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The Knox Brothers
Edward Burne-Jones
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Kibworth Rectory might have been designed and built to bring up a large family. All the children were so happy there that in later years they could cure themselves of sleeplessness simply by imagining that they were back at Kibworth. They had their own cow in the pasture, their own rookery in the elms, and, best of all, the railway ran past the bottom of the garden, and the dark red engines of the Midland line could be observed five times daily. The Knoxes were passionate railway children. True, people said that the drains were bad at Kibworth, but who cared? They were completely safe in the large nursery at the top of the back stairs, looking down into the kitchen garden, where in memory it was always summer, with the victoria plums ripening on the south wall. Their father mounted his stout horse, Doctor, to set off on his parish visits, and their dearly loved mother waved from an upper window.
The pack of children fell into distinct groups: the girls, said by their brothers to be an inferior species, but holding their own; the elder boys, dark, charming, dangerous-looking, with a disposition to fight each other to the death under the nursery table on some point of honor; the “little ones,” fair, Quakerish and much more manageable. All, except poor Ethel, who was somewhat slow and stunted, were clever. All were tenderhearted, but, after babyhood, only Winnie was able to express her feelings with no inhibitions at all. “Enter Winnie, and kisses everybody” was a sardonic stage direction in one of Eddie’s first plays.
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