Kirsty Eliza 1851

The Nursery, Downes, 30th June 1851

Dear Sister,

How is married life treating you? I cannot sleep, so I write this by the light of a candle stub, and have put my bloomers along the door crack so that Miss Peterson – that’s the Governess – will not see the light. Don’t want to get in trouble my first week.

Don’t mind if these children of the Right Honourable James Wentworth Buller are our finers and betters, some of them snore fit to wake the dead, and seeing as they number one shy of a dozen, that makes quite a racket. I believe cook over-creams their cocoa and it makes them adenoidal. I almost got their names down. Proper queer some of ‘em:

James
Redvers
Earnest
Herbert
Julia
Adela
Henrietta
Alice
Mowbray
Audley and
Tremayne

Phew!

How is mother, father and my little sisters? I miss you all helluva lot. Thought we was run off my feet helping mother at Stanbury Court but it’s nothing to life here. I’m up and scrubbed by 5am to clear the grate of the nursery fire and set a new one. Then I do the chamber pots – an’ I hope those laddies get a better aim before they get to shooting pheasant or they’ll have someone’s eye out – and finally dress the little uns. That’s if tiny little Tremayne ever stops his bawling. Governess thinks the wet nurse finished too soon, he hangs off your skirts so. Poor mite. Not much chance of a cuddle from his ma.

I seen Mrs Right Honourable James Wentworth Buller just once in the week since I got here, getting into a Landau. Maybe she wore herself out having all them babbies, or writing out her name before she became plain old missus Buller: Mistress Juliana Jane Howard-Molyneux-Howard she was. What’s wrong with Jane?

Reckon Redvers is my favourite. Being twelve, he thinks he’s quite the old man, not least as he’s off to Eton next year, where his hero Wellington got educated. He has the merest bit of fluff on his top lip which he parts and oils, and I made a terrible gaffe on my second day, taking it for a smut from the fire and tried to scrub it off with my hankie. The little laddie has fairly flinched every time I reach for my pocket ever since.

Redvers disdains the childish pre-occupations of his younger brothers and sisters, but yesterday I caught him galloping alongside Lord Wellington, poker raised, vanquishing Napoleon on little Alice’s rocking horse. He went beetroot red, tried to leap off, only one on his tea-drinkers was stuck in the too small stirrup, and pretended he was strength testing the toys’ bolts out of brotherly concern for his sister. Twuz a proper scummer.

Won’t take none of his cheeky witpot though. The laddie couldn’t believe I could read an’ write near as good as he – not in Latin mind, though there ain’t been much use for that gobbledegook since the Tudors changed the Prayer book to Engish- nevermind I’m 21 and he’s just twelve. I told him Dad taught me, and learnt himself at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School what King Edward Sixth founded. Young Redvers nearly chokes on his crumpet and pronounces educating the great unwashed is a recipe for rebellion, but I’m a country mile cleaner than him an’ his brothers and I’ve already scrubbed the breeches to know it.

Now he knows I can hold a conversation, I find he is often deep in a book in the nursery when I come in to fill the coal skuttle, which he’ll soon set down, to ask my opinion on some world affair, only the book often starts out upside down. I think he is lonely.

And if the chitterns ain’t thinking me daft, Governess takes me for a crook. She left a coin under the nursery carpet as a test, and when I returned it she looked positively disappointed. Felt like cleaning out her teacup with the chamberpot brush.

Ain’t all bad up here at Downes, though. The morning mist lingering over the grounds is a sight to see. And the house is so grand, you can believe that Crediton was once the cathedral city for all of Wessex.
Also, the under butler, Hatherleigh, noticed I’m new and saved me some buttered bread when the children was in the school room. He’s ever so distinguished, quite the double of Prince Albert, and not near as old and crusty as most of the menservants. His first name is Peter an’ his father is a watchmaker in Exeter no less. Governess spied us talking, me hiding my rough hands under my apron, and goes, take care Eliza, you have babies enough to care for.

What can she mean?

Only three more weeks till fair day and my afternoon off.

Your loving sister,

Eliza

Kirsty Eliza, Winter 1854

The Nursery, Downes, 7th January 1854

Dear Sister

How is it in the town? Up here at Downes, we are forbidden to talk of the riots. When I look out at the pristine blanket of snow over the eaves of the servant’s wing, barely a bird in flight in this bitter cold, it is hard to imagine windows smashed and rocks thrown in anger. I hope mother wasn’t scared and the boys had no part in it. Wicked to break a shop window when such as our father will work all year to make the damage good.

The Buller family are much aggrieved at the ingratitude of Kirton folk, Governess says, because James Wentworth Buller himself provided relief to a hundred of the women who were begging before the riot started. Fancy a hundred and fifty loaves of bread stolen and so many gaslights and shops destroyed! Hatherleigh says such a to-do would never happen in Exeter because they have a constabulary there and the ruffians of Crediton are wont to be lawless with no police force to restrain them. Are we such bad folk in Crediton? I suppose if the bakers will raise their prices in this gnawing cold, hunger makes a ruffian of the mildest souls. There are so many navvies in the town too, with Brunel’s railway being built, and this cold snap makes them idle when they want to work. Before our conversation was finished, he apologised for his own lack of restraint at the fair. He said the roses in my cheeks quite unmanned him. I suppose I can’t blame the man if his eyes ain’t painted on.

Young Redvers made his return to Eton for the spring, this morning. His moustache looks quite respectable now he’s an big grown man of fourteen. His pa was too preoccupied with the arrest of Dicky Burgoyne and Johnny Hubber for inciting the riots, and was not there to say goodbye. His ma is up in London. His face looked quite pale in the window of the landau. Is it true the senior boys are at liberty to give a birching to the younger ones? It don’t sound Christian, the strong tormenting the weak. I popped a gobstopper from Taffy’s in his pocket for the journey.

Do keep your hearth lit now you are expecting. Not sure what has got into Governess, but she says I can take a sack of coal home with me on my next afternoon off. Mother and father will be glad of that.

Your loving sister,

Eliza

Kirsty Eliza, Winter 1879

Downes, Housekeeper’s Office, 3rd February 1879

Dear Sister,

In haste – I have a new maid starting, and must put a coin under the nursery rug to test her honesty.

Did you see young master Redvers in the Times? – I must stop calling him that now he is a major-but you get my drift. He is to be awarded the Victoria Cross for valour under fire against the Zulus, in the battle of Hlobane, where our armies were defeated. Not for long though. He beat the Zulus at the battle of Kambula the very next day. Reckon all that birching at Eton gave him a stubborn streak.

They say Zulu warriors are quite terrifying. They send our cavalry mad with the relentless banging of their drums and spear the horses out from underneath them. Redvers pulled a fellow soldier off his dying horse, galloped him to safety, firing his pistol all the while, then returned for another comrade in a similar plight. Ain’t that zummit?

Of course he was a top Biffen, a seventeen hand stallion, not one on ‘em wheest jibbers that pulls the cab to the station but still. Partridge, the gardener, says Redvers’ valet took his entire wine cellar with him to South Africa and will most likely uncork a 1702 bottle of port tonight. Good for him. I just hope Redvers gets to finish it.

The family are all decamped to London and it is just myself, the new maid and the gardener at Downes, plus acres and acres of white sheets over the fine furnishings. The grounds are quite eerie with nary a horse coming or going. I don’t know how Redvers can trade our gorgeous misty Mid Devon mornings for all that heat and dust, especially now poor James Howard is passed and its all his to inherit. But he always wanted to be a general, and I’m just getting stodgy with age, and too many of cooks suet puddings.

Fifty next year! Not much stirs the blood these days, except baiting the between maids now I’m the old dragon housekeeper jangling her keys. They call me the meat Cleaver, but it’s just too easy sometimes. I can’t pass the top bedroom in the servants wing without picturing my 21-year old self in there, crying into the pillow. The house was so quiet last night I did a dreadful thing. I went and lay on Mrs Buller’s chaise longue and ate one of her Turkish delight. The eyes of the Duchess of Norfolk in the painting on her wall quite bore into me.

Oh look, I’ve written pages despite the time. How’s little Sam? Do send more news of my grand nephew, the closest thing I’ll have to a grandkiddy. He sounds as maze as a brush, like them little Bullers was, before they all growed up and grew girt bristly grey moustaches.

Your loving sister

Eliza