A gloomy source of light

Priscilla Napier

SECRET COMMENT: THE DIARIES OF GERTRUDE SAVILE, 1721-1757 edited by Alan Savile Kingsbridge Historical Society, Hatch Arundell, Loddiswell, Kingsbridge, Devon, TQ 7 4AJ, £15.95, pp. 390 Gertrude Savile, born in 1697, lived in beautiful Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire, owned by her brother Sir George Savile, 7th baronet, with him and her widowed mother and widowed elder sister, all of whom she regarded with suspicion. Her brother treated her on the whole generous- ly, listening to her, attempting to cheer her. She found his efforts `superficial'; he did not understand her `maladie'.

She lacked for nothing, except financial independence, with her own maid and foot- man to go with her wherever she went, to carry the parcels, stave off the roughs, and generally smooth the rubs of life. For diver- sion she played the harpsichord, embroi- dered chair seats, read widely, wrote verses as well as her cathartic journal, and freely quoted from other people's verses. She was taken on visits, sent to Bath or London, to theatres, parties, the opera, the races, to dances, to royal processions, to Bartholomew Fair, and was almost perma- nently miserable throughout. We meet her first in 1721, just back from a visit to Bath where she had gone 'with lit- tle hopes of pleasure, nay, with the greatest dread and horror'. Nor would she have gone,

had not my dreadful life at Rufford been beyond bareing . . . it is safe making experi- ments where one's condition cannot be made worse.

It was all the fault of the siblings, George, 18 years older, and Lady Cole, even older, who had unhelpfully called Gertrude the afterthought 'an intruder'. At `the Bath' she caught the eye of Major Stanhope, but cannot respond. All her native exuberance had been stamped out of her.

Why those awful looks? Why the dystance? Why the Austerity?

so crushing to her natural 'levity and cock- ettry'. Only at Bath had she been

free from the trembling of nerves, the confu- sion of Spirits and the agony of mind that my Brother's self and family occationed in me.

Captain Stanhope had eyed her 'with a simple conscious look', and even made intelligent conversation, seeming in every way a paragon — 'persevering, honest, sin- cere, good-natured . ' But she could only slam him down with cold words and turn her back on him, and he disappears. Much the same sad story is told later with Lord Chesterfield and with Lord William Manners.

Gertrude is held fast by an extreme Calvinism. Happiness seems sinful: death and disaster as the result of her own sins and everyone else's wait round every cor- ner. As she shrewdly says, those in deep misery are irresistibly drawn to that which will increase their misery. She suffers so badly from her bouts of 'melancholy', her `thoughts fit for Bedlam', that she was probably a clinical depressive — as such meriting compassion. She was clearly a dif- ficult woman, quarrelling with all her ser- vants — cooks, housemaids, footmen come and go like yo-yos. She was always finding them lazy, deceitful or insolent, and fan- cied that they despised her for depending on her brother. Gertrude had little sympa- thy from her mother, her sister, or an aggravating aunt who presently joins the party.

She also has an unholy reverence for social distinctions. Poor Mr Preston, who with his sister accompanies Gertrude on another visit to Bath, is criticised for an impoliteness particular to people who only grow Gentlemen by their own acquired money, people who have the indelible mis- fortune not to inherit land.

Away with Mr Preston, he's as far beyond the 1727 matrimonial pale as any heathen Chinese.

For all this, Gertrude's journal, well edited and explained by Alan Savile, and transcribed by the late Dorothy Hooper, is well worth reading, though too long. She is ruthlessly honest about herself, and as she matures, ruthlessly observant of the con- temporary scene. Her heroes, apart from the Duke of Marlborough, are not ours. Cumberland is one — `no picture or wax- work could be more beautiful', when he defeats the Scots he is 'our handsome young hero, and the beheading after Cullo- den of Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino is recorded by Gertrude with complaisance. King Frederick William of Prussia when he defeats the French is 'an Instrument in God's hands'. King George I and II of Eng- land are 'an Honour and Treasure to their people — a sight that makes my little heart glow with Love and Joy'. Seeing George II again at Richmond, I find I have the same pleasure in seeing him that I used to have in seeing his father — a warmth of heart, a sort of Cordial] to my spirits which can calm and please me when I am most out of humour, and can leave a tinc- ture, a satisfaction upon my mind for a long time.

A novel light on George II.

This adulation of and thankfulness for the Protestant protagonist are a measure of how deeply fearful our 18th-century forebears were of powerful, looming Catholic Europe, of Spanish or French armies liable any moment to land on our shores. British victories of 1759 eased this.

Gertrude Savile is no Celia Fiennes in the literary way, but she is original, crisp, almost sparky on occasions, an unselfconscious revealer of her times, an unknowing contributor to our knowledge of them.