The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope Part 11

Of their Yorkshire neighbours who did not live in the immediate vicinity, the family at Cannon Hall saw but little during the winter months; therefore, during their journeys to and from town, they invariably took the opportunity of staying a few nights with those friends whose houses happened to lie conveniently near the line of route. One of the places thus constantly visited by them was Fryston, where at this date there dwelt, with a numerous family, the widow of Richard Slater Milnes, formerly M.P. for York.

The position of the Milnes in Yorkshire was almost unique. In Wakefield, during the flight of years, there sprang into prominence certain merchant princes whose names became household words throughout the county. The Milnes, Heywoods and Naylors, in turn, rose to affluence; but foremost and distinct among these remained the Milnes, who from 1670 owned the great cloth trade of the North, and who, towards the close of the eighteenth century, were represented by four brothers whose firm had secured a monopoly of that trade between England and Russia.

These brothers, by reason of their wealth and influence, were received on terms of intimacy by the older county families. They built themselves each a substantial house in Wakefield, fashioned out of bricks which they manufactured and timber which they had imported from Russia, with which country they were naturally in constant communication in the course of their business. These houses, which stood close together, facing the main road through Wakefield, were handsome in construction and luxuriously furnished; but, by and by, two branches of the family migrated from the town of their birth; James Milnes built Thornes House, and Richard Slater Milnes purchased the estate of Fryston, where he took up his residence about 1790. His new possession was a larger and more comfortable home than the dwelling he had quitted, and although standing in the centre of the great West Riding industries, it was beautifully situated on the banks of the river Aire. Besides extensive gardens and shrubberies, it was surrounded by a fine park, while adjoining it were miles of beautiful larch and beech woods. On the death of Richard Slater Milnes it pa.s.sed into the possession of his son, Robert Pemberton, who with his brother, Richard Rodes, were the only two sons in a family of nine children.

The brothers, in some particulars, presented a marked contrast to each other, though both were fascinating and clever.

Robert Pemberton was extremely eccentric, but brilliant. He was recognised to be full of promise, and it was antic.i.p.ated that he would one day make a considerable stir in the political world. Writing of him many years later, John Stanhope mentioned the following anecdotes:--

"Mr Milnes of Fryston was one of my earliest friends. After a sharp contest with Mr Smyth of Heath he was returned for the Borough of Pontefract. His Maiden speech in Parliament produced a very great sensation; but a second speech which he made shortly after was considered as a failure, though Mr Plummer Ward, himself no bad judge, declared it was superior to the former and spoke highly of it. I rather think that Milnes terminated it abruptly and was considered to have broken down. He seems himself to have thought so for he made no further effort, and, soon after, abandoning all political views, turned his mind entirely to Agriculture.

"At that date Milnes was a wild, unstable creature, at one time devoting his days and nights to reading; at another giving them up to play; at another engrossed entirely with shooting; always agreeable, clever and sarcastick, he was everything by fits but nothing long, yet always dearly loved by his friends and companions, always a straightforward man, full of high feeling and honour.

"Perhaps nothing will give a better idea of the wild spirit of his character than an occurrence that took place in his youthful days. At a time when Battues and a system of the preservation of game as it is now carried on in Norfolk were little known in this part of the country, he undertook the entire management of the game at Fryston, and succeeded in stocking the Plantations there with abundance of Pheasants. Not content with giving his orders to the keepers, he used frequently to accompany them in their nightly watches.

"On one of these occasions they fell in with a party of poachers, who took to their heels.

"Milnes, who was the foremost in the chace, succeeded in grappling one of the fugitives. The man struggled on to the brink of a deep quarry and finding that Milnes did not slacken his grasp, determined to dare the jump, calculating, as he afterwards confessed, that as his limbs were strong and well knit, that he should suffer no damage, but that Milnes, being slight, would break his leg. Milnes, nothing daunted, kept his hold, and went down with the poacher, whose calculations were reversed, for _he_ broke his legs, and Milnes escaped, comparatively speaking, unscathed."

Rodes Milnes, the younger brother of Pemberton, though gifted with less natural genius, at first bid fair to be of a more dependable character; and while his mother retained an interest in the firm of Milnes, Heywood & Co., he continued to go into Wakefield regularly two or three times a week to look after the business, driving himself in a phaeton drawn by a pair of beautiful black ponies. But later he became closely connected with the turf, and many lively stories are attached to his name. He and Mr Peter of Stapleton were racing a.s.sociates, and their stable won the St Leger no fewer than five times in eight years; he was also a turf comrade of Lord Glasgow, and after a successful day at York Races, it is said that these two friends would station themselves at the window of the inn where they were staying and stop every pa.s.senger to insist that he or she should drink a gla.s.s of wine with them.

Rodes Milnes was exceedingly handsome, but later in life became very stout, after which he used to enjoy the pleasures of sport in a somewhat original fashion. In the middle of the plantations at Fryston was a mound on which he used to seat himself in a revolving chair; the keeper would then beat the neighbouring woods in order to drive the birds in the direction of the mound, and as they appeared, Rodes Milnes used to spin round in his chair and take rapid shots at the flying game.

As the Milnes withdrew themselves more and more from their former business, the Naylors came to the fore. For long this later firm was represented by two brothers, John and Jeremiah. The former was the ornamental partner, the latter the useful. John, clad in faultlessly cut clothes and a carefully powdered wig, was an impressive figure, and was well supported in his picturesque role by his wife, a handsome and stately dame. Jeremiah, the working bee, was less polished in manner and more careless in dress. As Rodes Milnes drove into Wakefield twice a week, so did Jeremiah Naylor drive into Leeds Market regularly every Tuesday and Sat.u.r.day morning, in order to buy white and coloured cloth in its unfinished state. Thence he would return followed by one or two large waggons full of the cloth so purchased, which was subsequently finished, partly at the works of his firm and partly by cloth dressers in the town.

Indeed, Jeremiah, who was noted for his shrewd business capacity and frugal tendencies, was said to have bought one-third of all the cloth manufactured in the West Riding.

Only on one occasion is it reported that the shrewd Yorkshireman was outwitted in a bargain. The story is thus amusingly told by the late Mr Clarkson of Alverthorpe Hall:--

"Mr Jeremiah Naylor had a favourite mare which used to take him to Leeds twice a week; but at last, from age, she got past her work, and he unwillingly consented to sell her. He drove her himself to Doncaster fair, and early in the day met with a customer; but at a very low price. After this shabby way of disposing of an old favourite he had to look out for a successor, and after dinner went again into the fair where, after a critical search, he saw for sale an animal likely to suit him, which took his fancy from its resemblance to his old favourite of twenty years before. The price was a stiff one, but the bargain was concluded at last, and the new purchase put into the harness, which seemed exactly to fit.

"Mr Naylor was delighted with the pace at which his fresh steed took him home to Wakefield; but on arriving at his house, was met by his old groom, who, after scanning the new acquisition, said dryly: 'Well, Sir, you've brought the old mare back again!' Mr Naylor rather rebuked the man, who replied by loosening the mare from the harness, when she walked straight to her own stand in the stable, and doubtless felt there was no place like home. The poor thing had been cropped and docked and groomed so as completely to deceive her old master."

As the Naylors waxed in wealth they considered themselves to be the successful rivals of the former great merchants of Wakefield, the Milnes and Heywoods, so that it is said a favourite toast of theirs was--"The Milnes _were_, the Heywoods _are_; and the Naylors _will be_"; a toast destined never to be realised, for in 1825 the mercantile house of the Naylors collapsed.

Another Yorkshire neighbour whom the Stanhopes visited at this date was Mr Beaumont of Whitley Beaumont, [10] and although on this occasion the entry regarding their visit is scanty, a fuller description of their eccentric host, written by Marianne the following autumn, may be here inserted:--

_Nov. 14th, 1808._

Last Monday we met the Mills' at Grange, she, delightful as usual. We returned the next day, and in our road called on Mr Beaumont of Whitley.

The master of Whitley is a strange creature, half mad. He leads the life of a hermit, and has not had a brush, painter or carpenter in his house since he came into possession many, many years ago.

It is more like a haunted house in a romance than anything I ever saw.

He is now an old man, and has never bought a morsel of furniture; half the house never was finished; one of the staircases has got no banisters. The stables were burnt down some time ago and have never yet been rebuilt. The rooms he lives in have not been put to rights for many years--a description of the things they contain would not be easy,--hats, wigs, coats, piles of newspapers, magazines and letters, draughts, bottles, wash-hand basins, pictures without frames, apples, tallow candles and broken tea-cups.

The whole house looks like a place for lumber. There are some fine rooms, but so damp and mouldy it is quite shocking. There is a chapel completely filled with old rubbish and a plaid bed which was put up for the Pretender.

In the room Mr Beaumont sleeps in I saw his coffin made of cedar wood.

He scarcely ever sees a living creature and quite dislikes the sight of a woman. He does everything in the room, which no housemaid ever enters, nor indeed any part of the house.

We saw there Jack Mills, the Democrat, and his little boy who is christened Alfred Ankerstrom Mirabeau. Ankestrome was the man who killed the King of Sweden; Mirabeau the chief author of the French Revolution. He was G.o.dfather to this boy. Before you re-instate the Bourbons, should you not extirpate such a man?

Shortly after the return of the Stanhopes to town in 1807 they entertained a guest of a very opposite character, but nearly as remarkable for eccentricity as was the hermit of Whitley. In Walter Stanhope's journal for January 30th of that year is recorded a dinner party of strangely incongruous elements. "This night there dined with us Wilberforce, Wharton, Smedley, Skeffington, Sir Robert Peel and Ward."

John William Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, was the son of a former Yorkshire neighbour of the Stanhopes, Julia, second daughter of G.o.dfrey Bosville of Gunthwaite. As such he was an _habitue_ of their entertainments both in London and the country, and was much liked by them in spite of his peculiarities, which occasionally led to most awkward _contretemps_.

An exceptionally brilliant man, agreeable, a profound scholar, a witty _raconteur_ and noted for a remarkable memory, of which several surprising instances are still recorded, Mr Ward, in common with so many of his contemporaries, was also a celebrated _gourmet_, and experienced the popularity of the host who provides dinners of unusual excellence for his friends. In view of these recommendations, his eccentricities were treated with leniency by those who suffered from them; none the less, they were apt to occasion most of his acquaintances, including the Stanhopes, considerable alarm. For, a singularly absent-minded man, Mr Ward was not only in the habit of unconsciously uttering aloud his most secret reflections in a voice which could not fail to reach the ears of those most concerned, but his often uncomplimentary criticisms were sometimes, in complete mental aberration, actually addressed to the subject of his thoughts. At a dinner party this was extremely embarra.s.sing, and when he was seen, according to his usual habit, to be engaged in stroking his chin contemplatively, preparatory to giving vent unwittingly to severe strictures upon his host or his fellow guests, universal uneasiness might be observed to prevail amongst all present.

Still more, such remarks on his part were apt to be uttered in a fashion calculated further to upset the gravity of those who overheard them. Even in ordinary conversation Mr Ward had a curious trick of employing two voices of a totally different type--one, Marianne Stanhope described as being drawn from the cellar, the other, as having its origin in more celestial regions. At one moment he spoke in the deepest ba.s.s, and the next in the highest tenor, these different tones sometimes succeeding each other with a rapidity which was singularly disconcerting, and which strangers found so perplexing that it was with difficulty they could believe two different persons were not addressing them in such varied notes. Yet, with all this eccentricity, his conversation was so well worth listening to that the matter and not the manner of it remained in the minds of his guests. Therefore, it was with universal regret that, during his later years, and after he had been Foreign Secretary under Lord G.o.derich, his friends learnt how his peculiarities had developed into mania, and how he had been placed under restraint.

Nor was he the only guest destined afterwards to be the victim of a tragic fate, amongst those present at the dinner party with which Mrs Stanhope began the season of 1807. Another man, then in the heyday of popularity and fame, was doomed to a yet sadder close to his meteoric career.

Sir Lumley Skeffington, of Skeffington Hall, Leicestershire, was a celebrated votary of fashion. Descended from "Awly O'Farrell, King of Conereene," and from innumerable Kings and Princes of Ireland, his ancient lineage, as well as his p.r.o.nounced dandyism, gave him a claim upon the attentions of society, which was further augmented by his literary pretensions. Nevertheless, he subsequently experienced a reverse of fortune, typical of the days in which he lived; and of his rise and fall John Stanhope gives a brief account.

"Poor Skeffington," he relates, "was the Dandy of the day, _par excellence_. Remarkable for his ugliness, his dress was so exaggerated as to render his lack of beauty the more marked. He was a very good-natured man, and had nothing of the impertinence of manner of the fops who succeeded him. Moreover, he was a _bel-esprit_, writing epilogues and prologues, and was at one time the observed of all observers. I have seen him at an a.s.sembly literally surrounded by a group of admiring ladies."

Skeffington, in short, in 1805, wrote a play ent.i.tled "The Sleeping Beauty," which, produced at great expense at Drury Lane, gained for him much fame among his contemporaries and caused him for a time to be looked upon as a lion in the fashionable world. Enjoying to the full his reputation as a literary celebrity, he elected to ape certain mannerisms and eccentricities which he considered in keeping with this character.

"He," Gronow mentions, "used to paint his face like a French toy. He dressed _a la Robespierre_ and practised other follies, although the consummate old fop was a man of literary attainments, remarkable for his politeness and courtly manners, in fact, he was invited everywhere. You always knew of his approach by an _avant courier_ (sic) of sweet smells, and as he advanced a little nearer, you might suppose yourself in the atmosphere of a barber's shop."

Skeffington, after the publication of his play, was known by the nickname of "The Sleeping Beauty," and a representation of him in that role John Stanhope describes as "the best caricature I ever saw." Tall, thin, and a complete slave to his toilet, Sir Lumley not only indulged in an abnormal use of perfumes and cosmetics, but was incessantly to be seen combing his scented tresses by the aid of a hand mirror, till it was suggested that one of his Royal ancestors must have formed a _mesalliance_ with the mermaid who most appropriately figured in his armorial bearings, similarly employed. The extreme slimness of his figure was accentuated by a coat which he made as famous as Lord Petersham did the garment called after his name; and Byron added to the fame of the beau by mentioning him in the satire "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers":--

And sure great Skeffington must claim our praise For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays Renowned alike; whose genius ne'er confines Her flight to garnish Greenwood's gay designs, Nor sleeps with 'Sleeping Beauties,' but anon In five facetious Acts comes thundering on, While poor John Bull, bewildered with the scene, Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARICATURE OF SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON AS "THE SLEEPING BEAUTY."]

Unfortunately, however, the harmless foibles of Sir Lumley were combined with an unbounded extravagance which finally involved the luckless dandy in a ruin as complete as it was pathetic. He disappeared from fashionable life to undergo a dreary imprisonment, and when he at last issued thence, the world which had showered blandishments upon him in his prosperity, would have no more of him. In vain did he dress exquisitely, enunciate witticisms and a.s.sume a gaiety of manner which he was far from feeling.

The friends who had courted his society before his downfall now shunned his acquaintance, and a _bon-mot_ uttered at his expense elicited the applause which his most happily-conceived jests failed to evoke. On some stranger pointing out Skeffington to Lord Alvanley, and inquiring who was that smart-looking individual, Alvanley responded with a wit more keen than kind--"It is a second edition of 'The Sleeping Beauty,' bound in calf, richly gilt and ill.u.s.trated by _many cuts_."

For long did the luckless beau continue, with a pathetic persistence, to haunt the scenes of his former triumph. At theatres, at picture auctions, in the Park, and in all fashionable thoroughfares, he was a familiar sight, still with the pa.s.sing of years the b.u.t.t of the contemporaries who had once fawned upon him, and, as they gradually diminished, the standard jest of a younger generation. With the flight of Time, the blackness of his false ringlets never varied, the brilliant rouge of his cheeks, or the strange costume which he had worn during the heyday of his existence, and to which he clung after it had been obsolete for half a century. And with each year his slim figure became yet thinner, his back more bent, and his spindle legs more bowed, till at length the man who had been born early in the reign of George III. witnessed the dawning of the year 1850; after which the quaint figure of the once-famous Sir Lumley Skeffington was seen no more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME CATALANI _From an engraving by Carten in the collection of Mr A. M. Broadley._]

But of the fate which the future held for their guest, the Stanhopes can little have dreamed when Sir Lumley dined with them a few months after the production of his play and at the moment when his society was courted by all his acquaintances. The little dinner party composed of so many brilliant conversationalists was enjoyed by all present; the reaction which it represented to the host and hostess after the comparatively quiet week in Yorkshire was much appreciated by them; and two nights after the entry respecting it, Mrs Stanhope records further gaieties:--

Marianne went to the Opera last night with the charming Miss Glyn. It was thin & they were in their old box for the first time this season, & that is so high up, no one found them out, but she saw Frank Primrose [11] at a distance. The Opera is new done up and beautiful.

Catalani [12] is very good in the Comic Opera, & there is a new dancer who is a scholar of Parisides, and dances delightfully. Kelly's room [13] is no longer open, therefore, the only ways out are the great and chair doors. However, one good has arisen--the large room has become the fashion.

London is thin, & the only party I have heard of is one at Mrs Knox's on the birthnight.

_Marianne Spencer-Stanhope to John Spencer-Stanhope._ _February 8th, 1807._

Yesterday, we dined at Sir Richard Glyn's.... Poor d.i.c.key! he was more forlorn than ever. I never did see such a little wooden puppet. He speechified just in the way you used to say he did at Christ Church to all the ladies in rotation. His chief business is getting chairs for the company. I think the old description of a husband would very well apply to him.... "_It is a thing that sits at the bottom of the table & likes legs better than wings of Chicken._"