Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [106]
Agnes’s three sisters in England—Elizabeth, her antisocial writing partner who lived in London; Jane, the dumpy homebody at Reydon who adored Agnes; sweet-tempered Sarah, now living in Northumberland and married to Richard Gwillym, a Church of England clergy-man—were content to sit on the sidelines, basking in the reflected glories of this Lady Bracknell figure. They knew that Agnes’s cultivation of blue-blooded friends was as much strategic as snobbish: it gave her access to the fabulous, and uncatalogued, collections of official and personal papers at stately homes all round the country. Her friendship, for instance, with William George Spencer Cavendish, sixth Duke of Devonshire, allowed her to root around in the archives of Devonshire House in London and in his two homes in Derbyshire: Hardwick House and Chatsworth House, the famous “Palace of the Peaks.”
Agnes Strickland, premier royal biographer in Victorian England, and a woman of commanding presence.
In August 1851, Agnes was happy to include a fourth sibling in her admiring family audience in England. Her brother Sam, nine years her junior, had returned with his eldest daughter, Marie Beresford, on an extended visit. Both father and daughter had recently lost their spouses. Ostensibly they were in England to visit Sam’s mother, confined to her bedroom at Reydon Hall in Jane’s care. Mrs. Strickland was now a crusty eighty-year-old, and from her old-fashioned four-poster bed she continued her lifelong habit of issuing a barrage of orders, disapproval and complaints. However, the real reason for Sam’s return was to woo another wife—his childhood sweetheart, Katherine Rackham.
Sam’s English sisters were all swept off their feet by their brother. Twenty-six years earlier, they had waved goodbye to an unruly, curly-headed twenty-year-old; now they found themselves embracing a stout and prosperous Canadian landowner. He was “so frank, good-natured and intelligent,” reported Jane, “and so full of sense and sensibility.” Agnes adored playing the grande dame of Suffolk and showing her brother what strides the county had made in his absence. When Sam wasn’t paying his respects to the Rackham household, he was available to accompany his sisters to church, to the market, or to London. And since Katherine Rackham’s elderly mother refused to release her middle-aged daughter into matrimony, Sam was often available. He had to wait until Mrs. Rackham died, in 1855, before Katherine was able to join him in Canada.
In January 1852, a parcel arrived at Reydon Hall that shattered all this cosy Strickland congeniality. Inside, Agnes found a copy of Roughing It in the Bush, hot off the press and sent by the publisher Richard Bentley. Initially, she was pleased to feel the quality of the leather binding. She smiled as she read the warm inscription: “to Agnes Strickland … this simple Tribute of Affection is dedicated by her sister, Susanna Moodie.” However, as she read on, her smile evaporated. The book was full of disgusting scenes and ghastly people. While Agnes had been writing about glorious coronations and royal maidens, her sister had chosen to describe vulgar foreigners living in squalor. While Agnes had been mingling with the mighty, Susanna had been mixing with servants, farm labourers, drunks and “barbarous Yankee squatters.” While Agnes had stayed at Chatsworth, Susanna had lived in a pigsty. Susanna had written pages about