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246 Old Memories of East-Bourne. [Chap. XIX.
carried on the paper on Conservative lines for a year or two, and then sold it to his political opponents. Mr. T. S. Gowland did not take to printing until some years after he took over the Library.
An Old-Style Dinner, 1827.
In Lord Broughton's Becollections(.a), under the date of July 7,1827, there occurs the following entry :—
" Dined at Devonshire House; 38 at table, and a scene of magnificence which I have never before seen. More than 20 servants, of whom about 12 in full dress with ruffles, white gloves and swords so that the guests looked very shabby in comparison with the attendants. The Duke of Sussex was there ... In the evening we had no amusement except from a talking bird just arrived from Malabar."
It was the 6th Duke of Devonshire who gave this dinner. I never before met with a notice of swords being worn in the full dress of livery servants. This Duke kept up the old style, I fancy, to the end of his life. At any rate, I remember seeing him drive into Buxton from Chatsworth one day, in the autumn of ] 856, in a carriage and 4 with postillions although Chatsworth is only a few miles from Buxton.
A Drive in Derbyshire.
The following incident must have occurred in the year 1829:—
" Some 40 years ago an old lady and a young nephew arrived at an Inn in Derbyshire one evening in the course of a tour through the picturesque county. Anxious to make an early start the next morning, they endeavoured to bespeak the only pair of post horses possessed by the Innkeeper ; but their efforts were in vain. The said horses had already been ordered for Lord
C-----------and his bride, making their wedding trip and sleeping in the house
that very night. Said the fussy old lady or the young nephew, ' Let us have them first; we will start early: we have not far to go: the horses will be back in plenty of time for Lord C. who is sure to be down late for breakfast/ The Innkeeper was, however, inexorable: ' he dared not play his Lordship a trick.' But the old lady's prophecy was correct. Lord C. was very late for breakfast: and she might well have had the first turn with the horses, and hi* Lordship would still have had his horses ready when he himself was ready.
Lord C. is now Duke of D----------, but his bride's kindness and goodwill to
all who came in contact with her are things which remain engraven on the memories of only a few. Whether his Grace is still late for breakfast we know not.'—Sussex Times, September 1, 1879. |
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(a) Recollections of a Long Life, vol. iii, p. 207. |
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