Queen Elizabeth's gentlewoman, and other sketches

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GENTLEWOMAN

AND OTHER SKETCHES

Photo by VV. A. Call, Monmouth

MONUMENT TO BLANCHE PARRY IN BACTON CHURCH,
HEREFORDSHIRE

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S
GENTLEWOMAN

AND OTHER SKETCHES

BY

SYBIL GUST

AUTHOR OF "FROM A LITTLE TOWN-GARDEN"

LONDON : SMITH, ELDER & CO.

15 WATERLOO PLACE
1914

[All rights reserved]

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON &* Co.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

/Vf

*

TO
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE

PREFACE

THE kind reception given to my former
small volume of essays, From a Little Town-
Garden^ has encouraged me to offer another
series to my readers. These sketches are
obviously too miscellaneous to form a con-
nected work, ranging, as will be seen, from
Queen Elizabeth to a dormouse. For this
shortcoming I can offer no apology, but trust
to the friendly indulgence of those into whose
hands my little book may fall.

My special thanks are due to Lt.-Col. J. A.
Bradney, C.B., and the Rev. C. T. Brothers,
Rector of Bacton, Herefordshire, for their
kind assistance with the history of Mistress
Blanche Parry, and to the Rev. H. F.
Westlake for permission to use his photo-
graph of her tomb in St. Margaret's, West-
minster. Also to Fraulein Auguste Gieseler

VII

PREFACE

and Frau Niemoeller for their help in obtain-
ing for me much curious information and
several rare old books bearing on the
romantic and — to English people — little
known history of the principality of Lippe
Detmold.

SYBIL GUST.

DATCHET, July 1914.

POSTSCRIPT

THE following pages were completed, as will be
readily seen, before the world was set on fire in
August of this year. It is interesting to find that
Princess Pauline of Lippe, more than a century
ago, when her little country was in danger be-
tween two threatening forces, chose the tyranny
of Napoleon rather than that of Prussia.

I regret that two mistakes have remained in the
text. On page 119! have stated that Peter Martel
climbed Mont Blanc, whereas he only reached the
glacier of the Montanvert; and on page 41, line 8,
for " exile " read " captive."

DATCHET, October 1914.

CONTENTS

PAGE

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GENTLEWOMAN . i
SOME HEROES OF LIPPE .... 35

FURSTIN PAULINE 63

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY IN DETMOLD 91

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX 109

FLOWERING SUNDAY AT PENALLT

CHURCH 123

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS . . . .135

TOYS 151

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW . . . .163
A LITTLE EXPERIENCE OF FURNISH-
ING 179

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN . . . .199
BRYANSTON SQUARE 217

ILLUSTRATIONS

Monument to Blanche Parry in Bacton

Church, Herefordshire .... Frontispiece

Tomb of Blanche Parry in St. Margaret's

Church, Westminster . . . To face Page 28

Statue of Hermann on the Grotenburg ,, „ 42

Fiirstin Pauline of Lippe ... „ ,,78

The Castle of Detmold ... „ ,,98

The Krumme Strasse, Detmold „ „ 105

Penallt Old Church in Monmouthshire „ „ 130

"A Little Village Green" ... „ 168

XI

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GENTLE-
WOMAN

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GENTLE-
WOMAN

THERE are some who played a distinguished
part in their day, and moved in great historic
scenes, whom history has so strangely neglected
that they now have passed almost beyond her
reach. Such a one is Blanche Parry, a great
English lady of the sixteenth century. If we
turn back over the years and try to follow in
the way she trod, we find that we can, at
first, but just trace her faded footmarks, and
touch the fringe of her shadowy garments.
Then, as we watch, we find we are not too
late. Slowly she takes form and life before
us, more and more clearly she stands out at
last against a bright and gorgeous background,
the scene of her long life's faithful service,
the Court of Queen Elizabeth.

No portrait exists with her name ; but her
3

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

face and form are known to us on two grand
contemporary monuments and in one stained-
glass window. In a picture at Hampton
Court by the recently discovered painter
Hans Eworth, of " Queen Elizabeth and
the Three Goddesses," Her Majesty is seen
issuing from her palace door in splendour
outshining their celestial charms ; behind her
stand two ladies, richly attired ; and in one,
wearing a square headdress, who is evidently
of mature age, it is perhaps not entirely
fanciful to trace the features of Blanche
Parry.

The longest and most detailed account of
her was written by George Ballard in his
Memoirs of several learned Ladles of Great
Britain ; yet even he, to his regret it seems,
included her as an afterthought, and owns
that he can say but little of her. ..." Yet
it might seem very unkind and ungrateful in
a lover of antiquities not to insert this worthy
gentlewoman in his catalogue of learned
women, who appears, not only to have been
a lover of antiquities herself, but likewise an
encourager of that kind of learning in others.
4

GENTLEWOMAN

... I have seen," he continues, " a pedigree
of the Parry family drawn up by her own
hand which discovers the gentility of her
descent. But I did not extract anything
from it, having not then thought of drawing
up any account of this gentlewoman."

There are further a few references to
Blanche Parry in the pages of half a dozen
chronicles of the time ; there are lines of
undying grace and beauty inscribed on her
tomb in Bacton Church, near her home in
Herefordshire ; for the rest, her history is
that of the mighty Queen whose servant and
loving confidant she was until death called
her from her mistress' side.

She rocked her cradle at Greenwich ; she
watched over her motherless childhood ; she
stood beside her through the tormenting
anxieties of her reign, and she lived to see
its crowning glory in the year of the Armada.

We are obliged to lift the veil from an
unfortunate episode in Elizabeth's early life,
to find the first mention in contemporary
history of Blanche Parry. The Princess her-
self was in no way to blame for the wicked
5

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

and shameful courtship of the Lord High
Admiral Thomas Seymour, which he pur-
sued before the very eyes of his wife, the
widowed Queen Catherine Parr, and resumed
with increased audacity after her death ; but
it is probable that to a certain extent the
incident warped the child's precocious and
impressionable mind — she was only fourteen
— and left its mark on her after-life.

The scandal was spread and fostered by
those among her so-called friends whom
she most confidently trusted : Mrs. Ashley,
her governess, and Thomas Parry, her trea-
surer ; l but they narrowly escaped paying
for their heartless treachery with their lives.
They were involved as confederates in the
charge brought against Seymour in that he
" did by secret and crafty means practise to
achieve the purpose of marrying the Lady
Elizabeth," and with him they were arrested
and confined in the Tower. That they came
out alive was solely due to Elizabeth's earnest

1 Various writers have assumed that this man was kins-
man to Blanche. There was, however, no relationship
that can be traced between them.
6

GENTLEWOMAN

and touching intercession with the Protector
Somerset.1

Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, Commissioner of the
Council, was appointed to ascertain how far
the Princess herself was implicated. This
horrid task he attempted to carry out by
means of a written statement addressed to
the maid of honour, which he requested her
to show to Elizabeth. We may be sure that
Blanche Parry did her part with gentleness
and discretion ; but on reading this sinister
document, between her shame and perplexity
and her generous desire to shield her servants,
the Princess broke down and wept.

" It may please your Grace," wrote Sir
Robert Tyrwhitt shortly after to the Pro-
tector Somerset, " to be advertised that after
my Lady's Grace had seen a letter (which I
devised to Mistress Blanche from a friend of
hers) that both Mistress Ashley and her cofferer
were put into the Tower, she was marvel-
lously abashed and did weep very tenderly
a long time. ..."

1 See her letter, written from Hatfield, in the Burleigh
State Papers.

7

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

Thomas Seymour paid the extreme penalty
on March 20, 1549. Gay, beautiful, and
fascinating, bad man though he was, he
kindled, we believe, the only spark of real
affection that the heart of Queen Elizabeth
ever knew ; for she never loved again, though
she flirted all her life.

Blanche Parry came of a fine old stock in
the West Country, the Parrys of New Court
in the Golden Valley. They gave at least
one distinguished soldier to the nation, Harry
ap Griffith ap Harry (son of Griffith, son of
Harry), who fought at Mortimer's Cross.
Ap Harry, the Welsh form of the family
name, became, through various changes,
Parry in succeeding generations. These
modifications of surnames "by shortnesse of
speach and change of some letters " were
very common in mediaeval documents, and
joined to the compilers' indifference to
spelling — for they thought nothing of writ-
ing the same word in a dozen different ways
— make many a confusion in family history.
Another of Blanche's kinsmen in her own

time was principal huntsman to Queen
8

GENTLEWOMAN

Elizabeth. Through her grandmother Jane,
daughter of Sir Henry Stradling, she was
related to the first Earl of Pembroke, and
to the chief families of her native county.
There were marriages also between certain
Parrys her cousins, and cousins of the Cecils,
the family of the great treasurer Burleigh ;
and he acknowledges this relationship when
witnessing her will as executor.

With his powerful aid she brought the
cause of many who were in want and suffer-
ing before the Queen. We know through
the memorial lines on her tomb at Bacton
that she herself would often " move her
Grace's ear" for the sake of some poor
servant fallen on evil days : and moreover
that she always knew, in venturing thus, how
far she might go without offence : but also
she had the courage which true pity gives,
and she resolutely set her face against what
appeared to her injustice, even though she
had to reckon with the highest in the land.
Among the Cecil papers at Hatfield is a
letter from " Mistress Blanche Parry to Lord
Burghley, dated 1582, August 16. Desires
9

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

his favour on behalf of Mr. Pendryth, whose
wife nursed the Queen, and also is one of
the Queen's tenants of the Manor of Nor-
born, County Kent. The bishop of Canter-
bury has appointed certain persons to carry
away Mr. Pendryth's tithe corn without
suit commenced in law. — From the Court
at Nonsuch."

Another testimony to her kindness of
heart is contained in a letter she wrote to
Sir Edward Stradling on behalf of one of her
relations : it runs thus :

"To the Right worll. my very loving
Cosen Sr. Edward Stradling Knight. — After
my very harty comendacons unto you —
wheras the Queenes Matie of her gracious
favour, hath heretofore graunted a patent of
the gayolershipp of [a certain county] to my
kinseman Davyd Morgan, wch he hath ever
sence enjoyed : for that he is a younger
brother, and hath noe other way of livinge,
I have thought good to praye you most
hartely that he maye, w01 yor favor and lik-
inge, enjoye the same by him selfe or his

10

GENTLEWOMAN

deputye wthout treble ; and you shall have
sufficyent suertyes to save you harmeles
according as her Maties sayd graunte doth
purporte ; and what favor you shall shewe
him I will be readye to requytte. And soe,
trustinge that he shall need noe other helpe
herein besyd my request, I byd you hartely
well to fare. From the Courte at Windesor
the Xllth of December 1582. — Yor assured
loving Cosen,

BLANCHE PARY."

Like her mistress, Blanche was deeply
influenced by the spiritualistic beliefs and
fancies of those days, and touched by the
magician's wand wielded by the hands of her
lifelong crony, that very dubious comrade of
the angels, sorcerer, quack and arch impostor,
the Welsh astrologer fitly named Dee or
Black. To this man, who was of beautiful
persuasive presence, and went on his crooked
way "robed in a gowne like an artist's
gowne," with a " long beard as white as
milke," who could make himself adored by
his friends, but was dreaded by the people

ii

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

for a wizard, Queen Elizabeth bent her com-
manding intellect in childish credulity. He
led her on in her forlorn quest of perpetual
youth and beauty, he persuaded her she was
rightful Sovereign of strange and far-distant
thrones, and made the stars in their courses
combine to flatter her. We can well im-
agine the old maid of honour present when
the Queen took dark counsel with Dr. Dee.
We can see her standing one day beneath the
churchyard wall at Mortlake, the magician's
home, when Dee, who had that very morning
laid his wife in her grave hard by, allowed
" the maiden majesty of England " to gaze
into his magic mirror. She penetrated no
further, however, into the spirit world on
this occasion, graciously abandoning her in-
tention to visit his library and hold further
converse with his shadowy companions, out
of regard for his very recent widowhood.

The Queen made many a promise of aid
and advancement to Dee which she did not
remember to fulfil. These repeated dis-
appointments, his evil fame as a conjuror,
and his ceaseless journeys on the Continent

12

GENTLEWOMAN

in search of the philosopher's stone, brought
him more than once to the verge of starva-
tion. " When most distressed by the lubricity
of fortune," Blanche Parry, as always, stood his
friend, and she procured for him from the
Queen the Mastership of Saint Cross, Win-
chester ; but his life closed in great misery.
An entry in his diary, under date July 16,
1579, records the christening of his son
Arthur : " Mistres Blanche Parry of the
Privie Chamber " being his godmother. She
also stood sponsor and gave her name to
Blanche Parry, a man who became Sheriff of
Breconshire, in which county she possessed
considerable landed estates ; and where she
instituted a suit against one Hugh Powel of
Llangasty for her rights to a moiety of fishery
in Brecknock mere. She appears to have had
a sharp eye for any flaw in a business transac-
tion, and the poor man must have regretted
the day when he crossed her path. He lost
his case and the Court decided to destroy
certain weirs that he had erected on the
disputed water.

Blanche Parry's skill in learning extended
'3

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

beyond the occult sciences. She was famous
in her day for her mastery of foreign
languages, and she was deeply interested in
historical and antiquarian research. She
obtained from Sir Edward Stradling his manu-
script account of the conquest of Glamorgan
" out of the Welshmen's hands," for her
friend David Powel, who inserted it in his
Historic of Cambria, and in the final paragraph
acknowledges her aid :

"Thus farre the copie of the winning of
Glamorgan as I received the same at the hands
of Mistris Blanch Parrie, collected by Sir
Edward Stradling, Knight."

A glorious light is cast on this great lady
from a passage in a very rare book of which
only three or four copies are known to exist,
a treatise on Most approved and Long experi-
enced WATER WORKED, by G. Rowland
Vaughan, Esquire, 1610. He was her great
nephew, and inherited New Court from his
mother Joan, daughter and coheir of Miles
Ap Harry, the brother of Blanche. We see
her here reigning supreme over the dazzling

GENTLEWOMAN

throng of Queen Elizabeth's courtiers, and
also in the person of a somewhat formidable
aunt ridding herself of her loafing young
nephew for his good. He has the generosity,
however, to acknowledge the lofty excellence
of her character :

" After I had spent some yeares," he writes,
" in Queene Elizabeth's Court, and saw the
greatness and glory thereof under the command
of Mistres Blanche Parry (an honourable and
vertuous Gentlewoman, my Aunt and
Mistresse) my spirite being too tender to
indure the bitternesse of her humor ; I was by
her carefull (though crabbed austerity) forced
into the Irish wars. . . ." We must, how-
ever, give this young scapegrace the credit of
having later in life settled down to at least
one sober pursuit, as witness his diligent
labours on the Water Works. In her will
his aunt, ever mindful of her kith and kin,
bequeathed to him a hundred pounds.

The account of the Queen's Purse in
Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth con-
tains the regular entry of Blanche Parry's
name among the givers of jewels and other
'5

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

costly presents each New Year's Day to Her
Majesty. She had an insatiable craving for
every description of finery ; and she demanded
those tokens of her servants' loyalty from
them throughout her life. Nothing came
amiss to her — whether it were a " a night-
coif of cambric, cut work and spangles, or a
suite of ruffs of cut work, flourished with gold
and silver," or " one fair pie of quinces," or
even — a frequent offering from clergymen of
rank — ten pounds in gold coin. In addition
to her own gifts to the Queen, Blanche Parry
was the bearer of many from others, both
within and without the Royal Household.
As we glance down the pages, we find our-
selves in a blaze of thousand-coloured lights ;
we can see the gem-starred raiment of
England's splendour-loving Sovereign, and
hear the clink of golden coins that was ever
grateful to her ear.

Among these New Year's gifts are the
following :

Delivered to Mrs. Blanch Apparey, and
given by various Knights, sums of money in

French crownes in dimy soveraignes, in purses
16

GENTLEWOMAN

of blak silk and silver knytt in angells, in
blak silk and gold. . . .

A book of the Armes of the Knights of
the Garter now being, covered with tynsell.

A cofer of wodde paynted and gilt with
combes carved, glasses and balls, given by
Mrs. Blanche Apparey.

One square piece unshorne vellat edged
with silver lase.

Given by Mr. William Huggyns, and
delivered to the said Mrs. Blanch, a greate
swete bag of tapphata with a zypher, and a
border of rosses and sphers embrodered with
Venice gold and pearles. A peice of fine
cameryk, delivered to Mrs. Blaunch Apparey.

Here the Maid of Honour receives a
present from Her Majesty; a somewhat
simple one, it would seem : Presented by the
Queen, to Mrs. Blaunch Appary, one guilt
stowpe with a cover.

Presented to the Queen by Mrs. Blanche
Parry, a peir of brasletts of Cornelion hedds,
two small perles betwixt every hed, garnished
with golde.

Among "juelles geven to her Majestic at
17 B

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

Newyerstide, anno 1 5° regni sui " is one juell,
being a scrippe of mother of perle, hanging at
three little cheines of golde, and a small
agathe pendaunte geven by Mrs. Blaunche
Parrye.

A juell, being a cristal garnished with
golde ; Adame and Eve enamelled white,
given by Mrs. Blaunche Parrye, broken.

Anno 17° a flower of golde enamuled
greene, with three white roses, in either of
them a sparcke of rubyes, and the midst
thearof a flye, and a smale cheyne of golde
to hange it by, being broken, given by Mrs.
Blanch Parry. A little box of golde, and a
little spoone of golde.

A paire of braceletts of golde, given by
Mrs. Blanche Aparry.

Among Diverse Parsones . . . chardged
with sondrie somes of readie monye ... is
Mrs. Blanch Appary ... as given to the
Queen's Majestic at the late Lorde Northe's
howse at the Charter house, by the Merchant
adventurers £500.

By Blanche a Parry, a litill box of golde to

put in cumphetts, and a litill spone of golde,
18

GENTLEWOMAN

weying all 3 oz. I qr. One long cushion of
tawny cloth of golde, backed with taffety.

The Queen's gifts to her household seem
usually to have taken the form of plain gold
or silver plate, measured out to them by
weight, as thus : " Given by the Quene's
Maiestie at her Highnes Manor of Richmond
to gentilwomen.

To Mrs. Blanche Parry in guilte plate,
Keele 18 oz. qr."

Amidst these splendours comes an abrupt
reminder of the end of all earthly things :

" For Her Majestic,

Mrs. Blanche Apparie for the funeral of
Mr. Vaughan," — presumably a kinsman of the
Maid of Honour in the Queen's service, the
money being a token of her kindness — £20.

Where are they ? all these precious stuffs
and glittering toys ? Where is " the peir of
brasletts of cornelion hedds, two small perles
betwixt every hed," or " the juell of golde
whearin is sette a white agathe," — where is
" the litill spone of golde " ? A few yet
survive among the country's treasures, but the
greater part are lost. Many disappeared in their

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

royal owner's life-time, for she had a curious
inability to keep them safely attached to her
person. She returned " minus a portion of
them " every time she went abroad ; and
among the wardrobe memoranda of Queen
Elizabeth are the following entries :

" Lost from Her Majesty's back, the I4th
of May, anno 21, one small acorn and one
oaken leaf of gold, at Westminster. Lost
by Her Majesty, in May, anno 23, two
buttons of gold, like tortoises, with pearls in
them, and one pearl more, lost, at the same
time, from a tortoise. Lost at Richmond,
the 1 2th of February, from Her Majesty's
back, wearing the gown of purple cloth of
silver, one great diamond, out of a clasp of
gold, given by the Earl of Leicester."

In gathering up the scattered fragments
that go to form the picture of Queen
Elizabeth's chief gentlewoman, we must pause
to wipe away a stain that never ought to have
sullied its fairness. It has been laid there by
the hand, usually so just and careful, of the
historian Agnes Strickland ; we are bound,

20

GENTLEWOMAN

that is to say, to visit the blame on her ; but
as it all hangs on one little word, we will
hope it is merely a printer's error.

Elizabeth, she says, in her Lives of the
Queens of England, " gave her half-brother,
Sir John Perrot, the command of a fleet to
intercept a meditated invasion of Ireland by
Philip II " in the year 1579. It is a pretty
story that follows, and it may be told in the
picturesque language of Sir John's biographer :

" Goeing from London by Barge, he had
with him divers noblemen and gentlemen
who did accompany hym into the shipps.
As they lay in their barge agaynst Grenewich
where the Queene kept hir Court, Sir John
Perrot sent one of his gentlemen ashore with
a Diamond in a Token, unto Mistris Blanch
Parry, willing hym to tell hir, that a Diamond
coming unlocked for, did always bring good
Looke with it ; which the Queene hearing of,
sent Sir John Perrot a fair Jewell hanged by
a white Cypresse, signifying with-all, that as
longe as he wore that for hir sake she did
beleve, with God's Healpe, he should have
noe Harme. . . ."

21

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

In Miss Strickland's account, before the
name of Mistris Blanch Parry she has inserted
the mischievous pronoun " his" A moment's
reflection must have convinced the writer that
even making every allowance for Sir John's
almost limitless powers of gallantry, it is yet
inconceivable that Queen Elizabeth's fiery and
jovial knight, at the brightest moment of his
dashing prime, should have had an intrigue
with an old lady of seventy-one. That there
was, however, a pleasant tie of friendship
between these two is shown by an entry in
her will, in which she leaves "To the right
honorable Sir John Perrott, Knighte one
peece of plate weighinge fortie ounces."

Blanche Parry, herself unmarried, " a maid
in Court and never no man's wife," served,
as we have seen, the maiden Sovereign of
England with loving fidelity to the end.

She was quite blind when she gave up her
trust.

Some items from her will, dated the year
of her death, June 21, 1589, copied from
one of the great clasped books at Somerset
House, may be of interest here. Generous

22

GENTLEWOMAN

and great-hearted, upright and imperious,
her character shines from the crabbed letters
on the old mellowed page.

The document begins in the way then
customary with the confession of her trust in
God and hope of heaven :

I, Blaunche Parrye, one of the Gentle-
women of the Queenes Maiesties privye
Chamber, whole in bodie and mynde. . . .
Do make this my testamente and laste will
in the name of the Eternall Lyvinge God
and the father the Sonne and the holie
Ghoste in whose name I was baptised and in
whome only I hope and believe to be saved,
Amen.

The words are simply a formality, but
none the less significant of the Church's hold
on her children.

" First," she continues " I bequeth . . .
my bodie to be buried in the Parishe Churche
of Sainte Margaret within the Cittie of
Westminster . . . if yt please God to call
me neare London. Item, I give to the
Queenes most Excellente Maiestie my
Soveraigne Ladie and Mistres my beste
23

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

Diamonde. ... I give to the Righte honor-
able my very good Lord Sir Christopher
Hatton Knight Lord Chauncelloure of Eng-
lande one table Diamonde. ... I give to
the righte honorable my very good Lorde
the Lorde Burleighe Lorde highe treasurer
of Englande my Seconde Dyamonde. . . .
To . . . my very good Ladie Cobham one
Rynge with a poynted Diamonde and a
chayne of knobes enamyled worke ... to
my very good Lorde the Lorde Lumley one
ringe with a poynted Diamonde eighte peices
of hanginge beinge in my House, two short
carpetts and one carpett of foure yardes
longe . . . towards the amendinge and re-
payringe of the highewaye betwene New
Court and Hampton ... in the Countie of
Hereford 20 pounde ... to my cosen
Anne Vaghan . . . one chayne of goulde
and a girdle which the Queenes Maiestie gave
me. ... I will that my Executors shall
bestowe the somme of five hundred poundes
in purchasinge of Landes whiche shall be
worthe tenne poundes by yere and to builde

a conveniente allmshouse for fower poore
24

GENTLEWOMAN

people to be chosen from tyme to tyme
within the parishe of Backton in the Countie
of Hereford : of the oldeste and pooreste
within the said parishe whether they be men
or women, there to be releeved of the
profitts of the said Landes for ever . . . the
said allmshouse to be builded as neare the
parishe Churche of Backton ... as the
Land may be provided for that purpose . . .
I give to my Cozen Anne Whitney One
hundred pounde which one Newton and one
Birde do owe me ... to Mr. Morgan
the pothicarye one ringe worthe three
pounde ... to Mr. Hewes the Queenes
Masties Lynnen Draper one Ringe of Goulde
worthe ffyve poundes. ..."

There are bequests to every "woman
servante," and every yeoman who should be
in her service at her death, also various
moneys from her landed estates, to be paid
to her kinsfolk " Yerely at the ffeaste of the
Annuncyacon of the blessed Virgin Marye
and Sainte Michael the Archangell."

She appoints Lord Burleigh Supravisor of
her will, entreating him "to see the same
25

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

performed according to the meaninge of my
Desire ... for charities sake."

In a codicil dated three days later, she
takes peremptory measures to ensure that
there be no wrangling and family jars over
her gifts. . . . "Yf any person or persons
to whome I have by my laste will given or
bequeathed any somme or sommes of money
or other thinge Do at any tyme after my
Decease make any treble or strife or Do
withstande or goe aboute to overthrowe
Denye or annihilate my said will ... or
shall not houlde hym or herselfe contented
and pleast with the said Legarcys . . . that
then they he or she whoe shall so treble
molest or incumber my Executors or shall
stand to Denye or withstande the probation
of the said will shall loose and forgoe the
benefitt of all suche Legarcys giftes and
bequests ... so given or bequethed."

Blanche Parry was obliged to alter the
provision made for building the almshouse
at Bacton, as is stated in the latest codicil to
her will written two months before her death,

December 2, 1589. "Whereas by my will
26

GENTLEWOMAN

I have appoynted fyve hundred poundes or
thereabouts to be bestowed for the buildinge
of an allmshouse in Bacton in the Countie
of Hereford, and for the providinge of tenne
pounde Lande yerelie or thereabouts for the
same. I do now in Liew thereof for that I
cannot provide Lande in Backton aforesaid
for buildinge of the said House, assyne
appoynte and will that my Executors shall
purchase so much Landes as shall yealde
above all chardges yerelye for ever the
nomber of seven score bushells of corne
viz. wheate and rye and to be stored and
distributed yerelye amongste the poore
people of Backton . . . and Newton . . .
for ever, and that the Deane and Chapter of
Hereford shall from tyme to tyme have the
oversighte and distributinge of the said
corne. ..."

She lies buried as she wished, in St.
Margaret's Church, Westminster,1 and over
her resting-place near the west door, her

1 Ballard with extraordinary carelessness states in his
book on the Learned Ladies that Blanche Parry was
buried beneath "the South Wall of the Chancel" in
27

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

effigy wrought in stone and coloured, kneels
before a Prie-Dieu. The face, with its
grand simple lines, is a wonderful blend of
refinement and determination ; in the thin-
lipped mouth there is perhaps a trace of the
" crabbed austerity " that drove young Row-
land Vaughan across the seas. She wears a
close jewelled cap and long veil, a great up-
standing ruff and double cable chain of gold ;
her dress falls in plain sweeping folds. The
figure is perfect — only the praying hands are
gone. Underneath, very hard to read in the
dim light, is the inscription : " Hereunder is
entombed Blanche Parrye dau : of Henry
Parrye of New Courte within the County of
Hereford, Esquier, Chiefe Gentlewoman of
Queene Elizabeth's most honourable bed
Chamber, a keper of her Majesty's juells,
whome she faithfullie served from her High-
nes birth : beneficiall to her kinsfolke and
countryemen, charitable to the poore, inso-
muche that she gave to the poore of Bacton

Westminster Abbey, a statement that has, as anyone
who has been inside the abbey can tell, no sense at all.
One or two later writers, without taking the trouble of
verifying it, have simply copied his mistake.
28

Photo by J. Russell &" Sons

TOMB OF BLANCHE PARRY IN ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH,
WESTMINSTER

GENTLEWOMAN

and Newton in Herefordeshiere seavenscore
bu she 11s of wheate and rye yerelie for ever
with divers somes of money to Westmynster
and other places for good uses. She died a
maide in the Eightie Two yeres of her age
the Twelfe Februarye (O.S.) 1589." l

In Atcham Church, near Shrewsbury, are
two lovely windows which, placed originally
in Bacton Church, were removed thence a
hundred years ago by the then vicar's wife
of Atcham, who was related to the Parrys.
She found the windows much injured and
neglected, and has placed their history on
record in the glass below the east window,
but it is a pity that the inscription itself is
much broken away and illegible. This win-
dow represents Milo Ap Harry, who built
New Court, and died in 1488, with his lady,
and his sons and daughters on either side;

1 In the churchwarden's account of St. Margaret's
under the heading of Foraine Receiptes is the following
entry relating to this tomb : Item receyved of Mr.
Powell one of the executors of Mrs. Blanch Parry for
license and composition with the parish to erect and
sette up a monument for the said Mrs. Blanch Parry in
the parish Church. — (Quoted by Rev. H. F. Westlake in
his recent work on the church.)
29

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

their garments are rich and stately, with
beautiful embroidered borders. Above their
kneeling figures are the Virgin and Child,
with saint and angel. The other window
shows Blanche Parry herself, kneeling before
Queen Elizabeth enthroned with orb and
sceptre. She offers her a book ; and above
are four angels holding lyres. The two
windows shine in a soft brightness of golden
light.

It remains for us yet to visit the true shrine
of the Parrys, the little ancient church of
Bacton in Herefordshire, which stands in its
peaceful meadows above the Golden Valley.
In the porch an old notice-board records her
bequests to the poor ; and within the church
on the north wall hangs framed a large piece
of embroidery worked by Blanche Parry's own
hand, and worn by her, tradition says, as part
of one of her Court dresses. The description
of this beautiful relic has been kindly sent
me by the Rector of Bacton. "It is of white
corded silk, shot with silver and powdered
over with bunches of flowers, very beautifully
embroidered in silk . . . amongst the posies
3°

GENTLEWOMAN

may be seen daffodils, roses, honeysuckle,
oak leaves and acorns, mistletoe, and other
flowers. Scattered between these is a strange
assembly of animals, men in boats, creeping
things, birds, and butterflies. In later times,
shameful to say, this beautiful piece of work
was remorselessly cut up to fit a very small
Communion Table, which accounts for its
present shape."

Left of the altar on the chancel wall is a
stone memorial, bearing the figures of Blanche
Parry and her mistress. It is a beautiful and
touching work, a love - offering from that
simple countryside to the memory of the
great and good lady of Bacton. She kneels
beside the figure of the Queen seated in state,
who wears a farthingale sewn and starred with
gems and a heavy jewelled chain. The maid
of honour is simply dressed, and wears like
the lady in Eworth's picture, a cap with a
square flat top, of a type that recalls the
period of Lady Jane Grey and Mary Tudor
rather than the Elizabethan. Like many old
ladies, Mistress Parry was faithful, it seems,
to bygone fashions in her dress. She wears
31

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S

long hanging sleeves, a kirtle, and overdress.
In her left hand she holds a little book ; and
something that looks like a jewel in her
right.

On a tablet above the figures are the fol-
lowing verses, which were surely written by
herself. A few of the lines are unusually
obscure for Elizabethan poetry, but one and
all they breathe her steadfast and loving
spirit :

I Parrye hys doughter Blaenche of Newe Covrte

Borne
That traenyd was in Pryncys covrts wythe gorgious

Wyghts
Wheare Fleetynge honor sovnds wythe Blaste of

Home
Eache of Accovnte too Place of Worlds Delyghts.

Am lodgyd Heere wyth in thys Stonye Toombe

My Harpynger ys Paede i owghte of Dve

My frynds of Speeche heere in doo fynde me

Doombe
The whiche in Vaene they doo so greatlye Rhve,

For so mooche as hyt ys bvt Thende of all
Thys Worldlye Rowte of State what so they Be
The whiche vntoo the Reste heereafter shall
Assemble thus cache Wyghte in hys Degree.
32

GENTLEWOMAN

I lyvde allweys as Handmaede too a Qvene
In Chamber Chief my Tyme dyd overpasse
Vncarefvll of my Wellthe ther was i seen
Whyllst i abode the Ronnynge of my Glasse.

Not dovbtynge wante whyllste that my Mystres

lyvde

In Womans State whose Cradell saw i Rockte
Her Servante then as when Shee her Crovne

attcheeved
And so remaened tyll Deathe my Doore had

knockte.

Prefferrynge styll the Cavsys of cache Wyghte
As farre as i doorste move Her Grace hys Eare
For too rewarde Decerts by covrse of Ryghte
As needs Resytte of Sarvys doone cache wheare.

So that my Tyme i thus did passe awaye
A Maede in Covrte and never no mans Wyffe
Sworne of Qvene Ellsbeths Hedd Chamber allwaye
Wythe Maeden Qvene a Maede did ende my Lyffe.

"On Thursday last," wrote Thomas
Markham to his cousin the Earl of Shrews-
bury, " Mrs. Blanche a Parry departed ;
blynd she was here on earth, but I hope
the joyes in heven she shall see ! "

33

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

THE first invader of Northern Germany,
thirteen years before Christ, was Drusus the
Roman. There is a legend that when he
was encamped with his host on the banks of
the Elbe, at the moment of his highest
success, he saw in a vision the menacing figure
of a woman. She pointed towards the South
whence he came, and spoke to him in Latin,
one word, " Retro ! " Shortly after, Drusus
died through a fall from his horse, and his
body was taken back for burial in Rome.

Twenty-four years later, in the year A.D. 9,
another Roman General, Quintilius Varus,
prepared to subdue the wild tribes of the
North, and he again was bidden defiance, not
this time by a veiled apparition, but by a
young hero of flesh and blood, Arminius or
Hermann, chief of the Cherusci. His name
37

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

is usually given in its Latin form by historians
because he had been a Roman citizen and had
fought in the Roman army, but it is better
to keep to the name by which his own
country knew him, Hermann — Man of the
Host — for he was heart and soul a Saxon.

Five of the leading races of the North
and several of the lesser tribes went to form
his mighty host, that far outnumbered the
invaders. The earliest fires of the great
rising flickered almost in sight of the Roman
leader — warnings actually reached him in his
camp at Aliso ; but yet he took no heed.
He was in truth unequal to the task before
him. Indolent and weak, incapable of rapid
action, a lover of riches and ease, his powers
were ill-matched against a race, of barbarians
it is true, but barbarians exquisitely cunning,
passionate, and brave. He fancied them
peace-loving, simple, easy to win ; and he
trusted their leader, Hermann, who had
been well known to him in Rome, as a
probably ally against the West German princes.
But Hermann deceived Varus, and led him
to his destruction by a trick. From the
38

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

several boundaries of the widespread Roman
encampment, full of false hope, Varus drew
his men together; on they came over the
valleys of Ems and Weser and the low hills
of Osning, from the gates of Minden on the
North and the Westphalian borders on the
South, through the heavy autumn rains, till
they were within range of the German archers
somewhere in the trackless depths of the
Teutoburgian Forest.

The exact locality of the field is not known;
it is a problem that has puzzled the experts
for hundreds of years ; but the majority are
in favour of the region lying east of the
plains of Westphalia, that forms the present
principality of Lippe-Detmold.

Where the forest shades were densest
appeared before Varus a crowd of his allies,
an auxiliary contingent of Saxons ; but their
menacing looks soon showed him they were
traitors, and the flower of his cavalry deserted
with them. Thus fortune forsook the Roman
leader at the very outset of the three days'
fight; his men lost all heart in the pitiless
rains that checked and hampered them at
39

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

every turn and ruined their arms ; and so the
legions of Augustus perished miserably. Two
of the eagles were captured by the enemy :
the bearer of the third, who at least showed
himself worthy of his trust, tore it down
from its pole and died where he fell, clasp-
ing it in his arms. "Varus showed some
spirit in dying," says the old Roman writer
in the bitterness of his heart, " though none
in fighting," for seeing all was lost he fell on
his sword.

Thus ended all hope of Roman supremacy
between Rhine and Elbe — the dream of the
Caesars. True, the struggle was yet to break
out afresh. For eight long years Hermann
remained at the head of his wild tribes, while
all Germany looked to him ; for she had to
fear a greater than Varus, his successor in
the Roman command, Drusus, surnamed
Germanicus in honour of his valour shown
on German soil, nephew of Tiberius the
Emperor.

From his base on the Rhine Germani-
cus set out for the scene of Rome's humilia-
tion. He recaptured two of the three lost
40

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

eagles ; he found the bones of his fallen
countrymen lying dishonoured on the battle-
field and gave them reverent burial, raising
over them, it is said, though no trace of it
can now be found, a stone memorial. He
returned in triumph to Rome, Thusnelda,
the wife of Hermann, with her infant son
whom his father never saw, being led exile in
his train. Both mother and child were to
die in exile in Rome. Germanicus, how-
ever, was not destined to finish his cam-
paign on the Rhine. Either Tiberius had
lost heart over the long strife, or, more
probably, he grudged his great captain
his rising fame ; and so, from a mean and
spiteful motive, he ordered the recall of the
forces.

The life of the Saxon leader closed in
tragedy, sacrificed to the jealous hate of
a few base spirits among his own people ;
but for nigh two thousand years he has been
honoured in story and song . . . and in
our own day, on the summit of the Groten-
burg, one of the principal heights in the
Teutoburgian range of forest-clad hills, the
41

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

genius of the sculptor Ernst von Bandel
has raised to him a mighty bronze memorial.

The first beginning of Lippe's history as
an independent state carries us on eleven
centuries from the defeat of Varus. Her
rulers were Counts of the dynasty of West-
phalia ; but the word Graf — Count — being
then a general term for an imperial official,
the Counts of Lippe adopted a distinctive
signature, and wrote the words Liberi et
Nobiles after their names, in token that they
were free men, and held their heads high
among the Edelherren of Germany.

Bernhard II, born in 1146, stands at the
head of Lippe's roll of fame ; he springs, a
glorious figure, from the darkness of the
buried years.1 Behind him, dimly descried,
are others of his kin ; the first Bernhard and
his daughter the Abbess Hildegunde, and
Hermann, father of our hero, who went with

1 I would refer my readers — only I fear it is long out
of print — to Die Lippischen Edelherren im Mittelalter, a
charming little history by A. Piderit, published in 1860,
and Von Meysenbug's account of Bernhard II in the
Lippe number of Niedersachsen.
42

STATUE OF HERMANN ON THE GROTENBURG

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

the conquering army of Friederich Barbarossa
to Rome and died there. He is among the
famosiores of the Roman Chronicles, but he
is outshone by his greater son.

Shades of the heroes of Lippe ! Simon the
First, Bernhard the Seventh, Simon the Sixth,
will you think yourselves slighted if we give
the old twelfth-century warrior, your mighty
ancestor, the place of honour above you all ?
. . . They send no answer back; they are
resting from a hundred battles ; so we can
only hope there is the proper feeling amongst
them.

For the fame of Bernhard II spread far
beyond his little country. East and West
the lands were illumined by the splendour
of his fighting days, and the fiery torch he
lighted in his old age for God.

The source of nearly all we know of him
is a great Latin epic written in his honour
forty years after his death, by one Justinius,
a learned doctor of Lippstadt, the city founded
and fortified by Bernhard on the fertile banks
of the river Lippe.

In this poem we read that the future ruler
43

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

learnt his first lessons at his father's knee.
Then, being a younger son, and destined for
the cloister, he was sent to pursue his studies
at the monastery of Hildesheim, where his
gifts of heart and mind delighted all his
teachers. He had already been advanced to
the dignity of Canon (Domherr), for pro-
motion in all the walks of life was rapid in
those days, when suddenly the course of his
life was changed. The elder brother died
and Bernhard was recalled home, to exchange
bell, book, and candle for the saddle and the
sword.

The boy threw himself into his new appren-
ticeship with his habitual ardour. He left
nothing undone to fit himself for his life's
task, and he went to learn the arts of war in
many lands.

Bernhard was twenty-six years old when
he became reigning Count of Lippe. The
clouds hung heavy over his little country;
it was racked with fears and surrounded with
enemies. More than once he was to win it
back by hard fighting from their grasp, lose
it and win it again. He decided at the out-
44

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

set to seek some powerful aid, and found it
in his father's old comrade, Henry called the
Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria.

This man, insatiable fighter and arch-rebel,
took the stripling to his heart. It was a
fierce kind of friendship that linked these
two together. They were kindred spirits, it
must be owned, in certain qualities of violence
and greed. The Lion, however, went further
than Bernhard in open revolt against his liege-
lord the Emperor, for it was not in Bern-
hard's nature to be a traitor.

He quickly rose to the supreme command
of Henry's forces, and was faithful to him
till his downfall.

The young Edelherr of Lippe was of
beautiful and stately presence, a perfect
knight. Everywhere he went the people
cheered him. We can almost fancy we hear
the trumpets herald his coming and catch
the greeting of the crowd. Thus he appeared
before the Emperor at a meeting of the
Reichstag at Wiirzburg in 1168, riding at
the head of a brilliant train to the sound of
martial music. The Emperor asked in as-
45

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

tonishment what gallant knight it was. Then
when he knew, he received him with especial
honour, which was kind of Barbarossa, con-
sidering the young free-lance had already twice
disobeyed the summons to his sovereign's
presence. When the company were gathered
round the dafs it was found there were not
seats for all. So the Count of Lippe and
his nobles took off their beautiful mantles
and sat upon them ; but at the close of the
day they rose and left them on the ground.
The bystanders drawing his attention to what
they took for forgetfulness, Bernhard replied
that it was not customary in this country for
a man to carry his seat away with him. This
remark was thought extraordinarily witty by
the assembled nobles, who greeted it with a
shout of merriment.

Bernhard chose his bride from the ancient
race of Are and Hochstaden. The ruins of
their ancestral home still look down from the
rocky heights above the valley of the Ahr,
fourteen kilometers from its junction with
the Rhine; and it was a lovely flower the fiery

chieftain gathered there eight hundred years
46

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

ago. Justinius praises her beauty and her
homely virtues, and says she was ever kind
to all in poverty or distress.

She bore her husband six daughters and
five sons, who all grew up and prospered.

Like all her countrywomen, the Lady of
Lippe must have been an admirable house-
wife, to have successfully reared eleven chil-
dren in circumstances of quite exceptional
difficulty. For through all those years she
never can have known one moment's peace,
left to guard her people from thronging
dangers, her spouse incessantly under arms
on distant fields — for the Lion's campaigns
took him into many lands — save for brief
periods when he returned to fight his foes
at home. We know not how she bore her
trials, or even whether she stayed or fled.
The old Latin scholar did not reflect perhaps
that women too can be brave ; for he tells
us nothing, or almost nothing, of the sorrows
of Heilwig von Are.

Bernhard had but little time for the pleas-
ures of his domestic hearth. For years past
Duke Henry had cast covetous eyes on the
47

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

See of Cologne and the fair lands bordering
the Lower Rhine. He now prepared for a
conquering expedition against the Archbishop
— for the great Churchmen were all soldiers
in those days — who for his part intended to
grab the Dukedom of Westphalia. There
were thus two great divisions among the
princes, and between them the land was torn
asunder.

The Count of Lippe threw in his lot afresh
with Duke Henry, and went plundering and
destroying through the West.

Judged by the correct standards of the
twentieth century, the character of Bernhard
the Robber, we confess, leaves something to
be desired. The twelfth century thought
otherwise. There was nothing at all remark-
able in destroying one's neighbour's property ;
it was the ordinary occupation of a gentle-
man, although Bernhard's nickname points to
his having done it with exceptional thorough-
ness, even for those days. But there was a
greatness in his actions, in the worst as in
the best of them, which took the imagina-
tion of men ; and, even while they feared,
48

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

they loved him. Certain it is that, when
the storms broke over his own little country,
there were not failing hands stretched out to
help him.

There came a day when the Archbishop
of Magdeburg, whose territories Bernhard had
plundered, laid siege to him in Haldensleben.
The Lipper defied him to do his worst ; the
Archbishop's fury spent itself for many days
in vain. At last he resolved on a cruel and
desperate act — he would flood him out. Two
rivers flowed round the town ; the besiegers
actually forced the waters out of their course,
so that they overflowed into the streets.
Bernhard had to put his whole strength into
the work of saving lives. He tore down the
ruined houses, and on rafts made of the
beams he had the living, as many as they
would hold, carried away to safety, and the
dead to burial.

Still the danger rose with the rising waters,
and he began to feel his spirit fail. He con-
trived to send messengers to his old friend
and comrade imploring his aid, but in vain.
Henry the Lion was fallen ! broken at last
49 D

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

on the vengeance of his sovereign lord whom
he had deserted and wronged. Then the
brave defender gave way. He saw there was
no other means of saving the townspeople,
and, still cheering them on, he made a noble
surrender.

Bernhard went home. Great in peace as
in war, he set himself to the work of restor-
ing prosperity to his country ; he sowed the
desolate fields once more and built up the
ruined dwellings. Thirty years later he was
to succeed afresh in the same work in the
newly conquered lands of the East, for in all
things relating to worldly affairs of those rough
times this extraordinary man was supreme.
Neighbouring Courts sought his advice on
matters of legal procedure and business, and
the cities that he founded were the glory of
his country.

In the midst of these admirable tasks he
sets out, alas ! in search of fresh plunder ; he
robs the Church of Minden ; and we are
grieved to find him seizing the property of a
lady, the Abbess of Freckenhorst, in so much
that she brought an action against him. But
5°

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

it was the end. He was to make his ex-
piation ; and the time was nearly come.

Physically Bernhard of Lippe must have
been a man of iron. Now, however, the
strapazen — hardships — of five and thirty
years of fighting began to tell on him ;
symptoms of illness showed themselves and
increased with dreadful rapidity ; he became
crippled in all his limbs. When he could
no longer stand upright, he was carried in a
litter made of osiers, drawn by two horses ;
and in this way he led many a campaign, the
magic of his presence still cheering on his
men.

But in time the strain became too hard,
even for him ; he drew back altogether from
the active life and spent some years in
retirement.

During his fighting days, at least once at
the outset and once towards the close, he
had been mindful of the things of God :
witness his foundation and endowment of the
Augustinian Monastery which still stands at
Lippstadt, and the Cistercian Monastery of
Marienfeld. Now in the enforced inaction

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

of physical weakness his thoughts gradually
turned away from the world ; and he made
a solemn resolve that should he recover he
would devote his life to God's service. Then
a marvellous thing happened. As his spirit
thus broke through his fetters, suddenly the
body too was freed. The burden of his
disease fell from him like a severed chain,
and he was healed.

The story was far-famed as a miracle. We
should rather, perhaps, call it an instance —
a very wonderful instance — of spiritual
healing.

Bernhard was over fifty years of age when
he entered on the immense labours of his
remaining thirty years of life.

Far to the north-east of Germany,
on the shores of the Baltic, there was a
wild Region called Livland, inhabited by the
heathen tribe of the Aestii. A band of
Christians, among whom were not a few
Westphalians, were fighting there for the
Cross; and Bernhard went to join them,
with the desire of later becoming a
missionary.

5«

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

We know nothing of this his first crusade.
On his return home, he gathered his children
round him, and told them of his resolve.
Heilwig clung to him with pleading and
tears — to give Justinius his due, he does
mention those tears — but all in vain. Bern-
hard drew up a charter of certain rights and
privileges for his capital city, which is still
preserved in the Archives of Detmold, and
made over the government to his eldest son
Hermann. Then he went his way, and as
Brother Bernhard, a simple monk, he entered
the Monastery of Marienfeld in Westphalia.

Years passed. Bernhard spent them in
prayer and repentance, and in learning many
things. Patiently he went all over the
ground of his forgotten studies at Hilde-
sheim, till he reached an extraordinary pre-
eminence in many kinds of knowledge. At
last he was ready for the task he had set
himself to do, and, returning to Livland, he
offered his services to the Bishop of Riga.
Shortly after, he was chosen Abbot of the
Cistercian Monastery of Diinamunde on the
sea-coast. But his mission was not to be
53

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

fulfilled by peaceful means. The pilgrim
army of the Christians soon called on the
great soldier to help them ; and he set out
for the heathen stronghold of Fellin.

It was a moment of triumph for the Cross.
The fortress had fallen and the enemy was
making in full flight for the River Aa.
Bernhard intercepted them. He threw a
bridge and wooden fortification across the
stream, shattering the fugitives with lances
and arrows ; and a great hymn of rejoicing
went up from the church in Livland ; — but
already her skies were clouding over.

Foremost in the Christian army was an
order of soldier-monks, called Brethren of
the Sword. They were known by their
white habit, bearing a sword and cross
worked in red. Covered with glory in the
field, they became grasping and unruly.
They rose against the bishop to the extent
of disputing with him his own episcopal seat
of Riga. He had to journey to Rome and
obtain fresh authority from the Pope before
some measure of order was restored. Dis-
sensions and delays such as these were the
54

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

breath of life to the heathen, and the cause
of Christ was in serious jeopardy, when its
great champion rose again in his might. He
set out westward, preaching and winning
fresh soldiers for the Cross. " In journeying
often, in perils by the heathen, in perils
among false brethren, in weariness and pain-
fulness," he kept his torch burning, " an old
man full of the spirit of the apostles."

Now we find him under arms again in
Livland winning a great fight with three
thousand men against six thousand. Now
he is in Rome, asking the Pope to permit
his acceptance of the dignity lately conferred
on him by the Bishop of Riga — the See of
Felburg in the newly conquered district of
Selonia. He travels back through Germany
to Oldenzaal in Guelderland, where his son
Otto, Bishop of Utrecht, consecrates his
white-haired father as bishop — a sight, says a
contemporary writer, that moved the world
to admiration.

Bernhard's closing years were saddened by
the sorrows of the pilgrim army in the East.
In an unfortunate moment the Bishop of Riga
55

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

had asked the aid of the King of Denmark,
and, all unknowingly, had brought a serpent
into their midst. Madly jealous of the
advance of the Germans in Livland, the King
actually encouraged the heathen tribes against
them, and won over the fickle Brethren of
the Sword to his side.

Bernhard, wearied and out of heart, re-
solved to entrust his flock awhile to younger
hands. During the spring of 1220 he went
home to his own country, and, to his joy, he
shared in the consecration of the newly com-
pleted Church of St. Mary at Lippstadt. In
various works of mercy three years passed by,
and then he went back to the distant battle-
field.

It was for the last time. Soon his hands
became too weak to hold the sword, but still
so long as his strength lasted he went with
his soldiers weaponless, leading them on with
words of comfort and hope.

Bernhard had prayed that he might die in
action ; but his wish was not fulfilled. He
closed his eyes peacefully in his home at

Selburg, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.
56

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

But a strange and tragic occurrence marked
his passing. The monks of Dunamiinde
begged for the saint's body, and somewhat
reluctantly the Church of Selburg gave con-
sent. Abbot Robert his successor, and friend
of many years, went himself to receive it
and brought it home by boat down the
Dtina. When in sight of the monastery a
sudden storm arose, the boat capsized, and
the good abbot was drowned. Both the
bodies were recovered and buried in the
same grave ; so in death the two friends
were reunited.

There are few parallels in history to the
character of Bernhard of Lippe. A true
child of those stirring times, in the scope of
his achievement he was far in advance of
them. Supreme in everything he under-
took, going ever straight to his goal, his
glory shines down the long track of his
little country's annals, her great soldier and
saint.

A few miles west of the borders of Hanover,
on a commanding eminence stands the town
57

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

of Blomberg, the home of the Counts of Lippe
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, until it
was transferred to Detmold, the present capital.
There is a legend regarding the foundation
of Blomberg, that one day when the people
of the countryside had chosen the site of their
town, they marked out a great square on the
ground, with spaces representing the position
of the principal buildings. Then in the evening
stillness God visited the place and sowed flowers
all over it, that sprang up during the night.
When the people saw the wonderful sight at
dawn, they knew that He had blessed their
choice, and they called the town Blumenberg
— City of Flowers.

Here lived and fought and died Bernhard,
seventh of his name, called Bellicosus, famous
adversary of the cruel soldier-priest Dietrich,
Archbishop of Cologne. For many years Diet-
rich had been engaged in a quarrel with Soest,
a town that was ever coveted by the Counts of
Lippe, and had two centuries before withstood
a siege by Bernhard the Second.

Bellicosus took the part of Soest against
the Archbishop, and attempted to win over
58

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

the town for his own ends, but the citizens
of Soest would have none of him. They pre-
ferred another man, and they sent the Lipper
a written message which as a snub is unsur-
passed, I think, in the history of the world.
It runs thus : —

" Wettet, dat wy den vesten junker Johann
van Cleve lever hebbet als juwe, unde werd
juwe hiemit abgesagt. Dat Soest, I494."1

Dietrich stood even a poorer chance with
Soest than did Bernhard. Furious with the
Upper's interference, he gathered together a
great force of Bohemians and Saxons, and went
burning and plundering through his lands.
Finally, throwing himself on Blomberg, the
Archbishop sacked the towns and massacred
the inhabitants.

Hard-pressed in his fortress, their brave
leader was powerless to save them. Like his
great ancestor at Haldensleben, he stood his
ground till the last possible moment, and then
he had to fly, making his way through a secret

1 "Know, that we like the valiant knight, John of
Cleve, better than you, and therefore you are hereby
refused. From Soest, 1494."

59

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

passage underground to a little wood hard by.
Near the great arched entrance to the castle
is shown to this day a door with massive iron
hinges, and behind the door a rough opening
half concealed by some loose stones. There
is believed to be the passage down which the
hero of Blomberg fled to safety. The spot is
dreaded by the children, who believe that a
white-robed lady haunts it.

Bernhard was only eighteen. Sixty years
of fighting were yet before him ere he was to
lay down his sword — for his life was one long
chain of battles. But we have seen him though
so young in years, yet at his best and bravest,
and we will not disturb him further in his
hard-won rest, asleep beside his lady beneath
the beautiful Gothic tomb in the Abbey
Church of Blomberg. Yet we are loth to
leave him. They were a great race, the Edel-
herren of Lippe. It needed but a turn of
Fortune's wheel, says the biographer of Simon
the First, to raise them to a foremost place
among the sovereigns of Germany. Perhaps
one day some English writer with a vein of

romance will tell their story. We should
60

SOME HEROES OF LIPPE

like to watch the stern life they led in their
fortress homes, and pass in their train through
the old towns, quiet places now full of brave
memories, that echoed to their horses* feet
long ago.

61

FURSTIN PAULINE

FURSTIN PAULINE

AMONG the rulers of Lippe, whose portraits
from earliest, half-legendary ages to the
twentieth century hang in the Hall of
Ancestors in the Castle of Detmold, the
greatest and best loved of all in these latter
days was a woman. She was Pauline, born
Princess of Anhalt Bernburg in 1769, and
wife of Leopold I, the first reigning Prince
of Lippe.

Her splendid gifts were brought to per-
fection through an exceptionally severe train-
ing ; for all her young days were passed in
grave intellectual pursuits, and in transacting
affairs of state for her infirm and crotchety
father, Prince Frederick. She corresponded
with many of the most distinguished men of
her time ; she was a remarkable linguist, and
deeply read in classical literature ; but in her

letters to her cousin and chief confidant, the
65 E

FURSTIN PAULINE

young Duke of Augustenburg, another side
of her nature peeps out, and she pities her-
self half whimsically for the unnatural
austerities of her life. " In two years I have
not danced a step," she writes in 1793, "but
I have read an extraordinary number of
books and written an immense quantity of
manuscript." She was just then completing
a large collection of poems, and also a
volume entitled Morals for Women, part of
which was afterwards published. But with
touching self-forgetfulness she is glad to be
of use : " With pleasure I have read nothing
for several weeks past but a pile of docu-
ments taller than myself, and worked late at
night at my writing-table ; but it does me
good to be useful in any way to my family,
for my excellent health allows of iron in-
dustry (eisernen F/eiss), and I hope that much
business is clearing my brains. To be sure,"
she adds, " the Muses and the Graces are
coming off badly." Then she gives a glance
to the outer world and the political horizon,
and hazards a word of prophecy : "It seems

clear enough to me that some day perhaps
66

FURSTIN PAULINE

the lesser German princes will be swallowed
up by their mightier neighbours, and the
smaller states of Europe will be the prey of
the greater. It would not cost me one tear
if I ceased being a princess. I have very
few, very trifling needs, and, as I flatter
myself, resources enough ... I should not
be out of place, I think, no' matter whither
fate should lead me."

But about this time circumstances arose
that unsettled and distressed Pauline. Her
brother married ; the sisters-in-law did not
understand each other, and for some reason
her father became estranged from her. At
this juncture a former lover renewed his suit ;
and she was well content to leave her home
as the bride of the Prince of Lippe Detmold
on January 2, 1796.

Pauline was delighted with the welcome
that the people of Detmold gave her. "Never
was any Princess more kindly, more heartily,
more joyfully received," she wrote ; " all
these festivities breathe the people's happy
child-like trust in their new mother. The

situation of Detmold is unspeakably lovely ;
67

FURSTIN PAULINE

whoever first used the word ' smiling ' of
a landscape stood assuredly on this side of
Westphalia."

The marriage, which was entirely happy,
was of very short duration. Leopold died
in 1802, leaving his widow with two little
boys; and thenceforth for eighteen years,
until the heir attained his majority, she
reigned alone.

Pauline took over the government of
Lippe at a perilous time. Between Prussia
on the one hand and Napoleon on the other,
each playing for the leadership of Germany,
the smaller states, as she in her youthful
wisdom had foreseen, stood in danger of
being swept out of existence. Hesse was
already making overtures to Lippe and
Waldeck, intending to force them into the
North German league with Prussia. To
Pauline in this crisis it was clear that her
country could not stand alone ; some pro-
tection it must have ; but above all things
she dreaded and mistrusted Prussia. The
hated alliance with Napoleon appeared to her

the lesser evil of the two. She turned from the
68

FURSTIN PAULINE

advice of all her ministers, and in April 1 807
she joined the Confederation of the Rhine.

Those who most bitterly blamed her for
this step knew least, perhaps, how dear it
cost her. She gave her reasons for it at the
time in an eloquent memoire justificatif. Then
she set herself to work to save for her
country some measure of independence.

Through the charm of her personality and
her shining gifts as a hostess, she had made a
valuable friend in Louis, King of Holland,
brother of Napoleon, when he had lately
passed through Detmold and been entertained
by her at the Castle. Thenceforth she could
reckon on his good offices with Bonaparte.
Already, too, she was known to Dalberg,
Primate of the Confederation, for she had
travelled in the depth of the preceding winter,
over almost impassable roads, with a small suite
and her two boys, to confer with him at
Aschaffenburg. She was greatly attracted by
the Primate, and formed a close friendship
with him. From Aschaffenburg she had gone
to Mainz, where she had been most warmly

received by the Empress Josephine and Queen
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FURSTIN PAULINE

Hortense. Thus the outlook on the whole was
favourable, the way was prepared ; and she now
resolved to plead with the Conqueror himself
at Paris.

She did it for her country's and her
children's sake. " Je ne devais aller a Paris,"
she wrote to Louis, who had attempted to
dissuade her from her intention, "qu'avec
beaucoup de regrets et a centre coeur, et
assurement si je n'etais mere et Tutrice, s'il
ne s'agissait que de mon propre sort, le projet
meme n'aurait pas existe. Mais j'ai jure de
remplir mes devoirs, et aussi longtemps que
je pouvais esperer seulement qu'un voyage a
Paris me serait utile ou plutot a mes enfants,
il me semble que ni ma sante ne les desagre-
ments personnels n'osaientm'empecher. . . . Je
ne voulais point passer a Vos yeux pour frivole
et trop prompte."

The autumn of that year saw her in the
French capital, where her sojourn proved
happy and successful beyond her hopes. She
has left in her diary minute and lively
descriptions of the sights of Paris, and of a

tremendous ovation given to Napoleon at a
70

FURSTIN PAULINE

sitting of the Institut de France. She writes
of the gay magnificence of the Court and her
friendly relations with one and all there ; with
King Jerome of Westphalia and his Queen —
a specially fortunate circumstance for her, as
they were her next door neighbours at home —
with Madame Mere and Cardinal Fesch, with
the Murats, and also with various German
princes and envoys who had come on the
same errand as herself. She was kept waiting
three weeks, however, before she was granted
her momentous audience of the Emperor.

Napoleon received her graciously. His
idea of the political relationship between the
lesser German states was probably extremely
hazy, but he took some personal interest in
Pauline through the connection of the Prince
of Anhalt her father with Catherine II. of
Russia. The Princess of Lippe was moreover
an attractive woman with a fine spirit, and
these advantages did not go for nothing with
Napoleon. He granted certain concessions
she asked for, and ever after, he, the despiser
of princes, spoke of the Fiirstin Pauline with
respect.

FURSTIN PAULINE

But for her part she held her head high,
and refused the tyrant that flattery and sub-
servience that princes of a tamer spirit paid
him. Detmold took no heed whatever of his
triumphs, and obeyed none of his regulations ;
in the churches his name was never heard.
Scarcely a Frenchman was seen in the town ;
the Fiirstin, however, strictly enjoined on her
subjects to treat any who should pass through
with kindness and consideration. But the
soldiers of Lippe did their duty. They fought
under the Corsican's flag in Tyrol and in
Spain, and many died on the road to Moscow.

Throughout those stormy times the
Fiirstin guided her children's training with
anxious care, leaving nothing undone that
might fit the heir for his life's work, even
though the thought was ever present to her
mind that her descendants might yet be
robbed of their ancient place among the
sovereigns of Germany. " The princes must
be brought up in the right way," she said,
" though indeed it is almost likely that our
grandchildren will live as private citizens.

Yet if their eyes are opened to the light of

72

FURSTIN PAULINE

truth, the loss of the ermine will not greatly
distress them."

She watched meanwhile over her people's
home interests with unflagging devotion.
For many years she worked at much-needed
reforms in the constitution and representation
of the country ; these, to her great disappoint-
ment, were not put on the statute-book in her
lifetime, but on the day they were first made
known the Detmolders showed their gratitude
in a burst of loyalty, and illuminated the
town in her honour. Certain malcontents,
however, remained of the old regime. As
the Fiirstin passed through the brilliant streets
that night her attention was drawn to two
houses which stood in darkness. " I think
that is quite as it should be," she answered ;
" where there is light, there must be shadow
too."

Pauline was gifted with an unwearying
sense of duty and a capacity of close atten-
tion to business for hours at a stretch.
During the protracted meetings of her
Council she never showed the slightest fatigue
or a moment's confusion of thought. She
73

FURSTIN PAULINE

was before her time in the wisdom and good
sense of all her works of mercy, and in her
discouragement of indiscriminate almsgiving.

With the help and advice of one of the
greatest authorities of her day, General
Superintendent Weerth, she brought the
educational system of Lippe to a state
of perfection unsurpassed in her time by any
other state in Germany. She spared herself
no pains, no effort, but was always at her
post. In fifteen years she only paid two
short visits to her old home at Anhalt.

Doubtless the times were many when her
burden borne so long alone, weighed on her
heavily, for we find their traces in her written
thoughts, and we know they left their mark
on her daily life ; but she would take heart
again in her own way, finding ever fresh paths
of work and service :

" It seems to me," she wrote to a friend
who had lost her hold on life's happiness, " that
in useful activity, in the peaceful conciousness
that we are of use and at work, we have the
best hope of winning God's approval and
the fulfilment of our wishes and prayers. . . .
74

FURSTIN PAULINE

Forgive me when I entreat you to look up
like a child, not merely in selfishness and
despondency drawing the distance near in
dreams, but seeking out the love and good-
ness that are close at hand, and creating them
anew out of your inmost being. I live the
stern life of duty, I have lost those whom I
loved . . . my future is shadowed, sorrow
leads me on to fresh work, so little prospers
with me, and everything that was once my
delight has vanished ; and yet I am not cast
down. ... I read the great authors with the
highest enjoyment, but I only allow myself
that pleasure when my day's work is done ;
and even though I may have Matthison's
newest book of poems by me, or Goethe's
latest work — should a pile of criminal cases
lie beside it, my hand will reach out mechani-
cally to them.

" If then I have fulfilled my trust, if I have
been true to my calling, yet, though one more
sorrow come, I fold my hands and am
resigned."

The allusion to the cases in criminal law
that came before the Fttrstin is significant of the
75

FURSTIN PAULINE

earnest thought she gave to these matters, of
which in common with many of the rulers of
Lippe, but to a degree remarkable in a woman,
she possessed expert knowledge. According to
the custom of the country all sentences on
offenders were drawn up in her name, and her
decisions were distinguished by strict justice
and shrewd perception, but also by mercy and
pity. A few sentences may be given here :

". . . Inasmuch as a son who illtreats his
parents is always worthy of being held in
abhorrence, the severity of his sentence must
not be relaxed. . . . Too much forbearance
in such cases is sin against virtue, religion, and
morality."

To a magistrate who had asked whether
one who had died by his own hand should
be buried without the rites of the Church —
Eselsbegrabniss — she gives this fiery rejoinder:

" God defend us from such antiquated
abuses, that only distress the sorely afflicted
survivors still further."

Again : " Opening letters is an unlawful
proceeding. In times of war it is indeed per-
mitted, but then it must be made known before-
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FURSTIN PAULINE

hand that the letters must be closed again with
an official seal. Now to break open letters and
seal them up again in secret is extremely
wrong; even though the intention may be
good, no object can justify unlawful means.
Under my rule such things will never be ; I
shall entertain no further proposals so con-
trary to my moral sense."

And, lastly, in the following decision we
can trace her minute care for her people, not
least for the erring ones. A prisoner had
been taken seriously ill, and the question
arose as to what to do with him : " Economy
and humanity alike dictate the postponement
of his sentence " ; but the man's relations
being miserably poor — bettelarm — to release
him and leave him entirely in their charge
would mean, though a saving for the prison
authorities, a still harder punishment for him :

"I see no way out.of it for the wretched man
who, though he is a criminal, is a human
being as well, than to transport him out of
prison to his own sick-room, and have him
nursed there. The doctor can report on his
condition every week to the Court, and the
77

FURSTIN PAULINE

rest can be decided later. I send herewith ten
soup tablets ; each of them will make a good
wholesome bowl of soup for a sick person ;
they only have to be melted down and
salted, with a few slices of bread added to
them."

One who was well acquainted with the
Filrstin Pauline in her vigorous prime has
left us the following pen-portrait :

" Her figure was short rather than tall,
and for her height she was fairly stout. In
her splendid eyes shone the spirit that dwelt
within her, and kindness also, tempered with
gravity. There was nothing feminine in her
conversation ; on the contrary, it was that of
an intellectual and highly cultivated man.
She spoke with much decision, and I firmly
believe that on important matters of business
she very rarely deferred to the opinion of
others. With all her tenderness her whole
appearance was queenly and commanding."

The description is a little formidable per-
haps, but the writer adds a graceful touch :
" Despite this truly masculine temperament
she was by no means indifferent to personal
78

FURSTIN PAULINE OF LIPPE

FURSTIN PAULINE

adornment. She dressed with exquisite taste,
and a splendid tiara often sparkled on her
head."

To know the Fiirstin's inmost heart, how-
ever, we must read her correspondence with
her friends, for in those homely and affection-
ate letters we find the woman outshining the
princess — a woman whose home life was
blessed by the happiest intercourse with those
dear to her, and by her own thoughtful kind-
ness and power of sympathy.

The following extracts are taken from her
correspondence with her closest friend in
Detmold, the wife of her Chancellor, Konig.1

On one occasion when he had been ill she
writes :

"DEAR FRAU CANZLERIN, — I come to
you with the earnest entreaty that if the
Chancellor has the least pain still, you will
prevent his doing himself harm by coming to

1 Published in 1860 in a memoir entitled : Erinne-
rungen aus dem Leben der Fiirstin Pauline zur Lippe-
Detmold, ausdennachgelassenPapieren eines ehentaligen
Staatsdieners.

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FURSTIN PAULINE

the Council, and to arrange that he would
allow us all to come to him instead. You,
dear, will be glad, I am sure, to give us a
table and inkstand, and room to dispose of
ourselves and the papers as well ; then the
Chancellor need not put himself out, but
will feel much better if he stays in his easy
clothes ; while, on the other hand, it would
distress me greatly if he were to overtire
himself."

On another day we find the Fiirstin making
a bet with her lady-in-waiting, Fraulein von
Biedersee, as to the colour most becoming to
Frau Canzlerin's pretty young dame de com-
pagnie :

" We were saying on Sunday evening how
bright Fraulein von G. is looking, and die
'Biedersee thought white suited the young
lady the best, but I maintained that hortensia
(hydrangea) takes the place of honour with her.
I should greatly like my choice to be approved,
but that can only be if you, my dear, will slip

the accompanying sarsenet into the young
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FURSTIN PAULINE

lady's wardrobe for me. With this request I
bid you farewell very affectionately,

"P.

" The trimming is enclosed with it."

In a letter to the Chancellor, dated New
Year's Day, 1809, we read :

" I write to you for the first time in this
new year, my dear and valued friend, accord-
ing to old-fashioned custom, with my heart-
felt wish that you will yet enjoy many years
in the best of health and undiminished
strength ; a wish for this country's sake as
well as for my own. . . . The year just gone
by was not pleasant, it brought many trials,
but it closes with clearer horizons, and God
will help us on ! The little violet-blue note
is for Frau Canzlerin. Keep me in friendly
remembrance, and be ever assured of my
especial esteem and friendship.

"PAULINA."

It is sad to relate that the excellent Chan-
cellor died a year after the date of this letter.

The Fiirstin arranged for his widow to remain
81 F

FURSTIN PAULINE

on for eighteen months in the home of her
married life so as to lessen, as far as possible,
the shock of parting : " I wished," she wrote,
"to let the first sorrow abate somewhat. I
thought it would comfort you to keep the
rooms . . . that our dear one occupied, to
yourself for the present, and to go on living
for a year in the house which was dear to you
through him. . . ." Then she explains why
she is now obliged to let his successor take
possession, with a thoughtful regard for the
poor lady's feelings which might teach a
lesson to many who have to turn out their
old dependants ; and she adds, " I repeat my
entreaty that you will not misunderstand me,
but rest assured that I shall gladly take every
opportunity of showing you my true good-
will. — Your most sincere friend,

" PAULINA."

She writes to Frau Canzlerin for her birth-
day :

"You will allow me, dear friend, to send

you my best wishes for the 29th of Septem-
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FURSTIN PAULINE

her; though late, they are none the less
sincere. May many joyous and happy days
be yet in store for you, and your gentle life
be like a clear streamlet flowing through
fields of flowers.

" In token that, though absent, I was not
unmindful of your birthday, permit me to
send an everyday dress for you and a coverlet
for your sofa, and so I commend myself as
ever to your friendship."

The letters continue to the closing days of
the Fiirstin's life. In January, 1820, she
writes :

" MY REVERED FRIEND, — Accept my
warmest thanks for your charming little
letter, filled with such kindly true and
fervent wishes for me. Plainly they came
from your heart, and have deeply touched
my own. God bless and keep you, honoured
lady, through many years to come, for you
are to me the living impersonation of good-
ness, kindness and charity. May you never
lack true happiness ; may good health and
spirits be ever yours, and sweet contentment
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FURSTIN PAULINE

in the welfare of Fraulein von G. I entreat
for a continuance of your friendship, assuring
you sincerely that mine will only end with
life."

That end was not far distant when she
wrote the words. In her latest letters sounds
now and again a note of weariness, for her
sands were running low — Pauline did not
live to be old.

In her last birthday greeting to her friend
she regrets her inability to attend the festival
— the Germans make much more of such
anniversaries than we do — and she adds :

" May the little dinner service give you
pleasure ; I hoped it might. When I was
choosing it a week ago I was confidently
hoping to come, if only for a few minutes,
but a very bad relapse has prevented it. ...

" I stand in God's Almighty Hand and
am content to live on if He wills, but glad
and thankful if He soon calls me to
Himself."

A few almost illegible lines of farewell,

written two days before she died, ends the
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FURSTIN PAULINE

long correspondence with Frau Canzlerin,
who survived her dear princess for nineteen
years.

The highest gratification of the Fiirstin's
public life, and the greatest proof, perhaps,
of her people's trust in her, came through
the citizens of the grand old town of Lemgo,
sister foundation with Lippstadt in the
eleventh century, who, finding themselves in
financial straits, appealed to her to be their
burgomaster. She accepted the office, and
despite her failing strength she put the affairs
of the town to rights and carried out her
duties faithfully.

That was in 1819, near the close of her
life. About this time she began her pre-
parations for handing over the government
of Lippe to her son Leopold ; and as she did
so she prayed this prayer :

" Grant me three great experiences not
generally given to dying sovereigns :

"To resign in the undiminished fullness
of my powers : not to survive them in my
Office of Regent. To reap in my lifetime
85

FORSTIN PAULINE

the love that usually blooms only after
death ; to see many things grow and ripen,
that my hand has planted."

She had only a few months to live when,
on July 4, 1820, she assembled her ministers
around her in the Throne Room of the
Castle of Detmold and rendered up her
trust.

She spoke to them as follows :

" When eighteen years ago I solemnly took
over the government of this country . . .
how different were all things, how narrow,
how sad ! a widow's veil, a deep-mourning
dress, now, festive robes ; fatherless weeping
children, five and six years old at my side,
now, my strong grown-up sons . . . then,
want and scarcity in the land . . . now,
cheapness and plenty and shouts of rejoic-
ing ! . . . I promised at my accession to
devote myself entirely to my country and
my children, and how many soever my
failures have been, my conscience is witness
that I have been faithful. . . ."

She appeals for her people's loyalty to
86

FURSTIN PAULINE

their young prince, and then she turns to the
boy at her side :

" I trust your heart has never yet failed to
respond to the call of duty, so that you may
ever feel how beautiful, great, and holy a
trust it is to be the comfort, the hope, and
the father of thousands. I charge you never
to condemn anyone unheard, never to give
way to favourites, to lead your household
well and carefully in great things as in small,
that you may never shrink from the Christian
practice of benevolence and the princely pre-
rogative of generosity. I entreat you to be
swift in action ; if a man never delays, except
under urgent necessity, he has time for
everything ; and a sovereign must never
allow himself pleasures or distractions before
his work is done. ... If you wish to assure
me happiness for my remaining years, I entreat
you to act according to my admonition ; then
my motherly blessing will be your share and,
what is infinitely more, God's approval your
reward."

The words were not spoken in vain.
87

FURSTIN PAULINE

Leopold II. has gone down to history as a
wise and peace-loving ruler.

Had Pauline of Lippe been destined to a
larger sphere among the sovereigns of Europe
she would assuredly have held a foremost
place. It may truly be said of her that she
combined the best of both worlds here below.
With her genius for administration and the
leadership of men, she was a woman of deep
and simple piety, brightened by a touch of
poetic imagination. With her clear eyes she
saw the truth of things, the meaning of life
and duty : —

" No one," she wrote, " who truly thinks
and feels wanders through his days in a fairy
world of glowing pictures ; they may renew
the roses for him when his path is winding
through thorns . . . but then their part is
done ; they fall away and fade, when his real
life begins. . . . We dream and dream, but
never live our dreams ! in life's realities the
magic colours break apart, the prism changes
to common glass : it can keep no rainbow
brightness for its own. . . . And then, all

the more loyal, all the more excellent souls
88

FURSTIN PAULINE

belong to the higher life. Every cloud on
earth's horizon seems close to their
human clasp, but over all the returning
Saturn reigns supreme. It is a familiar
consolation that we are but pilgrims here,
that our home is above : I know, however,
of none so many-sided, so all-embracing ; for
on a journey how willingly do we endure
hardship ; we teach and talk, and gather the
wayside fruits, keeping the goal ever in sight,
while we say to ourselves ' At home there is
rest ! ' Now and again we miss our way,
but the true child of God looks ever stead-
fastly to the Father, and the less he feels at
ease here below, the nearer comes the day of
the unveiling, and sounds the call of his true
home ! "

89

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY
IN DETMOLD

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY IN
DETMOLD

IT is late in the afternoon of a summer's day,
1913. The scene is the pathway that leads
up the Grotenburg, a mile or two out of
Detmold, through deep shadows of beech
and pine and undergrowth of heather and
reddening bilberry, to the statue of Arminius,
the Hermanns-Denkmal, on the summit. A
great concourse of people of all ages and
degrees are climbing up the narrow road ; it
is really a heroic venture for the old ladies
in the procession, all of whom are carrying
wraps and waterproofs, for we are going to
sit for three hours under a threatening sky,
where umbrellas will be strictly forbidden.
We are further encumbered with a number
of crackling paper bags filled with light
refreshments. But the ladies of Detmold
93

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

think nothing of climbing, no matter what
the difficulties may be, on foot up their
beloved hills.

Our destination to-day is not the Denkmal
however, but about half-way up the hill, a
kind of circular clearing in the forest — a
place anciently fortified, of mysterious origin
called the " Hlinenring." The word
" Hiinen " in early Saxon times stood for the
dead ; a winding-sheet was a Hiinenkleid.
Men called their forefathers simply Hiinen,
and when any ancient stonework or fragment
of buried buildings came to light they said
the Hiinen had made them. These relics of
a remote past were often in the shape of
tombs and resting-places of extraordinary
dimensions, hewn out of great blocks of
stone ; these were called graves of the Hiinen,
and became associated in the imagination of
the people with a race of giants. The
Httnenring on the Grotenburg is thought to
have served them as a place of solemn
assembly, but in these days it is sometimes
put to gayer uses, for in itself it forms a
perfect natural theatre for the alfresco plays
94

IN DETMOLD

given every second year in commemoration
of Hermann's victory over the legions of
Augustus. One of these, Die Hermann
schlacht, a work of the great writer Heinrich
von Kleist, is about to be performed on the
evening of which I write.

The main part of the theatre slopes up-
ward from the stage in a way admirably
adapted for all the spectators to see alike.
The back of the stage is screened by a grove
of beeches ; others stand sentinel around the
upper levels, giving the place an air of
mystery and peace.

Now we have reached our places ; and
await the opening scene with breathless
expectation.

From the forest shades appears a group
of Saxon chiefs in very low spirits, lamenting
the certain ruin of their country. Germany,
they are saying, lies already in the dust at the
mercy of conquering Rome. The young
Prince of the Cherusci joins them ; they gather
in a circle at the door of a keeper's hut in
the wood, and discuss the blow they yet
hope to strike for freedom.
95

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

The play runs with admirable vividness
and simplicity through the three days' fight
that ensues to the final tragedy and triumph.
There is no scene-shifting, no delay to break
the thread of the story ; only once, on a
former occasion, was there an unlooked-for
interruption, when a wild boar of the forest,
taking her family for an airing, crossed the
stage with nine little ones. There is no
music but the chorus of grey-haired bards
heartening their hero to his task :

" Du wirst nicht wanken und nicht weichen
Vom Amt, das du dir kiihn erhoht.
Die Regung wird dich nicht beschleichen
Die dein getreues Volk verrath ;
Du bist so mild, o Sohn der Gotter,
Der Fruhling kann nicht milder sein :
Sei schrecklich heut, ein Schlossenwetter,
Und Blitze lass dein Antlitz spein ! " 1

1 " From thy great duty none shall move thee,
Thou wilt not shrink, thou wilt not quail ;
Undaunted thou : though those who love thee,
Thine own true people, faint and fail.
Gentle and kind, O Son of Heaven,
As Spring's first Zephyrs mild art thou ;
Dart from thine eyes the flashing levin,
And whelm thy foes in tempest now !
96

IN DETMOLD

One lurid incident occurs when Thusnelda,
the wife of Hermann, a lady of terrific
determination, throws Ventidius the Roman
legate alive to a bear. The catastrophe is
mercifully represented unseen, by means of
groans and a dragging chain.

Tacitus has recorded that Varus, broken-
hearted, died by his own hand. In the
play, however, at the close, he falls in single
fight with Hermann, whom the princes hail
as king of free Germany.

The skies have cleared ; the play ends in
a burst of sunshine. The audience begins to
disperse and vanish down the way they
came ; but we have still time before night-
fall to see that other Hermann on his quiet
hill top.

It is a colossal figure in copper standing
on a beautiful sandstone Unterbau. With
one foot he crushes the eagle, his left arm
leans on his spear, his right lifts the sword
on high. His eyes gaze over the far horizons
of the wooded hills.

It is hard to describe the fascination of the
Hermann. It is not that he is perhaps the
97 G

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

grandest expression in modern plastic art of
the spirit of hero-worship ; it is not that he is
stained by the years a glorious colour like the
green of his own pine-trees in the sunlight ;
it is not even that the sight of him standing
there makes two thousand years seem as
nothing, so living a thing he is ; some magic
beyond all this draws us up the Grotenburg's
familiar pathways to his feet.

In bright starlight we go home to Detmold,
through the meadows watered by the Werre,
its gay little river, between high, solemn
beechwood groves. To-morrow we will turn
a deaf ear to the call of the hills and remain
tofldner in the Lange Strasse.

The Castle of Detmold, the ancient home
of her princes, stands in the heart of the
town, a little way back from the principal
street, amid its own beautiful gardens. Quiet
and dreamy they lie, bounded on two sides
by remains of mediaeval fortifications. No
one actually knows who laid the first stone of
the Castle, but there is a tradition that it
was Bernhard VII ; and surely it can have

been none other than he, the heroic defender
98

IN DETMOLD

of Blomberg, who saved the great tower of
Detmold from the same destroyer, and in
defiance of Dietrich of Cologne and his wild
men, raised up around it a splendid new
home for himself and his heirs.

Time and the builders have wrought many
changes in the Castle of Detmold, but it
keeps the spirit of the Edelherren. It has
four great wings, with four corner towers
enclosing a central courtyard, and in this
courtyard the gem of the whole building, a
roofed-in gallery hangs, a lovely thing of
lightness and grace, on the stern old wall.
Within this gallery are a few curious por-
traits : here a Cistercian monk, an imaginary
likeness perhaps of Bernhard II, there a king
of Denmark, of peculiarly sinister aspect : on
the back of his picture is inscribed his name
in Latin : " The Very Illustrious Frederick,
anno 1539." " Nice faces all," said my guide
with a comprehensive gesture, " ancestors of
our Princely House." I cannot trace any
connection of the dynasty of Lippe with that
of Denmark, but no matter.

The Castle contains a treasure chamber
99

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

richly stocked with rare specimens of mediaeval
goldsmiths' art, also some famous tapestries
in beautiful preservation ; and the bright
little state rooms are like a miniature
Windsor.

Opposite the Castle entrance in the Lange
Strasse is the Hotel Stadt Frankfurt, once
the principal inn of the town. Its front is
bright with long strands of petunia, a favourite
decoration of Detmold houses in the flower
season, which hangs over the balconies and
has white and purple blossoms as large as
clematis. This house has memorable asso-
ciation with Brahms, who came to Detmold
with Frau Schumann in the summer of 1855,
and became a great favourite of the music-
loving prince Leopold III. In his reign,
which covered the stirring events of 1864,
'66, and '70, Detmold became one of the
chief musical centres in Germany. He
established his own private orchestra of forty-
five players and a series of Court concerts,
he took great interest in the new school of
Wagner and Berlioz, and sought out and
encouraged promising young talent. The

100

IN DETMOLD

theatre of Detmold saw thus the rising of
many a star.

When Frau Schumann came to Detmold
she was nearing the end of the long agony
of her husband's insanity. He died the
following year, and she did not visit the
town again, but her playing with the young
Joachim of Beethoven's violin concerto at a
public concert lived long in the memory
of music-lovers there. Brahms stayed on,
throwing himself into the life of the little
capital ; he conducted an amateur Choral
Society, he gave music lessons to the Prince's
clever young sister, the Princess Frederike,
and his wonderful gifts became the talk of
the town. All day long through the win-
dows of the Stadt Frankfurt floated heavenly
strains ; and he would practice extraordinary
feats in transposition and reading at sight
with his friend Bargheer, a distinguished
musician and conductor of the Court Or-
chestra. Brahms' piano was a worn, shrill
old grand, kindly given him by the wife of
his earliest patron in Detmold, Frau Hof-
marschall zu Meysenbug. On his arrival

101

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

there had been no piano available for him in
all the town ; fortunately the Hofmarschall's
family found they could let him have their
old one, as they were just then moving into
a smart new house. From his window in
the Stadt Frankfurt young Brahms could see
the Dowager Princess and her daughters
driving down the street from the beautiful
eighteenth-century palace on the banks of
the Werre ; and the young ladies as they
passed, perhaps, looked up at him.

We may follow yet other footprints in
Detmold's quiet streets. Some of the happiest
days of the composer Lortzing's broken and
disappointed life were passed here ; he
appeared in the theatre both as actor and
singer, and his earlier operas were performed
with great success. Detmold is the mother
of two poets ; of the greater, Freiligrath, she
is justly proud — strange child of hers though
he was, with his love of far-off things, of
Eastern colour and brightness, and his weird
and awful imagination. The British nation
should be grateful to him for his ardent love
of our poets, for he translated many English

102

IN DETMOLD

ballads, and even attempted some songs of
Burns. His muse's gentler moods are
shown in a few simple and lovely lyrics such
as "The Picture Bible," the worn brown
book seen in his old age that brings back to
the poet his childhood's days : —

" O Zeit, du bist vergangen !
Ein Mahrchen scheinst du mir!
Der Bilderbibel Prangen
Das glaub'ge Aug' dafiir,
Die theuren Eltern beide,
Der stillzufriedne Sinn,
Der Kindheit Lust und Freude,
Alles dahin, dahin ! " *

or he bids us listen to spirit-voices in forest
and flowering fields and deep still water ; or
he sees as in a vision the dying leader of

1 " O Childhood, lost for ever !
Gone, like a vision by,
The pictured Bible's splendour,
The young, believing eye,
The father and the mother,
The still contented mind,
The love and joy of childhood,
All, all are left behind!"

— GOSTWICK.

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YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

Israel on the lonely mountain top with
God, content now his eyes have once looked
on the Promised Land afar : —

" Ich habe dich gesehen !
Jetzt ist der Tod mir recht !
Sauselnd, mit leisem Wehen
Herr, hole deinen Knecht ! "

Christian Grabbe, " whose life was as wild
as his dramas," lived and died in Detmold.
He was madly jealous of all the poets of the
world, and fancied himself born to strike out
an entirely untrodden path to fame. His
life's fitful flame burnt itself out in five and
thirty years, but he has left one little fairy
play called " AschenbrOdel" — Cinderella —
which is full of fancy and grace. Freiligrath
has made him immortal in a great poem
called " Bei Grabbe's Tod."

Our reminiscences have taken us a few
hundred yards up the street, beyond the
lively Market Place lying in the shadow of
the fine old Church of Calvin, to the first
turning on our right, the Krumme Strasse,

or the Crooked Street. It was originally
104

THE KRUMME STRASSE, DETMOLD

IN DETMOLD

so-called because each of the inhabitants —
they were the old aristocracy of Detmold —
wished to see a little farther across the way
than his neighbour. So he built his house
jutting out a few feet beyond the one beside
it, and the street has therefore an irregular
crescent shape. This is a common occurrence
in North German towns. Were I but a
poet, how I could sing of the Krumme
Strasse ! What a theme for her poet-children
to have missed ! The crimson-tiled roofs
hang deep-shadowed eaves over the lovely
white walls that have mellowed into ivory
hues with the years; many are decorated
with a coloured frieze of fans in wood-carving
and pious proverbs in old black letter over
the doorways. A double flight of stone
steps leads to the front entrances of the
more important houses here, with wide-flung
balustrades of wrought-iron work that gives
them a pathetic air of grandeur and dignity.
High overhead on the roof of an ancient inn
was fixed in years gone by its sign, a chariot
and four white horses in painted metal ; it
was very conspicuous seen against the sky,

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

and the children of the Krumme Strasse used
to sing : —

" Es war ein Postreiter von siebendzig Jahren
Der wollte zum Himmel mit vier Schimmel fahren.
Die Schimmel die gingen trab trab, trab trab,
And warfen den alten Postreiter ab." 1

Two fragments of twisted iron are all that
is left of the chariot and its audacious driver,
and the children of to-day have never learnt
the little song.

The Krumme Strasse stands in the heart
of old Detmold, surrounded with clusters of
ancient dwellings so recklessly out of the
perpendicular that a stranger passing by might
really fear for the safety of the golden-haired
children playing on the doorsteps. One
vanished relic of past life in Detmold will
always be treasured in my remembrance,
namely, the old Lutheran Church in the
Scholer Strasse. It was a small octagon
building with the pews grouped round the

1 " There was a postilion of seventy-seven,

Who wanted to drive four white horses to heaven ;
Trot, trot went the horses ; alas for their load !
The poor old postilion fell off in the road ! "

C. A. A.
106

IN DETMOLD

altar in the middle. I can see myself there,
a little child, balanced, with complete de-
corum but much difficulty and resultant
cramp, on my narrow and slippery seat
through long, drowsy summer mornings. It
was always twilight in the little church ; what
light there was came through diamond panes,
and lingered in blue, wavering lines on the
backs of the old black pews. I can hear
Pastor Engel's majestic tones read the great
opening words of the service, " Im Namen
des Vaters, und des Sohnes, und des heiligen
Geistes," and then the slow chanting of the
beautiful Chorales, and the prayers ; then the
long, stately discourse, always extempore :
no Lutheran preacher would dream of read-
ing from a manuscript ; finally the curious
progress which always fascinated me, of the
almsbag at the end of a long pole, travelling
among the congregation. The almsbag used
on festival occasions was a very handsome
object, I remember, of crimson velvet with
heavy silver clasps and lid. To this day I
can hear it tinkling as it passed out of sight

among the distant pews.
107

YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY

Pastor Engel was a very handsome man,
grave and kind, with a beautiful voice and
presence. In the fine new church that stands
on the old site a modest tablet beside the
pulpit records his faithful ministry.

Thirty years ago, before the spirit of
modern improvement had made any head-
way in the little town — now, it has laid its
clumsy fingers even on the Lange Strasse
and the Krumme Strasse — Detmold was a
paradise. To-day, in its sweet setting of
wooded hills, with its shining waterways and
air of old-time dignity, it is a paradise
still. . . .1

1 I must leave this chapter unfinished. It was
written in May, 1914.

108

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

"SHALL I write a little account of Chamonix?"
" Chamonix ! it is the most hackneyed
place on earth ; about as well known as
Clapham Junction."

These words in their piercing veracity might
well have discouraged a braver heart and
checked a fleeter pen than mine. But I
made bold reply that true originality is not
forever seeking new paths, but finds fresh
lights shining on the old ; that I should
certainly write the chapter in question, and
put what had just been said at the beginning.
" This and Chamonix," wrote Ruskin from
Geneva in 1885, " my two homes of Earth "
— and often in after years he spoke of the
deep quiet of Chamonix' happy valley, and
the " curious sense he had there of being shut
in from the noise and wickedness of the world."
He knew of course that other days were

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

coming ; he watched them already breaking
over " many a sweet mountain valley and
green place of shepherd solitude " that soon
should give their secrets up to a throng of
tourists and hotel keepers. This prophesy
has been abundantly fulfilled, and it is idle to
regret what is gone. One comfort remains,
that though man may disfigure the plain, he
cannot harm the mountains : not even though
his little funiculars climb them, and his
great railways pierce them to the heart ; and
therefore Chamonix' " holy sights " through
all changes are the same.

There is a certain grey rock on the slope
of the Brevent hill, which bears Ruskin's
name cut on its side. There we may rest
and watch the little river Arve threading its
white way through the plain below. Above,
stretching away eastward, is the wild range of
the Aiguilles Rouges, and, guarding the oppo-
site end of the valley, Mont Blanc and his
brethren, Aiguilles du Dru, Moine, Grandes
Jorasses, scarred and rent asunder by the
frozen highways of the glaciers. The great
scene contrasts with sight and sound of humble

112

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

life around — little school-girls in their six
months' holiday-time mind the cattle in the
meadows, sturdy figures with tidy pigtails,
their knitting carried in a tin pail slung round
their waists ; a peasant comes out of his chalet
with a great bowl of spaghetti for his guinea-
pigs, and we laugh at the sight — a human being
eating a yard of spaghetti is not seen at his best,
but a guinea-pig thus engaged is supremely
absurd. Silver butterflies with sapphire
bodies alight on the sunny wall beside the
roadway, and the grasshoppers' music never
ceases through the drowsy summer day. We
spent much time in studying the grasshoppers;
some that appeared tired out with excess of
joie de vivre allowed themselves to be inspected
at leisure. The great green-armoured one
wears, like the rest of his family, a transverse
piece of his coat " cut on the cross," as a
dressmaker would call it, fitted with the most
exquisite precision round his neck; and he
gives a shriller, harsher cry with the friction
of his wing-covers than does the dusky-brown
locust his cousin, who makes his strange flut-
tering sing-song by rubbing his ridiculous hind
113 H

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

legs together. He is coloured like a withered
leaf, but changes into sudden glory as he
spreads his rose-red wings (that before were
folded away out of sight) and soars upwards ;
like a plain, meek person going to heaven.

Chamonix sixty years ago was merely a
hamlet — a few chalets grouped round an inn
or two. The village has increased perhaps
tenfold since those days, and is now a great
cluster of hotels, with their usual accessories
of gay shops, tea-rooms, and all the para-
phernalia of restless modern life. We put up
at the house which is specially connected with
the finest tradition of the place — Hotel Couttet
et du Pare, whose windows look straight across
the tree tops, only one roof intervening, to
Mont Blanc. The name of Couttet is a great
and honoured one in Alpine annals, and had
far better stand alone in the inscription above
the hotel entrance. The Pare is a neat garden,
arranged around the house on a pretty piece
of timbered ground, varied with pelouses, on
which it is politely requested no visitor should
walk. Every evening the tender annuals in

the flower beds were sheeted in white muslin
114

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

to protect them from frost. I thought how
Mont Blanc, looking down nightly on the
timid things, must in his mighty heart despise
a pelouse. There was many a day that weep-
ing summer when he hid his head, and pale,
wispy fragments of cloud, favourite messen-
gers of the storm, hovered low over the pine
crests. Then the most intrepid mountaineer
had to content himself with the mild life of
the plain, and the guides stood about in idle
groups at the street corners. They seem a
less powerful, less distinguished type of men
than their fathers who climbed the Alps
with Charles Hudson and De Saussure and
Whymper. I saw only one bearded giant of
the old stamp, and he stood boldly out among
some small, wiry men, head and shoul-
ders above them ; he had a splendid physique
and a face like a god.

The little town does not lack its attrac-
tions. Loppe's pictures, that are permanently
exhibited here, should be seen by all ; soft and
brilliant and daring, they come nearer than
any other artist's work to the mountain spirit,
and can best render the piercing blue of the
"5

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

glaciers, and the brooding sadness of the
pines. Close to the poor little bare English
church is an open space, where tiny boys of
seven or eight play at quoits with extra-
ordinary grace and dexterity.

Passing over the bridge into the principal
street and going westward, in a few minutes
we arrive at the miniature museum. It con-
tains the usual heart-rending pictures, either
entirely imaginary, or rudely put together from
survivors' descriptions of Alpine disasters ;
battered relics of those who have perished on
the mountains, chairs which carried queens
over glaciers, and the little wooden gallery
that once formed part of an observatory,
which, with incredible pain and labour, the
great scientist, Dr. Janssen, " a man so lame
that he could barely walk alone on level
ground," set on the crown of Mont Blanc.
The interior was fitted with a huge instru-
ment for registering altitudes and air pres-
sure, which was to inaugurate a new era in
Alpine science. We can but admire its in-
ventor's unconquerable spirit, and his brave

words spoken before the French Academy of
116

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

Sciences when he introduced his instrument to
them in August 1894, and faced, even then,
the possibility that his labours, when set against
the destroying forces of Nature, might after
all prove in vain. " I do not conceal from
myself," he said, " that notwithstanding the
minute precautions that have been taken, there
must be some degree of uncertainty about the
result." The scheme was hopeless from the
very first. Before the base of the observa-
tory was half completed on its perilous site
it began to subside ; yet Janssen did not lose
heart, but was dragged with infinite difficulty
by sledge, and by the builder's windlasses
when his men's strength gave out, three
times to the summit to urge on the work.
It failed ; through fourteen years the building
remained, slowly sinking as the snow, in the
warmer temperature of its she her, sank beneath
it, till at last only the wrecked timbers were
visible. Then the little turret was taken
down and transported to the museum at
Chamonix, where it keeps alive a splendid
memory of courage and hope.

Here, too, is a relic of St. Fra^ois de Sales,
117

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

Bishop and Prince of Geneva, in a great cruci-
fix found at La Roche, a village near his home
in Savoie, whither a child of six, " burning
with the desire to learn to read," he was sent
to school.

Lately I have searched in vain for any
trace of him at Geneva, for the town, throne
and fortress of the reformed religion, has
done its best to forget him ; only the house
in which he lived is still standing, opposite
the bare and dreary Cathedral. But we
might track his footprints over all the land of
Savoie, and before this cross he may first have
prayed and learnt his baby tasks.

The little parish church in Chamonix
stands on the site of the old Priory, which
was destroyed by fire in 1758. It contains
one mediaeval relic in the group of grey stone
pillars within the western entrance, which
once formed part of the Lady Chapel. The
Priors enjoyed practically sovereign powers
over the whole district and ruled their flock
with a rod of iron. The peasants at their
hands suffered injustice and oppression in

many dreadful forms — cruel fines for petty
118

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

offences, and even death at the stake ; but
history has taken little account of them. It
has passed almost in silence over all this
region, although ancient charters connected
with Chamonix and its neighbourhood date
back a thousand years, till, towards the end
of the nineteenth century, a learned French-
man, M. Andre" Perrin, published some studies
based on certain documents collected by a local
antiquary. But no record was found of the
mountain guardians of these valleys earlier
than 1741, when an Englishman, Windham
of Norfolk, with eight of his countrymen,
first set foot on the hills above the Arve.
Mont Blanc itself is but an infant in history,
its name being first found on a map published
by one Peter Martel, a shoemaker's son, who
took a party of young Genoese, fired by the
fame of Windham's achievements, up the
mountain in the following year.

Many of Chamonix' former days are
thus buried to us forever out of mind ;
and the little grey pillars of its ancient
Church keep secrets that will never be

revealed.

119

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

We achieved the crossing of two glaciers —
they are among the chief lions of Chamonix, the
Mer de Glace and Les Bossons. I shall not try
to describe the glaciers, for everyone knows
what they are ; or rather, it would be more
true to say that no one knows, for it takes
the scientists a whole lifetime to understand
how God has made them. With their grim
companions the deceitful moraines, in their
slow unseen motion that has never ceased
since first they cleft the primeval hills, they
are one of Nature's most strange and awful
phenomena, and yet within, down the mighty
cracks and fissures, how bright and lovely they
are ! — even as heaven itself, for there is no
earthly thing to compare with the glacier
blue.

Our way homeward from Les Bossons led
through the forest over rough bridges cross-
ing mountain torrents, and past a chalet
where we rested and had coffee and bread
and honey. A poor woman there in the
tourist season made a living for herself and
her two baby boys. I said I thought them
a fine little pair. " Vous croyez? mais ils

120

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

sont turbulents," she said. The most perfect
harmony reigned between them, however, on
that sunny evening as they played in the aim-
less way of little children, which has always, we
may be sure, some secret plan, among the fallen
pine needles, building up heaps of twigs and
knocking them over. Their orange-coloured
socks were darned with scarlet wool and
made a vivid patch of brightness in the forest
shade.

These fragmentary reminiscences shall
close on the flower-sown pastures of Le
Planet. They shut in the valley of Chamonix
at its western end, on the boundary between
Switzerland and France, above the little
Church of Argentiere. The uplands are
strewn with great fragments of shattered
stone, which form themselves into a vast
rock-garden. Here are wild raspberry, scarlet
bearberry, late flowering gentian, yellow
violas with black markings and brave stems
" upward striving," as an old German botany
book describes them, like a good Christian ;
arbutus and veronica, thalictrum with its
maidenhair foliage, and harebells with four

121

A WEEK IN CHAMONIX

blossoms on one stalk, like a lady with four
daughters to marry. The flower that had
come out first would be already withering
on the stem ! All around the drifts and
hollows, the grass gleamed with the stemless
or " Carline " thistle. So perfect a thing it is,
with its gold and purple centre, its double
row of shining silver petals that close over it
at nightfall, and aurole of serrated leaves, it
looks like a star just fallen out of heaven.
Its name comes from a legend that links this
lovely plant with Charlemagne, of whom it
is told that once, when his army was stricken
with pestilence, an angel showed him certain
healing powers of the stemless thistle ; and he
and all his host were saved.

The legend is half forgotten now, and the
thistles have lost their magic art. Instead,
they are seen trimming a lady's hat — ignoble
fate ! There is some way of preserving the
flowers for this purpose which prevents their
shrivelling. I gathered a few that day on Le
Planet, and repented it too late ; they curled
their white petals tightly over, hiding their
beautiful faces as though they grieved.

122

FLOWERING SUNDAY AT
PENALLT CHURCH

FLOWERING SUNDAY AT
PENALLT CHURCH

WE drove there with Jimmy in the tub.
Jimmy is a pretty old pony with a bright bay
coat and a loving ; disposition ; the tub is
his little cart. The distance from home
over the Monmouthshire hill-side was only
a couple of miles perhaps ; but we always
allow extra time for Jimmy, as he is afflicted
with an insatiable thirst ; he drags his in-
dulgent drivers, tub and all, into any by-
ways he fancies, and over any obstacle, if only
he can spy his favourite refreshment in a
pool, or a puddle even, shining afar. So we
take quite an hour on the journey.

The fields are just shimmering with spring
colours, and the crests of the gorse are golden.
They put me in mind of a child who was
125

FLOWERING SUNDAY

asked what flowers he wished to have for his
own little garden ; and he said he did not
mind what they were, so long as they were
" all lit" This great wild garden of the West
would have partly pleased him ; only here
and there the flowers are lit, as yet, but they
give fair promise of summer fire ; and in
their al fresco ballrooms the daffodils are
dancing. All around our rocky pathway,
high over the valley of the Wye, " the moors
lie bare to God."

It is a wild, enchanted region where one
might fancy, as over the Cornish moors, the
angels' feet have trod, for in many respects
this land of holy memories and legends
bears affinity to Cornwall ; and its inhabitants,
who are neither Welsh nor English, are
thought to be descendants of ancient races
that are lost to history, and akin to the
West Irish, Cornishmen and Basques. The
spirit of prayers prayed long ago still breathes
from many a site of Druid worship here.
" Druid is a convenient word that often
serves to cover our general ignorance of pre-
historic faiths. Yet for unnumbered years
126

AT PENALLT CHURCH

this shadowy priesthood has been definitely
linked in men's thought with various relics
that still survive in this ancient land, and
give life to old legend and belief. Such
are the yew, abundant in Monmouthshire
churchyards, under which the Druids,
medicine-men and seers, dispensed justice
and wisdom, and the stones at cross-roads
leading to their places of burial, on which
the coffin-bearers rested their burdens,
chanting hymns the while — a Bardic custom
that still lingers in the west in the singing
at old-fashioned funerals, though this takes
place no longer around the crosses. The
mourners sing now at the house, before they
go to the grave.

In a certain beautiful little garden in the
Penallt hills is a grove of oaks which, though
themselves not old, are thought to be de-
scendants of older trees that sheltered the
Druids at their times of solemn assembly ;
and close by the grove fragments of cross
and arch have lately been unearthed that
suggest sacred associations. Just beyond

the garden there is an ancient holding that
127

FLOWERING SUNDAY

still bears the old name, soft-sounding like a
far away melody, of Cae-Dryllis, or Druids'
Field.

Until quite recently the country people
preserved the Druidical remains with a
blending of fear and reverence, weaving
round them many mediaeval legends and
ghost stories; but a prosaic and destructive age,
encroaching even on this hallowed ground,
has since done away with most of them.
A flourishing specimen of the Glastonbury
thorn, which really did flower on Christmas
Eve, was lately cut down to make room for
a motor garage in Monmouth ; and in the
same way many of the Druidical stones have
been broken up to mend the roads. An
old inhabitant of Penallt told me how she
had persuaded her husband to save one of
those that stood in the way of his plough.
The stones had served in later days as bases
to crosses, now mostly destroyed, and the
sturdy Protestantism of the country people
came to regard both base and cross as signs
of the errors of Rome. So the neighbours

told her that the stone was popish and must
128

AT PENALLT CHURCH

be destroyed ; but she knew that folk had set
store by it in old times, and she had her
way. The stone was removed to a place of
safety, where it still stands.

Jimmy's diversions on the way to Penallt
would provide time for a complete historical
survey of Monmouthshire ; but we have
lingered too long among the Druids and
have reached the lych-gate at last, disposed
of pony and cart for the time, and entered
the churchyard under its " pleached walk "
of pollarded limes.

It is Palm Sunday, called in these parts
" Flowering Sunday," and every grave is
decked with flowers. This is a survival
from very old days, a rite probably of the
ancient British Church, which had its first
beginnings in the West, in Monmouthshire
and Glamorganshire. So much at least is
almost certain. But there are those, learned
in ancient Welsh poetry and Bardic literature,
who say that flowering the graves, like the
singing at the wayside crosses, was a pre-
Christian custom. It never spread much

farther east in England, but it is met with
129 i

FLOWERING SUNDAY

in other countries of Europe ; Aller -seelen
Tag (All Souls' Day) is thus honoured in
Germany.

For the most part the offerings this Flower-
ing Sunday on the Penallt graves are very
humble, but not one has been forgotten ; all
are brightened with a nosegay of wood-
anemone and primrose, or a wreath made
with the rich green moss that grows in sweet
luxuriance in the woods. On a baby's grave
is one solitary daffodil, its broken stalk tied
round and round with quite unnecessary
tightness, in the way little children do, with
a bit of thick black worsted.

The churchyard is very peaceful and
lovely, waiting in hope and patience for the
risen life. A great yew guards the church
on its eastern side, "renewing its eternal
youth " these thousand years and more ; it
has seen a thousand spring-times break
over the shining river far below, and the
woody heights of Kymin across the gorge;
and beyond the plain of Monmouth, the
beautiful Brecon Mountains. Seen from a

little distance down the hill, the old church
130

AT PENALLT CHURCH

and its mighty sentinel stand alone against
the sky. Yews, in the West especially, were so
frequently planted in churchyards because of
their legendary power of absorbing poisonous
gases that were believed to rise from the
graves at set of sun. The dreaded exhala-
tions took fearsome shape in the imagination
of the people, and became spirits, ghosts that
appeared in the twilight.

" These gases, or will o' the wisps," says a
seventeenth century writer, " divers have seen
and believe them dead bodies walking abroad";
and the solemn yew stood among them as a
safeguard and purifier.

The origin of Penallt Church is lost in the
misty past. No one knows even to what
saint it was dedicated ; no doubt his blessing
still rests on his church, but his very name
has vanished. The present building, with its
massive ivy-covered buttresses, and decorative
windows in the tower, dates only from the
fourteenth century ; it is the site probably of
an ancient shrine. An unusually wide pass-
age in place of the narrow " squint " so often
seen in mediaeval churches gives an added

FLOWERING SUNDAY

dignity to the single aisle, and commands the
entire chancel.

The old pews, now replaced by uninterest-
ing modern benches, were very curious, being
all jumbled together anyhow, and so narrow
that it was practically impossible to sit in
them ; it was a point of honour in Penallt
to possess a pew, so they had to be divided
when families increased ; one was even hung
on the wall, like a bird-cage. The owners
retained them in a kind of dog-in-the-
manger spirit ; they seldom occupied them,
but allowed no one else to do so, and so
they remained empty, the few attendants at
service sitting in the galleries invisible to all
except the parson in his three-decker. The
western gallery was filled by a great table
with desks, round which the choir sat and
sang without accompaniment. Towards the
east end the floor inclines downward, follow-
ing the fall of the ground. The altar has
been raised in recent times, but originally it
stood much lower than the level of the nave.
We stand awhile before the bell begins to toll

in the deep quiet of the chancel. An in-
132

AT PENALLT CHURCH

scription, quaintly worded over a little boy's
grave in the vault below, speaks to one's
heart with childlike serenity across the
years : —

" WILLIAM, the Son of Thomas and Jane Evans,
aged six years.

" Mourn not dear Parence,
Nor lament for me ;
Childeren with God
Canot unhapy Bee."

It is good to think that the Parence have
joined him long ago.

The service that Sunday evening began
late, and as the church has no lights, save
two candles on the pulpit and two at the
harmonium, it was almost dark before the
end ; only the great chained unicorn in a
huge Queen Anne coat-of-arms over the
chancel arch gleamed white in the gloom.
We all knew the hymns by heart, so we
needed no books :

" Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,
It is not night if Thou be near. . . ."

the children's voices rang bravely through

FLOWERING SUNDAY

the shadows ; then the little congregation
streamed out under the arching limes, and
Jimmy, mindful of his comfortable stable,
cut his customary digressions short as he
went home over the steep hillside.

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

LOOKING back from the flats of middle age
over life's varied experiences, we often find
that among the figures standing out most
vividly from the background of the past are
those of travelling companions.

Friendships lost as soon as made in
" journeyings oft " ; scenes lived through in
sudden intimacy with strangers, some swift
glimpse of beauty or comedy or sorrow, these
keep their bright colours undimmed through
many years from the very fact of their having
been thus fleeting, rung down on life's stage,
passing shows without beginning or end.

Yet it is difficult at times to explain the
curious hold they have on us, chance comrades
who follow us all through after years out of
the shadows, keeping a semblance of life to
the last. Why can I recall so plainly for

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

instance, as though it were yesterday I had
seen them, two well-dressed ordinary women,
mother and married daughter evidently, whom
I once met in a London train bound for the
Sussex coast, and remember their trivial talk,
their comfortable impedimenta and pair of
overfed Pekinese ? " I miss my excellent
Sarah," the younger lady is saying ; " she was a
maid after my own heart ; never said anything
but 'Yes m'm' and 'No m'm' ever since I first
had her, ten long years ago ! Then on a
certain black Monday she announces her
departure ! Going to be married to a dairy-
man, and wishing to spend a few weeks with
her mother first. The young fellow was
above reproach, all promised well, so I pulled
myself together and was most generous — set her
up with the whole of her crockery and linen
for the future home. Then, what should the
bridegroom do but drive his cart into a motor
lorry a week before the wedding day, and
break his neck ! She is inconsolable of
course. . . ."

" Oh do you think those sort of people
really take it so much to heart ? " said the
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TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

other lady ; " in that rank of life, you
know. . . ."

" Oh yes, she does," rejoined her daughter ;
" she minds more than you would think. . . .
But the question for me is, what will she
do with the crockery and linen ? Will she
send it all back to me ? and what on earth
shall / do with it ? with the man's initials so
neatly put on the linen in those little red
letters. . . . really it is annoying. ..."

They were nearing their destination ; the
old lady had been gathering up her belongings,
and her attention had wandered from the
story.

" Oh ! well we will hope it will be better,"
she answered vaguely. The two got out at
Three Bridges and I was left with a respectable
old working woman, the only other occupant
of the second-class carriage. She had been
crying, and was plainly in some great trouble.
I ventured to speak to her and asked her what
it was. She would not be offended I thought ;
to certain people it is very difficult to offer
sympathy, it only seems to make matters
worse, but the poor nearly always meet one

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

half way. I was little prepared for the story
she told ; even now after long years, it passes
by me at times like a black mark suddenly
drawn over some fair tranquil page of life, a
thing awful in its primitive tragedy, a
catastrophe such as now and again, so long as
the world lasts, will close on the old, old
story : —

" Ein Jiingling liebt ein Madchen,
Die hat einen Andern erwahlt."

The old woman was a caretaker in some
offices at London Bridge Station, and so I
imagine she had a free pass on the line. Her
daughter was in service on a Sussex farm, and
a young fellow there had tried to win her for
years, but in vain, for she cared for another
man, and this persistent lover wearied her ; so
that lately she had avoided him, and refused
even to let him see her face. At last he gave
up hope ; but she had broken his heart, and
he sent her a strange message saying he would
not be shut out any longer, but one day he
was coming right across her way, where she

could not choose but find him. The girl
140

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

wrote all this to her mother at the time, mak-
ing light of it, however, for she had never
really taken him seriously. Then — it had
happened that very day — she had gone out at
sunrise into the drying ground i with the wash-
ing, and there she saw his body hanging on
the line. The girl was found an hour later
lying unconscious on the ground ; and they
had sent for her mother.

" Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu ;
Und wem sie just passieret
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei."

" Do you think they really take it so much
to heart ? " the lady's words came back to me
— " in that rank of life, you know. . . ."

Many of the poor spend half their lives in
moving from place to place; for when one
has next to nothing to spoil, and one's earthly
goods travel safely in sacks and red cotton
handkerchiefs, the attractions of a little lower
rent, a healthier house, a better prospect of
work, must no doubt be all-important. I
was telling a working woman one day that

I was " moving," and what a trouble I found
141

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

it all. I learnt that she was moving too, for
the dismal reason that there was a sink out
of order in the kitchen, which had given all
the children blood-poisoning. Failing, alas !
Miss Octavia Hill, where was the sanitary in-
spector? "Well I do feel with you ma'am,"
she said, with the ready sympathy of her
class, " it is a set-out," but I daresay she has
changed house several times since that day.
Usually of course the poor can only travel
within a very small radius, and catlike, they
often come back to the place whence they
originally started. I remember, however,
meeting one day on the platform at Notting-
ham a man with his wife, and a family like
the tail of a comet; there were seven boys
and four girls, all plainly on the verge
of starvation ; but they were travelling from
a remote hamlet in the Midlands to seek
their fortune in Exeter. It is a marvel how
a poor mother in a family removal of such
magnitude ever gets under weigh at all ;
often she loses half her belongings on the
journey; but I have only once known a

woman's " tender care " actually cease to-
142

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

wards the child she bare to the length of
leaving it behind on the platform. It was
holiday time ; the scene was King's Cross ;
our destination I have forgotten. In the
confusion near the booking office the mother,
bewildered, had put the baby down and
picked up a portmanteau instead. Just as
the train was moving off she realised what
had happened, and there ensued what the
newspapers call a painful scene as she hung
half crazy out of the carriage window, with
four older children crying and frightened,
clinging to her skirts. These mishaps have
a way of just stopping short of actual dis-
aster; so it was in this instance. A porter
came running up with the baby, and threw
it into its mother's arms ; and we breathed
freely once more. Suddenly it choked and
went black in the face. " He's got whoop-
ing-cough," she explained. Beside her sat
a young woman with a still smaller and very
fragile infant ; she was a neighbour from
home, and they were all travelling together,
with the reckless indifference of the working-
classes about infection. Two kind old north-
'43

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

country farmers were in the carriage with us,
and it was beautiful to watch their self-deny-
ing efforts to be of use to this helpless party.
One gave up his seat to two of the children
— for we were packed as tight as herrings in
a barrel — and stood during the greater part
of the journey in a violent draught in the
corridor ; the other, when the window strap,
that time-honoured resource of the travelling
baby, failed at last to divert the whooping-
cough child, made a paper fleet for it out of
his Financial Times. Of such high qualities
are heroes made.

On the whole the poor spoil their children
every bit as much as we do, but with far
more excuse than we, who get nurses and
governesses to do all the difficult work. The
poor mother, weary and worried, simply takes
the short cut to peace ; it serves for the
moment. An illustration of this system,
an extreme case, perhaps, was given me in
a little scene one day at Oxford station.
We were travelling to Birmingham, I think.
Into the carriage a woman, hurrying and

flustered, thrust a baby boy in charge of an
144

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

older brother, along with a Japanese basket
crammed to bursting, and a bag of buns.
She begged one of the ladies present, a very
unsuitable, severe looking person who sat
knitting in the further corner of the carriage,
to give an eye to the children. "Their
grandmother and aunts are coming in from
the country to meet them at Birmingham,"
she explained. The baby suddenly rebelled
against this prospect ; it kicked over the bag
of buns, scattering them in all directions, and
set up a loud and dismal wail. There were
still a few minutes before the train was timed
to start ; the mother came to a hasty resolve.
"Well, there now, he shan't go to Birming-
ham," she said, and out she bundled baby,
brother, Japanese basket, and as many buns
as were within reach, and what the grand-
mother and aunts said when they got to
Birmingham I shall never know !

We all have watched with interest, or
laughter, or pity, some such scenes as
these, wishing at times that we might trace
them to the end — footprints lost in the snows
of time, wandering lights in the dark. . . .
'45 K

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

There was once a little French governess
with whom I travelled to Lyons one day,
and she told me her story, being too happy
at the time, I think, to keep it to herself.
She was an orphan, alone in the world, and
for ten years she and her lover had been
separated, he at home, she in America, both
with the thrifty foresight of their nation
earning money to be married on, and now
she was going home to him. I can see the
light shining in her eyes as she said he would
surely meet her at the station, though he had
not written of late — she wondered why. In
due time we arrived. . . . What had hap-
pened ? Had some evil befallen him, or
had he simply tired of waiting for her all
those years ? I cannot tell, but he was not
there; just as my train steamed out of the
station I saw her go through the barrier
alone.

As these memories come crowding in before
me, some clear, some fainter, some shifting
and confused, I pass again over ground that I
have lately trod, and compare new days with

old. Nowhere, I think, has the luxury of
146

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

railway travelling further advanced than on
the convenient restaurant cars now run on
every main line at home and abroad. Time
was when all the food we could depend on
through many empty hours had to be
scrambled for at a buffet in a few desperate
moments when the train halted at some inter-
mediate station. Yet this lively interlude had
its advantages ; it unstiffened our limbs and
shook up our spirits, adding zest to the long
monotony of the journey ; we have lost where
we have gained, I think. There is a grim
and sooty hideousness, a certain terror even,
in the long and difficult walk we must take
nowadays from our well-appointed com-
partment to the restaurant car, over those
quaking little bridges and down the mean,
draughty corridors. I am forever haunted by
a story I once heard of the stout old lady on an
express train, who was passing over a bridge
when the shivering plates gave way beneath
her weight and she fell through on to the
line. . . . The form of a little waiter on a
journey from Paris to Basle one stormy
winter evening comes back to me ; he was

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

following me past a hundred coupe litsy
all exactly alike, their blinds already fast
drawn for the night, with the object of
obtaining a franc I owed him on my supper
bill. It had to be extracted from my husband,
who was at that moment disposing himself to
slumber ; and the difficulty of finding him
under the circumstances was great. With all
possible discretion, I attempted to peer through
window after veiled window, going, though
I knew it not, far beyond my goal. At
length we stood before a fast-closed door
that barred our way. We made a squalid
picture in that unlovely place — myself, touzled
and worn and travel-stained — for only certain
very rare forms of female beauty are proof
against a twelve-hours' railway journey — and
the waiter, a petty figure in his absurd white
jacket and brass buttons and semi-military
trousers, his little soul entirely absorbed in
that impossible quest of tenpence, while all
the time the train went rushing through the
storm ; pale, torn shreds of light ever and
anon fled past the windows, and the wind

shrieked like some wild thing in pain. I
148

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

tried the door ; it was fast as Newgate prison.
" Ouvrez," I shouted through the din, with
as much dignity as I could command. The
waiter eyed me with sudden alarm ; I believe
he thought me a desperate character meditating
a peculiarly dreadful form of suicide. " Mais
je ne puis pas, Madame" he said, " nous sommes
au bout du train.'"

Once more the scene shifts ; we are on a
Channel steamer nearing Folkestone ; and
again it is evening, but a peaceful sunset one.
There is a pageant in the sky — a chain of
dark clouds stretches all along the flaming
horizon, as if it were a mighty army of the
hosts of God. A baby boy sits on deck on
his mother's lap ; he holds a key, which he
has mistaken for a watch, to his ear. " Tick,
tick, tock," he says hopefully. His brother,
two or three years older, has been enjoying
himself after his own fashion during the entire
crossing — dragging his sea-sick attendant
about, doing all the little mischief he can
find; his oft-repeated query — "Why soodn't
I ? " the same that every infant has been ask-
ing since the world began, rings all over the
149

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

deck. He is holding his nurse's hand now,
and stands as near as he dares to the rails,
trying to look over the ship's awful sides into
the sea. The engines are stopping ; the water
eddies and seethes around the great posts of
the landing stage, and it frightens him.
" How are we going to get off the boat,
Nanny ? the sea is coming so close ! how are
we going to get off the boat ? "

TOYS

TOYS1

AN article that appeared a year ago in a
weekly paper, called Ugliness in the Nursery^
struck so true a note that it is a pity it
should have perished in the flood of ephe-
meral literature. It was an earnest indict-
ment against certain grotesque and hideous
toys that are sold every Christmas in the
great bazaars, and are bound to produce an
influence that is more or less bad on their
little owners. In some Continental countries
mothers choose pretty nurses and beautiful
toys for their babies, believing beauty and its
reverse to be alike capable of transmission ; and
Lafcadio Hearn somewhere in his writings
tells a story of a Japanese father who
carried the dead body of his two-days'-
old child through some of the temples and

1 Reprinted by kind permission from Mothers in
Council.

'53

TOYS

gardens of the city where he lived, so that
even in death it might not be quite un-
touched by the beauty of earth.

It may be that such thoughts are merely
fanciful. Yet in these days of elaborate
child-study, when so much heed is paid to
the influence of early surroundings, and
immense importance is given to environment
as a means of training, it is surely an extra-
ordinary fact that we are content to put
ugly and vulgar objects, to be its playthings
and constant companions, into a baby's hand.

I saw a lady recently buying presents for
her small children in a famous London toy-
shop. She chose, among other things, a
horrible little figure called " the mechanical
advocate," a creature in a lawyer's gown
with a ghastly white face and a red blob for
a nose, which, when wound up, went through
a series of violent gesticulations. It is diffi-
cult to see what can possibly be gained
by giving a child such a plaything as that.
I disliked the whole army of golliwogs, now,
I think, happily defunct, because they were
ugly and impossible ; and I would avoid

TOYS

nearly everything that has its head too big
for its body. For some old friends of this
peculiar construction, such as Punch and
Humpty-Dumpty, we keep, young and old,
a friendly feeling ; yet it remains something
of a mystery why a figure is supposed to be
funny simply because one of its members is dis-
proportionately large. It would be interesting
to trace the origin of this idea. I would
banish from every nursery the terrifying
masks with which big boys like to frighten
their little sisters, and all things that are
hideous and unnatural.

There are many ways in which our modern
toys are found wanting. In England we
have never yet attained to the skill and
imagination of the French and German in-
ventors, their touch of fancy and grace.
The Christmas shops here are festooned with
hundreds of transparent net stockings, dis-
playing all their contents at once, that are
intended for the " hanging up " ceremony
on Christmas Eve. These seem to me to
defeat their own object, for the whole charm
and excitement of the stocking surely lies in

TOYS

its mystery, in the sense it imparts of the
unknown, the dive into its dark depths when
we wake on Christmas morning. Our own
stocking is far the best for this purpose, so
there is no need for an imitation one at all.
There is, indeed, a sad waste of trouble in
the huge efforts made nowadays to amuse
little children. In these realistic times
imagination is crowded more and more out
of their world ; the most wonderful skill is
spent in reproducing the things of actual life
for them, and the result is failure.

I saw a five-year-old boy playing in a
garden close by the door of his home.
Around him were several toys — a motor car,
a few ninepins, and a new box of soldiers —
of these he took no notice at all. He had
got a stick, on which a leaf was neatly
impaled ; and he held it motionless before
an iron scraper. Every few minutes he took
ofF the leaf, laid it carefully edgewise between
the prongs of a rake lying on the grass, and
put on a fresh one. So absorbed was he in
this game, if game it could be called, that
I had to ask him twice what he was
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TOYS

doing before he answered, " Making toast."
Nothing that ever was invented can equal
the delight of imagining something that is
not there ; for a child's mind lives and grows
by the unseen. Still, we can all remember
certain toys that formed the very fabric of
our lives, though they only attained that
beautiful eminence after long, hard service ;
for the toy that is decrepit and infirm is the
one we really love. I saw a little girl clasp-
ing tenderly in her arms an unspeakably
dreadful object. It was a doll that had lost
its face, and had only the back of its skull left.
She sang a little song to the doll, wrapping
it tenderly round with a piece of flannel, and
trying to balance a small knitted bonnet on
the slippery fragment of its head ; they made
together a tiny travesty of death and life.

To return to our toy-shop. " This way
for Cinderella ! " proclaimed a live walking
Father Christmas — " unique performance for
the little ones ! " I beheld a rough repre-
sentation of a stage with a painted Cinderella
fleeing up the stairs in the background to
the sound of a gong striking twelve with

TOYS

wearisome reiteration. A mechanical waiter
rattled to and fro over the boards, bearing a
tray of peppermints. That was all ; it was
not a play, it was not Cinderella, it was not
anything. The children, in unending pro-
cession, passed gravely before it.

In a show-case was displayed an array of
snow-men, faithfully copied from the original
article, with boot-button eyes and the usual
sketchy features. They were solid all
through, made of some thick white woollen
material, and they would live for ever, through
winter and summer alike, in defiance of
the very nature and being of a snow-
man, that most fugitive of all childhood's
joys, which changes in a moment and dies in
the sunlight.

Through a crowd of toy carts of every
description there passed a lady with a dis-
mally undecided little boy. Milk carts
failed to please him, exact miniatures of the
real thing, with drivers driving dashing
ponies, and great brass cans shining bril-
liantly. Taxi-cabs whizzed past him, motor
omnibuses, Lord Mayor's coaches, Irish cars.
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TOYS

He turned away from them all, grimly
attracted by a dying goldfish in a tank a
little farther on — the only real thing he could
find in all that world of shams. The mother
drew him back again, and they stopped
before a coal waggon. At last his eye
brightened. "I should like one of those
little black sacks," he said. The poor lady's
face fell. " Oh, they wouldn't sell it out of
the cart," she answered ; " and it wouldn't
be worth buying either. Nannie can make
you a sack at home." " I should like one
of those little black sacks," he said.

It is open to question, I think, whether
small children should be taken to these huge
emporiums at all. They are usually quite
unable to choose out of the host of things
before them, and they get fretful and be-
wildered. Certain primitive feelings, the
good old rule of " Me First," the refusal to
share, the desire to obliterate one's brothers
and sisters, gradually win the day ; peace and
goodwill are banished from the scene, to be
too often restored, alas ! by mistaken means.
A mother was explaining to her three little

TOYS

sons that she could not afford three toy
summer-houses ; they might have one be-
tween them ; which should it be ? The
discussion took up an immense time ; and, as
all such discussions will do, it " ended in
tears." " I want the 'ouse with the wailings,"
sobbed the youngest infant, "but I don't
want to 'ave it between us." The fruitless
moments passed, louder grew the voices,
more tears were shed. At last the mother
said something, too low for me to catch,
which had an instant and magic effect.
Smiles shone out, and peace reigned once
more. A short time after, as I was leaving
the shop, the trio with their exhausted parent
passed out before me. In his arms each
little boy carried a toy summer-house.

Among the distractions of the toy-shop I
have wandered from my original point, for
the subject takes us far afield, and is less
simple than we should believe at first sight.
" Let us entertain primarily with grace," says
Ruskin ; " I insist much on this word — with
grace assuredly." We must put grace into
the children then as best we may, and no

doubt we shall succeed in the end ; but they
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TOYS

will not care a pin about it to begin with.
Trailing clouds of glory they come ; but their
hearts are set on the little black sacks. And
we say, " How odd children are ! They are
a bundle of contradictions ; you never know
what will please them." The real truth is,
that no one yet, not the wisdom — least of all
the wisdom — of all the ages, has altogether
understood a child. With his little fellows
he is shut into his own wonderful world ;
their feet are set in ways that we have for-
gotten how to tread. Only we can at least
make sure, as far as possible, that the
thoughts suggested to them through their
play are not entirely idle or unlovely. For
children are quick to grasp the symbolism of
things ; they are ever trying to find the truth
that underlies all make-believe. But in that
world of theirs the two are so closely inter-
woven that sometimes the children confuse
one with the other, and then they come and
ask us to explain. " I have got a toy bunny,"
said a little girl to her mother, " and I know
there are real bunnies ; and I have a toy train,
and I know there are real trains ; and I have

got a toy hoop, but what is a real hoop ? "
161

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

" WHEN do you move ? "

" Have you actually moved already?"
" When are you REALLY GOING to move?"
The question was asked me up and down
the town, in varying forms, with every grada-
tion of civil interest, of friendly banter, finally
of mild incredulity, as people are wont to ask
when a thing has been pending some con-
siderable time. We shall never hear it again ;
for we have made — at least I trust we have
made — our last move in this world.

It was done of our own free will ; we were
not obliged to go ; yet now that the parting
is actually over, on looking back it seems
strangely sad, as it were the close to a long
sunny day that can never dawn again ; others
may follow just as bright, but they will not
be the same. The feeling springs somehow
from the finality of the thing ; in our incon-
165

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

sequent way we resent the ending of one of
life's chapters, even when we ourselves have
written the final word. For we who are
grown up and have even passed II mezzo del
cammin, still remain at heart like little children
who say to their mothers time after time
" Again ! " after some game that has pleased
them.

" Tous les departs attristent."

In the deserted home the familiar rooms
stand wide and empty now ; the walls with
all their stored-up memories are vacant and
bare, showing here and there a patch of
brighter colour on the faded paper where
pictures or furniture have kept off the sun-
light. The house has passed with extra-
ordinary swiftness from the comfort and
homeliness begotten of the long years that
are gone, to utter desolation. One of that
solitary and depressing race known as care-
takers, till the joyful advent of a new tenant, is
carrying on a shadowed career in the basement.

I know that the little town garden will

do its best to show a brave front as of old,
1 66

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

to the spring ; yellow faces of aconite inside
their green ruffs will look up again to greet
it, bluebells will sing in an impoverished,
but still cheerful chorus. The back yard,
however, so many years the home of my
diligent hens, is empty and silent now,
reverting little by little to what it originally
was, a grass-grown orchard. It became a
back-yard, despite the presence of three
venerable apple trees, when we set up the
chicken runs ; and the ground was soon hard
as brick, every scrap of vegetation disappearing
under the busy feet. The pullets are pursu-
ing their honourable calling on a neighbour's
premises, but a few aged cocks, beaux of a
past generation, their brave plumage but
little the worse for a hundred fights, were
offered up, indignant, on the culinary altar
and " came in " for mince ; a petty exit, I
grieve to think, for warriors so valiant.

On the very eve of our farewell to the
Crescent, Pat, our dear Irish terrier, closed a
blameless life in peace. We mourn him truly,
but we do not wish him back ; for he never

could bear a change. . . . The last van has
167

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

rounded the corner, the moments have all run
out, and the little house stands forlorn, an
empty shell, a still form whence the spirit has
fled.

Skirting a reach of the main road between
Windsor and London, a stone's throw from
a little village green, runs a high red-brick
ivied wall that hides from view a wide lawn
and an old-fashioned kitchen garden, with
meadows and a little copse beyond. Here in
the shade of ilex and copper beeches stands
our new home, a plain Georgian building of
red brick, hidden under a coat of yellow
paint stained drab and grey by time and
weather. Here and there beautiful old
crimson colours shine through where the paint
is very slowly perishing, but it is good for
yet a hundred years. The front of the house
is extremely simple, almost childish in design,
pierced by fifteen windows all alike. Along-
side the front a row of little semi-circular
flower-beds bordered with box edging, the
prettiest evergreen edging of all, was always
bright in past spring-times with primrose and

scillas, and in summer with stocks and other
168

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

homely annuals. " No such things," says
Miss Jekyll in Some English Gardens, " look
well or at all in place against a building ; the
transition from the permanent structure to
the transient vegetation is too abrupt," and
she advises instead the planting of " something
more enduring. . . . mostly evergreen."
But why? It is an arrangement after
Nature's own heart ; one of those contrasts
that she loves. For so the frail wild flowers
find out the crevices of the mighty rocks and
deck the everlasting hills, like little children
playing at an old man's feet.

Many of the principal living rooms of the
house look north, for the sunlight, slayer of
microbes, that we rightly deem essential to
our health and homes in these enlightened
days, was a matter of indifference to our
hardier forbears. To them the window tax
was a far weightier consideration, and out of
respect to it a great part of the west side of
the house was closed up and blind ; only in
recent years one of the occupants bethought
her of opening two windows to the sun.

The interior of the house in olden days
169

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

was melancholy and severe. A squat black
stove, naked and unashamed, stood in the en-
trance hall, and made an ineffective attempt
to warm the whole of the echoing corridors.
The bedrooms upstairs were deadly cold,
and their occupants entrenched themselves
behind strong baize doors to keep out the
draughts. Very little light came through
the tall north windows, for a wilderness of
scrubby undergrowth without, topped by tall
laurels and great brooding yews, obscured the
garden spaces. A graceful, tall acacia stood
much too near the house, with its infant de-
scendants cropping up in hundreds all over
the lawn ; it fell in a recent October gale.

The walls of the " reception " rooms were
hung with a crimson " flock " paper of a
sticky, fluffy texture that would not be
tolerated now ; the pictures had all been sold
when we took /possession, but their ghosts
were still there, irregular patches and squares
at many different levels, with red triangles
above them showing where the cords had
hung. In the drawing-room a few shreds

of a very curious old Japanese paper, that
170

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

must have been a great rarity in its time,
clung to the woodwork of the wainscoting.

The appointments of the house were solid
and dignified. Such was the great two-storied
kitchen table, of a kind rarely seen nowadays,
with a platform beneath, capable of holding
six months' stores. It disappeared in the sale
held when the house changed hands, being
bought for four shillings by some itinerant
dealer. The fastenings of the window
shutters are of a most elaborate and burglar-
defying mechanism. Through the long winter
evenings the tranquil ladies who lived and
died in the house must have enjoyed un-
broken peace and safety behind those power-
ful barriers.

How many stories of old days the
shrill, cracked bells could have told that
hung in the cold outer corridors on the ground
floor ! Their name-plates were saved from
destruction when we came into the house,
and though the gilt lettering is faded almost
out of recognition, the words have a charm
for me still — The White Room, The North

Room, Lady Alicia's Bedroom, Lady Selina's
171

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

Bedroom. At times I fancy I can hear
voices calling from those rooms above, and
the answering footsteps of the prim, old-
world dependants.

The owners of the place for nearly two
centuries were ladies of noble ancestry and
quiet ways of life ; they were all blessed with
exceptional length of days, and the latest
generation spent theirs in looking for the new
reign of Christ on earth, which was to begin
in 1882, and herald the Millennium. They
were led to those conclusions through Piazzi
Smyth's monumental researches into the
mysteries of the great Pyramid. Last year we
saved from the sale of the old ladies' little
treasures their copy of this extraordinary work
— Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, a faded
brown book, with four stars engraved on the
cover, and the graceful delicate signature of
one of the owners on the fly-leaf. The
author's abstruse and elaborate reasoning,
based on an immense system of measurements
and investigation, speaks from these dead
pages with weighty assurance and confident

hope. "The Great Pyramid system," he
172

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

says, " is full of benevolence and compassion
for the poor and needy, besides teaching that
their anguish and woes will last but a few
years longer ; for then, agreeably with the
Scriptures, Christ himself will again descend
from Heaven, this time with angels and arch-
angels accompanying, and will give to man at
last that perfect and righteous government
which man alone is incapable of; so shall the
Saviour reign over all nations brought under
his one heavenly sceptre, until that millennial
termination arrives, when Time shall be no
more. . . ."

Lady Georgiana has drawn a faint pencil
line beside this passage, in token of her
approval. Someone, greatly daring, once
ventured to take her to task for trying to
read the future, and quoted to her the words
of Scripture : "Ye know neither the day nor
the hour wherein the Son of man cometh."
She was a lively and resolute old lady, not
easily crossed on any subject, and this one
of all others lay near her heart. She sent
a winged shaft at the speaker. " We are not
told we shall not know the year," she said.

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

Lady Georgiana and her sister, Lady Alicia,
discussed this tremendous theme on many a
Sunday afternoon with a great-nephew of
theirs, a little Eton boy, who often came
over in the Half to spend an hour with them.
The young visitor was just at the age when
life looks its brightest, and he viewed the
near approach of its end thus presented to
him, with much disfavour. He would
marshal before the old aunts all the argu-
ments he could muster that might tell
against Mr. Smyth's conclusions. Occasion-
ally the afternoon's entertainment would be en-
livened by the strains of Moody and Sankey's
hymns, played by the boy on the little
cottage piano that stood in the corner of the
long, low drawing-room. I saw the piano
once or twice in later days, when it had long
been silent ; it had a beautiful front of
gathered crimson silk, the folds simulating rays
issuing forth from a brass luminary resplend-
ent in the centre.

The little Etonian scored in the end, for
the year so confidently awaited came and
passed with no sign from heaven ; no trumpet
J74

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

sounded in the skies, and the old watchers lived
on, " still ascending towards the snows," until
the summons, but not in the way they had
looked for, came at last. They have left a
fragrant memory behind them in the little
village clustering round their home, a memory
of unnumbered kindnesses. Yet they ever
retained that vast conception of a great gulf
fixed between themselves and their " inferiors,"
which was part of an ancient order of things,
now happily well-nigh passed away. It was
characteristic of the Ladies Bountiful of that
bygone day, and blended strangely with their
ways of gentle courtesy and their true good-
ness of heart. Lady Georgiana, who became
rather blind towards the end of her life, was
in the garden one day when she heard carriage
wheels approaching. " Tell me who it is,"
she said to her sister, " for I do not wish to
bow to rubbish."

A relic of the old ladies' closing days still
exists in the garden path that skirts the
shrubberies around their home, made extra
wide to admit of three invalid chairs abreast.
The last survivor of those successive genera-
ls

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

tions of sisters was a gentle old lady whom
I remember seeing one day standing in the
beautiful Adam doorway, framed in magnolia
and wistaria, the one graceful feature of the
plain, grave building. Lady Selina was very
small and slender, and indeed what she lived
upon would have barely supported a robin.
"A little chicken, my dear," she said to a
hungry young cousin in her teens, who was
sitting at luncheon with her one day, as she
lifted the cover before her, and there reposing
in its meek white sauce lay one merry-
thought. No wonder that Lady Selina
dwindled and almost vanished out of sight as
her ninetieth year drew on, but yet her hold
on life remained extraordinarily strong. She
lived four years longer still, and then she too
was laid to rest in the churchyard close at
hand.

The house was left tenantless and gradually
fell into disrepair, almost decay. " The
solemn sequence of the seasons " passed over
it in silence ; the dust of the dead years lay
thick in the empty rooms. So it long

remained ; and now and again a local con-
176

FROM OLD DAYS TO NEW

tractor would intrude within the gates and run
his cold, speculative eye over the grey build-
ing standing desolate in the beautiful garden,
and talk of pulling down the house, cutting
up the property into lines of convenient villas.
These things were not to be. Better days
have dawned at last, and the old place is
renewing its youth once more. New life is
springing up within it and around ; snow-
drops are weaving their white wreaths afresh
at the feet of the beech-trees.

177 M

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE OF
FURNISHING

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE OF
FURNISHING

SOME weeks before that first new spring-time
the house was refurnished and ready. There
is often a greater charm and a deeper interest
in revivifying an old place than in creating a
new one ; so we found it here, but there was
one drawback to this advantage, in that we
had not an entirely free hand. It was cer-
tainly fortunate that no structural alterations
were needed ; so we did not have to adopt
the headlong course of " throwing the dining-
room into the hall," or the like. But in
various respects we were obliged to adapt
our own ideas to old and often difficult con-
ditions. I like square landings on every
floor, and in our new-old house there are
none ; I like a drawing-room level with the

garden instead of being put away upstairs, and
lii

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

windows which open at the top instead of
only at the bottom. These let in a search-
ing and peculiar draught which is a radically
different thing from " fresh air " ; but they
were practically never opened at all in the
easy old days when no one worried about
microbes. I have gone so far as to put
little wheel ventilators into one or two
window panes ; but they cost fourteen
shillings each, so that it is cheaper to remain
stuffy.

We have installed a radiator system, the
house without such aid in winter being
perishingly cold ; the great wide chimney
stacks are mostly built for better security
against outside walls, an arrangement which
wastes a good third of the heat. The
fire-places were quite worn through and
useless ; the pretty old grates, their thin
plates adorned with delicate wreaths and
garlands, were sold as old iron, and carted
off by the rag and bone man. I was quite
sorry to see them go ; they had a pathetic
look of still quenchless welcome, with

memories of bright wood fires behind their
182

OF FURNISHING

bent and ruined bars. They have gone, and
Teale grates with red, some with grey-blue
tiles, have taken their place, and save an
infinity of blacking.

From the bowels of the earth arise strange,
hoarse sounds when the great slow-com-
bustion furnace is fed in its cellar-home
under the pantry floor. Day and night at
work, the thing's hunger is never satisfied ;
but we live in hope that it is really a great
economy, as coke is cheap and fewer coal
fires are needed. The radiators — industrious
offspring of the slow-combustion — are all
discreetly concealed in little white houses,
with lattice sides and perforated tops. We
have installed electric light, but with all its
transcendent merits I shall never care for it in
living rooms as I do for the homely domesti-
cated lamp — such a one, with its great cheery
sun-face, and gentle sound ever and anon of
oil dropping in the receiver, as stood on our
schoolroom table long ago. I remember, too,
with affection the candlesticks furnished with
black funereal shades made of stout, almost
impenetrable wirework, specially contrived as
183

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

precaution against fire, with which we nightly
groped our way to bed. Electric light in bed-
rooms is indeed a boon, and saves that tapping
all over the place in the dark, and many a pain-
ful collision with the furniture, in the search
for a match-box. Luminous match-boxes
were a useful invention in their day, but they
could not light our way to them, and proved
most disappointing when laid by chance the
wrong side up. Where there is no electric
light in a bedroom the match-box should
always reside on its own little bracket by the
door ; but I have never met with that simple
device, save in one house, in the whole course
of my life. The great drawback to electric
light is that the modern housemaid forgets
the humble match-box altogether, although
we need it just as much as before for sealing
our letters and curling our hair. How
wonderful is electricity ! as familiar to us
now as daily bread, and yet how few of us
can say what it is, this mysterious, captive,
mighty force, that obeys a baby's hand, and
springs into magic life at our will ! In the

ever-widening fields on which it shines no
184

OF FURNISHING

service is too splendid, none too humble, for
it to render ; it lights St. Paul's Cathedral,
and boils the kettle for our tea. On the
common ground of every-day life it is en-
croaching ever further; one day it will be
everywhere used for cooking, and we shall
wonder how we put up so long with the
cumbrous, smutty, wasteful kitchen range.
To the eye of the thrifty housewife there is
no more exasperating sight than the kitchen
fire roaring away with nothing on it ; a gas
stove, where it can be had, is a useful com-
promise. As a rule, we all make a perfect
fetish of switching off the light in passages
and rooms temporarily unoccupied. This
form of thrift is all very well when we have
only ourselves to consider, but should not
be practised at the expense of our guests.
Well I remember charging into a wardrobe
on a pitch dark landing when on a visit to a
friend. I saw " stars " and got a black eye,
and did not forgive her for a month. If we
cannot afford to keep a few extra lights burn-
ing while their visit lasts, we should take our
guests round the house on their arrival, and
185

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

show them where the switches are. These I
prefer made in gun metal, which I think
prettier than the common fluted brass knobs,
and it saves labour in cleaning. Best of all,
however, is the sunk box with its neat plate
flush with the wall ; this can only be con-
trived where the wall is of a certain thick-
ness. I chose very pretty plates for my
house, perfectly flat and plain, with a little
design of reed and ribbon round the margin
to match the decoration on the old-fashioned
door furniture. When they were fixed I
found they were further ornamented with
senseless bumps and excrescences. The elec-
trician said they would be a dead loss to him
if I insisted on changing them, so I must
bear with them to the end.

For every bedroom a collapsible stand for
dress-boxes should be kept handy. This
simple convenience, found in every conti-
nental hotel, is rarely seen in English houses ;
yet its use saves us from an infinity of
fatigue, and that feeling of blood to the head
and general irritability peculiar to the process

of packing in the ordinary way on the floor.
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OF FURNISHING

I have not yet solved the question of
casement curtains as against blinds, for with
curtains, if we want only slightly to shade
the sunlight, we have to darken the whole
window, or else we find two pairs of inner
curtains necessary, one for each sash, an
arrangement that I always think unsuited to
a dignified old window. Blinds, on the
other hand, are one of the failures of
civilisation. The Venetian blinds are heavy
and awkward in working, with a habit of
descending violently to the ground, and the
ordinary sort on the smallest provocation
come off the roller and refuse to go up
straight when replaced ; once crumpled and
untidy they remain so till the end. They
are wedded, moreover, either to the dust-
collecting tassel, or to the hard, ridiculous
acorn, admirably adapted for smashing the
glass. If we must have tassels, let us at
least remember to renew them as soon as
their skirts drop off, a misfortune which
invariably attends them after a certain period
of hard wear, leaving a few rags and tatters

clinging to the head. They cost but two-

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A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

pence each, or threepence with trimmed
petticoats, while nothing looks more neglected
and untidy than the mutilated half of a
tassel, a sight to which most people are
strangely indifferent. While on the subject
of windows, let me plead that our dressing
tables be placed anywhere but in their usual
position, where the looking-glass obscures the
greater part of the light within, and entirely
disfigures the window without. However
pleasing the picture presented to the beholder
in the front of a looking-glass, the back is
one of the plainest objects in the whole
range of household furniture. Our curtains
in general are now cut on far less extravagant
lines than formerly ; for it is no longer the
custom to have them trailing a yard or more
on the ground, and looped up by day in an
immense mass over the cord. They are
still chained like wild beasts to the wall ; no
other means has yet been invented of keeping
those tidy that are made to reach the ground,
but they are cut just the requisite length
and no more. The sumptuous heavy

draperies, however, such as make the splendid
1 88

OF FURNISHING

setting to a Vandyck portrait, were in keeping
with the spacious days gone by. As to
choice of materials there should be very
little difficulty, now that we have such end-
less variety to select from, reproductions too
of beautiful old designs. Birds, perhaps the
most lovely motif in all decoration, are un-
suitable for seats of chairs I think, for I
never like the idea of sitting on a bird.
Various " fadeless " dyes are on the market
now, but their claim has yet to be proved,
and even if it is they will forfeit a certain
charm. Some colours that time has faded
are more beautiful than any yet produced by
human skill.

Fashion, as we have seen, is retracing her
steps in many directions, and looking in
quest of fresh ideas to the fancies and inven-
tions of byegone days, but these of course are
not all capable of adaptation now, though
time has lent them a certain enchantment.
I have not yet noticed, for instance, any
revival of the bead cushions (always pro-
nounced " cushin ") beloved of our grand-
mothers. Some of these survive to this day,
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A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

heavy and cumbersome, their crude bright-
ness undimmed by a hundred years — for it is
I believe impossible, short of total annihilation,
for anything to happen to a bead — and the
touch of them as cold as a winter's day.
Vanished too, and I trust for ever, are the
hideously named antimacassars that were
painfully worked with blood and tears and
stout red cotton, by our infant fingers.
Traced upon them were the ghosts of nursery
rhymes, cows jumping, a remarkable feat at
any time, but doubly so with four crippled
legs, over the moon ; John Gilpin, not in the
least degree

" Like an arrow swift
Shot by an archer strong,"

but pottering on the sorriest of nags through
merry Islington ; blurred and bedraggled
swains paying court to maidens whose faces
had never made their fortunes. They bore
not the faintest resemblance to Nature, the
smaller outlines being simply impossible to
reproduce with our big, awkward stitches.

Those were the darkest days of schoolroom
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OF FURNISHING

needlework, before the art in general had
been revived and properly taught as it is
now. Our pathetic little failures were duly
presented to our mothers on their birthdays,
and adorned the drawing-room till after
many a long day the laundry and the kindly
sunlight between them finally succeeded in
obliterating the design ; but the sun's action
was often indefinitely retarded because its
rays were never allowed to enter Victorian
drawing-rooms save through drawn blinds, for
fear of fading the carpet and " springing " the
marqueterie. Our grand-mothers sat patiently
through their glorious summers behind win-
dows veiled in impenetrable linen. We may
laugh over the anxious carefulness of those
leisured days, but we must admit that it has
preserved for our enjoyment many a treasure.
Indeed our best chairs and tables receive scant
respect now that our children are free to run
in and out of every room in the house ;
whereas their grand-parents, when they were
children, save in certain grave and solemn
periods of the day were kept severely out of

sight and hearing of the elders. Our
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A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

modern furniture, moreover, is less capable
than the old of withstanding hard usage ;
but I fancy we are right in discarding the
curious custom of drawing every stick of
furniture into the middle of the room, which
was thought to preserve it when the family
were away from home. Carpets in those
days were always laid up to the wainscoting,
a fusty and unnecessary arrangement still pre-
vailing in many houses, which undoubtedly
produces an accumulation of dust along the
walls; but the wear and tear of dragging heavy
objects so frequently to and fro must surely
have outweighed the increased facilities of
cleaning. Among the recent advances of
civilisation can be reckoned a more intelligent
warfare against dust ; but the modern house-
maid has yet to learn that all her efforts are
in vain unless she first damps her materials.
Watch her trying to sweep a floor with a dry
broom ; the dust simply gets up and dances
about, to settle down again when her back is
turned. Valuable furniture requires, of course,
special treatment.

At this point I am brought face to face
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OF FURNISHING

with the gigantic bogey of spring cleaning ;
and even at the risk of digression I must here
pause and lay it low. Surely it is an extra-
ordinary fact that so many intelligent people
should be content to pass several of the most
delightful weeks in every year in discomfort
which, so long as our houses are kept in
decent order through the seasons, is wholly
unnecessary. I have known one lady actually
forced to keep her bed because no room in
her house during this miserable process was
habitable.

What though the infinite labours of spring
cleaning, " its tragic passions and desperate
energies, inspired first the broom and then the
pen of Jane Welsh Carlyle;" what though a
late distinguished writer has written a prose
epic on the theme — it remains that in this oft
recurring and terrific upheaval we have a
bogey that never should have been suffered
to rise from dead winter's shroud to stalk
through the fairest hours of spring.

We may well be thankful for the invention
of the vacuum cleaner, which does away with

the wearisome business of taking up and
193 N

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

relaying carpets, and the childish and violent
process of beating them ; also for the greatly
extended use of matting, which needs very
little attention, either when used as what is
called in the hideous jargon of the trade a
" surround," or in place of a carpet alto-
gether. Matting has one drawback in that
the rougher kinds play havoc with the hem
of our skirts, and also it is cruel stuff to
work, prickly and awkward for the poor
sempstresses' fingers. When laid, however,
it proves greatly superior to stained boards,
which have to be rubbed and bees'-waxed twice
a day if we object to seeing grey marks on
them. Parquet is the prettiest flooring —
also the dearest — for a smart modern house,
but it is out of place, of course, in an old-
fashioned setting.

Every labour-saving device is of special
value when we consider the present tendency
to overcrowd our rooms. With its jumble
of photographs, silver tables, knick-knacks,
flowers — even of flowers we can have too
many — it is almost impossible to move in a

modern drawing-room. Let us call back
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some of the spaciousness and dignity of
home life a hundred years ago, and adopt,
to a certain extent at least, our grandmothers'
ideal of having in every room a table large
enough to spread a map out on ; with its
suggestion of leisureliness and useful infor-
mation, this would be a relief to the eye
among a great part of our spindley, meaning-
less furniture. Tea-tables, dressing-tables,
and writing-desks are nearly always too small.
I admit, however, that dining-tables in old
days were usually made so large as to inflict
misery and silence on a shy young visitor.
I well remember in my childhood going to
luncheon with an old lady over ninety,
and trying with some timid remark to bridge
the vast stretch of years and napery that lay
between us.

Our present need for a little more space
and restfulness in home furnishing shows
itself even in the pictures on our walls. It
is impossible to describe the medley of
startling incident that "saute aux yeux" as we
enter many a modern sitting-room. The
Muses in Parnassus look down astonished on

A LITTLE EXPERIENCE

a crowd of Japanese figures hurrying under
red and orange umbrellas through the rain ;
Paolo and Francesca, clasped in their eternal
embrace, are floating through nothingness
close to Queen Victoria in her nightgown,
receiving the news of her accession from the
Archbishop of Canterbury. What matter is
it if we even leave a few spaces bare on walls
and floor; they are better than a hundred
jarring objects. With the violent over-
emphasis affected by certain journalists, we
were recently advised in the " Ladies Page "
of a daily paper to " avoid a monotonous
house like the plague." Well, so we can ;
and yet preserve some measure of order and
kinship among our household gods. There
is, on the other hand, one apartment in many
ordinary houses which does, I think, cry
aloud for a little variety and brightness; I
mean the Entrance Hall. This suggestion
applies to country houses principally ; for in
the confined space of town houses a narrow
passage, capable of very little adornment, has
usually to do duty for a hall. Why is this

feature of our home so seldom pleasing to
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OF FURNISHING

behold ? Why, when every other room in
the house smiles a welcome, are we content
with an austere and frowning hall ? — an apart-
ment given over to the unlovely comradeship
of hat rack and umbrella stand, goloshes and
waterproofs? The hall is the first room
that greets the stranger as he enters, and
the last on which he looks back in parting ;
it ought, in common with every greeting and
every farewell, to have a heart in it.

197

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

I AM writing in " holy December " ; the
procession of the months has almost passed
away, and I watch their closing days, lit with
a blaze of Christmas candles, vanish into the
dark.

For a few of us, not for many, the year
has gone by with the shifting splendour of a
pageant ; for some it has been simply like a
chain hung with small plain beads, or a slow
train travelling through flat, uninteresting
country ; and for others, like a forest track
that winds through lonely and shadowed
ways towards the light.

We used to play as children with an old
toy called the Wheel of Time. It was a re-
volving circular cage containing a narrow strip
of paper, on which a number of little dancing
figures representing the seasons were seen in

201

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

silhouette. We looked through the inter-
stices and made the mannikins go faster and
faster, tripping over one another, whirling
round and round, till they became a some-
what violent allegory of the fleeting years.
The little sermon in the Wheel of Time fell
on unheeding ears, however; it would have
seemed to us indeed, if we had ever thought
about it, extremely untrue to life, which,
with its distant shining goal of " growing up "
appeared to us then interminably long.
There would be time for everything, we
thought; we know better now! Yet to us
all, young and old, there come December
days, real, not dream days I mean, when Time
seems not to fly at all, but to potter by with
halting feet as he drives his slow team, the
dull grey hours, along the winter furrows.
Then because we talk without thinking, we
say that Nature is asleep ; when we well know
that she is never less asleep than now, her
watching time : holding fast the charge that is
given her, she is keeping her treasures safe
till the long days call them. Nature is
never idle, never really out of heart ; she is

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THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

always looking forward and beginning all
over again ; and those who read her aright
need but lift their eyes to see the desolate
fields white already to harvest.

Moreover, there is a beauty in winter, an
appeal in its shy, pensive woods and fleeting
lights, that speaks more closely to our heart
than all the fanfare of Spring, " Les clairs
soirs d'hiver, quand la neige s'echauffe au
couchant et prend des tons de fleurs
d'amandier, ce spectacle caresse le regard de
teintes plus douces que tous les temoignages
du printemps."

There is true philosophy in these thoughts,
and yet there are days, mournful days of
the dying year, when, we know not how,
its consolations fail. Then I turn with
hope renewed to a kind of chart of the
spring which I came across one day. It
is, I think, worth giving here in full, for
it sends a shaft of brightness down the
long vista of the months with the thought
that there have been years, and will be again,
when the loveliest of all Spring's voices

have been heard so early as December
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THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

MR. MARSHAM'S INDICATIONS OF SPRING.
Lord Suffield's Remarks on them.

Snowdrop appears
The Thrush sings
Hawthorn Leaf .
Hawthorn Flowers
Frogs and Toads croak
Sycamore Leaf .
Birch Leaf
Elm Leaf .
Mountain Ash Leaf .
Oak Leaf .
Beech Leaf
Horse Chestnut Leaf .
Chestnut Leaf .
Hornbeam Leaf .
Ash Leaf .
Ringdoves coo . .
Rooks build
Swallows .
Cuckoo sings
Nightingale sings
Churn Owl sings
Young Rooks
Turnip Flowers .
Lime Leaf .
Maple Leaf
Wood Anemone blows
Yellow Butterfly appears

Earliest year mentioned, 1735. Latest, 1800.
Some of these indications were observed in 62 years.
Some in 30 years.

204

Earliest.

Latest.

Dec. 24

Feb. 10

Dec. 4

Feb. 1 3

Feb. ii

April 22

April 13

June 2

Feb. 20

May 4

Feb. 22

May 4

Feb. 21

May 4

March 4

May 6

March 5

May 2

March 31

May 20

April 5

May 10

March 10

May 2

March 28

May 12

March 7

May 7

April 2

May 26

Dec. 27

March 20

Feb. 2

March 14

March 30

April 26

April 9

May 7

April 7

May 19

April 29

June 26

March 26

April 24

Jan. 10

June i 8

March 19

May 7

March 15

May 7

March 16

April 22

Jan. 14

April 17

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

4th, that a yellow butterfly has been seen
amid the January snows, and that the
rooks, were they so piously minded, might
lay their foundation-twigs on the Feast of the
Purification.

Lord Suffield's Remarks have been, I fear,
omitted from the original of my chart, un-
less they be all contained in the simple,
yet speaking, testimony to his friend's wonder-
ful gift of observation and lifelong watchful-
ness which is inscribed beneath. We will
hope that Mr. Marsham looked his last
on the world in the season whose earliest
and latest tokens he had waited for, year
after year, through so many days, and that
Spring shed its full radiance on his passing
hence.

I read a curious fact about rooks lately,
which was received, I am sorry to say, with
derision by all to whom I have since related
it, namely, that they love to disperse them-
selves about the tree-tops down the whole
length of an avenue and " caw," as it were, in
perspective. I recommend the idea to the

designer of the next new concert hall in

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THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

London. Avenues are gradually ceasing to
exist in our parks and gardens, being no
longer in fashion, and have begun a different
and petty existence in the suburbs ; so the
poor rooks are driven to resort in small groups
to single trees, sacrificing the diminuendo
effects in music that they love.

The robins are singing. I was annoyed
in reading some novel lately by an allusion
to the robin's " scarlet coat : " when only his
breast of course is red. Probably the writer
had never taken the trouble of looking at a
robin. In a recent essay by an eminent
naturalist it was suggested that the robin's
red breast, like other bright patches of colour
in the plumage of certain birds, is given him
by a thoughtful Providence as an aid to his
wooing. But the robin's breast is not bright
at all, it is a dull orange-red. True, it takes
on a soft and lovely sheen in sunlight ; still,
it would hardly dazzle the lady of his choice,
though it might certainly please her. Some-
times, though rarely, she is just as well turned
out herself, for instances are not unknown

of a hen robin being quite indistinguishable
206

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

from her mate. There is a variety native in
the East that is ruddier than the European
robin, whose breast is almost the colour of
dried blood ; and the origin of the well-known
legend is plain which tells that a robin
alighted on the head of the Saviour as He
hung on the Cross, and drew therefrom the
deepest driven nail ; and blood springing
from the wound, just tinged the robin's breast
with red.

From a short distance this bright, cold
morning, the kitchen-garden paths appear
with a white border instead of a green, the
shiny leaves of the low box edging being
decorated each with a rim of hoar-frost, finely
gradated according to the shelter the upper
leaves can give to those beneath them. The
lowest leaves have no ornament at all. From
the great bare trees that guard the old red
walls of the garden the winds have lately torn
away crowds of small boughs and dead,
brittle twigs, letting in more and more of the
sky through the tree-tops, brightening the
winter day overhead . We notice this brighten-
ing perhaps scarcely at all, but it is there,
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THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

increasing all the winter through after any
stormy spell. For the most part we are not
half enough aware of light ; we forget to look
for it ; and so, in more senses than one the
long " winters of our discontent " seem darker
than they really are. Often it needs a poet's
eye to see light shining in unexpected places ;
and recently in a beautiful essay on Colour
in Autumn I read of an effect of light that
all the poets, save one, have missed : — " the
mock sunshine of the faded woods." It
follows hard on the pageant of the dying
year, but only Tennyson, I believe, has noted
it. Yet any autumn day after the brilliant
colours have all burnt themselves away, on
some woodland walk by thicket and hedge,
we may see what looks at first sight like a
sudden drift of sunlight ; and we shall find
that it is only a patch of oak or beech under-
wood, lingering sheltered in a kind of bright-
ness long after the winds have stripped the
lofty trees ; or sprays of golden bramble, or
tangled fronds of bracken, pale and dead.
We speak of " autumn tints," but in its usual

connection it is the feeblest expression in the
208

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

language, for, strange to say, it is his mighty
fires we mean by " tints," not the little lights
that burn unnoticed long after those have
died.

To return to the garden. In a large bed
in a sunny corner, though they ask for no
special indulgence, being content with any
fairly open position, are planted my Mrs.
Sinkins pinks. It is a pity their beauty is so
short-lived, for after a few days they invariably
burst their sides and let their petals fall about,
a weakness shared by others of the carnation
family. Little wire waistbands have been
invented for greenhouse carnations, which can
be put round the opening buds to keep their
shape intact ; but it would take too long to
do this to ten thousand Mrs. Sinkins. The
real original Mrs. Sinkins, who was formerly
matron of the Slough Workhouse, lives two
miles from my home ; I saw her and Mr.
Sinkins recently. She told me — and I have
her permission to write the story down — that
one day she saw some of the pinks on a
market stall, and remarked to the salesman

how universally they are now grown, and he
209 o

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

agreed and said : " Do you know Mrs. Sinkins
herself was a very poor woman before she
grew rich on her pinks ? Now she drives in
a carriage and pair." But Mrs. Sinkins
replied : " You are not quite right in either
of those statements, young man. Mrs. Sinkins
never was a very poor woman, and she is
certainly not rich now ; she never drives in a
carriage and pair ; and I ought to know, for
my name is Mrs. Sinkins." Indeed she has
made no money with her pink ; she gave it to
a great nurseryman, who has made it famous
for her. Another day she was standing on
the platform at Slough Station with her
brother; two gentlemen came by, and one
said to the other : " O I do love Mrs.
Sinkins ! "

" Do you hear what they are saying ? "
asked her brother, a little shocked.

" It's my flower they mean, not me ! " she
said.

Mr. and Mrs. Sinkins, in their old age, are
enjoying the reflection of the happiness they
have given to the world ; for theirs is a loved
name in every garden.

2IO

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

I got bulbs for indoor decoration this
winter from Scilly ; but by inadvertence
several of these, when potted, were stored in
too dry and warm a place, and I fear they
will fail ; others were placed on a concrete
floor and they caught cold. They are far
better simply plunged in the open ground.
I am, however, hoping for great things from
some amaryllis bulbs, that a friend has lately
brought me from Cape Town, although she
truly observes that finding the seasons trans-
posed on its arrival here must be very con-
fusing to a bulb. Still, these South African
lilies often succeed in this country. In
place of my lost narcissi and tulips I must fall
back on dried boughs of chestnut and beech,
and the ever useful, if somewhat lugubrious
aspidistras. It always surprises me to see
people writing to the gardening papers that
their aspidistras have failed, for I find it
impossible to harm these simple plants ; they
have nine lives. Given too much water, their
leaves grow luxuriantly of a rich deep green ;
given too little, the foliage is scantier, but
beautifully variegated with canary yellow.

211

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

In either case they show the Christian grace
of contentment.

Many of our disappointments in gardening
(I speak as a humble amateur) are of course
of our own making ; but I have not yet
probed the mystery of an extraordinary
reverse I lately experienced. In the spring
I sowed seeds from a hundred packets, each
differently named, and most carefully
selected as to colour and height in the open
borders, and in due time they all came up
foxgloves. Now few sights of early summer
are more beautiful than the foxgloves' graceful
spires, but these were too ridiculous ; there
were hundreds and thousands of foxgloves ;
the garden was the laughing stock of all
beholders. I had many carted away in
wheel-barrows to the wild garden, and
moved others to the rear of the borders, and
I wrote to the firm that had supplied me the
seeds, relating the occurrence. I received
a polite reply, saying they were utterly at a
loss to explain the curious circumstance I
had kindly communicated to them. Where
it is possible, let our own flowers supply the

212

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

seed, though some may need great care to
ensure its "coming true" ; for it is always well
to begin at the beginning : we gain the sense
of real achievement then ; and our best rewards
in life have their birth in the workshop : —

" For where the old thick laurels grow along the thin

red wall,

You'll find the tool and potting sheds, which are the
heart of all."

Mr. Phillips, the foreman who superin-
tended the alterations to the house, came back
in the following autumn to build our new
potting sheds. We had missed him greatly
in the interval, and felt like children who lose
an old nurse and are left to look after their
toys themselves. Across the road is a small
annexe to the garden, which sheltered a curious
and melancholy structure of unknown origin,
decorated with leaded windows and a rough
kind of painted tracery that gave it a half-
hearted ecclesiastical air. It stood in a corner,
partly concealed by tall rank stems of the
Jerusalem artichoke, one of the few entirely
unattractive plants in existence. This build-
ing was called by Mr. Phillips simply " The
213

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

Gothic." One day he and his men attacked
it with destroying implements, and its dubious
and useless existence ended with a clatter
and a groan. But the wood that composed
The Gothic was found to be heart of oak,
and seasoned as wood is rarely seasoned now ;
so it went to build the sheds, and two pieces
of rough ornament from the old doorway
adorn their homely entrance. Ruggy, a little
grey dog, with a soft white ruff like foam of
the sea round his neck, spends half his valu-
able time grubbing inside the sheds. During
the other half he trots about, a concentrated
bouquet of potting shed. The ingredients are
easily recognised — leaf mould, common soil,
string, tar, boxes of seedling tomatoes, mouse-
trap and mouse, sacks, and many a nameless
plaything of his own, hidden away in dusky
corners. In all the growing time of the year
he is to be seen in the neighbouring farmer's
field, with a friend entirely of his own making
— a mild old man, whose calling is known in
Buckinghamshire as " bird-starver." This
apparently inhuman title merely means that

he frightens the birds away from the young
214

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

crops. Sometimes he carries a gun, but I
think no bird can be really afraid of him.
A certain air of poetry hangs over the bird-
starver as he and his little comrade roam the
fields together, and the whirring of wings
before him makes music as he goes.

The gardener likewise must protect his
growing things from their natural enemies ;
but his fight is often a squalid and un-
interesting one, and the means he is obliged
to use are merciless. He gets quite indif-
ferent to them through long habit ; so the
green fly that smother the roses are flooded
out with soapy water ; well, we need not
mourn for them, perhaps, they have not
much individuality ; but what of the earwigs,
which are justly famed as the best mothers in
creation ? They are deceived and lured to
death by means of bamboo stems and inverted
flower-pots ; rats and mice are trapped and
hunted and poisoned ; snails, pursued in
summer after nightfall with a candle, and
doomed to a fearful end next morning in the
chicken yard. The great brown owl in the
yew tree kindly helps the blackbirds to
215

THOUGHTS IN A GARDEN

dispatch some of the fat grey slugs; for others
we set ready a little fortress made of green
tin, containing a mound of bran which at-
tracts them with cruel guile, and lets them
fall through to drown in a salt water moat
below.

And so the strife goes on that sees no
ending — Nature's pitiless laws forever at vari-
ance, it seems, with her kindness ; while the
gardener watches and remembers, ever hope-
ful; sowing always in joy, even though he
sometimes reap in tears.

216

BRYANSTON SQUARE

BRYANSTON SQUARE

THERE are certain regions of London that
never lose for those who once lived in them the
feeling of home. Whole streets and districts
have been transformed beyond recognition,
and many actually swept away by the changed
conditions of twentieth-century life ; while
others remain as they used to be when those
now middle-aged were children, and keep the
mellow brightness of old days.

I wandered round Bryanston Square, which
lies north of Hyde Park at the farther end
of Great Cumberland Place, one autumn
afternoon, and looked through a window of
my heart at three little sisters who lived
there thirty years ago. The lofty dignified
lines of mid-Victorian houses are the same
now as then : here a bow window or extra
storey has been added, there are new marble

steps and a trellis and creeper; but the
219

BRYANSTON SQUARE

character of the whole is unchanged. At
each corner of the Square is a larger, statelier
mansion than its neighbours ; these are of
brick and lead up again to another crescendo
in the middle, of superior grandeur and stone
facing. We lived in one of the brick houses
on the sunny side.

The palings round the Square through
which the little slum children peep are
black of course, as of yore ; so too are the
bushes : I can recall the sticky feel of those
evergreen leaves bravely struggling through
the fogs to greet the coming spring-time.
The husky, cross voice of the much-tried
old gardener calls to me down the ages to
keep off the grass, and in one corner still
stands his tool-house, pyramid-roofed, which
remained for us a forbidden place of vaguely
imagined delights to the last. The same
mounds at each end of the garden, adorned
with laurel and privet and intersected with little
winding paths, break the monotony of the
landscape — and of old those always held a
certain air of mystery. We fancied that
sprites and wizards had their haunts among

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BRYANSTON SQUARE

the bushes there ; but they were a languid
race, and suffered from the prosaic nature of
their surroundings. Real, live fairy stories
demand for their setting some measure of
privacy ; whereas it was impossible to protect
ours from the tall watching windows of the
houses on either side of the Square, and the
inquisitive hansom cabman sitting idle on
his perch outside the gates. The fairies,
too, were sadly cramped in Bryanston Square ;
for no sooner had you got to the top of one
scrubby little hill than you were at the
bottom again, in the every-day world that
knew them not, the dull, wide pathway which
formed a promenade for old ladies and
nursery maids. Just outside the railings, at
the southern end of the Square, stands a
dingy fountain which has long run dry, and
bears a faded inscription to a certain respected
inhabitant of Marylebone, a distinguished
journalist who died fifty years ago. The
long list of his once shining virtues is vanished
nearly out of sight, but I could just read
that " this refreshing fountain " — poor, dusty,
silent thing — was erected to keep his memory

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BRYANSTON SQUARE

green. Beside the fountain, a stern iron
placard, new since our day, threatens with
instant prosecution all performers of music in
the Square. Banished then is the Monday
German band, and the daily organ-grinder,
with his tiny monkey dressed in a particularly
well-cut coat ; it fitted him without a wrinkle,
and gleams yet, a bobbing speck of cheerful
red, through the misty past. But I am
forgetting that the monkey and his poor
master would both he dead by this time,
even if they had not been driven from the
Square ; it is so many years since last we
knew them there. Down the long road
paces slow the great yellow watering cart,
the little excitement of its appearance break-
ing in on quiet, dusty summer days. I
remember the awestruck respect with which
I regarded its semi-sacred calling, for was
not "MARYLEBONE VESTRY" writ
large on its amber sides ? and I wondered
what happened to it on Sundays, when Canon
Fremantle and the white-robed choir of St.
Mary's took up all the available space. In
those days we were not aware that Mary-

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BRYANSTON SQUARE

lebone contained any other place of worship,
or I might have concluded that there was

D

a more capacious vestry somewhere else.
" Where is the water cart stood on Sundays ? "
I once asked our old nurse, but I do not
think she gave me any satisfactory reply.

St. Mary's Church, the sombre Georgian
building with its deep-toned bells that seemed
to shame the shrill voices of common life
around, gave the due note of gravity to our
days. Through the deep shadows of its
classical portico, Sunday by Sunday, we passed,
cheerily greeted by the kind old beadle,
resplendent in his triple-caped, gold-trimmed
coat and three-cornered hat, at his post
beside the red baize door. I miss the beadle
at many a London church to-day ; he has
passed with the tide of old-fashioned things.

We are inside St. Mary's now, and the
discreet melancholy figure of the pew-opener
is there, with her worn, welcoming face, her
neat black dress with its prim adornment of
gimp down the front, and the bonnet strings
that came undone and floated out behind

when a large congregation assembled and she
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

got a little flustered. To this day I can see
the two narrow shiny places in the ribbon
where it was wont to be tied : children notice
such things. It is hard on the pew-openers
of England, a humble, harmless race, that
Dickens should have set among them forever
the unlovely form of Mrs. Miff, her of the
" vinegary face " and grasping soul ; for a
meek and quiet spirit was the ornament of
our old friend of St. Mary's. But they have
climbed the social ladder since her day, for
since the old-fashioned pews with doors have
disappeared, the office of pew-opener has
risen to that of Church Attendant.

The interior of the great building is dimly
lighted and severe. During the Litany,
when I grew tired with kneeling and sat up
furtively against the hard straight back of
the pew, or when my thoughts, despite all
efforts to steady them, would wander from
the sermon, I had recourse to various
pastimes. I would count the little bits of
glass in the side windows, arranged in a
symmetrical design of squares and lozenges,

and again in squares, faint colour-echoes of a
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

kaleidoscope we loved at home ; or looking
up to the circle of little gas jets that
twinkled like stars in the lofty roof, I
wondered how anyone could climb up so
high to reach them ; or my little sister and
I, shocking to relate, would start a race with
our hymn books, turning over the pages as
quickly as we could till we should reach the
end ; but this game made a dangerous swish-
ing noise, and was usually checked before we
had got very far. When these several dis-
tractions became exhausted, we were reduced
to shutting our eyes and rubbing them round
and round with our fingers, when a bright
and beautiful object, like the eye of a pea-
cock's feather, immediately appeared in the
farther corners. I have never yet under-
stood how one can see this lovely thing in the
dark. For many years I have searched the
T^aily Telegraph to see if Sir Ray Lankester
would explain the mystery From his Easy
Chair, but so far it does not seem to have
occurred to him.

The service is ended at last, and I follow the

three little sisters out again into the daylight.
225 p

BRYANSTON SQUARE

At No. i in the Square lived in solitary
state the Turkish Ambassador, a gentle,
mild old man with a passionate fondness for
small cage birds. The glass window case
built out of his great bare reception room
was fitted up as an aviary, and the little
specks of gay colour brightened the darkest
days without. One morning as we came
home from our walk in the Park, and
chanced to look up at the corner house,
we saw the cages still and empty, that so
lately had been full of " fluttering love."
The servants in a few days' absence of their
master had forgotten to feed the birds, and
they had starved to death !

The old ambassador never recovered his
tragic loss, I believe ; it was not long before
he followed his little songsters out of this
life, and the Embassy was transferred to a
different part of London.

We kept a canary of our own, a bird
with very little character, — and a dormouse.
There was also a cat called Frank, a spirited
animal, although of unwieldy size and

fabulous age ; but he despised the tame
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

pleasures of schoolroom life, and preferred
a career of brave adventure in the basement.
The dormouse belonged to my little sister
and me, and was the light of our lives.
Our elder sister was of a serious and literary
disposition ; she did not care for animals,
but devoted herself to improving her own
mind and ours in various branches of study.
I should add that she was always most kind
to us, the two " little ones," and from our
extremely humble position on the ladder of
learning we looked up to her with admiring
affection. She would come into the nursery
with Dr. Brewer's Guide to Science in her
hand, a fat blue book that imparted much
useful information in catechism form. I
remember one such occasion, especially, when
she wore a frock of the colour we called
" crushed strawberry " then — it has become
Rose du Barri since — and a very pretty
sprigged muslin pinafore threaded with black
velvet ribbon. My memory of that frock
and pinafore is unusually bright, for looking
back on them now I am afraid our clothes

were mostly hideous. For our walks abroad
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

we wore in winter blue coats of an extra-
ordinarily stout material which were called
Pea-jackets, soberly braided down the front ;
and in change with those we had " Norfolk "
coats, a type of garment that has unfortu-
nately survived all these years, though it
now, I think, shows signs of extinction ; it
ought never to be seen out of Norfolk, if it
must be seen anywhere. Ours were in grey
tweed, with a " duster " pattern in squares
of red on it. Children thirty years ago were
seldom nicely dressed. Our sister kept her
forefinger in the first page of Dr. Brewer's
Guide. " What is Heat ? " she asked.
Answer came there none ; and she had to
supply it herself. " That which produces
a sensation of Warmth." ..." Do you
know what a Second is ? ... Every time I
wink, that is a Second."

We were busy putting a fresh cotton-wool
lining into the dormouse's sleeping apart-
ment, and for once we did not attend to
her. It was a Herefordshire mouse from the
meadows near Foye, above the valley of the

Wye. I grieve now to think how cruel it
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

was to take his freedom from him, as he
played over the summer fields, and shut him
up for life in an incredibly stuffy little box,
five inches square, with a " wheel " by way of
exercise, a circular wire frame-work like the
hoops of a barrel, which he worked for hours
together with his feet. He reached a mar-
vellous speed in the wheel, flying round and
round till his little form was entirely lost,
and he appeared a mere wraith, a disembodied
spirit, a tiny symbol of perpetual motion.
But the idea of any injustice on our part
towards the mouse never entered our heads ;
and we surrounded him with an amount of
love and attention that he must have felt
positively oppressive at times. His career is
surely a record among his fellows ; for he
travelled twice to Italy and back, through
the St. Gothard tunnel and home by diligence
over the Simplon, spending the winters in
Florence and Rome ; and all that time he
was completely unconscious, rolled up into a
tight cold ball, wrapped in sleep. Every
spring-time, after the long rest, we watched

for his unfolding tail with a joy of expecta-
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

tion that nothing in life has ever equalled
since.1

There came a season at last — it was in
London — when the awakening of the dor-
mouse lacked its usual eclat ; we grew very
anxious about him, and consulted a celebrated
bird-fancier, who was also experienced in
mice ; he gave his serious attention to the
case, but all in vain. One summer evening
the little thing fell asleep out of due time,
and then we knew he would not wake again.
Late that night we crept out of bed, unknown
to Nannie, to watch beside him till he died
at sunrise. His limbs and tail arranged
themselves differently from the way they had
in natural sleep, and grew stiff as they had
never done before ; so then we knew he was
dead, and we buried him in the quietest spot
we could find in the quiet square.

We never got another mouse ; but replaced

1 My sister says that I am mistaken about the dor-
mouse's winter sleep; that the schoolroom in which he
lived being never really cold, he kept constantly waking
up, and that this artificial activity hastened his end.
Yet I remember his habits exactly as I have described
them above. We shall never agree on the subject now.
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

our favourite after an extended period of
bereavement by two bright green frogs that
our grandmother's maid brought for us from
the south of France. They were named
Tim and Toddy. We planted a miniature
rock garden as a home for them, in a dish
with pebbles, sand, and water. Looking back
now I think the frogs' rock and water garden
was very ingeniously contrived, and actually
anticipated the miniature Japanese gardens
shown years after at the White City. This
one was covered with an immense wire meat
safe, and we fed the frogs with blue-bottle
flies. The sight of a blue-bottle fly on the
window-pane was one of joy to us, instead of
horror as in these hygienic days ; certainly
the frogs swallowed daily a few million
microbes, and flourished on them.

It was a thrilling study in animal mag-
netism to watch the frogs transfix their
victims with their gleaming eyes before de-
vouring them ; the flies would remain motion-
less, hypnotised, and then the frogs would
spring, often both of them at one and the
same fly, when a terrible collision ensued.
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

That autumn we went to Germany and
took the frogs with us; they had to travel
of course in the traditional glass jar half full
of water, with a step-ladder for them to perch
on. Through the long hours in the night
train my sister and I took charge of our pets
by turns, keeping awake with immense diffi-
culty that we might not topple over and
upset them. We had not reckoned, how-
ever, on the inevitable dearth of flies in
winter, and were forced for several seasons to
induce the frogs to eat meat instead, sus-
pending minute pieces on a hair deftly
inserted through the top of the meat safe,
which we " danced " before them in imitation
of a fly. The deception was highly success-
ful, my little sister cheerfully sacrificing one
long bright red hair, a new one of course,
every day. I forget why I never offered up
any of mine ; being of no particular colour,
it would have served the purpose far better.

One incident of Tim's blameless career
was of an alarming and melancholy nature at
the time, though fortunately it had a happy

ending. After lessons were over on winter
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

evenings in the hotel at Dresden, our
favourite amusement was giving the frogs an
outing on the schoolroom table, and letting
them disport themselves with their usual
grace round the lamp. Suddenly in the
midst of his tiny diversions Tim stretched
out all his legs, closed his eyes, and lay to all
appearance dead. First Aid in various forms
was requisitioned, but in vain ; we resigned
ourselves to this sudden and unlocked for
grief, and laid him in readiness for decent
interment the next day, in a pail. When we
removed the covering the following morning,
behold Tim alive and kicking; and he was
spared for several months to come, in sound
and vigorous health. We diagnosed this
curious case as Lampstroke, an ailment for-
tunately I think unknown to the British
pharmacopeia.

The following autumn we again went
abroad, and were making our final prepara-
tions for the start when my mother sud-
denly struck at the thought of taking the
frogs, the jar, the meatsafe, and the Japanese
garden a second time across Europe, and said
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

they must all be left at home. We were in
despair over this decision, when, in the very
nick of time, a famous Oxford naturalist ap-
peared on the scene, and offered to board and
lodge the frogs, free of all charge till our
return. This generous proposal we accepted
thankfully.

One spring day soon after we came back
to our country home in England, my sister
and I were sitting on a bank in the garden
when the servant came out to us, bearing in
his hand a beautifully perforated tin box,
" Live frogs, with Great Care," being inscribed
on the label. I remember thinking then that
we had reached the topmost summit of earthly
joy. We opened the box, and out jumped first
our own familiar Tim ; then . . . Another
frog. We looked at each other in silent dis-
may, then both spoke at once, three fateful
words : " It's not Toddy" Toddy had died
from natural causes during the winter ; the
kind professor, with immense trouble, had
procured another mate for Tim, never think-
ing we should know the difference. . . .

Yet another reminiscence — a very different
234

BRYANSTON SQUARE

one from any of the above — comes back to
me from those finished years : it is that of
a lame street singer, an old woman who used
to come limping round the Square with a
crutch, singing some miserable ditty. It was
always evening when she came, just as the
sun sank behind the tall roofs opposite our
windows, and the lamplighter hurried past.
I was afraid of this woman, how or why I
cannot exactly tell ; but there was something
about her far more dreadful than mere poverty
such as I vaguely pictured it, and connected
in my mind, rather happily than otherwise,
with Christmas trees and school feasts in the
country, and the well-behaved, tidy infants
who came with their teachers to the children's
service at St. Mary's. This lame beggar
tugged at my heart, and her poor little song
told of things undreamt of in our untroubled
lives — injustice, and misery, and want. She
opened my eyes to the existence of those
things, though they lay somewhere far beyond
my ken ; and the first dawning knowledge
that all is not right with the world is often
terrifying to a child. When the shrill,
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

quavering voice came nearer and nearer out
of the shadows in the Square, and no one
saw me, I used to hide in the box room. . . .
I think some of our neighbours took pity on
the old woman and fed her; I am sure my
mother did, and it is good to think that she
is now at rest.

A brighter memory is that of our dear nur-
sery maid, Ann. In these pompous days the
good old word nurserymaid is despised, and laid
aside in favour of the grand and unattractive
title of " second nurse." Ann alone it was
who had the nerve to convey us all three with
an immense wooden hoop each, across Oxford
Street by the Marble Arch, on our way to
the Park. " Take care of your hoops, Miss
Sybil and Miss Hester ! " I can hear so plainly
still her kind, anxious voice as she landed us
all safely on an " island " before we plunged
afresh into the stream. We loved the hoop
expeditions, and once we even induced Nannie
to come with us instead of Ann. But the pro-
portions of Nannie's figure were very different
from those of her slender satellite, and on

arriving at the island we found that " what
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

with one thing and another " (a favourite
expression of Nannie's that did duty for all
kinds of emergencies) there was not enough
room for us all. We brimmed over into the
road, with a glorious sensation of adventure ;
but the incident remained a somewhat sore
subject with Nannie ever after.

Those were happy times we spent in the
pleasant old roomy house. The least attractive
feature, as usual I think in Victorian houses,
was the great stately dining-room. It was
sombrely furnished with chestnut-wood chairs
of an extraordinary solidity, and was presided
over by a vast haunting picture of the Dead
Sea, with mysterious veiled figures in the
foreground, who came to me often in my
dreams, hovering amid the desolation of the
shore. The lower window panes, being of
ground glass engraved with a firmament of
stars, completely obscured the view of the
outer world and gave to the apartment an
air of profound retirement and stillness.
Our nurseries, however, were delightful. I
remember the strange yet familiar feel of the
rooms when we arrived from the country
237

BRYANSTON SQUARE

and the caretaker had got our tea ready,
and everything was a little exciting and un-
usual. Brightest of all the scenes I recall
were perhaps those just before bedtime, most
vivid moments of a child's day, when after
glorious romps we were undressed " before
the fire."

Alas for the homes of England ! now
suffering invasion in ever greater numbers
by the gas-stove — that mean product of
modern ingenuity, a heartless lifeless thing
that lacks all charm, and all poetry, and all
romance :

" Now in the falling of the gloom
The red fire paints the empty room ;
And warmly on the roof it looks,
And flickers on the backs of books.

Armies march by tower and spire
Of cities blazing, in the fire ; —
Till as I gaze with staring eyes,
The armies fade, the lustre dies.

Then once again the glow returns ;
Again the phantom city burns ;
And down the red-hot valley, lo !
The phantom armies marching go ! "
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

What poet could make anything of a gas-
stove ? Happily there is many a nursery
yet which would think scorn of any such
device, where the children can still see " cities
blazing in the fire," and fall asleep on winter
nights to the little crackling sound ever and
anon repeated, of the red coals dropping
lower in the grate, while the light throws on
the ceiling a huge quivering silhouette of the
guard. . . .

In our day nursery an immense box
covered with carpet stuff and made to hold
all our toys, stood in the recess of one of the
windows, and was called by us simply " The
Step," as it served that purpose when we
wanted to look out on the Square. Forag-
ing in the Step, which survives to this day,
and still shelters some ancient treasures, I
lately found a small green note -book in
which my little sister in a large laborious
hand had made out a list of all her belong-
ings. I give it here just as it stands, written
apparently in a kind of blank verse, with her
own corrections and curious spelling. It seems
to me not without interest as representing
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

a child's complete toy equipment thirty years
ago, with a few more serious items included.
They come to life again before me as I read
the entries; but the toys would look very
trifling and simple now beside the elaborate
and splendid playthings that are showered
on the children of to-day. On the fly-
leaf of the book is inscribed " Hester
from Dear Frau," l and the list is as
follows :

I have got a jumping frog. Pump.

Small cradell.

Japanese box for cards.

Kaleidoscop ; little wide

Awake ; paint box,

little doll in her bath ; writting

desk; little

basket, a welp [?]

tea urn, tea

kettle, little

perrambulator,

Throstle's Nest.

1 "Frau" stands for Fraulein Auguste Gieseler, our
governess and our dearest friend.
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

Sunday

Evenings with my children (this
was the name of a book we
used to read on Sundays after
tea),

New maps of

England, and a

little man with a

dark blue umberrella

a very preety

little wire basket which

the blind made

Kate Greenaway plate

little Red Riding

Hood, box with

beeds on it, lotto.

Children busy

Children glad •
•Children nauty
'Children oad. •

A pencil line, as shown above, is carefully
drawn through the last four lines, which
represent the title of a story apparently, but

the continuation reads :

241 Q

BRYANSTON SQUARE

I did not mean
to stratch out
Children busy
Children glad
Children nauty
Children sad
for I have one,
little pussies
playing on instruments,
two little houses,
a small cabin
et, a beautiful
peacock blue
plush box
doll Evangeline,
beartrice.

a doll " dorathry "
a blue vase — there,
was another, but
Pussy broke it,
little cat look-
ing into a vase
little box which dwindle
into quite small,

a little doll in

242

BRYANSTON SQUARE

a creadle.

Dolls.

Beartrice.
Dory.

Books.
" The Boys and I."

And the last entry of all has a sacred air
about it, and a whole page to itself.

" An Angle."

Our house was called in the agents' lists
a " mansion," a term which implies a back
stairs. The steps of these were, and are
still I suppose, extraordinarily high and
steep, and were covered with crackling lino-
leum ; and up from the kitchen every drop
of water was carried by our uncomplaining
housemaids to the top storey. No servant
in these days would dream of doing such a
thing. Towards the end of our tenancy my
mother installed a " geyser " on one of the
upper floors, an article we had dimly heard
of in the schoolroom in connection with
243

BRYANSTON SQUARE

volcanoes. I have never met another tame
geyser before or since. The front staircase
was roofed by a large skylight, which was
very cold in winter. Radiators, hot water
pipes, and such luxuries were unheard of
in our time. I remember one day, as Nannie
stood on the landing, a bit of loosened wood-
work from above came down on the top of
her, and she wore two bumps on her dear
old forehead ever after. This disaster,
which was indeed a rather serious one, made
a most solemn impression on our minds at
the time ; and we came to reckon the events
of life as before, or after, the skylight fell
upon Nannie.

To this day I have a chilly remembrance
of the iron banisters, with my face pressed
against them, as my little sister and I
watched the ladies and gentlemen on dinner-
party nights pass up the stairs below to the
drawing-room. We perched ourselves mid-
way on the upper flight. To the right of
the landing, just beneath our vantage point,
was a tall glass before which the guests

finally " tidied," turning themselves about,
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

adding little finishing touches before the
door was opened, all-unconscious of four
eyes fixed upon them with delighted in-
terest. We had to " skew round " through
the bars somehow, with a most painful
effort, for this particular scene ; but it was
well worth it. There was one lady whose
coming was always heralded by the un-
usually elaborate rustling of her stiff ex-
pensive skirts ; the clinging soft chiffons and
crepe de chines of to-day were not then in
fashion. I really think she must have been
the Auntie of whom Stevenson sang : —

" Whenever Auntie moves around,
Her dresses make a curious sound ;
They trail behind her up the floor,
And trundle after through the door."

We never failed to guess that lady ; and
I can yet see before me a certain pink train
as it swept along the passage, and hear the
voice of my mother's maid from the distant
top landing, saying as her practised eye sur-
veyed its every fold, " That gown is dyed."

Our eldest sister did not share those
thrilling vigils. She played a more refined
245

BRYANSTON SQUARE

and distinguished part, and was " found "
in the drawing-room when the ladies came
up after dinner.

Scraps of conversation come floating down
to me from those long-dead festivities, over-
heard as the couples went down the stairs
to dinner, and we used to make rapid
guesses as to whether the gentleman or lady
would " begin " first. . . .

" I was in the House to-day. Never
heard the Grand Old Man in finer form.
An amazing bit of oratory ! Still, it's per-
fectly clear that the Government is riding
for a fall. . . ."

" What a charming girl that is of yours,
Sir Henry ! Will you lend her to me for
the Foreign Office on Monday ? I hear she
wins all hearts, and now that all my own
birds are flown. ..."

" Wasn't it a lovely cotillon last night ? —
I must show you my presents some time.
Did you see those two girls sitting out by
themselves ? They never got anything.
Somehow I didn't think they would. . . .

I was so sorry for them. . . ."
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BRYANSTON SQUARE

The voices grow fainter, and run together
into a confused medley of cheerful sound ;
the procession vanishes with one last gleam
of a satin skirt, the doors are shut below ; —
and two little girls go up to bed.

THE END

Printed by BALLANTYNB, HANSON 6* Co.
at Paul's Work, Edinburgh

University of California

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