Kenna's Kingdom: a Ramble Though Kingly Kensington
Brown, R. Weir
1881
CHAPTER X. HOLLY LODGE.
CHAPTER X. HOLLY LODGE.
IN our rambles we have sometimes met with places and names over which we would willingly have lingered. But when those names were the names of well-known men who are still among us, or who have only lately left us, we have either passed by in silence, or at the most, allowed ourselves only a casual peep, and we have already in our introduction explained our reasons for not doing more. There is one house which must be an exception to our usual practice- Holly Lodge. It is a comfortable old-fashioned place standing in its own grounds, situated on the slope of Campden Hill, and now belongs to the Earl of Airlie. | |
But for nearly four years, from , it was in the hands of one whose name | |
195 | has often been mentioned in these pages-, the most popular historian of England. We think we have made this exception not without reason. Mr. Trevelyan's spirited life and letters of his uncle have provided us with ample materials, while in as we see him at Holly Lodge, there is nothing to mar, nothing to confuse, nothing to criticise, so that we need be under no fear of wounding the feelings of friends or relations. It is the picture of an author and reader, enjoying himself as only an author and reader can, and the warm deep evening glow of a sun that is setting in more than usual brilliancy, colours such a picture of greatness, happiness, home life and contentment, as is not often to be found in the career of a literary man. |
In then, , still plain Mr., removed from his chambers on the second floor in the Albany and settled at Holly Lodge, Kensington. The house had been recommended to him by his old friend Dr. Millman. The first effect of this recommendation was to set to re-reading and re-criticising the Doctor's book on Latin Christianity, and the second was the purchase of the lease of the house, | |
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which latter he pronounced to be The rooms it is true, were not for the most part very large, but that mattered but little, as room of the house-the library, was all that could be desired. It was a spacious apartment, enlarged by pillared recess, and opening on a beautiful unbroken slope of verdant green. After an autumn trip in Germany and Italy, says in one of his letters If this lawn were not overshadowed by any giants of the forest, of shrubbery there was abundance. says the happy proprietor, And again in , A few days later he rejoices over the advent of the rhododendrons, and of the starting into leaf of the mulberry tree, That under such influences should, perhaps for the first time in his life, turn gardener, is not surprising. The Christmas holidays, he tells his sister in , have interrupted his gardening. Now he directs creepers to be placed round his windows and beds of rhododendrons to be formed round his fountain, and again he Yet, sometimes he even took an hour from his reading to attempt himself to exterminate these persistent foes. |
he writes to his youngest niece, 's letters to children must, indeed, have formed no inconsiderable portion of his correspondence. He was one of those few men who unaffectedly enjoy children's society, who are never tired of them, who could spend hours with them when they would grudge a ten minutes to a grown-up person, who can really enter into the mysteries of a child's world, and can really appreciate a child's imagination and ideas. had been such a man all his life. His greater leisure, however, gave him more time for the indulgence of this love for children at Holly Lodge. His little niece, Alice, was an especial favourite. One night he dreamed most vividly that
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was a great favourite with boys and girls as well as with younger children. He would play robbers and tigers in a den built up with newspapers behind the sofa, would write valentines, and nursery rhymes, for those who were somewhat older, would indite chatty notes to schoolgirls about their lessons, and criticise classical authors for schoolboys. He followed the careers of his nephews and nieces with watchful eyes, with an ear ever ready to receive their troubles, fears, and hopes, a purse ever open to purchase toys, to provide treats, and above all to furnish books. 's purse was, indeed, ever in his hand. His generosity was unsparing without being unbounded. Yet if there were faults at all, he was perhaps too liberal, and during his residence at Holly Lodge was besieged with applications from third-rate authors, and a host of people whom he had never seen. To a clergyman, he sends twenty-five pounds. One lady, has thirty-five pounds in a month, another a hundred and thirty pounds in a few months; to A needy man of letters calls to beg a | |
200 | guinea, and is sent away with a hundred pounds. And such generosity was not confined to moneymatters. He dined each Sunday at his club, marching there in all weathers rather than disturb his servants' Sunday evenings. William and Elizabeth on one occasion go off to fetch William's father, an old man with a stick, and the old man is hospitably entertained beneath the roof of Holly Lodge. |
That roof, indeed, was well known for its hospitality. Nothing gave its owner greater pleasure than to see a few choice spirits gathered round a table laden with good things. One day it is a gathering of the Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he himself was one. The party takes place on Lord Mayor's Day, , and the dinner is well cooked and the " audit" ale perfect. At another time he would entertain a couple of schoolboys with a dish of mullet, as a reminder of classical banquets. | |
These good things were, however, seasoned by what was still better, a ceaseless flow of anecdote after anecdote, quotation on quotation, droll comparisons, jeux d'esprits, and of clear luminous argument and narrative. It may be true that he engrossed the lion's | |
201 | share, but one surely would not grudge the lion his roar, even if by doing so the pigs might have no opportunity of squeaking. |
Such was as he appeared to others; of his life, lived by himself, he has left many memorials in his diary, and in the notes which cover the blank spaces of the volumes of his library. | |
His power of digesting books was enormous, and while at Holly Lodge he gave that power full play. | |
A book was always in his hand, or the substance of a book was always in his mind. He read inside the house, outside, everywhere. He would walk up and down the portico " learning by heart the noble Fourth Act of the Merchant of Venice, or reading pamphlets of 's time." | |
Folios, quartos, and octavos were despatched at the rate of a volume a day, a whole work in six hours, The facility with which he read as quickly as other persons glance over a book, and the ease with which he remembered what he had so rapidly read, is so extraordinary, that his diary alone can give any adequate conception of what his reading was. | |
He had, besides, greater work in hand; his History, | |
202 | a considerable portion of which was penned here. It was at Holly Lodge, too, that he wrote his articles on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and William Pitt, of which it is but scant praise to say that they are probably the finest biographical sketches of that kind in existence. |
His literary career was as successful as it deserved to be. | |
On one day-harvest day-as calls it, 's first thought was to take a Paddington omnibus to his sister's home, to impart the joyful news, to laugh, and to be laughed at. Rather more than five months afterwards, in , came the offer of a peerage, which was accepted. But such happy days, such triumphant retirement was not to last long. | |
Symptoms of illness, had long felt. His great anxiety was lest they should affect him mentally. This fear became almost a morbid dread. At one time, he fears he is losing his German, and reads at | |
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once a hundred pages of Schiller to reassure himself.
At another, he commits to memory the entire roll of
the House of Lords, including the second titles, then
the Cambridge and Oxford Calendars. he says, He learns line upon line of "Catullus," then three hundred and sixty lines of " Martial," and his deepest wish is With at that time, at least, there seemed but little danger of such a fate. His appetite for reading, his critical faculties, his powers of memory, were clear and sharp to the end, and that end was, as he himself would have wished, sudden. His brotherin-law, Trevelyan, had accepted the Governorship of Madras, and felt bitterly the approaching parting with his sister and his sister's family. Books were his only resource. He read, he noted, he criticised. He wrote steadily, but with no hope of ever accom |
204 | plishing the period he had proposed in his preface. The thoughts of the parting, which he attempted to drive away by work, almost overpowered him. "I dread the next four months more than even the months which will follow the separation. This prolonged parting, this slow sipping of the vinegar and the gall,-is terrible." |
The middle of December came and hard frost set in. Yet he read German, Latin, and English, and got through the day tolerably. He felt as if he were dying of old age. Before Christmas the frost gave way, the weather was mild, the sun shone, and ventured into the verandah; the doctors pronounced the complaint a heart complaint, and a heart complaint merely. He writes, The journal from which we have so often quoted comes to a close on Friday, the | |
205 | . On that day he did not exert himself to write, but stayed by the fire making Christmas calculations, and reading. |
This entry concludes with some remarks on the idea of Dickens' "Harold Skimpole " being meant for Leigh Hunt. They are as clear, as concise, as logical as any which the journal contains; yet they form its last entry. | |
His sister and her family spent the Christmas Day with him, and the usual Christmas dinner was eaten, but spoke but little, and seemed tired and sleepy. His relations feared for his brain; he himself more justly for his heart. Christmas Day was a Sunday. On the following Wednesday, his nephew, George Trevelyan, called at Holly Lodge late in the afternoon. He entered the library. His uncle was sitting with the first number of the Cornhill Magazine for the ensuing year, open before him, at the first page of Thackeray's " Lovel the Widower." But the story was unheeded, and received his nephew's remarks languidly and drowsily, or with a loss of self-command, when some painful and pathetic reflections were suggested to him. His sister came | |
206 | later in the evening, and found her brother in the library as he had been left by his nephew, the Magazine open at the same page-he was dead. He had attempted with his servant's assistance to move, had risen, had sat down again, had passed away. The last time he put his pen to paper was to sign a letter addressed to a poor curate to whom he was enclosing twenty-five pounds. The greatest living English historian of his time was gone; his work was left unfinished, to command even in its unfinished state, such popularity as seldom falls to the lot of any historian. We write at a time too near to the events we have been depicting to do more than deplore our loss. True, more than eighteen years have past, but the world still laments that 's History of England goes no farther than the death of William the Third, and with all its faults, for its faults are many, it seems likely that eighteen centuries hence, some ardent student of classical literature may close the volume with a sigh, as he thinks of what prolonged pleasure might have been yet in store for him, had been spared for a few years longer to enjoy health, life, and intellectual vigour at Holly Lodge. |
