All Rights Reserved   FIFTY-ONE YEARS OF VICTORIAN LIFE BY THE DOWAGER COUNTESS OF JERSEY LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1922 DEDICATED TO MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury....

AN EARLY VICTORIAN CHILD I was born at Stoneleigh Abbey on October 29th, 1849. My father has told me that immediately afterwards—I suppose next day—I was held up at the window for the members of the North Warwickshire Hunt to drink my health. I fear that their kind wishes were so far of no avail that I never became a sportswoman, though I always lived amongst keen followers of the hounds. For many years the first meet of the season was held at Stoneleigh, and large hospitality extended to the ge

A VICTORIAN GIRL The Christmas festivities of 1862 had to be suspended, as my mother’s health again obliged my father to take her to the South of France. This time I was their sole companion, the younger children remaining in England. We travelled by easy stages, sleeping at Folkestone, Boulogne, Paris, Dijon, Lyons, Avignon, and Toulon. I kept a careful journal of our travels on this occasion, and note that at Lyons we found one of the chief silk manufactories employed in weaving a dress for Pr

MARRIAGE Next year—1870—all thoughts were to a large extent taken up with the Franco-German War. It does not seem to me that we took violent sides in the struggle. Naturally we were quite ignorant of the depths of cruelty latent in the German nature, or of the manœuvres on the part of Bismarck which had led to the declaration of war. We were fond of our sister’s French governess Mdlle. Verdure, and sorry for the terrible collapse of her country, but I think on the whole that the strongest feelin

EARLY MARRIED LIFE It is more difficult to write at all consecutively of my married life than of my girlhood, as I have less by which I can date its episodes and more years to traverse—but I must record what I can in such order as can be contrived. We did not stay long at Fonthill, and after a night or two in London came straight to our Oxfordshire home—Middleton Park. My husband’s grandfather and father had both died in the same month (October 1859) when he was a boy of fourteen. He was called

BERLIN AND THE JUBILEE OF 1887 I find it difficult to recall all our foreign travels. In 1876 I paid—with my husband—my first visit to Switzerland, and three years later we went again—this time making the doubtful experiment of taking with us Villiers aged six and Margaret (called Markie) aged three. Somehow we conveyed these infants over glaciers and mountains to various places, including Zermatt. We contrived a sort of awning over a chaise à porteurs carried by guides—but they did a good bit o

GHOST STORIES AND TRAVELS IN GREECE To go a little back in recollections of the eighties one of our friends was Lord Cairns, Lord Chancellor in 1868 and again from 1874 till, I believe, his death. Once when I was sitting near him at dinner, we were discussing ghost stories. He said that without giving them general credence he was impressed by one which had been told him by the wife of the Prussian Minister, Madame Bernstorff. (I think, though am not sure, that Bernstorff was Minister before ther

VOYAGE TO INDIA—HYDERABAD I must go back a little in these mixed memories to record our early acquaintance with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who afterwards became one of our great friends. I believe that I first met him at Lady St. Helier’s (then Lady Jeune) at a luncheon or party in 1886. We asked him to dinner at 3 Great Stanhope Street, and he accepted—and we also asked the Jeunes. Mr. Chamberlain, though this was about the time that he split with Gladstone over Home Rule, was still regarded as a

MADRAS, CALCUTTA, AND BENARES From Hyderabad we went to Madras to fulfil our promise of paying a visit to Mr. Bourke, who had now become Lord Connemara. We stayed there for over three weeks and became much interested in the Presidency. Being rather remote from the usual routes of visitors it is perhaps less known, and has been called the “Benighted Presidency,” but many of the natives are exceptionally intelligent, and there appears to be more opportunity than in some other parts of India of see

NORTHERN INDIA AND JOURNEY HOME From Benares we went to Lucknow, where we had the good fortune to meet Sir Frederick (afterwards Lord) Roberts, and Lady Roberts, who were exceedingly kind to us during our stay. We had one most interesting expedition under their auspices. We and some others met them by appointment at Dilkusha, a suburban, ruined house of the former King of Oude from which Sir Colin Campbell had started to finally relieve Outram and Havelock in November 1857. Roberts, then a young

WINDSOR—EGYPT AND SYRIA After our return to London in the spring I was greatly surprised when on meeting Sir Henry Ponsonby one day at a party he desired me to send my article on India to the Queen. He was at that time her Private Secretary and knew her deep interest in all things concerning India, but I never imagined that anything which I had written was sufficiently important to be worth her notice. However, I could but do as I was ordered, and I was still more surprised a little later at the

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AUSTRALIA Mr. Hare’s account of our August Party in 1890 mentions the reason of its being the last for some time. My husband had been already offered the Governorship of Bombay and would have liked it for many reasons, but was obliged to decline as the climate might have been injurious after an attack of typhoid fever from which he had not long recovered. He was then appointed Paymaster-General, an unpaid office which he held for about a year. The principal incident which I

FURTHER AUSTRALIAN IMPRESSIONS—NEW ZEALAND AND NEW CALEDONIA Lady Galloway came out to us towards the end of 1891, and in January she accompanied us on one of our amusing expeditions. This time it was about three days’ tour through a hilly—indeed mountainous country. The hills in Australia do not, as a rule, attain great height; it is because they are so ancient in the world’s history that they have been worn down by the storms of ages and the ravages of time. We went, however, to open another r

TONGA AND SAMOA Not long after our return from New Caledonia I set sail again, this time to take advantage of an invitation from the Britannic Land Commissioner to stay with him at his house in Samoa. My brother Rupert Leigh and my daughter Margaret accompanied me on the Norddeutscher Lloyd mail-ship Lubeck . The Germans subsidised the line, but it was, I understood, run at a regular loss. We left on August 3rd, and encountered very rough weather, seas sweeping over the bridge, and even invading

DEPARTURE FROM AUSTRALIA—CHINA AND JAPAN Early in 1893 my husband was obliged to resign his Governorship, as our Welsh agent had died and there were many urgent calls for his presence in England. The people of New South Wales were most generous in their expressions of regret, and I need not dwell on all the banquets and farewells which marked our departure. I feel that all I have said of Australia and of our many friends there is most inadequate; but though the people and places offered much var

JOURNEY HOME—THE NILE—LORD KITCHENER Our sojourn in Japan was all too short, and we sailed from Yokohama in a ship of the Empress Line on May 12. Capturing a spare day at 170° longitude, we reached Vancouver on the Queen’s Birthday. Our thirteen days’ voyage was somewhat tedious, as I do not think that we passed a single ship on the whole transit. The weather was dull and grey, and there was a continuous rolling sea, but I must say for our ship that no one suffered from sea-sickness. She lived u

THE DIAMOND JUBILEE—INDIA—THE PASSING OF THE GREAT QUEEN I realise that in the foregoing pages I have dwelt more on foreign lands than on our own country. This only means that they offered more novelty, not that England was less interesting to my husband and myself. The great Lord Shaftesbury used to say that his was a generation which served God less and man more. I trust that only the latter half of this dictum has proved true, but certainly throughout Queen Victoria’s reign men and women seem