These were persons who, like many Bristol people, had large property in the West Indies—the Miles’s, for instance, made their fortunes there. The elder daughter, Elizabeth, had been born in the West Indies, and when she fell into bad health, her father took the opportunity of taking her back to benefit by her native air, when he went to look after his West Indian property, leaving his younger daughter, Hephzibah, with Mrs. Fry.
“They had not been gone long when Hephzibah took a chill, and in a very few days she died. Mr. Harrison attended her. Some days after he called as a friend upon Mrs. Fry, when she said, ‘I want to tell you something which has happened to me: I have seen Elizabeth.’—’ Impossible,’ said Mr. Harrison. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it was so. I was sitting reading the “Promise” ’ (so I believe ‘Friends’ always call the Bible), ‘when I fell into a state which was neither sleeping nor waking, and in that state—I was not asleep—I saw Elizabeth standing by me. I spoke to her, and, forgetting what had happened in my surprise, I told her to call her sister. But she said to me that she had seen her sister already, and that she was in a box, and had a great deal of sewing about her chest. She especially used the word “sewing:” then she vanished away, and the place in the Promise where I had left off was changed: some one had turned it over.’ Mr. Harrison noted all this.
“Some time after came a letter from the father to Mrs. Fry, written before he had heard of Hephzibah’s death. After speaking of other matters he said, ‘I must now tell you of a very curious circumstance which has occurred, and which is much on my mind. The other day Elizabeth, who had been much better, and who is now nearly well, surprised us by falling into a stupor, and when she came to herself she would insist upon it that she had been to Clifton, and that she had seen you and Hephzibah, and that Hephzibah was in a long box, with a great deal of sewing upon her chest: and she says so still.’ The dates were precisely the same.
“Hephzibah’s death was so sudden that there was a post-mortem examination, though it was not considered necessary to distress Mrs. Fry by telling her of it. On this occasion Mr. Harrison was unable to be present. He went afterwards to the student of the hospital who was there, and who remembered all about it, and he said—what Mr. Harrison had not previously known—that after the examination the body was sewn up, with a great deal of sewing upon the chest.”
“Dec. 16.—The Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Tait arrived before afternoon-tea, at which there was much lively conversation. Apropos of Radicalism and the conversation of Bishops, Lord Salisbury mentioned Sydney Smith’s saying that he would ‘rather fall a victim to a democratic mob than be sweetly and blandly absorbed by a bishop.’
“In speaking of Jenny Lind, Mr. Richmond said that she had ‘none of the warm ruddy glow of the sunny South in her character, it was rather the soft calm beauty of Swedish moonlight.’ He spoke of the faces he had drawn—of the interest of the ugly faces, if the lines had character; of the difficulty of translating a face like a moon or a footstool; that still such faces were quite the exception, and that he believed the reason why he succeeded better than some others of his confraternity was that he was better able to realise to himself the good in the character of his subjects.”
“Dec. 17.—Mr. Richmond was at the same little table at breakfast. He talked of great writers and talkers, how their art was not the creation of something new, but the telling of old things well in a new dress—the bringing up the thoughts long bedridden in the chambers of their own brain.
“He talked of Carlyle—of how his peculiarities began in affectation, but that now he was simply lost in the mazes of his own vocabulary. One night, he said, he met a man at Albert Gate at 12 P.M., who asked for a light for his cigar. He did not see who it was till, as he was turning away, he recognised Carlyle, who gave a laugh which could be heard all down Piccadilly as he exclaimed, ‘I thought it was just any son of Adam, and I find a friend.’ It was soon after the Pope’s return to Rome, and Mr. Richmond spoke of him. ‘The poor old Pope,’ said Carlyle, ‘the po-o-r old Pope! He has a big mouth! I do not like your button-holes of mouths, like the Greek statues you are all so fond of.’
“Our third at the breakfast-table was a Mr. Jeffreys. Mr. Richmond said afterwards that he was a conchologist, which he regarded as the very tail of science—the topmost twig of the tree looking up at the sky.”
“Dec. 19.—Yesterday I drew the gallery and chapel. There is something mediæval in the band playing all dinner-time, yet without the sound being overwhelming, from the great size of the room; in the way the host and hostess sit in the middle like royalty, and in the little lovely baskets of hot-house flowers given to each lady as she goes down the staircase to dinner.”
“Dec. 20.—The last collection of guests have included the Duke of Wellington, the Cowleys, Lord and Lady Stanhope, and M. and Madame de Lavalette—all full of interest. Certainly Hatfield is magnificent and grandly kept up. I had much talk with Mrs. Lowe,[35] who delights in tirades against Christianity. She said how absurd it was to expect belief in the Bible, when no one could agree upon so recent a subject as Lord Byron: that half the Bible was contrary to all reason: that it was monstrous to suppose that the Deity could enjoin a murder like that of Isaac, &c.”
“Dec. 27, East Sheen.—Mrs. Stuart Wortley came to luncheon. She remarked how that which was most striking in Italy was not the effect of light, but of shadow. Into the shadows of England you could not penetrate, but the shadows of Italy were transparent; the more you looked into their cavernous depths, the more you saw there, discovering marvels of beauty which existed there in repose.
“She told us that the secret of ‘the Haunted House in Berkeley Square’ is that it belonged to a Mr. Du Pré of Wilton Park. He shut up his lunatic brother there in a cage in one of the attics, and the poor captive was so violent that he could only be fed through a hole. His groans and cries could be distinctly heard in the neighbouring houses. The house is now to be let for £100 the first year, £200 the second, £300 the third, but if the tenant leaves within that time, he is to forfeit £1000. The house will be furnished in any style or taste the tenant chooses.”
To Miss Wright.
“Holmhurst, Jan. 10, 1873.—I have had a pleasant visit at Battle Abbey. The Duchess (of Cleveland) received me very kindly. The house is comfortable and the library is first-rate, and there is always a pleasure in a house which has ruins, cloisters, haunted yew walks—history, in fact—in its garden. The Duke, who is one of the few living of my father’s old friends, was very cordial; and Lord and Lady Stanhope, whom I am devoted to, arrived with me. The rest of the guests were Harry Stanhope, a clergyman, Colonel and Mrs. Heygarth, Colonel and Mrs. Byng, Mr. Newton the Lycian archæologist, Mr. Planché the Somerset Herald, and Mr. Campbell of Islay—a party which had plenty of good materials. We drew, acted, and all tried to make ourselves agreeable. The Duchess was a perfect hostess, amused us all very much, and was intensely amused herself.”
My book “Wanderings in Spain,” came out in the autumn of 1872, and met with a more enthusiastic reception from the public than anything I have ever written. Three editions were called for in six weeks, but there the sale ended.[36] The reviews were rapturously laudatory, but I felt at the time how little reliance was to be placed upon their judgment, though for the moment it was agreeable. The Times declared that no one ought to go to Spain without the book; the Athenæum, that only in one instance had pleasanter sketches fallen under its notice; while the Spectator blew the loudest trumpet of all:—
“In this least commonplace, and yet most comprehensive of works of travel, we find everything we have previously learnt of that comparatively unworked mine of history, art, poetry, and nature, Spain, as well as a great deal which is entirely novel. But the old is placed in a dazzling light of fancy, association, and suggestion, and the new is captivating. The skies of Spain shine, the wide-sweeping breezes
