One excursion I specially remember in connection with that autumn was partly, I think, a pedestrian one, to Amiens and Beauvais, made in company with the W---- A----, of whom my brother speaks in his autobiography; which I mention chiefly for the sake of recording my testimony to the exact.i.tude of his description of that very singular individual. If it had not been for the continual carefulness necessitated by the difficulty of avoiding all cause of quarrel, I should say that he was about the pleasantest travelling companion I have ever known.
In the beginning of April, 1841, after a little episode of spring wandering in the Tyrol and Bavaria (in the course of which I met my mother at the chateau of her very old friend the Baroness de Zandt, who has been mentioned before, and was now living somewhat solitarily in her huge house in its huge park near Bamberg), my mother and I started for Italy. Neither of us had at that time conceived the idea of making a home there. The object of the journey, which had been long contemplated by my mother, was the writing of a book on Italy, as she had already done on Paris and on Vienna.
Our journey was a prosperous one in all respects, and our flying visit to Italy was very pleasant. My mother"s book was duly written, and published by Mr. Bentley in 1842. But the _Visit to Italy_, as the work was ent.i.tled (with justly less pretence than the t.i.tles of either of its predecessors had put forward), was in truth all too short. And I find that almost all of the huge ma.s.s of varied recollections which are connected in my mind with Italy and Italian people and things belong to my second "visit" of nearly half a century"s duration!
We made, however, several pleasant acquaintances and some fast friends, princ.i.p.ally at Florence, and thus paved the way, although little intending it at the time, for our return thither.
Our visit was rendered shorter than it would probably otherwise have been by my mother"s strong desire to be with my sister, who was expecting the birth of her first child at Penrith. And for this purpose we left Rome in February, 1842, in very severe weather. We crossed the Mont Cenis in sledges--which to me was a very acceptable experience, but to my mother was one, which nothing could have induced her to face, save the determination not to fail her child at her need.
How well I remember hearing as I sat in the _banquette_ of the diligence which was just leaving Susa for its climb up the mountain amid the snow, then rapidly falling, the driver of the descending diligence, which had accomplished its work and was just about entering the haven of Susa, sing out to our driver--"_Vous allez vous amuser joliment la haut, croyez moi_!"
We did not, however, change the diligence for the sledges till we came to the descent on the northern side. But as we made our slow way to the top our vehicle was supported from time to time on either side by twelve strapping fellows, who put their shoulders to it.
I appreciated during that journey, though I was glad to see the mountain in its winter dress, the recommendation not to let your flight be in the winter.
CHAPTER V.
I accompanied my mother to Penrith, and forthwith devoted myself heart and body to the preparation of our new house, and the beautifying of the very pretty paddock in which it was situated. I put in some hundreds of trees and shrubs with my own hands, which prospered marvellously, and have become, I have been told, most luxuriant shrubberies. I was bent on building a cloistered walk along the entire top of the field, which would have afforded a charming ambulatory sheltered from the north winds and from the rain, and would have commanded the most lovely views, while the pillars supporting the roof would have presented admirable places for a world of flowering climbing plants. And doubtless I should have achieved it, had we remained there. But it would have run into too much money to be undertaken immediately,--fortunately; for, inasmuch as there was nothing of the sort in all that country side, no human being would have given a stiver more for the house when it came to be sold, and the next owner would probably have pulled it down. There was no authority for such a thing. Had it been suffered to remain it would probably have been called "Trollope"s folly!"
Subsequently, but not immediately after we left it, the place--oddly enough I forget the name we gave it--became the property and the residence of my brother-in-law.
Of my life at Penrith I need add nothing to the jottings I have already placed before the reader on the occasion of my first visit to that place.
My brother, already a very different man from what he had been in London, came from his Irish district to visit us there; and I returned with him to Ireland, to his head-quarters at Banagher on the Shannon.
Neither of this journey need I say much. For to all who know anything of Ireland at the present day--and who does not? worse luck!--anything I might write would seem as _nihil ad rem_, as if I were writing of an island in the Pacific. I remember a very vivid impression that occurred to me on first landing at Kingstown, and accompanied me during the whole of my stay in the island, to the effect, that the striking differences in everything that fell under my observation from what I had left behind me at Holyhead, were fully as great as any that had excited my interest when first landing in France.
One of my first visits was to my brother"s chief. He was a master of foxhounds and hunted the country. And I well remember my astonishment, when the door of this gentleman"s residence was opened to me by an extremely dirty and slatternly bare-footed and bare-legged girl. I found him to be a very friendly and hospitable good fellow, and his wife and her sister very pleasant women. I found too that my brother stood high in his good graces by virtue of simply having taken the whole work and affairs of the postal district on his own shoulders.
The rejected of St. Martin"s-le-Grand was already a very valuable and capable officer.
My brother gave me the choice of a run to the Killeries, or to Killarney. We could not manage both. I chose the former, and a most enjoyable trip we had. He could not leave his work to go with me, but was to join me subsequently, I forget where, in the west. Meantime he gave me a letter to a bachelor friend of his at Clifden. This gentleman immediately asked me to dinner, and he and I dined _tete-a-tete._ Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to apologise for the appearance of a very fine John Dory on the table, saying, that he had been himself to the market to get a turbot for me, but that he had been asked half-a-crown for a not very large one, and really he could not give such absurd prices as that!
Anthony duly joined me as proposed, and we had a grand walk over the mountains above the Killeries. I don"t forget and never shall forget--nor did Anthony ever forget; alas! that we shall never more talk over that day again--the truly grand spectacular changes from dark thick enveloping cloud to brilliant sunshine, suddenly revealing all the mountains and the wonderful colouring of the intertwining sea beneath them, and then back to cloud and mist and drifting sleet again. It was a glorious walk. We returned wet to the skin to "Joyce"s Inn," and dined on roast goose and whisky punch, wrapped in our blankets like Roman senators!
One other scene I must recall. The reader will hardly believe that it occurred in Ireland. There was an election of a member for I forget what county or borough, and my brother and I went to the hustings--the only time I ever was at an election in Her Majesty"s dominions. What were the party feelings, or the party colours, I utterly forget. It was merely for the fun of the thing that we went there. The fun indeed was fast and furious. The whole scene on the hustings, as well as around them, seemed to me one seething ma.s.s of senseless but good-humoured hustling and confusion. Suddenly in the midst of the uproar an ominous cracking was heard, and in the next minute the hustings swayed and came down with a crash, heaping together in a confused ma.s.s all the two or three hundreds of human beings who were on the huge platform. Some few were badly hurt. But my brother and I being young and active, and tolerably stout fellows, soon extricated ourselves, regained our legs, and found that we were none the worse.
Then we began to look to our neighbours. And the first who came to hand was a priest, a little man, who was lying with two or three fellows on the top of him, horribly frightened and roaring piteously for help. So Anthony took hold of one of his arms and I of the other, and by main force dragged him from under the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s of humanity. When we got him on his legs his grat.i.tude was unbounded.
"Tell me your names," he shouted, "that I"ll pray for ye!" We told him laughingly that we were afraid it was no use, for we were heretics.
"Tell me your names," he shouted again, "that I"ll pray for ye all the more!"
I wonder whether he ever did! He certainly was very much in earnest while the fright was on him.
Not very long after my return from this Irish trip, we finally left Penrith on the 3rd of April, 1843; and I trust that the nymph of the holy well, whose spring we had disturbed, was appeased.
My mother and I had now "the world before us where to choose." She had work in hand, and more in perspective. I also had some in hand and very much more in perspective, but it was work of a nature that might be done in one place as well as another. So when "Carlton Hill" (all of a sudden the name comes back to my memory!) was sold, we literally stood with no _impedimenta_ of any sort save our trunks, and absolutely free to turn our faces in whatsoever direction we pleased.
What we did in the first instance was to turn them to the house of our old and well-beloved cousin, f.a.n.n.y Bent, at Exeter. There after a few days we persuaded her to accompany us to Ilfracombe, where we spent some very enjoyable summer weeks. What I remember chiefly in connection with that pleasant time, was idling rambles over the rocks and the Capstone Hill, in company with Mrs. c.o.ker and her sister Miss Aubrey, the daughters of that Major A. who needs to the whist-playing world no further commemoration. The former of them was the wife and mother of Wykehamists (founder"s kin), and both were very charming women. Ilfracombe was in those days an unpretending sort of fishing village. There was no huge "Ilfracombe Hotel," and the Capstone Hill was not strewed with whitey-brown biscuit bags and the fragments of bottles, nor continually vocal with n.i.g.g.e.r minstrels and ranting preachers. The "Royal Clarence" did exist in the little town, whether under that name or not, I forget. But I can testify from experience, acquired some forty years afterwards, that Mr. and Mrs. Clemow now keep there one of the best inns of its cla.s.s, that I, no incompetent expert in such matters, know in all England.
Then, when the autumn days began to draw in, we returned to Exeter, and many a long consultation was held by my mother and I, sallying forth from f.a.n.n.y Bent"s hospitable house for a _tete-a-tete_ stroll on Northernhay, on the question of "What next?"
It turned out to be a more momentous question than we either of us imagined it to be at the time; for the decision of it involved the shape and form of the entire future life of one of us, and still more important modification of the future life of the other. Dresden was talked of. Rome was considered. Paris was thought of. Venice was discussed. No one of them was proposed as a future permanent home.
Finally Florence came on the _tapis_. We had liked it much, and had formed some much valued friendships there. It was supposed to be economical as a place to live in, which was one main point. For our plan was to make for ourselves for two or three years a home and way of living sufficiently cheap to admit of combining with it large plans of summer travel. And eventually Florence was fixed on.
As for my mother, it turned out that she was then selecting her last and final home--though the end was not, thank G.o.d, for many a long year yet. As for me, the decision arrived at during those walks on Exeter Northernhay, was more momentous still. For I was choosing the road that led not only to my home for the next half century nearly, but to two marriages, both of them so happy in all respects as rarely to have fallen to the lot of one and the same man!
How little we either of us, my mother and I, saw into the future--beyond a few immediate inches before our noses! Truly _prudens futuri temporis exitum caliginosa nocte premit Deus!_ And when I hear talk of "conduct making fate," I often think--humbly and gratefully, I trust; marvelling, certainly,--how far it could have _a priori_ seemed probable, that the conduct of a man who, without either _oes in presenti_, or any very visible prospect of _oes in futuro_, turns aside from all the beaten paths of professional industry should have led him to a long life of happiness and content, hardly to be surpa.s.sed, and, I should fear, rarely equalled. _Deus n.o.bis haec otia fecit!--Deus_, by the intromission of one rarely good mother, and two rarely good, and I may add rarely gifted, wives!
Not that I would have the reader translate "_otia_" by idleness. I have written enough to show that my life hitherto had been a full and active one. And it continued in Italy to be an industrious one.
Translate the word rather into "independence." For I worked at work that I liked, and did no taskwork. Nevertheless, I would not wish to be an evil exemplar, _vitiis imitabile_, and I don"t recommend you, dear boys, to do as I did. I have been quite abnormally fortunate.
Well, we thought that we were casting the die of fate on a very subordinate matter, while, lo! it was cast for us by the Supernal Powers after a more far-reaching and over-ruling fashion.
So on the 2nd of September, 1843, we turned our faces southwards and left London for Florence.
We became immediately on arriving in Firenze la gentile (after a little tour in Savoy, introduced as an interlude after our locomotive rambling fashion) the guests of Lady Bulwer, who then inhabited in the Palazzo Pa.s.serini an apartment far larger than she needed, till we could find a lodging for ourselves.
We had become acquainted with Lady Bulwer in Paris, and a considerable intimacy arose between her and my mother, whose nature was especially calculated to sympathise with the good qualities which Lady Bulwer unquestionably possessed in a high degree. She was brilliant, witty, generous, kind, joyous, good-natured, and very handsome. But she was wholly governed by impulse and unreasoning prejudice; though good-natured, was not always good-humoured; was totally devoid of prudence or judgment, and absolutely incapable of estimating men aright. She used to think me, for instance, little short of an admirable Crichton!
Of course all the above rehea.r.s.ed good qualities were, or were calculated to be, immediately perceived and appreciated, while the less pleasant specialties which accompanied them were of a kind to become more perceptible only in close intimacy. And while no intimacy ever lessened that regard of my mother and myself that had been won by the first, it was not long before we were both, my mother especially, vexed by exhibitions of the second.
As, for instance:--Lady Bulwer had for some days been complaining of feeling unwell, and was evidently suffering. My mother urged her to have some medical advice, whereupon she turned on her very angrily, while the tears started to her beautiful eyes, and said, "How _can_ you tell me to do any such thing, when you know that I have not a guinea for the purpose?" (She was frequently wont to complain of her poverty.) But she had hardly got the words out of her mouth when the servant entered the room saying that the silversmith was at the door asking that the account which he laid on the table might be paid. The account (which Lady Bulwer made no attempt to conceal, for concealment of anything was not at all in her line) was for a pair of small silver spurs and an ornamented silver collar which she had ordered a week or two previously for the _ceremonial knighting of her little dog Taffy_!
On another occasion a large party of us were to visit the Boboli Gardens. It was a very hot day, and we had to climb the hill to the upper part of the gardens, from whence the view over Florence and the Val d"Arno is a charming one. But the hill, as those who have been at Florence will not have forgotten, is not only an extremely steep, but a shadeless one. The broad path runs between two wide margins of turf, which are enclosed on either side by thick but not very high shrubberies. The party sorted themselves into couples, and the men addressed themselves to facilitating as best they might the not slightly fatiguing work before the ladies. It fell to my lot to give Lady Bulwer my arm. Before long we were the last and most lagging couple on the path. It was hard work, but I did my best, and flattered myself that my companion, despite the radical moisture which she was copiously losing, was in high good humour, as indeed she seemed to be, when suddenly, without a word of warning, she dashed from the path, threw herself p.r.o.ne among the bushes, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of sobs and weeping. I was horrified with amazement. What had I done, or what left undone? It was long before I could get a word out of her. At last she articulated amidst her sobs, "It is TOO hot! It is cruel to bring one here!" Yes, it was _too_ hot; but that was all.
Fortunately I was not the cruel bringer. I consoled her to the best of my power, and induced her to wipe her eyes. I dabbled a handkerchief in a neighbouring fountain for her to wash her streaked face, and eventually I got her to the top of the hill, where all the others had long since arrived.
The incident was entirely characteristic of her. She was furiously angry with all things in heaven above and on the earth below because she was at the moment inconvenienced.
Here is the beginning of a letter from her of a date some months anterior to the Boboli adventure:
"Ill.u.s.trissimo Signor Tommaso" (that was the usual style of her address to me), "as your book is just out you must feel quite _en train_ for puffs of any description. Therefore I send you the best I have seen for a long while, _La Physiologie du Fumeur_. But even if you don"t like it, _don"t_ put it in your pipe and smoke it. _Vide_ Joseph Fume."
A little subsequently she writes: "Signor Tommaso, the only revenge I shall take for your lecture" (probably on the matter of some outrageous extravagance) "is not to call you _ill.u.s.trissimo_ and not to send you an illuminated postillion" (a previous letter having been ornamented with such a decoration at the top of the sheet), "but let you find your way to Venice in the dark as you can, and then and there, "On the Rialto I will rate you," and, being a man, you know there is no chance of my _over-rating_ you."
The following pa.s.sage from the same letter refers to some negotiations with which she had entrusted me relative to some ill.u.s.trations she was bent on having in a forthcoming book she was about to publish:--"As for the immortal Cruikshank, tell him that I am sure the mighty genius which conceived Lord Bateman could not refuse to give any lady the _werry best_, and if he does I shall pa.s.s the rest of my life registering a similar _wow_ to that of the fair Sophia, and exclaiming, "I vish, George Cruikshank, as you vas mine.""
The rest of the long, closely-written four-paged letter is an indiscriminate and bitter, though joking attack, upon the race of publishers. She calls Mr. Colburn an "embodied shiver," which will bring a smile to the lips of those--few, I fear--who remember the little man.
Here are some extracts from a still longer letter written to my mother much about the same time: "I hear Lady S---- has committed another novel, called _The Three Peers_, no doubt _l"un pire que l"autre_!...
I have a great many kind messages to you from that very charming person Madame Recamier, who fully intends meeting you at Venice with Chateaubriand in October, for so she told me on Sunday. I met her at Miss Clarke"s some time ago, and as I am a bad _pusher_ I am happy to say she asked to be introduced to me, and was, thanks to you, my kind friend! She pressed me to go and see her, which I have done two or three times, and am going to do again at her amiable request on Thursday. I think that her fault is that she flatters a little too much. And flattery to one whose ears have so long been excoriated by abuse does not sound safe. However, all is right when she speaks of you. And the point she most eulogised in you is that which I have heard many a servile coward who could never go and do likewise" [no indication is to be found either in this letter or elsewhere to whom she alludes], "select for the same purpose, namely, your straightforward, unflinching, courageous integrity.... Balzac is furious at having his new play suppressed by Thiers, in which Arnauld acted Louis Philippe, wig and all, to the life; but, as I said to M.
Dupin, "_Cest tout naturel que M. Thiers ne permetterait a personne de jouer Louis Philippe que lui-meme._" ... There is a wonderful pointer here that has been advertised for sale for twelve hundred francs. A friend of mine went to see him, and after mounting up to a little garret about the size of a chessboard, _au vingt-septieme_, he interrogated the owner as to the dog"s education and acquirements, to which the man replied, "_Pour ca, monsieur, c"est un chien parfait. Je lui ai tout appris moi-meme dans ma chambre_"[1] After this my friend did not sing "Together let us range the fields!" ... Last week I met Colonel Potter M"Queen, who was warm in his praises of you, and the great good your _Michael Armstrong_" (the factory story) "had done....
Last Thursday despatches arrived and Lord Granville had to start for London at a moment"s notice. I was in hopes this beastly ministry were out! But no such luck! For they are a compound of glue, sticking-plaister, wax, and vice--the most adhesive of all known mixtures."
[Footnote 1: "As for that, sir, the dog is perfect. I have myself taught him everything _in my own room_!"]
Before concluding my recollections of Rosina, Lady Lytton Bulwer, I think it right to say that I consider myself to have perfectly sufficient grounds for feeling certain that the whispers which were circulated in a cowardly and malignant fashion against the correctness of her conduct as a woman were wholly unfounded. Her failings and tendency to failings lay in a quite different direction. I knew perfectly well the person whose name was mentioned scandalously in connection with hers, and knew the whole history of the relationship that existed between them. The gentleman in question was for years Lady Bulwer"s constant and steadfast friend. It is quite true that he would fain have been something more, but true also that his friendship survived the absolute rejection of all warmer sentiments by the object of it. It was almost a matter of course that such a woman as Lady Bulwer, living unprotected in the midst of such a society as that of Florence in those days, should be so slandered. And were it not that there were very few if any persons at the time, and I think certainly not one still left, able to speak upon the subject with such _connaissance de cause_ as I can, I should not have alluded to it.
She was an admirably charming companion before the footlights of the world"s stage--not so uniformly charming behind its scenes, for her unreasonableness always and her occasional violence were very difficult to deal with. But she was, as d.i.c.kens"s poor Jo says in _Bleak House_, "werry good to me!"