Now! Then! The good life at Stapleton Park (Pontefract), country house of the still unmarried and vaguely solvent horse-racer and politician Edward Petre, 33 today

28 September 1827: The good life at Stapleton Park (Pontefract), country house of the still unmarried and vaguely solvent horse-racer and politician Edward Petre, 33 today

Thomas Creevey. 1904. The Creevey Papers, 2nd Ed., Vol. 2. Ed. Herbert Maxwell. London: John Murray. Get it:

Excerpt

What a comfortable house this is, and how capitally “dear Eddard” lives. What a fool this good-natured Eddard is to be eat and drunk out of house and harbour, and to be treated as he is. The men take his carriages and horses to carry them to their shooting ground, and leave his fat mother [Juliana Barbara Howard] to waddle on foot, though she can scarcely get ten yards. Then dinner being announced always for seven, the men neither night have been home before eight, and it has been quarter to nine that Dowager Julia and her ladies have been permitted to dine. Then these impertinent jades, the Ladies Ashley, breakfast upstairs, never show till dinner, and even then have been sent to and waited for. Dowager Julia makes one eternally split with her voice and her words and her criticism upon everybody. She is always at it and always right, and a good honest soul as ever was.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Editor Maxwell in his footnote confuses Edward Robert Petre and Robert Edward Petre.

He married the 18-year-old Laura Stafford-Jerningham two years later:

Mr. Petre was universally supposed to be the possessor of an enormous fortune. Though, as we have said, Lord and Lady Stafford would never have urged their daughters to marry merely for money, yet it is only natural that the idea of their future son-in-law’s wealth must have been the reverse of a drawback in their eyes. He would, in fact, have been extremely rich had his estates been managed with prudence and his income spent with discretion. But he had no head for business, and left his pecuniary affairs entirely in the hands of his steward. He had no taste for study or any sedentary occupation, but spent the greater part of his time in the open air, riding, hunting, shooting. Well would it have been for him had he remembered the necessity for the constant supervision of l’oeil du maître. He had a town house in Chelsea, at that time one of the most fashionable quarters of London, strange as the fact may appear to those whose lot is cast in later years. His estates were situated in Yorkshire, in the vicinity of Doncaster, Pontefract and Selby respectively. The splendid domain of Stapleton Park formed, as it were, the centre of the group. It was here that he spent the principal part of the year before he resolved to marry. His favourite amusement was racing, and this alone would be sufficient to account for his diminished resources, for a princely fortune indeed is necessary to those who keep racing stables and frequent the turf, with all the heavy and numerous expenses which this delightful amusement entails. If we blame Mr. Petre for pursuing it to an extent of which his means did not allow, we cannot refuse him our sympathy when we remember how great must be the charm of superintending the training and exercising of the beautiful animals, how great the interest of betting, how intense and all-absorbing the excitement of their owner when the grand day arrives and the brilliant assembly of spectators is gathered together. Mr. Petre was, moreover, successful on the turf. He won the St. Leger three times, in three successive years in 1827 with ‘Matilda,” in 1828 with “The Colonel,” in 1829 with “Rowton.” Subsequently to this final victory he abandoned racing altogether. There is every reason to believe that his affection for Lord Stafford’s daughter formed a potential motive for taking this step. But he had been piously brought up, and it appears that his conscience reproached him for having hitherto led a life wholly devoted to pleasure, and for having during a long series of years wasted alike his money and his time. As far as he was concerned, his choice of a wife was wise indeed. Her influence over him was very great, and the strength of her character remedied the weakness of his own, and directed his natural love of spending into channels which made him, in after years, a help and blessing to many of his co-religionists. … Had he not been possessed of true principles and a high sense of honour, he could never have nerved himself to so great an act of renunciation as the abandonment of his favourite and most exciting amusement.

Mrs. Petre had only been married a few months when she discovered the apparently hopeless condition of her husband’s finances. Already his creditors were knocking loudly at the door. His recent alliance with a daughter of Lord Stafford naturally encouraged them to hope for speedy payment, and thus rendered them more importunate than they would otherwise have been. The large sums spent upon the turf, the manner in which he had lent to his friends money which they had never returned, the lavish and reckless footing upon which his household had been conducted, all combined to render his annual expenditure greater than was warranted by the income he derived from his estates. In a word, without his wife’s intervention he would have been completely ruined.

Fully aware of his own inability to cope with the situation, he was only too thankful to leave everything in her hands, and invest her with complete and irresponsible power to do whatever she thought best. The task would have been no easy one for a man who was experienced in such matters. For the shoulders of a girl of nineteen it was a heavy burden indeed. She took it up with a courage and high spirit which commanded universal admiration, and astonished all who came into contact with her. She devoted all her intellectual powers to her dreary and distasteful occupation, entered into the minutest details, made herself mistress of the most intricate subjects, until, with the aid of her lawyers, she arrived at a clear and complete comprehension of the state of her husband’s finances.

One thing was apparent, namely that prompt and extensive retrenchments were an absolute necessity, and that great sacrifices must be made. A large portion of the Yorkshire estates were sold, and even the furniture of the mansion which stood in Stapleton Park. Mr. and Mrs. Petre quitted this beautiful place in 1830 or 1831, never to return there. The management of the property which was not sold was placed in the hands of administrators, who were to retain control over it until all debts should have been discharged. In order that this might be more speedily accomplished, the husband and wife resolved to spend several months of every year abroad, at least for some time to come, since, if they continued to mix in the society to which they had been accustomed, it would have been absolutely impossible for them to economise as they had determined to do.

How different was all this from the future which Laura must have pictured to herself on her marriage morning! Yet so high was her spirit, so dauntless her courage, so immense her power of self-control, that, whatever she felt, she never allowed herself to appear gloomy or depressed. Her perfect health was of course no small aid to her, and enabled her to support and sustain her invalid husband.

(Clarke 1899)

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Original

What a comfortable house this is, and how capitally “dear Eddard” lives. What a fool this good-natured Eddard is to be eat and drunk out of house and harbour, and to be treated as he is. The men take his carriages and horses to carry them to their shooting ground, and leave his fat mother [Juliana Barbara Howard] to waddle on foot, though she can scarcely get ten yards. Then dinner being announced always for seven, the men neither night have been home before 8, and it has been ¼ to 9 that Dowager Julia and her ladies have been permitted to dine. Then these impertinent jades, the Ladies Ashley, breakfast upstairs, never shew till dinner, and even then have been sent to and waited for. Dowager Julia makes one eternally split with her voice and her words and her criticism upon everybody. She is always at it and always right, and a good honest soul as ever was.

158 words.