Pleasures And Palaces
Vil
PLEASURES
AND PALACES To her friends Aet. 56.
LONDON, june 6, 1888 On my crossing from America Mrs. Brooks completely saddled herself on me.
She had her chair put beside mine on deck and considered herself to be " under my wing", as she expressed it.
I am afraid she found it a wing of marble.
I could not gush with her worth a cent.
I do not find that I feel myself to be any different ' as an English subject than as an American.
I have not the vote in either place, so I am not a citizen of either, and have ho call to be patriotic.
In fact, I do not see how women can ever feel like anything but aliens in whatever country they may live, for they have no part or lot in any, except the part and lot of being taxed and legislated for by men.
You need not think, therefore, that I feel any pangs in leaving America as far as my country is concerned.
I do regret very greatly leaving so many dearly loved friends, but I feel as if I should see you all often after all, and we are not separated in spirit.
Mary's daughter, Ray, my first grandchild, is the sweetest little thing that ever was.
She sleeps all night like a softly breathing seraph, and when I wake I hear her little rustlings like a tiny bird in its nest.
My spectacles charmed her at once, and in a few minutes after we first met we were intimate friends, and
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL in an incredibly short space of time we assumed our proper positions of mistress and slave.
When I tell | you that she sucks my watch and uses my spectacles as a hammer, you will understand which one of us is mistress, and which the slave!
She is in short a perfectly delicious baby, and I am a perfectly idiotic grandmother !
To her friends Aet. 56.
TORQUAY, June 10, 1888 As usual Lady Mount Temple is full of interesting things, and to-day she introduced me to a mysterious creature, a man he looked like, who is the leader of a strange sect called the '' Temple', and who declared to me that he had not slept a wink for 8 years, but had every night got out of his body and travelled around the world on errands of service for the Lord! ! He declared that he sees angels as plainly as he sees men, and knows them all apart, and that Michael has light flaxen hair, and Gabriel dark eyes and hair, and they all live in the sun!
But I cannot begin to repeat all his nonsense, He was like all other cranks with some slight variations, and like all the rest believes that his religion and his experiences are the ushering in of a new era in the world's history.
I wonder how many " new eras "
I have heard tell of ? - At least 50 I should think.
And meanwhile the old world wags on just as it has always done, and will wag, I suspect, in spite of all their new eras.
Another very interesting thing has been a visit we paid to\a very mysterious brother and sister who had lived in a little shut-in cottage on the side of the cliff
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for 25 years, and during all that time had never made a single friend in all the neighbourhood, and had never had a single visitor in their house as far as anyone could tell.
Why they had kept themselves so secluded no one could say.
Lady Mount Temple with her tender sympathy for all who are in trouble, had gone to see them when she first went to Babbacombe and somehow found her way into their hearts,
_ but even now, though it has been many years, she knows nothing of their story.
The brother paints and the sister plays on the harp, and their little shut-in grounds are radiant with flowers.
They keep no servant, and no workman ever enters their place.
To her daughters Aet. 56.
LLEWYN BARRIED, RHAYADER VALLEY,
NR. LLANDRINDOD WELLS 1
Aug. 8, 1888 I wish you would pay off all our calls while I am away from Wales.
DO!
'There are six to pay.
You can go in detachments.
Let me be spared any further sacrifices in this line.
I have brought a novel to read called *"' Cut by the County " with which T shall arm myself against the next County we live in.
I cannot help hoping that the next place we live in the County will not call on us, for I must say it is a decided bother.
For me, in my old age, to begin paying calls is a little too much to ask, after all my lifetime testimony against it.
1JIn the summer of 1888 Robert Pearsall Smith rented a country house in the Rhayader Valley—Shelley's valley—near
Llandrindod Wells, L.P.S. i
104,
A RELIGIOUS REBEL
To her friends Aet. 56.
LONDON, fan. 1889
Lady Tavistock is a most charming person and evidently very religious.
She arranged with me for an interview of herself and Mrs. Benson, the wife of the Bishop [Archbishop] Benson who lives in Lambeth
Palace, on the subject of my views on holiness and the life of faith.
It is to come off this week.
Lady Tavistock and Rachel Fowler and I are hoping to start some Ladies' Prayer meetings in London during the "Season "', for the upper class ladies, who, Lady
Tavistock sek are starving for some food outside of their Churches, where often they are fed with the merest chaff.
Lady Tavistock is really the Marchioness of Tavistock, and her husband is the heir to the Duke of Bedford, so anything she starts is sure to go, and she seems especially fitted for just such a meeting, as she has had a great deal of success among her own tenants at '' Oakley House " in Bedford, and is a most devoted Christian.
It is very interesting to see so many really earnest Christians among the very highest nobility, but I must confess, it is mostly among the women.
; To her friends Aet. 57.
ROME, feb. 7, 1889 It is my 57th birthday to-day, and I am delighted to be growing older.
I am convinced it is a great art to know how to grow old gracefully, and I desire to practise it.
One secret of it I am sure is to take the side of the young people, and
PLEASURES AND PALACES
I mean to do this just as far as possible.
When I remember my own youth, and recall the immense power any old person, who believed in me and sympathised with me, had over me in' those days, I cannot but think my influence for good over the young people of my day will be far greater by the road of sympathy than by the road of antagonism.
The next thing I want to say is that it is worth living 57 years just to be the grandmother of such a delicious little granddaughter as my little Ray Costelloe!
I have often thought at different periods of my life that I had at last found my proper niche, but now I am convinced my proper niche is being a grandmother, I fit into it so completely, and enjoy it so thoroughly!
If becoming a grandmother was only a matter of choice I should advise everyone of you straightway to become one.
There is no fun for old people like it!
Rome is full of priests in all their varied and picturesque dresses and I confess it does give me solid satisfaction to see men obliged to walk around in this muddy Rome with long flapping skirts twisting around their ankles at every step!
It seems to introduce a little more fairness into things.
To Lady Mount Temple and Mrs. Russell Gurney ; Acta 57,
FRIDAY'S HILL?, Oct. 3, 1889
I think of you now as two " enchanted Princesses "' sitting in a bower of heavenly love, while I feel myself
1 Mrs. Russell Gurney, Lady Mount Temple and H.W.S. formed themselves as a holy band of "' Trins '' comparable to the five mystic birds of Philadelphia long before (see ante).
L.P.S.
2 In 1889 my father rented Friday's Hill House and estate, at Fernhurst, Sussex, near Haslemere, Surrey.
It now seems to me odd that I
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL to be a sort of humdrum mortal plodding along in the common paths, with packing to do, and cooks to interview and workmen to oversee, and all sorts of mundane affairs to attend to.
But after all I am just as truly dwelling in fairyland as when with you, for our true and only fairyland is the beloved and beautiful will of God, which environs us all everywhere and in everything.
To her daughter, Mary Costelloe (Berenson) 1 Aet. 58.
44. GROSVENOR ROAD, LONDON
March 15, 1890 When Ray comes in to breakfast in the morning her first proceeding is to run round the table telling me to say, '' Who is that frisking around the table?"
To this grandpa has to answer, "' I guess it is a calf.""
Then she says to me, "' You are the mamma cow and you must call your little calf to breakfast."
'Then I have to say, ** Come little calf, come to breakfast.""
Then she trots over and gets in her chair beside me and says, "' Here the calf is sitting on its tail, and you are the mamma cow sitting on your tail."
And so she goes on all through breakfast.
She is too bewitching.
Yesterday when she was in here she asked me towards the last whether I was going to give her a chocolate when she
I, who was then at Oxford, should have insisted on a house with woods and shooting for our summer and autumn abode.
The "' Old Adam " of sport in me was completely baffled by the Sussex poachers and soon died a natural death.
L.P.S.
1 Karly in 1890 H.W.S.'s daughter, Mrs. Costelloe, went to Florence to study Italian Art under the tutorship of Mr. Bernard Berenson, whom she married (1900) a year after the death of her husband
B. F. C. Costelloe.
In the intervening period she stayed in Florence, with only occasional visits home, while her two daughters lived with their father at 41 Grosvenor Road, only three doors off from the home of H.W.S. at No. 44.
L.P.S.
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AND PALACES
went home.
I said "Yes".
She was silent for a minute or two, and then said, '"'I hear God's voice Saying it is time for me to go home now! !"
I could not help thinking she was not so unlike some older Christians, who hear God's voice telling them to do what they have already set their hearts on doing !
To-day Ray pretended I was the devil and she gave me her naughty children who would not take their hot baths quietly to burn up.
To her friends Aet. 58.
LONDON, April 1890 I went with Lady Henry Somerset to see the Salvation Army Shelters, and it was one of the saddest and most discouraging sights we had either of us ever seen, not so much because of the poverty, as because of the 'plain and unmistakable signs of degradation from drink.
I never saw a more beastly set of human beings, and it seems an insult to beasts to call them this.
Fora penny these sots, for they were nothing else, could get a decent place to sleep, in a comfortable airy room, and for another penny they could get enough to eat....
They were all evidently professional tramps, and they could " bum " around all day in their haunts of drink and vice, sure at night of a warm and comfortable shelter and good food for the infinitesimal sum of ed.
If one enjoyed bumming nothing could be more satisfactory.
Nearly all the Christian workers among the slums feel grave doubts of the wisdom of these Salvation
Army Shelters, as they find by experience that all such things only encourage thriftlessness and pauperise the
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL recipients.
No doubt some do get converted at the meetings, and that of course is pure gain.
But the night we were there it seemed hopeless to expect to reach such a sodden set of drunkards.
Lady Henry Somerset to Hannah Whitall Smith E LONDON, Dec. 17, 1890 It was such a joy to see thee.
I wish I could tell how much thee is to my life.
I always turn to thee as a sort of rest and often just think about thy face when I get troubled.
I am not very good at saying all I feel, but 'deep down I do feel it all so much.
To her friends Aet. 59.
SYRACUSE, SICILY, Feb. 26, 1891
The excursion of all excursions we took on the zoth to Segesta and Selinunte.
It rained when we started, and it snowed, and rained, and hailed, and blew, in alternate snatches all the day through.
Such mud and such a climb I hope never to encounter again during all the span of my natural life.
Details would be harrowing ; so suffice it to say after climbing for endless miles upon miles, as it seemed to me, though really I believe it was only a climb of 3 of an hour, we suddenly turned the corner of a cliff, and there before us standing in lonely grandeur, on the summit of a smooth grassy hill, surrounded by mountains on every side, was the Temple of Segesta!
It seemed utterly alone somehow, as though it belonged to a different world from ours ; and after our weary toilsome climb, it looked so profoundly still and at peace.
But the wind whistled through the columns, and gusts of snow and rain
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AND PALACES
blinded us, and we were fairly driven away long before we had half exhausted our enjoyment of all the grandeur and beauty of the place.
Then came the journey back to the carriage, with that dreadful river to cross.
How differently people can look at things!
At table-d'héte a gentleman sitting next to me, whom I had met among the ruins of Segesta during the day, said in a most lugubrious tone—'' How solemn these ruins are!
How deeply they make us feel that we are nothing but poor worms of the dust, here to-day and to-morrow gone into oblivion."
'" Oh, dear no," I replied most cheerfully, "' that is not the way they make me feel at all.
'They fill me with joy to think that we ourselves are so much grander than the things we make, that the earth which holds them cannot hold us, and that we are like birds, alighting here for a moment and then stretching our wings to fly off to a better world."
I never felt so zmmortal as I have since I came among these crumbling ruins.
Here we met a Mr. Dennis who has excavated a great deal at Cyrene in North Africa, and owns a ruined
Temple there which, now that he is old, he will be glad to sell to anyone who is ambitious of becoming the proprietor of a ruined Grecian Temple.
A few years since I am certain I should have wanted to purchase it myself, if I could have afforded it.
I remember I purchased a little lake in Florida with 80 acres around _ it for the sake of owning the alligator that lived in the lake ; and I purchased a claim in Wyoming for the sake of owning some land in a state where women had the vote ; and why not have added a ruined Greek Temple to the collection ?
On the oth we went to Capri, and from there we took a sail boat across to Sorrento, where we slept.
'That sail boat was a rash proceeding on my part!
But the
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL | sea looked smooth, and the day was lovely, and the distance looked insignificant, and my usual good sense seemed to desert me, and we did the foolish thing.
Alys enjoyed it, but I suffered.
It took us 3 hours, and the smooth sea proved to be full of unsuspected hills and hollows, and I found myself feeling more and more
*"' meachin "', and could only console myself by saying over and over inwardly with continually increasing emphasis, '' Never again, Never again Never NEVER NEVER again !!"
It is a delightful feeling to find one's self gradually getting done with this world.
It seems such an assurance or prophecy of the better country, that is the heavenly, towards which one is gradually drawing nigher and nigher.
Not that I have any immediate prospect of getting there, but I do like to feel that I have begun to pack up togo.
So I have said farewell to Sicily and the Temples with a happy heart, and have turned my face homeward without one longing look behind.
To her friends Aet. 59.
LONDON, May 4, 1891 London is in the full tide of the " May Meetings "', and I will just give you my list of engagements for this week, so as to give you a little idea of all that I am drawn into doing.
Monday, May 4th.
Morning.
Visit from Lady Tollemache to talk of spiritual things.
Afternoon.
Go with Alys and Lady Albinia [Hobart] to see Lady Henry Somerset about Girls'
Clubs.
Evening.
National Temperance League Anniversary.
Tuesday, May 5th.
Visit to Mrs. A. B. who is in spiritual trouble and wants help.
Afternoon.
Bible
PLEASURES
AND PALACES III Reading at Brixton.
Evening.
Reception for Temperance Women.
Wednesday, May 6th.
Morning.
British Women's Temperance Association Temperance Meeting.
Afternoon.
2.30
Moral Reform Union Meeting.
3.30
_Meeting about Women Guardians.
Evening.
Jerusalem Medical Mission to Women.
Thursday, May 7th.
Morning.
Suffrage Meeting.
Afternoon.
Tea with Lady Pease.
Evening.
Speak at Polytechnic to a Girls' Club.
Friday, May 8th.
Morning.
Shopping.
Afternoon.
Bible Reading in Highbury.
Evening.
Dine Lady Mount Temple's.
Saturday, May 9th.
Go to Bristol to give a Bible Reading.
I wonder how many of our tombstones will have to be se cE with the epitaph "' Died of too many
Meetings "'
To her daughter, Mary Costelloe (Berenson) Aet. 59.
FRIDAYS HILL, Aug. 16, 1891
Logan is making some Pot-pourri with rose leaves, and I gave Ray some old roses to pull to pieces to go into the pot. When it was all done, she said very complacently, " Won't Uncle Logan be pleased >? Won't he kiss his little Ray and hug her for giving him so many rose leaves ?"'
I answered mechanically " Yes', and she went on talking about it for a little, repeating over and over how her Uncle Logan would hug and kiss her ; and then she said in entirely a different tone of voice,
"' Grandma, you.and I believe this about Uncle Logan, but we know he won't do it at all, don't we?'
Was it not a subtle distinction ?
I12
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL Of course I love thee as much as thee loves Ray.
But I cannot have her all to myself, and my very love teaches me to stand on one side and take such scraps as I can get.
Some day thee will understand this too, when Ray gives herself to some awful man !
\ .
To her friends Aet. 59.
FRIDAY'S HILL, Oct. 5, 1891
We have been to see our neighbour at Blackdown, Lord Tennyson,! who is now 83 years of age.
I have always been devoted to his "' In Memoriam " but I find that it is not the fashion with 'the most artistic young people of the present generation to admire Tennyson.
They even declare he is not a poet in the true sense of the word at all ! I should be dreadfully shocked at this, only that I remember how in my young days I scorned the poetry which the generation before me admired, such as Cowper and Dryden, and even, I almost tremble to say it, Milton, who was never a poet to me.
; The poets admired by the young people now are _ Shelley and Keats and Wordsworth and William
Morris and Shakespeare.
Even Browning and Swinburne have gone out of fashion. I cannot keep up with the coming generation in their literary taste, but it is very interesting to hear all about it. And I confess I 1 The Pearsall Smiths had first got to know Tennyson through a letter of introduction given by Walt Whitman to the daughters Mary and Alys, who had paid him a visit on the Isle of Wight.
Near his Sussex residence, it is said that Tennyson would walk on Blackdown, conspicuous with his cloak and beard and broad-brimmed hat ; if spectators appeared, he would angrily take cover behind bushes ; if no spectator turned up, he would, in still worse a temper, go back home, disappointed.
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enjoy seeing them have opinions of their own.
The individual human being is a wonderful thing to my mind, and everything that reveals it interests me immensely.