Maria's Diary 39

 

Chapter 39

And through the various maze of time,

And through th'infinity of space,

We follow Thy career sublime,

Jan 1861 

I felt like a gooseberry staying with Papa and Deborah  in their new house, so I moved in with Frederick, who also had Edith, and our cousins, Emily and Elsa Piper staying with him in Torquay. 

Papa visited Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Rome. She was suffering from the illness that she didn’t expect to recover from. Robert Browning usually prohibited her from world visitors but as Papa was famous, and he brought a letter of introduction, and a report about his intimate relations with Napoleon she said, “I’II  talk to him.” She confirmed that they had similar views and she was glad to hear it confirmed by a disciple of Bentham, true, liberal and of distinguished intelligence.” She died on June 29, 1861. 

The most talked about death this year was of course that of Prince Albert.  Edgar was invited to the funeral. 

Prince Albert died on 14 December 1861 at Windsor Castle. His remains were moved to the entrance to the Royal Vault in St George's Chapel at Windsor before being taken to the new Mausoleum at Frogmore. The hearse was drawn by six horses and escorted by the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards, dismounted, and by the 1st Battalion of Scots Fusiliers with reversed arms. Four carriages followed the hearse. Benjamin Disraeli's comment on Prince Albert's death was: 'With Prince Albert we have buried our Sovereign. This German Prince has governed England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings has ever shown'.

My brother Edgar was a good friend of the Prince, having worked with him over the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition in 1851, and thereafter as part of the committee which decided how to spend the money raised by it.  Shortly after the funeral, the Queen made Edgar  a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath.

In 1862 Harriet Martineau, a leading Unitarian of the time, told a story about Papa. Someone who had known Papa  as a boy had told her sister, that, forbidden by his mother to have the silk handkerchief he wanted, he found one in the street, salvaged a presentable piece of it, and sewed it to a cotton handkerchief, allowing the silk corner to hang from his pocket. She obviously thought that showed his devious mind, but I think it shows great resourcefulness. 

Harriet Martineau  really does not like Papa and described him privately as 'a supreme charlatan and worse—a cheat, a liar, and, at least once, a swindler.' Others see  him as ostentatious, self seeking, and obsequious. Nobody denies his talent, however, and many testify to his personal integrity in matters of conscience.

Arguably the most prominent Unitarian layman of his time, Papa was assiduous in attending Unitarian meetings, in taking the chair, in opening bazaars and buildings, and in giving speeches and toasts on Unitarian occasions. He was President of the BFUA, 1860-61, and was subsequently ever-present at its meetings. He excelled in giving the traditional toast 'to civil and religious liberty the world over.' 

I decided to move back  in with Papa and Deborah, as I had sort of got over my resentment of her, taking my place as Papa’s companion. We got along fairly well and did many things together. 

John Charles came back to England in 1862, and he decided to spend some of his great wealth in doing up Larkbear House.   The old property   was left empty and much in need of repair. So instead of doing that, John Charles bought the surrounding property and turned the whole thing into a magnificent palace. 

 

Built at a cost of £7,000, it was designed by Ambrose Westlake, and constructed by Stafford of Bartholomew Street. The house has a drawing room, dining room and billiard room on the ground floor, five large bedrooms with dressing rooms on the first floor and a library overlooking a fine view towards Haldon, and staff quarters on the second floor. There is a basement large enough to be able to store enough food to withstand a long siege. 

An article in the Western Times article listed the virtues of the house in some detail. Just to build the house, the contractors had to cut the top off the hill to create a platform, using the removed material to slope the hill down to the wall on one side of the path along the river, and covering the old lime kilns. Supposedly designed in ‘Elizabethan’ style, the house is typical of the period in Exeter, being constructed of limestone from Berry Head, quoins of stone from Chudleigh, and window and door dressings of Bath stone. The stone for the windows, doors and chimney dressings cost £1,000. The main entrance, which is in Tudor style, leads into a hallway of Minton tiles “at no small expense”. The drawing room had a mirror measuring 5 ft by 9 ft, a feature worth commenting on.

Money was not spared on the garden, with Veitch’s nursery contracted to landscape it with a full range of shrubs and trees. There was an extensive range of outbuildings including a summer house, tool house, orchid house, fern house, peach house, strawberry house, melon and cucumber house and vinery, all heated with a hot water system. There is stabling for five horses and a double coach house. On the river there is a private landing stage.

John Charles  presented to the British Museum a fine collection of coleoptera, consisting of more than 84,000 specimens, known by the name of the Bowering collection.

John Charles got married in 1863 to Isabelle Toulmin.  Her father, Calvert,  and Papa had been friends back in the Hackney days.  She was 20 and he was 42, so many thought this was a very big age gap.  Poor Isabelle died less than a year later, at her parents’ house in Bayswater.  

John Charles remarried in 1866 to Mary Furlonger and their first son, John Frederick was born in 1867. 

 

 I accompanied Papa and Deborah on many of their outings. For instance we went to the Devonshire Association for Advancement of Science. Another time we supported the Graphic Society.

Sometimes Papa was ill or away, and Deborah would go on our own like the Banquet at Mansion House for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.

 

Both Deborah and I went to the Exeter school of art and at their annual meeting Sir Stafford Northgate the  president, gave me a medal for drawing from example. Papa gave an eloquent and earnest address regarding  financial difficulties of the school. 

 

I haven’t been able to teach as I was hoping to, but I have donated to the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.  And I regularly attend and support activities at St. Mary’s Church in Exeter. 

 

In 1865   both Deborah and I won prizes and medals for painting flowers from nature,  foliage from nature, and birds from nature, sometimes in water colour, sometimes in oils.  

 

In 1868 to raise money for the Art Union, Deborah and I were some of the  contributors of prizes, including some of our water colour drawings.  

 

We were invited to the Fishmonger’s banquet - so it was quite a bunch with Papa, Deborah and me, and then Edgar and his wife. 

 

All of us banded together to support the huge bazaar in Exeter, the funding of which was to support the Prince Albert Museum. 

 

Papa wrote this very appropriate poem describing what was on sale.  

 

A lady from Paris the very late mode:

A peasant from Norway, just brought from abroad;

New songs for bright voices, new books for hard brains,

Gay nosegays and posies, gay garlands in chains!

 

Dolls! How can I reckon them: better than kisses,

For dear-little ducks , little masters and misses

Clad, booted and ganted with ruffles and hose

And see pretty slippers for sweet pettitoes!

 

And for ladies such books as would tempt them to run

Ere their long robes are left, or their short robe begun

What a choice for momas - what a pride for the nurses

Their doyleys, pen wipers, pincushions and purses;

 

White rabbits that won’t run away

That scratch would not - fans, ottomans, hats!!

And antimacassars, scarves, bracelets and rings

And hundreds, yes hundreds of beautiful things; 

 

And feathers of peacocks, and studies of botany

Photographed pictures - indeed there is not any

Science or art without representation. 

 

Deborah had her stall which was  rich in works of art,  stove ferns and daledians, Japanese fly catchers, dogs and foxes heads, and a glove box made of cotton waste - which is called Parkensine.

We were listed in the paper for our stalls. 

 

Contributors Mrs. Edgar Bowring  and Miss Edith, at Lady Bowring’s stall, contributed scenes of painted  scenery, French dolls, and a photograph of King of Siam .

 

I contributed a beautiful cushion that I had embroidered.  But I also ran my own stall  with beautiful dolls and old point lace, 

Another activity I shared with Deborah was the Exeter Naturalist club.  

Although I did little with my music at this time, I was asked to provide piano music for background at the wedding of Lelis Gillies, a family friend. 

 

Papa, Deborah and I went to a school of Arts and Science group, and my work was selected for a national competition. The speech from Papa said, “They could not feel but that a great work was being done - slowly perhaps but steadily certainly a wonderful change was being effected in the tone of the rational mind with respect to Art education.”

Our next devastating news was on August 26, 1869. Our sister, Emily but now the nun, Mother Aloysia – had died of a fever in Hong Kong. But she had made a huge difference to the lives of many in the meantime. Again, the newspapers have provided me with the material about her.

Emily was a God-send to the nuns from Italy who spoke little English. She became headmistress of the English school and translated between the Portuguese and Chinese and Italians when needed. She gave the convent a social cachet that must have helped recruit girls to come to the school. 

She was well known and universally respected. She chose the Society into which she had entered because she found therein a more congenial sphere for the indulgence of her charitable sympathies towards the poor and needy. The department in which she laboured was education and from what we have regularly heard, her work was most effective. Her intellect acute by inheritance and education and moulded to beauty and virtue by the care of her father and more by the delicate sensitiveness of her mother - was from childhood directed to seeking after truth in serious  earnestness and her mind matured, the Colonial Court in which she lived was kept singularly pure by hallowed parental influences. Educated to seek the truth, she  had at last found it in the Roman Catholic religion and it is no matter of surprise that a sanguine temperament carried her beyond being a mere convert, that she became an enthusiast and gave up all former friends, country, family to serve her God. She chose her field of work typically and spent her time helping girls of all grades, of all nations, (it was her faith that God had made all one family, all nations on the earth) who will call her blessed. The influence she acquired over her pupils, her children (they were all her children in Christ) unbounded as it was, was ever tuned to  improve the religious the pious aspiration of the young, and who can dare, in the certainty to come to each, in the eternity of the hereafter, to measure the good which this young lady, who leaving the luxuries of life has within the precise waffs of office may have effected. 

The funeral left the Italian convent at 4, and arrived at the Catholic cemetery about 5. The number of various Catholic religious were in attendance and others such as the Chief Justice, Hon. Mr. Forth, Hon. Cecil Smith and others of the Protestant community.  

The deceased lady was universally beloved and respected and her loss will be severely felt not only in the Society of which she was an honoured member but by the community in general. The service at the grave was performed by the Rev. T. Raimondi, Prefect Apolstolic. As the coffin was eased into its resting place, the choicest tribute that can be made to the memory of one - the tears of the once poor and friendless women she rescued from a life of sin and misery fell upon it. 

In this busy world, where the trial and test

Is to do what we can,-ever doing our best;

We may think of that teacher, the best of the good,

Whose sweetest reward was, 'She did what she could.' 

Lines addressed to EB by John Bowring