House and Garden 
of the great stair, and on every tread and rise 
of it, a wealth of most intricate inlay. At 
last came the sculptors to carve the mantels 
of Carrara marble. 
The enterprise was nearing completion. 
The old house with its manifold memories 
stood in the background, like a friend, 
proven and trusty, but now supplanted. 
Part of it came down to make room for the 
new palace, and part was allowed to remain 
as an appendage in the rear. We have 
learned something of its associations. Were 
the same kind of family affections to gather 
about the magnificence of the new house, 
in time to come, as had hallowed the sim¬ 
plicity of the old? What had Fate in store ? 
Fate soon answered, and with cruel irony. 
The earliest guests to enter, before the noise 
of hammer and chisel had fairly ceased, were 
a horde of angry creditors, eager to seize 
whatever they could lay hands on, and carry¬ 
ing off even a sculptured mantel that they 
found still unfixed. In the midst of the 
turmoil the Countess Verney died, and her 
funeral was the sole family pageant that ever 
issued from the new grand entrance. Pier 
lord, Ralph, was forced to go into hiding 
to evade his creditors, and it is said that 
he only escaped arrest by leaving the 
house in the hearse which had borne his 
wife to her grave. A little later he crept 
back to the stripped and desolate house, 
where he lay a month in hiding, concealed 
by the loyalty of his dependents, who 
brought him food to eat and a bed to lie 
on. In after times old men remembered 
that, as children, they had seen his face at a 
window and had answered his beckoning 
finger when he called for service. In an¬ 
other month he lay dead in his house in 
Curzon Street. This was on 31 March, 1791. 
The stately new house, as he left it, stood 
for a few years in empty splendor, nor was 
it to know any other associations than those 
of ruin and death. It was never inhabited, 
and the niece of its builder, who was created 
Baroness Fermanagh in her own right, caused 
two-thirds of it to be pulled down, leaving 
only the end block as it now remains to con¬ 
vey some idea of its original greatness. The 
Baroness shunned the place shadowed by so 
much misfortune and lived in London, 
where in 1810 she died. The epitaph of 
the house might very well be that of the 
dead infant, 
Since I was so quickly done for,— 
1 wonder what I was begun for. 
The Baroness Fermanagh left the property 
to Sir Harry Calvert, who took the old family 
name, and was better known as Sir Harry 
Verney. When he entered into possession 
both the remnant of the ancient house and 
the fine fragment of the later, were knit to¬ 
gether, and became once more a home. New 
memories of the happy olden kind again gath¬ 
ered about it. Amongst these occurs the name 
of P'lorence Nightingale, a sister of the late 
Lady Verney, and a frequent visitor to the 
house. Her portrait hangs over the mantel¬ 
piece of the room she has often occupied, 
and suggests once more the wideness of 
the range of Fmglish experience. Peaceful 
Claydon, and the hospital beds of Scutari! 
Historical musings, how easily they respond 
to a touch or a name. And who could help 
musing in Claydon House where the old 
portraits and heirlooms are cared for so 
reverently, and which has now again become 
a worthy embodiment of the spirit of the an¬ 
cient race whose seat it was. 
Laborers’ Cottages at Steeple Claydon 
