Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [8]
It was an extraordinarily intense family of literary youngsters: they spent far more time with each other than with any other children and had all read more by the age of ten than most girls of their era and class read in a lifetime. Of the six sisters, five would become published authors. In later years, Catharine found the comparison of the Stricklands with another literary sisterhood of the nineteenth century irresistible. “Began reading for the second time the life of Charlotte Bronte,” she wrote in her journal when she was fifty-eight. “There is so much in this book that reminds me of our own early years—were I to write a history of the childhood of the Strickland family …how many things there would be that would remind the reader of the early days of the Brontes.”
During these years, Thomas Strickland’s investments continued to prosper. He still owned property in Rotherhithe which yielded some income, and he had also entered into a partnership with a coach-maker in Norwich, the chief city in Norfolk. He bought a townhouse within the city walls, on a cobbled street near the lovely medieval church of St. Giles. And in 1808 he purchased a gentleman’s residence eighteen miles southeast of Bungay, about a mile from the Suffolk coast. During a particularly cold spell in January, the Stricklands left Bungay and moved to Reydon Hall.
The girls revelled in the well-stocked library and dusty attics of Reydon Hall, Suffolk.
Reydon Hall is a solid brick manor still considered one of the most attractive houses in the county. Built in 1682, it has mullioned windows, fancy curved Dutch gables on its third floor and rambling grounds. At the front of the house during the Stricklands’ ownership was a broad sweep of driveway hidden from the road by a thick stand of oak, chestnut and ash trees; to the rear, extensive lawns dotted with old sycamore trees gave way to the Reydon woods, owned by the Earl of Stradbroke. Inside the Hall there were three spacious reception rooms, several bedrooms, a stone-flagged kitchen and servants’ quarters. The writing desk of General Wolfe, hero of the Plains of Abraham, took pride of place in the drawing room; how Thomas had acquired this treasure is uncertain. In the best tradition of noble mansions, the Hall even boasted a third-floor garret reputed to house a ghost called “Old Martin.” The bedrooms were low-ceilinged and pokey, and there were constant problems with a leaky roof. Nonetheless, its old brick glowed with warmth, and even today, after countless additions and renovations, its beautiful scalloped gables and elaborate double chimneys lend Reydon Hall considerable grace. The house affirmed that Thomas Strickland had arrived in Suffolk society.
Thomas and Elizabeth now divided their time between Reydon Hall and Norwich, where their two sons went to the fee-paying Norwich Grammar School. They frequently took their two oldest girls with them, leaving the younger ones at home in the charge of the servants. “Reading was our chief resource,” Catharine would recall in later years. “We ransacked the library for books, we dipped into old magazines of the last century…. We tried history, the drama, voyages and travels, of which latter there was a huge folio. We even tried ‘Locke on the Human Understanding.’ We wanted to be very learned…” They combed through back numbers of the Astrologer’s Magazine for tales of witchcraft and ghosts, which they then retold with great relish to the cook and housemaid until the latter were convinced they would meet