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Ancestors. The trip
alone to Scotland at seven. Rossie Priory and life at the castle. A
stone-cutter's apprentice.
My grandfather was one of the
wealthiest landowners of Dorking, in the County of Surrey, England. He was also
a great gambler, and at the time of his death he had lost everything but his
wife and four children. Grandmother's maiden name was Ann Bennet, sister of the
then Earl of Tankerville, of Chillingham castle, Nottinghamshire. The House of
Tankerville was created by King Henry V in 1418. At the time of Queen Elizabeth,
Sir John Bennet's son was raised to the peerage of Lord Ossulsron, and his son,
having married Lady Mary Grey, only child of the Grey Earl of Tankerville,
became heir to the title. My father always claimed that he was the rightful heir
to the title, but the connection brought no emolument to the family.
The Castle of Chillingham, with it's ancient park of
25,000 acres, came to the Bennet lords through the Tankerville marriage, and is
one of the oldest country seats of England, having already been known as ancient
in 1418, when the Grey earldom was created. The famous herds of white cattle,
wild and fierce, have roamed under the trees of Chillingham Forest from time
immemorial, having been described as of unknown antiquity in the days of William
the Conqueror. The late King Edward had a narrow escape from death while engaged
in shooting the king of his herd, and the head and horns now adorn the walls of
Sandringham.
On
the death of my grandfather, my father and his family moved to Cheshire, where
he became the steward of Cholmondeley Castle, the home of the Marquis and
Marchioness. There I was born on October 11, 1855. At an early stage in my
existence I attended the village school with my brother and sisters, until some
change occurred in my father's fortunes and we moved to Exeter, where he
invested his capital in the White Lion Hotel. The business prospered until the
time of the Ascot races, when he lost his investments in an unlucky venture.
Father was known at the time as one of the world's greatest cricket players and
the man who taught King Edward of England, then Prince of Wales, and the late
Czar of Russia the great English game. To recoup his fortunes he became Stewart
of the properties of Prince Dhuleep Singh, an Indian Rajah, resigning this
position to become manager of Rossie Priory, the Scottish estate of Lord
Kinniard.
After the Exeter collapse, Mother
had taken the children to London, and I was growing to be a big boy of seven
years. Word came to her one day from Father that I should be shipped post haste
to Dundee, Scotland. As mother was in poor health, my Aunt Betsy was delegated
to accompany me to the steamer, which was lying at anchor in the Thames, off the
West India docks.
The boat that took us to the
steamer was one of the small wherrys that ply on the river for two pence a trip.
It was manned by a one-eyed boatman just from the country, who had invested his
capital in the rowboat and was about to try out his new investment on us. He
shoved off and the boat swung out with the tide. By the time he got settled in
his seat and the oars shipped, we were well up the river and nearing Lambeth
Bridge. The water was choppy, with a fresh wind blowing up from the sheerness
banks, and the spray was coming over the boat. Our Charon was pulling against
the tide with all his might when one of the oars "caught a crab" and
we all but capsized. My aunt nearly collapsed with fright, but I, who knew
something about rowing, seized one of the oars and she was soon herself again,
whereupon she devoted herself to giving the boatman a dressing down in language
that must have been a revelation to the Yorkshire yokel. After an hour’s hard
pull we reached the Scottish liner, and the boatman caught a line that was
thrown from the deck and made it fast to a ringbolt in the bow. A Jacob's ladder
was lowered from the gangway. The old lady stood up in the boat while I kissed
her goodbye, and she helped me to catch the steps. Just as I got a good hold a
heavy swell came up with the rising tide, the boat rolled toward the ship, the
ladder swung out, and I bumped my aunt full in her ample co porosity. As she
slumped down between the thwarts she gasped: "oh, you bad boy!" while
I clambered the rest of the way to the deck. When I looked out, the boat was
well on it's way to the shore, and Aunty in the stern sheets was shaking her
umbrella at the man at the oars, as if urging him to greater efforts.
I was given a berth in the cabin
with a Scotsman who was returning to Perth after a successful sale of a shipment
of sheep. His trip had been a profitable one, and he was in a hilarious frame of
mind. Producing a bottle of Jamaica rum, he regaled me not only with the rum but
also with tales of Bonnie Scotland and what he did to London on his visit, until
we dropped off to sleep. I knew no more until two days later I was roused out of
my bunk by the roar of the cable as the steamer dropped anchor in Dundee harbor.
Evidently my arrival on the dock
at Dundee had not been heralded in trumpet tones, for beyond the fishermen who
were cleaning skats for the market and probably thought I was a likely customer,
there was no one to welcome me. As I gazed over the prospect, I felt like Japhet
in search of his father. Suddenly my luck turned, for my fellow-passenger, the
Scotchman, just then coming over the dock, guessed my predicament and offered to
take me with him as far as Inchture, a village about two miles from the Kinniard
estate. Arriving there my friend of the boat bade me farewell and went on his
way to Perth, while I was driven to the castle in a light phaeton behind a
spirited pair of ponies that had been waiting.
Rossie Priory reminded me
strongly of my birthplace, Cholmondeley Castle in Cheshire. It was surrounded by
a high stone wall, pierced by an entrance gate large enough for a troop of
soldiers to march through ten abreast. Outside the wall was a deep moat spanned
by a drawbridge with a gateman in charge, who with his family lived in a pretty
thatched cottage just inside the gate. As the pony carriage drew up to the
drawbridge, the gateman lowered the bridge and touched his hat as the spirited
ponies darted across, along the graveled roadway bordered by flowers and
carefully landscaped gardens for a distance of one hundred yards, and up to the
portico of the great stone castle of the Lord and Lady. On each corner of the
castle round turrets rose twenty feet higher than the roof, from which peered
small windows, and along the cornice of the roof were battlements for the
shelter of the men-at-arms who formerly protected the castle. English ivy
climbed profusely over the building, and luxuriant trees shaded the lawns on
that summer morning.
As the door of the castle opened,
my small figure passed between two footmen with chins high in the air, clad in
gorgeous livery of purple velvet, lace-trimmed coats and tight-fitting knee
breeches, pink silk stockings and slippers. Their hair was plastered down with a
substance that looked like white plaster. Had not my father appeared to take me
in charge at that moment, I would have been overwhelmed with bashfulness at such
magnificence.
The entrance hall was a scene of
beauty. The ceiling was high, and the walls were hung with great paintings of
Scottish chiefs and rural scenes. The floor was covered with carpet that must
have cost a fortune. From the entrance hall we entered the cloister, a great
hall running the full length of the building. Huge oak beams supported the
ceiling. Along the sides stood figures of men in armor, and on the walls were
crossed swords, crossbows and bows and arrows, arranged between great paintings
of the ancestors of the House of Kinniard. A thick rug covered the floor. Into
this cloister opened the dining rooms, ballrooms, and drawing rooms. At one end
of the cloister was a great staircase leading to the bedrooms. The kitchen and
servants' dining room were in the basement.
My father, through some
misunderstanding, had thought that I was to be billed through to Inchture, and
did not appear to be particularly enthusiastic over my coming. He conducted me
upstairs to the housekeeper's room, where the motherly old lady took me in
charge, and my palate still yearns for the supper of tea and sponge cake.
Next morning Lady Kinniard sent
for me, and I was taken to meet her. Her ladyship was a kind and loveable
person, and did not inspire me with as much awe as did the pompous footman at
the door. She tested my voice, and, finding that satisfactory, duly enrolled me
in the Chapel choir. There were rehearsals during the week for the Sunday class,
attended by eight or ten other small boys, children of the tenants of the
estate. For the choir I was equipped with a white surplice with a wide black
ribbon. Father also sent for some new clothes for me from Dundee, and the
following Sunday I appeared in a smart black Eton jacket, white shirt and
collar, with a neat bow tie and a little black silk plug hat.
For a month my life at the castle
was a symposium of bliss, until my father returned from a sudden trip to Dundee
and coolly informed me that my holiday was over and I was going to work.
Easton and Sons was the cognomen
of a dry goods store in Westport, Dundee. It was called the linen draper's shop,
although it sold no linen that I could see, and was in no sense the department
store that it developed into today. It is still in business and has become the
largest store of its kind in Dundee. There I received my first lesson in
salesmanship. With my little scissors fastened to the front of my Eton jacket, I
would take down bolts of cloth from the shelves and cut off pieces for the lady
customers, or sell them paisley shawls.
Before I could graduate as a
floorwalker, my watchful parents apprenticed me for two years to a stonecutter
in the city, and I was soon in a far way to become proficient in the art of
making tombstones. The owner of the monument yard took me into the bosom of his
family, and, aside from the regular diet of porridge, fish, and cheese for
breakfast, it was a fairly good home for me. The family was piously inclined and
as rigid in their religious customs as the most fanatical Puritan that landed on
Plymouth Rock. Every Sunday morning a bawbee was pressed into my hand as a
contribution to the Almighty, who was supposed to need a tithe from little boys
to defray the expense of making the wheels of the Universe go round. The
services at the Kirk began at eleven o'clock and lasted well into the afternoon.
Drowsiness overcame me long before the preacher reached his "ninthly,"
and I was jarred back into consciousness by sundry pokes in the ribs from the
umbrella of my employer.
As I became more expert in
smoothing down slabs of granite, I was allowed to try my hand at lettering.
Under the tutelage of an old and grizzled mechanic I fast grew to be quite an
artistic stonecutter and completed several jobs, the last one of which, I
gathered, was a tribute to the capacity of a fellow townsman:
"Here lies Tom Bales, who
lived at South Bell, A man who carried his can to his mouth well. He carried so
much and he carried so fast, He could carry no more so was carried last. The
liquor he drank being too much for one, He could not carry off, so now he's
carrion."
Three months before the
expiration of my apprenticeship to the monument works I returned to Rossie
Priory because of another change in the family fortunes. By this time Mother and
the other children, who had arrived in Scotland, were ready to fly south again,
and Father, whose fame as a cricketer had spread all over the United Kingdom,
was persuaded to return to London by the "All England Eleven," a great
cricket club, and a place was created for him on the staff of Lord Palmerston,
then Prime Minister.
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