Mr George Burden, of Thames Street, married on March 8th, 1835, at his parish church of St Catherine’s, Jane Elizabeth, the daughter of Ezechiel Cranby, a shipmaster of Wapping. The union was blessed with two still-born and eleven living children, of whom my own friend, the Mr Burden with whom these pages deal, was the third, born on January 19th, 1841, and baptised the next day under the scriptural name of Emmanuel.
As is so often mysteriously the case with even numerous families, the name of the Burdens survived in but a single member. Of the three other sons, James, Thomas, and Cranby, the first died while yet a child; the second was drowned at sea as first mate of one of his grandfather’s vessels; and the third, whose intellect had always been deficient, did not long survive his thirtieth year, but passed away, unmarried, in Dr Milford’s private home at Reading. Two of the sisters also perished in tender years. Of the five that survived, Charlotte and Victoria remained unmarried, Patience was early left a childless widow and retired to Bournemouth, while Esther, who wedded a wealthy Australian in June 1865, sailed with him to Melbourne some months later, and has never since been heard of by her family.
MR BURDEN’S NEPHEW, HILDEBRAND WORTHING, WHOSE INHERITANCE OF GENTLE BLOOD SADLY UNFITTED HIM FOR A COMMERCIAL LIFE
The youngest, however, who was christened Maria, but was known in the family as “Baby,” made, when barely twenty-six, an alliance with the younger son of Mr Arthur Worthing, of Worthing Court, Bucks. This marriage, whatever social attractions it may have offered to the younger members of the household, proved unfortunate. Her husband was dissipated and improvident and encountered repeated difficulties in the society of Boulogne sur Mer, in France, where his father-in-law supported him on a small pension for some years. After the premature death of his young wife in 1873, he returned to England, led a random and useless life among his old associates, but had upon his deathbed the satisfaction of knowing that his brother-in-law (Emmanuel) had paid the greater part of his debts, and had renovated his wife’s grave in the Protestant cemetery of the French seaport town where she lay at rest in God’s acre. Hildebrand, the only fruit of this marriage, was placed as a clerk in the office of Bowler & Co., by Mr Burden—for he was ever solicitous of the honour of his blood.
At the suitable age of thirty-one, Emmanuel Burden, who was thus destined to centre in himself the greater part of his father’s fortune, married a lady for whom he had felt an unvarying attachment, and to whom he had indeed been engaged for some eight years.
She was a person of modest but engaging demeanour, the fourth daughter of the Rev. Harward Sefton of Hagden Courtney, in the county of Huntingdon, and of Miriam Davis, his wife; from whom, perhaps, Mrs Burden inherited her power of rapid calculation and her acute judgment of human weakness. Mr Burden’s father, while fully accepting his son’s choice of Eliza (for such was the lady’s name), was wisely opposed to an improvident marriage, and deemed it prudent to make the young people wait until his son had thoroughly learnt and taken on the business he was to inherit in Thames Street.
Their courtship, though protracted, was peaceable and happy. They learnt to know each other fully in the long walks which they would take together over Hampstead or Putney heaths. Their families even permitted sometimes a more intimate intercourse. Young Mr Burden (as he then was) would receive his affianced wife in the social evenings of his father’s house (they then resided above the shop in Thames Street) or, in turn, would appear as an honoured guest from Saturday to Monday at the Rev. Mr Sefton’s vicarage: taking the train from Liverpool Street at 1.15 on the former and returning to town by the 9.20 from Hagden Courtney upon the latter day.
They were married, as his father had been, at St Catherine’s. Miss Sefton had accepted the hospitality of her aunt for the occasion. Rice was thrown;—and a shoe. Jests were exchanged. The honeymoon was spent in Wales.
Mr Burden, senior, judged it well that the newly-married couple should take, on their return, a house at some distance from London. His business had largely increased; the first floor had already been invaded for some years by the wares necessary to a show-room, and the whole premises should properly have long been given up to the storage of his goods and the accommodation of his offices. Mrs Burden, senior, had died during the engagement of her son, and so at last it was arranged that a new household should be formed on the heights to the south of London, where the fresh air and larger spaces of the country could be combined with the exigencies of a daily train to town.