After a while the news reached Mrs Ramage that her husband had been killed. Then came another message that Lieutenant Reynell had been dangerously wounded; and finally, at the close of the day, Lady Harriet received the information that Major Acland, seriously hurt, was in the hands of the enemy.
With equal courage and affection, the devoted woman resolved to go in search of him, and that without delay. Accordingly, with Dr Brudenell, chaplain of the regiment, she entered a small boat and proceeded down the river to the enemy’s outposts. Here they were challenged by the sentry, and Brudenell, hoisting a white handkerchief on a stick, attempted to explain their errand. The sentinel, however, proved obdurate, not only refusing to carry any message to the officer in command, but warning them not to move, or he would fire on the boat. So all through that inclement night, insufficiently clad, without a particle of food, and in imminent danger of becoming a target for the foe, they sat and waited.
With the morning their situation improved. The general, on being made cognisant of the facts, received the lady with soldierly sympathy, and accorded her full permission to attend on her husband until his recovery.
Soon after they returned to England, and to Pixton, but Colonel Acland was born to ill-luck. He fought a duel on Bampton Down, November 11, 1778, with Captain Lloyd, an officer of his own regiment, whom he had offended by praising the humanity of the American people, and caught a chill. Four days later he was dead.
Lady Harriet had two children—Elizabeth Kitty and John Dyke. The latter, after succeeding to the baronetcy, died at the age of seventeen, whilst his sister married, in 1796, Lord Porchester (afterwards second Earl of Carnarvon), and died in 1816. Lady Harriet outlived both husband and children, dying in 1818.
The present possessor of Pixton is the Dowager Countess of Carnarvon; and her sons are the lineal descendants of the intrepid woman whose adventures I have described.
Pixton Park, with its beeches and herd of fallow deer, and Lady Harriet’s Drive, flanked on each side by gorgeous oak woods or oak coppice, vocal with streams, and centred by brown Haddon, are among the features which enable Dulverton to maintain its proud claim to extraordinary beauty of scenery. In this respect it has no superior in the West Country, and Tennyson, who visited the neighbourhood not long before his death, went away delighted with it. An account of this visit appears in the life of the poet by his son, the present Lord Tennyson; and, although rather inaccurate in some of the details, yet, as a piece of impressionism, deserves to be reproduced.
“In June, Colonel Crozier lent us his yacht, the Assegai, and we went to Exmouth, and thence by rail to Dulverton—a land of bubbling streams, my father called it.
“Lord Carnarvon had told him years ago that the streams here were the most delicious he knew.
“We drove up the Haddon valley, and to Barlynch Abbey on the Exe. The ragged robin and wild garlic were profuse. We returned by Pixton Park.