“_Hutton, Yorkshire, Nov. 30._--I came here yesterday, arriving in the dark. It was a great surprise, as I expected to find the place amid the Middlesborough smoke, to see from the window on awaking a beautiful view of high moorland fells beyond the terraced gardens. I laugh when I think how the Duchess of Cleveland rejoiced in giving Mrs. Pease such a pleasant change to Raby, to see this intensely luxurious house by Waterhouse, filled with delightful collections of books, pictures, and carved furniture, and its almost Arabian-Night-like conservatories.
“We have been through bitter wind to Guisborough Abbey--only a grand church front standing lonely near a fine avenue of trees in the grounds of Colonel Challoner.
“Mr. and Mrs. Pease are excellent. He is member for Darlington, son and nephew of the famous Pease Brothers. She, formerly a Fox of Falmouth, is one of the most charming people I ever saw, full of the sweetest and simplest natural dignity. She lives in and for her children, and though the mother of six girls and two boys, looks about six-and-twenty herself.[152]
“There is a Mr. Stover here who is amusing. An uncle of his lives in the haunted house at Biddick. One day when he came in from shooting, he hung his hat on a pole-screen, and sat down by the fire to read his newspaper. Presently, looking over his paper, he saw, to his amazement, his hat on the top of the screen nodding at him. He thought he must be dreaming, but watched, and it certainly nodded again. He got up and walked round it, when it seemed still. Then he sat down again and watched it, and it nodded again, and not only that, but the screen itself seemed to be moving bodily towards him. He watched it, and it certainly crossed part of the pattern of the carpet: of this there could be no doubt. Then he could bear it no longer, and he rushed at the screen and knocked it over. Underneath was his tame tortoise.”
“_Wentworth Wodehouse, Dec. 3._--This house has a very stately effect as you approach it, with a truly majestic portico. On the first floor is an immense hall like those in the great Roman houses, and on either side diverge the reception rooms, hung with pictures. Amongst the portraits are several of the great Lord Strafford, with his parents, his son, and his two daughters--Anne and Arabella. Of these, the elder married the Marquis of Rockingham, from whom the present owners are descended. The picture by Vandyke of Lord Strafford and his secretary is glorious. The rooms themselves want colour and effect. Sixty guests can stay in the house, and a hundred and twenty can dine without any crowd, but the place needs great parties of this kind, for smaller ones are lost in these vast suites of too lofty rooms. Lord Fitzwilliam[153] is the very type of a high-bred nobleman, and Lady Fitzwilliam[154] has a sweet and gentle manner; but Lady F. is calm and placid, her two daughters calmer and placider, and Lord F. calmest and placidest.