Moving all nature with his artless plaints,
fell in love with his cousin; but the course of true love was ruffled by the proverbial obstructions. The young lady’s favour was quickly gained, but her father’s approval was not so easily secured, and that is scarcely to be wondered at. Byrom at the time had not settled down to any profession; his prospects were doubtful; he had been obliged to seclude himself on account of his political proclivities; and had, moreover, come to be accounted an eccentric and somewhat dreamy philosopher, infected with the mysticism of the French school. The practical, hard-headed Manchester merchant could, therefore, hardly look upon him as an eligible suitor or a promising husband for a young lady destined to inherit the ancestral home of the Byroms. Everything, however, comes to him who can wait. Byrom did wait; and eventually the obdurate parent yielded, and gave his consent to, if he did not actually express approval of, the match; and on Valentine’s Day, 1720–1, at the old church, the young couple were united, the bride having just completed her twenty-first year, and Byrom being then in his twenty-ninth.
Chalmers, in his biography of Byrom, represents the marriage as a clandestine one. He says the lady’s father “was extremely averse to the match, and when it took place without his consent, refused the young couple any means of support; and, as a means of supporting himself and his wife, Byrom had recourse to the teaching of shorthand writing.” But this is an error, as evidenced by a passage in a letter addressed by the bride’s elder sister, Anne Byrom, to Mr. Stansfield, under date February 18, 1720–1, four days after the wedding:—
I received yours last week, and designed answering it by first post, but could not have an opportunity, we having been pretty much engaged this week; for on Tuesday last sister Elizabeth was married to Dr. Byrom, with consent of father and mother, and the wedding kept here, and we having had a deal of company.
His sister here designates him “Dr.” Byrom, and the prefix to his name was through life commonly accorded by his friends and acquaintance. He does not appear ever to have taken a degree entitling him to it, though in one of his letters written from Montpelier he styles himself “Dr. of Physic.” There is a common belief that he practised medicine in Manchester; but this was only upon rare occasions, chiefly among the poor and the members of his own family; and he threw physic to the dogs when he applied himself to the perfecting of his system of shorthand. Shortly after his marriage he became the occupant of a house belonging to Mr. Hunter, standing at the corner of Hanging Ditch, and what is now the lower end of Cannon Street, but then called Hunter’s-lane, and here his family resided for many years. His journal affords pleasant glimpses of his home life and surroundings at this time:—
October 5, 1722.—This day we came to Mr. Hunter’s house. Saturday, 6th.—Laurenson’s wife died. Sister Ellen ill. Sorted my papers all morning. Mr. Hooper came about one to ask me to go to Holme (Hulme Hall). I followed ’em thither; Mr. M. and R. and Mrs. H. Malyn. Dr. Mainwaring there. We bowled, read Haddon’s verses on the eclipses, &c. Mr. Leycester came, and Mr. Kate.
The Mr. Hooper here referred to was the recently-appointed librarian to Chetham’s Library, and the chaplain to Lady Anne Bland, of Hulme Hall, lady of the manor of Manchester. Massey Malyn was a son of Dr. Malyn, who had acquired by his marriage the Sale Hall Estate, in Cheshire, and was himself the rector of Ashton-upon-Mersey; Robert Malyn, his younger brother, was an undergraduate of Cambridge; Peter Mainwaring was a well-known medical practitioner in the town, who subsequently married one of the sisters and co-heiresses of Massey Malyn; and John Haddon was the rector of Warrington. Hulme Hall was at that time the centre in which gathered the wit and learning and intellectuality of the neighbourhood. Lady Anne Bland, the widowed owner, and the foundress of St. Ann’s, was accounted the leader of fashion among the Hanoverian and Whig party, and the rival of Madam Drake, who carried the palm among the Jacobite and Tory fashionables; the former deeming it not inconsistent with her dignity to resent the exuberant display of Stuart tartan at the newly-built Assembly-rooms, in King Street, by arraying her party in orange-coloured ribbons, and dancing a minuet with them by moonlight in the open street. Byrom was always a welcome guest at Hulme, where his sprightliness and epigrammatic humour was highly appreciated, and with the pious, if somewhat imperious, owner he was, in spite of his Jacobite proclivities, an especial favourite. He was a frequent worshipper at St. Ann’s, the “new church” as it was called, in contradistinction to the “old” or parish church, oftentimes occupying Lady Bland’s seat, and occasionally going back to tea with her in her own coach:—