The tiding

On my birthday a couple of weeks ago - which I celebrated with friends and a buffet lunch of haggis, salmon, karaage and Waldorf salad (the company was harmonious but eclectic) - my cousin (3rd once removed) Michael arrived with more family documents. Since then I've been reading as time has allowed. It's such a rich store! All the generations from Weedens I-III are well represented, by letters and other kinds of material. (I single out 12-year-old Weeden III's detailed journal of a holiday taken in Margate in 1818 as a document of particular charm.) Some mysteries have been unravelled, others ravelled all the more. It will probably take me years to do it justice, but along the way I'll add some highlights here that I think may be of wider interest.

In the next couple of entries I'll be looking at the children of the first Weeden Butler (1742-1823). Of the four that grew to adulthood, we've already met two: Weeden II (1772-1831), whose children's letters occupied the last few family entries and who took over the Chelsea school in 1814 on his father's retirement; and his high-achieving brother George (1774-1853), who was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, Headmaster of Harrow, Dean of Peterborough, and became the patriarch of a whole dynasty of academics, lawyers and politicians culminating in Rab Butler.

They had a younger brother, John, who lived less than 18 months, and then two more siblings: Charles (1777-1814) and Harriot (1779-1846). It's about these youngest two that I want to write, for each, in their own way, holds a mystery. In Charles's case the mystery is public, and surrounds the circumstances of his death, when the East Indiaman "William Pitt" (of which he was master) was lost with all hands off the coast of Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape. I've long known of this tragedy as a bald fact, but now I have the letters and speculations that surrounded the event. There's a lot, and it will take some time to get it into a state that can be usefully summarised. But I promise I'll get there, and that it will be worth it.

For now, let's turn to Harriot, whose mystery is more private. I have no letters from her, nor picture neither, just references to her by a series of other authors - references that leave enough gaps to allow for multiple interpretations. Perhaps it's best to lay out the evidence first - which may be supplemented as I work through the many letters, etc., now in my possession.

Some early references to Harriot come from the letters of Pierce Butler (no relation) the American senator and Founding Father, whose son Thomas was attending Weeden I's school at the time. In August 1787, he takes a few minutes away from attending the Constitutional Convention to praise the eight-year-old Harriot's progress in writing: "The rapid progress she has made is amazing, and must give great delight to her good parents." Another letter, sent when Harriot is 14, makes reference to a serious illness, without specifying its nature.

So far, so standard. However, in April 1803, the month after their mother's death, Charles records in a letter to his elder brother Weeden II a disturbing incident, witnessed by his bride-to-be Fanny in the Cheyne Walk house:

Today I had the Pleasure of seeing our dearest, only Parent now left on earth, & found him, as well as Harriet & Fanch [?] quite well. Poor dear Henny [Harriot] however on Tuesday went off in a very strong hysterical fit, when coming down stairs & alarm’d my father who was coming with her extremely. You may judge of Fanny’s situation, who told me she felt even more apprehensive for my father, who had become as white as a sheet, knowing that Harriet would shortly come too [sic], but fearful lest the shock might have overcome him! When at Chelsea I did not hear a word of this from my Father & did not wish to recal [sic] the memory of it to him. They talk of Henny’s going away for a short Time, till her Spirits get stronger & I think, if she could get to Mrs Yeo’s [?] Clifton, the Jaunt & Residence there would be a delightful thing for her. Our dear Father, was apparently perfectly composed and cheerful, but had, perceptibly, suffered much. He could not sleep after the surprise. Miss S. Giberne had been out in the morning in Chelsea & I conjecture the similarity of situation, tho’ at a distant Period, had worked upon Harriet’s mind, naturally very susceptible & now with too just a cause rendered almost helpless. She however was quite compose’d yesterday & had had Miss Slater with her all the morning. I was extremely hurt at the account, as the last letter I had receiv’d mention’d that every thing was going on so very well.

(Clifton, then near rather than part of, Bristol, was at this time a spa town, a rival to the longer-established Hotwells at the bottom of the hill.)

Harriot was sufficiently recovered to be a witness at Charles and Fanny's wedding the following year, in any case. The next glimpse of her is on 10 January 1822, also in a letter to Weeden II. This time the writer is his other brother, George, who has just seen her in Clifton. The immediate context is that their father, the elder Weeden, is to turn 80 later that year and has been drafting some changes to his will. That's a story I may return to on another occasion, but what concerns us here is the plan for Harriot's inheritance, which Weeden has decided to put into the hands of trustees - an idea George heartily approves of.

To Harriet £500, “in the hands of Trustees;” this trust seems to be very essential in her case. For I regret to say, that her conduct at Clifton has of late been more extravagant than heretofore: she has now quitted Mrs Scriven, & is under the same roof with my father, waiting there until some satisfactory arrangement can be made for her separate maintenance.

Harriot also pops up in the letters between Weeden II's children, if somewhat tantalisingly. On 23rd February 1824, by which time the elder Weeden was six months dead and Harriot had presumably come into her trustee-managed inheritance, sixteen-year-old Anne writes to Weeden III:

One thing, which I think you will be surprised to hear, is that Aunt Harriet is coming to stay a few days with us at Chelsea soon. I am not quite sure of this yet, and therefore do not mention that I have told you, as I may be thought medling [sic]. If I hear any more about it I will tell you in my next letter.

When I first read this, I wondered why an aunt coming to stay should be surprising news or require such diplomacy.

Finally, Annie Robina Butler, the daughter of Anne and Weeden's brother Tom, wrote in her 1907 biography of her father that when he was living in Cheyne Walk in the 1840s and having to provide for a growing family on a small salary, one of his responsibilities was the care of an "invalid aunt." This was of course Harriot, who spent the last few years of her life in the house where she was born, dying there in 1846.

Annie Robina would have been just five at the time of Harriot's death, so although she lived in the same house for several years her memory of her aunt, and of the nature of her invalidism, would probably have been a little hazy - nor would she necessarily have wished to share it with her child readers. Was it physical? Mental? Both?

Harriot passes elusively through these various pieces of evidence. The reading of least resistance is that she suffered from what her contemporary Jane Austen might have seen as an excess of sensibility, leading to a degree of mental instability. That seems strongly implied by Charles's letter in particular, and confirmed in George's - although the latter is ambiguous as to the form of Harriet's "extravagance": is he referring to her use of money, as the financial context might suggest, or also to her behaviour? She doesn't appear to have been confined to anything as hardcore as an asylum, but I wonder what the Clifton regimes of Mrs Yeo or Mrs Scriven were like - were they normal lodging houses or something more like sanatoria?

Again, was Harriot's condition (whatever it was) with her from the beginning, or was it triggered - or at least worsened - by some kind of traumatic event? Charles's suggestion that "the similarity of situation, tho’ at a distant Period, had worked upon Harriet’s mind", suggests something of the kind. At first I thought that it must be a reference to their mother's death. Perhaps "Miss S. Giberne" (probably Sally Sophia Giberne, an older cousin born in 1764) reminded Harriot of their mother, who had been a Giberne herself? But their mother's death had occured just a few weeks earlier, not at a "distant Period".

Armchair diagnosis is a mug's game, but it's also the only game in town, apart from minding one's own business - which is of course unthinkable.