In those times there was such a thing as south-down mutton!
John Ellman, of Glynde, was a man known to the whole agricultural world. To those who never saw him, he was known by his full-length portrait, as was Coke of Norfolk, and other celebrities of his day, to be seen in the window of a corner shop, between St. James’s Street and Pall Mall, kept by a gentleman who had the aspect of George the Fourth, and was supposed to be a son of the monarch; giving one a good idea of what the king would have been, had he been born a commoner.
XXII.
Ellman, of Glynde, was a knee-breeches man, with top-boots, tall, coated for horseback, and with a characteristic farmer’s hat, not scanty of brim. As such I remember him; but when alone, or even speaking to another, there seemed something wanting to him, and this was a—Cattle Show.
I recollect his daughter—an extremely pretty girl, sixty-five years ago. I used to wonder how such a delicacy could come of so purely masculine a breed of men.
The south-down sheep is no doubt fully kept on at Glynde; the late Earl of Chichester, too, is said to have kept up the breed, but it is to be feared that it is less profitable than the fat, or wool-growing sorts, which yield the worst mutton to the market, and the best wool; matured for the butcher within a year.
“Sic transit gloria brebis.”
Mr. Hodson took me with him to the funeral of the then last Lord Hampden, who only enjoyed his estate for twelve months. I entered the vault; the crimson velvet and gilt nails were as fresh on the coffin of the previous lord as on the one now placed by its side. All the other red velvet coffins had gone brown.
A gentleman, it was Mr. Cumberland, of the mint, who was related to Lord Hampden, and used to stay with him at the old family seat in Buckinghamshire, told me that there was always a table in the family pew on Sunday morning, with wine glasses on it, and a bottle of port wine, with which the friends regaled themselves during the weary service at church, which, as a duty, they attended, so setting a good example to the village folk.