CHAPTER III
REMINISCENCES OF SEDBURY BY MISS DIANA LATHAM[[10]]
My cousin Eleanor Anne Ormerod was the youngest of a family of ten—seven brothers and three sisters—all clever, energetic creatures, and gifted with a strong sense of humour. A large family always creates a peculiar atmosphere for itself; it also breaks up into detachments of elder and younger growth, and the elder members are beginning to take places in the world before the younger are out of the schoolroom. Eleanor’s eldest brother was a Church dignitary while she was still a child, teased and petted by her young medical student brothers, and the darling of her elder sister Georgiana. The father and mother of this numerous flock were both remarkable people. Mr. Ormerod, historian and antiquary, always occupied with literary or topographical research, was an autocrat in his own family and intolerant of any shortcomings or failings that came under his notice. He could, however, on occasion, relax and tell humorous stories to children. The family discipline was strict; the younger members were expected to yield obedience to the elders, and it was said that the spaniel Guy (he came from Warwick), who ranked as one of the children, always obeyed the eldest of the family present. My aunt had a large share of the milk of human kindness added to much practical common sense and a touch of artistic genius in her composition; it was from her that her daughters inherited their eye for colour and dexterity of touch. Mr. Ormerod was a neat draughtsman of architectural subjects, but my aunt had taste and skill and a delight in her own branch of art—flower painting—that lasted all her life.
Sedbury Park (plate I.) was a beautiful home; the house, a handsome family mansion with comfortable old-fashioned furniture, good and interesting pictures, old china, and a splendid library, afforded also ample space for its inmates to follow their various hobbies, and many were the arts and crafts practised there at various times. The carpenter’s bench, the lathe, wood-carving, electro-typing, modelling and casting for models each had their turn, and in all this strenuous play Eleanor had her full share. Society played a very secondary part in life at Sedbury; calls were exchanged with county neighbours at due intervals, and there was some intimacy with Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, the Bathursts of Lydney Park, and the Horts of Hardwicke. But though Mr. Ormerod attended to his duties as magistrate, and went duly to meetings of the bench at Chepstow, he was quite without sympathy for field sports and the pursuits of his brother magistrates. He was absorbed in his own studies, and something of a recluse by nature.
[Miss Ormerod has herself written of the elaborateness of the arrangements and the great formality which were associated with the regular county dinner party, the chief method of entertainment at Sedbury sixty years ago. She referred to the anxieties experienced lest the coach should not arrive in time with the indispensables including fish—“the distance of Sedbury from London involving twenty-four hours or more of transmission in weather favourable or otherwise.” Miss Ormerod continues:—
“One very important matter in the far gone past times in the arrangement of the dinner table, was the removal of the great cloth and of two cloths laid, one at each side, just wide enough to occupy the uncovered space before the guests, and long enough to reach from one end of the table to the other. The removal required a deal of care and dexterity, and I do not think it was practised at many other houses in our neighbourhood. When the table was to be cleared for dessert of course everything was removed, including the great tablecloth itself—one of the handsomest of the family possessions, and of considerable length when there were the usual number of about eighteen or twenty guests. The operation was performed as follows:—The butler placed himself at the end of each strip successively, and a few of the house servants or of those who came with guests along each side. The butler drew the slips in turn and the servants took care there should be no hitch in the passage of the cloths, and so each was nicely gathered up.
“But the removal of the great tablecloth which was the next operation was a more difficult matter. The great heavy central epergne of rosewood had to be lifted a little way up by a strong man-servant or two, whilst the tablecloth was slipped from beneath it and the cloth was started on its travels down the table till it came into the hands of the butler, who gathered it up. The beautifully polished table then appeared in full lustre. The shining surface sparkled excellently and presently reflected the bright silver and glass and the fruit and flowers with a brilliance which to my thinking was much more beautiful than the arrangement of later days.”]
The annual visit to London was a great delight to my aunt, who enjoyed meetings with her own family and friends, and visits to exhibitions, &c. Her husband had always occupation in the British Museum, and her daughters took painting and other lessons. Mary, the eldest, was a pupil of Copley Fielding; Georgiana (plate [XXVII].), and Eleanor later, had lessons from Hunt and learnt from him how to combine birds’ nests and objects of still life with fruits and flowers into very lovely pictures. Both were excellent artists with a slight difference in style: Georgiana’s pictures had great harmony of colour and composition; Eleanor’s had more chic. Hunt was a very touchy little man—almost a dwarf—and if by any chance my aunt did not see him and bow as she drove past he cherished resentment for days after. At Sedbury driving tours or picnic excursions to the ruined castles and other objects of interest (plates [V]., [XVI]., [XXV].), in the neighbourhood were frequent, and the sketches that resulted were often reproduced as zincographs. Now and then a tour abroad was achieved, but such tours were few and far between. The beautiful copy of Correggio’s “Marriage of St. Catherine” which ultimately became Eleanor’s property, was acquired on a visit to Paris and the Louvre.