CHAPTER VII - 1847–1848

Summary

In 1847 the three sisters Jessie Sismondi, and Emma and Fanny Allen, were moving house. There appears to have been much heart-searching as to whether they should uproot altogether and follow their favourite nieces Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emma, and Fanny Hensleigh to the home counties, but eventually they decided that it was best to live and die where they had been born and where Fanny and Emma had spent most of their lives—a wise decision I imagine.

Jessie Sismondi writes to Elizabeth Wedgwood (June 7, 1847):

I have never got over my pleasure at my and your little Emma's letter expressing such true and earnest wish that we would live near her. I had such a fit of dejection after you went away that it is very true I wished our house here at old Scratch. Charlotte Langton luckily came over one Sunday evening that I was just going into church in hopes I might pray myself out of it, but the long meditation of the silent sermon would probably have depressed me into the slough of despond. Her sweet look and voice, and gentle sympathy was as David's harp to Saul.

This year, too, Sarah Wedgwood, having left Camp Hill, her Staffordshire home, came to live at Down to be near my mother. She took ‘Petleys’ from Sir John Lubbock, and lived there till her death. Her three servants were the dear friends of us all as children, and whenever life was a little flat at home, a visit to the kitchen at aunt Sarah's to see Mrs Morrey, her sister Martha, and the manservant Henry Hemmings, was always delightful.