Penelope's Pups 2

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Chapter 2

 

Herongate Hall

Nr Richmond, Surrey

November 23^rd 1812

Dear Julia,

Well, I have met the redoubtable Daisy! And of course, Mr. Daisy, or as one should properly style him, Mr. Nettleby. Mr. Nettleby is a most amiable man and does not mind being styled as Mr. Daisy, which he says is a fairly accurate summation of his circumstance. Lady Herongate told him he should assert himself more . Mr. Nettleby laughed at her, and asked how often the late Lord Herongate tried to assert himself, and declared that a proper acceptance of who wore the trousers and a failure to be exercised over the state of affairs led to a longer and happier life .  Lady Herongate is a starchy old dowager, but she was quite at point non plus with this easy refusal to even pretend to be Daisy’s lord and master.

However, I watched him just say ‘Daisy’ when she was getting a little flushed from dashing about helping Lady Herongate’s cook quite unnecessarily, and she subsided.  Daisy is in an interesting condition and Mr. Nettleby seems to be keeping a good eye on her to prevent her from over-exerting herself. She  is quite visibly with child now and seems to be blooming, but she had quite a hectic flush and the  cook was muttering words we don’t learn in our French lessons. I think he was already put out that we were making a very English pudding in his domain, it being ‘Stir-up Sunday’.  Did you make and stir puddings with all your excess of adopted children and your siblings?  We had great fun and all got covered in flour.  I could imagine the Goyder twins managing to have a flour fight but perhaps they are being more mature and setting an example as you have borrowed them for Christmas whilst you seek for the perfect governess. The only person who dislikes Stir-up Sunday is, I think the vicar, whose name is Virgil Gore-Sheldon, and I assure you, he deserves it.  He gave a thundering denunciation of the blasphemy – yes, I am not joking, he said blasphemy – of misinterpreting the text "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people" in thinking about such irrelevancies as food.

I think most of his tenant-farmer congregation think food really very important. It gets more important the less of it you have; as those of us who were at the Oxford school can attest.

I have not even mentioned Fancy and Fleet, the spaniels.  They are pretty creatures, Fleet is a foxy colour and Fancy is the same with white markings, and they have big brown soulful eyes.  Lady Herongate wages a constant war with His Majesty’s tax collectors – in the person of Sir Brabazon Kendry, the local magistrate, whom she apostrophises as a young whipper-snapper with more hair than wit.  Mr.  Nettleby says that Sir Brabazon is a fair and just man but that the dogs are spaniels, even if they are King Charles Spaniels not the larger hunting dogs, and the law specifically lists spaniels as due for taxation.  Lady Herongate claims they are lap-dogs.  As to being a young whipper-snapper, I believe him to be around 40 years old.  Mr. Nettleby said, however, that he would speak to Sir Brabazon, as he was really pleased with how well Fancy and Fleet looked, since he had nicknamed them ‘Feisty’ and ‘F—t’ for being so fat and ill-conditioned, but had written to his Aunt Augusta (and what a suitable name Augusta is for Lady Herongate, for she is august) that overfeeding the dogs was a form of cruelty and begged her to stop doing so.  She has evidently taken him at his word, and they have besides their own servant, a boy who rejoices under the name Copenhagen, after Admiral Nelson’s victory. Lady Herongate calls him Cope, but he answers better to Hage which is what his friends call him. He is employed to take them for a run twice a day, as well as to groom them and bathe them at need.  I like Hage, he puts me in mind of what a younger brother of the Goyder twins might be like.  He’s an ambitious youth, struggling with educating himself. His father is Lady Herongate’s Bailiff, so he is a cut above the village boys, but still not easy to rise, as he hopes to do, to the position of steward or secretary to a landowner.  Didn’t you say that your Sir Perceval was in need of a good bailiff soon?  It would be better than having to kick his heels helping out his father. Of course, he’s only eleven now, but there’s nothing like looking ahead.

Daisy has heard of your Rupert, and thinks Sir Perceval an excellent soubriquet for him.  She  was full of praise for him spending some of his hereditary sinecure on orphans, but then she has started an orphanage for crippled children to teach them to make the most of themselves.  She hired a doctor and gave him his congé within two weeks as soon as she discovered that he saw an orphanage of cripples as a gift to him to experiment on them. One of her orphans smuggled a letter out, about how he was scratching their arms, and they got all sorts of diseases, and it was not inoculation before you ask.  Daisy borrowed from Dr. Mac’s vocabulary and called the physician a ‘shilpit wee sumpf’ and has called for him to be struck off. She took out a full page advertisement in the newspaper as well, declaring him to be no follower of the hypocratic oath, which states ‘first, do no harm’.  Apparently his excuse was that orphans are not cared about by anyone that he could do as he liked to them to make breakthroughs to save what he called ‘real’ children.  You may be assured that Daisy (and she has asked me to call her Daisy) laid into him with vigour, pointing out that she cared, and that there was a big difference between using an experimental cure on sick children who were unlikely to recover otherwise, and in introducing sickness to them in the first case.  She has hired a once-fashionable London doctor who turned to drink and dried him out with brutal and ruthless efficiency – Mr. Nettleby’s description – and offered him a chance to make up for being a sot without having to go to sea for it. Anyway, Daisy is wondering if you and Sir Perceval will be wanting servants in the future. She tends to recruit from what they call ‘fallen women’ though in the case of former servants, as you know full well from having a pack of half siblings, most of them were more pushed than fallen.

Fancy just brought me her lead and put her paws on my knee with a mournful look; and I am employed to keep them occupied over Christmas so I will take her  and Fleet for an extra outing. I have no doubt that both will get slipped extra titbits over the festive season, however hard Lady Herongate tries not to spoil them so the extra exercise will do them no harm.

Your affectionate friend,

Penelope.

 

“What is this sinecure she mentioned?” asked Julia of her husband, who she was entertaining by reading out her friend’s letter.

“Oh, it is a grant from the crown, as Constable of Howlett Montfitchet; a castle equally ruinous as Stansted Montfitchet.  It’s what Gerard calls ‘The Noble Ruins’ which gives him the opportunity to refer to our maternal grandmother, who is a dowager Hasely of great rectitude and starchiness as ‘the Nobler Ruin.’  Basically I have to keep law and order in the neighbourhood, and as I am also the local magistrate, that is a simple matter.  For which I am paid the ridiculously large sum of four thousand pounds yearly on top of what the estate and my investments bring.  I am more than happy to further justice by caring for your siblings and call it a suitable way to fulfil some duties arising from a post which frankly no longer has any real meaning.”

“Oh, I see,” said Julia.  “I am happy to leave money matters in your hands.”

“You’d better tell her about the extra members of our household provided by Philippa,” said Rupert.

“Goodness, yes!” said Julia, giggling.

 

Reedmere Priory

Howlett End

Essex

25^th Nov. 1812

Dear Penelope,

I am glad you have met the legendary and redoubtable Daisy, and it sounds as though legend does not exaggerate. What a horrid shock for her to find such perfidy in a doctor seemingly prepared to give time to orphans, I assume she thought he would be like Dr. Mac.  I fear the local doctor has not given me a high opinion of other physicians, but Rupert tells me that he is not a physician, only an apothecary-surgeon who served an apprenticeship with his father, and does not have a degree. As well as a governess we are seeking a household doctor, and an apothecary will do us well enough for in the case of anything serious we can appeal to Dr. Mac.

We have settled in well; and after discussion with Frank, Ben and Sally, as the oldest of my siblings here, we are to be Rupert and Julia to them and to Jacky when he is home from sea. However, there is a large gap then, from  William and the child we never knew having died, and Elizabeth and Harry are much of an age with  our ‘Bells’. Arabella was, of course, the first to call us firmly Mama and Papa, and when Isabella stopped being shocked she started to do so too. Harry is warily starting to trust me, and calls Rupert ‘Papa’ quite happily.  Elizabeth has asked if she cannot be called ‘Elizabelle’ or ‘Elisabella’ so she can be a Bell as well as Isabella, Arabella, Rosabella, Annabella and Maribella (I thought I would list them in case you had forgotten) and as she has to get used to not being Lizzie in any case, I don’t see why not. She is nine months older than Isabella, and it is good for Isabella not to be the oldest, and she is less prim than she was. Elizabelle as I must now call her is thriving on having siblings, and has lost the affectations forced on her for having been sold to actors.  Harry is not quite five, it turns out, having been born in December; He is learning his name, having been called ‘brat’ and ‘oy, you’ all his young life. Maggie is an excellent nursery nurse along with Ruth, and she said to me that it pleases her to see her son happy.  Her wretched mother who abused Harry so has been forced to go on the parish since Maggie refuses to send her any more money, and Rupert paid for Maggie to take out a writ against her for the neglect of the child she was paid to care for. The old woman had made the poor child tend to her animals and her few crops, and without him she did not do so good a job of it.

We also have Sally’s grandmother, who is frail, but she is there purely to tell stories and be someone to cuddle the children, something they all sorely need. 

And to answer your question, yes of course we observed Stir-up Sunday. Our vicar is a little bit of an idiot at times but not enough to refer to it as blasphemy! Dr. Theodore Marney is a bit starchy but he is a fairly recent-comer to this parish, and is still settling in.  He did say, when he read the text that he hoped his congregation would manage to concentrate on God and His vicar for a little while before they decided to stir up their pudding more than they ever managed to stir themselves to good works. Such snidery stung the conscience of many and I noticed some of our stingier parishioners surreptitiously putting more in the offertory.  And Dr. Marney puts more than a tithing in, so he may not be as friendly as the Rev. White back at Swanley but he practises more than he preaches, and no man can do more. 

Now, I must tell you of Philippa’s exploits!

It was Boanerges’ fault – no surprise there – for some rascal had been and taken some ponies from the New Forest with the intent of breaking them for sale.  And the poor things were in a terrible state!  Anyway, Boanerges got out, as is his wont, and managed to release the ponies and led them back to our lands, where Philippa, his ally and crony in the business, promptly charmed them enough to accept her ministrations and coloured their manes and tails after the manner of gypsies, and set about healing them of all the weals, with the enthusiastic aid of Arabella and Harry. Those ponies will be too tame to go back to the New Forest, but perhaps we can arrange for them to breed with wild ponies to keep up numbers. They are wild creatures in any case and not anyone’s property, though Philippa seems able to tame them well enough; but they will permit no-one but her, Arabella and Harry to approach them. Harry may have a birth date in the same year as Isabella, but there are six months between him and Isabella, and only three between him and Arabella, who must have been conceived immediately after Isabella was born. Scarcely wonderful that there were problems with her, or that her mother was unhealthy through the pregnancy and subsequent to it. Arabella declares that Harry is her twin; and to be honest, with his birthday being on top of Christmas, I am inclined to let him share a birthday with Arabella.  Sally and Annabella are also March babies – apparently Harkness thought it was ‘so sweet’ to give Annabella a name similar to Arabella because of Annabella being born on Arabella’s birthday.  That man is a fool.

Your affectionate friend,

Julia

 

 

 “Well th-that is an understatement,” said Penelope to Daisy, to whom she was reading Julia’s letter, to help keep Daisy acquainted with the Charity School girls.

“He does sound most unsatisfactory from what you have told me; but those twins!” said Daisy. “I  hope Julia does not mind their influence on her ... well, her children, they are now.  Why does she have them staying?”

“Oh, there’s n-no vice in them and l-little ones l-love them,” said Penelope.  “J-Julia is waiting to f-find a really g-good governess, and asked to borrow Fee and Phip in the m-meantime. It gives them a bit of work experience, for R-Rupert is p-paying them, so Felicity has a b-bit more for setting up her Modiste’s shop, and Ph-Philippa has b-been getting a bit of money by b-breaking and t-training colts for d-driving and s-selling them on at a profit.  I w-wager those ponies will b-be mounts for the B-Bells before next Christmas, horses l-love Phip.”