’We had one row, which, however, ceased on the appearance of our stalwart troop; indeed, I think one Birmingham smith, a handsome fellow six feet high, whose vehement disinterestedness would neither allow to eat, drink, or sleep in the house, would have scattered them.’

Mr. and Mrs. Austin established themselves at Weybridge in a low, rambling cottage, and we spent some summers with them.  The house was cold and damp, and our dear Hassan died in 1850 from congestion of the lungs.  I always attributed my mother’s bad health to the incessant colds she caught there.  I can see before me now her beautiful pale face bending over poor Hassan as she applied leeches to his chest, which a new maid refused to do, saying, with a toss of her head, ’Lor! my lady, I couldn’t touch either of ’em!’ The flash of scorn with which she regarded the girl softened into deep affection and pity when she looked down on her faithful Nubian servant.

In 1851 my father took a house at Esher, which was known as ’The Gordon Arms,’ and much frequented by our friends.  In a letter, written about that time to C. J. Bayley, then secretary to the Governor of the Mauritius, Lady Duff Gordon gives the first note of alarm as to her health:  ’I fear you would think me very much altered since my illness; I look thin, ill, and old, and my hair is growing gray.  This I consider hard upon a woman just over her thirtieth birthday.  I continue to like Esher very much; I don’t think we could have placed ourselves better.  Kinglake has given Alick a great handsome chestnut mare, so he is well mounted, and we ride merrily.  I expressed such exultation at the idea of your return that my friends, all but Alick, refused to sympathize.  Philips, Millais, and Dicky Doyle talked of jealousy, and Tom Taylor muttered something about a “hated rival.”  Meanwhile, all send friendly greetings to you.’

One summer Macaulay was often at Esher, his brother-in-law having taken a house near ours.  He shared my mother’s admiration for Miss Austen’s novels, and they used to talk of her personages as though they were living friends.  If, perchance, my grandfather Austin was there, the talk grew indeed fast and furious, as all three were vehement, eloquent, and enthusiastic talkers.

When my mother went to Paris in the summer of 1857 she saw Heine again.  As she entered the room he exclaimed ’Oh!  Lucie has still the great brown eyes!’ He remembered every little incident and all the people who had been in the inn at Boulogne.  ’I, for my part, could hardly speak to him,’ my mother wrote to Lord Houghton, who asked her to give him some recollections of the poet for his ‘Monographs,’ ’so shocked was I by his appearance.  He lay on a pile of mattresses, his body wasted so that it seemed no bigger than a child’s under the sheet that covered him, the eyes closed and the face altogether like the most painful and wasted Ecce Homo ever painted by some old German painter.