Hall Life - Recollections of Harriett Browne
Shaun Castle 22 May 2006
"When I look back upon my early childhood it is always a mystery to me how my father and mother were able to live in the comfortable and hospitable manner they did, without a penny of debt, in a large old fashioned house with extensive grounds on an income never, I believe, exceeding £2,000 per annum. We kept a cook, a kitchen maid, housemaid, laundry maid, a dairy maid, a butler, a coachman and a page, and out of the house, a gardener and bailiff, a farm servant and a dairywoman, besides often additional workers in the grounds and on the farms. Also in the harvest season, a whole gang of Irish Reapers appeared, living entirely on potatoes and buttermilk.
We kept an old fashioned chariot, heavy and most uncomfortable for the three who had to sit as bodkin upright in the middle, or else sometimes on the stool “cap box” for 20 or 30 miles at a time. We also had an inside Irish Car a jaunting car as it was called, and a Tub for one horse.
A large empty round table and chairs round the walls and large high sofas in drawing rooms were the fashion no ornaments or flowers. We had a good deal of Chippendale furniture, which was considered of no account. Our elders slept in great four-post beds, on feather beds, and almost entirely surrounded by thick moreen curtains.
My father built a schoolhouse and my sister Catherine chose the school mistress and taught in the school every day for nearly 40 years. Girls from a distance were often boarded out in Tallantire so that they could go to Miss Brown’s school.
My mother, being advance of her time, took in the cheap literature Penny Magazine, Saturday Magazine and the Childrens Friend, and after stitching on strong brown paper jackets she lent them to the village. Our village of course formed an important part of our lives; we knew every man and woman and child and even to the very dogs and cats.
We wore French merino in winter , pretty prints and coloured muslins in summer, and for evening Farages and crepe de Lysle but for best, white muslin and sea muslin was always right with pretty lace or bugle “Berthe’s” and “Sahots”, or bright sash and natural flowers in the hair. Aunt Jane sometimes gave us a silk dress or a rich black scarf for out-door wear. Elder ladies wore turbans and wonderful erections of caps. We wore open white cotton stockings and sandalled shoes both indoors and out and white petticoats always. The first dresses I remember were napkin frocks and dark blue pelisses with beaver bonnets; afterwards we had mushroom coloured silk spencers from Brussels very pretty blue silk “Canzons” also a gift and worn with white frocks and gipsy hats. When I was in London close drawn silk bonnets were worn and I had a pink silk one with white heath underneath.
Our kitchen garden was not locked and we children could take any amount of common fruit - apricots we could not grow but our peaches and pears were magnificent. It was a prolific garden. We always suspected the gardener of helping our peacocks out of this world, especially a very fine white one, as they pecked holes in the hot house glass to get at the grapes - my father did not like flowers, but we had good borders of old fashioned perennials and beautiful flowering shrubs, also a wealth of snowdrops and polyanthus in the shrubberies.
We loved the walks to Bramble Wood, and to Dearham Gill, a tiny fairy glen of primroses (rather a rarity - though cowslips were abundant) to Roman Banks and Tallantire Hill, where we could see Mr. Dixon’s tall chimney in Carlisle 28 miles off - to the stepping stones and the farmeress, “Jenny Graham”, to the Westland Grange, the Hill, and the Low House Farms, and the summer evening walks with mama to mysterious woods with paths and stiles, to Argus Lane with its pink rose and honeysuckle and flutter of blue butterflies, and the “frogpond” and its brilliant dragon flies." Links to this post
