Fifty-One Years of Victorian Life Part 4

When all was over and farewells and congratulations ended, Jersey and I went down for a short honeymoon at Fonthill, which my grandmother lent us.

So ended a happy girlhood--so began a happy married life. I do not say that either was free from shadows, but looking back my prevailing feeling is thankfulness--and what troubles I have had have been mostly of my own making.

My father was so good--my mother so wise. One piece of advice she gave me might well be given to most young wives. "Do not think that because you have seen things done in a particular way that is the only right one." I cannot resist ending with a few sentences from a charming letter which Aunt f.a.n.n.y wrote me when I went to Stoneleigh after my engagement:

"I have thought of you unceasingly and prayed earnestly for you. I could not love you as I do, did I not believe that you were true and good and n.o.ble--and on that, more than on anything else, do I rest my faith for your future. Oh, Marky my darling child, _cling_ to the good that is in you. Never be false to yourself. I see your little boat starting out on the sea of life, anxiously and tremblingly--for I know full well however smooth the water may be now there must come rocks in everyone's life large enough to wreck one. Do you call to mind, dear, how you almost wished for such rocks to battle against a little time ago, wearying of the tame, even stream down which you were floating?

G.o.d be with you when you do meet them."

CHAPTER IV

EARLY MARRIED LIFE

It is more difficult to write at all consecutively of my married life than of my girlhood, as I have less by which I can date its episodes and more years to traverse--but I must record what I can in such order as can be contrived.

We did not stay long at Fonthill, and after a night or two in London came straight to our Oxfordshire home--Middleton Park.

My husband's grandfather and father had both died in the same month (October 1859) when he was a boy of fourteen. He was called "Grandison"

for the three weeks which intervened between their deaths, having been George Villiers before, so when he returned again to Eton after his father died, the boys said that he came back each time with a fresh name. His grandmother, however, the well-known Sarah, Lady Jersey, continued to reign at Middleton, for the largest share of the family fortune belonged to her as heiress of her grandfather Mr. Child--and, I suppose, in recognition of all he had enjoyed of hers, her husband left her the use of the Welsh property and she alone had the means to keep up Middleton. She was very fond of my husband, but when she died, soon after he came of age and inherited the place, he did not care to make many changes, and though his mother paid lengthened visits she had never really been mistress of the house. Therefore I seemed to have come straight upon the traces of a bygone generation. Even the china boxes on my dressing-table and the blotters on the writing-tables were much as Lady Jersey had left them--and there were bits of needlework and letters in the drawers which brought her personally vividly before me. The fear and awe of her seemed to overhang the village, and the children were still supposed to go to the Infant School at two years old because she had thought it a suitable age. She had been great at education, had built or arranged schools in the various villages belonging to her, and had endowed a small training school for servants in connection with a Girls' School at Middleton. Naturally the care of that school and other similar matters fell to my province, and I sometimes felt, as I am sure other young women must have done under similar circ.u.mstances, that a good deal of wisdom was expected from me at an age which I should have considered hardly sufficient for a second housemaid. Some of the schools of that date must have been quaint enough.

An old lame woman still had charge of the Infant School at the neighbouring hamlet of Caulcot, whom we soon moved into the Almshouses. In after years one of her former pupils told me that she was very good at teaching them Scripture and a little reading, but there was no question of writing. If the old lady had occasion to write a letter on her own account she used a knitting-needle as a pen while my informant held the paper steady. If a child was naughty she made him or her stand crouched under the table as a punishment. She never put on a dress unless she knew that Lady Jersey was at the Park, and then, she being crippled with rheumatism, her pupil had to stand on a chair to fasten it up, lest the great lady should pay a surprise visit.

[Sidenote: LORD JERSEY'S MOTHER]

Sarah, Lady Jersey, had a great dislike to any cutting down or even lopping of trees. She had done much towards enlarging and planting the Park, and doubtless trees were to her precious children. Therefore the agent and woodmen, who realised the necessity of a certain amount of judicious thinning, used to wait until she had taken periodical drives of inspection amongst the woods, and then exercised some discretion in their operations, trusting to trees having branched out afresh or to her having forgotten their exact condition before she came again.

In one school, Somerton, I was amused to find a printed copy of regulations for the conduct of the children, including injunctions never to forget their benefactress. But she was really exceedingly good to the poor people on the property and thoughtful as to their individual requirements. One old woman near her other place, Upton, told me how she had heard of her death soon after receiving a present from her, and added, "I thought she went straight to heaven for sending me that petticoat!"

Also she built good cottages for the villagers before the practice was as universal as it became later on. The only drawback was that she would at times insist on the building being carried on irrespective of the weather, with the result that they were not always as dry as they should have been.

Lady Jersey was well known in the world, admired for her beauty and lively conversation, and no doubt often flattered for her wealth, but she left a good record of charity and duties fulfilled in her own home.

As for her beautiful daughter Lady Clementina, she was locally regarded as an angel, and I have heard that when she died the villagers resented her having been buried next to her grandmother, Frances Lady Jersey, as they thought her much too good to lie next to the lady who had won the fleeting affections of George IV.

I soon found home and occupation at Middleton, but I confess that after being accustomed to a large and cheerful family I found the days and particularly the autumn evenings rather lonely when my husband was out hunting, a sport to which he was much addicted in those days. However, we had several visitors of his family and mine, and went to Stoneleigh for Christmas, which was a great delight to me.

Soon after we went abroad, as it was thought desirable after my chest attack of the previous winter that I should not spend all the cold weather in England. We spent some time at Cannes, and I fancy that it really did my husband at least as much good as myself--anyhow he found that it suited him so well that we returned on various occasions.

Sir Robert Gerard was then a great promoter of parties to the Ile Ste Marguerite and elsewhere, and the Duc de Vallombrosa and the d.u.c.h.esse de Luynes helped to make things lively.

[Sidenote: IN LONDON]

I will not, however, dwell on scenes well known to so many people, and only say that after a short excursion to Genoa and Turin we returned in the early spring, or at the end of winter, to superintend a good deal of work which was then being done to renovate some of the rooms at Middleton.

At the beginning of May we moved to 7 Norfolk Crescent--a house which we had taken from Mr. Charles Fane of Child's Bank--and my eldest son was born there on June 2nd, 1873. He had come into the world unduly soon--before he was expected--and inconveniently selected Whit Monday when the shops were shut and we were unable to supply certain deficiencies in the preparations. Nevertheless he was extremely welcome, and though very small on his arrival he soon made up for whatever he lacked in size, and, as everyone who knows him will testify, he is certainly of stature sufficient to please the most exacting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LIBRARY, MIDDLETON PARK.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MIDDLETON PARK. _From photographs by the present Countess of Jersey._]

My mother-in-law and her second husband, Mr. Brandling, were among our frequent visitors. Mr. Brandling had a long beard and a loud voice, and a way of flinging open the doors into the dining-room when he came in in the morning which was distinctly startling. Apart from these peculiarities he did not leave much mark in the world. He was very fond of reading, and I used to suggest to him that he might occupy himself in reviewing books, but I do not think that he had much power of concentration. My mother-in-law was tactful with him, but he had a decided temper, especially when he played whist. As I did not play, this did not affect me.

My younger sister-in-law, Caroline, and I were great friends. She had married Mr. Jenkins, who was well known as a sportsman and an amiable, genial man. His chief claim to fame, apart from his knowledge of horses and their training, was an expedition which he had made to avenge his sister's death in Abyssinia. His sister had married a Mr. Powell and she and her husband had been murdered by natives when travelling in that country. Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Powell's brother went to Egypt, collected followers, went into the territory where the murder had taken place, burned the village which sheltered the aggressors, and had the chief culprits handed over to them for execution. It was said that the fact that a couple of Englishmen would not leave their relatives' death unavenged produced more effect than the whole Abyssinian expedition.

[Sidenote: ISOLA BELLA, CANNES]

The winter after my boy's birth Caroline lost hers, who was a few months older than mine, and was herself very ill, so we invited her and Mr.

Jenkins to join us at Cannes, where we had this season taken a villa--Isola Bella. We were the first people who inhabited it. It has since been greatly enlarged and its gardens so extended that it is now one of the finest houses in the place. Even then it was very pretty and attractive, and we enjoyed ourselves greatly.

There was a quaint clergyman at that time who had known Caroline when she had been sent as a girl to Hyeres, where he then ministered, and where he had been famous for a head of hair almost too bushy to admit of being covered by a hat. He was anxious to re-claim acquaintance, but though civil she was not effusive. He was noted for paying long visits when he got into anyone's house. I heard of one occasion on which his name was announced to a young lady who was talking to a man cousin whom she knew well. The youth on hearing the name exclaimed that he must hide, and crept under the sofa. The visitor stayed on and on till the young man could stand his cramped position no longer and suddenly appeared. The parson was quite unmoved and unmovable by the apparition of what he took to be a lover, and merely remarked "Don't mind me!"

We found this house so charming that we sent our courier back to England to bring out our boy. My aunt, Lady Agnes, and her husband, Dr. Frank, with their baby girl, lived not far off--they had found Isola Bella for us and were pleasant neighbours. My husband, Caroline, and myself found additional occupation in Italian lessons from a fiery little patriot whose name I forget, but who had fought in the war against the Austrians. Among other things he had a lurid story about his mother whose secrets in the Confessional had been betrayed by a priest, resulting in the arrest and I believe death of a relative. After which though the lady continued her prayers she--not unnaturally--declined to make further confessions.

Our sojourn on this visit to Cannes was further brightened by Conservative triumphs in the 1874 elections. We used to sit after breakfast on a stone terrace in front of the villa, Mr. Jenkins smoking and Jersey doing crochet as a pastime--being no smoker; and morning after morning the postman would appear with English papers bringing further tidings of success.

The Jenkinses returned to England rather before ourselves--we travelled back towards the end of April in singularly hot weather, and when we reached Dover Jersey left me there for a few days to rest while he went back to Middleton. Unfortunately the journey, or something, had been too much for me, and a little girl, who only lived for a day, appeared before her time at the Lord Warden Hotel. It was a great disappointment, and I had a somewhat tedious month at the hotel before migrating to 12 Gloucester Square--the house which we had taken for the season.

I have no special recollections of that season, though I think that it was that year that I met Lord Beaconsfield at the Duke of Buccleuch's. It is, however, impossible to fix exactly the years in which one dined in particular places and met particular people, nor is it at all important.

[Sidenote: OXFORDSHIRE NEIGHBOURS]

I would rather summarise our life in the country, where we had garden parties, cricket matches, and lawn tennis matches at which we were able to entertain our neighbours. Now, alas! the whole generation who lived near Middleton in those days has almost pa.s.sed away. Our nearest neighbours were Sir Henry and Lady Dashwood at Kirtlington Park with a family of sons and daughters; Lord Valentia, who lived with his mother, Mrs. Devereux, and her husband the General at Bletchington; and the Drakes--old Mrs.

Drake and her daughters at Bignell. Sir Henry's family had long lived at Kirtlington, which is a fine house, originally built by the same architect--Smith, of Warwick--who built the new portion of Stoneleigh early in the eighteenth century. Sir Henry was a stalwart, pleasant man, and a convinced teetotaller. Later on than the year of which I speak the Dashwoods came over to see some theatricals at Middleton in which my brothers and sisters and some Cholmondeley cousins took part. After the performance they gave a pressing invitation to the performers to go over on a following day to luncheon or tea. A detachment went accordingly, and were treated with great hospitality but rather like strolling players.

"Where do you act next?" and so on, till finally Sir Henry burst out: "What an amusing family yours is! Not only all of you act, but your uncle Mr. James Leigh gives temperance lectures!" Sir Henry's son, Sir George Dashwood, had a large family of which three gallant boys lost their lives in the Great War. To universal regret he was obliged to sell Kirtlington.

It was bought by Lord Leven, whose brother and heir has in turn sold it to Mr. Budgett. Not long before I married, the then owner of another neighbouring place--Sir Algernon Peyton, M.F.H., of Swift's House, had died. Lord Valentia took the Bicester hounds which he had hunted, for a time, rented Swift's from his widow, and ultimately did the wisest thing by marrying her (1878) and installing her at Bletchington. They are really the only remaining family of my contemporaries surviving--and, though they have occasionally let it, they do live now in their own house. They had two sons and six daughters--great friends of my children. The eldest son was killed in the Great War.

Another neighbour was a droll old man called Rochfort Clarke, who lived at a house outside Chesterton village with an old sister-in-law whose name I forget (I think Miss Byrom)--but his wife being dead he was deeply attached to her sister. Soon after our marriage he came to call, and afterwards wrote a letter to congratulate us on our happiness and to say that had it not been for the iniquitous law forbidding marriage with a deceased wife's sister we should have seen a picture of equal domestic felicity in him and Miss ----. He was very anxious to convert Irish Roman Catholics to the ultra-Protestant faith, and he interpreted the Second Commandment to forbid _all_ pictures of any sort or kind. None were allowed in his house. Once he wrote a letter to the papers to protest against the ritualism embodied in a picture in Chesterton Church--an extremely evangelical place where Moody and Sankey hymns prevailed. Later on the clergyman took me into the church to show me the offending idol. It consisted of a diminutive figure--as far as I could see of a man--in a very small window high up over the west door. The most appalling shock was inflicted upon him by a visit to the Exhibition of 1851, where various statuary was displayed including Gibson's "Tinted Venus." This impelled him to break into a song of protest of which I imperfectly recollect four lines to this effect:

"Tell me, Victoria, can that borrowed grace Compare with Albert's manly form and face?

And tell me, Albert, can that shameless jest Compare with thy Victoria _clothed and dressed_?"

The sister-in-law died not long after I knew him, and he then married a respectable maid-servant whom he brought to see us dressed in brown silk and white gloves. Shortly afterwards he himself departed this life and the property was bought by the popular Bicester banker Mr. Tubb, who married Miss Stratton--a second cousin of mine--built a good house, from which pictures were not barred, and had four nice daughters.

I cannot name all the neighbours, but should not omit the old Warden of Merton, Mr. Marsham, who lived with his wife and sons at Caversfield. The eldest son, Charles Marsham, who succeeded to the place after his death, was a great character well known in the hunting and cricket fields. He was a good fellow with a hot temper which sometimes caused trying scenes.

Towards the end of his life he developed a pa.s.sion for guessing Vanity Fair acrostics, and when he saw you instead of "How d'ye do?" he greeted you with "Can you remember what begins with D and ends with F?" or words to that effect. There was a famous occasion when, as he with several others from Middleton were driving to Meet, one of my young brothers suggested some solution at which he absolutely scoffed. When the hounds threw off, however, Charlie Marsham disappeared and missed a first-cla.s.s run. It was ultimately discovered that he had slipped away to a telegraph office to send off a solution embodying my brother's suggestion!

[Sidenote: CAVERSFIELD CHURCH]

Caversfield Church was a small building of considerable antiquity standing very close to the Squire's house. The present Lord North, now an old man, has told me that long ago when he was Master of Hounds he pa.s.sed close to this church out cub-hunting at a very early hour, when the sound of most beautiful singing came from the tower, heard not only by himself but by the huntsmen and whips who were with him--so beautiful that they paused to listen. Next time he met the clergyman, who was another Marsham son, he said to him, "What an early service you had in your church on such a day!"

"I had no weekday service," replied Mr. Marsham, and professed entire ignorance of the "angelic choir." I have never discovered any tradition connected with Caversfield Church which should have induced angels to come and sing their morning anthem therein, but it is a pretty tale, and Lord North was convinced that he had heard this music.

One thing is certain, the tiny agricultural parish of Caversfield could not have produced songsters to chant Matins while the world at large was yet wrapped in slumber.

Thinking of Caversfield Church, I recollect attending a service there when the Bishop of Oxford (Mackarness, I believe) preached at its reopening after restoration. In the course of his sermon he remarked that there had been times when a congregation instead of thinking of the preservation and beautifying of the sacred building only considered how they should make themselves comfortable therein. This, as reported by the local representative, appeared in the Bicester paper as an episcopal comment that in former days people had neglected to make themselves comfortable in church. However, my old Archdeacon uncle-by-marriage, Lord Saye and Sele, who was a distinctly unconventional thinker, once remarked to my mother that he had always heard church compared to heaven, and as heaven was certainly the most comfortable place possible he did not see why church should not be made comfortable. The old family pew at Middleton Church had been reseated with benches to look more or less like the rest of the church before I married, but was still a little raised and separated by part.i.tions from the rest of the congregation. Later on it was levelled and the part.i.tions removed. From the point of view of "comfort," and apart from all other considerations, I do think that the square "Squire's Pew"--as it still exists at Stoneleigh--where the occupants sit facing each other--is _not_ an ideal arrangement.

At Broughton Castle--the old Saye and Sele home--one of the bedrooms had a little window from which you could look down into the chapel belonging to the house without the effort of descending. Once when we stayed there and my mother was not dressed in time for Morning Prayers she adopted this method of sharing in the family devotions.

Broughton Castle, and Lord North's place, Wroxton Abbey (now for sale) are both near Banbury, which is about thirteen miles from Middleton--nothing in the days of motors, but a more serious consideration when visits had to be made with horses.