FOR eight or nine years, while my sons were at school, I lived at Rickmansworth. Unfortunately the Leweses had just left it. Moor Park belonged to Lord Ebury, my wife's uncle, and the beauties of its magnificent park and the amenities of its charming house were at all times open to us, and freely taken advantage of. During those nine years I lived the life of a student, and wrote and published the book I have elsewhere spoken of, the 'Creeds of the Day.'
Of the visitors of note whose acquaintance I made while I was staying at Moor Park, by far the most illustrious was Froude.
He was too reserved a man to lavish his intimacy when taken unawares; and if he suspected, as he might have done by my probing, that one wanted to draw him out, he was much too shrewd to commit himself to definite expressions of any kind until he knew something of his interviewer. Reticence of this kind, on the part of such a man, is both prudent and commendable. But is not this habit of cautiousness sometimes carried to the extent of ambiguity in his 'Short Studies on Great Subjects'? The careful reader is left in no sort of doubt as to Froude's own views upon Biblical criticism, as to his theological dogmas, or his speculative opinions. But the conviction is only reached by comparing him with himself in different moods, by collating essay with essay, and one part of an essay with another part of the same essay. Sometimes we have an astute defence of doctrines worthy at least of a temperate apologist, and a few pages further on we wonder whether the writer was not masking his disdain for the credulity which he now exposes and laughs at. Neither excessive caution nor timidity are implied by his editing of the Carlyle papers; and he may have failed - who that has done so much has not? - in keeping his balance on the swaying slack-rope between the judicious and the injudicious. In his own line, however, he is, to my taste, the most scholarly, the most refined, and the most suggestive, of our recent essayists. The man himself in manner and in appearance was in perfect keeping with these attractive qualities.
While speaking of Moor Park and its kind owner I may avail myself of this opportunity to mention an early reminiscence of Lord Ebury's concerning the Grosvenor estate in London.
Mr. Gladstone was wont to amuse himself with speculations as to the future dimensions of London; what had been its growth within his memory; what causes might arise to cheek its increase. After listening to his remarks on the subject one day at dinner, I observed that I had heard Lord Ebury talk of shooting over ground which is now Eaton Square. Mr. Gladstone of course did not doubt it; but some of the young men smiled incredulously. I afterwards wrote to Lord Ebury to make sure that I had not erred. Here is his reply:
'Moor Park, Rickmansworth: January 9, 1883.
'MY dear Henry, - What you said I had told you about snipe-shooting is quite true, though I think I ought to have mentioned a space rather nearer the river than Eaton Square.
In the year 1815, when the battle of Waterloo was fought, there was nothing behind Grosvenor Place but the (-?) fields - so called, a place something like the Scrubbs, where the household troops drilled. That part of Grosvenor Place where the Grosvenor Place houses now stand was occupied by the Lock Hospital and Chapel, and it ended where the small houses are now to be found. A little farther, a somewhat tortuous lane called the King's Road led to Chelsea, and, I think, where now St. Peter's, Pimlico, was afterwards built. I remember going to a breakfast at a villa belonging to Lady Buckinghamshire. The Chelsea Waterworks Company had a sort of marshy place with canals and osier beds, now, I suppose, Ebury Street, and here it was that I was permitted to go and try my hand at snipe-shooting, a special privilege given to the son of the freeholder.
'The successful fox-hunt terminating in either Bedford or Russell Square is very strange, but quite appropriate, commemorated, I suppose, by the statue there erected.
Yours affectionately, 'E.'
The successful 'fox-hunt ' was an event of which I told Lord Ebury as even more remarkable than his snipe-shooting in Belgravia. As it is still more indicative of the growth of London in recent times it may be here recorded.
In connection with Mr. Gladstone's forecasts, I had written to the last Lord Digby, who was a grandson of my father's, stating that I had heard - whether from my father or not I could not say - that he had killed a fox where now is Bedford Square, with his own hounds.
Lord Digby replied:
'Minterne, Dorset: January 7, 1883.
'My dear Henry, - My grandfather killed a fox with his hounds either in Bedford or Russell Square. Old Jones, the huntsman, who died at Holkham when you were a child, was my informant. I asked my grandfather if it was correct. He said "Yes" - he had kennels at Epping Place, and hunted the roodings of Essex, which, he said, was the best scenting-ground in England.
'Yours affectionately, 'DIGBY.'
(My father was born in 1754.)
Mr. W. S. Gilbert had been a much valued friend of ours before we lived at Rickmansworth. We had been his guests for the 'first night' of almost every one of his plays - plays that may have a thousand imitators, but the speciality of whose excellence will remain unrivalled and inimitable. His visits to us introduced him, I think, to the picturesque country which he has now made his home. When Mr. Gilbert built his house in Harrington Gardens he easily persuaded us to build next door to him. This led to my acquaintance with his neighbour on the other side, Mr. Walter Cassels, now well known as the author of 'Supernatural Religion.'
