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My cousin Eleanor Anne Ormerod was the youngest of a family of ten—seven brothers and three sisters—all clever, energetic creatures, and gifted with a strong sense of humour. A large family always creates a peculiar atmosphere for itself; it also breaks up into detachments of elder and younger growth, and the elder members are beginning to take places in the world before the younger are out of the schoolroom. Eleanor’s eldest brother was a Church dignitary while she was still a child, teased and petted by her young medical student brothers, and the darling of her elder sister Georgiana. The father and mother of this numerous flock were both remarkable people. Mr. Ormerod, historian and antiquary, always occupied with literary or topographical research, was an autocrat in his own family and intolerant of any shortcomings or failings that came under his notice. He could, however, on occasion, relax and tell humorous stories to children. The family discipline was strict; the younger members were expected to yield obedience to the elders, and it was said that the spaniel Guy (he came from Warwick), who ranked as one of the children, always obeyed the eldest of the family present. My aunt had a large share of the milk of human kindness added to much practical common sense and a touch of artistic genius in her composition; it was from her that her daughters inherited their eye for colour and dexterity of touch. Mr. Ormerod was a neat draughtsman of architectural subjects, but my aunt had taste and skill and a delight in her own branch of art—flower painting—that lasted all her life.

Sedbury Park (plate I.) was a beautiful home; the house, a handsome family mansion with comfortable old-fashioned furniture, good and interesting pictures, old china, and a splendid library, afforded also ample space for its inmates to follow their various hobbies, and many were the arts and crafts practised there at various times. The carpenter’s bench, the lathe, wood-carving, electro-typing, modelling and casting for models each had their turn, and in all this strenuous play Eleanor had her full share. Society played a very secondary part in life at Sedbury; calls were exchanged with county neighbours at due intervals, and there was some intimacy with Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, the Bathursts of Lydney Park, and the Horts of Hardwicke. But though Mr. Ormerod attended to his duties as magistrate, and went duly to meetings of the bench at Chepstow, he was quite without sympathy for field sports and the pursuits of his brother magistrates. He was absorbed in his own studies, and something of a recluse by nature.

[Miss Ormerod has herself written of the elaborateness of the arrangements and the great formality which were associated with the regular county dinner party, the chief method of entertainment at Sedbury sixty years ago. She referred to the anxieties experienced lest the coach should not arrive in time with the indispensables including fish—“the distance of Sedbury from London involving twenty-four hours or more of transmission in weather favourable or otherwise.” Miss Ormerod continues:—

“One very important matter in the far gone past times in the arrangement of the dinner table, was the removal of the great cloth and of two cloths laid, one at each side, just wide enough to occupy the uncovered space before the guests, and long enough to reach from one end of the table to the other. The removal required a deal of care and dexterity, and I do not think it was practised at many other houses in our neighbourhood. When the table was to be cleared for dessert of course everything was removed, including the great tablecloth itself—one of the handsomest of the family possessions, and of considerable length when there were the usual number of about eighteen or twenty guests. The operation was performed as follows:—The butler placed himself at the end of each strip successively, and a few of the house servants or of those who came with guests along each side. The butler drew the slips in turn and the servants took care there should be no hitch in the passage of the cloths, and so each was nicely gathered up.

“But the removal of the great tablecloth which was the next operation was a more difficult matter. The great heavy central epergne of rosewood had to be lifted a little way up by a strong man-servant or two, whilst the tablecloth was slipped from beneath it and the cloth was started on its travels down the table till it came into the hands of the butler, who gathered it up. The beautifully polished table then appeared in full lustre. The shining surface sparkled excellently and presently reflected the bright silver and glass and the fruit and flowers with a brilliance which to my thinking was much more beautiful than the arrangement of later days.”]

The annual visit to London was a great delight to my aunt, who enjoyed meetings with her own family and friends, and visits to exhibitions, &c. Her husband had always occupation in the British Museum, and her daughters took painting and other lessons. Mary, the eldest, was a pupil of Copley Fielding; Georgiana (plate XXVII.), and Eleanor later, had lessons from Hunt and learnt from him how to combine birds’ nests and objects of still life with fruits and flowers into very lovely pictures. Both were excellent artists with a slight difference in style: Georgiana’s pictures had great harmony of colour and composition; Eleanor’s had more chic. Hunt was a very touchy little man—almost a dwarf—and if by any chance my aunt did not see him and bow as she drove past he cherished resentment for days after. At Sedbury driving tours or picnic excursions to the ruined castles and other objects of interest (plates V., XVI., XXV.), in the neighbourhood were frequent, and the sketches that resulted were often reproduced as zincographs. Now and then a tour abroad was achieved, but such tours were few and far between. The beautiful copy of Correggio’s “Marriage of St. Catherine” which ultimately became Eleanor’s property, was acquired on a visit to Paris and the Louvre.

This self-contained family life did not lead to the marriage of the daughters, and three only of the seven sons married—one very late in life. Mary, the Princess Royal of the family, was the centre of the first group—herself and four brothers; Georgiana that of the second, consisting of two brothers older than herself, one younger, and Eleanor. Georgiana was a most lovable person; she always believed in her younger sister’s capacity and in her projects, which were not approved of nor taken seriously by some of her elders, and could not have been carried out until after the break up of the home on the death of Mr. Ormerod. Meantime, the naturalist element in Eleanor was free to lay up knowledge for future use, and her country life gave leisure and opportunity for observation of bird, plant, and insect life, to say nothing of reptiles. Any snake killed on the estate was brought to Eleanor, and if it was remarkable for size or beauty she took a cast of it to be afterwards electrotyped, or had it buried in an ant-hill in order to set up its skeleton when the ants had cleaned the bones. The casts, which resembled bronze, were sometimes attached to slabs of green Devonshire marble, and made handsome paper weights. Wasps were at one time a subject of special study and interest to her brother Dr. Edward Ormerod, and she and Georgiana once conveyed a wasp’s nest to him at Brighton. I believe he did not allow the wasps to exceed a certain number, out of consideration for the neighbouring fruiterers.

The premature deaths of Edward and William, physician and surgeon, were heartfelt sorrows to the two sisters nearest in age. If Eleanor’s lot had been cast in later days she might have become a lady doctor of renown; she had many qualifications for the medical profession and a liking for domestic surgery; she had strong nerves and inspired confidence and used to say that she never went a journey without some fellow-passenger going into a detailed account of all her ailments. Besides strong nerves she had strong eye-sight and a delicate but firm touch. Her brothers did not encourage anatomical studies, but she could prepare sections of teeth and other objects for the microscope as beautifully as any professional microscopist. Some of my cousins were strong sighted and very short-sighted, and much inclined to be sceptical as to my long-sighted vision.

My last visit to Sedbury was in the autumn of 1853 in company with my step-sister Margaret Roberts, then just beginning to try her powers as an authoress. Eleanor must then have been twenty-five or twenty-six, but was considered to be quite young by her family, and in some respects was really so. She no longer played such pranks as embarking in a tub to navigate the horse pond, but her fine dark eyes would shine with mischief, and she was the licensed jester to the family circle.

PLATE V.

Ruins of Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire.

Frith photo.

The routine of life at Sedbury usually began, on the part of the younger members of the family, with a walk after breakfast prefaced by a visit to the poultry yard and greenhouses. Georgiana was chief hen-wife, and kept an account of the eggs and chickens. The park, lying on high ground between the Severn and the Wye, had beautiful points of view and fine timber, and there were lovely views beyond its precincts. “Offa’s Dyke” ran through a corner of the estate, and the discovery of some Roman pottery in its neighbourhood had given my cousins much occupation in sticking broken fragments together and re-building them into vases (plate XI.). Our most beautiful walk, rather too long for the morning strolls, was to the “double view,” a projecting promontory above the Wye where the river curves and from whence a lovely view is visible both up and down the stream. From the morning walk we always brought back something from hedge or field for my aunt to draw as she lay on her sofa with her drawing table across it. She was then in failing health, but still able to draw, and she used to make studies of flowers in pencil on grey paper, touching in the high light with Chinese white. Each drawing when finished was shut up in a large book, and there kept until some gathering of the family took place, when the drawings were produced and a lottery ensued, each person choosing a drawing in turn according to the number on the ticket they had drawn. I have a book of these beautiful drawings (plate VI.) which I greatly prize. In her youthful days she had painted in oils, and there were some fine copies of Dutch flower pictures in the drawing-room made by her. In later life the care of her large family left scant time for Art, but she cherished it in her daughters, and it was again a resource in her advanced age. The great sculptor Flaxman was a friend of her father and had encouraged her youthful efforts in Art. She had amazing industry and had copied many of his designs on wood as furniture decorations.

PLATE VI.

Portion of Norman Work from Chepstow Parish Church.

From a drawing by Mrs. Ormerod, 1844. (p. 6.)

Georgiana and Eleanor usually had some painting or other industry on hand, or copying to do for their father. In the afternoon we often took a drive and were taken to see Tintern or the Wynd Cliff or some other point of interest. After dinner we sat in the library, a fine room with a splendid collection of books shut up in wire bookcases. Each member of the family had a key to the imprisoned books, but a visitor felt that to get one extracted for personal use was rather a ceremony. The beautiful illustrated books were brought out for the evening’s entertainment and then safely housed again. On Sundays we walked or drove to Tidenham Church, a “little grey church on a windy hill” (plate VII.). We took a walk in the afternoon, and in the evening Mr. Ormerod read a sermon in the library to us and the servants. Such was the routine of life that autumn at Sedbury. At the time of our visit, the Gloucester Musical Festival was going on, but there was no thought of going to hear it. In later years Eleanor possessed a good piano and studied the theory of music, but I think that was prompted by her general cleverness and activity of intellect rather than by any special gift for music. She was teaching herself Latin during our visit, and as time went on she acquired other languages. She made beautiful models of fruits by a process of her own invention. A collection of these was sent to an International Exhibition at St. Petersburg and she acquired sufficient knowledge of Russian to correspond with the department of the Exhibition receiving them.

After the break-up of the Sedbury home, consequent on the death of Mr. Ormerod, who survived his wife^[11] for many years, Mary bought the lease of a house in Exeter and settled there for the rest of her life; the two younger sisters took a house for three years in Torquay, where we were then living as well as their, and our, old and beloved uncle, Dr. Mere Latham. Wishing to be nearer London, they removed to Isleworth and some years later to Torrington House, St. Alban’s, where they spent the remaining years of their lives.

DIANA LATHAM.