“I am afraid Lady Salisbury must have got rather knocked out of time coming to the Castle, by all the saluting, trumpeting and general prancing of the guard of honour. She was nervous crossing our drawbridge with four ‘jumpy’ horses which she told me had never been with troops before! Altogether I don’t think this was a day to suit her at all. I heard the postillion riding the near leader shout back to the coachman on the box as they started homeward from our door, ‘Put on both brakes _hard!_’ Away went the open carriage which had very low sides and no hood, and Lord Salisbury, being very wide, rather bulged over the side. Wearing a military cape, lent him by my General, the day turning chilly, he had a rather top-heavy appearance, and we only breathed freely when that ticklish drawbridge, and the very steep drop of the hill beyond it, were passed. So now let them rest at Walmer. Will will do all he can to secure peace for them there.”
On August 20th I went to poor Sir John Millais’ funeral in St. Paul’s. The ceremony was touching to me when I thought of the kind, enthusiastic friend of my early days and his hearty encouragement and praise. They had placed his palette and a sheaf of his brushes on the coffin. Lord Wolseley, Irving, the actor, Holman Hunt and Lord Rosebery were the pall-bearers. The ceremony struck me as gloomy after being accustomed to Catholic ritual, and the undertaker element was too pronounced, but the music was exquisite. So good-bye to a truly great and sincere artist. What a successful life he had, rounded by so terribly painful a death!
One of the most interesting of the Dover episodes was our hiring of “Broome Hall” for the South-Eastern District manœuvres in the following September. The Castle was too far away for working them from there, so this fine old Elizabethan mansion, being in the very centre of the theatre of “war,” became our headquarters. There we entertained Lord Wolseley and his staff as the house-party. Other warriors and many civilians whose lovely country houses were dotted about that beautiful Kentish region came in from outside each day, and for four days what felt to me like a roaring kind of hospitality went on which proved an astonishing feat of housekeeping on my part. True, I was liberally helped, but to this day I marvel that things went so successfully. Everything had to be brought from the Castle--servants in an omnibus, _batterie de cuisine_, plate, linen and all sorts of necessary things, in military waggons, for the house had not been inhabited for a long while. All the food was sent out from Dover fresh every day, by road--no village near. The house had been palatially furnished in the old days, but its glory was much faded and so ancestral was it that it possessed a ghost. A pathetic interest attaches to “Broome” to-day, and I should not know it again in its renovated beauty. Lord Kitchener restored it to more than its pristine lustre, I am told.