Cover	Contents	Page 63		Previous <	Next >
The Birtwhistles of Craven and Galloway
Appendix 3 European Magazine Vol 76 pps 105-110 TALES OF TODAY Lady Ann of Pembroke in 1819 Our Tales to-day were regulated by the pictures chosen from my port-folio; and as the only lady in our little groupe had honoured the young clerk by choosing a chancellor’s portrait, he requited the courtesy by selecting a celebrated female’s for the subject of this Tale. When Mungo Park prepared to cross an unknown river, he estimated its depth by the length of time the air-bubbles took to ascend after a stone had been thrown into it. If the depth of the human mind was thus determined by the length of time its projects take in rising to light, my friend De Romille’s must have been considered one of the profoundest. Thirty years had elapsed before he executed his favourite scheme of returning to his native land, and when he finally began his voyage homewards, his determination had been chiefly fixed by the splendid folio volume, rich in charts, tales of heraldry, and aquatint views representing the ancient and modern glories of his beloved Yorkshire. Therein he saw records of those days when a Baron of fifty serving men lodged and boarded in London for seven pence a-day; when his marriage feast consumed twenty four peacocks at 8s each, thirty-six oxen, and as much gingerbread as would cover a table; and when my lord’s counsel were satisfied with eighteen-penny-worth of sack and sugar each. But above all he was enchanted by the portrait and memoir of Lady Ann De Clifford, Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, rebuilder of her ancestor’s ancient castle, and so skilled in all gentle and useful arts, that she wrote orders for conserves with the same hand that denounced vengeance against a treacherous seneschal for unleading the roof. He found in the inventory of her wardrobe a memorandum of my ladie’s glass flowers and feathers, and a note of sixpence for powdering her hair through a quill, by which he saw that her toilet had been duly fashioned; and a fac-simile of her order for admission of one Susan Gill into her almshouse, provided “she said prayers and lived decently” assured him that she watched, as became a virtuous matron, over the morals of her servants. Lady Ann, in short, was the model and standard			of perfection in his mind; and having but one daughter, he had called her Ann, and sent her to a seminary near this noble lady’s estate, that she might be in all things acquainted and impressed with her example. Being three thousand miles distant himself, he selected for her guardian and future trustee, a lineal descendant of Lady Ann’s most approved steward, a farmer of primitive morals and provincial shrewdness, whose great-grandfather’s name appeared in the oldest fee farm rents. He had received annual communications since his daughter’s settlement in England from this good man; marvellously concise, but always indicating that his Ann advanced in every part of education which the Lady Ann excelled in; and De Romille was struck with high respect for modern seminaries, when he found that to learn Latin, Greek, geometry, chemistry, elocution and algebra, were no uncommon matters in the year 1819. De Romille underwent the fatigues of his long voyage with the delicious heart-fullness of a father hastening to the completion of his labours. He had received the Baron’s title- flattering to his fancy only because it gave to his cherished daughter the name so dear to his imagination; and as that imagination became frolicsome during the leisure of a long voyage, he conceived the dangerous idea of visiting his birth-place and his daughter as a stranger before he appeared “with all his blushing honours thick upon him”. A letter dated from the Isle of Wight, announcing that he meant to refresh his health in that Montpellier of England before he entered into its most northern district, was sent to amuse the steward, and a stage- coach conveyed the new Baron de Romille into Yorkshire. During the moonlight night that preceded his last journey, De Romille’s heart beat with a school-boy’s gladness as he remembered the ancient elms and firs that overtopped the castle and stretched their interwoven arms over the stream that wore a channel at its foot. His adventurous leaps among the steep and shaggy rocks that once formed that channel, his plunder of rooks nests and wild strawberries to divert an only sister now no more, returning to his memory with pleasant dimness of evening shadows, softened and improved by distance. His sister bore the name he loved so fondly; and its holy place in his remembrance probably confirmed the hold which Lady Ann De Clifford’s image had kept there since his boyish days. To revive the ancient honours of his family, and see his favourite name preserved by the sanctity of living excellence, was a hope he had already half-fulfilled; and it two hours- in another hour, he might realize the whole! The loaded and uneasy post-coach turned down the black steep of Rumblegap- (an ominous and suitable name!)- but our traveller thought only of the valley below. There lay his native village - yonder was
cont.
Cover	Contents	Page 63		Previous <	Next >