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in a strange land, sharing carriages and admiring statues, had their own little society in Florence and Rome, and were allied generally by birth and wealth and the peculiarity of their taste for the fine arts. Sir Godfrey (it is no wonder) grew restive, and was impatient to put an end to this aimless wandering with a family of small children in a land of foreigners, among picture and ruins which bored him acutely. One entry, made at Rome, shows us what was going on in the spring of 1794: Almost the whole of our Neapolitan set was there we all made an excursion to Tivoli. I conveyed Lord Holland, Mr. Marsh, and Beauclerk. . . . We got back late at night. . . . In the course of our evenings Lord H. resolved to make me admire a poet. . . Cowper. My evenings were agreeable.. A sharp fit of gout, brought on by drinking Orvieto wine, did not increase the good temper of (my husband).' One of the attractive features of those early Italian travels is the leisure that people had, and the instinct, natural in a beautiful land far from all duties, which made them fill it with long hours of aimless reading. Lady Webster says of herself that she 'devoured books,' histories, philosophies, serious books for the most part, to increase her knowledge. But Lord Holland made her read poetry; he read Pope's Iliad' aloud, besides a translation of Herodotus, a good deal of Bayle and a great variety of English poetry.' Her head was conquered, and that, in Lady Webster's case, was the only way to her heart. Sir Godfrey left her alone in Italy for months together; finally, in May 1795, he returned to England without her. The diary is still as sensible as ever; one might imagine her a cultivated British matron with all the natural supports. But, remembering that she had now determined to defy the law and to honour her own passion, there is something more highly strung than usual in the record of her days. She never repents, or analyses her conduct; her diary is still occupied with Correggio and the Medici family and the ruts in the roads. She drove about Italy with her own retinue, spending a few days in one place, a week in another, and settling in Florence for the winter. Lord Holland's name occurs again and again, and always as naturally as another's. But there is a freedom in her manner, a kind of pride in her happiness, which seems to show that she was perfectly confident of her own morality. In April, Lord Holland and Lady Webster travelled back to England together; Sir Godfrey divorced his wife in July 1797, and in the same month she became Lady Holland. Something remarkable might have been expected from such a marriage, for the feeling

between a husband and wife who have won each other by such neans will not be conventional or easy to explain. One does not know, for instance, how far Lady Holland was led to live the life he did from a sense of gratitude to her husband, and one suspects hat Lord Holland was tender and considerate beyond what was natural to him because his wife had made an immense sacrifice on his behalf. He saw, what other people did not see, that she was sometimes made to suffer. One can be sure at least that the oddities were only superficial, and that Lord and Lady Holland, grown old and sedate, never forgot that they had once been in league together against the world, or saw each other without a certain thrill. Oh, my beloved friend,' exclaimed Lady Holland, 'how hast thou, by becoming mine, endeared the everyday occurrences of life!"

I loved you much at twenty-four;

I love you better at three-score

was, so Lord Holland wrote when they had been married for thirtyfour years, the

One truth which, be it verse or prose,
From my heart's heart sincerely flows.

If that is so, we must admire them both the more for it, remem bering what a reputation Lady Holland won for herself in those years, and how difficult she must have been to live with.

She may well have taken possession of Holland House with a vow to repay herself for wasted time and a determination to make the best of herself and of other people at last. She was determined also to serve Lord Holland in his career; and those unhappy years when she had roamed about the Continent, making her sensible observations, had taught her, at least, habits that were useful to her now, to talk the talk of men' and to feel keenly the life in people round her. The house at once, with such a mistress, came to have a character of its own. But who shall say why it is that people agree to meet in one spot, or what qualities go to make a salon ? In this case the reason why they came seems to have been largely because Lady Holland wished them to come. The presence of someone with a purpose gives shape to shapeless gatherings of people; they take on a character when they meet which serves ever after to stamp the hours so spent. Lady Holland was young and handsome; her past life had given her a decision and a fearlessness which made her go further in one interview than other women in a hundred. She had read a great deal of robust English

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fiction, histories and travels, Juvenal in a translation, Montaigne and Voltaire and La Rochefoucauld in the French. I have no prejudices to combat with,' she wrote; so that the freest thinker could speak his mind in her presence. The reputation of this brilliant and outspoken young woman spread quickly among the politicians, and they came in numbers to dine or sleep or even to watch her dress in the morning. Perhaps they laughed when they discussed her afterwards, but she carried her main point triumphantly— that they should come to see her. Two years after her marriage she notes To-day I had fifty visitors.' Her diary becomes a memorandum book of anecdotes and political news; and it is very seldom that she raises her eyes for a moment to consider what it is all about. But at one point she gives us a clue, and observes that although she cares for her old friends best she 'seeks new acquaintances with avidity,' because mixing with a variety of people is an advantage to Lord H.' One must live with one's kind and know them, or the mind becomes narrowed to the standard of your own set,' as the life of Canning had shown her. There was so much good sense always in what Lady Holland said that it was difficult to protest if her actions, in their excessive vigour, became dangerous. She took up politics for Lord Holland's sake, with the same determination, and became before long a far greater enthusiast than he was; but, again, she was able and broad-minded. Such was her success, indeed, that it can be said by a student of the time1 nearly a hundred years after it has all faded away- Holland House was a political council chamber . . . and the value of such a centre to a party under exclusively aristocratic leadership was almost incalculable.' But, however keen she became as a politician, we must not pretend that she inspired Ministers, or was the secret author of policies that have changed the world. Her success was of a different nature; for it is possible even now, with her diaries before us, to reconstruct something of her character and to see how, in the course of years, it told upon that portion of the world which came in contact with it.

When we think of her we do not remember witty things that she said; we remember a long series of scenes in which she shows herself insolent, or masterful, or whimsical with the whimsicality of a spoilt great lady who confounds all the conventions as it pleases her. But there is some quality in a scene like the following, trivial as it is, which makes you realise at once the effect of her 'Mr. Lloyd Sanders.

presence in the room, her way of looking at you, her attitude even, and her tap with her fan. Macaulay describes a breakfast party. 'Lady Holland told us her dreams; how she had dreamed that a mad dog bit her foot, and how she set off to Brodie, and lost her way in St. Martin's Lane, and could not find him. She hoped, she said, the dream would not come true.' Lady Holland had her superstitions. We trace it again in her words to Moore, 'This will be a dull book of yours, this "Sheridan," I fear'; or at dinner to her dependent, Mr. Allen, Mr. Allen, there is not enough turtle soup for you. You must take gravy soup or none.' We seem to feel, however dimly, the presence of someone who is large and emphatic, who shows us fearlessly her peculiarities because she does not mind what we think of them, and who has, however peremptory and unsympathetic she may be, an extraordinary force of character. She makes certain things in the world stand up boldly all round her; she calls out certain qualities in other people. While she is there, it is her world; and all the things in the room, the ornaments, the scents, the books that lie on the table, are hers and express her. It is less obvious, but we expect that the whole of the strange society which met round her board owed its flavour to Lady Holland's freaks and passions. It is less obvious, because Lady Holland is far from eccentric in her journal, and adopts more and more as time goes by the attitude of a shrewd man of business who is well used to the world and well content with it. She handles numbers of men and women, rough-hews a portrait of them, and sums up their value. His taste is bad; he loves society, but has no selection, and swallows wine for quantity not quality; he is gross in everything. . . . He is honourable, just, and true.' These characters are done in a rough style, as though she slashed her clay, now this side, now that. But what numbers of likenesses she struck off, and with what assurance! Indeed, she had seen so much of the world and had such knowledge of families, tempers, and money matters, that with greater concentration she might have shaped a cynical reflection in which a lifetime of observation was compressed. Depraved men,' she writes, are in a corrupt state of things, but yet they like the names of virtues as much as they abhor the practice.' La Rochefoucauld is often on her lips. But merely to have dealt with so many people and to have kept the mastery over them is in itself the proof of a remarkable mind. Hers was the force that held them together, and showed them in a certain light, and kept them in the places she assigned VOL. XXV.-NO. 150, N.S.

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to them. She took in the whole sweep of the world, and imprinted it with her own broad mark. For not only could she subdue all that happened ordinarily in daily life, but she did not falter when the loftiest heights, which might well have seemed beyond her range, lay across her path. She sent for Wordsworth. He came. He is much superior to his writings, and his conversation is even beyond his abilities. I should almost fear he is disposed to apply his talents more towards making himself a vigorous conversationalist . . . than to improve his style of composition. He holds some opinions upon picturesque subjects with which I completely differ. . . . He seems well read in his provincial history."

Monstrous and absurd as it is, may we not find there some clue to her success? When anyone is able to master all the facts she meets with, so that they fall into some order in her mind, she will present a formidable figure to other people, who will complain that she owes her strength to her lack of perception; but at the same time so smooth a shape of the world appears in her presence that they find peace in contemplating it, and almost love the creator. Her rule was much abused in her lifetime, and even now we are disposed to make little of it. We need not claim that it was ever of very great importance; but if we recall her at all we cannot, after all these years, pretend that it has no existence. She still sits on her chair as Leslie painted her-a hard woman perhaps, but undoubtedly a strong and courageous one.

VIRGINIA STEPHEN.

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