LETTERS TO HIS WIFE.

333

Hon. Sir Charles Murray to his Wife.

"TOUGH-MEAT AND SKIM-MILK HOTEL, EASTBOURNE, 1875.

I have been reading the 'Standard' of yesterday during breakfast, and saw there a notice of a book by a Mr Drummond (brother of Lord Strathallan), describing his sporting tour of five years in S. Africa; and the number of lions, elephants, rhinoceros, and other wild animals, as well as buffaloes, antelopes, &c., &c., which, during that time, by his own account, he has slaughtered by hundreds if not by thousands, seems almost incredible! The newspaper critic thus finishes his article: A score or two of hunters as unsparing and indefatigable as Mr D. would soon annihilate the game of a whole continent.' of a whole continent.' . . . This tallies with what I saw and read forty years ago in the Far-West prairies, amid those vast herds of buffalo which pasture there. The Indians (savages!) kill exactly what they require for their food, dress, and tents, while the white men (Christian sportsmen and civilised traders) slaughter them by thousands to take the buffalo tongues and hides, leaving the carcasses to be devoured by wolves and vultures."1

1 Such was Murray's impression, derived from his experience with the sportsmanlike Pawnees; but the general run of Indians were no whit less bloodthirsty than the white men. Catlin ('North American Indians,' vol. i. p. 256) describes scenes of almost incredible butchery, and foretells, so far back as 1840, the ultimate extinction of the bison. He relates how, when he was on the Upper Missouri, six hundred mounted Dakotas started after a huge herd at noon, returning at

The Same to the Same.

"AIX-LES-BAINS, September 25th, 1875. 'Yesterday evening I tried to console myself for your absence from my dinner-table by inviting two very agreeable elderly persons to share my meal. They made themselves so agreeable that I did not require to utter a word; I had only to listen to their lively and witty sallies. The lady was much the older of the two, and both in the earlier and middle portions of her life had been rather too celebrated for her gallantries; but now that her advanced age had reduced those to matters of memory, and she was living perforce a respectable life, I naturally expected that, if she alluded at all to those discreditable bygone days, it would be with some expression of satisfaction at the change that time had wrought in her way of life. You may imagine, then, my surprise at hearing her say in regard to those old days, 'Qui m'aurait proposé une telle vie (comme celle que je mène à present) je me serais pendue'! Now I know you are dying to learn the names of this old couple, so I will satisfy your curiosity-St Evrémond and Ninon de l'Enclos. If you get this before you leave, bring my cigars with you. Remember, when you come to the frontier and the visite des bagages, to curb that little spirit of impatience which is apt to break forth in you at

sundown with no fewer than fourteen hundred fresh buffalo tongues, which they sold to the Hudson Bay traders for a few gallons of whisky. The carcasses were left where they fell, to be devoured by wolves.

LETTER FROM DEAN STANLEY.

335

sight of a French official. Don't forget that the more you irritate them the deeper will their paws go into your box; and if they find the box of baccy, you must prepare a petite scène de comédie with Marcelline-turn suddenly upon her, and ask her how she dared to bring cigars for her husband in your box, and thus, on paying the duty, you may save them."

Perhaps there never was a less legible hand than that of the writer of the following, which must therefore be taken "errors excepted":

Dean Stanley to Hon. Sir Charles Murray.

"DEANERY, WESTMINSTER, Good Friday, 1878. "It so happens that Farrar (who is now my neighbour and colleague as Canon of Westminster) has written an essay on this very subject of Matt. xix. 24, which contains all the information which you desire. It there appears (1) that the proposal to turn camelus into a cable is quite unwarrantable; (2) that the use of 'needle's eye' to express an impossible passage for a huge creature is proverbial amongst the Rabbinical writers for chimerical projects, usually not in connection with a camel, but an elephant. Therefore no further illustration is needed.

"But (3) the illustration which you mention of the wicket-gate of a town is given in Lord Nugent's. . . This I imagine is the book in which you saw it, and to which the 'Family

Herald' alludes. The town where he reports himself to have seen a gate so called is not Jericho (which in its modern state of sporadic ruin has no gates), but Hebron. Farrar also refers to Sir J. Ch―'s in Rome.' But the most precise and interesting account is from a nameless traveller whose letter he quotes, who in 1835 saw a camel trying to push through a gate, so called, in the house of a Jew in Morocco.

"Old David Morier, who died this year, had a Bible annotated with oriental references to customs in Persia and elsewhere, by his brother Hadji Baba. If you would like me to look at this or I will do so. I think that the name of the gate probably sprang from the same run of thoughts that produced the proverb. I never fill [? fall or fell] in with anything of the kind myself. Yours sincerely, A. P. STANLEY."

CHAPTER XIII.

1882-1892.

HOME LIFE.

IN 1882 the Murrays abandoned the home at Oaklands Hall, which they had occupied for eight years, and went to the Grange, a beautiful house near Old Windsor, which they had built for their son Cecil.

There is a letter early in that year from a famous old sportsman, Horatio Ross, then in his eightyfirst year, enclosing a card target showing his practice at fifty yards with a rook-rifle. He exults with the glee of second boyhood over the steadiness of his octogenarian eye and hand, and advises Sir Charles to take to rifle-shooting as an agreeable pastime for old age.

During the autumn of 1882, and occasionally in subsequent years, Lady Murray's health prevented

Y