On one occasion, when present at an assembly at the county town (Aylsham), she was horrified to discover that two local men, sons of a successful miller and merchant in that place, had obtained admission, and it was not long before she gave a very pointed demonstration of her resentment by exclaiming in a loud voice, “It is most unpleasant here. I can hardly see across the room for the flour dust.”
She herself at her advent into this world had been the victim of great resentment on the part of her father, the Earl of Buckinghamshire, who, when he was apprised of her birth by his butler, is said to have somewhat gloomily replied, “Then you had better go and drag the baby through the horse-pond.” He was, it must be added, not unnaturally very much annoyed at the birth of a girl, instead of a male heir who should succeed to his estates.
Old Lady Suffield, besides presenting my father with her picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence, also gave him a mat or rug which she herself had worked. In old days ladies spent a good deal of time in making carpets and the like. At Wolterton was a carpet, cross-stitch, worked all in one piece, by my great-grandmother, Lady Walpole; whilst a tablecloth and twelve dinner napkins were reverently preserved on account of having been spun by her.
Needlework carpets were much valued by the families to whom they belonged. There is still, I believe, at Croome a portion of such a carpet which once covered the floor of a boudoir in the family mansion in Piccadilly, now long since passed into other hands; whilst at Apethorpe, in Northamptonshire, there used to be a very large needlework carpet which had been presented to that Lord Westmoreland who was Ambassador in Vienna, having been worked by the ladies of that city by way of especial compliment.
The “Double Dow” and her ways carried one right back to the eighteenth century, to which she in reality belonged, having been married in 1792. Nevertheless she lived well into comparatively modern days, dying only in 1850.
Living at Blickling in stately splendour, old Lady Suffield always drove up to London, despising the railroad as being a vulgar innovation. In my youth the post-chaise still flourished, and my father constantly travelled in one.
Well do I remember seeing Lord George Bentinck waiting for him in a post-chaise standing outside our house in London. He had come to fetch my father, as they were both going to drive down to Newmarket together. This, I think, was the only occasion on which I got a good look at this handsome pillar of the Turf, as he was in those days, and the two things I remember about him were his voluminous cravat and the delicate moulding of his hands, one of which (the very perfection of form, I thought) rested on the ledge of the open window of the chaise.
In 1846 a great dinner was given to Lord George at Lynn, at which my father, who was then High Steward of the town, presided. Mr. Disraeli was present, and made a speech which received a most enthusiastic reception.
ADMIRAL ROUS
Two great friends of my father were Admiral Rous and George Payne, both staunch supporters of the Turf, and therefore in complete sympathy with his desire to win the Derby.