I was engaged about the middle of July, and shortly we returned to Stoneleigh. My mother was terribly busy afterwards, as my brother Gilbert came of age on the first of September and the occasion was celebrated with great festivities, including a Tenants’ Ball, when the old gateway was illuminated as it had been for the Queen’s visit. The ivy, however, had grown so rapidly in the intervening years that an iron framework had to be made outside it to hold the little lamps. There was a very large family party in the house, and naturally my affairs increased the general excitement and I shared with my brother addresses and presentations. As my mother said—it could never happen to her again to have a son come of age and a daughter married in the same month. She was to have launched the Lady Leigh lifeboat in the middle of September, but my sister was commissioned to do it instead—and we returned to Portman Square for final preparations. Like most girls under similar circumstances I lived in a whirl during those days, and my only clear recollections are signing Settlements (in happy ignorance of their contents) and weeping bitterly the night before the wedding at the idea of parting from my family, being particularly upset by my brother Dudley’s floods of fraternal tears. However, we were all fairly composed when the day—September 19th, 1872, dawned—and I was safely married by my Uncle Jimmy at St. Thomas’s Church, Orchard Street. It was not our parish, but we had a special licence as it was more convenient. My bridesmaids were my two sisters, Frances Adderley, one of the Cholmondeleys, Minna Finch (daughter of my father’s cousin Lady Aylesford), and Julia Wombwell’s eldest little girl Julia—afterwards Lady Dartrey.
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 Fanny 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 noble—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? God 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.