Letters from England, 1846-1849Bancroft, Elizabeth Davis
History
Letters from England, 1846-1849
Bancroft, Elizabeth Davis
England -- Description and travel
And now with a new sheet I must begin my account of Nuneham. . . . The
Archbishop of York is the second son of Lord Vernon, but his uncle, Earl
Harcourt, dying without children, left him all his estate, upon which he
took the name of Harcourt. We arrived about four o’clock. . . . The
dinner was at half-past seven, and when I went down I found the Duchess
of Sutherland, Lady Caroline Leveson-Gower, Lord Kildare, and several of
the sons and daughters of the Archbishop. The dinner and evening passed
off very agreeably. The Duchess is a most high-bred person, and
thoroughly courteous. As we were going in or out of a room instead of
preceding me, which was her right, she always made me take her arm, which
was a delicate way of getting over her precedence. . . . At half-past
nine the [next morning] we met in the drawing-room, when the Archbishop
led the way down to prayers. This was a beautiful scene, for he is now
ninety, and to hear him read the prayers with a firm, clear voice, while
his family and dependents knelt about him was a pleasure never to be
forgotten. . . . At five I was to drive round the park with the
Archbishop himself in his open carriage. This drive was most charming.
He explained everything, told me when such trees would be felled, and
when certain tracts of underwood would be fit for cutting, how old the
different-sized deer were—in short, the whole economy of an English park.
Every pretty point of view, too, he made me see, and was as active and
wide-awake as if he were thirty, rather than ninety. . . . The next
morning, after prayers and breakfast, I took my leave.
_To A. H._
BISHOP’S PALACE, NORWICH, August 1st.
MY DEAR ANN: How I wish I could transport you to the spot where I am
writing, but if I could summon it before your actual vision you would
take it for a dream or a romance, so different is everything within the
walls which enclose the precincts of an English Cathedral from anything
we can conceive on our side of the water. . . . Some of the learned
people and noblemen have formed an Archæological Society for the study
and preservation [of] the interesting architectural antiquities of the
kingdom, and [it] is upon the occasion of the annual meeting of this
society for a week at Norwich that the Bishop has invited us to stay a
few days at the palace and join them in their agreeable antiquarian
excursions. We arrived on Friday at five o’clock after a long dull
journey of five hours on the railway. . . . Staying in the house are our
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Milman, Lord Northampton and his son, Lord Alwyne
Compton, and the Bishop’s family, consisting of Mrs. Stanley, and of two
Miss Stanleys, agreeable and highly cultivated girls, and Mr. Arthur
Stanley, the writer of Dr. Arnold’s Biography.
[Picture: Lord Palmerston. From the portrait by Partridge; photograph
copyright by Walker & Cockerell, London]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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