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The Birtwhistles of Craven and Galloway
Appendix 5 Letter from Anna Vardill to Maria Denman in 1838 (transcribed from an item in the Flaxman collection at the British Library) Miss Denman Upper Norton St Portland Place. Dear Friends. Wednesday Morn; Nov 21 (1838) We are here safe -by miracle, after travelling 112 miles in 6 hours with three of the fiercest elements about us. Once we had hopes (as the hero of the hod said when his bearer slipped on the topmost rung of a ladder) of an adventure. Halfway- that is near Wolverton Station, we saw the red flag displayed in token of danger and felt our carriage retrograding rapidly. An amiable fellow traveller putting his head through the window informed us we were on the very spot where the mail slipped & buried its wheel in the earth & where the bridge broke down . We are on the bridge now! With this gracious intelligence he added the comfort of a remark that the repairs here were not half finished & we “listened to our beating hearts”, sat looking at the unfenced road and the floods caused by an overflow of both sides, promising an agreeable variety of watry deaths if we escaped the fire engine. When our train was safely replaced on its line, we learned what the poet had chosen to mystify that we have only deviated to avoid a collision with some stones collected for repairs. Then we began to study our prospectus and learned we should enter London by an enormous tunnel, attended by another engine roaring louder than ten Etnas. So we read by the light of our roof lamps, talked of hideous accidents, dozed, dreamed – and awoke in Euston Square. There with vast thankfulness we entrusted ourselves to a Fly with only four legs and arrived here in time for a modern tea table. Really Scherhazada’s thousand and one nights hardly afford more prodigies than half a day on a Rail road; and astounding as it seems, it is not more awful than the road we travelled near Birmingham on Monday 19^th in a post coach on the edge of a precipice fenced only with a few hurdles from a gulf fit for a Fire king’s palace “It was a sight For a queen’s birth-night On that hill so near the sky To look over walls of splintered rock On rivers of fire and towers of smoke While our fierce sleds thundered by” Monday was the first birthday I ever spent in two new counties and without old friends. Therefore I hope to celebrate the first fine day with you- at least one half of it, as the sharp air inevitable in Euston Square at 6 oclock has not favoured a tendency to cough left by last year’s influenza. I had no intention of exposing my ear to bellowing of a rail road engine; but the neglect of a sleepy chambermaid at the Birmingham Hotel lost us the only coach which begins its journey from there in the morning. But the weather continued fine, &the trees were as richly clad in dark green, crimson and gold as in September. We will embroider our adventures when we meet- we four, for the Kings were allowed once more to visit their London uncle instead of staying near the Cheshire parsonage and their sister all winter. How are all the great K’s and the little k’s- the Sinclairs, the literary travellers & your own small fairies? When will the Bristol diamond be set in a ring? Answer when you see your Cobweb.
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