Musings of an aging fan

We haven't heard yet from George - who, being born in 1813, is the youngest of Weeden Butler's Cheyne Walk correspondents. His letters to his eldest brother tend to focus on the garden and on animals, whether considered as pets, livestock or food. This is typical, written when he was ten years old:

Chelsea, October 23rd

Dear Weeden

I do Saesar [sic] with John, Edward, and Henry Wylde; and we have done three pages in it, since I began. I have left off Corderious [sic] a long time. Would you be so kind as to lend me an Ovid? Charles Giberne killed two rabbits, one black and the other brown, and he had a great feast with Strachy [sic] and the two Hancocks, Papa has given me an Enfield’s Speaker with four pictures in it, two men came to ask Papa’s leave to build a house in Mr Depuis’ [sic] Garden, and Papa said that he had no Objection; but that they were not to make any windows to look in the playground: and they have begun to build it. The Hancocks are making an arbour in their garden, and have lengthened it down to Bowerbank’s garden. They have made a trench round the earth, as I have made mine. Bowerbank and I collected a great many bones, and I emtyed [sic] them out two days ago, and they were all over good fishing gentles. Miss Brunell [sic] came here and she says, that her Papa and brother are ill. I remain, your affectionate brother,

George Butler

In case you don't know (I had to look it up), fishing gentles are blowfly larvae, good for bait. As for the people mentioned: Strachey we've already met; Charles Giberne would go on to be the father of Agnes Giberne, a children's and popular science writer; while Bowerbank is almost certainly Louis Quier Bowerbank, who (as any fule know) did so much to reform mental healthcare in his birthplace of Jamaica.

It's nice when letters by different people refer to the same events, and we get a bit more detail on the projected new house in a letter from Fanny, written at the same time. Fanny, aged twelve, is clearly testing her powers of literary expression. She would go on to become the family poet, or what her nephew Gerard would describe acerbically as "a determined rhymer", but I quite like her turn of phrase in describing the playing style of the infant Isabella:

A gentleman of the name of King is building a house at the bottom of our playground, in Mr Dupuis’ garden. He is a paper stainer, & says “he is building it to dry his paper.” He came the other day to ask Papa’s leave, without which Papa says he could not have done it. The windows are not to face the playground. George was mightily pleased with your letter and got through all the prosy part very heroically without once giving it to Papa to read. The Hancocks have been making their garden much longer. Mine is getting on very well and my Myrtle is beginning to blossom very nicely. The box of playthings that you gave to Isabella has begun Alas! to feel the heavy hand of time. Legs and arms have been broken off without mercy. However, the stumps still remain and she seems as fond of them as ever.

A couple of months later, in the run up to Christmas, we find elder sister Anne (aged 15) party planning. Have things changed much in the last two centuries? But of course, since her mother's death the previous year she is now mistress of the house, and takes these things seriously:

I hope we shall be able to have a little dance these holidays. I have planned it all, and have made out a list of about 40 or 42 persons, whom I should like to come. When you are at home, we must think about it. I think we might have the dance in the School room, if there were many people coming, or in the dancing room if there not above 16 or 20, and then we might have the tea and supper, in the study as that is a ???er room than the parlour, and would be more handy, as it opens into the Schoolroom. The only objection I have to the Schoolroom is that it is so much disfigured by the boys. The walls are so covered with ink. We might have the green forms from the dancing room down, and it would be very easy to cover two more with green, and I daresay 4 would be enough, and they take up much less room than chairs. I think that we might cover the part over the fireplace with artificial flowers, as those were made at Mrs Christie’s and that is the most conspicuous part, and I think the worst in the room. Out of my list of 40, perhaps not above 25 would come, but it is always best to send out about 20 invitations first and then see how many of them will come, and then if more are wanted to send about 10 more, and so on. Will you have as many as you want. I will send you a list of those I thought of, perhaps you will think of some more to add to it. I daresay you will not know all the names, but some of them are great friends of Fanny’s school and some are my friends. It is a good plan to make out a large list and then we can ask first those we wish most to come and if they can not, we can make up the numbers we want by others. I believe the party at Mrs Christie’s will be about the 30th of the next month.

Let us end in July 1825, where we find Anne reporting on a couple of delightful outings in a much more rural London, complete with gypsies:

On Monday Miss Gardiner, Fanny & I went for a walk to Putney, and along the towing path about a mile or rather more, we set out directly after breakfast & took our provisions with us, & also books and work [i.e. needlework]. We spent a delightful day in the fields & came home to tea at 7. Yesterday we had Mr Johson’s cart and set off at half past 9 in the morning round by Vauxhall, Miss Eady’s, Lewisham, Sydenham & to Norwood where we dined & had tea & came home at 6 through Brixton, Clapham, Kennington & Battersea. At Norwood we were surrounded [by] gypsies. Mary had her fortune told. They wanted me badly to have mine told, one of them said I was born to riches, that I should have a handsome present soon & a lot of nonsense. Isabella Gardiner is to marry once more. (I suppose they thought she was a widow.) We had a beautiful ride, and when we liked we got out and walked. We took a great many things with us. Isabella was quite out of her mind with joy. I never heard her laugh so & say such drole [sic] things before. ... I shall send you a piece of cake which I hope you will like. I am sorry to say Cook did not bake it half enough.

What became of these children? They had very different fates. The shortest-lived was young George, who died aged just 16, in 1830. He was followed by the end of the decade by Anne, who died in childbirth, aged 29, a couple of years after marrying. (Her son was still born.) Weeden himself made it to middle age, although he outlived all five children from his first marriage and was widowed, then remarried and fathered five more. Fanny made her three score and ten, while Tom, my own ancestor, was the longest lived of all, seeing ten children grow to adulthood before dying at the age of 97.

And Isabella? She was also long-lived - she almost made 88 - growing by the end to resemble Queen Victoria (with whom she was a near contemporary) to an almost uncanny degree.