A BOOK OF THE MOMENT
LYME LETTERS
'7,3, me Letters. By The Lady Newton. (Heinemann. 32s. exl.)
THOSE who have followed the fortunes of the House of Lyme in Lady Newton's first book will eagerly welcome this new volume of Lyme Letters. It is not, however, in the least necessary to have read the first volume in order to enjoy the second. The present book appears to begin exactly where it ought, so gracefully and so shortly does Lady Newton recap• itulate where recapitulation is necessary. " I propose," she says, in her preface, " to introduce to my readers the sons and daughters of my favourite character, Richard Legh of Lyme (1634-1687) and his wife Elizabeth " endeavouring " to introduce fresh glimpses of the home life at Lyme, and so to open out a new vista of the old house with the description and lives of its offshoots." Lady Newton has, if we may be allowed the expression, a great gift for history-telling. She deduces the social life of the period with which she is dealing from the exceedingly interesting letters and papers which have been preserved nt Lyme. The result is a vivid description of life at the time of Charles II. and later, centring in one of the greatest and most splenclid of English country houses. " One gathers from these letters," we read, " how small and purely local were the interests of the writers' daily lives " ; but it is just these homely details which make them intensely interesting. We hear of the writers' illnesses, their quarrels, ,their expenses, their love affairs and their philosophizings. Considering their method of treating the sick, the marvellous thing is how very often they got well.
In 1683 ten children in the Legh family were ill at Lyme with smallpox and all recovered ! Their mother was expecting her eleventh child, who arrived in the middle of the epidemic. Nursing was at the time unknown as a science, though, of course, kindness and solicitude for the sick were as common as they are now. Lady Newton's chapter on the nursing in public institutions in the seventeenth century m akes one's blood run cold. In St. Bartholomew's there was a ward for smallpox patients where they lay four in a bed. The governors realized that the nursing was bad, but respectable, kind-hearted women would not undertake such a job. The ten little Leghs no doubt fared better than hospital patients. At any rate they got sympathy and attention, and apparently some know- ledge of how to reduce fever existed everywhere. The idea that those who had been ill must have change of air, even though it were a change for the worse, was as general as it is now. Elizabeth Legh was strongly advised to send a delicate little girl to London for a change and assured by her kind friends that if she did not do so she might lose her. " Ken- sington Gravel Pits " was a favourite resort of the sick.
Very great care was taken of the Legh children. They are most fondly alluded to in these letters " my girl a dainty pert one." " The sweetest boy ever yet seen," &c. Schools and tutors are chosen with evident regard to the chil- dren's happiness.. " Madam Legh " used to recommend a Mr. Shane who kept a school at Warrington, ." a very sober man, a quiet good-natured man both in the school and else- where ; the boys generally improve very well under him." Lady Newton reminds us, however, that the custom of the day excused great cruelty in schools. The elder Legh children were all educated at home " where a tutor, ' a Bachelor of Arts,' a very good scholar and of great modesty and sobriety instruc- ted them in the three R's, music and elementary Latin." Spel- ling, when even good spellers allowed themselves great latitude, presented difficulty to many boys and girls. Kadam Legh upon one occasion returned to her daughter an ill-spelled letter with a severe scolding. The poor child went to an old house- keeper belonging to the family for comfort but found none, the latter declaring " There was never any writ like it. I intend to keep it as long as I live that it may rise up in judgment against all women pretending to writ." One of the younger sons went after his father's death to a school at which he was strangely neglected, but all in the way of indulgence. He arrived very ill prepared at the University, when he writes that he is very grateful to his tutors for their kindness " to such a block as I."
The expenses of a young man of position at Oxford in 1685
came to about £120 a year counting pocket money. Servants played a large part in the household. Mrs. Pott, the nurse, is greatly thought of, and we hear of the scurvy enormity " of a groom who rode a horse to a fair without permission and was found drunk in the road, " the horse in a woeful pickle." One very serious quarrel with a neighbour, about the shooting of a stag which caused a breach never healed, is here recounted.
News of the great world reached Lyme from London chiefly by way of news letters. These letters, which have been pre- served, cover a period of about 150 years. They were the forerunners of the more modern printed newspaper, though they appear to have gone on long, after these began, being exempt from the, strict system of licensing which curtailed the liberty of the printed word. " The writing of these news letters was a regular profession adopted by well educated and observant men and quite distinct from that of the writers of printed news. All leading men and politicians of the day employed these Intelligencers,' who wrote to their patrons every two or three days during their absence from London, and kept them informed of the politics of Europe as well as Home affairs." This early and secret branch of the journa- listic profession might be revived ! With modern means of transit the running to and fro after foreign news would be both exciting and romantic. Young men with a good knowledge of languages would find a new career open to them—if anyone would pay them enough. Apparently the Intelligencer always required to be highly paid.
Was the world of which Lady Newton writes a pleasanter world than ours ? There are some indications that Lady Newton thinks that it was. We are inclined to think that while it was not perhaps so pleasant to be young it was in some ways pleasanter to be old. Old people seem to have retained not only their authority but their influence far longer than they do now. The patriarchal system lingered very long. Madam Legh was the greatest person in her children's world even after they were grown up and married ; not that they did not criticize her ; they criticized her freely ; but she " counted " with all of them. When she was staying with her son Tom he writes to his brother that she gets more and more particular about her food. " My mother is so very curious that she will have a very extraordinary good table or she roars without reason." If every old family had kept its records as the Lyme records have been kept how delightful would be the study of the social history of England ! But we are supposing that every family could produce a Lady Newton to deal with them and, so to speak, to write them up ; and that is an absurd supposition. Such historians arc rare indeed.
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