Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/133

Rh My grandfather's sisters were remarkably beautiful women —all save one, who became Mrs. Jackson. Jacquetta, born in June, 1768, married in May, 1791, Sir Stafford Northcote, Bart., and was consequently the ancestress of the Earl of Iddesleigh. Emily, born in August, 1775, in April, 1796, married Sir Samuel Young, Bart., of Formosa, in Berks. Eleanor, born in July, 1771, married Thomas Redhead, of Snare Hill, Suffolk. Lucy, born in October, 1778, married T. Louis Malet, son of Malet du Pan, Minister of King Louis XVI, and Caroline, born in August, 1782, married the Rev. William Coney.

Darton, the painter and gilder at Tavistock, has told me that he heard his father say—the father had practised the same profession in Exeter as did later his son—that when the lovely Misses Baring drove through the town, people were wont to rush to their doors to see the Beauties go by.

Of my grand-aunts I remember only Lady Northcote and Mrs. Jackson. The former, in her old age, was a martyr to bronchitis; though aged, she retained traces of her former beauty. I stayed at Pynes occasionally. Sir Stafford and she had three sons, Henry Stafford who died before his father, and Hugh Stafford who was in the army. The third son was Stafford Charles, whom his father forced to enter Holy Orders, so as to be able to take the living of Upton Pyne, where he was no credit to his cloth. He married Elizabeth Helena Robbins, a woman harsh and ungracious, who had conceived a violent dislike for the family at Pynes, and during many years that she was at the Rectory would never cross that threshold. Her daughter Selina, however, was often at Pynes and was my playmate when I was there. She was high-minded and vehement in character, and was thwarted in everything by her mother. She became engaged to a nice but rather prim young gentleman. Whilst walking with her fiance one day she pulled a ferret out of her pocket to show it to him. He was so offended that he broke off the engagement.

Old Sir Stafford was wont to say that there were two things which filled him with regret. One was that he had compelled Stafford Charles to take Orders, the other was that he had not kept a carriage for his mother. His father had been a wastrel, and after his death the widow, by the strictest economy, by