MISS JEMIMA STANBURY, OF EXETER.
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Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady,
very much respected, indeed, in the city of Exeter. It is to be
hoped that no readers of these pages will be so un-English as to be
unable to appreciate the difference between county society and town
society,--the society, that is, of a provincial town, or so ignorant
as not to know also that there may be persons so privileged, that
although they live distinctly within a provincial town, there
is accorded to them, as though by brevet rank, all the merit of
living in the county. In reference to persons so privileged, it is
considered that they have been made free from the contamination of
contiguous bricks and mortar by certain inner gifts, probably of
birth, occasionally of profession, possibly of merit. It is very
rarely, indeed, that money alone will bestow this acknowledged
rank; and in Exeter, which by the stringency and excellence of its
well-defined rules on such matters, may perhaps be said to take the
lead of all English provincial towns, money alone has never availed.
Good blood, especially if it be blood good in Devonshire, is rarely
rejected. Clergymen are allowed within the pale,--though by no means
as certainly as used to be the case; and, indeed, in these days of
literates, clergymen have to pass harder examinations than those ever
imposed upon them by bishops' chaplains, before they are admitted ad
eundem among the chosen ones of the city of Exeter. The wives and
daughters of the old prebendaries see well to that. And, as has been
said, special merit may prevail. Sir Peter Mancrudy, the great Exeter
physician, has won his way in,--not at all by being Sir Peter, which
has stood in his way rather than otherwise,--but by the acknowledged
excellence of his book about saltzes. Sir Peter Mancrudy is supposed
to have quite a metropolitan, almost a European reputation,--and
therefore is acknowledged to belong to the county set, although he
never dines out at any house beyond the limits of the city. Now, let
it be known that no inhabitant of Exeter ever achieved a clearer
right to be regarded as "county," in opposition to "town," than had
Miss Jemima Stanbury. There was not a tradesman in Exeter who was not
aware of it, and who did not touch his hat to her accordingly. The
men who drove the flies, when summoned to take her out at night,
would bring oats with them, knowing how probable it was that they
might have to travel far. A distinct apology was made if she was
asked to drink tea with people who were simply "town." The Noels of
Doddescombe Leigh, the Cliffords of Budleigh Salterton, the Powels of
Haldon, the Cheritons of Alphington,--all county persons, but very
frequently in the city,--were greeted by her, and greeted her, on
terms of equality. Her most intimate friend was old Mrs. MacHugh,
the widow of the last dean but two, who could not have stood higher
had she been the widow of the last bishop. And then, although Miss
Stanbury was intimate with the Frenches of Heavitree, with the
Wrights of Northernhay, with the Apjohns of Helion Villa,--a really
magnificent house, two miles out of the city on the Crediton
Road, and with the Crumbies of Cronstadt House, Saint Ide's,--who
would have been county people, if living in the country made the
difference;--although she was intimate with all these families,
her manner to them was not the same, nor was it expected to be the
same, as with those of her own acknowledged set. These things are
understood in Exeter so well!
Miss Stanbury belonged to the county set, but she lived in a large
brick house, standing in the Close, almost behind the Cathedral.
Indeed it was so close to the eastern end of the edifice that a
carriage could not be brought quite up to her door. It was a large
brick house, very old, with a door in the middle, and five steps
ascending to it between high iron rails. On each side of the door
there were two windows on the ground floor, and above that there
were three tiers of five windows each, and the house was double
throughout, having as many windows looking out behind into a gloomy
courtyard. But the glory of the house consisted in this, that there
was a garden attached to it, a garden with very high walls, over
which the boughs of trees might be seen, giving to the otherwise
gloomy abode a touch of freshness in the summer, and a look of space
in the winter, which no doubt added something to the reputation even
of Miss Stanbury. The fact,--for it was a fact,--that there was
no gloomier or less attractive spot in the whole city than Miss
Stanbury's garden, when seen inside, did not militate against this
advantage. There were but half-a-dozen trees, and a few square yards
of grass that was never green, and a damp ungravelled path on which
no one ever walked. Seen from the inside the garden was not much;
but, from the outside, it gave a distinct character to the house, and
produced an unexpressed acknowledgment that the owner of it ought to
belong to the county set.
The house and all that was in it belonged to Miss Stanbury herself,
as did also many other houses in the neighbourhood. She was the owner
of the "Cock and Bottle," a very decent second class inn on the other
side of the Close, an inn supposed to have clerical tendencies, which
made it quite suitable for a close. The choristers took their beer
there, and the landlord was a retired verger. Nearly the whole of
one side of a dark passage leading out of the Close towards the High
Street belonged to her; and though the passage be narrow and the
houses dark, the locality is known to be good for trade. And she
owned two large houses in the High Street, and a great warehouse
at St. Thomas's, and had been bought out of land by the Railway at
St. David's,--much to her own dissatisfaction, as she was wont to
express herself, but, undoubtedly, at a very high price. It will be
understood therefore, that Miss Stanbury was wealthy, and that she
was bound to the city in which she lived by peculiar ties.
But Miss Stanbury had not been born to this wealth, nor can she
be said to have inherited from her forefathers any of these high
privileges which had been awarded to her. She had achieved them by
the romance of her life and the manner in which she had carried
herself amidst its vicissitudes. Her father had been vicar of
Nuncombe Putney, a parish lying twenty miles west of Exeter, among
the moors. And on her father's death, her brother, also now dead, had
become vicar of the same parish,--her brother, whose only son, Hugh
Stanbury, we already know, working for the "D. R." up in London. When
Miss Stanbury was twenty-one she became engaged to a certain Mr.
Brooke Burgess, the eldest son of a banker in Exeter,--or, it might,
perhaps, be better said, a banker himself; for at the time Mr.
Brooke Burgess was in the firm. It need not here be told how various
misfortunes arose, how Mr. Burgess quarrelled with the Stanbury
family, how Jemima quarrelled with her own family, how, when her
father died, she went out from Nuncombe Putney parsonage, and lived
on the smallest pittance in a city lodging, how her lover was untrue
to her and did not marry her, and how at last he died and left her
every shilling that he possessed.
The Devonshire people, at the time, had been much divided as to the
merits of the Stanbury quarrel. There were many who said that the
brother could not have acted otherwise than he did; and that Miss
Stanbury, though by force of character and force of circumstances
she had weathered the storm, had in truth been very indiscreet. The
results, however, were as have been described. At the period of which
we treat, Miss Stanbury was a very rich lady, living by herself in
Exeter, admitted, without question, to be one of the county set, and
still at variance with her brother's family. Except to Hugh, she had
never spoken a word to one of them since her brother's death. When
the money came into her hands, she at that time being over forty
and her nephew being then just ten years old, she had undertaken to
educate him, and to start him in the world. We know how she had kept
her word, and how and why she had withdrawn herself from any further
responsibility in the matter.
And in regard to this business of starting the young man she had been
careful to let it be known that she would do no more than start him.
In the formal document, by means of which she had made the proposal
to her brother, she had been careful to let it be understood that
simple education was all that she intended to bestow upon him,--"and
that only," she had added, "in the event of my surviving till his
education be completed." And to Hugh himself she had declared that
any allowance which she made him after he was called to the Bar,
was only made in order to give him room for his foot, a spot of
ground from whence to make his first leap. We know how he made that
leap, infinitely to the disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused
obedience to her in the matter of withdrawing from the Daily Record,
immediately withdrew from him, not only her patronage and assistance,
but even her friendship and acquaintance. This was the letter which
she wrote to him--
I don't think that writing radical stuff for a penny
newspaper is a respectable occupation for a gentleman, and
I will have nothing to do with it. If you choose to do
such work, I cannot help it; but it was not for such that
I sent you to Harrow and Oxford, nor yet up to London and
paid L100 a year to Mr. Lambert. I think you are treating
me badly, but that is nothing to your bad treatment of
yourself. You need not trouble yourself to answer this,
unless you are prepared to say that you will not write any
more stuff for that penny newspaper. Only I wish to be
understood. I will have no connection that I can help,
and no acquaintance at all, with radical scribblers and
incendiaries.
JEMIMA STANBURY.
The Close, Exeter, April 15, 186--.
Hugh Stanbury had answered this, thanking his aunt for past favours,
and explaining to her,--or striving to do so,--that he felt it to be
his duty to earn his bread, as a means of earning it had come within
his reach. He might as well have spared himself the trouble. She
simply wrote a few words across his own letter in red ink:--"The
bread of unworthiness should never be earned or eaten;" and then sent
the letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew.
She was a thorough Tory of the old school. Had Hugh taken to writing
for a newspaper that had cost sixpence, or even threepence, for its
copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him. At any rate the offence
would not have been so flagrant. And had the paper been conservative
instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms of conscience
before she gave him up. But to live by writing for a newspaper! and
for a penny newspaper!! and for a penny radical newspaper!!! It was
more than she could endure. Of what nature were the articles which he
contributed it was impossible that she should have any idea, for no
consideration would have induced her to look at a penny newspaper, or
to admit it within her doors. She herself took in the John Bull and
the Herald, and daily groaned deeply at the way in which those once
great organs of true British public feeling were becoming demoralised
and perverted. Had any reduction been made in the price of either of
them, she would at once have stopped her subscription. In the matter
of politics she had long since come to think that everything good was
over. She hated the name of Reform so much that she could not bring
herself to believe in Mr. Disraeli and his bill. For many years she
had believed in Lord Derby. She would fain believe in him still if
she could. It was the great desire of her heart to have some one in
whom she believed. In the bishop of her diocese she did believe, and
annually sent him some little comforting present from her own hand.
And in two or three of the clergymen around her she believed, finding
in them a flavour of the unascetic godliness of ancient days which
was gratifying to her palate. But in politics there was hardly a name
remaining to which she could fix her faith and declare that there
should be her guide. For awhile she thought she would cling to Mr.
Lowe; but, when she made inquiry, she found that there was no base
there of really well-formed conservative granite. The three gentlemen
who had dissevered themselves from Mr. Disraeli when Mr. Disraeli was
passing his Reform bill, were doubtless very good in their way; but
they were not big enough to fill her heart. She tried to make herself
happy with General Peel, but General Peel was after all no more than
a shade to her. But the untruth of others never made her untrue, and
she still talked of the excellence of George III. and the glories of
the subsequent reign. She had a bust of Lord Eldon, before which she
was accustomed to stand with hands closed and to weep,--or to think
that she wept.
She was a little woman, now nearly sixty years of age, with bright
grey eyes, and a strong Roman nose, and thin lips, and a sharp-cut
chin. She wore a head-gear that almost amounted to a mob-cap, and
beneath it her grey hair was always frizzled with the greatest care.
Her dress was invariably of black silk, and she had five gowns,--one
for church, one for evening parties, one for driving out, and one for
evenings at home, and one for mornings. The dress, when new, always
went to church. Nothing, she was wont to say, was too good for the
Lord's house. In the days of crinolines she had protested that she
had never worn one,--a protest, however, which was hardly true; and
now, in these later days, her hatred was especially developed in
reference to the head-dresses of young women. "Chignon" was a word
which she had never been heard to pronounce. She would talk of "those
bandboxes which the sluts wear behind their noddles;" for Miss
Stanbury allowed herself the use of much strong language. She was
very punctilious in all her habits, breakfasting ever at half-past
eight, and dining always at six. Half-past five had been her time,
till the bishop, who, on an occasion, was to be her guest, once
signified to her that such an hour cut up the day and interfered with
clerical work. Her lunch was always of bread and cheese, and they who
lunched with her either eat that,--or the bread without the cheese.
An afternoon "tea" was a thing horrible to her imagination. Tea and
buttered toast at half-past eight in the evening was the great luxury
of her life. She was as strong as a horse, and had never hitherto
known a day's illness. As a consequence of this, she did not believe
in the illness of other people,--especially not in the illness of
women. She did not like a girl who could not drink a glass of beer
with her bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and she thought
that a glass of port after dinner was good for everybody. Indeed, she
had a thorough belief in port wine, thinking that it would go far to
cure most miseries. But she could not put up with the idea that a
woman, young or old, should want the stimulus of a glass of sherry
to support her at any odd time of the day. Hot concoctions of strong
drink at Christmas she would allow to everybody, and was very strong
in recommending such comforts to ladies blessed, or about to be
blessed, with babies. She took the sacrament every month, and gave
away exactly a tenth of her income to the poor. She believed that
there was a special holiness in a tithe of a thing, and attributed
the commencement of the downfall of the Church of England to rent
charges, and the commutation of clergymen's incomes. Since Judas,
there had never been, to her thinking, a traitor so base, or an
apostate so sinful, as Colenso; and yet, of the nature of Colenso's
teaching she was as ignorant as the towers of the cathedral opposite
to her.
She believed in Exeter, thinking that there was no other provincial
town in England in which a maiden lady could live safely and
decently. London to her was an abode of sin; and though, as we have
seen, she delighted to call herself one of the county set, she did
not love the fields and lanes. And in Exeter the only place for a
lady was the Close. Southernhay and Northernhay might be very well,
and there was doubtless a respectable neighbourhood on the Heavitree
side of the town; but for the new streets, and especially for the
suburban villas, she had no endurance. She liked to deal at dear
shops; but would leave any shop, either dear or cheap, in regard to
which a printed advertisement should reach her eye. She paid all her
bills at the end of each six months, and almost took a delight in
high prices. She would rejoice that bread should be cheap, and grieve
that meat should be dear, because of the poor; but in regard to other
matters no reduction in the cost of an article ever pleased her.
She had houses as to which she was told by her agent that the rents
should be raised; but she would not raise them. She had others which
it was difficult to let without lowering the rents, but she would not
lower them. All change was to her hateful and unnecessary.
She kept three maid-servants, and a man came in every day to clean
the knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much
labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could
live with her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises,
and as to dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether
broke down; but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that
their places were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want
for aught, when once the good opinion of Miss Stanbury had been
earned. When once she believed in her servant there was nobody like
that servant. There was not a man in Exeter could clean a boot except
Giles Hickbody,--and if not in Exeter, then where else? And her own
maid Martha, who had lived with her now for twenty years, and who had
come with her to the brick house when she first inhabited it, was
such a woman that no other servant anywhere was fit to hold a candle
to her. But then Martha had great gifts,--was never ill, and really
liked having sermons read to her.
Such was Miss Stanbury, who had now discarded her nephew Hugh. She
had never been tenderly affectionate to Hugh, or she would hardly
have asked him to live in London on a hundred a year. She had never
really been kind to him since he was a boy, for although she had paid
for him, she had been almost penurious in her manner of doing so,
and had repeatedly given him to understand, that in the event of her
death not a shilling would be left to him. Indeed, as to that matter
of bequeathing her money, it was understood that it was her purpose
to let it all go back to the Burgess family. With the Burgess family
she had kept up no sustained connection, it being quite understood
that she was never to be asked to meet the only one of them now left
in Exeter. Nor was it as yet known to any one in what manner the
money was to go back, how it was to be divided, or who were to be the
recipients. But she had declared that it should go back, explaining
that she had conceived it to be a duty to let her own relations know
that they would not inherit her wealth at her death.
About a week after she had sent back poor Hugh's letter with the
endorsement on it as to unworthy bread, she summoned Martha to the
back parlour in which she was accustomed to write her letters. It was
one of the theories of her life that different rooms should be used
only for the purposes for which they were intended. She never allowed
pens and ink up into the bed-rooms, and had she ever heard that any
guest in her house was reading in bed, she would have made an instant
personal attack upon that guest, whether male or female, which would
have surprised that guest. Poor Hugh would have got on better with
her had he not been discovered once smoking in the garden. Nor would
she have writing materials in the drawing-room or dining-room. There
was a chamber behind the dining-room in which there was an inkbottle,
and if there was a letter to be written, let the writer go there
and write it. In the writing of many letters, however, she put no
confidence, and regarded penny postage as one of the strongest
evidences of the coming ruin.
"Martha," she said, "I want to speak to you. Sit down. I think I am
going to do something." Martha sat down, but did not speak a word.
There had been no question asked of her, and the time for speaking
had not come. "I am writing to Mrs. Stanbury, at Nuncombe Putney; and
what do you think I am saying to her?"
Now the question had been asked, and it was Martha's duty to reply.
"Writing to Mrs. Stanbury, ma'am?"
"Yes, to Mrs. Stanbury."
"It ain't possible for me to say, ma'am, unless it's to put Mr. Hugh
from going on with the newspapers."
"When my nephew won't be controlled by me, I shan't go elsewhere
to look for control over him; you may be sure of that, Martha. And
remember, Martha, I don't want to have his name mentioned again in
the house. You will tell them all so, if you please."
"He was a very nice gentleman, ma'am."
"Martha, I won't have it; and there's an end of it. I won't have it.
Perhaps I know what goes to the making of a nice gentleman as well as
you do."
"Mr. Hugh, ma'am,--"
"I won't have it, Martha. And when I say so, let there be an end
of it." As she said this, she got up from her chair, and shook her
head, and took a turn about the room. "If I'm not mistress here, I'm
nobody."
"Of course you're mistress here, ma'am."
"And if I don't know what's fit to be done, and what's not fit, I'm
too old to learn; and, what's more, I won't be taught. I'm not going
to have my house crammed with radical incendiary stuff, printed with
ink that stinks, on paper made out of straw. If I can't live without
penny literature, at any rate I'll die without it. Now listen to me."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I have asked Mrs. Stanbury to send one of the girls over here."
"To live, ma'am?" Martha's tone as she asked the question, showed how
deeply she felt its importance.
"Yes, Martha; to live."
"You'll never like it, ma'am."
"I don't suppose I shall."
"You'll never get on with it, ma'am; never. The young lady'll be out
of the house in a week; or if she ain't, somebody else will."
"You mean yourself."
"I'm only a servant, ma'am, and it don't signify about me."
"You're a fool."
"That's true, ma'am, I don't doubt."
"I've sent for her, and we must do the best we can. Perhaps she won't
come."
"She'll come fast enough," said Martha. "But whether she'll stay,
that's a different thing. I don't see how it's possible she's to
stay. I'm told they're feckless, idle young ladies. She'll be so
soft, ma'am, and you,--"
"Well; what of me?"
"You'll be so hard, ma'am!"
"I'm not a bit harder than you, Martha; nor yet so hard. I'll do my
duty, or at least I'll try. Now you know all about it, and you may go
away. There's the letter, and I mean to go out and post it myself."