Chapter Five: I travel north

(It is early in the year 1761. Charles Huntingdon has inherited a country property from his aunt, and has decided to visit it) 

   I was given many dire warnings concerning the perils of travelling in winter: stories of stagecoaches overturned with passengers’ arms and legs broken, men and horses drowned in crossing swollen rivers, coachmen frozen to death on their boxes; and, even if these disasters were avoided, of journeys such as mine being prolonged to a week or more. The only hopeful aspect, I was given to understand, was that at least the bad weather might cause the numerous highwaymen who haunted the route might prefer to stay indoors.  But I was not deterred, for I was eager to inspect my new property without delay, and I also wished to escape the tiresome importunities of the duns. I had my landlady pack me some boxes of clothes and instructed her to keep my rooms vacant for when I next came to London. I discovered that the stage coaches could take me as far as Mulchester, a few miles south of Bereton, so I wrote to the Priory, my aunt’s house that was now mine, informing them of my proposed arrival there.

   The first two days of the journey northwards followed good turnpike roads and passed without incident, though could scarcely be called pleasant. The weather was cold and miserable, and the company no more cheerful. Because of the season, the only other travellers on the coach by the end of the second day were an elderly-looking man and two ladies, whom I guessed were his wife and daughter. He never introduced them, nor did I ever find out the purpose of their journey. A casual opening remark by me concerning the weather produced only a forbidding silence. I felt that the daughter at least would have enjoyed a talk, but was deterred by severe glances of her father. The man did nothing but grumble about the weather, the supposed insolence of the coachman and the quality of the inns where we halted. I soon found his company unendurable, and I was much relieved whenever we did halt at an inn and I was able to escape from his presence for a while.

   On the third day my fellow-travellers became increasingly nervous as we entered wild wooded country south of Mulchester, where the turnpike ended and the road became much rougher. This district, they told me, was the haunt of a notorious highwayman known as Black George.

   “He robbed friends of ours last year,” said the mother, “He is said to be a gentleman who would never harm a lady, but who can trust anyone in these fallen times?” Her husband said nothing, but their daughter proudly announced, “I at least have come prepared!” and produced a tiny pistol, scarcely more than a toy, which she was concealing in her muff. Her parents were as astonished as I was.

 “It’s loaded, primed and ready for use against anyone who might make an attempt on my virtue!” she declared as she waved the little weapon about, much to everyone’s alarm. I decided to abandon this grotesque family, and, the day now being cold but clear and bright, left the carriage to take a seat on the box alongside the coachman, whom I thought might prove better company.

                                                     (A small pistol for ladies)

   This proved a bad decision. There was no sign of Black George, but a few miles further on the coach almost overturned! Suddenly the front left wheel ran into what appeared to be an ice-covered puddle but proved to be a deep hole, and stuck there! Fearing the coach would overturn I leapt clear and landed on my feet in a slough of freezing mud. I escaped injury, but my shoes were full of water, my stockings soaked and my breeches splashed all over with dirt. I lost my hat and wig, and had to run to catch them before they blew away. The coach did not overturn, but remained leaning at a precarious angle, and the passengers clambered out with some difficulty. We removed the heavy luggage and the coachman contrived to quieten the horses, but setting the vehicle upright again proved beyond our joint strength, though even the old gentleman lending a reluctant hand before abandoning the attempt and retreating to redouble his grumbling. What were we to do? This would, of course, have been the golden opportunity for Black George to rob us. The older lady was understandably alarmed at the prospect, and her daughter flourished her toy firearm in all directions with great bravado, but happily there was no sign of any such person.

   I volunteered to seek help. Looking around, I fancied I could see smoke away on the left through the leafless trees and I ventured down a path in that direction, icy water squelching in my shoes at every step. Before long I discovered a tiny settlement of ruinous cottages in a clearing.

   There was nobody in sight except a small child, half-naked despite the cold, who on seeing me squawked with fear and fled inside one of the huts. From this a man appeared, holding a stout stick and with hostility written plain on his dirty and unshaven face. He challenged me in a snarling voice, but I could barely understand a word he said. He was now joined by other cottagers, men and women with their brats peering from behind them. They regarded me with suspicion as I endeavoured to explain the disaster that had befallen our coach, and the need for assistance in righting it. I promised money if they would come to our assistance, at which they held a brief consultation together. I wondered whether they were deciding whether it might be less arduous to knock me down and rob me of everything I possessed, but maybe my scarecrow-like appearance suggested that such a course was not worth the effort for the meagre rewards it might bring. As it was, a few of the men agreed to come to our aid.

  Righting the coach proved no easy task, though the hole proved to be less than knee deep, but by much labour, accompanied by not a few rustic oaths, we achieved our task, and the coach happily proved to be undamaged. Our helpers were then thanked and rewarded as promised, mostly from my purse; for the old gentleman harrumphed at what he regarded as excessive generosity and showed a great reluctance in parting with a few small coins for our rescuers. Any moralist, I thought, would have been gratified to discover that these cottagers, although sunk in poverty, had nonetheless behaved so helpfully towards strangers.

   I clambered back inside the coach and was now shivering violently, but the ladies made a great fuss of me, hailing me as a hero and insisting on draping me with their cloaks lest I should catch my death of cold. The daughter mopped out my shoes with her shawl, but her proposal to rub my frozen feet back to warmth was vetoed by her parents. Mother and daughter demanded that we stopped at the next inn we encountered, a squalid place where with some difficulty I was able to obtain hot water to wash and to change into fresh clothes from my boxes. All this took time, during which interval my gentleman fellow-traveller complained loudly about the very poor quality of the wine he was sold; though in that matter I would concede that he had justification.

  At least the delay enabled us to recover our spirits, which had been much shaken by our near-disaster, and we reached Mulchester late that afternoon without further incident.

(The coach overturns, by Thomas Rowlandson)

   This proved to be a large and bustling sort of town. I was obliged to alight here, for the coach would now proceed eastwards, whereas Bereton lay a few miles to the north. I accordingly had my boxes unloaded at the sign of the Duke of Buckingham and took a seat inside, ordering beer and victuals to revive me after my journey.    

   I now met with a severe disappointment, for I was informed by a waiter that coach services to Bereton were very irregular; none would be running this day or the next. I said that in that case I would need a room for the night; at which he shook his head sadly and said that all were likely to be already taken.

  I approached the landlord. My untidy appearance following my recent misadventures doubtless told against me, and his initial response was haughty and unhelpful. However, when I informed him that I was the heir to the Andrew property and had come to inspect my inheritance, he suddenly became vastly obliging: bowing and rubbing his hands together in an ingratiating manner, he told me that he had lived in the town for his entire life and that he had known Mrs Andrew well. He was loud in her praise, laying particular emphasis on her generosity to the Mulchester tradesmen. I wondered how much of this was true: his implication that I ought to be equally free in spending my money being quite transparent. More usefully, he told me that my new home, the Priory, was well known in the district; lying less than half an hour’s ride to the west of Bereton, and he insisted on despatching a man forthwith to bear a message that I had arrived and was anxious to view my new home.

   When I indicated that I wished to spend the night at the inn while I awaited a reply, he swept aside the discouraging information given me by the waiter, and after much rousting around of his servants a room was duly found: “The very best room!” he proclaimed proudly. He volunteered to show me up there himself, expressing the hope that he could count upon my patronage in the years to come. I considered the price I was charged excessive, but saw no point in arguing about it. Afterwards I wondered if some unfortunate traveller of less importance had been summarily evicted to make space for the new arrival, or whether I had simply not appeared rich enough to merit a favourable response.

  I did not sleep well that night, though the bedsheets and blankets were at least clean, the floor must have been swept fairly recently and there were not too many cobwebs in the corners. A fire had been lit in the small grate and the windows shut tight against the cold, so the room was in consequence not cold but instead was stuffy and airless, and a strange smell pervaded the place. I wondered, was this really the best room? Or was the landlord not convinced that I was who I claimed to be, and had accordingly placed me in one of the lesser rooms? I did not unpack my boxes, but lay in the shirt and breeches in which I had travelled after my accident. My mind rolled round endlessly in anticipation of seeing the Priory, which was now so close. What would I find there? How should I behave towards my new servants and neighbours? But at some point I must have dozed off, and was awakened by the noise of carts moving in the yard outside.

 

   Towards noon that day a waiter conducted to me a small, neat man, quick in his movements, who politely asked me if I was Mr Huntingdon. On my confirming that this was indeed the case, he introduced himself as Martin Clifford, my late aunt’s attorney. He was eager to make a good impression, but was nervous, and in consequence talked much too rapidly at the start. I let him rattle on, until after a while he was happy to accept my assurance that I would trust him and treat him as an advisor and friend. The landlord now appeared bringing a bottle of wine and a pie, and then hovered in the background trying to hear what we were saying. I found this annoying, but Clifford, who must have known him well, ignored him.

  Clifford hoped I had had a comfortable journey. The tale of our adventures in the stagecoach caused him to shake his head sadly at the perils of winter travel. Black George, I learnt, was a very real threat to travellers on the route we had travelled. At the same time, he assured me, the staff at the Priory, and indeed all the people of Bereton, would be proud and delighted that I had gone to all this trouble to visit them. Since my aunt’s death, he said, the house had been left in the care of her housekeeper, Mrs Timmis, whose brother Ned was a prosperous tenant farmer on the estate. They, together with Clifford himself, had looked after Mrs Andrew’s affairs during the illness of her final years and after her death. He would be happy to discuss with me the state of the finances whenever I should wish, and he trusted I would find everything in order.

  I asked him about the history of the family, but he said that I would find all the detail I needed from my aunt’s papers, for she was a great antiquary. Her late husband, Mr Paul Andrew, had been the last of his line, and my mother and her husband were the only members of Mrs Andrew’s family who had produced offspring, thus leaving me as the heir.  

  “Mr Andrew died a dozen years ago, having been sick for some time before that. In his will he left everything to his widow, and then to go to whomsoever she should choose. She watched over your education and always intended that you should inherit the Priory. A number of hopeful gentlemen sought to marry her, for she was rich and had no children of her own, but she wouldn’t have any of them! She was a very independent lady.”

   He now asked me what I might wish to know concerning the town of Bereton and its people. I laughingly replied that I was already confused by the pronunciation of its name, for I had noticed that some said “Beerton” while others said “Berraton”: which was more correct? Clifford, who by now felt more at ease in my presence, replied with great mock solemnity that this was a matter of the utmost controversy, causing divisions as deep and hostile as those in the past between Jacobites and Hanoverians, but that he personally preferred the latter pronunciation. I might even have discovered, he added in shocked tones, that the town was sometimes named as “Beht’n”, but this deplorable usage was limited to the common people here in Mulchester. 

  Mention of Jacobites led me to recount how I had been told that one of Bereton’s Members of Parliament, Sir James Wilbrahim, was a notorious Jacobite. Clifford replied cautiously. Sir James, he said, was the most prominent gentleman in these parts, and well-respected; a Member of Parliament like his father and grandfather before him, but was now something of a recluse: a widower for many years past, living with his daughter and a few old servants at his home of Stanegate Hall to the east of the town and seldom travelling to London. He suggested that I should write to Sir James informing him that I had come to claim my inheritance, and I might then be invited to visit Stanegate, where I could judge things for myself.

  “For my part,” he said, “I have avoided asking too many questions concerning certain unfortunate past events, since feelings still run strongly around here, and, if I may say so, I would advise you to do the same, at least until you are better acquainted with the district and its people.” I nodded, and promised to follow this advice. I then said that after the noise and endless turmoil of London I was looking forward to living a life of bucolic peace and quiet, in a village where the events of the outer world never intruded, to which he replied that this was true at the moment, but it was impossible to predict the future.

 

  Outside the inn we mounted a trap drawn by a pair of horses, where there was just sufficient room for the two of us and my boxes. Clifford said that this equipage had belonged to my aunt, and hoped that I would pardon him for having used it after her death and without my permission. A silent man named Henry drove us.

  We set off northwards. After a while a long low hill loomed up ahead of us in the dim winter light. Its summit was invisible through the heavy cloud and its steep lower slopes were covered in a tangle of trees and undergrowth, leafless and gloomy. Clifford explained this was named Brackenridge on the maps, but locals called it simply “the hill”. The town of Bereton was situated below its southern flank. Brackenridge had for uncounted ages been quarried for its stone, and once there had been copper mines running deep into the lower slopes, in consequence of which Bereton had in former times been a town of importance. But the mines had long been abandoned, and many of the quarries too, so the town as a result had decayed, whereas Mulchester had grown.

   We did not follow the road into Bereton, but turned left on a drovers’ track which led to the village of Bearsclough, just beyond the western end of the ridge, where I would find my new home. We drove beneath the southern face of the hill. The track was narrow: at some points sheer rock faces loomed above us on the right, and at others we appeared to be on the floor of a narrow valley, where the rocks and earth on either side were held in place by the roots of ancient trees. I could see hardly anything from the single lantern we carried, but our horses and driver must have known the way even in the dark.  It was very cold and a steady sleet began to fall. The canvas serving as a roof to the carriage was flimsy, and I was shaken by the rough track. This was hardly the best introduction to country life at my new home!

                                                  (The path to Bearsclough in summer)

At last we left the ridge behind us and came to open fields. It was less dark once out from under the trees, and soon we passed a cluster of cottages which was the village of Bearsclough. Then we drove through a gateway and along a gravel drive to a large stone building. I had reached the Priory, and I was its new owner! Someone had heard our approach, for a door was flung open and two servants rushed out to unload my luggage.

   I was welcomed at the door by a large woman, broad rather than tall, with a formidably ample bosom. Her eyes were bright and shrewd, her skin was clear, and her hair, which was mostly contained under a white mob-cap, was brown. I judged her to be about forty or fifty years old. Clifford introduced her as Mrs Timmis, the housekeeper. She must have been nervous at meeting her new master for the first time, for she was constantly rubbing her hands on her apron, which despite this treatment remained a virginal spotless white. But her voice was steady as she welcomed me to my new home, and hoped that my journey had gone well and that I would find everything in order. I attempted to set her at her ease by saying that I was greatly looking forward to residing at the Priory. 

   Clifford now bade me goodbye, declining my invitation to stay longer and saying that his own home was not far away and he wished to reach it without delay since the weather was getting worse. He told Henry to fetch his own horse and he then departed, promising to return in a day or so to acquaint me with the accounts of the estate.

 

  My coat was taken and I was conducted into the parlour, where a fire blazed in a vast hearth of grey stone. I sat in a chair before it and asked for a bowl of hot water to wash my face and hands, and then for tea. These were swiftly brought, following which the servants were lined up to be presented to me. There were half a dozen indoor servants, mostly women and girls, as well as two gardeners, the silent Henry as stableman, and various boys who helped them. They all appeared neat and clean, and bowed or curtsied in a most respectful manner. They were all here to serve me! I briefly addressed them all, but it was Mrs Timmis who then gave them their orders, which they scurried away to fulfil. The cook and her assistants returned to the kitchen to prepare a dinner for me, and two maids were despatched to unpack my boxes.

   “I expect you’ll be wanting to take on servants of your own”, said Mrs Timmis cautiously.

  I assured her that I was perfectly satisfied with what I had seen. indeed, I felt immediately at home, and was enjoying my first experience of being the master of a household. A little later she approached me in an apologetic manner.

   “You don’t seem to have brought no dressing gown, sir”, she ventured, “and I’m afraid this is the only one in the house. It belonged to the old master, sir”.

  She produced a long garment of heavy quilted cotton, embroidered with Indian designs. I said it would do very well, and after my coat and waistcoat were taken away to be brushed, I allowed her to help me put it on. Standing in front of a mirror, wearing Mr Andrew’s old gown, I turned from side to side admiring myself in the glass and felt very much the new master of the house. It was in this manner that I was approached by a maid to tell me that dinner was ready.

  I found a long oak table set with English blue and white earthenware, which seemed more suitable for the occasion than Lord Teesdale’s delicate foreign porcelain. I was served a collar of brawn with bottled mushrooms and vegetables, followed by an apple pie and cheese, together with good ale from a barrel. Mrs Timmis proudly informed me that all this produce came from my own farms, supervised since the death of Mrs Andrew by her brother Ned, whilst at the same time apologising that the fare should be far inferior to what I was accustomed to in London. I said, quite truthfully, it was very good. I desired that she should sit at the table and talk with me; which however she politely but firmly declined to do, preferring to remain standing. She was never still; always talking or bustling about, and usually both together.

  I resolved to use Mrs Timmis as a source for all future knowledge of the town of Bereton and the country around; but for the present I found I could barely keep my eyes open, and despite the fact that it was still early evening, directly I had finished the meal I asked to be shown to my bedroom.

  Mrs Timmis took a candle and herself conducted me up the stairs to a room above where I had dined, still talking. “I hope you won’t object, sir”, she said, “but I’ve taken the liberty of making up the bed that the mistress died in; for it’s the best bed in the house. I can have a bed made up elsewhere if you prefer”. I assured her that there was no need to go to such trouble. She lit me a candle from the one she carried, asked me whether I needed a servant to help me undress, and on being assured that this would not be necessary, pointed out a bell I could ring to call a servant at any time, and finally departed.

  I scarcely examined the bed before collapsing into it. My first night as a country gentleman in my own house! The bed, though old, was a good one; soft and comfortable, with a mahogany frame supporting heavy blue damask curtains. I was tired, but very happy. The privations of the journey had been a price well worth paying to achieve this satisfaction. I soon drifted into sleep.