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I am, dear Mr. Reeve, yours faithfully, And the Journal winds up the year with December 31st To Hinton St. George, on a visit to Lord Westbury. The year opened at Hinton, shooting with Lord Westbury. Montague Smith was there. Nothing ever amused me more than Lord Westbury's society, and I became intimate with him.
I will see what letters I can find, and will write again when I have looked over my packets of letters. This promise was afterwards fulfilled. Lord Westbury's letters were sent to Mrs. T. A. Nash, whom Mrs. Parker afterwards married. Early in January 1884, Mrs. Reeve went to Paris, on a visit to Lady Metcalfe one of Mr. Dempster's nieces. On the 16th Reeve joined her there.
It was slanting off at a bias to the southeast, leaving a long, lean, wedge-shaped gap between it and the last strip. I pulled it off and started again, shifting the angle. But I overdid the thing. This time it went biasing off in the other direction and left an untidy smudge of paste on Westbury's nice, clean strip.
I went back and prepared another strip, humbly and without any attempt at style. This time, too, I did not consider the line of the ceiling, but conformed to the vertical edge of Westbury's final strip, allowing my loose section to dangle like a plumb-line several moments before permitting it to get its death-grip on the wall.
But I run ahead of my story it is a habit. It was Westbury's practical knowledge that first claimed our gratitude. It was complete and infallible. He knew every horse and horned beast and vehicle in the township, and had owned most of them, for he was an inveterate trader.
Fortune was good to us: the Westbury household offered us shelter until we were ready to make at least a primitive beginning, and one could not ask better than that. Mrs. Westbury was a famous cook, and Westbury's religion was conveyed in the word plenty. The hospitality and bounty of their table were things from another and more lavish generation. The Joy promptly gave our hosts titles.
How friendly Westbury's lights looked when we crossed the bridge by the mill and turned into the drive, and what gracious comfort there was in his bright fire and warm, waiting supper. We did not go up the hill that night. Good Old Beek found rest and food and society in Westbury's big red barn. The difficulty was to get busy
He was the head and heart of the whole rebel contention, and his opinions on neutrality were as clear as they were on morality. The private secretary had nothing to do with him, and regretted it, for Lord Westbury's wit and wisdom were great; but as far as his authority went he affirmed the law that in politics no man should be trusted.
He could not persuade the 'Pall Mall Gazette, for which he was then writing, to take this view; but upon Westbury's resignation he obtained the insertion of a very cordial eulogy upon the ex-chancellor's merits as a law reformer. The appointment to the recordership was one of the last pieces of intelligence to give pleasure to my father. Fitzjames had seen much of him during the last year.
He said he would plow down there by the house late in the evening, or on the next wet day. Luther plowed and harrowed and sowed for us two fields of rye and timothy mixed, to insure a future meadow, this on Westbury's advice. A part of one field had great boulders in it, which he suggested we take out.
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