Berry hill, belonging to Mr Thomas Walker, was the nearest house to Fountain Dale, just about three miles off over the heath, a climb the whole way. Mr and Mrs Walker were hospitable people, very kind, childless, so they surrounded themselves with relations. Their connexions were all among the mercantile aristocracy of England, a new phase of life to me with my old highland blood, and one at which I opened my eyes with wonder. The profusion of money among all these people amazed poor me. Guineas were thrown about, as we would not have dreamed to deal with shillings. There was no ostentation, no great show any where, but such plenty, such an affluence of comfort. Servants well dressed, well fed; eating, indeed, went on all day upstairs and downstairs, six meals a day the rule. Well appointed stables, delightful gardens, lights every where, fires every where, nothing wanting, every thing wished for was got; yet, though good humoured and very kindly, they were not really happier one bit than those who had to count their pennies and could only rarely gratify their tastes. Generally speaking, the generation which had made the money in the mills was more agreeable than the generation which had left the mills and was spending the well earned money. The younger people were well educated—so-called—the men were School and College bred, gentlemanly, up to the times; but there was a something wanting, and there was too much vivacity! too much noise, no repose. The young women were inferiour to the young men; they were very accomplished, in the boarding school acceptation of the word, but mind there was not, and manners were defective—no ease. They were good, charitable, and highly pleased with their surroundings and with one another, and extremely proud of their brothers. They had all well filled purses. I do not remember hearing the amount of their regular allowances, but I do remember well the new year’s gift at one Walker house. There were four young people of the family, and on lifting the breakfast plate each found a fifty pound note underneath it. William left with me Five pounds for my winter’s pocket money. This cut a sorry figure by comparison.
General and Mrs Need were not rich; they lived quietly, had a small establishment, and, to the credit of the rich relations, lived amongst them, apparently on equal terms. Annie, indeed, was the great lady every where, and extremely beloved. Four, I think, of the County gentlemen visited at Berry hill and Fountain Dale: Mr Coke, a bookworm, with an odd wife; Major Bilby and Captain Cope, cadets of good families, in the militia; and Mr Hallowes, a regular country squire, fit for a novel—short, chubby, goodlooking, shooting, fishing, hunting, hospitable, kindly, a magistrate, and not an ounce of brains. The beautiful old manor house he lived in stood almost alone. In all our drives I never recollect passing a gentleman’s seat; it was a very isolated part of Nottinghamshire, up in the moors. To say the truth, it was rather sleepy work this life in the Forest, and yet the time passed happily. Annie was so bright, so kind, her four boys fine little fellows, and once a fortnight there was an Oyster ploy; the particular friends were invited to meet a barrel of natives and Mr Need, the General’s elder brother; by the bye, his wife was a nice, clever woman, unfortunately very deaf. At Berry hill I once met Mr and Mrs Lempriere—he was a fat little lively man, the son of the ‘Classical Dictionary.’10
One visit I did enjoy; it was to the Strutts of Belper and Derby. General Need’s father, his friend Mr Strutt, and old Arkwright—a barber, I believe—originated the cotton manufacture of England. Arkwright was the Head, Strutt the Hands, and Need the Sinews, for he had had the purse.11 He was a Nottingham Stocking weaver. Of his two sons, one became a country gentleman, land to the value of £4000 a year having been purchased for him about Mansfield. This was John Need. The other, Sam Need, went into the Army with his younger son’s portion, £20,000, into the Cavalry, to India, rose to high command, bore a good name, and married Annie Grant. The four daughters had £100,000 between them. Three of them married in their own Station, and very happily three brothers Walker, all in trade; the fourth, a beauty, won the heart of Mr Abney, a man of family and fortune, which alliance rather separated her from her kindred.
The Strutts were silk weavers. The principal establishment was at Belper, near Derby; such a pretty place, wooded banks and a river, and a model village, the abode of the workmen. Jediah Strutt, who had married a Walker, niece of the General’s, was the manager and part Owner of the Helper mills. He had an extremely pretty house in the village, with gardens behind it down to the river, and such a range of glass houses. There were Schools, an hospital, an infirmary, a Library, a chapel, and a Chaplain of their own persuasion (they were Unitarians), all so liberally provided, Mrs Strutt and her young daughters all so busy in all these departments, assisted by the dear old Chaplain, who was really the soul of his flock. Then there was the Mill. It was the first of the sort I had ever seen, and it made a great impression on me. I forget now whether the moving power was steam or the pure water of the little river, but the movements produced by either are not easily forgotten. It all seemed to me like magick. Immense rooms full of countless rows of teetotums12 twirling away by themselves, or sets of cards in hundreds of hands tearing away at cotton wool of their own accord; smoothing irons in long rows running out of the walls and sliding over quantities of stockings; hands without any bodies rubbing as if for the bare life over wash tubs, and when people wanted to reach another storey, instead of stairs they stept upon a tray, pulled a string, and up they went, or down, as suited them.
One huge iron foundry was really frightful; the Strutts manufactured their own machinery, and in this Cyclops den huge hammers were always descending on huge blocks of iron red hot, some of them, and the heat, and the din, and the wretched looking smiths at work there made a very disagreeable impression. It was a pleasant change to enter the packing house. At this time large bales were being prepared for the Russian market; the goods were built up neatly in large piles, high above our head—a string was pulled, a weight came down, and the big bale shrunk into a comfortable seat!
One of the Strutt family, an old uncle, a bachelour and an oddity, was so enamoured of his machinery that he had as much magick as possible introduced into his own house; roasting, boiling, baking, ironing, all that it was practicable so to manage was done by turning pegs; and being rather a heavy sleeper, a hand came out of the wall in the morning at a certain hour and pulled the bed clothes off him The whole place was amusing; Jediah and Mrs Strutt very nice, and John Strutt, a younger brother, very nice. We went to a Ball in Derby from Belper, and who should I meet there but our old Edinburgh friend Mary Balfour, now Mrs Meynell. What an ugly man she had married, but he was of high degree; and how very plain she had grown, but she had had a long purse. She was delighted to see me, and, I believe, supposed I had moved into Derbyshire for good, she was so very congratulatory; a second look showed me on the arm of the head of the Strutt family, old Mr Strutt of Derby, so she faded quietly away. This old Mr Strutt was charming, very simple, very clever, very artistick in all his tastes; he had lived a great deal abroad, and at the close of those dreadful Napoleon wars had picked up gems of price of all kinds. His house was a museum; paintings, sculpture, china, inlaid woods, not too many, and all suitably arranged.
We went from this house next day on our way home to lunch in Dovedale at Mr Arkwright’s,13 a beautiful little place in a beautiful valley. Such a luncheon of hothouse fruits. The old gentleman came out of his Mill in his miller’s dress and did the honours gracefully. The upper Ten thousand had better look to themselves or they will be shoved from the high places. We paid another visit a little before this time to my old friend Tom Walker of the Scots Greys. He had married a very pretty Irish wife, Constantia Beresford, left the Army, and lived in rather a pretty place not far from Derby. At his house I met two rather agreeable young men, an Irish Mr Bowan, a dragoon, and Count Lapature, an oddity, but a clever one, though a little fine. I was glad to meet them again at the Derby Ball, where I did not know many people. Another very pleasant acquaintance was Colonel Pennington, an old Indian friend of the General’s. He spent a couple of months at Fountain Dale, and left
it to return to Bengal to make out the two years required to complete the 32 years of service. He was an artillery officer, had commanded the Force for some years, after indeed creating it, he was thought a great deal of by military men, and was a clever, agreeable companion, but very plain, old, little, shabby. We made him some marmalade, Annie and I, to remind him of his Scotch lady friends, and he wrote for us some amusing verses in return. He was a furious hunter, and regretted nothing in England so much as his stud.
It is strange that during my long stay in Sherwood I never went but once into Nottingham, though only 15 miles from it. My cousin, the rich Miss Launder, lived there, and Doctor Charles Pennington. it is a fine old city with its Castle upon the hill, from which the town slopes to the green plains all round. I rode once or twice to Newstead with Colonel Pennington. Colonel Wildman was not then settled there; it was undergoing repairs, having only just been bought from Lord Byron,14 and was a fine place certainly, well wooded, with a lake, gardens and shrubberies, but flat, too flat. The house was very fine. One long gallery was divided by skreens into three large rooms, and when filled by the pleasant guests the Wildmans brought there, Annie Need found herself in her right place. When my sister Mary paid her visit to Fountain Dale she and Annie spent half their time at Newstead. Colonel Wildman was West Indian and very rich. He had made one of those queer marriages some queer men make—educated a child for his wife. She turned out neither pretty nor clever, but she satisfied him, and was liked. Haddon Hall was more interesting than Newstead, less attractive, a large high, ugly house. All the reception rooms on the 3rd storey; they were small, low, and scantily furnished; nobody ever lived there, and the Duke of Devonshire’s visits were far apart. One thing touched me. The Duke was childless, unmarried; beside the bed on which he lay when at Haddon was a small cot in which slept the little Cavendish boy who was to be his heir. I can’t recollect any other incidents of my life in Nottinghamshire.
In May I went up to London with the General. We travelled all night, and about 6 o’clock in the morning I was met on Hampstead heath by my dear little Aunt Frere in her demi-fortune.
Uncle Frere had given up his London house, and lived now in a villa on Hampstead heath, a comfortable house, but ugly, standing in a small square of pleasure ground enclosed by high Walls, shutting out all view of very pretty scenery; London in the distance with its towers and its steeples, and its wide spreading streets, and the four or five miles between the great City and Hampstead Hill a perfect confusion of so called country residences. Life in the forest had been sleepy though enlivened by changes and by the hunter’s horn and the bark of dogs, as the horses dashed into the yard on a hunting afternoon, the riders clamouring for bread and cheese and ale, when Annie and I would look out of the back window at what was really a pretty sight. Life at Hampstead was very sleepy, enlivened by nothing, but it was pleasant in a sleepy way, every body was so kind. It was a hot house full of children who did little and servants who did less.
We got up early, as my Uncle had to go to chambers after breakfast, We drove into London nearly every day. We had Freres without end to dinner, such miserable dinners, worse than the breakfasts, for at them we had Twyford sweet brown bread and good butter. We went to bed late, for we were often out at dinner or at plays and Concerts, and twice at the Opera, that was a treat, only no one near me felt the worth of the musick and then we had to drive the four or five miles back, which was very tiring. We always seemed to be busy, yet we did little, there was always a fuss, a quiet fuss, and I was very weary, for we heard nothing, the world was very dead to us, though we were so near the heart of it. And there was no repose, no one was ever left alone. My Uncle and Aunt were all kindness, the children were little things, good and clever, but they were only half alive. I have never since wondered at the wretched health of all that family, the wonder is that any of them lived to grow up after such an exhausting process as was their rearing, no nourishment for either soul or body. No young body could thrive on the unpalatable provisions presented to not very hungry appetites—and no mind could expand where there was so little interest felt in all the improvements of this improving age. They were mostly unnoticed and there was a sort of a religious bar which closed the door against all that was bright and beautiful. Yet these religious feelings were not morose, there was no Calvinism in their creed. As far as their lights allowed, they enjoyed the blessings of their lot. I don’t know that any of my Uncle’s brothers were clever men. Some had got up high but all fell down again. Uncle John made a mill of his Spanish Ambassadorship, Uncle Bartle, who was charming, was outwitted by a woman when acting as Uncle John’s Secretary. Between them they caused the retreat to Corunna and the death of Sir John Moore.15 Excepting these two, they had all the wit to marry rich wives and really only Hatley Frere was below par. My Uncle was a good man of business and a man of good sense, he never seemed to be quite awake enough even to speak distinctly; he drawled his words and through his closed teeth, leaning back in his chair with half closed up eyes, as if quite wearied, as perhaps he was after a hot day’s work in chambers. He was a kind, straight forward man, with a great reputation as a man of business, always intent upon giving pleasure to every one around him. My dear, little Aunt was one of the ‘blessed who are pure in heart,’ and if any of us are ever to ‘see God’ she will be of them, for her whole life on earth was a continued preparation for heaven. Not a praying, stern, faquir like life of self imposed miseries, hardening the heart and closing it against all the gentle and beautiful influences created to be enjoyed by us; her Christian creed was ‘to do good and sin not’; self she never thought of except as a means of rejoicing others. She was in truth the minister of comfort to her circle, the sun of her sphere. She yielded to the habits she found, but had she been thrown among a higher order of minds, her naturally great abilities would have developed themselves still more worthily, cramped as they were. She and all belonging to her were happy. What can we wish for more. She had eight children at this time; John and George at School, fine boys, and two little men at School too, a day School, the lessons for which they prepared with me while I was with them. The two elder girls were nearly grown up, pretty, both of them, the two younger ones were nice little bodies very fond of play. Anne was clever, so was poor Willie who did not live.
Uncle William Frere, we called them all Uncles, had married the most accomplished amateur singer in England. At this time she was taking lessons from Velluti; she missed no opportunity of improving herself. He was delighted with her voice and her style, said there were few professional singers superiour to her. She often rode out to Hampstead with her husband, sang to us the whole evening, and rode back again. I often rode in the mornings to her on my cousin Lizzie’s quiet pony, and she would sing to me alone as readily as to an admiring crowd. I remembered well what she taught me. I frequently rode into town, frightened a little at first by the noise and bustle of the streets, but I got used to it. Sometimes we cantered over the heath and on to Harrow, which was a great deal pleasanter.
I must try and recollect the names of the few remarkable people I met with. I was twice at the Opera and heard Curioni, Pasta, De Begnis, Camporesi, Madame Vestris and Velluti.16 The Messiah was admirably given at the Hanover Square Rooms, and Cramer, who was giving lessons to Miss Richards, called, at her request, to hear the little highland girl sing ‘Hanouer,’ took his violin out of the case, caught up the air, and then played lovely musick of his own as a return for the gaelick Crochallan, and Castle Airley. Sir Robert Ainslie came often to hear the old Scotch ballads, and George Rose to get a listener to his translation of Ariosto, which proceeded but slowly, and never, I believe, was published. Mr William Rose occasionally came to dinner, and that poor, mad poet, Coleridge, who never held his tongue—stood pouring out a deluge of words meaning nothing, with eyes on fire, and his silver hair streaming down to his waist.17 His family had placed him with a young doctor at Highgate, where he was well taken care of. A nephew of his, a fine young man, a great favo
urite with my Uncle, often came to us on a holiday; he was a great lawyer afterwards. Miss Joanna Baillie18 was a frequent visitor; a nice old lady. Then we had Mr Irving of the unknown tongues, the most wonderful orator, eloquent beyond reason, but leading captive wiser heads. Men went to hear him and wondered. Women adored him, for he was handsome in the pulpit, tall and dark, with long black hair hanging down, a pale face set off with teeth superb, and such a pair of flashing eyes. The little chapel he served was crammed with all the titles in London. It was like a birthday procession of carriages, and such a crush on entering as to cause screaming and fainting, torn dresses, etc. Hatley Frere firmly believed this man’s rhapsodies, kept him and his wife and their child in his house for ever so long, and brought them up to us for a day. We thought them very dirty; tried the translations I believe, and was busy at this very time calculating the year for the world to end. Happily the period fixed on passed away, to the exceeding relief of many worthy persons.19 At a Concert of ancient musick to which my Uncle and Aunt kindly took me I saw another celebrity—the Duke of Wellington. He was standing talking with Rogers the poet, who seized on my Uncle as he was passing to appeal to him on some subject they were discussing, and for five minutes I stood next the great Duke.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady Page 60