The Remarkable Lushington Family. David Taylor

men as well as a number of artists and writers. It was ideal for Carr who, although a lawyer by profession, at home was a devotee of music and the arts and on close terms with several leading artists and designers of the day including Arthur Devis, Thomas Hope and Robert Smirke. Carr’s circle of friends also included the wealthy banker and abolitionist Samuel Hoare Jr., and the poets William Wordsworth and Robert Southey.¹² A Hampstead neighbor was the Scottish author and poet Joanna Baillie, who extolled the virtues of the place in her verse:

      It is a goodly sight through the clear air,

      From Hampstead’s heathy height to see at once

      England’s vast capital in fair expanse.

      It was Hampstead’s “clear air” and “heathy height” that drew Thomas Carr to the place as he explained to Wordsworth, “I have reason to love it [Hampstead] with gratitude for I believe it saved my Life.” Wordsworth later recorded that Carr had confided in him,

      that in consequence of severe application to business his health had entirely failed, a complaint having been generated the seat of which he thought was in his heart, and I came here, said he, as I believed to die,—But relaxation from business and pure air, by little and little restored me, and I am now excellently well and my children 8 in number healthy and flourishing. The seat of his disease proved to be the Liver; he is now quite well and blooming, but in the lines of his face are traces rather of sickness than years. When I last saw him about ten years ago he was the most youthful and healthful looking Man of my acquaintance.¹³

      The Carrs lived at “Maryon Hall,” an impressive, late eighteenth-century, house, in an area known as Frognal.¹⁴ It was conveniently close to the center of the village and the parish church. Wordsworth described it as follows:

      most charmingly situated . . . which though not many yards from the public road sees nothing of it, but looks down the hill sprinkled with trees over a scenicly [sic] rich woody Country, like one of our uncut forests, towards the smoke of London and upon the Kentish and Surrey hills far beyond.¹⁵

      Sarah Grace was the first of Thomas and Frances’s eight children. She had two sisters both of whom married well. Isabella married Sir Culling Eardley Smith, a wealthy religious campaigner and a founder of the Evangelical Alliance, and Laura married Robert Monsey Rolfe, Baron Cranworth who became Lord Chancellor. The Cranworths lived in Kent where their neighbor was Charles Darwin. The other girls—Frances Rebecca and Anna Margaret—never married. There were three sons, Andrew Morton, Thomas William and William Ogle. Andrew Morton and William both followed their father into the law.¹⁶ Morton later moved to Edinburgh where he became Solicitor to the Excise, and William, who entered the diplomatic service, traveled with his sister Anna Margaret to Ceylon where he became King’s Advocate and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.¹⁷ Thomas William junior took holy orders and became an Anglican priest.

      A Literary Coterie

      The Carrs soon established themselves at the center of a lively literary coterie in Hampstead which included Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes. Baillie knew Byron and Keats and her work was greatly admired by Sir Walter Scott. The Baillie sisters were considered “sociable, hospitable, and much admired and visited, being on intimate terms of friendship with many eminent figures in the arts and sciences.”¹⁸ Joanna wrote to Walter Scott, “We have a most agreeable neighbour here, a great favourite of my Sisters & mine . . . Mr Carr, a learned Barrister.”¹⁹ Together, the Baillies and the Carrs made the middle-class society in Hampstead “very agreeable.”²⁰ Scott himself dined with the Carrs on at least one occasion in May 1815.²¹

      Another literary lion, the poet and essayist Anna Letitia Barbauld, moved to Hampstead with her husband, the Reverend Rochemont Barbauld, in 1785.²² She wrote several powerful, controversial, political tracts praising the French Revolution; criticizing Parliament in its failure to abolish slavery and championing the rights of Dissenters from the Church of England.²³ At one time, she had sought to mentor the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but he later turned against her. Barbauld was befriended by Joanna Baillie who almost certainly introduced her to the Carrs, and it was they she probably had in mind when, noticing the surplus of young women in Hampstead, she wrote, “I pity the young ladies of Hampstead . . . there are several very agreeable ones. One gentleman in particular has five tall marriageable daughters, and not a single young man is to be seen in the place.”²⁴ Barbauld became a regular visitor at “Maryon Hall” and wrote verses for the Carr children and took part in their family theatricals.²⁵

      It was Barbauld who introduced Thomas Carr to the radical journalist, political philosopher and novelist, William Godwin, husband of the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Their daughter Mary married Percy Bysshe Shelley and was the author of Frankenstein.²⁶ Another regular visitor at “Maryon Hall” was the lawyer and diarist, Henry Crabb Robinson, who considered Carr to be a clever and “very sensible man whose company I like.” Robinson later recalled dining with the Carrs when fellow guests were Wordsworth and the chemist, inventor and scientist, Sir Humphrey Davy and his wife.²⁷

      Joanna Baillie also introduced the Carrs to the Irish novelist and educationalist Maria Edgeworth. She was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth of County Longford, the inventor and educational theorist who was viewed wth suspicion in some circles as a religious heretic. Maria was one of an incredible number of twenty-two children. Maria was a very popular author in her time and was greatly influential in the development of the English novel. She is best remembered for Castle Rackrent, a novel which satirizes Anglo-Irish landlords and their overall mismanagement of their estates at a time when the English and Irish parliaments were working toward formalizing their union through the Acts of Union.

      In 1819 Maria, together with her sisters Fanny and Honora, were invited to stay at “Maryon Hall.” Maria, who had not enjoyed a happy childhood due to her father’s neglect, envied what she saw and wrote home to her own mother:

      Mrs Carr is the most kind hearted motherly creature I have seen since I came to England. How fortunate we were to come here just at the moment we did. We have a delightful airy bedchamber with cheerful bow window—large bed for Fanny and me—a room adjoining for Honora and a little dressing room—with a double and tiny anteroom that shuts out all noise. As Mrs Carr says I am sure these 3 rooms were intended from the Creation for the 3 Edgeworths they fit and suit them so exactly.

      Mr Carr! Oh mother I almost envy these dear good girls the happiness of the affection they have for their father. If you could see them all from the eldest to the youngest running to the gate to meet him as he rides home on his white horse! He is one of the very happiest men I ever saw—of the happiest temper—working hard all day usefully and honourably and coming home every evening to such a happy cultivated united family. When he sits down to dinner in the midst of his children he says he throws aside every care for the remainder of the day and enjoys himself. He is passionately fond of drawing and music and one daughter draws admirably and another plays and sings admirably—and all their accomplishments are for him and for their own family. They are really happy people. Certainly Fanny has the advantage of seeing a greater variety of the insides of families of all ranks than could have been expected—even by my sanguine imagination.²⁸

      The daughter noted by Edgeworth for her artistic talent was Sarah Grace, the future wife of Stephen Lushington.²⁹ Maria later wrote to Sarah:

      Your drawings are beautiful—but they are infinitely more valuable to me than drawings however excellent could be as proof of your kind dispositions towards me,—shall I say at once, of your liking me. I assure, my dear Miss Carr, this liking is mutual, and whenever we come to England again we shall with great eagerness avail ourselves of Mr and Mrs Carr’s cordial invitation and endeavour to cultivate the society of a family who have shown ours so much attention, and whom we feel so many reasons for valuing.³⁰

      Strongly influenced by her father’s views, Maria corresponded with Sarah on matters of education, an area of common interest between the Carr and, later, the Lushington families. Maria invited Sarah and her fiancée to visit her brother Lovell’s school in Ireland and she later wrote to her, “Since