MY GRANDMOTHER’S MAID
I must now devote a short chapter to a record of a faithful friend and
retainer of my mother’s family, whose sterling worth and amusing
peculiarities deserve especial mention.
When my uncle, Mr Poyntz, married, he went to live at his wife’s
beautiful estate of Cowdray Park, and his ancestral home of Midgham was
let to strangers. It had not been long in the family. Anna Maria
Mordaunt, first cousin to the “great Earl of Peterborough,” was maid of
honour to Queen Caroline, wife of George II., who is said to have made
Midgham, with the adjacent park and grounds, a wedding present to the
said Maid of Honour on her marriage with Stephen Poyntz, a distinguished
diplomatist, and minister at Stockholm and other foreign courts. There
was a whisper that Her Majesty’s kind intention was never fulfilled in a
pecuniary point of view, and that the purchase money came out of the
bridegroom’s pocket. But whether this be a fact or not, I am unable to
state. It is certain, however, that the Queen retained a great
friendship for Mrs Poyntz, whom she appointed governess (as it was
termed) to her son, William, Duke of Cumberland. A very large painting
recorded this event, and was a great object of interest to me in my
young days. I do not know the name of the artist, but well remember the
peculiar group of three personages—Queen Caroline, in regal purple and
ermine, presenting her eight-year-old son, in square cut coat, short
breeches, and dainty silk stockings, to my great-grandmother, who
figured as Minerva in full panoply.
[Sidenote: MRS POYNTZ]
Mrs Poyntz was an amiable and gentle-hearted woman, as her letters
testify, and can in no way be considered responsible for the subsequent
career of the Royal Duke. I have in my possession a most interesting and
touching letter from Lady Cromartie, whose husband was under sentence of
death, in 1715, as a Jacobite, in which she makes a most earnest appeal
to Mrs Poyntz to intercede with the Queen in behalf of the prisoner,
and, to the best of my belief, the intercession was of some avail. At
all events, Lord Cromartie’s life was spared, although his title was
attainted, and was only revived in 1861, in the person of the late
Duchess of Sutherland.[22] The Duke of Cumberland was a frequent visitor
at Midgham, and there was a suite of apartments called by his name. The
house, as I have said before, was constantly let during my uncle’s life,
but in a small, quaint cottage on the skirts of the park, lived, at the
time of which I am speaking, an old lady, who had been in the service of
my grandmother as lady’s maid, and still occupied a place of trust in
that of my uncle. We occasionally visited this dear old retainer of our
family, and one summer I accompanied my mother and my brother Charles to
Midgham Cottage.
Footnote 22:
Anne Hay McKenzie, married to third Duke of Sutherland, died 1889.
To me that visit was a real holiday. We all loved Illidge (for that was
her name) dearly, and were much amused by her eccentricities, while the
life in a real _bonâ fide_ cottage seemed to me like a page out of some
rural novel.
Illidge was a short, rather thick-set woman, with silver hair, bushy
eyebrows, bright eyes, and a most determined expression. She wore the
dress which was in vogue in the last generation: a short plain, scanty
gown of fawn-coloured silk, low in the neck and short in the sleeves, a
white muslin fichu, and apron and black mittens. There is a picture at
Drumlanrig Castle of the Duchess of Queensberry in exactly the same
costume, which I saw years afterwards when on a visit to the Duke and
Duchess of Buccleuch.
Illidge had very aristocratic notions, and nothing ruffled her dignity
more than when we—my brother or myself—marched into the kitchen and
called to Sarah, the sole indoor domestic of the little household,
asking her for what we wanted, instead of ringing the bell in the
parlour, although the parlour and kitchen were next door to each other.
“Just as you please, my dear,” said Illidge, looking extremely angry,
“but I’ve always been accustomed to gentlepeople ringing the bell, and
not coming into the kitchen at all hours, and making so free with the
under-servants!”
She had an inveterate hatred for the occupants of Midgham House. She was
quite aware that her master was always glad when the house was let and
warmed and kept in repair by being lived in, but if the angel Gabriel
had come down from heaven to become the tenant of Midgham House, Illidge
would have hated and despised him.
On one occasion I composed a grandiloquent poem, having for its theme
the courtship and marriage of Anna Maria Mordaunt and Stephen Poyntz,
which I wrote out in my best hand, and presented to Illidge, who agreed
with me in considering it a very fine epic.
[Sidenote: VISIT TO ILLIDGE]
My mother, who loved her early home dearly, did not share Illidge’s
views respecting the tenants, or visit with her wrath those who liked
the place well enough to hire it. So one day, in spite of frowns and
angry looks from our hostess, she called on me to go with her to pay our
respects to the tenants in question.
“Will you lend me the poem,” I asked in a very conciliatory voice, “to
take with me to the house? I think Mrs —— would very much like to see
it.” “That she never shall,” said Illidge, in a tone of such defiant
exasperation that I was indeed very sorry I had spoken.
Before I go any further, I cannot refrain from telling a story I heard
from Illidge’s own lips—indeed I published it in “Notes and Queries,”
and more than once imparted it to literary friends. Very little credence
has been awarded to this anecdote, but for my own part, I cannot doubt
the authority whence it was derived.
The heroine of the little romance I am about to relate was no less a
personage than Mrs Garrick, the wife of the eminent tragedian. In the
year 1746 the play-going public were thrown into a state of great
excitement in consequence of the appearance of a young and beautiful
dancer named La Violette. She hailed from Vienna, and had been
introduced by the _Maître de Ballet_ at that court with other young
ladies, to dance with the children of the Empress Maria Theresa. Her
Majesty took a great fancy to the girl, whose family name was Veigel,
which in Austrian patois signifies violet, and the Empress gave her the
name of Mademoiselle Violette. It is not mentioned in the life of
Garrick that she ever appeared on the public stage at Vienna, but she
came over to England and made her _début_ as a dancer at Drury Lane on
the 3rd December 1746.
[Sidenote: ROMANCE OF MRS GARRICK’S LIFE]
Horace Walpole in his amusing and gossiping letters, in which he minds
everybody else’s business, tells us how the London world, especially the
fashionable portion, went mad after Mademoiselle Violette, and how, in
particular, the Countesses of Burlington and Talbot rivalled each other
in seeking her society and showing her favour; the former having her
portrait taken, and carrying her off to Chiswick, and chaperoning her on
many occasions. Lord Burlington[23] shared in his wife’s predilection
for the lovely young Austrian. Lady Burlington, indeed, often played the
part of mother to La Violette (attending her to the theatre, and
throwing a warm pelisse over her, when she came out), and at length her
noble friends invited her to take up her abode at Burlington House. One
day as Lord Burlington was passing La Violette’s open door, he was
attracted by her singing, and stopped to speak and compliment her on her
sweet voice. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a picture, whether
miniature or not, I am unable to say, and in an agitated tone he
enquired whose portrait it was. La Violette replied that it was her
mother’s. Explanations followed, dates were examined, small relics in
the girl’s possession inspected, and, if I may be excused a vulgarism,
two and two were put together, and it was proved to Lord Burlington’s
entire conviction that La Violette was no other than his own
daughter—her mother being a beautiful artiste, with whom he had had a
_liaison_ on the Continent, but after a violent quarrel, a separation
had taken place, and they never met again.
Footnote 23:
Richard, fourth Earl of Cork and third Earl of Burlington, K.G., born
1695, died 1753; married Dorothy Saville, daughter of William, Marquis
of Halifax.
Of the particulars of her mother’s connection with Lord Burlington, I am
entirely ignorant; I merely give the story as it was related to me, with
the only details I can recall, by Illidge, who had it from the lips of a
niece of Lord Burlington’s housekeeper. The latter, being in his service
at the time of the incident, but having secrecy enjoined on her, kept
silence till many years after.
On La Violette’s marriage with David Garrick, in 1749, Lord Burlington
bestowed on her a dowry of £6,000, and one of the biographers of the
great actor says that this generosity on his lordship’s part gave rise
to the conjecture that she was his own child, going on, however, to
argue, by dates and diaries, that the English nobleman had not been on
the Continent at the time specified, and that the girl was the daughter
of Viennese parents of the name of Viegel.
It would be useless and tedious to enter into all the minutiæ of that
bygone history. I merely mention the facts as related to me by one who
thought it necessary to speak of it in a confidential manner, although
everybody connected with the little romance had long passed away. The
Garrick union was a very happy one, and for thirty years the husband and
wife were inseparable. The widow survived him for a long period, and it
was my good fortune to see her when I was quite a child. We encountered
her in the lobby of a theatre, as she was making her way out between two
female attendants, and my father said to me: “That is Mrs Garrick, Mary;
some day you will be glad to think that you have seen her.” She wore a
strange costume of quilted white silk, somewhat resembling a
dressing-gown, and a large mob cap, and though very aged, bore undoubted
traces of former beauty. I believe it was shortly before her death. She
died at Hampton, having nearly attained her hundredth year, at a house
which her husband bequeathed to her, and which still bears the name, if
I am not mistaken, of “Garrick’s Villa.”
To return to Illidge. The dear old soul continued to live on in her
lowly cot, with two companions, a “gal” to do the housework, and an
octogenarian, between her and whom a tender friendship existed, he
having been in old days the gardener at the Great House. She became
blind, but, old as she was, retained her activity and impetuosity of
nature.
[Sidenote: ILLIDGE AND THE ROBBER]
On one occasion she had been driven in to Newbury, to collect some
“monies” (whether for rent or not I am unable to say) belonging to her
master, and that night she went to bed as usual, with the key of the
escritoire, in which she had deposited the money, in her ample pockets
under her pillow. She was startled, although not alarmed (for nothing
could alarm her undaunted spirit) by hearing footsteps on the stairs,
and the opening of her bedroom door. A man’s gruff voice was heard at
her bedside, and the faint sound of the poor maid in hysterics above
stairs, for the burglar had locked in the two other inmates of the
cottage, though, alas! there was little help to be expected from either
of them.
“Now, then,” said the robber, “hand us over that money that you got
to-day in Newbury, every penny of it.”
She started up in bed, and turning her sightless eyes on the intruder,
exclaimed, in her most strident tones: “_No, I won’t, you villain!
What’s yer name?_”
It may easily be believed that her nocturnal visitor was not
communicative in this particular, neither did the courage of the old
lady influence his conduct. He went on to prove to her that “he would
stand no nonsense,” and when at length she had unwillingly produced the
keys in question, he insisted on her accompanying him downstairs, to
show him the spot where the treasure lay hid. So up she got, and,
guarding against the cold by putting on some of the multifarious
petticoats which she always wore, the blind old heroine groped her way
downstairs, all the time heaping imprecations on the head of her
persecutor, and foretelling for him that retribution he deserved. She
had a wonderful knack of finding her way by remembering the positions of
the pieces of furniture in her small sitting-room, and Illidge’s
prediction came true. The burglar, besides appropriating the money in
question, took a fancy to some trinkets in the drawer, and some
months—if I mistake not, a year afterwards—one of them was found in a
pawnbroker’s shop in Newbury, and identified by a person who had seen it
in Illidge’s possession. There was no doubt about it, for it was a
mourning ring, with a date and inscription, which rendered the
identification conclusive. The pawnbroker remembered the woman who had
brought it, who turned out to be an accomplice of the burglar’s, and in
this manner he was tracked and convicted.
And so ends all the adventures that I can recall of one of the most
attached and zealous retainers of which any family could boast. Illidge,
like the more celebrated personage with whom I have connected her name,
nearly attained her hundredth year, before she departed from this
sublunary scene.
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