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The Birtwhistles of Craven and Galloway
Four surviving letters from Anna to her London friends in the 1820s, although uncomplaining, give an impression that she was rather lonely in Scotland. The talk was of unchanging daily routine, the missing of old acquaintances and of the Royal Academy and, as Agnes approached school age, the seclusion of this quiet town of Kirkcudbright, where there were excellent teachers and classes for boys, but very inferior “motley” schools for girls. Anna was clearly a devoted mother, paying great attention to the upbringing of her daughter, as is revealed in her last letter from Scotland, in 1829 As life is composed of repeated days, the history of one may afford you a view of her whole life. Till nine she is employed in learning to read, digging her garden and helping me make breakfast: then follows a long ride on her hobby horse while an Impromptu is told in verse of prose, till eleven she hums, scrawls letters and dresses dolls while her sister Anne ( now fifteen) practises music and painting. Till one ( our dinner hour) she walks with Papa and Mama; after dinner frolics about while I read or talk to him till he is weary of both and goes to bed. After she has carried up his tea and tucked the curtains she dances and sings to the pianoforte while the rest of the family are abroad till seven; then if the weather does not permit Anne to be in the garden or paying evening visits she builds houses while a book is read aloud, till it is time to ask a blessing on the innocent day and begin a night spent almost in as happy and harmless dreams. Woolwich, Reading (1830-1852) James Niven was in failing health in 1829, and his death in 1830 prompted Anna to return to England. She took up residence with a Miss Winters in Woolwich, devoting herself to the bringing up of Agnes and two of the younger children of James Niven by his first marriage. Music and dancing featured strongly in the children’s daily lives, as did attendance at Exhibitions, although London visits were restricted to a single day during the summer months, because of Anna’s concerns about cholera epidemics. A letter to Mary Flaxman in 1833 perhaps gives a flavour of a typical day at Woolwich, including the sending out to a “seminary of young sages” for some young men to perform quadrilles with the young ladies, of one of the young men having the “good humour” to allow Agnes to win twice at chess, and of changing into frocks for dinner. Two ladies then arrived un-expectedly from London and turned out to be an American Anna had last met in 1817, and her daughter. The American ladies had heard of Anna from a gentleman in London, and, had travelled speculatively to Woolwich to find her. They had spent two hours in traversing the town of Woolwich in vain at last met a dairy woman milking, and was told of a little girl of about 10 years old walked with a Scotch maid on the Commons. The American ladies had stayed to sing some excellent songs. Mary Flaxman died in 1833, and the remaining letters from Anna in the Flaxman collection at the British Library are to Maria Denman (sometimes still addressed as Shakespeare’s Peaseblossom or Fairy) and her sister Caroline Denman. On the death of his wife in 1820, John Flaxman had adopted his sister- in- law, Maria Denman, as his daughter and, after his own death in 1826, the two sisters-in- law had worked tirelessly with Henry Crabb Robinson to find an appropriate home for Flaxman’s sculptures.
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