old picture.”
“Segovia, April 28.—I was quite ill at Madrid with severe sore throat and cough, and this in spite of the care I was always taking of myself, having been so afraid of falling ill. But it is the most treacherous climate, and, from burning heat, changes to fierce ice-laden winds from the Guadarama and torrents of cold rain. I was shut up five days, but cheered by visits from Madame de Riaño, young Arthur Seymour an attaché, and the last day, to my great delight, the well-known Holmhurst faces of Mr. and Mrs. Scrivens (Hastings banker), brimming with Sussex news. Mr. Layard was evidently very anxious to get us and all other travelling English safe out of Spain, but we preferred the alternative, suggested by the Riaños, of coming to this ‘muy pacifico’ place, and waiting till the storm was a little blown over. Madrid was certainly in a most uncomfortable state, the Italian King feeling the days of his rule quite numbered, houses being entered night and day, and arrests going on everywhere. I do not know what English papers tell, but the Spanish accounts are alarming of the whole of the north as overrun by Carlists, and that they have taken Vittoria and stopped the tunnel on the main line.
“It was a dreadful journey here. The road was cut through the snow, but there was fifteen feet of it on either side the way on the top of the Guadarama. However, our ten mules dragged us safely along. Segovia is gloriously picturesque, and the hotel a very tolerable—pothouse.”
“Salamanca, May 5.—One day at the Segovia table-d’hôte we had the most unusual sight of a pleasing young Englishman, who rambled about and drew with us all afternoon, and then turned out to be—the Duchess of Cleveland’s younger son, Everard Primrose.[15]
“May-day we spent at La Granja, one of the many royal palaces, and one which would quite enchant you. It is a quaint old French château in lovely woods full of fountains and waterfalls, quite close under the snow mountains; and the high peaks, one glittering mass of snow, rise through the trees before the windows. The inhabitants were longing there to have the Bourbons back, and only spoke of the present King as ‘the inoffensive Italian.’ Even Cristina and Isabella will be cordially welcomed if they return with the young Alfonso.
“On May 2nd we left Segovia and went for one night to the Escurial—such a gigantic place, no beauty, but very curious, and the relics of the truly religious though cruelly bigoted Philip II. very interesting. Then we were a day at Avila, at an English inn kept by Mr. John Smith and his daughter—kindly, hearty people. Avila is a paradise for artists, and has remains in plenty of Ferdinand and Isabella, in whose intimate companionship one seems to live during one’s whole tour in Spain. It was a most fatiguing night-journey of ten hours to Salamanca, a place I have especially wished to see—not beautiful, but very curious, and we have introductions to all the great people of the place.
“I shall be very glad now to get home again. It is such an immense separation from every one one has ever seen or heard of, and such a long time to be so excessively uncomfortable as one must be at even the best places in Spain. Five-o’clock tea, which we occasionally cook in a saucepan—without milk of course—is a prime luxury, and is to be indulged in to-day as it is Sunday.”
“Biarritz, May 12.—We are thankful to be safe here, having seen Zamora, Valladolid, and Burgos since we left Salamanca. The stations were in an excited state, the platforms crowded with people waiting for news or giving it, but we met with no difficulties. I cannot say with what a thrill of pleasure I crossed the Bidassoa and left the great discomforts of Spain behind. What a luxury this morning to see once more tea! butter!! cow’s milk!!!”
“Paris, May 20.—Most lovely does France look after Spain—the flowers, the grass, the rich luxuriant green, of which there is more to be seen from the ugliest French station than in the whole of the Spanish peninsula after you leave the Pyrenees. I have spent the greater part of three days at the Embassy, where George Sheffield is most affectionate and kind—no brother could be more so. We have been about everywhere together, and it is certainly most charming to be with a friend who is always the same, and associated with nineteen years of one’s intimate past.”
“Dover Station, May 23.—On Monday George drove me in one of the open carriages of the Embassy through the Bois de Boulogne to S. Cloud, and I thought the woods rather improved by the war injuries than otherwise, the bits cut down sprouting up so quickly in bright green acacia, and forming a pleasant contrast with the darker groves beyond. We strolled round the ruined château, and George showed the room whither he went to meet the council, and offer British interference just before war was declared, in vain, and now it is a heap of ruins—blackened walls, broken caryatides.[16] What a lovely view it is of Paris from the terrace: I had never seen it before. Pretty young French ladies were begging at all the park gates for the dishoused poor of the place, as they do at the Exhibition for the payment of the Prussian debt. George was as delightful as only he can be when he likes, and we were perfectly happy together. At 7 P.M. I went again to the Embassy. All the lower rooms were lighted and full of flowers, the corridors all pink geraniums with a mist of white spirea over them. The Duchesse de la Tremouille was there, as hideous as people of historic name usually are. Little fat Lord Lyons was most amiable, but his figure is like a pumpkin with an apple on the top. It is difficult to believe he is as clever as he is supposed to be. He is sometimes amusing, however. Of his diplomatic relations with the Pope he says, ‘It is so difficult to deal diplomatically with the Holy Spirit.’ He boasts that he arrived at the Embassy with all he wanted contained in a single portmanteau, and that if he were called upon to leave it for ever to-day, the same would suffice. He has collected and acquired—nothing! He evidently adores George, and I don’t wonder!”
To Miss Wright.
“Holmhurst, May 24, 1872.—You will like to know I am safe here. I found fat John Gidman waiting at the Hastings station, and drove up through the flowery lanes to receive dear Lea’s welcome—most tearfully joyous. The little home looks very lovely, and I cannot be thankful enough—though its sunshine is always mixed with shadow—to have a home in which everything is a precious memorial of my sacred past, where every shrub in the garden has been touched by my mother’s hand, every little walk trodden by her footsteps, and where I can bring up mental pictures of her in every room. In all that remains I can trace the sweet wisdom which for years laid up so much to comfort me, which sought to buy this place when she did, in order to give sufficient association to make it precious to me; above all, which urged her to the supreme effort of returning here in order to leave it for me with the last sacred recollections of her life. In the work of gathering up the fragments from that dear life I am again already engrossed, and Spain and its interests are passing into the far away; yet I look back upon them with much gratitude, and especially upon your long unvaried kindness and your patience with my many faults.”
“May 26.—To-night it blows a hurricane, and the wind moans sadly. A howling wind, I think, is the most melancholy natural accompaniment which can come to a solitary life. After this, I must give you—to meditate on—a beautiful passage I have been reading in Mrs. Somerville—‘At a very small height above the surface of the earth the noise of the tempest ceases, and the thunder is heard no more in those boundless regions where the heavenly bodies accomplish their periods in eternal and sublime silence.’ ”
It is partly the relief I experienced after Spain and the animation
