Letter from Emma Hubbard to her cousin, Arthur Phelps.
Transcribed from a scan of the original in July 2012 by Penelope Forrest,
born Phelps, great granddaughter of Arthur.
Market Bosworth
Feby 18th
[1856]
My
dearest Arthur,
Don't you like the look of the old address at the top? & don't I like
being able to put it there again, that's as I am so happy here, (I don't mean
that it is the only place that makes me so - but that it does its share) so much
happier than I can tell you, with every chance of becoming unbearably spoilt &
selfish. We shall have been at home
a month tomorrow. We went to Paris
for a week which was rather a spirited proceeding, we consider, as we had so
short a time, & enjoyed ourselves thoroughly: leaving all responsibilities &
respectabilities behind us, & living just as it happened - spending the whole
day walking about, eating when we were hungry & drinking when we were thirsty at
the nearest Restaurant or Café - sometimes ordering our dinner with the utmost
calmness from the carte without having the faintest notion of what would appear
- from minced mouse to stewed rhinoceros - & at other times throwing ourselves
humbly on the compassion of the waiters.
We went & returned via Newhaven & Dieppe - after weighing our purses
against our interiors, though I cannot say that it was the heaviness of the
former that caused them to win.
What a hard life a doctor's is!
I did not half know how hard till I came here.
You are very right in your opinion that I was meant to be married - at
least so John thinks - but I did not think I should be for all that.
Can you fancy me here at all?
Ordering dinner, receiving callers, writing pretty notes, cutting out
shirt collars, carpentry & locksmithing, arranging furniture &c &c &c?
If you can it is very clever of you.
John has no notion of being vexed or impatient, whatever I do - or leave
undone - so I hope I may in time become a very tolerable wife.
I wish you could see what a pretty drawing room we have 22 yd by 19.
It is over the dining room, which I dare say you remember, with a much
more extended view over just the quiet cow-feeding home scenery I love.
Inside it is panneled (sic)
pink with white mouldings, dark green curtains, furniture walnut with dark green
Utrecht velvet & a green & grey carpet.
I don't know such a harmonious pretty room anywhere.
The piano - a Broadwood's square in light mahogany - is the only
discordant piece of colour & it is so sweet-toned one would forgive it for any
inharmony of exterior. Then there
are all sorts of pretty things about the room & almost everything you see is a
gift from some one or other. I
would give a great deal to have you in it dear old boy at this present.
When I have done writing to you, May & I are going to put up another gift
which came on Saty from Lord Howe, an oval mirror, with a small
patterned frame & green enamel about it.
Won't it look pretty on the pale pink walls?
It came, with a great easy chair from Lady Howe.
She had called here a week before, & I have no doubt looked out for what
we had not got. Their daughter,
Lady Emily Curzon, is just married to a Coll Kingscote.
The Copes are all well. It
is so pleasant to be able to walk over to Osbaston again.
I never felt a bit at home at Kensington.
Here, I do thoroughly. My
only fear is that we are too happy - that it is out of the conditions of human
life to go on so. Well, it is very
silly to look forward, & we are very thankful for the present.
The peace of Bosworth has been a little disturbed by some cheese stealing
at Mr Bucknill's & the discovery that one of the most despicable
gangs of burglars at Birmingham, numbering some 12 or 14, is called "the
Bosworth Gang" & came almost exclusively from here.
So they know their way about here pretty well.
We have nothing to steal so don't disturb ourselves, but I should be glad
if some of them were caught, I confess.
Bassy is at last settled I hope for some time to come, & in a line which
does allow some exercise, though of a rather cramped description, to his
artistic powers. Mr
Oliphant, the gentleman who has the order for the painted window to Papa's
memory (windows I should say - for besides the S.E. one, all the
clerestory windows are to be partially stained) came to dine with us one day &
was so struck with B & his drawings that he asked him to come to him - & I think
he has been working there for 5 weeks.
I had a letter of 8 pages from him the other day - a happier & more
lighthearted letter than I have had from him for a very long time.
I do hope he may be able to marry "Bess" this year.1
She is really a very particularly nice Bess & suits him admirably
usually.
You did not tell me you had taken to smoking.
I am very glad it is put a stop to again.
B & Mr Oliphant smoke much more than they ought.
Mrs O is the authoress of Zaidu, The Quiet Heart, Katie
Stewart, Mrs Margaret Maitland & a good many other very pretty books.
I think I like the Fagans.
He is rather a "tyrannious tyke" as an old Scotch poet has it, but he is an
earnest zealous man & an Irishman which makes one excuse much.
I have been in a continual state of expectation since we left Paris of
having our photographs come after us but they have not appeared yet & we feel
rather anxious about them as we - or rather I - unwarily paid for them.
The man, Meyer, has a brother in London, whom Mamma is worrying about
them, as they were to be transmitted to him.
I fancy I am looking considerably better now than I did then.
I shall be so glad to see yours dear Stump when your moustache is to your
own satisfaction. John's hair is
not at all like the Phelps Aunt's & is, I am sorry to say, turning grey.
It is dark chestnut & in crisp waves 2 almost angular - unlike
any others I know. One of the
very best things I ever saw was John in a barber's shop at Dieppe whither he
went on landing on the Saturday to be shaved.
That operation being successfully performed, the barber attacked his
hair, & brushed away at it lustily, the hair starting almost straight up after
each stroke of the brush, till the little barber was fairly beaten.
Then followed an impressive little pantomime - the barber standing in an
attitude of deep thought for a moment looking at the hair, then, as if a
brilliant idea had insinuated itself underneath his sleek head of hair, rushing
to a shelf and producing a great pot of pomatum & sticking his fingers in ready
to begin. Then came John's turn,
who started up with the utmost horror & gestures of denial & went to the basin &
made it all right with a liberal application of cold water, to the astonishment
of the man & the intense amusement of a girl of about 14 behind. - Such a pretty
demure little maiden, nursing an Egyptian mummy of a swathed up babe.
She tried to keep grave & decorous for a long time but she gave in at
last.
Mary came with me to stay a few weeks & settle me here & I hardly know
what I should have done without her.
I am almost quite unsettled about permanent servants but I am in hopes of
having our nice old respectable Hannah come in June, as cook.
I should be very glad indeed to have her for a mistress has not a quarter
the power over the right conduct of a household that the head of the kitchen
has.
Poor Tom Oldacres died suddenly a few months ago.
He had been going on very well lately near Nuneaton I believe.
Buckwith is Mr H's ex-partner & does not practise. The other
doctor here - by name David Pestall Thomas - has not much practice.
Mr H has about as much as he can do, but it is a very
laborious practice - it extends over so many miles & the proportion of paying
patients is so small that it needs a man to be in the height of his health &
energy to make it at all worth having.
Goodbye dear. Your loving
sister
Emma Hubbard
1. Sebastian Evans ("Bassy") married Elizabeth Goldney in April 1858
2. Emma illustrates the crisp waves