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LIFE AT STONELEIGH

Stoneleigh offered every possible amusement to children—long galleries and passages to race up and down, a large hall for battledore and shuttlecock and other games, parks and lawns for riding and cricket, and the River Avon at the bottom of the garden for fishing and boating, not to mention skating in hard winters. People are apt to talk and write as if “Early Victorian” and “Mid-Victorian” children were kept under strict control and made to treat their elders with respectful awe. I cannot recall any undue restraint in our case. As I have already said, our mother was an influence which no one would have attempted to resist, but she never interfered with any reasonable happiness or amusement. Our father was the most cheerful of companions, loving to take us about to any kind of sights or entertainments which offered, and buying us toys and presents on every possible occasion. The only constraint put upon us, which is not often used with the modern child, concerned religious observance. We had to come in to daily Prayers at 10 o’clock even if it interfered with working in our gardens or other out-door amusement—and church twice on Sundays was the invariable rule as soon as we were old enough to walk to the neighbouring villages of Stoneleigh and Ashow, or to attend the ministrations of the chaplain who generally officiated once each Sunday in the chapel in the house. We had to learn some “Scripture lesson” every day and two or three on Sundays, and I being the eldest had not only to repeat these Sunday lessons to my mother, but also to see in a general way that my younger brothers and sisters knew theirs. I was made to learn any number of chapters and hymns, and Scripture catechisms—not to speak of the Thirty-nine Articles! At last when mother and governess failed to find something more to learn by heart I was told to commit portions of Thomas à Kempis to memory. Here, I grieve to confess, I struck—that is to say, I did not venture actually to refuse, but I repeated the good brother’s words in such a disagreeable and discontented tone of voice that no one could stand it, and the attempt to improve me in this way was tacitly abandoned.

STONELEIGH ABBEY.

RECTORS AND VICARS

On the whole I feel sure that the advantages of acquiring so many great truths, and generally in beautiful language, far outweighed any passing irritation that a young girl may have felt with these “religious obligations.” If it is necessary to distinguish between High and Low Church in these matters, I suppose that my parents belonged to the orthodox Evangelical School. I have a vague recollection of one Vicar of Stoneleigh still preaching in the black silk Geneva gown. At Ashow—the other church whose services we attended—the Rector when I was small was an old Charles Twisleton, a cousin of my father’s. He, however, had discarded the black gown long before my day. My father told me that when the new Oxford School first took to preaching in surplices Mr. Twisleton adopted this fashion. Thereupon the astonished family at the Abbey exclaimed, “Oh, Cousin Charles, are you a Puseyite?” “No, my dears,” was the confidential reply, “but black silk gowns are very expensive and mine was worn out.” Probably many poor clergymen were glad to avail themselves of this economical form of ritual. I have an idea that Rudyard Kipling’s Norman Baron’s advice to his son would have appealed to my parents had it been written in their day:

“Be polite but not friendly to Bishops,

And good to all poor Parish priests.”

I feel that they were “friendly to Bishops” when they met, and they were certainly good to all the Rectors and Vicars of the various villages which belonged to my father or of which the livings were in his gift, but they had no idea of giving their consciences into ecclesiastical keeping. In fact my grandmother Westminster once said to my mother, “My dear, you and I spend much of our lives in rectifying the errors of the clergy”; those excellent men often failing in business capacity.

The church services at both our churches were simple to a degree. At Stoneleigh the organ was in the gallery and the hymns were sung by the schoolchildren there. The pulpit and reading-desk were part of what used to be called a “three-decker” with a second reading-desk for the clerk. This was exactly opposite our large “Squire’s Pew” across the aisle. There had from time immemorial been a Village Harvest Home with secular rejoicings, but at last there came the great innovation of service with special decoration and appropriate Psalms and Lessons in church. I do not know the exact year, but think that it must have been somewhere in the sixties, after my Uncle James—my father’s youngest brother—became Vicar of Stoneleigh, as it must have been his influence which induced my father to consent to what he considered slightly ritualistic.

However, all went well till it came to the Special Psalms. The choir had nothing to do with leading responses—these pertained to the clerk—old Job Jeacock—and when the first “special” was given out he utterly failed to find it. The congregation waited while he descended from his desk—walked across the aisle to our pew and handed his Prayerbook to me that I might help him out of his difficulty!

Decorations in the churches at Christmas were fully approved, and of course the house was a bower of holly, ivy and mistletoe—these were ancient customs never omitted in our home. Christmas was a glorious time, extending from the Villagers’ Dinner on S. Thomas’s Day to the Ball on our father’s birthday, January 17th—a liberal allowance. The children dined down on both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, and there was always a Christmas Tree one evening laden with toys and sweetmeats. Among other Christmas customs there was the bullet-pudding—a little hill of flour with a bullet on the top. Each person in turn cut a slice of the pudding with his knife, and when the bullet ultimately fell into the flour whoever let it down had to get it out again with his mouth. Snap-dragon was also a great institution. The raisins had to be seized from a dish of burning spirits of wine, presided over by “Uncle Jimmy” (the clergyman) dressed as a ghost in a sheet, who had regularly on this occasion to thrill us with a recitation of “Alonzo the Brave and Fair Imogene”—the faithless lady who was carried off from her wedding feast by the ghost of her lover. Of course her fate was inextricably mixed up in our minds with the flame of the snap-dragon.

THEATRICALS

Twelfth Night, with drawing for characters, was duly honoured—nor were private theatricals forgotten. Like all children we loved dressing-up and acting. The first “regular” play with family and household for audience in which we performed was Bluebeard, written in verse by my mother, in which I was Fatima. After that we had many performances—sometimes of plays written by her and sometimes by myself. I do not think that we were budding Irvings or Ellen Terrys, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely and the audiences were tolerant.

More elaborate theatricals took place at Hams Hall, the house of Sir Charles Adderley (afterwards Lord Norton), who married my father’s eldest sister. They had a large family, of whom five sons and five daughters grew up. These young people were devoted to acting and some of us occasionally went over to assist—at least I recollect performing on one occasion—and we often saw these cousins either at Hams or at Stoneleigh, the houses being at no great distance apart. The youngest son, afterwards well known as Father Adderley, was particularly fond of dressing up—he was a well-known actor—and I am not sure that he did not carry his histrionic tastes into the Church of which he was a greatly esteemed prop. Another numerous family of cousins were the children of my father’s fifth sister, married to the Rev. Henry Cholmondeley—a son of Lord Delamere—who held the living of my father’s other place—Adlestrop. Uncle Cholmondeley was clever and devoted enough to teach all his five sons himself without sending them to preparatory schools; and between his teaching and their abilities, most, if not all, of them won scholarships to aid their careers at public schools. With their four sisters they were a noisy but amusing set of companions, and we always enjoyed their visits. My father’s youngest sister was not old enough for her children to be our actual contemporaries, but when she did marry—Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower of Titsey—she had twelve sons and three daughters—a good record.

My mother’s sisters rivalled my father’s in adding to the population—one, Lady Macclesfield, having had fifteen children, of whom twelve were alive to attend her funeral when she died at the age of ninety. So I reckoned at one time that I had a hundred first cousins alive, and generally found one in whatever quarter of the globe I chanced to visit.

Speaking of theatrical performances, I should specially mention my father’s next brother, Chandos Leigh, a well-known character at the Bar, as a Member of the Zingari, and in many other spheres. Whenever opportunity served and enough nephews and nieces were ready to perform he wrote for us what he called “Businesses”—variety entertainments to follow our little plays—in which we appeared in any capacity—clowns, fairies, Shakespeare or Sheridan characters, or anything else which occurred to him as suited to our various capacities, and for which he wrote clever and amusing topical rhymes.