Barton was a comfortable home, and Providence, to make perfection joyous, bestowed on Lady Bunbury a niece whose countenance was the daylight, whose voice was the music of all around. This was Cecilia Napier, the only living child of Sir George. She inherited the beauty and grace of Lady Sarah, whose portraiture by Reynolds was hers also. The family of Sir Henry came of a first marriage, but he loved the adopted one of his second wife as his own. This lovely girl became the wife of his third son, Henry, a colonel in the army.
One would almost think that Providence was the near relation of some families—it appoints them to such pleasant places, makes them so welcome upon earth, lets them want for nothing. So it was apparently at Barton Hall, on which the divine patronage was very generously bestowed.
As we learnt at school, Natura beatis omnibus esse dedit. Still, as a physician would say, this is only the predisposing cause; exciting causes must follow. And here Providence steps in, with the patronage of a prime minister, which is not, in appearance, dealt out disinterestedly; but there is not enough for all.
Sir Henry, on account of his conciliatory manners, was selected after the war to communicate to General Bonaparte his pending sentence of lifelong exile. Sir Hudson Lowe might perhaps have been as well appointed to the task, for the ex-emperor simply burst out into a torrent of abuse and rage, which not all the persuasiveness of the baronet could soften.
Sir Henry began military life at the battle of Maida, under General Stuart, and wrote an account of it in pamphlet form, but I think not for general circulation. He also similarly described his interview with Napoleon. It gave a fuller account of what passed than appears in Sir Walter Scott’s work, which was borrowed from it by Sir Henry’s permission.
Sir George Napier I knew very well; he was sometimes at Barton. Sir Charles I saw only once, and was charmed by the gentle and unpretending manner of the man who had performed such marvels of valour. When last in India, at the conquest of Scinde, he contracted a dysentery, which afterwards returned and proved fatal. He annexed Scinde, in violation of the orders from home. Lady Bunbury told me she had heard, but could not vouch for the truth of it, that in his despatch to the Government he announced what he had done in one apologetic word—peccavi.
It was said that the moral influence enjoyed over the troops by this great soldier even exceeded that of his command as general.
It may be interesting to note that Sir Henry’s successor, the late Charles Fox Bunbury, married a daughter of Leonard Horner, a sister of Lady Lyell. They lived at the old mansion at Mildenhall.
I knew Sir Charles Lyell in 1839, when I was the bearer to him of some fossils; and I met him with Lady Lyell and her sisters in 1853, when I delivered a lecture to a select company in the house.