1 It has been thought better to print the earlier portion, or such of it as might interest general readers, after this part of Mrs. Oliphant’s journal, so as to preserve the sequence of the narrative. — Ed.
2 See the section headed ‘Rome, 1864’ at the end of Chapter III, and footnote. — Ed.
3 This is exactly what Sir Walter says in his Diary, only published in 1890, so I was like him in this without knowing it.
4 Probably under thirty. — Ed.
6 This house is the scene of the story of ‘Isabel Dysart,’ reprinted since Mrs. Oliphant’s death. — Ed.
7 Mr. Drummond wrote to me when the article on Irving, which was in a manner the germ of the book, was published. It must have been in the end of 1848. He and all his community were much pleased with it, and had a notion, which my Roman Catholic friends always share, that since I went so far with them I must go the whole way. They gave me great encouragement accordingly, and I was supposed to be going to do just what they wanted to have done. We went to Albury on Mr. Drummond’s invitation, where we stayed three days, I think; and I remember the sensation with which I sat and listened while Mr. Drummond, the caustic wit and man of the world, explained to me how they were guided in setting up their church, and in building their quasi-cathedral in Gordon Square, and of the pillars called Jachin and Boaz, and a great deal more, while Lord Lovaine, his son-in-law, now Duke of Northumberland, a grave man, whose aspect impressed me much, listened gravely, as if to an oracle, and I looked on and wondered, amazed, as I sometimes used to be with Montalembert, at the combination of what seems to my hard head so much nonsense with so much keen sense and power; though I had much more sympathy with Montalembert, even with his medieval miracles, than with Jachin and Boaz. These good people thought, partly because of their deep sense of their own importance, and partly by a trick of sympathy which I had, and most genuine it was, that I was interested beyond measure in them and their ways, whereas it was in Irving I was interested, and listening with all my ears to hear about him, and much less concerned about the Holy Apostolic Church. They were disappointed accordingly, and not pleased with the book.
9 These pages, written in Rome at the moment of her bitter grief for the loss of her daughter, seem most suitably inserted here, though Mrs. Oliphant left them detached. — Ed.
10 “Life on an Island,” ‘Maga.’ January 1865.
11 Very shortly after the time here alluded to “Father Prout” retired to a monastery, where he died in 1866.
12 This is what I thought — that I had so accustomed them to the easy going on of all things, never letting them see my anxieties or know that there was a difficulty about anything, that their minds were formed to that habit, that it took all thought of necessity out of my Cyril’s mind, who had always, I am sure, the feeling that a little exertion (always so easy to-morrow) would at any time set everything right, and that nothing was likely ever to go far wrong so long as I was there. The sentiment was not ungenerous, it was in a way forced upon him, partly by my own insouciance and partly by the fact that he was always saved from any practical effect of foolishness, so that at the last, what with the growth of habit, there was no other way for it but that,— “There is no way but this,” words I used to say over to myself. And my Cecco, who had not these follies, but who was stricken by the hand of God, until that too rendered further going on impossible, by the drying up of my sources and means of getting anything for him — so that I seem sometimes to feel as if it were all my doing, and that I had brought by my heedlessness both to an impasse from which there was no issue but one. It was a kind of forlorn pleasure to me that they had never wanted anything, but this turns it into a remorse. Who can tell? God alone over all knows, and works by our follies as well as our better ways. Must it not be at last to the good of all?