ENGLISH SOCIETY A CENTURY AGO.*

iT is rather a pity that Lady Newdigate-Newdegate should base set herself a special literary purpose in publishing this volume of delightful letters, and should never for a moment allow her readers to forget that purpose. No doubt it is in- teresting to be able to point out that a certain character who gures in one of the best of George Eliot's minor stories can easily be identified with a person that actually lived before the authoress was born. Incidentally, also, there is indicated s little known and interesting chapter in the novelist's history. The Cheverel Manor of Mr. Gap's Love-Stor-y is identified as Arbnry in Warwickshire; Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel are intended to represent the Sir Roger and Lady Newdigate of the period ; and the hapless and romantic Catarina is a Sally Shilton, the daughter of a collier on the Arbury estate, whom Lady Newdigate heard singing on a doorstep, and took into her house to have her voice trained.

"it is at first sight surprising how this authoress can have acquired so much knowledge of the internal life of a family who lived long ago, and were dead many years before she was known. It has been accounted for in the following manner. Robert Evans' first wife (not George Eliot's mother) had been a valued member of the household at Arbury. (Her epitaph in Astley Church is as follows :—' In memory of Harriet, wife of Robt. Evans, for many years the Friend and Servant of the Family of Arbury.') She must have had ample opportunities of hearing the usual gossip handed down by housekeeper to house- keeper concerning the sayings and doings of the family. In those days, when feudalistic veneration still flourished, these traditions were reckoned of greater importance than since the world has moved onward at a giddy pace, and levelling influences have been at work and are working for good as well as for evil. No doubt the stories from the big house were treasured up in the immediate neighbourhood, and by none more than by the estate bailiff's little daughter. Mary Anne Evans was born at the South Farm, within the precincts of the park at Asbury, and she has told us how later on she used to be her father's constant companion in his business expeditions Whilst Robert Evans was transacting estate work with the Squire in the library, she probably waited for him in the housekeeper's room at Arbury. This picturesque old room has been accurately desoribed by her, and appears in more than one of her works It was probably through the • Th. Chonerels of amoral Manor. By Laiy Newdigtve-Newdezate. London Longman, and (..o. r106. 65.3

favour of the housekeeper that George Eliot obtained her know- ledge of the rest of the house, whilst her descriptions of Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel are evidently taken from the full- length portraits of their originals in the saloon at Arbury."

But although all this is interesting enough, there is

certainly no necessity for insistence on almost every second page upon the resemblance between "the little syren " of George Eliot's tragic story and the Sally Shilton of fact and the Arbury drawing-room. She, and Lady Newdigate, and Nelly Mundy, and indeed all the members of the admirable Arbury amateur comedy company, are eminently worth knowing for their own sakes. Their confidential letters present perhaps as delightful a picture as has ever been given of that English society which went to spas and seaside resorts, and the female members of which lived very much on this plan, laid down at Buxton on Friday, September 28th, 1781 :—

"We rise at 7, drink water till 9, breakfast, pray at 10, tumble and trot from 11 till 1, drink water, put on a clean skirt, dine at past 2; write, read, work, and play upon the guitar all the evening, sup at 8, bathe at 10, and then to bed."

Sir Roger Newdigate, "the incomparable Baronet of Newbury," as he has been styled by his biographer, Arch- deacon Churton, and not without reason considering the keen interest he always took in the University of Oxford, with which his name, as the founder of the famous prize for poetry, will always be associated, was born in 1719. He married while quite young Sophia, daughter of Edward Conyers, of Copt Hall, Essex, but, to quote the characteristic language of the compiler of this book, "as she was not the original of George Eliot's Lady Cheverel, we need only record that after a long and happy married life of thirty-one years she died in 1774, leaving no children behind her." It is more important to note that "the lady who was to become his second wife, and was destined to figure in the pages of Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story, was Hester Margaretta Mandy, daughter of Edward Mundy, of Allestree, in Derbyshire," and that "their marriage took place after a short courtship on June 3rd, 1776, at which period Hester must have been nearer forty than thirty years of age, though quite eighteen years younger than her husband." The first of the letters from the Arbury muniment cheat which are here given is from Hester to Sir Roger immediately after their engagement, and shows that the sort of language one finds employed by lovers in the Richardsonian cedar-parlour, or by Lovel and Miss Wardonr when not embarrassed by the presence of the Antiquary and his common-sense, was not uncommon in real life fully a hundred years ago :—

"I have gone about my business with composure, and flatter myself I have remember'd everything you have said to me tho' my endeavours have not in everything sueceeded, but business shall have no part in this Letter. My friends think I have taken too large a dose of it to-day, and to that they attribute my present aching Head, but the truth is I was last night unable to command my Anxious thoughts to Rest. The pleasing prospect before me one moment promised me a Life of happiness with r most worthy, estimable, and agreeable Man in yd World ; nay was I not afraid you wd from the short knowledge we have had of each other suspect my Sincerity I wd add the only Man upon Earth that I think could make ma truly bless'd. Yd next moment Rocks app&ir'd which made me think, the greatest of which are my own unworthyness and y• utter impossibility of my Ever obtaining any better bold of your affections, than what your blind partiality now gives me, and which I much fear will diminish as you become more clear-sighted."

Sir Roger and the second Lady Newdigate bad twenty-four years of married life, and seem to have been very happy. Their circle, including both his relatives and hers, was a very bright one ; one member of it in particular, her younger sister, Nelly Mundy, was full of vivacity. But Sir Roger

was frequently in London, and his wife's health compelled her to frequent such resorts of the day as Brighton, Bognor, and Buxton. They were therefore forced to depend largely on correspondence for sustaining their affection for each other. It is to be regretted that Sir Roger's letters have not been preserved, because his portrait would seem to imply that he was a man not only of many accomplishments but of considerable force of character. Lady Newdigate's own letters are full of not too ill-natured gossip, and those from the relatives on both sides which are included in this volume

tell similar tales. Although not malicious, and not at all enamoured of the Court, Lady Newdigate bad ears to hear. In 1792 she writes thus of two members of the Royal Family: —" Sad account of the P. of W. and Duke of Y. They

are beastly drunk every day, and people say the poor little Duchess is very unhappy." Five years later she writes of the "P. of W.," then at Brighton, that he is "always by Lady J.'e side [Jersey is meant] when the horses were not running Our ladies' maids hear that she and her daughters walk upon the Steyne at hours when nobody else does, and that yester- day the mob hissed her as she stood at her window, which faces the Pavilion." So much of an unfavourable character has of late been written of Lady Hamilton, that it is pleasant to get this glimpse of her from an account of a visit paid to her and her husband by Lady Newdigate's cousin :—

" We arrived at ten in the morning, and found Sir William and Lady H. playing and singing with several musicians. Lady H. sang several songs most enchantingly, and made us all very sorry

to go and see the aqueduct and the palace I was quite in love with Sir William and much charmed with my lady, who appears to me quite a pattern of good conduct. She is grown amazingly large, but is still very handsome. She sang us some beautiful Polish songs."

Another quotation may be made from a letter from Mrs. Francis Newdigate, partly because it indicates how politics were regarded a hundred years ago from the " class " point of view, and partly because it demonstrates the truth of Thackeray's declaration that in these days "people as soon

thought of doing their own washing as their own spell- ing ), "I cannot, my dear Sir, let you remain in ignorance as to polliticks, therefore have seized the last moment of the Par- lement te get a frank that you may have my intelligence gratis, for fear you sho'd think it was spig,ht made me write because I 'loose my wager. The King is now gone down to the House to prorogue the Parlen3ent which expires to-morrow, and I am appre- hensive that finding yourself right in this particular, you may be induced to espouse Mr. Mainwaring's cause in Middlesex in pre- ference to Mr. Bing, therefore I think it right to inform you Mr. Mainwaring is the son of a bricklayer, and I hope you will not make me the same answer I have just had from Mrs. Conyers that it was better than being the son of a gun. I know you will be very sorry to hear Lord Thurlow's house was broken open last night, and the villains are got clear off with the great seal. It is a very extraordinary accident. fan; not superstitious, but surely it looks a little ominous."

In these days, not only was the Great Seal stolen, but high- way robbery was not considered extraordinary. Living with Lady Denbigh, Lady Newdigate writes to her husband :—

" l3ehold his Lordship just arrived. He travelled late last night, and was robbed a little on this side Dunstable of 22 guineas, and they took his watch but on rect. of his purse returned it. I hope you had no such alarm "

Lady Newdigate was a born matchmaker, and her letters show that her time was largely taken up with arranging—as a rule very successfully—marriages for the male and female relatives of her husband and herself. Among these was

Charles Parker, the original of George Eliot's Captain Wybrow. He married a Miss Anstruther in 1785, and as the original of Catarina, or "the little syren," was only eleven years old at the time of the marriage, there is no reason to believe her affections were ever trifled with. Sally Shilton, after

being taken up by Lady Newdigate and made a successful drawing-room singer, did marry a vicar, the Rev. Mr. Ebdell. But she did not die in the flower of youth, but after

twenty-two years of married life at the age of forty- nine. The leading figures in the volume are, however, Lady Newdigate and, although he keeps in the back ground,

Sir Roger himself. She died in 1800 of a dropsical com- plaint; he, made a widower a second time at the age of eighty-two, survived her a few years. Her final letters, in

which she indicates her wish to live for her husband's sake, are unaffectedly pathetic. This book gives us not only a

picture of English society a hundred years ago, but reveals the heart of a worthy and sincerely religious woman, who kept her heart essentially unspotted from the rather frivolous werld in which she was forced to live.