Lady Anne Hadaway, [from] Travel & Tour Guide for England (incomplete manuscript, 1791)

Edited and introduced by Stephen Bending & Andrew McRae

 

 

Lady Anne Hadaway was a member of the powerful Grenville family, whose estates included the celebrated show gardens at Stowe. Her incomplete manuscript diary adopts the style of the confident aristocrat, at home with the owners of the gardens and houses she visits and willing to judge the relative merits of the different towns through which she passes. The diary begins on 8th September 1791 with this brief description of Nuneham, in Oxfordshire, and continues with an account of her journey to such fashionable tourist sites as Wilton, Fonthill, Stourhead, Longleat, Bristol, Bath and then on into Wales (see Section Eight). In the passage reproduced here, Hadaway describes a practice at Nuneham Courtney which apparently seeks to maintain the patrician ideal of the country-house community. The events which Hadaway describes take place in a new model village created after the original village was demolished in order to create a landscape garden. Nuneham has been suggested as a possible model for Oliver Goldsmith’s Auburn in The Deserted Village (see Section One above).

 

The family papers of the Harcourts have been published in part: E.W. Harcourt, ed., The Harcourt Papers, 14 vols. (Oxford, 1880-1905); Lady Anne’s manuscript diary is at the Henry E. Huntington Library (Huntington Manuscript, ST vol.359), from which we reprint the text.

 

 

Suggested secondary reading

Mavis Batey, Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire (Oxford, 1970)

John Beckett, The Rise and Fall of the Grenvilles, Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, 1710-1921 (Manchester, 1994)

Elizabeth Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics 1716-1818 (Cambridge, 1995)

 

 

 

   Nuneham the seat of Lord Harcourt commands a beautiful view of Oxford on the right, and of Abingdon on the left; at the bottom of the hill runs the Isis[1] which is discovered at different intervals winding along the lowlands. The house is neat and is adorned with some good paintings: a St. Margaret by Titian,[2] portraits of the King and Queen by Gainsborough.[3] The flower garden is elegant, and the church has been rebuilt some years ago by Lord H[arcourt][4] and has rather the air of a private chapel than of a parish church. On one side hang a number of tablets, on which are written the names of those who have gained the prizes of merit annually given by Lord and Lady Harcourt. The village of Nuneham is the entire property of Lord H[arcourt], and consists entirely of cottagers; they are all of the established church,[5] and each of them have a ticket with their names written on, which they bring regularly to church every Sunday, and drop into a little box nailed up for that purpose. The names of the absentees are written in a book, and at the end of the year the clergyman delivers in an account of the attendance of his parishioners. They who have been most regular at church and have supported a character of sobriety and industry are rewarded, if men with a hat and gold band, and if women with a hat and two [?heights][6] of ribbon round it, and on the top part of the door of each who has won the prize the letter M* is printed if the fortunate person is a man, and if a woman, the letter is written on the right of the star, *M. The same person may be successful more than once, and then an additional M is added for each time. The houses of those who have gained the prize are repaired immediately where the cottager requires at the expense of Lord H[arcourt]. Their Majesties when present at this fête when at Nuneham, and three young girls having each obtained the prize, their Majesties promised ten pounds to her who should first be married with the approbation of Lord & Lady H[arcourt] — to which they added ten pounds each as a portion to her.

   On the same day the prizes of spinning flax[7] are determined. The candidates bring their wheels and spin it in the park for three or four hours. An experienced weaver determined the prize. The first is a jacket and petticoat, the second a  cloak, the third a hat. The flax so spun is woven and given to the poor.

 

 

 


[1]Isis: local name for the river Thames.

[2]St Margaret  … Titian: Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian (c.1485-1576), one of the great painters of Renaissance Venice and highly prized in eighteenth-century England; he painted religious subjects such as St. Margaret throughout his career.

[3]Gainsborough: Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88), fashionable English landscape and portrait painter; his portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1781.

[4]Lord Harcourt: the second earl Harcourt, friend of Horace Walpole and the one-time republican poet Rev. William Mason.

[5]established church: Church of England.

[6] [?heights]: manuscript text uncertain.

[7]Flax: plant which produces textile fibre and linseed.