The Next Morning (Sunday), After
An Agreeable Breakfast In The Long, Low-Walled Breakfast-Room, Which
Opens Upon The Flower Garden, We Went To Windsor To Worship In St.
George's Chapel.
The Queen's stall is rather larger than the
others, and one is left vacant for the Prince of Wales.
LONDON, July 29th
And now with a new sheet I must begin my account of Nuneham. . . .
The Archbishop of York is the second son of Lord Vernon, but his
uncle, Earl Harcourt, dying without children, left him all his
estate, upon which he took the name of Harcourt. We arrived about
four o'clock. . . . The dinner was at half-past seven, and when I
went down I found the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Caroline Leveson-
Gower, Lord Kildare, and several of the sons and daughters of the
Archbishop. The dinner and evening passed off very agreeably. The
Duchess is a most high-bred person, and thoroughly courteous. As we
were going in or out of a room instead of preceding me, which was
her right, she always made me take her arm, which was a delicate way
of getting over her precedence. . . . At half-past nine the [next
morning] we met in the drawing-room, when the Archbishop led the way
down to prayers. This was a beautiful scene, for he is now ninety,
and to hear him read the prayers with a firm, clear voice, while his
family and dependents knelt about him was a pleasure never to be
forgotten. . . . At five I was to drive round the park with the
Archbishop himself in his open carriage. This drive was most
charming. He explained everything, told me when such trees would be
felled, and when certain tracts of underwood would be fit for
cutting, how old the different-sized deer were--in short, the whole
economy of an English park. Every pretty point of view, too, he
made me see, and was as active and wide-awake as if he were thirty,
rather than ninety. . . . The next morning, after prayers and
breakfast, I took my leave.
LETTER: To A.H.
BISHOP'S PALACE, NORWICH, August 1st
My dear Ann: How I wish I could transport you to the spot where I
am writing, but if I could summon it before your actual vision you
would take it for a dream or a romance, so different is everything
within the walls which enclose the precincts of an English Cathedral
from anything we can conceive on our side of the water. . . . Some
of the learned people and noblemen have formed an Archaeological
Society for the study and preservation [of] the interesting
architectural antiquities of the kingdom, and [it] is upon the
occasion of the annual meeting of this society for a week at Norwich
that the Bishop has invited us to stay a few days at the palace and
join them in their agreeable antiquarian excursions. We arrived on
Friday at five o'clock after a long dull journey of five hours on
the railway.
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