LONGLEAT.
The country round Marston affords a charming type of home English scenery, being almost entirely pasture land, embellished with very pretty woodlands and several country seats of great beauty, especially Longleat and Mells Park. Walks, rides, and drives are all varied in their character, and the road to Bath (in those days there was no short-cut by rail) was essentially picturesque, and as full of ups and downs as life itself!
LORD JOHN TOWNSHEND
Another house[[18]] was in Hertfordshire, close, indeed, to the town of Hertford itself. It is a quaint, old, red brick building with charming rooms, and a gallery that in my early childhood I considered interminable as to length; it was the property of my uncle by marriage, Lord John Townshend. He was indeed a link with the past, having been the friend of Fox and Sheridan, and having sat to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His wife[[19]] was my mother’s sister (her elder by nearly twenty years), who retained till an advanced age the traces of that beauty which was immortalised by Hoppner in one of his most delightful portraits, still hanging on the walls in the dear old dwelling. When very young, she had united herself to a man whose cruelty and immorality made her life miserable. The marriage was dissolved, and Lord John Townshend, as her second husband, did all in his power to make her forget the sorrows which had clouded her early years. But long before I knew of this sad passage in her history, I had observed the shade of melancholy and mystery which hung over my dear aunt’s aspect and manner.
[18]. Balls Park.
[19]. Georgiana Anne, daughter of William Poyntz, Esq.
Balls Park was a typical English house, birds, bees, butterflies, honeysuckle, roses. Our visits there were almost always in the “sweete season that budde and blossom brings,” and my remembrance of the place is invariably connected with summer. Here were cousins too, and many of them to whom I was very much attached, though they were greatly my seniors; no one ever was so rich in cousins. I remember once meeting the late Lord Carlisle at dinner at Charles Dickens’. “Mary Boyle is a cousin of mine,” said Lord Carlisle. “I suppose so,” replied Dickens; “I have never yet met any one who was not her cousin.”
TAMING A WOLF-DOG
Another house was Wigan Rectory, in Lancashire, a very different locality indeed. A frightful, black, manufacturing town, but we loved to go there, for my uncle George Bridgeman and his wife were most indulgent to us children.[[20]] Mr Bridgeman had first married my father’s, and after her death my mother’s, sister, and both husband and wife were our kind playfellows, taking an interest in all our little pastimes, and rich in that quality, so dear to childish hearts, of genuine fun. My aunt Louisa was devoted to gardening, and although her pleasure grounds were circumscribed, she took the greatest delight therein. I fear I wounded her horticultural nature on one occasion, when I complained that the rose I had just picked smelt of soot, and blacked my nose when raised thereto! In the backyard of the Rectory a magnificent wolf-dog lived in the kennel, the object of universal terror among the servants and gardeners. But I believed in and trusted dogs, and my firm conviction was that Lupus was misunderstood. I bribed the servants to let me feed him, which I did first at a respectful distance, advancing nearer and nearer each day as I presented him with his dinner. At length I deemed him tamed, and, not without slight trepidation, I approached, let slip his collar, and opened the garden gate. Never shall I forget the consternation which the apparition of girl and dog caused in my aunt’s little sitting-room which opened on the lawn. She was talking to my mother in this sanctum when she saw Lupus bounding over the grass, and standing on the threshold of her boudoir. With a loud cry the Rector’s wife jumped upon the chair, gathering her skirts around her, and summoning her juvenile protectress to call off the dog! But Lupus did no harm; he was only elated by his new-born freedom, and he became from that day the constant companion of the daily walks I took with my youngest brother and our nurse.