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 passed 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 partitions from the rest of the congregation. Later on it was levelled and the partitions 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.
LIFE AT MIDDLETON
Mr. Cecil Bourke was clergyman at Middleton when I married and had two very nice sisters, but he migrated to Reading about two years later, and was succeeded by the Rev. W. H. Draper, who has been there ever since. He is an excellent man who has had a good wife and eleven children. Mrs. Draper died lately, to the sorrow of her many friends. Some of the children have also gone, but others are doing good work in various parts of the Empire. Old Lord Strathnairn, of Mutiny fame, was once staying with us at Middleton. He was extremely deaf and apt to be two or three periods behind in the conversation. Someone mentioned leprosy and its causes at dinner, and after two or three remarks that subject was dropped, and another took its place, in which connection I observed that our clergyman’s wife had eleven children. Lord Strathnairn, with his mind still on “leprousy,” turned to me and in his usual courteous manner remarked, “It is not catching, I believe?”
Among other neighbours were Mr. and Mrs. Hibbert at Bucknell Manor, who had six well-behaved little daughters whom, though they treated them kindly, they regarded as quite secondary to their only son. On the other hand, Mr. and Mrs. Dewar at Cotmore were perfectly good to their four sons, but the only daughter distinctly ruled the roost. Moral: if a boy baby has any choice he had better select a family of sisters in which to be born, and the contrary advice should be tendered to a female infant.
To return to our own affairs. The little girl whom we lost in April 1874 was replaced, to our great pleasure, by another little daughter born at Middleton, October 8th, 1875, and christened Margaret like the baby who lay beneath a white marble cross in the churchyard. The new little Margaret became and has remained a constant treasure. Villiers’ first words were “Hammer, hammer,” which he picked up from hearing the constant hammering at the tank in the new water-tower. He was very pleased with his sister, but a trifle jealous of the attentions paid her by his nurse. A rather quaint incident took place at the baby’s christening. When Villiers was born, old Lord Bathurst, then aged eighty-two, asked to come and see him as he had known my husband’s great-grandmother Frances, Lady Jersey (the admired of George IV), and wanted to see the fifth generation. We asked him to stay at Middleton for the little girl’s christening, and after dinner to propose the baby’s health.