Letters to, from and related to Loughborough

I recently bumped into a postie friend of mine, and we got to discussing … ummm … post! Years ago, you’d have sent your friend or relative a postcard at, say 11 in the morning, and suggested meeting them in the park at 1 on the afternoon of the same day! Your postcard would have been quickly and safely delivered, and you’d have met your friend or relative in the park at 1pm as you’d suggested!

Writing letters and postcards was also important as a way of sharing news and updates, events, and feelings, and so on. If you were ‘important’ or your recipient thought highly of you, or considered your communications to be important to them, some of your letters and postcards might have been saved, and passed down through generations. This is particularly so with communications sent during troubled times, like during wartime. Eventually, your letters may have been donated to a record office, to be shared more widely, and someone might even collect your letters together and publish them.

These days the letterboxes [NOTE 1] are not filling as quickly as they used to. In fact, the letterboxes are barely filling at all. Lots of reasons for this, but possibly because many folk are using emails and social media apps to communicate, rather than putting pen to paper. If we did write more letters, what would we do with those we received in reply? Save them all? Save a selection? Throw them all out?

Hmmmm, so where am I going with this?? Ah, yes, connections with Loughborough!

Volumes 1 and 2 of Life and letters of Ambrose Phillippps de Lisle

As I mentioned above, sometimes people’s letters are saved, for a wide variety of reasons, which might include your being well-known, or popular, or a prolific and expert letter-writer. So, if you were the well-known poet, Philip Larkin, and you wrote regular letters to family, friends, and lovers, someone might have saved your letters, deposited them in some repository [Note 2], and someone else might have come along and gathered a selection together and published them [NOTE 3]. This, of course, did happen, and Larkin gives us a unique take on Loughborough, a place he came to, to visit his mother, his sister, her husband, and their child. 

In a letter dated 27 July 1949, which Larkin sent from the Lupton Hotel in Churston Ferrers, to his mother who was staying with his sister, Kitty, at 53 York Road, Larkin wrote:

“Mind you see a bit of life in Loughborough, always supposing there is any, which seems highly improbable to me, as Bruce [Montgomery, a friend of Larkin’s] wd say.”

If you were Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle (1809-1878), son of Charles March Phillips (who had attended Sherborne public school, as had James Bickham) and father of Ambrose Charles (the first of 16 children), you would have attended public school and Trinity College, Cambridge University, inherited the Grace Dieu estate, and later Garendon Hall and estate, from your father, converted from Anglican to Roman Catholic, commissioned a new hall to be built at Grace Dieu, and struck up a friendship with Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin [NOTE 4], and the Honourable George Spencer, son of the second Earl Spencer. All of which meant that you would have been a prolific letter-writer, with plenty to say, and someone would later collect a selection of your correspondence and publish it! [NOTE 5]

Names of de Lisle’s correspondents are both well-known and familiar – Lord Shrewsbury, the Duke of Rutland, Augustus Pugin, W.E. Gladstone, and more. Here are a couple of extracts, one a letter to the Duke of Rutland, the other to Mr Gladstone:

“GARENDON PARK, MAY 6, 1868.

MY DEAR DUKE [to the Duke of Rutland] – I thank you very much for your kind letter of the 1 st, from which I am delighted to find that you are so well and quite free from gout. This is specially agreeable to me to hear at such a critical moment in our National History …”

“GARENDON PARK, FEB. 28, 1877.

MY DEAR MR GLADSTONE – I little thought when I wrote to you, and when I was reading with so much interest and pleasure your kind answer to that letter, that I was on the eve of one of the greatest afflictions of my life. And yet sot it was , on the 6 th Feb. my poor dear son-in-law Arthur Strutt went to show a little niece of his the great wheel (Which his grandfather had invented) in the Family Mill at Milford, when by the mysterious permission of Divine Providence his foot slipped and he fell into the wheel, between the great outer one and the smaller cogg [sic.] wheel, and was instantly killed. Thus in one terrible and unlooked for moment a dear and affectionate son-in-law was carried off, and my favourite Daughter Alice was at a very early period of her Life plunged into all the grief and forlorn solitude of widowhood.”

Or, if you were Henry Alford, the Dean of Canterbury, with many friends amongst your contemporaries, and who had once been the vicar of Wymeswold, and were a personal friend of Loughborough’s Rector, Henry Fearon, a selection of your letters would have been saved, and later brought together to be published and read by succeeding generations [NOTE 6].

Below is an extract from one of the many letters Reverend Alford wrote upon the occasion of the death of his 10-year-old son, Ambrose, in 1850, this to Reverend Henry Fearon:

“TO THE REV. H. FEARON, RECTOR OF LOUGHBOROUGH.

I know, my dear Mr. Fearon, you are interested in us and ours, and therefore include you in the list of my friends to whom I have to announce the sad news of the death of our dearest and only boy. We only knew of his danger about an hour before, We had very few parting words, but those very sweet, it seemed like a dream. He died peacefully: so we have lost his happy voice and his bright promise from amongst us – a sad trial, but not, we hope, beyond the power of faith to see through in course of time.”

Or, if you were Richard Hurd, at one time Rector of All Saints Church in Thurmaston, before becoming Bishop of Coventry, then Lichfield, then Worcester, and had attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, at the same time as Loughborough’s Reverend James Bickham, and later had your portrait painted by Thomas Gainsborough, then your letters were sure to be saved and later published! [NOTE 7]

Interestingly, Hurd lived at Hartlebury Castle in Worcestershire, and, like Bickham, was a keen collector of books. He bequeathed his library to successive generations of clergy, and is still housed in the Castle, which I believe is open to the public.  

Here's an extract from Hurd’s letter to Thomas Balguy - who at the time of the correspondence was the Rector of North Stoke, near Grantham, and who later went on to become Archdeacon of Salisbury, then Archdeacon of Winchester – in which he mentions James Bickham:

Thurcaston, Jan. 29, 1762.

“I know nothing of the intrigues of the late Bishop of London [Dr. Hayter, died 1762]: and now they are of no concern to any body. Your prediction of him was, I fancy, accomplished somewhat sooner than you imagined. His successor you see is the Bishop of Carlisle [Dr. Osbaldeston, died 1764], to nobody’s joy, that I know of, expect Dr Browne’s; and he, I dare say, believes that I wish him no joy from it, in which however he is mistaken.

I had the greatest pleasure, as you would have, in the news of Mason’s preferments in the Church of York. I know nothing yet of the history of the Precentorship. The Residentiary’s place was owing to Lord Montague, for which I honour him.

…

Mr. Bickham is married, and is coming to reside at Loughborough in the spring, very early. Without doubt, as you say, he will be a good neighbour, but I am got into a way of living without any, which is much better.”

So, we’ve looked at a range of letters from across the years, including the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries! But, will there be any letters saved from the 21st century for future generations to enjoy?

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NOTES

[NOTE 1] There is an extensive study of letterboxes in Loughborough, on this blog:

Part 1 https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/10/loughboroughs-letterboxes-pt-1.html

Part 2 https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/10/loughboroughs-letterboxes-pt-2.html

Part 3 https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/10/loughboroughs-letterboxes-pt-3.html

Part 4 https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/10/loughboroughs-letterboxes-pt-4.html

Part 5 https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/10/loughboroughs-letterboxes-pt-5.html

The case of the Burton Street pillar box https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-case-of-burton-street-pillar-box.html

[NOTE 2] The Larkin archive is held at the University of Hull

[NOTE 3] Edited by James Booth, and published in 2018, ‘Philip Larkin: letters home, 1936-1977’ is a volume of a selection of Larkin’s letters

[NOTE 4] Together, Ambrose Phillipps and Augustus Pugin were known as the two APs!

[NOTE 5] In 1900, a collection of de Lisle’s letters were published by Macmillan, in two volumes, and entitled: ‘Life and letters of Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle’. The author was Edmund Sheridan Purcell, and the volumes were edited by Edwin De Lisle.

[NOTE 6] From: ‘Life, journals and letters of Henry Alford, D.D. late Dean of Canterbury’, edited by his wife, and published by Lippincott in 1873.

[NOTE 7] The Rev. Francis Kilvert, collected together some of the work of Richard Hurd, in a volume entitled: ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of the Right Rev. Richard Hurd. D.D., Lord Bishop of Worcester’, which contained a selection from his correspondence and other unpublished papers. This was published in 1860, by Richard Bentley of New Burlington Street, London.

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posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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