house, so I will give; you — a
list, of reliable charwomen."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 313

I discovered further in Mrs. E.'s book the
authority for a dish that has suddenly made its
appearance on all tables about here — green
tomatoes. Most outdoor tomato plants at this
season have many fruits that there is not heat
enough to ripen, and. it seems, Mrs. Earle has
discovered a way to treat them. Cooked accord-
ing to her prescription, they taste sometl.:
like an artichoke. In the receipt for brandy
cherries, I should substitute sugar-candy for
sugar — a decided improvement. It is verv
generous of this good lady to give jaded house-
keepers the benefit of her experience, instead of
amusing herself, like some literary ladies, with
rummaging impossible receipts out of ancient
tomes. I shall never forget how once, in earlv
days of literary enthusiasm. I had a carp dressed
after Walton's recipe for chub. I believe it
relished in the kitchen, where taste is about a
couple of centuries behind the dining-room.
And that reflection recalls the memory of an
amusing anecdote of travel. Some friends while
staying at a Swiss hotel were given a pudd':
with rum sauce. One mouthful was more than
enough for them, but the servants ate heartily
and were very ill. That is the first act. The
second act. which synchronises with the firs"

314 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the rage and grief of the male of the party for
the disappearance from his chamber of a new
and large bottle of bay rum. The solution of
the plot is obvious. The bottle found its way
mysteriously back again nearly empty.

5th. — An autograph list, come by post, ad-
vertises a letter of G. H. Lewes's, written in
1871, proposing to have texts from the works
of George Eliot hung up in schoolrooms and
railway-stations "in lieu of the often prepos-
terous Bible texts thus hung up and neglected."
Oh, those ages of simple faith, the early seven-
ties ! The same list, with a tine tolerance,
catalogues a sermon by White of Selborne on
" Repentance," which is marked as having been
preached thirty-one times. There is also what
is styled a " telegram sent by Tennyson " to his
publisher ; but surely this must mean the telo-
gram received by the publisher, which would
be in the clerk's autograph. A repulsive item in
the catalogue, which at best cannot help being
somewhat ghoulish, is a collection of letters by
Mr. Ruskin. Surely Mr. Ruskin should not yet
be sold as mummy.

6th. — I have been roaming the countryside in

Bearcfa «»(' a suitable house for . How few

have answered the agents' description ! Even

TAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 315

when I have been assured that the house had
certain conveniences, I have found them lack-
ing. " Has it a south aspect ? " I would inquire;
and would find that what looked south was the
larder ! One beautiful old house attracted me
greatly, and I wondered it had been so long
without a tenant, till on reaching the base-
ment, in the room beneath the dining-room, the
venerable housekeeper lifted up a board and
said with pride, " And here is the cesspool ; it
must be hundreds of years old." I was much
struck with the excellence of the roads about
Culham and Abingdon, an excellence due in
the main to the piety of the district in keeping
up toll-gates. Our fathers thought it right that
those who used the roads should pay for them
in some sort of proportion to their use ; the
modern notion is to let the squires and parsons
pay for everything. " Tax, tax tergo meo erit,"
cries the modern ratepayer ; he cannot add
"non euro." I have taken what opportunities
offered on my journey of seeing any famous
houses in the neighbourhood. Shaw House, by
Newbury, where King Charles was shot at while
making his toilet, has exquisite gables. With
Ufton Court I was a little disappointed ; the
middle part of the house, including the hall

316 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

with its beautiful ceiling, is occupied by the
forester to the estate, and only one of the wings
is a dwelling-house ; but its present tenant has
deserved well of lovers of antiquity by an ad-
mirable book upon the house and manor. Its
interest for literature is that Pope describes it
in his letters, and that it was the home of his
Belinda, Arabella Fermor. Bramshill is a beauti-
ful and perfect example of a Jacobean mansion.
In the descriptive volume put together by the
father of the present owner is a dunning letter
from the contractor to the Lord Zouch who built
it, which shows that human nature, both in Lords
and Commons, keeps to its types. It is written
with bated breath and whispering humbleness,
not without a shrewd stintr in the tail : —

"to the rt honble the lord zouch lord
"Warden of the Cinq Ports & one of
"his Matirb Privie Councell.

" Tho humble peticion of Thomas Selby.

"Humblie shewinge to your Lordshipp that

your pcticioner hath wrought dyvr0B peeces of
work for your Lordshipp & the last peece of
worke held your poticionor on worke L6 wcekes,
• luring which tyme your I \-ticionor horded him-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 317

self. The stuffe belonging to the worke cost
20 markes for which your honor yet oweth
your peticioner and for which your peticioner is
yet indebted to dyvers men who seek daylie
to arrest your said peticioner for the same, soe
that for feare he cannot perform any busynes
whereby to get his livinge beeing restrayned of
libertie to his utter undoingo. The stuffe with
your peticioner's labor came to xxij11 as by a
particular noate on the other side, which your
peticioner (for your better satisfaccion) haith sent
your Lordshipp, which specifieth all the moneyes
that your peticioner haith receaved, the last re-
ceapt was ten pounds, six pounds whereof was for
dyvers other workes done about the house, as by
a bill appeareth, and the four pounds was taken
in part of your peticioner's bill of xxij pounds.

" Maie it thirfore please your good Lordshipp
in comiserating your poore servaunt for that
xviij1' that remaynes of your peticioners bill
due to your saide peticioner three yeares and
half. That it would please your good Lordshipp
to give order for your peticioner's satisfaccion,
& your peticioner shall be ever bound to pray
for your honors prosperous health & happines
longe to continew.

" From the Ould Jury in London

"the xxiiij Januarii 1(!19."

318 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Then follows :

" My Lord ... I humblie beseech your good
Lordshipp not to be offended with rnee in taking
of this course, for this three years I have
weighted with peticions after your Lordshipp
for iny money, and none of your gentlemen
would take my peticion to your Lordshipp nor
suffer my admittance unto you & for want of
my mony I am utterly undone. Therefore I
humblie beseech your honor that I may have
my money or that your Lordshipp will send
unto my Mr Mr Thomas Capp in the old Jury
and let him understand your Lordshipp's
pleasure; if your Lordshipp should not paie
me my necessitie is such that I must peticion
to the Kinge, and send your Lordshipp a Privie
Scale ; beseeching your Lordshipp to render my
needes, and be noe way offended wth me for
seekinge of my ownc."

11 Ik. — Dinner conversation in October has a
way of repeating itself from war to year. There
is the discussion as to which birds taste the
better, wild or maize-fed ; there is the various
descant on the lamentation " up goes a guinea
ami down comes half a crown;" and there is
the speculation whence tho 'local butcher pro-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 319

cures his excellent supply of game. To the
last discussion those who stand and wait could
contribute a few interesting particulars, for every
local poacher is thoroughly well known. My
man William, for example, tells me he saw a
rag and bone man heavily laden with fattish
rabbit-skins about 4.30 this morning, as he was
meditating at his window, " but it was none of
his business." As a rule, the local ne'er-do-wells
do no more than act as guides to the gangs
that come over from the county town. I was
much struck to-day by a sharp contrast between
the manners of East and West in regard to

hospitality. When my friend was in

Turkey, he saw a man feeding his turkeys ;
and while he was so engaged, a flock of wild
turkeys came down to feed too. The man
drove them into a shed. " What shall you do
with them ? " asked my friend ; " kill them ? "
" Kill them ? " said the man ; " they are my
guests. In the morning I shall feed them and
let them go." To-day a hunted hare took
refuge in a cottage here, where it was presently
jugged. I am far from blaming the cottager ;
I wish but to note the contrast. The Western
word " guest," philologers tell us, is connected
with " hostis."

320 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Gf. Bacon : " The inclination to goodness is
imprinted deeply in the nature of man; inso-
much that if it issue not towards men it will
take unto other living creatures ; as it is seen
in the Turks, a cruel people, who nevertheless
are kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and
birds; insomuch as, Busbechius reporteth, a
Christian boy in Constantinople had like to
have been stoned for gagging in a waggishness
a long-billed fowl." : (Of Goodness and Goodness
of Nature.)

ISth. — X., an old college friend of mine, came
down a fortnight since from Saturday to Monday,
and we found him a very pleasant companion.
He had a way of conversing easily on most
subjects, and (what is even more interesting)
of making one converse easily oneself. In the
small hours, over a pipe, I found myself telling
him many anecdotes of my past life — adven-
tures by sea and land, money losses, bereave-
ments, and what not. But since that day I am
nervous of opening a journal. I iind my anec-
dotes in the evening papers, my spiritual ex-
perience distilled into sonnets for the Weekly

1 Ali-. Harrison Weir writes to the papers to-day suggesting
••in a waggishness " that the oooh that orows in the mors
should be gagged. Perhaps Mr. Long might be Induced to
make a muzzle order (16th Augusl L898).

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 321

Observer, iny political reflections clothed in
thunder in the Daily Phonograph. My friend's
friends should be worth to him not less than
five hundred pounds a year ; but he must be
continually enlarging his circle, to allow for
shrinkage.

The newspapers are full of the Church Con-
gress. I once went to a congress before the
heyday in the blood was tame and waited upon
the judgment, but I have never repeated the
experiment, as I wish to think well of the clergy.
Is it or is it not an argument against Socialism
that people show badly in groups, especially
professional groups ? " The merriment of par-
sons " is certainly, as Dr. Johnson found it,
" mighty offensive " ; but so is a meeting of
county gentlemen to protest against sacerdotal
tyranny. I suppose, too, between a syndicate of
employers and a trades union there is not a
pennyweight to choose for the nasty things
they will do and say. And we all know " the
poor in a lump is bad." Hear the modern
mystic : " lis sont la, rassembles n'importe ou ;
et lorsqu'ils se trouvent reunis, sans qu'on sache
pourquoi, il semble que leur premier soin soit
de termer d'abord les grandes portes de la vie.

Chacun d'eux cependant, lorsqu'il etait seul, a

322 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

vecu plus d'une fois selon son aine. . . . Quand
ils sont ensemble ils aiment a s'enivrer de choses
basses. Ils ontje ne sais quelle peur etrange
de la beaute ; et plus ils sont noinbreux, plus ils
en ont peur."

16th.— More "Pot-pourri." While "doing"
my Michaelmas accounts this morning, I found
that the butter book (for we use Tom's dairy)
was half as much again as last quarter, and the
reason given by the responsible Eugenia is that
Mrs. Earle protests against economy in butter.
On referring to the passage, I find that she
suggests instead an economy in meat, and I
pointed this out to E. ; but the butcher's book
shows no proportionate diminution. This has
led me to reflect how much more infectious
extravagance is than economy. I can recollect
some half-dozen pronouncements of various
people in favour of expansion in this or that
direction, and not one in favour of retrench-
ment. I suppose we shamefacedly keep our
economies to ourselves. An intimate and im-
pocunious friend told me lie said to his wife on
their wedding-day, "Now, howover closely wo
have to cut things, we will not try to savo in
tho washing bill." Another friend cautioned
mo seriously as a young man against reading

PAGES FROM A PR I V ATE DIARY 32 3

penny papers instead of the Times. A pious
old clergyman once said to me, " I have noticed
that some people spend much brain power be-
fore every journey in making up their minds
whether to travel by first or second class. The
best rule is always to go first." My aunt warned
me, when I began to collect, never to buy cracked
china or imperfect books. And it was one of
my father's commonplaces that one must drink
sound wine and smoke good cigars. Now, I
have found all these counsels fruitful in my own
experience. On the other hand, one has to
invent one's own economies, and I have not got
much further than to use a wax taper instead of
matches, to buy my coals in the summer and
stack them for winter, never to be photographed,
and to take in the threepenny edition of Brad-
shaw instead of the sixpenny.

My father's dictum about sound wine comes
the more readily to memory as I was dining
last evening with a teetotaler who regards wine
as poison, and, I am bound to say, acts up to
his theory. He should at least dispense it in
medicine glasses. I have no prejudice against
teetotalers. We have a very flourishing (so-
called) " temperance society " in the village, and
the result is seen in the increased comfort of

324 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the cottagers. I used sometimes to show my
interest in the cause by taking the chair at a
meeting now and then, but I have given it up
since ladies have begun to appear on platforms ;
for ladies recognise no rules of the game. In
the middle of a passionate address they think
it not indecent to appeal to the chairman to set
a good example by taking the pledge. At the
last meeting I attended, a lady speaker, the wife
of a clergyman, told how her husband used
always before his evening service to eat an egg
beaten up with brandy, which made him bilious ;
but since he had left off this drunken habit, he
had also left oft his bilious attacks. This was
more than old B. could stand, for he roared
out, "Twere the egg, inarm, what made he
bilious. You tell your mister to take t' brandy
wi'out un." One of the villagers at this meet-
ing made a mysterious speech, in which he gave
as his reason for taking the pledge, that there
was only in a pint of beer as much goodness as
would lio on a shilling. I havo one story that
I used to keep in lavender for these occasions ;
I had it of the doctor. When he was walking
the hospitals, there was a brewer's drayman
who had broken bis leg, and in six weeks tho
bone had not set. So they questioned him

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 325

about his diet. " Was he accustomed to drink
beer ? " " Yes, a little." " About how much ? "
" Oh, not more than three gallons a day." So
they allowed him a couple of quarts, and the
leg began to mend at once.

.22nd. — The new Professor of Geology at
Oxford found some kind words to say in his
inaugural lecture about Dr. Plot, who wrote the
natural histories of Oxfordshire and Stafford-
shire. The latter is sought by collectors for
the beautiful plans of the great houses in
the county, but the work itself is far above
contempt. It proves the good doctor to have
been a curious observer. He has recorded, for
example, instances of the now common practice
of lip-reading by deaf people :

" But I have more wonderful passages relating
to women than any of these yet to declare,
whereof the first and strangest is of one Mary
Woodward of Hardwick in the parish of Sandon,
who loosing her hearing at about 6 years of age,
by her extraordinary ingenuity and strickt ob-
servation of the peoples lipps that convers't
with her, could perfectly understand what any
person said, though they spake so low that the
bystanders could not hear it : as has been fre-
quently experimented by the right Honorable

326 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the Lady Gerard, and divers others of her neigh-
bours now living, with whom she would go to
Church, and bring away as much of the sermon
as the most attentive hearer there ; all which
she did, not with difficulty but so much ease
and satisfaction that if one turned aside and
spake, that she could not see his lipps, she
thought herself much disobliged. Nay so very
well skill'd was she in this Art (which we may
call Labiomancy) as 'tis generally beleived
(though I could get no personall testimony of
it, some persons being dead, and others removed
into Ireland who sometimes lay with her) that
in the night time when in bed, if she might lay
but her hand on their lipps so as to feel the
motions of them, she could perfectly understand
what her bedfellows said, though it were never
so dark. For confirmation of the possibility
and truth whereof, there are many parallel His-
tories sent us from abroad, of persons that have
done the same in all particulars . . . ; " and then
fill lows a string of cases from l>orcllus, Job a
Meek'ren, Petrus a Castro, Turpius, and Casau-
bon(p. 289).

LT./A.-

"This day is called the feasl of Oriepian,

And Crispin Crispian nIimII ne'er i,r<> by

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 327

From this day to the ending of tho world
But we in it shall be remembered."

I wonder if any one but me keeps the feast of
Crispian. Good Navy Leaguers have difficulty
enough in getting people to remember Trafalgar.
The awkward thing is that you can't have a
victory without some one else having a defeat,
and too loud a nourish of trumpets might hurt
sensitive feelings across the water. Still, it is
possible to be too considerate ; our first business
lies in educating our own people, and not the
least part of education consists in praising
famous men and our fathers who begat us.
The other side can always persuade themselves
that they were betrayed, or that it was their
tyrant who was defeated, not themselves. And
we shall not grudge them the celebration of
their own victories, such as Waterloo. I
wonder if Shakespeare kept the feast of Cris-
pian. I can imagine some soldier, a matter-of.
fact person like myself, calling at New Place on
25th October, two years. after "Henry V." was
written, and being greatly shocked to find that
Shakespeare did not even know it was Agin-
court day. I suppose if persons of genius
stimulate the rest of us, we must not be too
curious as to their practising what they preach.

328 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

I remember such a one expatiating to me upon
the titles of Scott's novels, and saying of
" Peveril of the Peak " : " Now I call that a
perfect name for a romantic novel ; no one
could hear it without being bitten with an
instant wish to know all about Peveril;" and
he rhapsodised for several minutes on all that
the name suggested to him — hairbreadth es-
capes, conspirators in gloomy caverns, &c. &c.
" Tell me the story," I said, " for I am ashamed
to say I have never read it." " Nor have I,"
said my friend.

I was dozing to-night in my chair towards
eleven o'clock, when the cook rushed in, with
hair up-staring and the tongs in her hand, and
begged me to go to the back door, which was
bewitched. I took up a poker and a candle
and went to inspect. It was sufficiently curious.
The door was shaking as if it had the palsy,
and the yard-dog outside was yelping most un-
comfortably. When I drew the bolt the shak-
ing at once stopped, and there was a slight
scuflling noise. The candle cleared up the
mystery by showing a small heap of debris
where a rat had been gnawing the sill to make
a way into the house. Its body must have
pressed against the door as it worked, and so

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 329

caused the shaking. But to which of us the
rat had a message we are yet in ignorance.

27th. — We are all in woe to-day, as the great
beech has been felled. For months we had shut
our eyes to the ominous cracks and more than
ominous rot, but at last it would not do. Its
brother was blown down two years ago, and, as
the newspapers are now prophesying a gale, it
seemed good policy to choose the direction in
which the tree should fall. Our neighbours
think us a little doting in our fondness, for the
beech did not conform to the regular type. As
the two trees had stood very close together,
each had branches only on one side ; and when
the first tree was down, the other looked wild
and horrid (in the classical sense), like a tree of
Salvator Rosa's. But it was beautiful in a way
of its own, and had never looked so beautiful
as to-day in the sunlight, all on fire with crim-
son and orange and brown and green ; as it fell
the leaves shot away from it like flames.
Eugenia sketched it in water-colours just before
execution, and is going to have a frame made
for the portrait from one of the branches — a
true relic. The rest will serve, perhaps, no less
well to keep it in memory, as it should supply
fuel to a pyre for many weeks. By what looks

330 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

to us at the moment like an odd attempt at
compensation, I hear that my kinsman Beaufoy
(" foy " is fagus) was presented to-day with a
son and heir.

The first sod of the new bowlino--o;reen x was
cut this morning with due formality. I have
had good luck in my search for ornaments to
decorate it. An old house in the neighbour-
hood has just changed hands; and the new
master, being a Nabob lately returned, as the
poet says,

" Home from the rule of Oriental races,"

1 The French writer, Le Blond, already referred to, who
was a pupil of the great gardener, Le Notre, is much exor-
cised about this term bowling-green. He says of it in Mr.
James's translation, "The invention and original of the word
bowling-green [boulingrin] comes to us from England. Many
authors derive it from the English words ; namely, from
bowl, which signifies a round body, and green, which denotes
a meadow, or field of grass ; probably because of the figure
in which it is sunk, which is commonly round, and covered
wi1 h grass. Others will have it, that the word takes its name
from the large green-plots, on which they are wont to play
.it bowls in England, and for which purpose the English take
oare to keep their grass very short, and extremely smooth and
even. A boulingrin in France differs from all this," &c, and
hr goes On I" explain that, it- is only the sinking that, makes

it a boulingrin, together with the tnrf that covers it; the
hot, of course, being that bowling-greens in England were
usually sunk. After this desperate effort in philology it. is
not surprising to find our author deriving the ha-ha, or sunk
hedge, from the exclamation of surprise, oft-aTi, that breaks
from the traveller al the vista beyond.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 331

with a taste for fine art not unnaturally Oriental-
ised, has banished from the garden some very
beautiful Italian stone urns, carved with sub-
jects in relief, and these I have rescued from
an adjoining farm. They are delicately dis-
coloured, which reminds me that yesterday I
met the vicar in a coat green with age hurrying
along on his bicycle at scorching speed ; whereas
to-day I met him as neat and spruce as a new
pin. He told me he was off to town to lunch
with his publisher. " And where," I said, " were
you posting to yesterday in such breakneck
haste ? " " Oh, I had to appear before the
Schools' Association to plead for a share in the
grant to necessitous schools." Dear vicar ! how
good-natured of him to dress for the part ! I
see he too has fallen a victim to the motto
mania, and has inscribed over his door, " Ut
rniirraturus habita" — the text which so charmed
Mrs. Ewing. I wonder if the Crown or the
Bishop will take the hint. I fear neither is a
frequent visitor.

28^. — The splendid weather seems at last to
be drawing to an end; each day is " miskier"
than the last. But the few hours when the mist
clears are still glorious. As Henry Vaughan
says, " Mists make but triumphs for the day."

332 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

November 5th. — The memory of Guy Faux
seems likely to outlive that of many saints in
the calendar, whether Catholic or Positivist — a
consideration which should supply a hint to the
conservators of the old religion or the inventors
of new ones. Let them celebrate their heroes
with a bonfire ! Bonfire, say the philologers, is
bone-fire. What could be more appropriate to
the feasts of martyrs? Such fires, moreover,
would be very useful for burning up refuse,
which in our villages has a way of festering in
heaps and breeding disease. It would seem
that such fires were the custom on at least
one festival in old England: "In vigilia beati
Johannis colligunt pueri in quibusdam regi-
onibus ossa et quoedam alia immunda, et insimul
cremant " (Brand's " Antiquities," i. 298). The
" Guy " in our village varies from year to year.
When the Liberal party is in office it is apt to
be the Premier, or some other prominent Minis-
ter; this year it was a local personage. The
pyre burned splendidly, aud had the usual
maddening effect on the spectators. The bigger
boys leaped through the flames like the old
Moloch worshippers, and once two of them,
jumping from opposite sides, mot in the middle
and nearly made a bone-fire of it in erim

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 333

earnest. The younger imps had furnished
themselves with besom stumps dipped in tar,
which they flourished like male Maenads.
Indeed, one could almost have imagined one-
self in a college quadrangle at Oxford after a
bump supper.

6th. — A magnificent day for colour. Walking
eastwards about four o'clock I met a regiment
of some thousand lapwings at drill. Their
evolutions were very skilful, from line to
column, and from column to line. The level
rays of the sun, as the birds circled overhead,
struck on their cuirasses and made them shine
like gold.

When the elements were mixed in me, the
ingredients were omitted that go to make a
partisan. I feel my deficiency whenever G. pays
me a visit, for his friends are always in the
right, his foes always in the wrong, any deed
being but a colourless abstraction apart from
the doer. Words follow much the same law,
especially if they are humorous. We had the
vicar and a few of our more literate neighbours
to meet him. At dinner I defended some
paradox, no matter what, and was rather
severely handled ; but G. afterwards congratu-
lated me on the admirable manner in which,

334 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

as host, I left the advantage to my guests.
The compliment was quite undeserved, but I
liked it all the same.

There seems to be a movement afoot just
now for preserving wild creatures of all sorts
by making paradises for them, but I hear of no
paradise for insects. And yet they too tend to
extinction. The ivy round our old houses does,
of course, a great deal towards preserving
certain species, such as wasps and spiders,
but these are still plentiful. The hornet, how-
ever, is growing quite scarce in Berkshire.
When I was a child they were common
enough. I remember my father's old gardener
suffering severely from a sting. He brushed
a bevy away from a jargonelle pear tree with
his hat, but unhappily one stayed inside for
purposes of revenge, and as old Northway's
head was bald, the creature had a walk over.
The hornet also used to figure in a moral poem
I was taught when a youngster, as quite the
natural playmate of childhood. It ran some-
thing like this :

"O mother, 1 told him tho hornet would sting him,
Which ho from tho hedge of tho garden w:is bringing.
But ho would not attend bo one word I waa Baying,
And now In; is screaming with pain."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 335

Perhaps it comes in a poem by the Misses
Taylor. I have searched for it in vain in Mr
E. V. Lucas's " Book of Verses for Children "
a charming collection, in which I am glad to
see a return to the old-fashioned strait-laced
children's poems. Parents had grown too shy
of Struwelpeter, and the prompt and awful fate
of the wicked in the " Cautionary Stories " of
Elizabeth Turner, forgetting that children can
purge their passions by these, as their elders by
"Hamlet" or "Macbeth." Here, for instance,
is a couple of stanzas on " Repentance," not in
Mr. Lucas, which do more for a baby's morals
than calling upon him to hear sermons :

" 'Tis not enough to say
' I'm sorry and repent,'
And then go on from day to day
Just as you always went.

Repentance is to leave

The sins you did bofore,
And show that you in earnest grieve

By doing them no more."

How clean and incisive it is — "Just as you
always went " !

10th. — I have been giving my household
lately an address now and again upon patriot-
ism, taking occasion by any stimulating report
from India. This morning I learn that the

336 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

garden-boy has walked into Reading to enlist.
Of course I am willing to spare his services to
the country, but I should have preferred his
giving rne warning in the ordinary way, so that
I might look out for a substitute. But that, I
know, would have been contrary to local eti-
quette, which directs that when a boy takes
his hand from the plough, he should go off to
the depot without looking back. No doubt, if
young men spoke of their intention beforehand,
fathers and mothers would in most cases exert
pressure to keep them at home. This secret
enlisting presents a curious parallel to the
usual mode of joining the Church of Rome
— a resemblance of which I can imagine the
late Cardinal Newman making very effective
use.

I have been reading lately the poems of that
forgotten worthy and patriot, Edmund Waller,
whose name is known to young ladies as the
author of "Go, lovely rose." His patriotism was
of that liner sort which is above party. He was
the cousin of Hampden and related to Cromwell,
and was employed by Parliament to negotiate
with Charles ; the negotiation became known
as " Waller's plot to seize London for the King,"
for which adventure he was lined .CI 0,000 and

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 337

banished. His panegyric on Cromwell is a fine
piece of writing, finer than his welcome to
Charles II., as that monarch did not fail to
point out to him. He comes to mind now as
the writer of some spirited verses to the King
on the English Navy :

" We are most happy who can fear no force
But winged troops or Pegasean horse.
Tis not so hard for greedy foes to spoil
Another nation as to touch our soil.
Should Nature's self invade the world again
And o'er the centre spread the liquid main,
Thy power were safe, and her destructive hand
Would but enlarge the bounds of thy command ;
Thy dreadful fleet would style thee lord of all
And ride in triumph o'er the drowned ball."

Dr. Johnson called these lines " so noble, that
it were almost criminal to remark the mistake
of 'centre' for 'surface,' or to say that the
empire of the sea would be worth little if it
were not that the waters terminate in land."
By " centre " Waller means the earth as centre
of the universe.

I came on a curious passage in a letter of
Mrs. Waller's to her banished son about the
marriage of his daughter. She wishes to know
what dowry he is prepared to give. " I am not
in hast to mary hir, she is yong enough to stay,
but the danger is if she should catch the small

338 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

poxe or hir beauty should change, it would be
a great lose to hir." Everybody is familiar
with the frequent references to small-pox in the
letters and memoirs of the seventeenth century.
Pepys is full of it ; but I have never met a
passage that brings so keenly home to one the
nearness of the risk.1

11th. — I went up to town to see my tailor,
and called in at my hatter's to have a mourning
band removed. The shopman remonstrated:
" Hatbands are fashionable just now, sir."
" Oh," I said, " you refer to Court mourning."
" Oh dear no, sir ; hatbands have been fashion-
able all this season." So it seems young gentle-
men still, as in Shakespeare's time, can be sad
as night only for wantonness !

My sister Charlotte was in distress at having
to change her butler, and she fancied the new
man had already begun to take liberties. " So,"

1 Would it not be possible for an Anti-anti-Vaccination
Society to issue a small pamphlet containing select passages
from our older literature about small-pox as it used to be ?
Copies might be sent to all magistrates for free presentation
to the conscientious, who come before them to swear under
the new Act, The brochure might collect some of the epitaphs
on those carried off by this plague, which abound in our
cathedrals and older parish churches. In the Little Cloisters
at We ttniti. t«i . for example, is a tablet to Mr. Tho. Smith,
Bach, of Arts, late of Oh. Ch. Oxford, who through y

spotted vaile of ye small 1'ox rendered a pure & Vnspotted
tool to God, March M>, L66f, cetatit sun 21,

PAGES FltOM A PRIVATE DIARY 339

said she, " I gave him a lesson last night. He
did not offer me cheese at dinner ; so I said,
' John, where is the cheese V 'I thought you
did not take cheese, ma'am.' ' Briny it.' And
when he brought it, I said, ' No, thank you.' I
don't think he will forget." Charlotte told me
she was glad to observe that more attention was
being paid to heraldry. " I hate to see widows
prancing about with their husbands' crests on
their harness."

I searched for a wedding present for K. I
saw a lovely Sheffield-plated urn, which I would
have bought if I were not certain she would
confuse it with electro-plate. If I were only a
little older I could be eccentric, like the lady
who, according to the papers, gave a brooch
with " Granny " in diamonds. There would be
some fun in that ; the expectant grandchild
would be in such a delicious quandary. Odi et
cvmo. My own dear grandmother was almost
too eccentric at the time of our marriage ; she
had promised us our house linen, and talked
so much about it beforehand that she came
to think she had given it, and would not be
undeceived.

V2tk. — I walked with the vicar, who told me
some anecdotes of an ordination examination.

340 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

The best was this : The question was, " State
what you know of Christianity in Britain before
Augustine ? " and the answer, " Before the corn-
ing of Julius Cassar, B.C. 55, there was practically
no Christianity in Britain." The " practically "
is good. On our walk we met the station-
master of a neighbouring village, who gave me
a military salute with his right hand and raised
his left three inches to the vicar. " Why does
he treat you to such maimed rites ? " I asked.
" It puzzles me," said the vicar, " as it is neither
Saturday nor Monday. On these days he is full
of the sermon he has delivered or is to deliver
at Bethel, and smiles on me as a fellow-augur.
But on other days he gives me his full courtesy
as one of his masters, the general public." At
the station we heard that the good man had
resigned his position on the railway to devote
himself to the cure of souls.

We talked of the "Golden Treasury." I
thought Mr. Palgrave's "Lectures on Land-
scape in Poetry " a much better book ; but it
did not hit an especially happy moment, like
the "Golden Treasury," and would never be
popular, as the public does not, cure for criti-
cism. The changes in the various editions of
the " Treasury " are an interesting study. It

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 341

was originally issued in 1861. Sidney was not
recognised until 1883, nor was Cowper's " Cast-
away," his finest poem. In 1891 appeared for
the first time Coleridge's " Kubla Khan,"
Vaughan's "They are all gone into the world
of light," Marvell's " Picture of little T. C,"
and "Nymph and Fawn," and ten poems
of Campion, besides Habington, Lord Essex,
Greene, Lord Rochester, Norris of Bemerton,
and Lyte, all hitherto unrepresented, and all
unnecessary. The defect of the book as a
selection is that beginning with an aversion
to anything eccentric, which justifiably ex-
cluded Donne, it lapsed too often into a
tolerance of the commonplace. There is an
extravagant over - proportion of matter from
Wordsworth (who has forty - three poems),
Campbell, Scott, Moore, and the minor Scotch
poets. To point the moral more clearly, ad-
ditions to the long tale of Wordsworth were
made room for by excisions from Shelley. " A
Widow Bird " and " Life of Life " disappeared
in 1891. The representation of several poets —
notably Blake, Keats, Campion, Carew — is really
misrepresentation. But when all deductions are
made, the book must be reckoned to have
thoroughly deserved its success.

342 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

15th. — Curiosity is a well-marked trait in
most of the higher mammals. The new trees
I have planted this season, some red oaks and
a maple (Schwedleri), have been objects of
careful investigation to the cows and horses,
and our new bowling-green is exciting just as
much interest among our own species. Some
of the neighbours make a circuit, as they can,
to the front door, by way of the garden, in order
to inspect it ; some, indeed, having inspected,
forget to proceed to the front door. In the

village it is spoken of as 's new pond. I

have a tenderness for curiosity, holding with
Coleridge that it is at the root of all philosophy
and all science. I remark, however, that the
persons most curious about my affairs are the
most reticent about their own. I suppose this
is only a particular example of the general law
that a habit of spending rarely coexists with a
habit of getting.

Three weeks of fine weather have finished the
excavation ; the turf has been rolled down the
sides, and we are now waiting for the brick
paths to l»c made before putting in the bulbs.
And wo shall probably have to wait till spring.

For tho big house that is building at for

the gentleman from town, in addition to spoil-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 343

ing all our roads by the daily passage of traction
engines, has engrossed all the local bricklayers.
This is excellent sport for them, but hard on
the casual employer. As a rule, in our part
of the country such contracts are liberally con-
strued, and we borrow workmen from each other
for an hour or a day ; but the gentleman from
town has no knowledge of our primitive ways,
and sticks to his pound of flesh. Nor would I
blame him, for sometimes a bricklayer will have
half-a-dozen jobs going at once. He will half
unroof the church, and then go and half buttress
the meeting-house ; from this he will be called
off to make a pit at the manor or new steyne a
well at the vicarage. While he is busy there
Tom's bailiff, who is "the Master," will fetch
him off to lath and plaster a cottage wall ; and
when that is done he will work gently round
the other jobs, with an occasional new one
interspersed. Perhaps I may be able to get
my friend X., who is an amateur bricklayer,
to put in a day with the trowel when he is
tired of the gun.

Eugenia, who suddenly perverted from Mrs.
Earle to Mr. Inigo Thomas, has been insisting
of late that we must have peacocks on the
terrace, like those in his drawing of Risley

344 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Hall.1 I do not like peafowl as gardeners,
nor does Brown; but I must allow that those
Eugenia has begged from her grandmother
have given us little trouble so far. Not that
they have remained on the terrace in the
graceful attitudes illustrated in Mr. Thomas's
picture, but that they have taken themselves
off altogether to Tom's farm, where they adorn
the great central midden. Once a day Brown
fetches them home, one under each arm, and at
once they begin a stately march back again. 1
think after this I shall believe, what people
often tell one, that no quality is so mistakingly
imputed as pride.

The fall of the leaf has revealed on many
trees the encroachments of ivy, and I have
been walking round the place with a knife. It
is curious that, notwithstanding all the home
truths that foresters and poets tell of the ivy, it
should be still allowed in so many parks to hurt
and disiigure the elms. Tom unkindly says that
when on an estate you see ivy having its own
w;iy, it is at once a sign and a symbol that the
lady rules the manor.

1 Bee "The Formal Garden in England." ByBlomfleld

;iiul Thomas.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 345

liJtJt. — Sophia overheard the following dia-
logue at a registry office : —

Lady. Are you Church of England ?

Maid. No, ma'am.

Lady. Roman Catholic ?

Maid. No, ma'am.

Lady. Wesleyan, perhaps ?

Maid. No, ma'am.

Lady. May I ask, then, what you are ?

Maid. Please, ma'am, I belong to the church
at Caversham.

This individualising tendency is an English
instinct, and accounts not only for the existence
of the Church of England, but also for the two
hundred and odd sects tabulated in Whitaker.
The last time Disestablishment was in the air,
I was told by an old fellow that he would like

the church disestablished at P , but not at

S .

18th. — "Conventions are the rudimentary
organs of duties. The duty of brotherly love
dwindles into the convention of leaving one's
visiting-card at a neighbour's house, just as the
old-fashioned duty of burning one's enemy
dwindled into burning his name on a piece of
paper. In particular, the duty of ' visiting the
sick ' survives in the convention of ' calling to

346 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

inquire/ and, if the sick are persons of import-
ance, writing your name in a book for the press
to copy." These sombre reflections, which I
have written in my " Pilgrim's Scrip," were
suggested by a visit I have just paid to my
sister, who is recovering from a slight illness.
I found at the house a young and fashionable
lady, engaged in making apologies for her
mother, who was a near neighbour, and "had
been so much occupied all the week with her
housekeeping, and to-day was so busy arranging
her flowers, that she had really found no time
to call." I was greatly tickled. It was plain
the maternal conscience was so far instructed
as to have heard of the duty of visiting the
sick, but not so far as to understand that if a
thing was a duty at all, time must be found for
it. As to any useful object that a visit might
serve, it was out of her horizon. The duty, in
short, was merely a convention. In the course
of conversation with the elegant daughter, I
assured her that not visiting the sick, so far
from needing any apology, was the only rational
course to pursue. The phrase "to visit," I ex-
plained, does not mean " to make a call," but
"to tako care of"; and I pointed out how op-
posed it is to the principles of medical science

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 347

to go into the same room with a person suffer-
ing from any infectious disease, such as a cold.
" In our village," I said, " we reconcile religion
and science by leaving little vessels of tisane
at each other's doors, and hurrying away as
fast as possible." As a matter of fact I am
myself a little old-fashioned, both in my science
and my religion, and I continue to pay visits
even to people who have colds ; only I make a
point of not doing it as a duty ; because, so far
as I can see, the only object of such a visit is to
cheer the spirits of your patient, which it fails
to do so soon as it is perceived you are calling
from conscientious motives. I find that the
best way to raise a person's cheerfulness, if the
ailment be only slight, is to take a gloomy view
of it. People hate to have it assumed that
they are better, or even to be asked if they are
better ; they hate, if they have broken a tendon
in a bicycling accident, to be told how easily it
might have been a bone ; or if on the top of this
they have taken influenza, to be congratulated
on the rest in bed, which is just what the leg
required. And indeed to play the superior
person with an invalid is really to steal from
him the moral advantage of his situation. He
knows what bright side there may be to the

348 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

case better than you do, but he is feeling the
dark side, and what he asks is a little sym-
pathy ; and when, having enjoyed that, it is
time to waive it away and erect himself above
the calamity, why, the moral advantage lies
with him, as it should.

207/t. — I was looking this morning at the fine
colour everywhere, bright in the foreground,
and fading into a fairy-like distance ; and I was
groping round my mind for some fit expression
of that fairy world, when there leapt to memory
the familiar line —

" Tis distanco londs onchantment to the view."

I believe this is the first time I have real-
ised what the poet meant by " enchantment."
At this rate, before I die I may be able to
appreciate "To be or not to be." I have boon
reading "Hamlet" lately, and trying to recover
the sharpness of first impressions. How strange
and unlike anything else in literature is the
"Ghost Ixiicdtli, Swear!" Shakespeare must
have enjoyed it as a new thrill ; and Hamlet's
queer speeches and hysteria in that scene must,
have born more puzzling to his audience- tin n
than QOW. They must have boon set down
purely for the self-indulgence of Shakespeare

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 349

himself — indeed, like half Hamlet says. One
of the best things said yet about " Hamlet " is
to be found in a back number of the Pall Mali
Gazette, by " An Old Playgoer," who was
Matthew Arnold. " Shakespeare created ' Ham-
let ' with, his mind running on Montaigne, and
placed its action and its hero in Montaigne's
atmosphere and world. What is that world ?
It is the world of man viewed as a being
ondoyant et divers, balancing and indeter-
minate, the plaything of cross-motives and
shifting impulses, swayed by a thousand subtle
influences, physiological and pathological. Cer-
tainly the action and the hero of the original
' Hamlet ' story are not such as to compel the
poet to place them in this world and no other ;
but they admit of being placed there ; Shake-
speare resolved to place them there, and they
lent themselves to his resolve. The resolve
once taken to place the action in the world of
problem, the problem became brightened by all
the force of Shakespeare's faculties, of Shake-
speare's subtlety. ' Hamlet ' thus comes at last
to be not a drama followed with perfect com-
prehension and profoundest emotion, which is
the ideal for tragedy, but a problem soliciting
interpretation and solution " (October 23, 1884).

350 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Let me jot down here a question proposed to
be set in a college examination : " From the
characters of Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia,
deduce that of Mrs. Polonius."

24dh. — Middle-aged men like myself are often
haunted by the notion that in some factitious
way they can raise the value of the libraries
they leave behind them. The most childlike
method I ever heard of was that of my neigh-
bour at , who wrote across the title-page of

every volume, " This is a scarce and valuable
work." But his device did not take in the
local tradesmen who assisted at the auction.
If a man is a poet or painter, and is sure of
dying before his boom is over, let him write his
name in every book. Else " the eftest way " is
to buy a book-plate of Mr. Sherborn. Annota-
tion tends to depreciation ; I know it well ; but
no bad habit so grows upon a man. To-day
I made two entries in my copy of Bacon's
"Essays" to No. xlix., Of Suitors. On the
words " Timing of suits is the principal," I say :
"If you know a great person to have something
against you, of which in consideration of your
services he is loth to speak, make your request
then, as he will probably grant it as a cover to
his complaint." On the rule iniquum petas ut

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 351

cequum feras, which might be rendered, " Ask
more than your due to get your own," I note
that an Oxford scholar of my acquaintance, if
he wished a valuable book to be taken from the
Bodleian Library into the Radcliffe Reading-
room that he might continue reading it after
the library was closed, used to begin by asking
leave for some unique manuscript, and when
that was refused, a book somewhat less valu-
able, coming gradually down a scale and being
refused with less emphasis, until he reached the
book which alone he wanted, when he would
say, " At least you can have no objection to my
taking this."

In Lamb's essay, which he entitles " Detached
Thoughts on Books," he makes several strictures
as to the form, folio or octavo, in which certain
works should be read. On this I comment :
" I knew a clergyman once ('tis true he was
also a baronet), who used to read his Thomas a
Kempis in a Bodoni folio, and a vellum paper
copy at that ; a truly magnificent way of de-
spising the world." One notices that Lamb cares
nothing for first editions as such ; he even pooh-
poohs the first folio of Shakespeare, a copy of
which my fingers still tingle from handling.
What would he have thought of a young lad

352 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

whom I heard ask at a bookseller's for " Three
Men in a Boat " (or some such title), adding,
" I should prefer it in a first edition ! " What
would he have said, too, of the folk who put
handsome volumes into handsome book-cases,
and leave them there for a quarter of a century
without removing the auction tickets !

2Qth. — I heard to-day a story from the Educa-
tion Office. An inspector was asked why he had
charged so much for his fare between two places
when as the crow flies it was only so many miles.
He replied, " I do not ride a crow."

29th. — The sale at Sotheby's of some letters
written by Sir Philip Francis has revived an
ancient controversy. I once knew an old gentle-
man living at Windsor, who thought he had
discovered a satisfactory proof of the Franciscan
authorship of the " Letters of Junius." He
would take his victim with great solicitude
into St. George's Chapel and point to a tablet
erected to the memory of the Anglo-Saxon
scholar Francis Junius ; and then would pro-
ceed to a demonstration how on certain days
Francis m/ust have been in the chapel, and
iinisl hiivo seen the tablet, and so doubtless
adopted the name.

December •""''/. — I have had another letter

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 353

from iny young journalist friend asking for
advice in his matrimonial difficulties. His wife
comes of a stock not much given to the con-
templative life, but full of practical energy,
which in her case has not large resources of
physical strength to draw upon. The conse-
quence is that when she herself is weary with
much coming and going, the sight of her hus-
band calmly driving a quill irritates her nerves
and is apt to cause a discharge. I have ven-
tured to suggest a homoeopathic remedy: that
a writing-table be provided for the dear lady—
as handsome a one as means will afford — and
that she be persuaded to attempt a novel.
This should act as a counter-irritant for over-
worked feelings, and might at the same time
tend to create a respect for the labour of litera-
ture. The servants might be encouraged, for
the first few days, to burst into the room with
messages from the butcher and baker and
candlestick-maker, whenever she was quietly
settled to work, and in this way create an un-
derstanding of the conditions necessary for the
practice of letters. The other symptoms were,
I fear, beyond my skill to prescribe for. " What
can I do when dear X., after an outburst which

reduces me to pulp, wonders why I am so

354 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

glum ; or, if I arn a little silent at meals, stimu-
lates me by a ' Why don't you say something ? '
a question which at once makes my mind a
blank." The only thing to do in this case, I
feel sure, would be to put the matter as deli-
cately as possible before the lady herself. I
suggested making her a present of an album,
in which from time to time some ideal Chloris
or Lala^e might be blamed for similar betises,
or, better, praised for their absence. To open
the volume, I sent the following pieces, the
first in the manner of Waller, the second in
that of Donne : —

"TO C03LIA.

" Ccxilia, I wonder and admire

That though a short hour since you frowned,
Chiding, as Boreas were your sire,
So chill the gust, so fierce the sound ;

Now bright as sunshine and as fair

Your halcyon1 face does soothe and hless,

As with a mild engaging air

Sou question of my pensiveness.

So the other Heaven, her anger spent,
Emerges from the cloudy tent
Suddenly splendid and serene,
\ qo disfiguring storm had been.
For her 'tis past, for men not so ;

Whose ways long weeks are choked with snow."

1 I am aware that Wallei would have accented " baloyon
on i he penult Ltnate.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 355

The second piece might be entitled " To his
contrarious mistress, who bade him talk."

" If our souls are the hemispheres

Of one vast world, our love, it is but fate
That the same sun should light and dark create,
Thy smiles accompany my tears ;
And if to bright
Night turn at last, day cannot but turn night,
While the earth's revolution makes the years.

As the same vocable ' Let be '

Both ' fiat ' is and ' finis ' ; both the call

That wakes the spring and hush that shuts up all ;

So fares it, Love, with thee and me !
So thy meant yea
Sounds in my willing heart a chilling nay ;

Thoughts bud not out, shake not their petals free.

15th. — The judgment of the House of Lords
in Allen v. Flood has been rapturously wel-
comed by all trades unions, and not least by
the honourable order of baronets, now on
strike. It is believed in well-informed circles
that many will now resign their positions if
any further increase is made in their number.
Every one must allow that the baronets h;ivo
been in some respects hardly used ; but as
ancient philologers derive their title from the
Greek /3apu<? (heavy), and more modern ones
from the root of the verb to bear, it would look
as if they were born to sorrow. They com-

356 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

plain that King James, to whom they owe
their foundation, promised for himself and his
heirs that the whole number of baronets should
never exceed two hundred, and should gradu-
ally decrease as the first creations became ex-
tinct ; whereas there are now no less than eight
hundred. If a sufficient number take advan-
tage of the new decision to throw up their
patents, this grievance would at once be reme-
died. But that, of course, would not bind the
future action of the Crown. Might not a peti-
tion be presented urging the Queen to follow
her ancestor's example and create a new order,
leaving the baronets to the distinction and
extinction they desire ? It is true that King
J nines pledged himself and his successors to
create no new dignity below a baron, but very
little regard has been paid to his other pledges,
and this deserves no more respect; or, if it
does, it would be possible to create a degree
equal to baronet with a somewhat different
title, such as ha riinclc, allowing it the same
honourable particle Sir lor prefix.

Another complaint made is, that many of the
recent creations are of people who have risen to
fori one in commerce, whereas English etiquette
allows no trading for gentlefolk below the rank

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 357

of marquis. But such a complaint rests upon a
misconception of the original purpose of the
order. The first instructions to the commis-
sioners do certainly require candidates to have
had at least a grandfather, but they lay much
more stress on the amount of their incomes ;
and in the original patent hardly a word is said
about blood, and a good deal about wealth.
This is how it runs :

"James, by the grace of God, &c, greeting.
Whereas among the other cares of sovereignty
with which our mind is constantly exercised,
that neither is the least nor of least moment,
the plantation of our kingdom in Ireland, and
chiefly of Ulster, a large and famous province
of the same kingdom, which now under our
government and by our arms being happily
subdued, we endeavour so to establish that so
great a province should more and more flourish
not only in the true practice of religion, civil
humanity, and probity of manners, but also in
an affluence of riches and abundance of all
things which contribute either to the ornament
or happiness of the commonweal ; . . . and
whereas it is intimated unto us, on the part
of certain of our faithful subjects, that I hey are
most ready as well witli their persons as their

358 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

fortunes to promote this our royal undertaking,
we moved with a desire of accomplishing so
holy and wholesome a work, and fondly regard-
ing such generous inclinations and minds so
addicted to our service and the public good,
have resolved with ourselves to be wanting in
nothing which may reward the aforesaid good
will of our subjects, or excite a spirit and
alacrity in others to perform their parts, and
furnish their expenses upon this occasion;
therefore, weighing and considering with our-
selves that virtue and industry are cherished
and supported by nothing more than by honour,
and that all the splendour and amplitude of
honour and dignity take their rise from a King,
as from a fountain, to whose high prerogative
it properly belongs to erect and institute new
titles of honour and dignity, as he from whom
the old ones floAved; we have thought proper
(the service of the commonwealth and the exi-
gence of the times so requiring) to reward new
merits with new ensigns of dignity; and there-
fore of our certain knowledge and mere motion
we have ordained, erected, constituted, and
created a certain state, degree, dignity, name,
and title of Baronet within this our kingdom of
England, for ever to endure," &c. The patent

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 359

then goes on to say that A. B., "who with a
generous and liberal mind gave and yielded to
us a relief and supply ample enough to main-
tain and support thirty men in our foot forces
in our said kingdom of Ireland for three entire
years," shall " by these presents " be raised,
appointed, and created a Baronet.

The price, that is to say, of the first baronet-
cies was £1095. Application was to be made
any Wednesday or Friday afternoon at White-
hall, and the sooner the better, as there were
only a limited number to be disposed of ; and
to quiet scoffers, " because there is nothing of
honour, or of value, which is known to be sought
or desired, be the motives never so good, but
may receive scandal from some, who wanting
the same good affection to the public, or being
in other considerations incapable, can be con-
tented, out of envy to those that are so pre-
ferred, to cast aspersions and imputations upon
them, as if they came by this dignity for any
other consideration but that which concerneth
this so public and memorable a work," the com-
missioners were to allow the new baronet to
take an oath that he had not paid for his
dignity more than the market price.

It is interesting, in view of the recent agi-

360 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

tation, to notice that within a year of the
establishment of the order, the baronets were
out on strike, owing to precedence being ac-
corded over them to the younger sons of vis-
counts and barons.

The present list of complaints is a long one.
Besides those I have noticed, one of the most
interesting is the protest of the Home Rule
baronets against being compelled to bear the
" bloody hand " of Ulster.

20tJt. — I notice in the magazines that there
has been a discussion about the reality of
" dowsing " or discovering water by the divin-
ing rod. One wonders how the fact can be in
debate when it is a lucrative profession. Mr. M.,
who is the only " dowser " I have seen, is gene-
rally accurate in his estimate of the depth at
which water will be found, so much so that he
is ready to contract for the required well on the
simple understanding "no water, no money."
I have a friend, not in the " dowsing " line of
business, who experiences very curious sensa-
tions when he crosses water — I do not mean in
a boat — even in the dark when the water is
not visible. And everybody knows how averse
those sensitive creatures donkeys are to crossing
ream.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 361

A lady who " has read with interest ray re-
marks on the need of comforting the sick by
taking a gloomy view of their condition," writes
to tell me that it was her invariable custom
when her late husband was at all seriously in-
disposed to read the Burial Service to him ! I
confess I was thinking of minor ailments.

21st, — There is no contagion so inevitable
as that of ideas; and therefore when an idea
once — which is seldom — gets into our village
it spreads. The current idea at the present
moment is garden improvement. The vicar is
anxious to formalise the vicarage garden, and
as it was made about two centuries aero, it
would not be difficult to reduce it to its old
lines. But one thing is indispensable, and that
is time ; and I warn the vicar that before the
yew hedges are grown the Church will be dis-
established. Being a man of faith, he will pro-
bably reject my advice, which is to plant privet
instead. Privet is as susceptible to the knife as
yew, and if my memory serves me it was the
material, according to Du Bartas, of the hedges
in the Garden of Eden. They were clipped, too,
according to the same authority, in the extreme
of the fashion —

" In satyrs, centaurs, whales, and half-men-horses."

362 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

There is, however, an even chance that nothing
will be done at all. For the lady of the vicarage,
who has her own garden gods, one of whom is
by name Robinson, has discovered in the early
chapters of his sacred work an attack upon
formalists. Eugenia was shown, when she last
called, a passage where her own idols, Messrs.
Blomfield and Thomas, were spoken of as no
better than they should be. This is the in-
evitable consequence of making a religion of
what is purely a matter of taste. Mr. Robinson
appeals to nature} But weeds are as natural
as flowers. A la\4n left to nature would soon
become a meadow. A hedge left to nature
would become monstrous and useless because
pervious. A well-grown yew-tree is undoubtedly
a beautiful object, but a yew clipped intelli-
gently is quite as beautiful, and if a tree will
clip it is not unnatural to clip it. A garden
given up to "topiary" work, such as Levens,
is dull enough ; but nothing could be finer or
more majestic (say) than the green court at
Canons Ashby (Sir H. Dryden's), with its double
line of cone-clipped yews, each ten feet in dia-
meter. I suppose they are two hundred years
old ; in which case glorious John may have seen
llioin planted, when In- visited at liis uncle's;

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 363

Richardson, at any rate, must have speculated
on their chances of survival to a green old age,
for he was a frequent guest. But Mr. Robinson,
I presume, would not deign a glance at such
deplorable distortion.

22nd. — In all our digging the treasure-trove
was nil, but to-day in cutting down an ancient
hedge we came upon a set of quoits. Quoits
would in old days have been as common a game
at the farm as bowls were at the vicarage,1 or
cock-fighting in the churchyard. I am not, as
a rule, lucky in finding thing* not having long
sight, and not having contracted the Mammon-
like habit of walking with my eyes on the
ground. One hears such marvellous tales of
things being found after many days by their
losers, that one half fancies the fairies may have
something to do with the whole process. Is not
this, for instance, a Puckish trick ? An old
friend of mine, who lived in Manchester, lost
the stone out of his signet ring, and found it in
the street, but not until he had had another
engraved. Sometimes the fairy is more kind.

1 Of. Costard of Sir Nathaniel: " There, an't shall please
you ; a foolish mild man ; an honest man, look you, and
soon dashed I He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith ;
and a very good bowler." ("Love's Labour's Lost," v. 2, 587.)

364 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

I know of a lady who has a bad habit of
dropping a ring as she gets into her carriage to
go out to dinner, and always finds it when she
reaches home. The gift, as one would expect,
sometimes runs in families. P.'s father found a
gold coin (Roman) ; he himself found a silver
shilling of Edward VI. ; and his infant son re-
cently picked up a halfpenny in copper, or, as
the police say, "bronze." Now, I suppose, the
virtue will have departed from the fairy-gift.
It is interesting to observe that this familiar
scale of metals is, therefore, not merely human
and conventional, but has a validity in the ideal
world. As Sophia and I approach nearer to our
golden wedding, I see more and more reason for
emphasising its genuinely metallic aspect. It
is a pure fiction of the poets, and bears its refu-
tation on its face, that the so-called golden ago
was the ago before the discovery of gold. But
this is to digress ; I was speaking of finds. My
esteemed friend and neighbour, the late rector

of , told me he once found in a newly

ploughed field a coin he could not identify. It
was of pewter, and bore a trireme on one sido
and <»n tli«' oilier a head. He kept it for years
in his cabinet, and exhibited it from time to
time to many antiquaries, who all pronounced

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 365

it unique. One day he saw some little boys in
his own parish playing with new coins precisely
similar. They were called " dumps " and came
from Birmingham.

It is rather unkind of the reporters to say
that the skull of Voltaire, recently exhumed,
was recognised by its sneer, for skulls have no
choice. And Voltaire was always so emaciated,
that his sneer was probably the natural sneer of
his skull. Still it suited his temper admirably ;
as his friend, Dr. Young (the author of " Night
Thoughts "), put it, referring to their contro-
versy on the merits of the Sin and Death
episode in " Paradise Lost " :

" You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once wo think you Milton, Death, and Sin."

It is extraordinary how Englishmen of all
classes have lost the taste and the capacity for
keeping festivals. To turn over the pages of
"Brand's Popular Antiquities" is to lose one-
self in a foreign land ; one wonders how our
forefathers, who practised all these elaborate
customs, found time to do anything else. We
still deck our houses and churches with ever-
greens at Christmas, but among evergreens we
do not discriminate. The beautiful carol of the

366 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

contest between the holly and ivy,1 first printed
by Ritson from a MS. of Henry VI.'s reign,
would be unmeaning to us ; at least, I know I
was asked to save all the ivy I had stripped off
my trees to help decorate the church. But
quotations given in Brand from churchwardens'
accounts show that ivy was used for church
decoration as early as the sixteenth century ;
in 1656 we have mention of yew, and in 1734
of cypress. Probably it saved trouble to fetch
branches into church from the churchyard.
But what becomes of the symbolism ?

January 1st, 1898. — "Semper ego auditor
tantum, nunquamne reponam ? " Am I to be
besieged with New Year's greetings and not
return the compliment ? Christmas cards I
will never send: no, not even in revenge; and
I have a hope the custom may soon die now
i hat hospitals and foreign missions (as I am
informed) have declined any longer to relieve
the British household of its last year's hoard.
Perhaps this accounts for the new form they
are taking. Instead of "herald angels" (who
really, the Vicar tolls us, ought not to be

1 " Nay, ivy, nay ; it shall not be, I wis ;

I, ci bolly bare bbe mastery, as the manner is.

Holly Stand in the hall, fair to behold ;

iw stand with. nit, the door, .she is full sore a-oold,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 367

"herald angels" at all, but a "welkin"), and
instead of the merry hunter out with the
hounds in a hard frost, the postman now
brings the good wishes of Mr. and Mrs. Jones
embossed in gold with a smudgeograph of
the new baby. But this must surely be the
beginning of the end. The New Year seems
to offer greater scope to the fancy. One
friend signalises the season with a Pindarique
Ode of his own compounding ; another with a
calendar of his particular saints and worthies ;
another — and this is what has haunted me —
with a text by way of motto. As the New
Year approaches I find myself uneasily fore-
casting whether it shall be Carlyle, or Sir
Thomas Browne, or Ruskin, that must guide
my pained steps through the fresh year of
grace, and whether the motto will be printed
in violet or magenta.1

To-night I gave a little feast to the village
handbell ringers. The talk was very interest-
ing ; but all I remember was a literary judg-
ment on Shakespeare. Somebody praised " The
Merchant of Venice," but P. dissented. He

1 The postman has resolved the doubt. It is Bacon, and
in scarlet, as befits a Lord Chancellor. This year my mind
is to "move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon
the poles of truth." It makes me giddy to think of it.

368 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

thought poor old Shylock very hardly used.
His favourite play was " Hamlet." There was
no favouritism in that. Shakespeare killed a
man on one side and then killed one on the
other ; gave this fellow a slap in the face, and
then that other a punch in the ribs. For in-
sight this is worthy of G. B. S.

4^ . — I noted some weeks ago 1 the departure
of my garden-boy for the crusades, but by an
oversight I did not record his return. I went
for my usual stroll round the garden after
break last three days later, and found the young
hopeful digging away as if nothing had hap-
pened. "Good morning, Sidney" (every boy
here is Sidney who is not Albert Edward);
• we have missed you these three days." "Yes,
sir." -What has happened to you?" "Went
to enlist, sir." " Well, why have you come back
again?" "Wouldn't have me, sir." William,
who is himself in the reserve, told me in
confidence, " he expected as how he were too
meek-hearted like." All the old soldiers in
i ho neighbourhood who have served in India
are 11 inch in request now for legends of the
Pathans. I bought the New Year's editions of
those invaluable works" Whitaker,"" Baohette"
1 November 10th.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 369

(for Sophia), and " Who's He." I feel sure that
a comparison of " Whitaker " with " Hachette,"
if one had leisure to make it, would throw light
on some fundamental differences in genius be-
tween the two peoples. It might even account
for the Dreyfus case.

6th. — I went to look at the lambs. Did any-
body in England ever see a shepherd playing
upon a pipe ? My experience of shepherds
is that they are what we call in Berkshire
" drew " men, sombre spirits, given perhaps to
psalmody on Sundays, but not likely on work-
ing-days to " fool away the light " with pipe
and tabor, or any other combination of instru-
ments. Somehow the hideous structures, like
bathing-machines, with corrugated iron roofs,
which roam our wintry meadows like the
wheeled house of the Scythian on the wide
steppe, seem an unfit tabernacle for any spirit
of song. It would be unimaginable in the
background (say) of that lovely little Raphael
drawing of a shepherd boy with a bagpipe
which Mr. Mackail printed for a frontispiece
to his version of the "Eclogues," or of the
flute-player by Campagnola reproduced in the
" Pageant " for last year. Nor do I find that

our shepherd's sons incline to take at all a

370 PAGES FKOM A PRIVATE DIARY

more romantic view of their father's calling.
The eldest, who is still at school, hopes in time
to be a butcher, and on his holidays dons a
blue apron and goes round for orders. Still
the old pastoral convention, though unreal,
has its charm, and I would not willingly lose a
single Hobbinol or Cuddy from any " Shepherd's
kalendar " of them all.

9th. — I picked out of the twopenny box

at 's a volume which I have found more

entertaining than I expected. It was "The
Secretary's Vade-mecum," a letter - writer of
the year 1697. The book was strange to me,
but from internal evidence I should judge that
it has been reprinted, for not a few letters that
appear in the daily papers seem to be studied
from its pages. The letters of the knight who
corresponds with Mr. Farrow about the money-
lending among ironmasters are undoubtedly
modelled upon the "Letters Comminatory,"
which (as the book says) "must be written
full of Resentments of Injury, in an angry,
passionate Stile, to territie the Person to a
submission." One of them accordingly begins :
"Ungracious ofispring of an infernal brood,
whom Heaven permitted for a plague, and the
Earth nourished as a peculiar mischief," &0.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 371

The gentleman, again, who writes to the Bishop
of London about ritual questions, has, I should
say, perused with no little profit the "letters
mandatory or Commanding in which you ex-
pect to have your will absolutely obey'd."
Besides these, there are letters accusatory, ex-
cusatory, reprobatory, petitionary, letters of
advice, and " mixed letters," of all of which,
and especially of the last, the press affords
daily examples.

Nor are there wanting specimens in every
style of that very important branch of corre-
spondence which deals with the art and mystery
of love-making. We are offered " a letter of
address from a gentleman to a lady " with " the
answer in a doubtful manner " ; perhaps the
volume would be of more practical use to-day,
in view of Sir F. Jeune's court, if it were the
gentleman's letters that were in the "doubtful
manner." There is one, however, that opens
ominously and, as it were, prophetically, with
the words, " My breach of promise," &c. In
a higher key we have one from a passionate
lover to his mistress beginning " Gracious object
of my pleasing thoughts, and mistress of my
affection " ; another in the pastoral style to a
" fair nymph," and " a plain country-letter "

372 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

from " Honest John " to " Honest Joan." A
curious side-light is thrown on manners by a
letter of introduction from a gentleman recom-
mending a friend to a lady as " her servant for
life." But the gem of the collection is " a letter
to a lady much grieved for the impairing of her
beauty by the small-pox." It should even make
an anti-vaccinationist shudder to know that a
letter on this topic was considered useful in
a " vade - mecum." 1 The consolation for the
ravages of the " inexorable distemper " is not
very consoling.

" What if some dimples are impressed by the
Disease ! Venue's Beauty consisted, to her Praise,
as Poetical Gayness sets it forth, in that particular,
though not happening by the same Means. Observe
the Face of Heaven, when the numerous Hoast
of Stars stud it over with Seeds of Light, how
beautiful and gay it represents itself to our admir-
ing Eyes ? So your Face, adorn' d or studded o'er
with little Rounds indenting it make it lovely and
desirable," &c.

The book includes some specimens of Caro-
line— or perhaps it would be more accurate to
say Low Dutch — banter and repartee, and a
collection of songs as far out of the present taste
as the banter. One, however, is interesting, not

1 Bee page 'S68.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 373

for its merits, poetical or linguistic, but as show-
ing how early our literature was captured by the
Scots siren.

" When anent your Love you came,

Ah, Sawney ! were you true,
What though I seem to frown and gloom,

I ne'er could gang from you.
Yet still my Tongue, do what I can,

With muckle Woe denies ;
Wae's me, when once I'se like a man,

It boots not to be wise."

17th. — Should not the excited behaviour of*
the Parisian students give pause to the gentle-
men who are for departing from the wisdom of
our ancestors by setting up a university in the
capital ? The head masters of our public schools
met not long ago in solemn session, and de-
nounced the new degree that Oxford and
Cambridge are granting for cricket and foot-
ball ; those ancient universities having at last
adopted the discipline of Plato (whom they
have long praised with their mouth), and ad-
mitted Gymnastics to be a recognised branch
of education. Tom is much excited over the
decision, and hopes we may at length get back
to the fine old fortifying curriculum of the
Magi, which, if we may credit Herodotus, com-
prehended only three items, riding, speaking

374 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

the truth, and drawing the (short) bow. Tom
is never tired of pointing to the Clarendon
building in Oxford as a crying instance of the
deference we pay to the wishes of pious founders ;
Clarendon having left his bequest to endow a
riding-school. I am not sure that some defence
might not be made for the Oxford authorities
in the matter, since Oxford hardly needs a
riding-school so long as it has Shotover. More-
over, both Oxford and Cambridge have accessible
rivers (of sorts) on which to practise rowing ; and
they have playing fields. But London is in a
different case ; and the present demonstrations
in Paris should convince sensible people that no
new charter ought to be granted to London till
a guarantee has been given for a sound training
in athletics. Let our present Lord Chancellor
found ;i riding professorship. We do not want
undergraduates parading Pall Mall and Picca-
dilly shouting an English version of " Conspuez
Zola." Spitting (apart from its unpleasantness)
must be, except perhaps in a vacuum, a miser-
able form of exercise.

18th. — A letter to the Times very happily
parallels the Dreyfus case for muddle-headed-
Dess with the trial in "Alice."1

1 The parallel has since been drawn si ill closer by the
Singing of Inkpots in the Chamber.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DTARY 375

19th. — In looking down the list of deaths (I
find, as I advance in years, I look at the deaths
before the marriages : the births are of no
interest to anybody) I saw the name of Mr.
Dodgson (" Lewis Carroll "), who was in every-
body's mouth yesterday. The Standard, how-
ever, vouchsafes no obituary notice ; but as
Mr. Dodgson resented nothing so much as a
hint that he was interested in any but mathe-
matical literature, perhaps this is taking the
correct line. I once committed the indiscre-
tion of confounding the humourist with the
don, and was properly snubbed. An Oxford
bookseller had told me that Mr. D. was ex-
tremely nice about the printing of his " Alices,"
and that every copy not up to his ideal was
withheld from sale and given to the poor. I,
coveting some of these for our village children,
and being in Oxford, sent a note to Christ
Church asking if I had been accurately in-
formed, and received in reply the following
printed circular, which is now among my most
cherished possessions : —

" Mr. C. L. Dodgson is so frequently addressed by
strangers on the quite unauthorised assumption that
he claims, or at any rate acknowledges, the author-
ship of books not published under his name, that he

376 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

has found it necessary to print this, once for all, as
an answer to all such applications.

" He neither claims, nor acknowledges, any con-
nection with any ' pseudonym,' or with any book
not published under his own name.

" Ch. Ch., Oxford."

23rcl— The influenza is with us. What im-
presses me about the disease is, that it picks
out the strongest people as though it were a
spirit of compensation. One of Tom's labourers,
originally a navvy, and perhaps the toughest
man in the place, is now tottering about with a
stick like a grandfather. Another sign of dis-
cretion is that it spares — at least in our neigh-
bourhood— the doctors and the parsons. There
is a droll story (one of those which hurt some
people with much laughing, while others see
nothing to laugh at) in a book called " Random
Recollections," by the Rev. George Huntington,
which I have had lent me, of a parson whom
Mr. H. saw hanging as far as he could out of
a window in the top storey of a house to avoid
infection, while he read the office of "Visita-
tion of the Sick." The clergy one reads about
in these pages aro delightful old gentlemen,
of whom the type is as extinct as the dodo.
Amongst them my favourite is an old Canon

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 377

Wray. "I heard him tell the Dean that he
thought four thousand a year a most desirable
income, with which any one might be content.
' You have enough,' he said, ' for your necessi-
ties and a few luxuries. No man need wish for
more." This is quite in the temper of Cowley,
who says in his essay " Of Greatness " : —

" When you have pared away all the Vanity,
what solid and natural contentment does there
remain which may not be had with five hun-
dred pounds a year ? Not so many servants or
horses, but a few good ones, which will do all
the business as well ; not so many choice dishes
at every Meale, but at several meals all of them,
which makes them both the more healthy and
the more pleasant ; not so rich garments, nor
so frequent changes, but as warm and as comely
and so frequent change too as is every jot as
good for the Master though not for the Tailor
or Valet de Cliamber ; not such a stately
Palace, nor guilt rooms, or the costliest sorts
of Tapestry, but a convenient brick-house, with
decent Wainscot and pretty Forest-work hang-
ings. Lastly (for I omit all other particulars,
and will end with that which I love most in
both conditions), not whole Woods cut in
walks, nor vast Parks, nor Fountain, or Cas-

378 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

cade-gardens, but herb, and Flower, and fruit-
gardens, which are more useful, and the water
every whit as clear and wholesome, as if it
darted from the breasts of a marble Nymph,
or the Urn of a River-God."

I used to wonder at Cowley's moderation in
fixing the ideal income at five hundred pounds
a year, until I reflected that the purchasing
power of money was in his day five or six times
what it is now.

28th. — I am sorry to see the Standard, for
whose criticism of life I have great respect,
laying down to-day as a truth of experience
that a person who has suffered great sorrows
is braced by them to bear little worries. "A
man who has known what it is to lose a wife is
not so likely to worry over the loss of a port-
manteau ; and one who has had to go without
food for a couple of days will keep his temper
though the soup be cold or the joint burnt to
a cinder." This is in the high pulpit manner,
and conceals a not very subtle fallacy. The
play upon the word "loss" reminds me of
Johnson's famous epigram —

" If a man who ' turnips ' cries,
Cry not when his father <lios,
Tib a proof that ho would rather
Il.ivc a turnip than his father."

TAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 379

The fact is, man is a social animal, and when
something goes wrong, his inbred integrity at
once impels him to inquire, " Whom can I
blame for this ? " Now, when he " loses " a
wife, misusing that word in the ordinary way,
there is usually no question of blaming any one,
and his indignation is not wasted. But when
he " loses " a portmanteau, there is an almost
inexhaustible series of objects for his indigna-
tion to lighten and thunder round — his ser-
vants at home, his hackney - coachman, the
railway officials, his fellow-travellers, and so
forth. Similarly, for his two days' hunger
probably no one is in fault ; but for the wasted
victuals there is the offending cook. And the
very condition of his patience under the one set
of circumstances is the condition of his wrath
under the other — I mean his high sense of duty.
Surely, my dear Standard, it is only your in-
different Radical, bred in the mistaken doctrine
of laissez-faire, who tolerates the incapacity of
his servants, whether public or private. Edward
Fitz-Gerald was fond of quoting a passage from
Wesley's journal, which garnishes the Standard's
doctrine with an amusing anecdote. " A gentle-
man of large fortune, while we were seriously
conversing, ordered a servant to throw some

380 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

coals on the fire. A puff of smoke came out.
He threw himself back in his chair and cried out,
' Oh, Mr. Wesley, these are the crosses I meet
with every day.' " Now, allowing a little touch
of exaggeration in the expression, due perhaps
to the " serious conversation " that was inter-
rupted, I cannot see the gentleman to be as
absurd as he is represented. My experience is
that masters who pass over gaucheries because
they seem too trifling to complain of are worse
and worse served. Who does not know the
domestic who never comes into a room without
leaving an open door to retreat by, and advances
to your chair with a note or a card like the
Spirit of the North Pole with all the Arctic
winds in " her tempestuous petticoat " ? Who
does not know the domestic who forgets to
attend to the drawing-room fire till the moment
before dinner is done, and you come in to find
it black and cold ? And if I resent such want
of consideration, I shall not find myself less able
to bear the next fit of the gout, or the next fall
in the stock-market, or the next variation of

's undisciplined temper.

FcbrtKii'!/ Ut. — It has been found convenient
to name tin; peacocks, so I have called them
"Thomas" and "Love." To induco them to

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 381

stay at home, I was advised to give them com-
pany, and accordingly I bought some guinea-
fowls — birds, as I think, of singularly beautiful
plumage. In Berkshire we call them gallinis,
which, oddly enough, was the name of a dancing-
master who, some time last century, ran away
with one of Lord Abingdon's daughters and
came to live in Berkshire. Gallinis are apt to
be wild, ;md have a trick of wandering far afield
and laying their eggs (your eggs) in your neigh-
bour's preserve ; but these were warranted home-
keeping, and so they have proved. But I could
sometimes wish they would visit other places.
At night they roost in the old oak, and about
twelve o'clock begin their lugubrious recitative —

" vexing the ethereal powers
With midnight matins at uncivil hours."

The doctor, who lives at the other end of the
village, tells me he finds them of service in
keeping him from falling asleep again after he
has been called up, and I cannot but be glad
that my loss should in any way subserve
another's gain. But peacocks or no peacocks,
doctor or no doctor, those birds must die.

3rd. — I saw an amusing scene this afternoon
:it our railway station. My companion X., who
is a keen grammarian, fell a-laughing at a

382 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

sentence on the notice-board, which is certainly
Lindley Murray " a little scratched." It runs :
" If passengers are desirous of leaving luggage or
parcels under the charge of the Company, they
must themselves take, or see them taken to and
deposited in, the cloak-room." Looking round
for some one to share his glee (I being engaged
at the ticket office), X. spied the local postman,
and began showing him the absurdity of the
thing ; but the postman could see no absurdity.
" They must themselves take,''" says X. ; " take
what ? " " Why, take the luggage," says the
postman. " It doesn't say so," says X. " Yes,
it does," says the postman. " Well, where are
they to take?" says X. "Why, to the cloak-
room," says the postman. " It doesn't say so,"
says X. " Yes, it does," says the postman.
After this dialogue in the manner of Sterne
they were both very red ; but X.'s indomitable
spirit would not give way, and the postman
became every moment more convinced he was
being made a fool of. Happily the train soon
solved the situation by ambling in. L'ublic
inscriptions have been of interest to me from
very early years. I recollect that my first letter
to a newspaper was to point out the misplace-
ment of an apostrophe in a notice board of the

PAGES FROM A TRIVATE DIARY 383

South Coast Railway. But things that interest
me have never interested editors, and my first
letter fared no better than my last. There is a
notice hanging in our village post-office to the
effect that " Postmasters are neither bound to
give change nor authorised to demand it."
This seems to the unofficial mind to lead to
an impasse. If I present a half-sovereign for a
five-shilling postal order, and the postmaster has
no small silver, what is to happen ? He says,
" I am not bound to give change ; " to which I
retort, " Nor are you authorised to demand it."
But a notice that gave me more pleasure even
than this was one sent round when the telegraph
wires were first brought to us; it was so non-
committal : " After January 1st telegrams will
be dealt with at this office." There were no idle
tradesmanlike promises about promptitude or
accuracy, or even about the transmission of thu
messages. They would be " dealt with " ; I pre-
sume, on the merits.

6th. — "Verbum non amplius" — influenza.

12th. — It has been a fairly mild attack, and 1
have not grudged a few days in bed, still less a
few days of convalescence ; for as there is no
infectious peeling in influenza, I have had no
scruple in ordering a variety of light literature

84 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

from the circulating library. " Send something
cheerful," I said. At the top of the heap came
" Weeping Ferry." I remembered a passage in
Herrick, where Charon says —

" Thou and I'll sing to make these dark shades merry,
Who else with tears would doubtless drown my ferry."

So I took heart, hoping Charon — if it was
Charon's ferry — might still be in the mood for
a song. Well, I am not going to dethrone
" Esther Vanhomrigh " ; but I am confirmed
in my opinion that Mrs. Woods is one of the
very few writers of to-day who write English.
After " Weeping Ferry " I read " The King with
Two Faces " — a story that has justly become
popular. And then I read Mr. Wells's " Certain
Personal Matters." Mr. Wells's uncle is a very
old friend, and I was gratified to make the
acquaintance of his aunt Charlotte, with whose
taste for mahogany I sympathise. Then, being
deeply interested in tho Scotch, I fell back on
Chambers's new ''Biographical Dictionary," for
this dictionary includes all the Scotsmen who
ever lived, with just a sprinkling of Medes and
Elamites, like slaves in the triumphal chariot,
to avert the evil eye. There are some interest-
ing stories of Bright in Mrs. Simpson's " Many
Memories" ; it is vastly entertaining to see how

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 385

a tribune, who was never weary of bullying the
country gentry, appealed to all the gods when
it was proposed to interfere with his own omni-
potence by Factory Acts.

I4:th. — The doctor told me this morning an
anecdote which may interest psychologists. He
had been attending for some considerable period
a country parson, and, according to a fashion
now becoming antiquated, attending him gratis.
When in due course the parson died, his widow
wrote to inquire how much the doctor would
allow her for the medicine bottles. When I
recalled Wordsworth's lines —

" Alas ! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning " 1 —

the doctor observed, first, that Wordsworth was
not in medical practice, and secondly, that he
says nothing about women. In regard to the
first point, I believe it is a fact that country
doctors find great difficulty in collecting their
fees ; and in regard to the second, as gratitude

1 llth. — In defence of the maligned sex I should like to
record a case of gratitude in a woman that left me a little
mournful. I had sent Charlotte a book for her birthday
last autumn, and at breakfast to-day she said: "Oh,
thank you for that delightful book you sent me." " Oh,"
I said, " what was it ? " " Dear me," said O, " I have quite
forgotten."

■la

386 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

depends upon imagination, it may well be that
women, having less imagination than men, are
less grateful. The doctor told me " intermittent
heart " is a not uncommon female ailment.
Sophia, to whom I communicated the anecdote,
will have it that it makes nothing against women
in general, but only against a particular species
with sharply defined virtues and defects, the
country parsoness. But for this lady I would
very gladly hold a brief, even against Sophia.
It is easy enough to caricature her as a sort of
ogress fattening up the peasant on beef-tea and
milk puddings to make a meal for her husband ;
for, no doubt, she is often as keen a partisan as
Mr. Arch himself, or the gentlemen who go
round the villages in red vans making fun of
her and her blankets, or the amiable celibates
who point the finger at her in Socialist church
magazines. But let her be ill and have to leave
home for a month, as sometimes happens to our
good " Vicaress," and hear the clamour of the
village mothers !

1 fi///. — I came up to Charlotte's for a few days.
There are two flics, trifling and absurd, which
yet somewhat, mar I he ointment of my infrequent
visits to town. The first is that the ancient
doorkeeper at my club is too often off duty,

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 387

leaving his place to a buttons who insults me by
asking my name ; the other, that my friends be-
come indignant if I do not pay visits. Now, as
some of them reside as far north as the Regent's
Park, and others as far south as Chelsea, to pay
calls I must either run the risk of bronchitis in
a hansom, or of asthma in the Underground
Railway. Of the two on this occasion I dreaded
asthma least, and have in consequence spent
much time on the Inner Circle of that inferno.
I observed there that ladies never open a
carriage-door (for fear, I presume, of soiling
their gloves), but wait until a door opens from
within and then make a rush for it. If they
are a party of six, and the compartment is
already full, while others are empty, this makes
no difference ; nor does it concern them if the
carriage they invade is one where men are
smoking. In fact, I saw yesterday a posse of
ladies carry by assault a smoking-carriage, from
which one man had alighted, all the rest beating
a sullen retreat into the adjoining compartment.
I should judge that if a person had time to
spend and could breathe the atmosphere, he
would glean a rich harvest of humours there
below the streets. In my short journey to-day
1 saw a man who turned his hat the front side

388 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

to the back when he got in, and reversed it
again when he got out; I saw another who
took down the number of the carriage in case
of accidents ; and a third who was " the very
model " of an old Leech picture with Dun-
dreary whiskers. Perhaps one might find
down there buried examples of all the forgotten
fashions.

17th. — To the Millais Exhibition. Many of
the pictures are old friends or old enemies, but
one which I had never seen before fascinated
me. It was the portrait of an elderly lady,
much wrinkled, with a parrot ; and suggested
nothing so much as that picture of which Mr.
Anstey tells in " The Fallen Idol," into which
Chalanka, the wicked image, got himself painted
as an accessory, and then transferred his fea-
tures to the sitter. It would be interesting to
know who the sitter was, and whether the
picture has a romantic history. As it is against
my principles to enrich the Academy, I forbore
to purchase a catalogue. One great charm of
the exhibitions at Burlington House is that
they may appeal to more than one sense; when
the eye is satisfied with seeing, the ear may
lake its turn of pleasure. Tin* waifs and strays
of conversation that have from lime to time

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 389

reached me without any deliberate eavesdrop-
ping, although never so delightful as those
recorded in "Voces Populi" — for a jest lives
in the ear even more than on the lips — have
often been as interesting as the pictures, and
quite as artless. This morning the first words
to fix my attention were these : " Do you know
I feel quite sure it is coming on ; Mary is down
with it and the nurse ; and if I had not pledged
myself to bring you here to-day I should have
stayed in bed. However, I shall turn in as
soon as I get home." I felt I was intruding
on domestic mysteries, and moved away to the
farther end of the room. Then, while I was
looking at the beautiful dove-coloured picture
of Mr. Ruskin in a prospect of rocks and water-
falls, two young ladies stationed themselves in
front of me, and began to discuss a sister art.
Said A. : "I see that the Poet-laureate is about
to give up writing in the Standard, in order to
devote more time to the Muses." Said B. : " Oh,
who is the Poet-laureate ? " A. : " For shame,
Sylvia ; what ignorance ! His name is Alfred
Austin. Isn't it strange that both he and
Tennyson should have been called Alfred?
and so many poets, too, are called Austin.
There is Alfred Austin, and Austin Dobson,

390 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

and " (after a pause) " Jane Austin.1 It is
rather a poetical name, don't you think ? "
B. : " Yes, dear. But we always take the
Standard at home, and I have never seen any
poetry in it." A. : " Oh, no ; that's just it. The
Poet-laureate has not had time to write any
poetry yet, because he has had to write the
Standard. But now he's going to begin. You
see, the Poet-laureate in these days has to be
such a political person. My father said, when
Mr. Austin was appointed, that it was a happy
return to the sound Conservative principles
that prevailed in Mr. Shadwell's time ; and
he hoped the Government, with their large
majority, would have the courage to make the
post a genuinely party one, so that Sir Lewis
Morris might come in when Mr. Austin went
out." B. : " Oh yes, I do so hope he will. I

1 Besides these, there was a William Austin of Lincoln's
Inn, who wrote three capita] Christinas carols; and a Samuel
Austin, of whose " steropegeretick poetry " that sadly mis-
named poet, Flalman, wrote —

" The beetles of our rhimes shall drive full fast in
The wedges of your worth to everlasting,

My much Apocalyptiqu' friend. Sam, Austin."

The father of tins Samuel and the son of this William were

also poets, and probably the "Dictionary of Biography"
would extend the list. All these, not excepting Jane, seem

worthy scions of I he great saint and rhetorician whose name
they bear.

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 391

do so dote on his wall-papers. But who was
Mr. Shadwell?" A.: "Oh, Sylvia, do look
at the marvellous stratification of these
rocks," &c.

This conversation has given me, what I very
much wanted, a subject for a paper due at the
Lit. and Phil. ; it shall be " Poetry and Politics :
their Mutual Relations and Antipathies." I
know at least one anecdote that will be useful

in illustration. Young was on a steamer

with the late William Morris, who very much
took to him, and after some days revealed to
the youngster that he was a poet. " Oh ! " re-
plied , not to be outdone, "so is my grand-
father." " And who is he ? " asked Morris.
" The D. of A-g-11." Morris turned on his heel
and had nothing more to say to the poor lad.

Pursuing for a moment the subject of poets'
names, would it be fair to say that the recur-
rence of the patronymic particle " -son " in so
many poets' names to-day points to a certain
absence of Apollonian inspiration, as who should
say terrwjilii ? I but throw out the suggestion
for what it is worth ; at any rate, a poet whose
own name is pontifical has found a good deal
of appropriateness in the names of the " Poeta3
Majores."

392 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

" For I must think the adopting Muses chose

Their sons by name, knowing none would be heard
Or writ so oft in all the world as those :

Dan Chaucer, mighty Shakespeare, then for third
The classic Milton, and to us arose

Shelley with liquid music in the word,'1 1

18th. — To Her Majesty's Theatre. All plays
deserving the name were written to be acted,
and so it is not wonderful that even at this date
we gain new lights on Shakespeare from any
decent representation. To-night I gathered
without difficulty why they killed Caesar. His
nose, his walk, his voice, his false emphasis,
deserved each a several murder. The only
wonder is that he was ever tolerated till the
third act ; and, indeed, at Her Majesty's he is
got rid of in the second. The gentleman who
played Brutus was often excellent in a rhe-
torical way ; and how rare it is to find an actor
whose rhetoric Is tolerable. I remember him
in Hotspur, when he was even better. The
only speech he gave really ill was the orchard
soliloquy, which he recited as if Brutus had
made up his mind before he began to think.

1 Another poet is said to be writing an epic which opens
thus —

" Ye nine, willi whom upon J';ini.issiis romp,

Tin- Mm.- uf Wat, of David, and <>f Thomp>M

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 393

And so, indeed, he had. And that may have
been the actor's subtle meaning. Still, he
should put the stress on the emphatic words
in the argument. Cassius, too, was quite pre-
sentable. What a pathetic figure he is, with
his affection for Brutus and desire to be loved
back again ! — the one human spot in his con-
spirator's nature — which yet ruins the whole
by making him, time after time, sacrifice his
better judgment to his idol. And so that prig
of paragons, his brother-in-law, is allowed to
spoil the conspiracy by sparing Antony, and,
worse, by letting him speak in the forum, and
then spoil the campaign by bad generalship
both in the council and in the field ; while, to
crown all, 'his colleague has to submit to the
charge of peculation at the same moment that
he is asked for money —

" I did send to you for gold to pay my legions,
For I can raise no money by vile means ; "

and when he tries to explain, is lectured on his
bad temper. Of course, it is all retribution.
Cassius wanted a moral cloak for his plot, and
Brutus supplied what was necessary —

" He covered, but his robe
Uncovered more."

394 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

Lucius seemed preoccupied most of the time
in rehearsing for private theatricals; I should
guess that he was practising the part of Ariel,
for he skipt and tript about in an airy, fairy
manner, not like any, even the most soaring,
human boy that ever wore buttons. Antony
necessarily lacked the one characteristic of
Antony — genius; but its absence was amply
atoned for by the excellent coaching of the
crowd, so that his oration came off just as well
as if it had been the real thing. By the way, I
could not help thinking how useful it would be
to Parliamentary candidates if their audiences
could in the same way be taught their proper
responses. Julius Csesar had not been seen on
the stage for many years, and one incidental
result of the revival has been an enlargement
of the repertoire of journalists. One comes on
lines and half-lines now in the most unexpected
places. It was only at the beginning of the
year that a certain journal celebrated the
solemn season by asking distinguished people
for mottoes, and Sir Edwin Arnold chose the
desolate speech of Brutus —

"<> that a man might know
The end <>f this day's business ere it come !
But it Bufficetb that the day will mid,
Ami t Inn the end in known."

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 395

On which a contemporary, whom I will not
name, commented thus : " We wonder from
which of his fathom-deep Buddhist books Sir
Edwin Arnold disinterred this cheery chirp."

In reading to-day the preface to Dryden's
"Absalom and Achitophcl," I was amused to
find the Tories referred to as Anti-Birming-
hams. " The longest chapter in Deuteronomy
has not curses enough for an Anti-Birmingham."
Thus does history repeat itself — at least in the
country districts — where we look upon Liberal
Unionists as neither flesh, fowl, nor good red-
herring.

19th. — My friend S., who is the incarnation
of hospitality, makes a point of arranging a
little dinner when I am in town. Being a
person of reserved manners, and ignorant of the
town interests of the hour, I sometimes find
myself a little embarrassed for topics of table
talk. On this occasion my blushes were saved
by the generosity of my neighbour, an actor of
distinction, who at once put me at ease by ask-
ing how I liked him in his new part. S. had
warned me that it was against etiquette to
confess to an actor that you had not seen him,
and so I replied : " Oh, amazingly ! it seemed
to me to revive the best traditions of the stage."

396 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

" Ah, then," said he, " you didn't care for my
last piece ! " " On the contrary," I replied,
" those were the classical traditions I referred
to ; " and I bowed, thinking that compliment
could no further go, and that I had done all
that could be expected of me. But my inter-
locutor resumed : " Classical, did you say ? I
should have called the play romantic myself."
"But surely," said I, "there is a neplus ultra, even
in the romantic drama, that we may speak of as
classical." He looked dubious, and I mopped
my face. I feared I had been laying it on with
a trowel, but I saw that more was expected.
If I had only been told what his last pieces
were ! Still, a risk had to be run, and I pro-
ceeded : " It is remarkable, when one looks at
the pictures in the Garrick Club, how inferior
in grace and dignity and how immature in con-
ception they appear when compared with the
renderings of the same parts to which wo are
accustomed." He looked mollified, and as-
sented. " As far as Shakespeare and Sheridan
and other Elizabethans are concerned, that no
doubt is so ; but, you see, they didn't act Jones
and Pinero, and so such a comparison can hardly
bo made." "Well, no," I said, "not in particu-

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 397

lars ; but we can judge the general style very
well, and eke out our observation by the criti-
cisms that have come down to us — on which
you have only to consult Mr. Joseph Knight —
and, without wishing to flatter, I should say
that there are one or two actors to-day who
combine a learning and polish due to study in
the best schools with a spontaneity and verve
that are altogether of our own time." "Two,
did you say ? " inquired he. " No," I said ; " I
was exaggerating — one." By this time I did
ndt know if it was I who was smoking or the
soup.

In the country one has few opportunities of
meeting these children of nature. Occasionally
one sees an individual or a company at the rail-
way stations, and then it is curious to note how
instinctively they treat the platform as a stage,
and take up the important positions on it. I
wonder if acting now is as lucrative a profession
as it was under Elizabeth. Shakespeare, we are
told, got nothing to speak of for his plays, but
made his fortune as an actor; and Alleyne,
another actor, after providing for his family,
founded Dulwich School. Another curious
point about actors is that they should not be

398 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

content with their own names, like painters and
writers, but take names (the ladies especially)
that belong to other people. Is there no pro-
perty in names ?

21st — It was to be positively the last dance
before Lent, and positively we must go ; and
when Sophia L positive, it boots not that there
are higher degrees of comparison. I suppose, if
a man has a grown-up daughter, he must not
repine if the privilege now and then entails a
twenty-mile drive on a winter's night. Happily
the season is clement, though the sky this morn-
ing looks as if it could snow if it would.

Our old vicar used to have an unreasonable
prejudice against dancing, based on the story of
King Herod and John Baptist ; but, as I once
told him, no dancing I had ever seen in Berk-
shire houses was good enough to make the on-
looker swear rash oaths, though I allowed that a
bad performance had sometimes that effect upon
other performers. Moreover, if any reliance can
be placed on the evidence of a very old window
in Lincoln Cathedral, Herodias's daughter danced
upon her head ; which was, to say the least of it,
not pretty manners. It shows how skin-deep
the boasted Herodian Hellenism really was, that

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 399

Herod took such a barbarian exhibition for fine
art. The true Greek gentleman would have been
disgusted ; for Herodotus tells the story of a
certain Hippocleides who thought to show his
cleverness at a banquet by dancing on his head
among the plates and dishes, a proceeding which
so disgusted his future father-in-law that he at
once broke off the match.

23rd. — The Zola case has come to its inevit-
able conclusion, and English: .en must be for-
given if they think it more than ever to their
credit that they are not as these Frenchmen.
English soldiers are often, and perhaps justly,
charged with contempt for civilians ; but as a
rule they confine themselves to generalities, as
when the Commander - in - Chief says in his
" Pocket - Book " that a soldier's profession is
the only one that could not be as well followed
by his grandmother. But in this amazing trial
the service has been swaggering over the Bar,
over men of letters, and, oddly enough, too, over
dentists. " You bring against us," said General
de Pellieux, shaking with fury, " foreigners and
dentists." The contempt for foreigners was once
supposed to be a peculiar mark of the barbarous
free-trading Englishman, and it is interesting to

400 PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY

find it in the civilised and cosmopolitan French.
The contempt for dentists is a more interesting
symptom. It looks like a survival from feudal
days, when the only surgeon was the barber,
who, like the corn-cutter, exercises what is still
held to be a menial function. The conduct of
the judge has been censured no less than that
of the generals ; but on a closer view it deserves
some praise. For what has he done ? While
preserving his own roof by apparent concessions
to the mob, he has allowed all manner of things
to come out in evidence that ostensibly he was
hushing up. We in England do not know the
terror of a Parisian mob; our own roughs, though
individually ferocious, seem somehow to exude
a saving humour when they collect in masses.
The fact is, one nation can never understand
another. This conclusion was forced upon me
last spring, when I was in Paris. I was sitting
down near the Arc de Triomphe, and on the
same seat was a gentleman whom I took to be
French. He was intently watching a long queue
of people taking omnibus tickets. Suddenly he
burst out, in the English tongue, " What fools
these people are ! " He could understand taking
tickets for the railway before getting into the

PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY 401

carriage, but it was clear that no one but a fool
would take a ticket for an omnibus till he was
well inside. Well, that is roughly one's feeling
about French justice — that it is probably all
right for Frenchmen.

THE END

Printed by Ballantynk, HANSON <&■> Co.
Edinburgh &■> London

LIFE AND WORKS OF

HARLOTTE, EMILY, and ANNE BRONTE

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er Volume; or the Set, in gold-lettered cloth case, 12s. 6d.

WORKS BY MISS THACKERAY.

" Her stories are a series of exquisite sketches, full of tender light and
hadow, and soft, harmonious colouring. . . . This sort of writing is nearly
s good as a change of air." — Academy.

"English Literature in the Reign of Victoria."— " One of the
lost delightful of our novelists, gifted with delicate invention, charm of thought,
nd grace of style." — Prof. Mori.ey.

Uniform Edition, each Volume Illustrated with a Vignette Title page.
Large crown 8vo, 6s. each.

)LD KENSINGTON. BLUEBEARD'S KEYS, and

:HE VILLAGE ON THE CLIFF. other Stories.

TVE OLD FRIENDS AND A TOILERS AND SPINSTERS.

YOUNG PRINCE. MISS ANGEL; FULHAM LAWN.
'0 ESTHER, & other Sketches. ___ T . AMQft«,« mv4ri

:he story of Elizabeth j msl T^JILQLIAMS0N s DIVAGA"

TWO HOURS; FROM AN IIUH&.

ISLAND. MRS. DYMOND.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.

MRS. GASKELLS WORKS.

"Mrs. Gaskcll has done what neither I nor other female writers in Fr
can accomplish — she has written nove r which excite the deepest ?ntt
in men of the world, and which every girl will be the better or reading
George Sand.

Uniform Edition, 7 Vols., each containing 4 Illustrations,
3s. 6d. each, bound in cloth.

WIVES AND DAUGHTERS.
NORTH AND SOUTH.
SYLVIA'S LOVERS.

CRANFORD, and other Tales
MARY BARTON, and other Tal
RUTH, and other Tales.

LIZZIE LEIGH, and other Tales.

*»* Also the POPULAR EDITION, in 7 vols., small post 8vo, limp clo
or cloth boards, gilt top, 2s. 6d. each. And the POCKET EDITION, in
vols., small fcap. 8vo, bound in cloth, with gilt top, is. 6d. per Volume ;
the Set, in gold-lettered cloth case, 14s.

W. M. THACKERAY'S WORKS.

The Biographical Edition.

" / do not hesitate to name Thackeray first. His knowledge of hit ma
nature was supreme, and his characters stand out as human beings with
force and a truth which has not, I think, been within the reach of any oth
English novelist in any period." — Anthony Troli.ope, on English Novelis
in his Autobiography.

13 Vols., large crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 6s. each. The 13 V umes
are also supplied in Set cloth binding, gilt top, £3, 18-.

This New and Revised Edition comprises additional material and bithert'
Unpublished Letters, Sketches, and Drawings, derived from the Author'
Original MSS. and Note-Books; and each volume includes a Memoir in th(
form of an Introduction by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie.

VANITY FAIR. I THE NEWCOMES.

PENDENNIS. CHRISTMAS BOOKS, &c.

YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, &c. THE VIRGINIANS.

BARRY LYNDON: THE FITZ AL . ENTURES OF PHILIP;

BOODLE PAPERS. AND A SHABB71' NTEEL

SKETCH BOOKS: Notes of a STORY.

Journey from Cornhill to LOVEL THE WIDOWER;

Cairo, &c. ROUNDABOUT PAPERS ;

CONTRIBUTIONS TO 'PUNCH.' DENIS DUVAL, &e.

HENRY ESMOND; AND THE BALLADS AND MISCEL-
LECTURES. I LANIES.

*#* Messrs, Smith, Elder, &> Co. will be happy to fotivard a Copy of
their Catalogue post free oh application,

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.VV.

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