Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. Part 14

_April 27th_.--Excursion to Port Royal and Dampierre, where we were received by order of the Duc de Luynes. Circourt was with us. 28th, to Fontainebleau. Met William Stirling and Lady Anna there; they were just married. 30th, races in Bois de Boulogne. Took Mrs. Henry Baring there.

Dined at the Emba.s.sy.

_May 3rd_.--Excursion to Reims with Circourt and Belveze.[Footnote: The Comte de Belveze, an intimate friend of the Circourts, a man, Reeve wrote, 'of great wit and discernment.' In 1873 he had printed, for private circulation, a small volume of _Pensees, Maximes et Reflexions_, a copy of which he gave Reeve, who 'highly valued it for its intrinsic merit and its rarity.'] Back to London by Lille and Laon.

_13th_.--My uncle, Tom Reeve, the rector, died. I attended the funeral, and went on to Thorpe Abbotts.

_June 10th_.--Party given by the Hudson's Bay Company to see their s.h.i.+ps at Gravesend. Dined there.

Went to Bracknell and Ascot.

_From Lord Clarendon_

_The Grove, June 11th_. I make you my sincere compliment upon the article, [Footnote: 'Dissolution of Parliament,' by Reeve. It appeared in the July number of the _Review_.] and thank you for giving me an early read of it.

It is by far the ablest defence I have yet seen for the donothingness of the Government about Reform; and you have most skilfully brought all the different schemes face to face, in order to knock their heads together, at the same time that you show yourself, as the organ of the Whig party, to be liberal and progressive, and not only ready, but anxious, to adopt any plan of Reform that will really effect that which reasonable men unite in desiring. I think the article will do great good; and I only wish that it could be circulated among cla.s.ses rather lower than the ordinary readers of the 'Edinburgh Review.'

Might you not in the last page enlarge a little more upon the opposition which the Tories, for party purposes, or from shortsightedness, have always made to Liberal measures? For that in reality is the strong case against them; and in judging of their fitness for power, the electors should consider how the country would have stood if their persistent opposition had been successful; how we should have pa.s.sed through the political crisis of '48 if the Corn Laws had been unrepealed; or the cotton famine, if Free-trade had not been established. The electors should also well consider whether they will accept, as governors and guides, men who predicted evils of the worst kind from measures which have produced the happiest results.

All these points are well alluded to in the last page, but they seem to me to want a few grains of salt; and we may be sure that Lord Robert Cecil [Footnote: The present Marquis of Salisbury. His elder brother, Viscount Cranborne, died three days after the date of this letter, June 14th.] in the 'Quarterly' will pepper the Whigs abundantly.

The Journal at this time has:--

Gout in July. Went to Aix on the 25th. The Aumales, Alc.o.c.ks, and Lord St.

Germans there. Home on August 17th.

_August 9th_.--To Scotland. We went again to Skibo. Harry Butler Johnstone there. Stayed at Skibo till the 30th. Then to Brahan. Found the Fergusons at Novar. Lord Kingsdown had taken Holme House, near Nairn. Went to see him there. Cawdor Castle. Then to Pitcorthie [James Moncreiff's] [Footnote: At this time Lord Advocate. Created a baronet in 1871, and a peer, as Lord Moncreiff, in 1874.] and Raith and Abington.

_September 23rd_.--Dined with Lord Granville to meet Castalia Campbell and Lady Acton. Lord G. was married on the 26th [to Miss Campbell].

To Torry Hill in October; also to Badger Hall and High Legh, and Loseley (then rented by Thomson Hankey).

_November 15th_.--Went down to Woodnorton [near Evesham], to see the Aumales at their farm. Shot there.

But the great topic of the latter part of the year, the subject which was in everyone's mind, was the cattle plague--the rinderpest--which threatened to become a matter of extreme national importance. When, at the time that now is, people are inclined to grumble at the precautionary measures adopted by Government, they should look back to the records of 1865 and read of the very serious alarm then felt. Writing to Dempster, himself a high authority on agricultural questions, Reeve naturally spoke of this, and the correspondence is largely filled with such sentences as:--

_September 22nd_.--A nearer acquaintance with the cattle disease is a very disagreeable addition to one's knowledge. They are afraid it will last for many years, and sweep off a great portion of the cattle in the kingdom....

You'll think I have got the rinderpest myself to write about nothing but these brutes.

_September 28th_.--The disease has now spread to sheep, and I verily believe we shall have a meat famine.

_October 12th_.--The ravages of the disease increase. We were to have gone to pay two visits in Ess.e.x this week, but our hosts are so distracted by the loss of their kine and the absence of dairy produce that they broke up their party and put us off.

_October 18th_.--The opinion of the Cattle Commission is that nothing can be done to stay the plague without putting a stop to all transport or movement of live cattle; and I expect this will be done. But how are we to be fed?

_November 23rd_.--The Lords of the Council have at last resolved to give all local authorities in Britain the power of stopping the entry of cattle into their own district, and all beasts brought to the Metropolitan Market are to be killed there.

And thus this plague, the illness and death of Lord Palmerston, and--more personal--the alarming illness and slow, lingering convalescence of Miss Charlotte Dempster--'my fair contributor,' as Reeve used to call her--fill the correspondence of the year. One note only, an account of Reeve's visit to Woodnorton, has a more particular interest.

_To Mr. Dempster_

_C. O., November 23rd_.--My last campaign has been in Worcesters.h.i.+re, where I went to see a barnful of princes and princesses in a house much more like a very wild Highland shooting quarter than an Englishman's hunting-box.

However, this only made the whole party more jolly; and as the stables are very superior to the house, I shall entreat them, the next time I go, to give me a loose box instead of a bedroom. Cutbush is supposed to have slept on a dresser in the servants' hall; and a stray Frenchman who arrived one evening was laid up in the smoking-room, on a sofa.

And, according to the Journal, the year closed with--

Visits to Farnborough, Denbigh (Haslemere), and Timsbury [Ralph Dutton's, near Romsey].

Between Reeve and the Duttons there was a friends.h.i.+p of many years'

standing, and they were there, wrote Mrs. Reeve, 'a pleasant little party of ten, only Henry has had a very bad fit of gout and could not join the shooters, or even the dinner-table some days: too provoking!' They remained at Timsbury for a week, and then:--

_January 10th_.--A pleasant party at Torry Hill, with Sir E. Head and Kit.

Pemberton. Shooting in the snow, which was heavy.

_18th_.--Sir C. Eastlake was buried.

One day at a dinner party of Royal Academicians at Eastlake's, they were discussing the merits of Solomon the painter and praising him. 'Yes,' said Valentine Prinsep, 'but Solomon in all his glory is not R.A.ed like one of these.'

_24th_. We were invited rather late in the morning to the christening of Sir Robert and Lady Emily Peel's infant daughter, and to a banquet afterwards. Christine came down to my office at two o'clock, and we went across to Whitehall Chapel. Sir Robert stood _rayonnant_ at the door; Lady Emily looked the picture of maternal beauty; and in the chapel we found a small but remarkable party--Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Wellington, Lord and Lady Russell, the Gladstones, Lady Ely, the Dufferins, &c., about fifty in all.

Lord Russell said he had never been inside that building [Footnote: Now the Museum of the Royal United Service Inst.i.tution.] before. Gladstone was very cordial, and we joined our enthusiasm about the roof of the building and the Rubenses. The Queen stood G.o.dmother.

After the ceremony we all adjourned to Whitehall Gardens. I was unluckily obliged to go away, but Christine stayed for the luncheon, which was superb. Gladstone proposed the health of the infant.

_25th_.--Dinner at Orleans House, on Conde's departure for his journey to the East; Murchison and Trevelyan there. The Prince de Conde [Footnote: The eldest son of the Duc d'Aumale, born in 1845, died at Sydney on May 24th, 1866. The Duke's second and third sons lived only a few weeks; the fourth, the Duc de Guise, born in 1854, died in 1872.] reached Sydney, but caught a fever there and died. His poor mother never recovered the shock.

_27th_.--John Edward Taylor, my oldest friend,[Footnote: A first cousin, elder son of Edward Taylor; see _ante_, vol. i. p. 167.] died.

A couple of months later Mr. Taylor's daughter, Lucy, was married to William Markby, going out to Calcutta as a judge on a salary of 4,000 a year. 'She is a very lucky girl' wrote Mrs. Reeve, 'her face her sole fortune, to win the love of a man so clear-headed and warm-hearted.'

Circourt came on a visit to us in March. We went together to Lincoln. I spent Easter at Lord Wharncliffe's at Wortley, with the Samuel Bakers (the African traveller) and the Tankervilles, and rejoined Circourt at Frystone (R. M. Milnes'). Thence to Ampthill, also with Circourt.

_From Lord Westbury_

_March 1st_.--I send you the proof of the judgement in Edwards _v_.

Moss, corrected and purged of some of its colloquial pleonastic forms of expression. It is very difficult to reduce a speech to the accuracy of a written composition. In doing so, the merit of the speech is lost, and the 'redacted' elements form a very bad paper. Old Tommy Townshend, when he heard of a good speech being printed, used to ask 'How does it read?--for if it reads well, it was not a good speech.' A judgement orally delivered extempore may be satisfactory to the ear, but when reduced to paper, the sentences become involved and jejune.

The diction of a good composition is [Greek: lexis katestrammeon], the diction of a speech is [Greek: lexis eiromeon]. I cannot understand how the senators or the Roman plebs could follow or endure the elaborate periods of Cicero, if they were delivered as written. I am sure with the funeral oration of Pericles, a common audience would have sat with mouths open, incapable of following a single sentence. So also with the orations of Livy. In fact, if the speeches delivered in the Roman Senate or the Athenian Forum were anything like the speeches reported, to listen to them must have been a great strain upon the mind and attention of the hearer.

I am writing to you whilst a learned counsel is arguing, but whose words and meaning are so obscure and involved that I am much in the condition of my supposed [Greek: aplous hakroataes] of the funeral oration.

The Journal goes on to speak of a subject of peculiar literary and historical interest.

_April 11th_.--Started with Christine and Circourt for Paris _via_ Havre, and at Rouen paid a visit to the Cardinal-Archbishop (Bonnechose).

The publication in 1864 of three volumes of the letters of Marie Antoinette, under the t.i.tle 'Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth. Lettres et Doc.u.ments inedits;' publies par F. Feuillet de Conches, and of another volume--' Correspondance inedite de Marie Antoinette. Publiee sur les Doc.u.ments originaux;' par le Comte Paul Vogt d'Hunolstein--had excited a keen controversy, in which one party, led by Professor von Sybel, the historian of the Revolution, maintained that the letters were forgeries. On the other hand, Reeve wrote an article for the 'Edinburgh Review' of April 1866, on the 'Correspondence of Marie Antoinette' in which he argued that the letters edited by M. d'Hunolstein were of very doubtful authenticity, but that those of the larger work of M. Feuillet de Conches were genuine. His visit to Paris gave him the opportunity to make a further examination, of which, and his interview with Sybel, he wrote a curious account.

_Sunday, April 15th_.--I called on M. Feuillet de Conches, the editor of the Marie Antoinette letters, whose authenticity is impugned, and on leaving his house I called on Lavergne, where I met M. de Sybel, the German professor, by whom these charges have been most actively brought and disseminated. I found that M. de Sybel, though in Paris, had not seen anything of Feuillet's collection, though he had publicly stated that he was going to Paris to clear up the whole story. Upon this I a.s.sured him (as was the fact) that I knew Feuillet would receive him with the utmost courtesy, if he would call upon him, and would show him anything and everything in his collections bearing on this matter; and as he appeared to hesitate, I offered myself to conduct and introduce him. Upon this he hesitated still more, and at last said that the fact was that his mind was so fully made up on the subject, and his conviction that these doc.u.ments are forged is so complete, that no amount of ocular evidence would shake it, and he should only conclude that the author of these fabrications was a very skilful fellow.

Upon this I desisted from any further attempt to bring M. de Sybel acquainted with M. Feuillet's collection, but I made this note of the conversation (which took place in the presence of M. de Lavergne) to show how strong M. de Sybel's prepossessions are. I have myself again examined the doc.u.ments, and though I have doubts as to one or two of them, said to proceed from the Abbe Vermond's papers, I see no reason to disbelieve the genuineness of the vast majority of the letters of the Queen which Feuillet possesses.