. Sophia was soon after baptised at
in 1839 and in the 1841 census, when Sophia was 16, she is registered at King's College in London, along with her sisters Fanny, Lucy, her brothers Henry and John, and her parents.
The picture of my mother was taken after her marriage and a little before her eldest son, my dear brother James, was born. No one who knew him will be surprised to hear he was a very lively precocious child, calling out the numbers on the house when carried in his nurse’s arms. My mother said he knew his letters at fifteen months old. She did not at the time think it very extraordinary but found the rest of us very stupid by comparison. Owing to some difficulty about her nursing him she always believed he was half starved as a baby, but she was young and ignorant and did what she was told. She could not speak of it without tears in her eyes even when he was a man.
The next my brother John, was always strong. When he was born and she asked what sort of child he was, they nurse said “Why mum he’s half grown up”. Then came Lucy and after an interval Fanny and me. All of us born in London near the Green Park. Lucy can remember my being christened in St Margaret’s near the Abbey.
When my father was Rector of Bloomsbury he took a small house called the Wharf for us with nurse and governess, near the river at Eton and my brothers went as day boys to the school. One of my first recollections is of our moving there from a house in Eton Cloisters. My father had been a Fellow of Eton. I supposed he resigned the Fellowship when he became Canon of Lichfield. I have too, a faint recollection of the Fellow’s Garden to the Cloisters, where I was allowed to pick one marigold a day.
At the Wharf, of course we had a private garden, or what should have been private, but I remember the Eton boys would come in and take the bunches of grapes which ripened on a wall. My mother had them covered with muslin bags to guard them from wasps and birds.
I remember a great flood from the river and Jem’s [her brother James] tempting us down in to the flooded kitchen garden, and the scrape we got in with our dear old nurse Nanny. We went to church in a boat over fields and hedges. Our cousin Bollands were somewhat similarly treated with us and lived at a house near Eton called Willowbrook. We generally spent our half holidays together acting plays with nurse and governess, and the boys went to the school where I believe my brother Jem helped them with their verses.
The Bolland brothers, Henry, William and John were handsome and very agreeable but not I suppose really scholarly. I think all Bollands talked above their abilities. John and I were great friends. When I was quite a little girl I remember the charwoman, who came to the Wharf, and to Willowbrook, stopping in her scrubbing to say, “Master Jonny Bolland told me to say, will you marry him when you are ninety-nine, and he is a hundred?”. Poor John Bolland! He did not live to be nearly half a hundred, but died in the desert.
These Bollands were the children of my mother’s sister, who married after an eleven year’s engagement, her cousin, another grandchild of the Masham shopkeeper. He became a judge, and I remember my Uncle Baron Bolland, a handsome old gentleman, predicting the ruin of England owing to the first Reform Bill.
Of course we had a great many first cousins, children of my father’s one brother [Henry Gylby Lonsdale], and of my mother’s five sisters. Of these we saw most of the Reids. My Uncle Reid was often ordered abroad, first as an RE, then as Governor of Bermuda, of the Windward Islands, and last of Malta, and my mother continually helped with the Reid children. She used to call them her second family, and say they had taken more out of her than her own. The eldest lived with us for two or three years and several of the others came a good deal to our house. The eldest died unmarried. The others were Maria Hore, Sophy Hallewell, Libby Gambier, Charlotte Chamberlain, Grace Hall.
My Aunt Reid and my mother were much attached to each other. She was hardly so pretty as my mother, but was the cleverest of all those sisters, and a brilliant woman. Her husband was a keen solider, but an illustration of Henry 5th’s “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humanity, but when the blast of war” etc etc. He had a grave face, but his rare smile was a sweet one. Only this week I was told of the improvements to the Bermudas he had brought, and not very long ago I was told his “Law of Storms” had saved a good many ships.
My Aunt Reid must have led an uneasy life, crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic, sometimes to bring a girl to school, and then return to her husband. It was a trouble to her she had no son. The daughters had not much of either their father’s or their mother’s talents. My dear cousin, Libby Gambier, had a little of her mother’s fun and agreeableness.
One of my mother’s eldest sisters married a Shropshire Squire and Parson, Mr or Dr Oakeley of Oakeley near Bishopscastle. There was a family living. She had ten children most of them handsome and most of them more or less wild. My mother said she spoilt them in proportion to their beauty, and certainly some of the handsomest of the six sons turned out black sheep, and a plain one turned out respectable. The eldest daughter Kate, and the youngest Sophy (Toto) were beautiful women. My mother took Kate driving with her in London, she got out at a shop leaving Kate in the carriage. When she returned she found a little crowd around it, and wondered till she saw Kate smile as accustomed to draw a crowd. She married an elderly Squire, Mr Barton of Longnor. I believe her son, or grandson, is now the Squire and married to a daughter of Toto’s.
We did not see much of any of the Oakeley cousins except this Toto, who was my mother’s godchild. I should think the family at Oakeley must have been of the sort of uncultured country-bumpkin squirearchy who are quizzed by the London fashionables in the old plays. Shropshire may have been a generation behindhand. They would not be much in my mother’s time. She told me how she sat with her nephews (I suppose nearly as old as herself) and found nothing to talk about, when after a long silence, one burst out with “To be sure I’m vastly fond o’ killing o’ rats”. But my mother had Toto, who was a great deal younger to stay with us often.
When I was a girl of about fourteen, I was as much in love with her as any of the young men admirers. Besides her beauty she had a fine mellow contralto voice, and was most amusing and attractive, very unreasonable and changeful, but that seemed only to rivet my chains. I never knew if she would neglect me as a mere child, in which case I was miserable, or make me a friend and a confidante. The confidences were all about her lovers, and I expect I should have been better without them. Once she told me she had accepted a man whom she hated. When I said “Why had she accepted him”, she said “It was to get rid of him.”
She was very like Cynthia in Mrs Gaskell’s
“Wives and Daughters”. Like it was with Cynthia whatever she put on looked right. When my mother was going to take her to a ball she was a little dismayed to see rather a dirty old frock put out for her, till Toto said “But Aunt Sophy they never look at my clothes”. She was an admirable mimic, and got fun out of the quietest sort of life, but was delighted at the prospect of a bit of gaiety. I have seen her before going out, rub her hands together saying, “Won’t I have a good flirtation tonight”? She did not much like offers – they spoilt the fun. One lover she did care for. She offered to run away with him to be married. He either was at the time, or was going to be, ordained, and prudently declined. She said it was dishonourable of him to refuse. Oakeleys had a curious code of honour. Altogether they were eccentric. After being almost scrubbily economical, they would burst into extravagances. “Oakeleys must go fast”. Poor Toto! She made not a very happy first marriage with a Captain Cleveland, a kind man but mostly at sea, and a disastrous second marriage. Under so much frivolity she had some generous qualities. She nursed a family of her brother’s (who with his wife, had died of yellow fever, in Bermuda) when the children arrived in London and doctors were afraid to attend them. I think she really loved and appreciated my Father and Mother.
in Marylebone, London. See William's entry for more details on the family.
, where her husband William was the vicar for a short while. Along with Sophia and William, their two eldest sons, Edward and Henry, were registered in the same census. By 1861 they had moved to
in Cheshire. They were living at the
, as recorded in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 censuses and they remained there until 1886 when William was forced to retire due to ill health. At this point, Sophia and William were in their 60s and retired to
in Greenwich, London. Husband William died in 1889 (aged 67) and Sophia remained in Eltham, possibly until her death. She was registered in the 1901 census at her son Arthur's house (
. The following obituary was published in the
1825 - 1907 (82 years)
