"Some have many, and some have few;
Here stands the mother of twenty-two."
And what she said was true.
My mother turned south from Shropshire, and I went to Lyme, near Disley, the fine old house of the Leghs, whose then head, W. T. Legh, had married Emily Wodehouse, one of the earliest friends of my childhood. It is a most stately old house, standing high in a very wild park, one of the only three places where wild cattle are not extinct. The story of the place is curious.
"Old Colonel Legh of Lyme left his property first to his son Tom, but though Tom Legh was twice married, he had no sons, so it came to the father of the present possessor. Tom's first wife had been the celebrated Miss Turner. Her father was a Manchester manufacturer, who had bought the property of Shrigley, near Lyme, of which his only daughter was the heiress. She was carried off from school by a conspiracy between three brothers named Gibbon Wakefield and a Miss Davis, daughter of a very respectable master of the Grammar School at Macclesfield. While at school, Miss Turner received a letter from home which mentioned casually that her family had changed their butler. Two days after, a person purporting to be the new butler came to the school, and sent in a letter to say that Mr. Turner was dangerously ill, and that he was sent to fetch his daughter, who was to return home at once. In the greatest hurry, Miss Turner was got ready and sent off. When they had gone some way, the carriage stopped, and a young man got in, who said that he had been sent to break to her the news that her father's illness was a fiction; that they did not wish to spread the truth by letting the governess know, but that the fact was that Mr. Turner had got into some terrible money difficulties and was completely ruined, and he begged that his daughter would proceed at once to meet him in Scotland, whither he was obliged to go to evade his creditors. During the journey the young man who was sent to chaperon Miss Turner made himself most agreeable. At last they reached Berwick, and then at the inn, going out of the room, he returned with a letter and said that he was almost afraid to tell her its contents, but that it was sent by her father's command, and that he only implored her to forgive him for obeying her father's orders. It was a most urgent letter from her father, saying that it rested with her to extricate him from his difficulties, which she could do by consenting to marry the bearer. The man was handsome and pleasant, and the marriage seemed no great trial to the girl, who was under fifteen. Immediately after marriage she was taken to Paris.
"Meantime all the gentlemen in the county rallied round Mr. Turner, and he contrived somehow to get his daughter away whilst she was in Paris. Suspicion had been first excited in the mind of the governess because letters for Miss Turner continued to arrive at the school from Shrigley, and she gave the alarm. There was a great trial, at which all the gentlemen in Cheshire accompanied Mr. Turner when he appeared leading his daughter. The marriage was pronounced null and void, and one of the Gibbon Wakefields was imprisoned at Lancaster for five years, the others for two. It was the utmost punishment that could be given for misdemeanour, and nothing more could be proved. The Gibbon Wakefields had thought that, rather than expose his daughter to three days in a witness box, Mr. Turner would consent to a regular marriage, and they had relied upon that. Miss Turner was afterwards married to Mr. Legh, in the hope of uniting two fine properties, but as she had no son, her daughter, Mrs. Lowther, is now the mistress of Shrigley."
To MY MOTHER.
"Lyme Hall, August 29, 1866.—I have been with Mrs. Legh to Bramhall, the fine old house of the Davenports, near Stockport, with the haunted room of Lady Dorothy Davenport and no end of relics. Out of the billiard-room opens the parish church, in the same style as the house, with prayer-books chained to the seats. We returned by Marple, the wonderfully curious old house of Bradshaw the regicide."
"Sept. 1.—To-day we had a charming drive over the hills, the green glens of pasture-land, the steeps, and the tossing burns recalling those of Westmoreland. I went with Mrs. Legh into one of the cottages and admired the blue wash of the room, 'Oh, you like it, do ye?' said the mistress of the house; 'I don't—so that's difference of opinions.' The whole ceiling was hung with different kinds of herbs, 'for we're our own doctors, ye see, and it saves the physic bills.'
"The four children—Sybil and Mob (Mabel), Tom and Gilbert Legh, are delightful, and Sybil quite lovely. It is a pleasure to hear the little feet come scampering down the oak staircase, as the four rush down to the library to ask for a story at seven o'clock—'A nice horrible story, all about robbers and murders: now do tell us a really horrible one.'"
"Thornycroft Hall, Cheshire, Sept. 3.—The family here are much depressed by the reappearance of the cattle plague. In the last attack sixty-eight cows died, and so rapidly that men had to be up all night burying them by lantern-light in one great grave in the park.... How curious the remains of French expressions are as used by the cottagers here. They speak of carafes of water, and say they should not oss (oser) to do a thing. The other day one of the Birtles tenants was being examined as a witness at the Manchester assizes. 'You told me so and so, didn't you?' said the lawyer. And the man replied, 'I tell't ye nowt o' the kind, ye powther-headed monkey; ask the coompany now if I did.'"