Maria's Diary -1

(This chapter is from before the time when William Holt came to London and during it, so some of the details in the first chapters are not accurate.) 

By Thee-who, when Thy children press

To Thy kind presence, bid'st them come:

And, pleased to shield, and pleased to bless,

Art their defence-their port-their home:

Where, safe from gusts, their bark shall be

Anchored for ever, Lord! by Thee.

I am so fed up with Papa. He is a very wonderful and great man and I love him very much, but it is because of his desire to do great things that we are now in such terrible trouble.

I don’t understand all the details, but I will give a summary of how things went from wonderful to dreadful in such a short space of time. We were very comfortable living in our large house in London Fields. We had a horse and a carriage, servants, and lots of parties and visitors. Papa dressed up like a statesman and even had a sword. Then suddenly the news came that our house was being repossessed, and the furniture taken, all to pay off part of Papa’s debts.

He was very interested in helping people, and one group of people he tried very hard to help were the Greeks who were fighting the Turks for their freedom. He supported  Lord Byron who went to fight for the cause, but the Greeks never had enough money to buy the guns and ammunition they needed. So being his friend, Lord Byron asked Papa to help, and by getting together subscriptions to a fund – they did raise a lot of money. They sent the required  guns but also included a printing press, which Lord Byron was very annoyed about, saying the fight had to come first, and the rebuilding later. But the Greeks said it wasn’t enough, so Papa tried even harder, and so he somehow sold shares in a fund which promised land in Greece as its protection against failure. He invested £5,000 of our money, which he must have borrowed from someone and of course the whole thing failed, and we were left penniless, and homeless.

One strange thing happened, when Lord Byron died of a disease during the war, the story is told that he had his body sent to Papa in a cask of rum. But Papa says it was meant as a joke.

Mr. Bentham tried to help Papa as best he could, and tried to get him a professorship of literature in the new London University, but they weren’t interested.

So the family had to split up. John Charles was sent to Aunt and Uncle Piper in Norton. Uncle Henry Piper runs a boarding school of high merit. Lewin and Frederick were sent to Grandpa in Exeter where there was a school close by at Mount Radford which they attended

So that left Moma, baby Edgar and me, so Papa took us all to stay with friends of his first in Heidelberg, then in Bonn after that to Amsterdam, staying about a few weeks in each place. Papa was very lucky that at this time, the Dutch decided to reward him with an honourary degree from Grovingen University , so he was called Doctor Bowring after that. It did a great deal to repair his image. He wore his academic gown whenever there was anything that it might be appropriate for. 

When we came home, Moma, who was expecting another baby, Edgar and I went to stay with Miss Emily Gibson who was a good friend from Tryon Place, Hackney. I don’t know why we didn’t go to Grandma’s house. Maybe she was not very well or something. Papa went to stay with Mr. Bentham, and it was hoped that eventually we all would be able to live there. Mr. Bentham’s property is two houses next to each other, and the one Papa was hoping we would be able to live in, was at the moment being lived in by the Mills, who didn’t like Papa one little bit.

So we rented a house at 7 North Place, Greys Inn Road. It was very near where William used to work, so he called in on us often.

After awhile, we moved to 6 Freemantle Court in Cornhill, but then we moved to 102 Leadenhall Street, which wasn’t very far away. It was an interesting area to live in with the offices of the East Indian House and the shipping line P and O,  in Cornhill, and  the Leaden Hall Market. There were covered allelys running off Cornhill where there were various offices.  I remember Papa talking about how important it was to support the London Royal Eye Hospital, and he had an annual subscription for that, and a perpetual one for  the Monthly Repository, which I think had something to do with his writing.  There were lots of coffee houses in the area near the Royal Exchange buildings and he would meet his friends at one of them.

So our lives are very different now. Papa has a close group of friends, and when they realised what an awful time we were having, they raised a fund to pay off his debts, and then they bought back from the auction of our furniture, most of our necessary bits  and Papa’s books. With what money was left, they put it into the bank for the use of Mama and the education of us children. I suppose that was so Papa couldn’t get his hands on it to speculate again on some hare brained scheme.

Luckily Papa retained his position as editor of the Westminster Review, which was paid work. And as his friend Colonel  Thompson was now in charge, he enjoyed the job much more. But he was ambitious to do more, but since the Greek problem, he wasn’t being offered any more government jobs abroad. So he started thinking about the possibility of becoming an MP.

Quite luckily, Mr. Bentham had a falling out with Mr. Mills, and as a result they moved out of Queens Square, so Papa has tried to make it suitable for us to live in and with the bits of saved furniture but we haven’t moved in yet. The boys seemed happy where they are and they are getting a good education, so it was decided they should stay put for the time being.

Jean Day