My Lady Ludlow | Page 8

parish church, as have allowed any one not a deacon at
the least to read prayers in a private dwelling-house. I am not sure that
even then she would have approved of his reading them in an
unconsecrated place.
She had been maid of honour to Queen Charlotte: a Hanbury of that old
stock that flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, and heiress of all
the land that remained to the family, of the great estates which had once
stretched into four separate counties. Hanbury Court was hers by right.
She had married Lord Ludlow, and had lived for many years at his
various seats, and away from her ancestral home. She had lost all her
children but one, and most of them had died at these houses of Lord
Ludlow's; and, I dare say, that gave my lady a distaste to the places,
and a longing to come back to Hanbury Court, where she had been so
happy as a girl. I imagine her girlhood had been the happiest time of
her life; for, now I think of it, most of her opinions, when I knew her in
later life, were singular enough then, but had been universally prevalent
fifty years before. For instance, while I lived at Hanbury Court, the cry
for education was beginning to come up: Mr. Raikes had set up his
Sunday Schools; and some clergymen were all for teaching writing and
arithmetic, as well as reading. My lady would have none of this; it was
levelling and revolutionary, she said. When a young woman came to be
hired, my lady would have her in, and see if she liked her looks and her
dress, and question her about her family. Her ladyship laid great stress
upon this latter point, saying that a girl who did not warm up when any
interest or curiosity was expressed about her mother, or the "baby" (if
there was one), was not likely to make a good servant. Then she would
make her put out her feet, to see if they were well and neatly shod.
Then she would bid her say the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. Then she
inquired if she could write. If she could, and she had liked all that had
gone before, her face sank--it was a great disappointment, for it was an
all but inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant who could
write. But I have known her ladyship break through it, although in both

cases in which she did so she put the girl's principles to a further and
unusual test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert
young woman--and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards
married a rich draper in Shrewsbury--who had got through her trials
pretty tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt all, by saying glibly,
at the end of the last Commandment, "An't please your ladyship, I can
cast accounts."
"Go away, wench," said my lady in a hurry, "you're only fit for trade;
you will not suit me for a servant." The girl went away crestfallen: in a
minute, however, my lady sent me after her to see that she had
something to eat before leaving the house; and, indeed, she sent for her
once again, but it was only to give her a Bible, and to bid her beware of
French principles, which had led the French to cut off their king's and
queen's heads.
The poor, blubbering girl said, "Indeed, my lady, I wouldn't hurt a fly,
much less a king, and I cannot abide the French, nor frogs neither, for
that matter."
But my lady was inexorable, and took a girl who could neither read nor
write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education towards
addition and subtraction; and afterwards, when the clergyman who was
at Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop had
appointed another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one of the
points on which he and my lady did not agree. While good old deaf Mr.
Mountford lived, it was my lady's custom, when indisposed for a
sermon, to stand up at the door of her large square pew,--just opposite
to the reading-desk,--and to say (at that part of the morning service
where it is decreed that, in quires and places where they sing, here
followeth the anthem): "Mr. Mountford, I will not trouble you for a
discourse this morning." And we all knelt down to the Litany with great
satisfaction; for Mr. Mountford, though he could not hear, had always
his eyes open about this part of the service, for any of my lady's
movements. But the new clergyman, Mr. Gray, was of a different stamp.
He was very