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Building RESTful Web Services with PHP 7

Lumen, Composer, API testing, Microservices, and more

Haafiz Waheed-ud-din Ahmad

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Building RESTful Web Services
with PHP 7

Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the
prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief
quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the
accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained
in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the
author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held
liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly
by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all

of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate
use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of
this information.

First published: September 2017

Production reference: 1060917

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham
B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78712-774-6

www.packtpub.com
Credits

Author Copy Editor

Haafiz Waheed-ud-din Ahmad Sameen Siddiqui

Reviewer Project Coordinator

Shuvankar Sarkar Vaidehi Sawant

Commissioning Editor Proofreader

Aaron Lazar Safis Editing

Acquisition Editor Indexer

Chaitanya Nair Francy Puthiry

Content Development Editor Graphics

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Technical Editors Production Coordinator

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About the Author
Haafiz Waheed-ud-din Ahmad has been working in the IT industry since
2008. He has mostly worked in web application development and mostly
used PHP at the server side. Although most of his experience is in PHP, he
is a technology agnostic person and also likes to learn and adapt to new
technologies. He also acts as an adviser for startups and new developers.

He has worked on Python and JavaScript as well. He likes to experiment

with new technologies, and he has also explored Golang, Scala, and Neo4J.
He also has a keen interest in data science and big data domain and has
worked on D3.js for data visualization. He is not just a technology
enthusiast but also likes to solve day-to-day problems by the usage of
technology. He blogs at http://haafiz.me/. You can follow him on twitter at
@Haafiz786.
About the Reviewer
Shuvankar Sarkar is an IT Analyst experienced in C#, .NET, PHP, and
web development. He is a technology enthusiast and maintains a blog at htt
p://shuvankar.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @sonu041. Shuvankar is
interested in computer security as well.

I would like to thank my family for making my life easy and full of
happiness.
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Table of Contents
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Downloading the example code
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. RESTful Web Services, Introduction and Motivation
Web services
Why a web service?
REST architecture
Client server
Stateless
Cache-able
Uniform interface
Resource identification
Manipulation of resources through representations
Self-descriptive messages
Hypermedia as the engine of application state (HATEOAS)
Code on demand (optional)
Layered system
RESTful web services
Conventions of RESTful web services
HTTP verbs and URL structure
List operation
Create operation
READ operation
Update operation
Delete operation
Why RESTful web services?
REST versus SOAP
 Nature of HTTP methods
Safe/unsafe HTTP methods
Idempotent and non-idempotent methods
HTTP response
Response type
Response codes
Case study - RESTful web service endpoints for a blog
Blog post
Requirements
Endpoints
Creating blog post
Reading blog post
Updating blog post
Delete blog post
Listing all blog posts
Blog post comments
Requirements
Endpoints
Creating the post's comment
Reading a comment
Updating a comment
Deleting a post comment
Listing all comments for a particular post
More resources
Summary
2. PHP7, To Code It Better
Scalar type declaration
Return type declaration
Null coalescing operator
Spaceship operator
Group use declarations
Generator-related features
What are generators?
Generator return expression
Generator delegation
Anonymous classes
Closure::call()
 Errors and exceptions
PHP7.1
Nullable types
Symmetric array destructuring
Support for keys in list()
Multi-catch exception handling
More resources
Summary
3. Creating RESTful Endpoints
Creating a REST API for a blog in PHP
Creating a database schema
Blog user/author table schema
SQL for users table
Blog post table schema
Blog post comments schema
Creating a RESTful API's endpoint
Code structure
Common components
DB class
Router class
Code sync
Creating blog post endpoints
REST client
To do
Visible flaws
Validation
Solution
Authentication
Solution
Proper 404 pages
Summary
4. Reviewing Design Flaws and Security Threats
Finding problems in the current code
Structural and design flaws
Missing query builder layer
Incomplete router
Usage of OOP
 Separate Configurations from Implementation
Should write tests
Input validation
Handling 404 and other errors
Meta information missing
DB fields abstraction
Security
Securing API endpoints
What is Auth middleware?
Common security threats in RESTful web services
Use of HTTPS
Securing an API key/token
Not passing an access token in the URL
Access token expiration
Limited scope access token
Public and private endpoints
Public API endpoints
Insecure direct object reference
Restricting allowable verbs
Input validation
Available reusable code
Summary
5. Load and Resolve with Composer, an Evolutionary
Introduction to Composer
Installation
Installation on Windows
Installation on Linux/Unix/OS X
Global Installation
Usage of Composer
Composer as a dependency manager
Installing packages
Installing using composer.json
The composer.json in detail
The require object
The require-dev object
The autoload and autoload-dev
The scripts
 The composer.lock
Composer as an auto-loader
Example
Composer for creating a project
Example
Summary
6. Illuminating RESTful Web Services with Lumen
Introducing Lumen
Why micro-framework?
Why Lumen?
What Lumen provides
What Lumen has in common with Laravel
How Lumen is different from Laravel
What exactly Lumen provides
A Good Structure
Separate configurations
Router
Middle-wares
Service Container and Dependency Injection
HTTP responses
Validation
Eloquent ORM
Database migration and seeding
Unit testing
Installing Lumen
Configuration
Setting up the database
Writing migrations
Writing RESTful web service endpoints
Writing the first controller
Lumen routes
REST resource
Eloquent ORM (model layer)
Creating models
Eloquent relationships
Controller Implementation
What we are missing?
 Validation and negative cases?
/api/posts with GET method
/api/posts with the POST method
/api/posts/1 with the GET method
/api/posts/1 with the PATCH/PUT method
/api/posts/1 with the DELETE method
User authentication
Other missing elements
Comment Resource Implementation
Summary
7. Improving RESTful Web Services
Dingo, simplifying RESTful API development
Installation and configuration
Simplifying routes
API versioning
Rate limiting
Internal requests
Responses
Authentication and middleware
JWT Auth setup
The Manual way
Simpler way through Lumen JWT authentication integration
package
Authentication
Log in
Invalidate token
Refresh token
Transformers
Understanding and setting transformers
Using transformers
Encryption
SSL certificate, different options
Summary
8. API Testing – Guards on the Gates
The need for automated tests
Types of testing
Unit testing
 Acceptance testing
Functional testing
Integration testing
What type of testing will we do?
Testing frameworks
CodeCeption introduction
Setup and understanding the structure
tests/{suite-name}/
tests/{suite-name}.suite.yml
tests/_support/_generated/{suite-name}TesterActions.php
tests/_support/{suite-name}Tester.php
tests/_support/Helper/{suite-name}.php
Creating the API suite
Configuring the API suite
Writing test cases
API tests for post resource
Other test cases
Summary
More resources
9. Microservices
Introducing Microservices
How to divide an application into microservices?
Motivation towards microservices
Maintenance and debugging
Scalability
Technology diversity
Resilience
Replaceability
Parallelization
How it is different from SOA
Team structure
Challenges of micro-services
Infrastructure maintenance
Performance
Debugging and fault-finding
Logs should be centralized
Logs should be searchable
 Track chain of requests
Dynamic log levels
Implementation
Deployments
Inter-services communication
Synchronous communication
Asynchronous communication
Shared library or common code
Summary
What's next
Preface
Web services has always been an important topic. With REST, things
became simpler and better. Nowadays, RESTful web services are widely
used. It was important a decade ago, but Single Page Applications (SPAs)
and mobile applications have increased its usage greatly. The aim of this
book is to educate PHP developers about the RESTful web services
architecture, the current tools available to efficiently create RESTful web
services such as a micro-framework named Lumen, automated API testing,
the API testing framework, security and microservices architecture.

Although this book is specific to PHP as we will be building RESTful web

services in PHP7, it is neither just about PHP7 nor just about REST.
RESTful web services and implementation in PHP is what we do in this
book. However, you will learn a lot more than that. You will learn about
some PHP features that are new in PHP7. We will cover how we should
structure our application and some common threats with respect to the web
and web services. You will learn how to improve a basic RESTful web
service and understand the importance of testing and the different types of
testing. So it is not about just REST or PHP, but also about some minor but
important programming-related stuff that is simple but makes things a lot
better in the real world. At the end of this book, you will learn about an
architecture named microservices.

In other words, although this book is intended for PHP developers, it will
benefit them beyond just PHP. So, this book is not a cookbook, but a
journey in which you start learning about RESTful webservices and PHP7
and then start building RESTful web services. You can then keep improving
your RESTful web services by learning about the problems in it and fixing
those. During such improvements, you will learn the different things in PHP
and benefit even beyond PHP.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, RESTful Web Services, Introduction and Motivation, introduces
you to web services, REST architecture, the RESTful web services, and its
comparison to other web services such as HTTP verbs and RESTful
endpoints. It also explains web services through the example of a blog and
then talk about the response format and response code.

Chapter 2,PHP7, To Code It Better, includes new features and changes in

PHP7 that we will either use in this book or are very important and worth
discussing.

Chapter 3,Creating RESTful Endpoints, is about creating REST API

endpoints for CRUD operations of a blog post in Vanilla PHP. It also
explains the manual way of testing API endpoints through a REST client
named Postman.

Chapter 4, Reviewing Design Flaws and Security Threats, reviews what we

have built in the preceding chapter and highlights the problems and flaws in
it so that we can improvise later.

Chapter 5,Load and Resolve with Composer, an Evolutionary, is about an

evolutionary tool in the PHP ecosystem: composer. This is not just an
autoloader or package installer, but a dependency manager. So, you will
learn about composer in this chapter.

Chapter 6,Illuminating RESTful Web Services with Lumen, introduces you to

a micro-framework named Lumen, in which we will rewrite our RESTful
web services endpoints and review how this tool will significantly improve
our speed and application structure.

Chapter 7, Improving RESTful Web Services, equips us to improve what we

did in the preceding chapter; you will learn how to improve RESTful web
services. We will create authentication and make a Transformer to separate
how JSON structure should look. Also, we will improve in terms of security
and learn about SSL.

Chapter 8,API Testing – Guards on the Gates, introduces the need of

automated tests. Will introduce different type of tests and then focus on API
testing. We will then cover an automated testing framework named
CodeCeption and write API tests in it.

Chapter 9,Microservices, is about the microservices architecture. We will

understand the benefits and challenges of microservices and look into some
of possible solutions and trade-offs.
What you need for this book
Although I used Ubuntu, any operating system with PHP7 installed on it
will work fine. The only thing required other than PHP7 will be an
RDBMS. This book uses MySQL-related settings when connecting to
database, so MySQL is ideal, but MariaDB or PostgreSQL will also be fine.
Who this book is for
This book is written for the following audience:

Anyone who has some basic PHP knowledge and wants to build
RESTful web services.
Developers who know basic PHP and have developed a basic dynamic
website and want to build a RESTful web service.
Developers who have learned PHP and worked mostly in open source
CMS, such as WordPress, and want to move toward developing
custom applications where a web service needs to be built.
Developers who are stuck with legacy systems done in Code Igniter
and want to explore the modern ecosystem of PHP.
Developers who have used modern frameworks such as Yii or Laravel,
but are not sure about the critical pieces required to build the REST
API that not only serves the purpose but works well in the long run,
something that doesn't always need manual testing and is maintainable
and extendable.
Seasoned PHP developers who have created a very basic API that
returns data but want to make themselves familiar with how it should
be done according to REST standards, how it will work when
authentication comes into the picture, and how to write tests for it.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between
different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and
an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file
extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are
shown as follows: "The randGen() method takes two parameters defining the
range of the returned value."

A block of code is set as follows:

<?php
function add($num1, $num2):int{
return ($num1+$num2);
}

echo add(2,4); //6

echo add(2.5,4); //6

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block,

the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<?php
function add($num1, $num2):int{
return ($num1+$num2);
}

echo add(2,4); //6

echo add(2.5,4); //6

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on
the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text.

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.
Reader feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think
about this book-what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important
for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of. To
send us general feedback, simply e-mail [email protected], and mention
the book's title in the subject of your message. If there is a topic that you
have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a
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Downloading the example code
You can download the example code files for this book from your account
at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can
visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed
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2. Hover the mouse pointer on the SUPPORT tab at the top.
3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box.
5. Select the book for which you're looking to download the code files.
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The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.co
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Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
good-bye, Mr. Lowe; in six weeks you’ll have me back again,” and if we
have quarrelled, it does not signify; but it would be very different if it was
for ever. Why, I should cry my eyes out.’
“One day, however, when Mrs. Lowe was inveighing against the
absurdity of the marriage service—of the bridegroom’s statement, ‘With all
my worldly goods I thee endow,’ even when he possessed nothing and it
was just the other way, and when she was saying, ‘Now when I married Mr.
Lowe, he had nothing whatever but his brains’—a deep voice from the end
of the room growled out, ‘Well, my love, I certainly did not endow you with
those.’
“‘Why contend against your natural advantages?’ said Mr. Lowe one day
to a deaf friend who was holding up an ear-trumpet to listen to a bore.
“In the afternoon I drove down with Lady Sherborne, Miss Dutton, and
Miss Elliot to see Lord Russell at Pembroke Lodge. It is a beautiful place;
not merely a bit of Richmond Park, but a bit of old forest enclosed, with
grand old oaks and fern. The Queen gives it to Lord Russell, who, at eighty-
four,[209] was seated in a Bath-chair in the garden, on a sort of bowling-
green, watching his grandsons play at tennis. Though he no longer
comprehends present events, he is said to be perfectly clear about a far-
away past, and will converse at any length about Napoleon, the escape from
Elba, &c. When I was presented to him, by way of something to say, I
spoke of having seen the historical mound in his garden, and asked what it
was that Henry VIII. watched for from thence as a death-signal, ‘was it a
rocket or a black flag?’
“‘It was a rocket.’
“‘Then that would imply that the execution was at night, for he would
hardly have seen a rocket by day.’
“‘No, it was not at night; it was very early in the morning. She was a
very much maligned woman was that Anne Boleyn.’
“We all sat by a fountain under the oak-trees, and then went into the
house to a sort of five-o’clock tea on a large scale.”

“Holmhurst, July 15.—Returned to the dear little home, where I found

Charlotte Leycester sitting on the terrace surrounded by the dogs, looking
on the lovely view from our greenery. The intense freshness of the air, the
glory of the flowers, the deep blue sea beyond our upland hayfields, and the
tame doves cooing in the copper beech-tree, are certainly a refreshing
contrast to London, though I should never have been able to leave it unless
Duty had pulled at me.”

“Highcliffe, July 24.—In this most unearthly Paradise all looks like last
year going on still—the huge stems of chestnut, and the white lilies and
bulrushes in the great vase relieved against the old boiserie of the saloon;
the wide window-porch open to the fountain and orange-trees and sunlit
terraces and sea; Lady Waterford coming in her hat and long sweeping dress
through the narrow wind-blown arbutus avenue; old Mrs. Hamilton-
Hamilton in her pleasant sitting-room, with Miss Lindsay hovering about
and waiting on her like a maid-of-honour; the Ellices, so cordial and
pleasant, so beaming with kindness and goodness, their largeness of heart
quite preventing their being able to indulge in the sectarian part of their own
religious ideas.... I have felt, as I always do very shy at first, and then
entirely at home.”

HOLMHURST.

“July 25.—We have all, I think, basked as much in the mental sunshine
of this beautiful life as in the external sunshine which illumines the brilliant
flowers and glancing sea.
 “We walked on the shore this afternoon. ‘See what festival the sea has
been making, and what beautiful coloured weeds she has been scattering,’
said Lady Waterford. We found two little boots projecting from the sand,
and as we dug them out and found them filled and stiff, we really expected a
drowned child to follow; but it was only sand that filled them, and the little
Payne child of Chewton Bunny had lost them when bathing. As we sat on
the shore while Lady Waterford looked for fossils, a staith came down from
the Bunny and flooded the little stream into a river, cutting off our return.
We, the male part, crossed much higher up: Lady Waterford plunged in and
walked: Lady Jane took off shoes and stockings and waded.
“Lady Waterford has talked much of marriages—how even indifferent
marriages tone down into a degree of comfort which is better for most
women than desolation.”

“July 26.—We walked in the evening to the Haven House. The old pine-
wood, with its roots writhing out of the sand, and its lovely views, over still
reaches of water to the great grey church, and the herons fishing, are more
picturesque than ever. Afterwards Lady Herbert of Lea arrived with her
beautiful daughter Gladys.[210] Lady Herbert is suffering still from the bite
of a scorpion when she was drawing in the ruins of Karnac.”
 Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
From a Photograph by W. J. Reed. Bournamouth.

“July 29.—In the afternoon I went with Lady Waterford to General

Maberly, who talked, as it seemed to me, very sensibly about the
exaggerations of teetotalism. He thought that every one should do as they
pleased, and that it was wrong of a great landowner to prevent the existence
of a public-house on his estate: that it was following the teaching of the
Baptist rather than that of our Saviour, for ‘was not our Saviour a wine-
bibber?’
“Lady Waterford has been speaking of sympathy for others; that there is
nothing more distressing than to see another person mortified.
“‘Mama could never bear to see any one mortified. Once at Paris, at a
ball they had, there was a poor lady, and not only her chignon, but the
whole edifice of hair she had, fell off in the dance. And Mama was so sorry
for her, and, when all the ladies tittered, as she was Madame
l’Ambassadrice and a person of some influence, I don’t think it was wrong
of her to apply the verse, and she said, “Let the woman among us who has
no false hair be the first to throw a stone at her.”’

“July 30.—Hamilton Aïdé says he went to visit two or three times at a

lunatic asylum. The matron, a very nice person, said, ‘There is here a very
extraordinary example of a person who has become quite mad, and only
from vanity.’ He went to see her. It was a very old lady, with great traces of
beauty and dignity of manner, but she wore the most extraordinary bonnet,
very large, and from the fringe hung a pair of scissors, a thimble, and a
needle-book. He made a civil speech to her about being glad to see her
looking so well, or something of that kind. In reply she only just looked up
and said, ‘For further information refer to the 25th chapter of the second
Book of Kings,’ and took no more notice whatever.”

“July 31.—Lady Jane Ellice says that there are three shades of people
one likes—those whom one must see in heaven, for it would not be heaven
without them: those whom one hopes to see in heaven and to meet there:
and those whom one hopes will be in heaven but that one will not see them
there. Her singing this evening of ‘Zurich’s Blue Waters,’ ‘Three Blue
Bottles,’ &c., has been perfectly charming.
“Lady Waterford has been telling of Ruskin ‘like a little wizened rat.’
‘He likes to be adored, but then Somers and I did adore him, and he likes to
lash his disciples with rods of iron. I do not mind that: it is his jokes I
cannot bear; they make me so sorry and miserable for him.’”

“August 3.—Lady Waterford said that Lady Stuart, when a Frenchman

tried to talk to her in very bad English, told him she preferred talking
French. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘vous aimez mieux, Madame, écorcher les oreilles
des autres, qu’on vous écorche vos oreilles.’”

“August 5.—I have left Highcliffe, and the gates of Paradise seem closed
for a year. There has been the usual perfect confidence about everything
through the whole party: the pleasant going backwards and forwards to
‘Hamilton Place,’ and the waiting upon old Mrs. Hamilton of her ‘equerry’
and her ‘maid-of-honour:’ the many friendly snubs and contradictions
which rail at all the smallnesses and ennoble all the higher aims of life.
After luncheon we all sat in the porch surrounded by the great lilies and
geraniums in flower and we had coffee there, looking upon the Isle of
Wight with the Needles looming through the mist: then we parted.
“It was a long drive in pouring rain from Southampton to Sydney Lodge,
where I found a warm welcome from dear old Lady Hardwicke.[211] It is a
moderate house, with large gardens, into which bits of old forest are
interwoven. This morning we drove to Eliot Yorke’s house at Netley Fort,
an old tower of the monks, in front of which the Mayflower set sail. The
situation is lovely, close to the sea, with a hilly garden in miniature and a
machicolated tower rising out of ivy walls like a scene in a play. But the
great charm is in Eliot himself, so handsome, with such a pleasant smile and
melodious voice. His Jewess wife, Agneta Montagu, and Hinchinbroke
were there. From the garden we went to the Abbey, where I drew while
Hinchinbroke amused himself by pretending to make love to an old lady
(‘Jemima Anne’) who was peering about in spectacles amongst the arches.
When we went back, boats were arriving from Cowes at the little wharf—
the Prince Imperial with the Duke and Duchess of St. Albans and a crowd
of others. The Prince has the most pleasant, frank, simple manners, and
makes himself agreeable to every one. He was much amused with the
quantities of Yorkes who seemed to crop up from every house round, and
said he ‘thought he must have landed by mistake on the coast of Yorkshire.’
His arm was in a sling, and he looked pale and fagged, for somehow, in
playing at leap-frog with his ‘camarades,’ he had tumbled into a camp-fire,
and, to save his face, had instinctively put out his hands, and burnt the
whole skin off one of them. It must have been terrible agony, but he never
complained.”

“August 6.—The Yorkes are absolutely devoted to each other. There is

such family loyalty that every peccadillo is consecrated. I certainly do not
wonder at their love for Eliot; he has such a sweet though frank manner, and
is so genial and kind to every one.[212] L. has been talking of the
advantages of even an unhappy married life over a single one, as
exemplified by the poor Empress, who herself said, ‘C’est mieux d’être mal
à deux que d’être seule.’
 “L. was at a party at Mrs. Brand’s, sitting by Lady Cork, when Lady
Francis Gordon came up to her. ‘Come, Lady Cork, can you spell in five
letters the three scourges of society?’ (drink, rink, ink). ‘No,’ said Lady
Cork instantly, ‘that I cannot do, but I can spell in two letters the two
blessings of society—U and I.’
“Mrs. Eliot Yorke is exceedingly pleasing and much beloved in her
husband’s family. Amongst the few Jews I have known, I have always
found the women infinitely superior to the men, and this is especially the
case with the Rothschilds. Some one once made an observation of this kind
to Rogers the poet. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the men crucified Him, but the women—
wept.’”

“August 12.—Last Monday I went to Cobham for a few days, arriving

just as the setting sun was illuminating the grand old red brick house deeply
set in its massy woods. A large party was assembled, its most interesting
element being Fanny, Lady Winchilsea, who is always delightful.
Archdeacon Cust told me a curious story of a Mr. Phipps, a clergyman at
Slough. He asked him if he was related to Lord Normanby’s family, and he
said they were related, but that they had never known one another, and that
the reason was a strange one. His father had been residing at Caen, where
they had become very intimate with a French family called Beaurepaire.
After his father left Caen, the great Revolution occurred, and all the
Beaurepaire family perished on the scaffold except the youngest daughter,
who, for some unknown reason, was spared. Having no relation left alive,
she was utterly desolate, and felt that no one in the world cared for her but
young Phipps, the son of her former neighbour, who had evinced an
attachment for her. So to the Phipps family she somehow made her way; but
they, disapproving the attachment, were all excessively unkind to her,
except one sister, who received her, and went out with her to India, where
her brother was then supposed to be. But when they reached India, they
found, with despair, that Phipps had left and gone to Egypt. Thither,
however, they pursued him, and there Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire was
married to him. Young Phipps would never forgive the unkindness which
had been shown to his wife by his family, and the two branches of the
Phipps family were never afterwards friends.
 “A schoolmaster near Cobham, named King, for some reason best
known to himself, has abolished the game of football—a most unpopular
move. The boys were furious, and one day, when the master entered the
schoolroom, he found ‘King is a donkey’ chalked up in large letters on a
board. For an instant he was perplexed; but it would never do to take no
notice. He left the inscription, but added the single word—‘driver.’ The
boys quite saw the joke, and the master’s prestige was restored.”

“Ampthill Park, August 29, 1876.—I came here on Monday, stopping

some hours in London on the way, and finding out ancient treasures in the
purlieus of Soho and St. Giles’s, which, black and filthy as they are, are still
full of reminiscences.
“At St. Pancras Station I saw a very ancient lady in a yellow wig step
into a railway carriage by herself, and her footman guard the door till the
train started, and I felt sure it was the Dowager Duchess of Cleveland. At
Ampthill Station the Lowther carriage was waiting for both of us, and we
drove off together. She talked the whole way, but the carriage rumbled so
that I could hardly hear a word she said, except that when I remarked ‘What
a fine tree!’ as we entered the park, she answered rather sharply ‘That was a
fine tree.’ She spoke too of the Lowther boys—‘They are having their
vacancies. I like that word vacancies,’ she said.

CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANNE, SOHO. [213]

 “It is a fine wild park, with most unexpected ups and downs and a great
deal of grand old timber, on a ridge rising high above the blue Bedfordshire
plain, in the midst of which a spire rising out of a little drift of smoke
indicates the town of Bedford. On one of the highest points of the ridge a
cross raised on steps marks the site of the royal residence where Katherine
of Arragon lived for most of her semi-widowhood, and where Anne Boleyn
shot stags in a green velvet train. The later house, approached on the garden
side by a narrow downhill avenue half a mile long, is in the old French
style, with posts and chains, broad steps widening at the top, and a perron....
The Duchess, at eighty-four, talked most pleasantly and interestingly all
evening. Lady Wensleydale, in her high cap and large chair, with her sweet
face and expression, sat by like an old picture. There is a picture of her thus,
by Pointer, surrounded by great white azaleas, but it does not do her justice.
“Yesterday I drove with James, Mildred, and Cecil Lowther to Wrest. It
is a most stately place, one of the stateliest I have ever seen. The gardens
were all laid out by Le Nôtre, and the house was of that period. Lord De
Grey pulled down the house, and found it rested on no foundations
whatever, but on the bare ground. It was so thin, that when the still-room
maid complained that her room was rather dark, the footman took out his
penknife and cut her a square hole for a window in the plaster wall.
Capability Brown was employed to rearrange the gardens, which were
thought hideous at one time; but though he spoilt so many other places, he
had sense to admire the work of Le Notre so much here, that he made no
alterations, except throwing a number of round and oblong tanks into one
long canal, which, on the whole, is rather an improvement. The modern
house is magnificent, and like what Chantilly must have been.
“On the vast flagged terrace in front of the windows we found Lady
Cowper[214] sitting in an old-fashioned black silk dress and tight white
bonnet. She has a most sweet face, and was very kind and charming in her
manner. I walked with her for a long time on the terrace, looking down on
the brilliant gardens, and beyond them upon equally brilliant groups of
people, for it was the annual meeting of the great Bedfordshire tennis club,
for which she always gives a breakfast. She told the whole story of the
place, and took me to see all the finest points of view and the great
collection of fine orange-trees brought from Versailles. She greatly
lamented the prudishness of her great-aunt (Lady De Grey), through whom
her grandmother had derived the place, who thought most of the old French
statues—which, according to the custom of that day, were made of lead—to
be insufficiently dressed, and so sold them for the value of the metal, at the
same time that she sold an incomparable collection of old plate, for the
same reason, for its weight in silver. She showed one of the statues, backed
by a yew hedge some centuries old. ‘That poor lady, you see, was saved
when all the others were sent away, because she had got a few clothes on.’
Lord De Grey had replaced some of the statues, and Lady Cowper herself
had added a most beautiful fountain from Carrara, with a very flat basin.
“Lady Cowper talked much of my mother and the ‘Memorials’ and of
‘my sister Lady Jocelyn.’ She spoke of the extreme quietude of her own
life. ‘A day like this (pointing out the crowd below) shows me that what this
place wants is—people, and I never have any. I think I must hire some
puppets to walk about and represent them.’ There are a number of
inscriptions in the grounds to different past-members of the family and their
friends. Lady Cowper said that Lady Palmerston, who was very matter-of-
fact, thought that of course they were buried there, and said, ‘How I do pity
Anne, living alone at Wrest, surrounded by all those graves of her family.’
Graves, however, there are, but of deceased dogs, a regular burial-ground,
with headstones like those in a churchyard, surrounded by a wall of clipped
yew.
“I was very glad to find Henry Cowper, who showed me the rooms,
which were full of people for the ‘breakfast,’ but I saw the two great Sir
Joshuas, which are magnificent, especially that of Lady Lucas and Lady
Grantham, as very young girls, with a bird.
“In the evening at Ampthill I told the story of Mary-Eleanor, Lady
Strathmore, to which Lady Wensleydale added her reminiscence of having
been told, at four years old, of Stoney Bowes having ‘nailed his wife’s
tongue to a table.’”

“August 30.—Yesterday I drew with Miss Lowther at the ruins of

Houghton Hall, the old home of the Russells, where Philip Sidney wrote
verses under the trees. It is a very stately though not a large house, and
beautiful in colour, from the mixture of red brick and yellow-lichened stone.
A great avenue, now utterly ruined, leads away from it direct to Bedford,
which lies six miles away in the elm-lined plain. It was deserted because
Lord Tavistock, returning from hunting, was thrown from his horse and
killed on the spot in the presence of his wife, who was waiting for him on
the doorstep: the family could never bear to live there again.[215]
“After luncheon, I walked with the old Duchess in the avenue. She
described being couched. ‘Did you take chloroform?’—‘Oh, certainly not:
no such thing: I should not have thought of it. Don’t you know that
couching is a very dangerous operation? the very slightest movement might
be fatal to it. I did not know what might happen under chloroform, but I
knew that I should never flinch if I had my senses, and I never did: and in
three weeks, though I was still bandaged up, I was out walking.’
“‘What was worse than becoming blind in my case,’ said the Duchess,
‘was breaking my knee-pan, for then, you know, one bone goes up and the
other goes down, and you never really have the use of your knee again.’
“‘And yet here you are walking, Duchess.’
“‘Yes, certainly I am. Prescott Hewitt said I never should walk again,
and I said “Yes, I should,”—and he answered, “Ah! well, with you perhaps
it is different; you belong to a family that have got a will;” and I walk, but I
walk by the sheer force of will.’
“The Duchess said she remembered old Lady Penrhyn and her pugs, and
their being dressed like children, and keeping a footman, and having a key
of Grosvenor Square.
“In the evening I drove with Mr. Lowther to Haynes, till lately written
Hawnes, the fine old place of Lord John Thynne (Sub-Dean of
Westminster), which he inherited from his uncle, Lord Carteret. We met the
old man riding in his park, and so much taken up with a sick cow that he
almost ignored us. But when we had walked round by the charming old-
fashioned gardens, we found him waiting for us on the garden doorstep, all
courtesy and kindness. Several sons and daughters-in-law dropped in to tea
in a kind of passage-room, but Lord John took me to see all the curiosities
of the house himself, and warmed up over them greatly. There is a most
noble staircase and a very fine collection of family portraits. In the drawing-
room is that of Lady Ann Carteret in a white satin dress, which she always
wore, and is always remembered still as ‘The White Lady.’ Her husband
was Jack Spencer, of whom there is also a fine picture. His grandmother,
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, one day said to him suddenly, ‘Jack, you
must marry, and I will give you a list of the ladies you may propose
to.’—‘Very well, grannie,’ he said, and he proposed to the first on the list.
When he came back with his wife from their wedding tour they went to pay
their respects to the old lady. ‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘I am the root and you
are only the branches, and therefore you must always pay me a great deal of
deference.’—‘That is all very well,’ said Jack impertinently, ‘but I think the
branches would flourish a great deal better if the root was under ground.’
“There is a great collection of small treasures at Haynes—snuff-boxes of
royal persons, of Lord Chesterfield, &c., and one with a portrait of a lady
ancestress,—‘not a good woman, she had nothing but her beauty,’—which
takes off and puts on a mask. But the great relic of all is, in its own old
shagreen case, the famous Essex ring—a gem beautifully set. With it is a
most interesting letter from Weigall, the famous jeweller, explaining a great
number of reasons why it must be the ring. There is also the pedigree of the
ring, which came through the hands of a great number of females—
heiresses.
“To-day the Duchess (Dowager of Cleveland) has been talking much of
the wicked Duchess of Gordon, her ancestress. She married all her
daughters to drunken Dukes. One of them had been intended to marry Lord
Brome, but his father, Lord Cornwallis, objected on account of the insanity
in the Gordon family. The Duchess sent for him. ‘I understand that you
object to my daughter marrying your son on account of the insanity in the
Gordon family: now I can solemnly assure you that there is not a single
drop of Gordon blood in her veins.’
“The Duchess of Cleveland went out walking this morning in beating
rain and bitter wind—blind, broken-kneed, and eighty-four as she is. ‘Well,
you are a brave woman, Duchess,’ some one said as she came in. ‘You need
not take the trouble to tell me that: I know that I am a brave woman,’ she
answered.
“Old Miss Thornton called—Lady Leven’s sister. She talked much of the
misuse of charitable funds in dinners to directors, payment of matrons, ex-
matrons, &c., and said, ‘There really ought to be a society formed for the
demolition of charitable institutions.’
“At dinner the Duchess vehemently inveighed against the deterioration
of the times. ‘Was there ever anything so ridiculous and uncalled-for as a
school-feast?’—‘But it is such a pleasure to the children.’—‘Pleasure to
them! In my days people were not always thinking how children were to be
amused. Children were able to amuse themselves in my day. It is not only
with the lower classes: all classes are the same—the same utterly
demoralising system of indulgence everywhere. Why are not the children
kept at home to learn to wash and sew and do their duty?’—‘But the
school-feast is only one day in the year.’—‘One day in the year!
Fiddlesticks! don’t tell me. I tell you it’s utterly demoralising. Why, if the
feast is only one day, it unhinges them for ten days before and ten days
after.
“‘Formerly, too, people knew how to live like gentlemen and ladies.
When they built houses, they built houses fit to live in, not things in which
the walls were too thin to allow of the windows having any shutters.... Why,
now people do not even know how to keep a great house. Look at ——, do
you think she knows it, with her alternate weeks for receiving visitors. That
is not what ought to be; that is not hospitality. A great house ought to be
open always. The master and mistress never ought to feel it a burthen, and if
it was properly managed, they never would. There should always be a
foundation of guests in the house, a few relations or intimate friends, who
would be quite at home there, and who would be civil and go out to walk or
drive, or do whatever might be necessary to amuse the others. There ought
to be no gêne of any kind, and there ought to be plenty of equipages—that
should be quite indispensable.’
“The conversation fell upon Rogers the poet. ‘Mr. Rogers came here
once,’ said Lady Wensleydale, ‘and I did not like him; I thought him so ill-
bred. He came with the Duchess of Bedford of that time, who was the most
good-natured woman in the world, and when he went out into the park and
came in quite late for luncheon, she said he must have some, and went into
the dining-room herself to see that he had it properly, and while he was
eating cold beef, mixed him herself a kind of salad of oil and vinegar, which
she brought to him. He waited a moment, then took up a piece of the beef in
his fingers, rolled it in the sauce, and, walking round the table, popped it
into the Duchess’s mouth. She went into the drawing-room afterwards and
complained to his friend Luttrell about it, “What can I have done that Mr.
Rogers should treat me so?” Luttrell said, “I have known Rogers for sixty
years, and have never yet been able to account for any one of his vagaries.”
“‘Rogers and Luttrell were great friends, though they always quarrelled.
When they walked out together, they never walked side by side, but always
one behind the other.
 “‘Rogers met Lord Dudley at one of the foreign watering-places, and
began in his vain way, “What a terrible thing it is how one’s fame pursues
one, and that one can never get away from one’s own identity! Now I sat by
a lady the other night, and she began, ‘I feel sure you must be Mr.
Rogers.’”—“And were you?” said Lord Dudley, looking up into his face
quite innocently. It was the greatest snub the poet ever had.
“‘Rogers hated Monckton Milnes. He was too much of a rival. If Milnes
began to talk, Rogers would look at him sourly, and say, “Oh, you want to
hold forth, do you?” and then, turning to the rest of the party, “I am looking
for my hat; Mr. Milnes is going to entertain the company.”’

“Holmhurst, Sept. 1.—I had rather dreaded the tête-à-tête journey with
the Duchess to-day, and truly it was a long one, for we had an hour to wait
at Ampthill Station, and then missed the express at Bletchley. When we first
got into the carriage the Duchess said, ‘Well, now, I am going to be quiet
and rest my eyes,’ which I thought was a hint that I was to take my book;
but very soon she got bored and said, ‘I can’t see, and am obliged to go on
asking the names of the stations for want of being amused;’ so then I was
obliged to talk to her all the rest of the way.
“At Ampthill she told me how she was going to London to meet Admiral
Inglefield, who was going to help her to ‘pick a child out of the gutter.’
‘That child,’ she said, ‘will some day be Earl Powlett. Lord Powlett took a
wager that he would run away with the lady-love of one of his brother-
officers, and he did run away with her; but she made it a condition that he
should marry her before a Registrar, which he believed was illegal, but it
was not, and they were really married. Her only child, a boy, was brought
up in the gutter. His name is Hinton, and he is presentable,[216] which his
wife is not, for she is a figurante at the opera; but she gets more than the
other danseuses, because she has the courage to stand unsupported upon a
tight-rope, which the others have not. Powlett offered his son £400 if he
would go away from England and never come back again, but he refused,
so then he would only give him £100. He lives by acting at small theatres,
but sometimes he does not live, but starves. He had four children, but one is
dead. It is the eldest I mean to take away and place with a clergyman and
his wife, that he may learn something of being a gentleman. I shall
undertake him for three years, then I shall see what he is likely to be fit for.
If I live so long, I can settle it; if not, I must leave the means for it. Facts are
stranger than fiction.’
“At the stations, the Duchess was perfectly furious at the bonnets she
saw. ‘If any respectable persons had gone to sleep twenty years ago and
woke up now, they would think it was Bedlam let loose.’ She said how
Count Streletski, who had travelled everywhere, said there was no country
in which people were satisfied with nature: if tall, they wished to make
themselves short; if short, tall: if they were light, they wished to be dark,
and vice versâ. She talked of the peculiarities of vanity in different people
—how the first Lady Westmoreland made the coiffeur wait and touch her
up when she was in the carriage.
“The Duchess parted from me at Euston Station, with a cordial invitation
to Osterley.”

“Sept. 27.—I have had a constant succession of visitors at my little

Holmhurst.
“A singular subject of interest has been Mr. Freeman’s virulent letters
against and about me. He seems insane on the subject of creating imaginary
injuries.[217] Certainly it is a little annoying to be called a thief in the public
papers, though it may be useful for one’s morals. However, ‘Experience is
the best teacher, only the school fees are heavy.’”

“Conington Castle, Sept. 29.—I came here yesterday to old Mr.

Heathcote’s. It is a low-lying place in the Fens, close to what was once
Whitlesea Mere, but is now drained, only patches of reeds and marshy
ground remaining here and there. The house is near the site of an old castle,
but its only claim to be called a castle itself arises from its having been
partly built out of the ruins of Fotheringhay, from which a row of arches
remain. To ordinary eyes the country is frightful, but Mr. Heathcote, as an
artist, sees much beauty—which really does exist—in the long unbroken
lines where the mere once was, and the faint blue shadows in the soft
distances. And he has preserved very interesting memorials of all that the
district has been, within his memory, in an immense series of sketches of
the mere in summer, and in winter, when covered with people skating; and
of the mere life—its fisheries, wild birds, and its curious draining mills,
now all of the past.
 “We have been to draw at Peterborough, a wonderfully foreign-looking
town, more so, I think, than any other in England. I saw Bishop Jeune’s
grave: it almost looks old now, and it really is many years since we lost
him; yet, on looking back, the time seems nothing, so quickly does life pass,
and living become out-living.”

“Sept. 30.—We have been to Hinchinbroke. Lord and Lady Sandwich

were alone. She was the Lady Blanche Egerton[218] of my long ago
Chillingham days. Lord Sandwich took me all over the pictures. The best is
that of Lady Castlemaine, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, very young
and lovely, with all her hair down. There is also a fine full-length of Charles
II., and a curious picture of Charles II. of Spain by Herrera. By
Gainsborough there is a beautiful portrait of Miss Martha Ray. Mr.
Hackman, who saw her with Lord Sandwich, fell in love with her, and took
orders in order to be able to marry her. Afterwards, when he saw her in
Covent Garden receiving the attentions of somebody else, he shot her in a
fit of jealousy, and suffered for it at Tyburn. In the ‘Ship Room’ is an
interesting picture by Vanderwelt of the naval action in which the first Lord
Sandwich died. His ship was fired by a fireship and blown up, and he was
drowned. Ten days afterwards his body was recovered, and the garter and
medal found upon it are preserved in a glass case near the picture.
“The rooms at Hinchinbroke are very pleasant and livable, but the oldest
parts of the house are burnt and the oak staircase is painted. Near the foot of
it, the skeletons of two prioresses (for the house was once a monastery)
were found in their stone coffins, and were buried again in the same place!
Lord Sandwich showed us the MSS. of the great Lord Sandwich—journals
and letters in many volumes; also many letters of George III., showing his
great interest in very minute public matters. He has also a splendid
collection of Elzevirs.
“When Lady Sandwich was going to visit a school the next day, Miss
Mary Boyle heard the mistress say, ‘Now, girls, to-morrow my Lady is
coming, and so, recollect, pocket-handkerchiefs must be the order of the
day: there must be no sniffling.’”

“Conington, Oct. 1.—This is one of the clockwork houses, with a

monotonous routine of life suited to the flat featureless country. To-day,
after church, the male part of the family set off to walk a certain six miles,
which they always walk after church, and, when we reached a certain
bridge, the female part said, ‘Here we turn back; this is the place where we
turn every Sunday through the year: we always go as far as this, and we
never go any farther.’”

“Sarsden House, Chipping Norton, Oct. 4.—I came here on Monday. At

Paddington Station I met Lady Darnley and Lady Kathleen Bligh, and a
procession of carriages in waiting showed that a large party was expected
by the same train. It came dropping in round the five-o’clock tea-table—
Lord and Lady Denbigh; Lord and Lady Aberdare and a daughter; Mr. and
Mrs. J. A. Symonds; two young Plunketts; George, Lady Constance, and
Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre; Lord Morton.... I like Lord Denbigh very much,
and feel sure that no Roman Catholic plotter would induce him to do what
he did not believe to be right, or say what he did not believe to be true.
“On Tuesday afternoon I drove to Heythorp with Lady Darnley, Lady
Denbigh, and Lady Aberdare. A long unfinished avenue leads up to the very
stately house, which has been well restored by Albert Brassey.
“In the evening Lord Denbigh told us:—
“‘Dr. Playfair, physician at Florence, went to the garden of a villa to see
some friends of his. Sitting on a seat in the garden, he saw two ladies he
knew; between them was a third lady dressed in grey, of very peculiar
appearance. Walking round the seat, Dr. Playfair found it very difficult to
see her features. In a farther part of the garden he met another man he knew.
He stayed behind the seat and asked his friend to walk round and see if he
could make out who the odd-looking lady was. When he came back he said,
“Of course I could not make her out, because when I came in front of her,
her face was turned towards you.” Dr. Playfair then walked up to the ladies,
and as he did so, the central figure disappeared. The others expressed
surprise that Dr. Playfair, having seen them, had not joined them sooner. He
asked who the lady was who had been sitting between them. They assured
him that there had never been any such person.
“‘The next morning, Dr. Playfair went early to see the old gardener of
the villa, and asked him if there was any tradition about the place. He said,
“Yes, there is a story of a lady dressed in grey, who appears once in every
twenty-five years, and the singular part is that she has no face.” Dr. Playfair
asked when she had appeared last. “Well, I remember perfectly; it was
twenty-five years ago, and the time is about coming round for her to appear
again.”’
“Lord Aberdare said that when Edward Lear was drawing in Albania, he
was in perfect despair over the troops of little ruffians who mobbed him and
would not go away. Suddenly his india-rubber tumbled down and bobbed
down some steps—bob-bob-bob. The boys all ran away as hard as they
could, screaming, ‘Thaitan! Thaitan!’ and never came back again.
“A delightful old Mrs. Stewart has arrived from Scotland. I sat by her at
dinner. She talked much of Mrs. Grote. She described an interview Mrs.
Grote had with Madame George Sand. She said to Madame Sand that it was
a pity she did not employ her great powers for the leavening and mellowing
of mankind, as Miss Austen had done. ‘Madame,’ said Madame Sand, ‘je ne
suis pas philosophe, je ne suis pas moraliste, et je suis romancière.’”

“Oct. 4.—While Madeleine has been drawing my portrait, Mrs. Stewart

has talked delightfully, contradicting the theory of De Tocqueville that ‘the
charming art of conversation—to touch and set in motion a thousand
thoughts without dwelling tiresomely on any one—is amongst the lost arts,
and can only be sought for in History Hut.’[219] She described her visit to
Ober Ammergau. Her anxiety to go was intense, but all the means seemed
to fail. The Princess Mary of Hanover and the Grand Duchess Elizabeth (to
whom she had intended to annex herself) walked. But, to be in waiting upon
them, went Baron Klenck, her Hanoverian son-in-law, and he came back
greatly impressed, and said to his wife when he came in, ‘If thy mother still
wishes to go, in God’s name let her set forth;’ and she went. She described
the life at the village—the simplicity, the cheapness; then, in the play, the
awful agony of the twenty minutes of the Crucifixion, the sublimity of the
Ascension. ‘I have seen hundreds of “ascensions” on the stage and
elsewhere, but I have never seen anything like that simple re-presentation.’
“At luncheon Mrs. Stewart described a sitting with Mrs. Guppy the
spiritualist. Count Bathyany, her daughter, and others were present. They
were asked what sort of manifestation they would have. They declared they
would be satisfied with nothing less than a ghost. There was a round hole in
the table with a lid upon it. Presently the lid began to quiver, gradually it
was thrown on one side, and a hand came up violently agitating itself. ‘Mrs.
Guppy said, “Dear spirit” (we are always very affectionate you know),
“would you like the glass?” and a great tall fern-glass was put over the
place: otherwise, I should have touched that hand. Then, inside the glass
(but we could not touch it, you know) came up something wrapped in
muslin: Mrs. Guppy said it was a head. Afterwards we were asked to go
down to supper: there was quite a handsome collation. A young American
who was with us was so disgusted with what he had seen that he would
touch nothing—would take neither bread nor salt in that house. I was weak:
I did not quite like to refuse, and I ate a few strawberries. Of course, as far
as the moral protest went, I might as well have eaten a whole plateful.
Bathyany made a very good supper. He took a rose away with him for his
Countess, for at the end of our séance quantities of flowers appeared, we
knew not whence, quite fresh, dewy, beautiful flowers: they appeared on the
table close to Count Bathyany.
“‘The spirits are very indulgent. They think we are in better humour if
our spirits are kept up. After I have been sitting there for some time they
generally say, “Harriet is exhausted; let her have a glass of wine.” Then
sometimes they give us nicknames—beautiful nicknames; my daughter they
called “Mutability,” and me they named “Distrust.”’
“We have been a long drive to a charming old house, Chastleton,
belonging to Miss Whitmore Jones, who lives there alone, ‘le dernier
rejeton de sa famille.’ It is in a hollow with fine old trees around it, manor-
house, church, arched gateway, and dovecot on arches grouped close
together, all of a delicate pink-yellow-grey. Inside is a banqueting hall with
very fine old panelling and curious furniture, and upstairs a long gallery and
nobly panelled drawing-room.”

“Sarsden, Oct. 5.—Last night Mrs. Stewart talked much of Hanover and
her life there. Her daughter was lady-in-waiting to the Queen. She described
how all the royal family might have their property back at once, but the
King would make no concession—‘God has given me my crown; I will
only give it back to Him.’
“Mrs. Stewart was with the Queen and Princess for five months at
Herrenhausen after the King left for Langensalza, when ‘like a knight, he
desired to be placed in the front of his army, where all his soldiers could see
him, and where he was not satisfied till he felt the bullets all whizzing
around him.’ The people in Hanover said he had run away. When the Queen
heard that, she and Princess Marie went down to the place and walked
about there, and, when the people pressed round her, said, ‘The King is
gone with his army to fight for his people; but I am here to stay with you—
to stay with you till he comes back.’ But alas! she did not know!
“All that time in Herrenhausen they were alone: only Mrs. Stewart and
her daughter went out occasionally to bring in the news; the others never
went out. At last the confinement became most irksome to the Princesses.
They entreated Mrs. Stewart to persuade mama to let them go out. Mrs.
Stewart urged it to the Queen, who said, ‘But the Princesses have all that
they need here; they ought to be satisfied.’—‘Pardon me, your Majesty,’
said Mrs. Stewart; ‘the Princesses have not all they need; it is necessary for
young people to have some change.’ ‘So,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘at last the
Queen saw that it was well, and she consented. She said, “We will not take
one of our own carriages, that would attract too much attention, but we will
take Harty’s—that is, my daughter’s—carriage, and we will drive in that;”
for the Queen had given Harty a little low carriage and a pony. So they set
off—the Queen, Princess Marie, and only the coachman besides. And when
they had gone some way up the hills, the pony fretted under the new traces
and broke them, and, before they knew where they were, it was away over
the hedges and fields, and they were left in the lane with the broken
carriage. Two Prussian officers rode up—for the Prussians were already in
Hanover—and seeing two ladies, beautiful ladies too (for the Queen is still
very handsome), in that forlorn state, they dismounted, and, like gentlemen
as they were, they came up hat in hand, and offered their assistance. The
Queen said, “Oh, thank you; you see what has happened to us: our
coachman has gone after the pony, which has run away, and no doubt he
will soon come back, so we will just wait his return.” But the coachman did
not come back, and the gentlemen were so polite, they would not go away,
so at last the Queen and Princess had to set out to return home; and the
officers walked with them, never having an idea who they were, and never
left them till they reached the gates of Herrenhausen. So the Queen came in
and said, “You see what has happened, my dear; you see what a dreadful
thing has befallen us: we will none of us ever try going out again,” and we
never did.
“‘We used to go and walk at night in those great gardens of
Herrenhausen, in which the Electress Sophia died. The Queen talked then,
God bless her, of all her sorrows. We often did not come in till the morning,
for the Queen could not sleep. But, even in our great sorrow and misery,
Nature would assert herself, and when we came in, we ate up everything
there was. Generally I had something in my room, and the Queen had
generally something in hers, though that was only bread and strawberries,
and it was not enough for us, for we were so very hungry.
“‘One night the Queen made an aide-de-camp take the key, and we went
to the mausoleum in the grounds. I shall never forget that awful walk, Harty
carrying a single lanthorn before us, or the stillness when we reached the
mausoleum, or the white light shining upon it and the clanging of the door
as it opened. And we all went in, and we knelt and prayed by each of the
coffins in turn. The Queen and Princess Marie knelt in front, and my
daughter and I knelt behind; and we prayed—oh! so earnestly—out of the
deep anguish of our sorrow-stricken hearts. And then we went up to the
upper floor where the statues are. And there lay the beautiful Queen, the
Princess of Solms, in her still loveliness, and there lay the old King, the
Duke of Cumberland, with the moonlight shining on him, wrapped in his
military cloak. And when the Queen saw him, she, who had been so calm
before, sobbed violently and hid herself against me—for she knows that I
also have suffered—and said in a voice of pathos which I can never forget,
“Oh, he was so cruel to me, so very, very cruel to me.” And after that we
walked or lingered on the garden-seats till daylight broke.
“‘The Queen was always longing to go away to her own house at
Marienberg, and at last she went. She never came back; for, as soon as she
was gone, the Prussians, who had left her alone whilst she was there,
stepped in and took possession of everything.
“‘The Queen is a noble, loving woman, but she is more admirable as a
woman than a queen. I have known her queenly, however. When Count von
Walchenstein, the Prussian commandant, arrived, he desired an interview
with her Majesty. He behaved very properly, but as he was going away—it
was partly from gaucherie, I suppose—he said, “I shall take care that your
Majesty is not interfered with in any way.” Then our Queen rose, and in
queenly simplicity she said, “I never expected it.” He looked so abashed,
but she never flinched; only, when he was gone out of the room, she fainted
dead away upon the floor.
 “‘The mistake of our Queen has been with regard to the Crown Prince.
She has had too great motherly anxiety, and has never sent out her son, as
the Empress Eugenie did, to learn his world by acting in it and by suffering
in it.”
“To-day Mrs. Stewart has been talking much of the pain of age, of the
distress of being now able to do so little for others, of being ‘just a creature
crawling between heaven and earth.’ She also spoke much of ‘the comfort
of experience,’ of scarcely anything being quite utterly irrevocable; that ‘in
most things, most crimes even, one can trail, trail oneself in the dust before
God and man.’
“In the morning Mrs. Stewart sat for her portrait to Madeleine, in her
picturesque square head-dress. She was pleased at being asked to sit. ‘Il faut
vieillir pour être heureuse,’ she said. She talked much whilst she was sitting
—much of Lady H.’s insolent and often unfeeling sayings. She spoke of a
doctor who had the same inclination, and said to her, ‘Ça ne me repugne pas
de dire les vérités cruelles.’ Talking of self-respect, she quoted the maxim of
Madame George Sand—

‘Charité envers les autres;

Sincérité envers Dieu;
Dignité envers soi-même.’

And added, ‘But who should one be well with if not with oneself, with
whom one has to live so very much.’
“This morning Lady Ducie’s pet housemaid gave warning, because, she
said, Lady Ducie was not so sympathetic to her as she was six weeks ago.
She said that as Lady Ducie was now not nearly so nice to her as she had
been, she should be obliged to marry a greengrocer who had proposed to
her.
“In the afternoon we drove to Daylesford—Warren Hastings’ so beloved
home. It is a very pretty place, picturesque modern cottages amid tufted
trees, and a very beautiful small modern church on a green. This church was
built by Mr. Grisewood, and supplants a so-called Saxon church, restored
after a thousand years of use by Warren Hastings. The inscription
commemorating his restoration still remains, and ends with the text—‘For a
thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday.’ The tomb of Warren
Hastings, a yellow urn on a pedestal, stands in the churchyard just under the
east window. He left the place to his wife’s son by her first husband, Count
Imhoff. Lady Ducie remembers Countess Imhoff coming to visit her
mother, always with a great deal of state, and always dressed in white satin
and swansdown, like one of Romney’s pictures. Mr. Grisewood succeeded
the Imhoffs, and, when his son became a Roman Catholic, sold the place to
Mr. Bias. We drove to the house, which stands well—a comfortable yellow
stone house in pretty grounds, with a clear running stream. Its
reminiscences and the power of calling them up made Mrs. Stewart speak
with great admiration of those who ‘could find the least bit of bone and
create a mastodon.’
“In returning, Mrs. Stewart told the story of Miss Geneviève Ward, the
actress. In early life she was travelling with her mother, when they fell in
with a handsome young Russian, Count Constant Guerra. He proposed to
her, and as the mother urged it, thinking it a good match, she married him
then and there in her mother’s presence, without witnesses, he solemnly
promising to make her his wife publicly as soon as he could. When he
could, he refused to fulfil his promise; but the mother was an energetic
woman, and she appealed to the Czar, who forced Guerra to keep his word.
He said he would do what the Czar bade him, but that his wife should suffer
for it all her life. To his amazement, when the day for the marriage arrived,
the bride appeared with her mother, led to the altar in a long crape veil as to
a funeral. Her brothers stood by her with loaded pistols, and at the door of
the church was a carriage into which she stepped as soon as the ceremony
was over, and he never saw her again. She is Madame Constant Guerra, and
has acted as ‘Guerrabella.’
“When we came home, I told a story in Lady Ducie’s sitting-room. Then
Lord Denbigh told how—
“‘Sir John Acton (whose son was Lady Granville’s first husband) was a
great friend of Lord Nelson, who was at that time occupied in a vain and
hopeless search for the French fleet.[220] One day Sir John was in his wife’s
dressing-room while she was preparing for dinner. As her French maid was
dressing her, a letter was put into her hand, at which she gave such a start
that she ran a pin she was holding into Lady Acton. This caused Lady Acton
to inquire what ailed her. She said the letter was from her brother, a French
sailor, from whom she had not heard for a long time, and about whom she
had been anxious. Sir John Acton, with great presence of mind, offered to
read her the letter while she went on doing her mistress’s hair. As soon as he
had read it he went off to Lord Nelson. The letter gave all the information
so long sought in vain, and the battle of the Nile was the result of the prick
of a pin.’”

“Prestbury, Oct. 6.—It poured so hard this morning that I put off leaving
Sarsden till late. Mrs. Stewart again talked much of the Hanoverian Court,
of the Guelph love of doubtful stories; how she saved up any story she
heard for the blind King. One day she was telling him a story ‘about
Margaret Bremer’s father’ as they were driving. Suddenly the horses
started, and the carriage was evidently going to be upset. ‘Why don’t you
go on?’ said the King. ‘Because, sir, we are just going to upset.’—‘That is
the coachman’s affair,’ said the King; ‘do you go on with your story.’
“With the Greatheeds, in whose cottage I am staying, I went a long
excursion yesterday up the Cotswold Hills, which have a noble view of the
great rich plain of Gloucestershire. Winchcombe, on the other side, is a
charming old town of quaint irregular houses. We passed through it to
Hailes Abbey, a small low ruin now, of cloisters in a rich meadow, but once
most important as containing the great relic of the Precious Blood, which
was brought thither by Edmund, son of the founder, Richard, King of the
Romans. Thirteen bishops said mass at different altars at the consecration,
and three of the Plantagenets—the founder, his wife, and his son Edmund—
are buried in the church. It is now a peaceful solitude, with a few ancient
thatched cottages standing round the wooded pastures.
“In returning, we turned aside to Sudeley Castle, the old Seymour house,
where Katherine Parr is buried. It is a picturesque and grand old house,
partially restored, partly now a green courtyard surrounded by ruined walls
and arches. The Queen’s (modern) tomb has a touching sleeping figure[221]
guarded by two angels. As we were coming out of the chapel, Mrs.
Dent[222] pursued us—a picturesque figure in a Marie Antoinette hat—and
brought us in to tea. The Dents made their fortunes as glovers, and, in their
present magnificence, a parcel of their gloves, as from the shop, is always
left in a conspicuous place in the hall, to ‘keep them humble.’”

“Tettenhall Wood, Oct. 12.—Whilst with the Corbets at Cheltenham, I

visited Thirlstone, a curious house which belonged to Lord Northbrook. It
was afterwards bought by Sir J. Philipps, the bibliomaniac, and contains the
most enormous and extraordinary collection of books and pictures
imaginable; a few gems, but imbedded in masses of rubbish, which the
present possessor, Mrs. Fenwick, daughter of the collector, is forbidden to
sell or destroy.
“I have been working hard for Mrs. Moore at the Memoir of her husband
the Archdeacon (the object of my visit), and have read through all his
speeches, &c. I see, however, how impracticable it is to help in work of this
kind. Mrs. Moore implores me to cut out what should be omitted. I select
what seems to me utterly trivial and commonplace, and she is annoyed,
saying it comprises the only matters of real importance. She implores me to
correct her diction and grammar: I do so, and she weeps because her
pleasure is destroyed in a work which is no longer her own.”

“Donington Rectory, Oct. 13.—This is a pleasant place in itself, and any

place would be pleasant within view of the beloved Wrekin.[223] On
arriving, I went on at once to Boscobel, and saw the oak which grew from
an acorn of the tree that sheltered Charles II., and in the ancient half-
timbered house, the hiding-place under the floor at the top of the turret-
stairs, where the Prince is said to have crouched for forty-eight hours, with
his trap-door concealed by cheeses. Well smothered he must have been, if
Staffordshire cheeses smelt then as they do now. There is a good portrait of
Charles, which he presented to the house after the Restoration. I went on
with Henry de Bunsen to White Ladies, now a low ruin of red walls in a
meadow, but entered still by a fine Norman archway. Inside is a quiet
burial-ground for Roman Catholics, amongst whose lichen-tinted
headstones is that of ‘Mistress Joan, who was called friend by Charles
II.’—being one of those who assisted in his escape. Beyond, in Hubble
Lane, is the ruin of the Pendrill house. The Pendrills[224] were seven
brothers, common labourers, but went up to London and had a pension after
the Restoration.
“We went on to Tong—a glorious church, quite a church of the dead, so
full of noble tombs of Stanleys and Vernons. Near it, in low-lying lands
with water, is Tong Castle, the old house of the Durants. The last Mr.
Durant brought in another lady to live with his wife, which she resented,
and she left him. There was a long divorce suit, which they both attended
every day in coaches and six. Owing to some legal quibble, he gained his
suit, though the facts against him were well known, and he was so delighted
at the triumph over his wife that he erected a monument in honour of his
victory on the hill above the castle. The sons all took part with their mother,
and when Mr. Durant was lying in his last illness, they set barrels of
gunpowder surreptitiously under the monument, and had a match and train
ready. They bribed a groom at the house to ride post-haste with the news as
soon as the breath was out of their father’s body; and the news of his death
first became known to the county by the monument being blown into
shivers. The Durants sold Tong to Lord Bradford.”

“Bretton, Yorkshire, Oct. 30.—I have been here for a very pleasant week
with a large party of what Lady Margaret (Beaumont) calls her ‘young men
and maidens.’ ... There has been nothing especial to narrate, though our
hostess has entertained the whole party with her never-failing charm of
conversation and wit.
“One day I went with Henry Strutt,[225] whom I like much, to Wakefield,
to draw the old chapel on the bridge. What an awful place Wakefield is—
always an inky sky and an inky landscape, and the river literally so inky
that the Mayor went out in a boat, dipped his pen, and wrote a letter with it
to the Commissioners of Nuisances.”

“Raby Castle, Nov. 1.—I came here on Monday, meeting the delicately
humorous Mr. Dicky Doyle at Darlington, yet with much fear that there
were few other guests; but I was relieved to find ‘Eleanor the Good,’
Duchess of Northumberland, seated at the five-o’clock tea-table, and have
had much pleasant talk with her. She spoke of her absorbing attachment to
Alnwick and the pain it was to leave it; that the things which make the
greatest blanks in life are not the greatest griefs, but the losses which most
affect daily life and habits.... Frederick Stanley and Lady Constance[226]
came in the evening, he very pleasant, and she almost more full of laughs
than any one I ever saw. Other guests are Colonel and Mrs. Duncombe,
young Gage, who will be Lord Gage,[227] and just before dinner a good-
looking youth came in, who turned out to be Peddie Bennet.[228]
“Yesterday Lord and Lady Pollington came, and old Lord Strathnairn,
looking thinner and more of an old dandy than ever.”
 “Nov. 3.—Yesterday, while I was walking with the Pollingtons through
the beech-woods deep in rustling leaves, the castle bell announced the
advent of guests, and returning, we found the Warwicks and Brooke
arrived.”

“Whitburn Hall, Nov. 7.—There is a great pleasure not only in the

affection, but in the demonstration of affection which one receives here.
Dear old Lady Williamson, in her beautiful tender old age, wins all hearts
by the patience with which she bears her blindness, and the sweetness with
which she sometimes imagines she sees; and Lady Barrington’s lovely and
lovable old face brings sunshine to all around it.... In the younger
generation, all is hospitality and kindness.”

“Brancepeth Castle, Nov. 8.—Yesterday I went with Augusta Harrington

to visit Edward[229] and Tunie Liddell in their new home at Jarrow. It is
startling to see how the spirit that animated the early martyrs has induced
them to exchange competence for penury, and to give up the elms and
flowers and pleasant sunny rooms of the Rectory at Wimpole. Now they are
amidst a teeming population of blackened, foul-mouthed, drunken roughs,
living in miserable rows of dismal houses, in a country where every vestige
of vegetation is killed by noxious chemical vapours, on the edge of a slimy
marsh, with a distance of inky sky, and furnaces vomiting forth volumes of
blackest smoke. All nature seems parched and writhing under the pollution.
Their days are perfectly full of work, and they have scarcely ever an
evening to themselves.... They said our visit did them good, and I shall go
again.
“Edward had been perplexed by an old woman, one of his parishioners,
always declaring herself to be at least ten years younger than he felt certain
she must be, yet he did not think she was of the kind who would tell a lie.
At last he found that she dated her age from her baptism. ‘The clergy were
not so quick upon us then,’ she said, ‘as they are now; so my father he just
waited till we were all born to have us baptized, and then had us all done
together: there were eleven of us.’
“I reached this great castle in pitch darkness. It is a magnificent place—a
huge courtyard and enormous fabric girdled in by tremendous towers of
Henry III. The staircase is modern, but most of the rooms have still the
vaulted ceilings of Henry III.’s time, though the arms of the Nevilles, with
which they were once painted, are gone now. The beer and wine cellars,
with some cells called dungeons, are very curious. The butler pointed out
with pride the black cobwebs which hung in festoons and cover much of the
wine, a great deal of which was in the huge bottles called ‘cocks’ and
‘hens.’ The white cobwebs he had less opinion of: they are less healthy.
“Pleasant Lady Haddington[230] and her daughter are here. Lady
Boyne[231] is a most pretty and winning hostess, and her children are
thoroughly well brought up, and take a pleasant easy part in everything. In
the evenings the whole party dance ‘Durham reels’ in the great hall.
“It was disappointing to have snow to-day, but there is much to interest
in the house and in the old church of St. Brandon close by, where some
grand figures of the Nevilles sleep before the altar. The very curious pews
and reading-desk of the time of Bishop Cosin were destroyed in a
mutilation of the church under the garb of ‘restoration’ sixteen years ago.
“There are several curious pictures by Hogarth here, in which the Lord
Boyne of that day is introduced; but the most remarkable is one of Sir
Francis Dashwood as a monk of Medmenham worshipping a naked woman
and all the good things of life.”

“Kirklands, Nov. 14.—On Friday I was again at Jarrow, and was warmly
welcomed by the Edward Liddells. Next morning I went with Edward to the
wonderful old church of the seventh century, where Bede’s chair still stands
under the Saxon arches. All around vegetation is blasted; dead trees rear
their naked boughs into the black sky, and grimy rushes vainly endeavour to
grow in the poisonous marshes. The very horror of ugliness gives a weird
and ghastly interest to the place. Edward finds endless work, and enjoys the
struggle he lives in. As Montalembert says, ‘Ce n’est pas la victoire qui fait
le bonheur des nobles cœurs—c’est le combat.’ His is literally a Christian
warfare. If he has spare time, he employs it in looking about the streets for
drunken men. As he sees them come reeling along, he offers to help them,
and walks home with them clinging to his arm. On the way he draws them
out, and having thus found out where they live, returns next day, armed
with the silly things they have let fall, to make them ashamed with. While I
was making a little sketch of the church, a wedding party came in, the
bridegroom being tipsy. Edward accused him of it, and he confessed at
once, saying that he had been in such a fright at the ceremony, he had been
obliged to take some spirits to keep his courage up. Edward said he
wondered he could care for that sort of courage, that was only Dutch
courage, real English courage was the only right sort; and as he supposed he
wished to make his wife happy, that was the sort of courage he must look
for; but being drunk on the day he married was a bad omen for her
happiness. And yet, in the midst of his little scolding, Edward was so
charming to them all that the whole wedding party were captivated, and an
acquaintance, if not a friendship, was founded. It all showed a power of
work in the real way to win souls. And—
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