Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a MemoirBiddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness
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Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir
Biddulph, Elizabeth Philippa, Baroness
Hardwicke, Charles Philip Yorke, Earl of, 1799-1873
The end of every life is the hardest to describe. The time of rest must
come, and with it retirement from public work. The parent begins life
again in his children, and in making place for them in the world. We
have followed the career of an active and energetic man, who thoroughly
lived his life, and enjoyed it. We have seen his first great
disappointment in the profession that he loved, when an opportunity
offered itself for service under Sir Charles Napier in the Baltic Fleet
during the Crimean War. To die in action, fighting for England, was his
ambition, and the failure of an opportunity for its fulfilment brought
with it much depression.
Meanwhile, however, he lost no time in vain regrets, or ceased from
active and useful work on his estate and in his county. We have read a
letter describing old 'Wimple' in 1781; I shall now try to carry on the
description in few words from 1855. It was a beloved home; we 'were
seven,' and in the adjoining rectory lived my uncle the Hon. and Rev.
Archdeacon Yorke, Canon of Ely, with six cousins, a merry party in
holiday time. The house was big and the furniture, books and pictures
fine, but my father's life would have satisfied the severest of
socialist critics by its simplicity. Our own dress was scrupulously
simple. Our boots I well remember, they were all made by a little
hump-back cobbler who lived at New Wimpole, and used to come by the
avenue to the 'Big House,' as it was always called, to measure us.
These substantial thick boots and leather gaiters from the village
shop, with short linsey skirts, formed our walking attire. And in the
Christmas holiday we all tore about the muddy fields in 'paper-chases.'
Later on I remember writing a paper for my friends on how to dress on
eighty pounds a year, which was my allowance at eighteen.
The cottages were beautifully clean and the furniture solid, all the
men wore smock-frocks and very thick boots with large nails that lasted
a year: no such thing as a blue suit and yellow boots would have been
tolerated then. The best dressed wife wore a red cloak and neat black
bonnet. The family Bible was found in every cottage, and my uncle gave
two cottage Bible-readings every week of his life. There was no attempt
at Cathedral services in country churches. The Communion service was
reverently given once a month, and on the great feast-days my uncle
preached in a black gown. And such a fuss was made when the black
waistcoat now commonly worn by the clergy was introduced: it was called
the _M. B. Waistcoat_ (mark of the beast).
My uncle ultimately adopted it, when promoted to a canonry at Ely. What
changes since those days, what luxury has crept in everywhere, and how
often one sighs over the simplicity of the past, which certainly
produced a stronger, if not a better race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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