Queen’s affairs will prove very troublesome from the doubtful nature of the demands upon the estate yet I fear not, for my coadjudicator is very keen in these matters & will keep me out of all scrapes. I would I had had nothing to do with them, but this is all in vain.23
It was not until the following January that Lushington was finally able to report to Lord Liverpool with a full account of the late Queen’s estate. He explained to the Prime Minister, “I was anxious to have taken this step at an earlier period, but much time was unavoidably occupied in obtaining a thorough knowledge of the concerns & collecting all the demands against the estate.”24 For all his work on the Queen’s behalf, Lushington was awarded the freedom of the City of London.
On Christmas Day 1821, Maria Edgeworth wrote to her aunt that she had just seen Sarah who “looks however as if she has gone through a great deal.”25 Shortly after this she wrote to Harriet Beaufort:
Mrs Lushington is now as agreeable as ever as we first thought Sarah Carr and has shewn since we have been here a degree of strength of mind and self command about duel in which her husband had nearly been doomed . . . Dr Lushington has been much misrepresented in the newspapers. He is an amiable private character and has many friends strongly attached to him. As to his politics I have nothing to do with them. I only hope and believe he will make his wife happy. On her journey home from Brunswick by the Rhine she took 90 sketches—beautiful.26
Lushington and his new wife eventually settled down to married life. At first they lived with the Carrs in Hampstead while they looked for a suitable house in London. However, Lushington, weighed down by the late Queen’s affairs, struggled to find time to search for a property and wrote to his father-in-law, “My time I am sorry to say is wholly occupied . . . We have still not yet obtained a house & I begin to think we shall not be able to procure a permanent residence this year.”27 At the start of the following year Stephen secured the lease of 2 Great George Street, Westminster which was conveniently placed for the Palace of Westminster.28
An early visitor to the new home, Maria Edgeworth, dutifully informed her mother that she had been to see “Mrs Lushington in her new house in which she has been but one day and is in all the horrors of settling.” Edgeworth was soon followed by Joanna Baillie who wrote:
Mrs Lushington has got into her new house in George St: Westminster where we saw her the other day full of courtesy & kindness, and everything in nice order about her. The Doctor & her occupied Mr Carr’s house here just after their return from Brunswick and were very pleasant Neighbours to us. He is full of ardour & spirit and sociability, and his conversation is very delightful.29
In addition to establishing a London residence, the Lushingtons took a lease on “Merry Hill House,” a well-situated country house in Bushey, Hertfordshire. They moved there in about 1829 after seeing it advertised in the Morning Post. 30 Here the couple spent their married life and raised their family. Joanna Baillie wrote:
we went with Mrs Baillie & spent the day at Merry Hill with the Lushingtons, for his two Brothers, Sir Henry & Mr Charles Lushington, with Miss L. the sister & Mrs. Chs. L: the Lady who has given an account of her over-land journey from India to the public; a very dear good account I am told, and I hope to read it soon. It was quite delightful to see the 3 Brothers so happy with one another, our friend Sarah was in good looks & spirits and all her children healthy & playing about. Merry Hill stands very pleasantly in a rich pretty country—but I need say nothing about that, as I believe you have seen it.31
Lady Byron became a regular visitor at “Merry Hill” as did Maria Edgeworth who reported to her mother that she had “lately dined with Mrs Lushington to meet Lady Byron-alone-result-I don’t like her-cold-and dull and flat-dog looking face.”32
“A Real Good Mother and Wife”
In the year that the Lushingtons moved to Great George Street, their first child, Edward Harbord Lushington was born and Maria Edgeworth wrote to Sarah:
The great pleasure of hearing of your safety, my dear Mrs Lushington, and of the birth of your boy, was much increased in the manner in which the good news was communicated to me in the most affectionate warm-hearted letter I ever read from your dear mother.33
Edward, named after his father’s friend Edward Harbord, third Lord Suffield, was followed by William Bryan, Hester, Frances, Alice, and Stephen. In 1832, Sarah gave birth to Vernon and Godfrey. The twins were followed by Laura and, finally, Edith Grace. The forthright Joanna Baillie commented to her friend Mary Montgomery, “His [Stephen’s] Children, take them all together, are not so handsome as might have been expected from such Parents, but Fanny whom you saw with Miss Lawrence, is I think the homeliest of the family.”34 Maria Edgeworth made a similar observation when she wrote, “Mrs Lushington is charming such a really good mother and wife. I wish her children were handsomer.”35
Lady Byron took a personal interest in the Lushington children. She created a trust fund, with Frances Carr as a trustee, that was strictly limited to providing “some educational advantages to your daughters.”36 She wrote to Sarah, “I am glad you don’t object of a Guardian for your Brats—she consents—and the less said about the matter the better.” She insisted that Sarah kept the matter a secret for the time being.37
Surviving correspondence of both Edgeworth and Baillie provides glimpses into the domestic lives of both the Carr and Lushington families. In January 1825 Baillie wrote, “Mrs Carr is going to carry us tomorrow to Newington, to see our kind friend Mrs Barbauld, who has a slight paralytic attack in one arm; and tho’ slight, must at the age of 80 be considered as a serious warning.”38 In June 1826 she wrote to Lady Bentham, “Dr & Mrs Lushington are in Hampstead for the summer and add to the happiness of all connected with them. He is just returned again for Parliament but will I fear next winter lead a busier life than his bodily strength will permit.”
The happiness of the Carr family was shattered in 1829 by the death of Thomas Carr. Joanna Baillie wrote to Sir Walter Scott’s daughter Anne:
This is a dreadful blow upon . . . the whole family and is lamented by everybody here who had the pleasure of being acquainted with them. As for my Sister & myself and our good Sister in law Mrs Baillie, we in him lost a pleasant & kind friend, who was one of the executors under my Brother’s will and one with whom we could consult & advise in every difficulty. He died after a short & painful illness, of some disease of the heart (for the body was examined) which, I understand, is a very rare one. Mrs Carr & the family are all as well as can be expected; such is our usual report, for we have not yet seen any of them, though I called frequently at the House.39
News of her father’s death was initially kept from Sarah as she was considered to be in a delicate state recovering from the birth of her first child.40
Following her husband’s death, Frances Carr and her family moved into central London, leaving some of her daughters to stay with the Baillies during the upheaval of the move. Joanna wrote to Margaret Hodson, “Mrs Carr has taken a lease of a very good house in New Street, Spring Gardens which is near the Lushingtons & very pleasantly situated. They will settle in Town about the middle of November.”41 She also wrote to Isabella Carr expressing her sadness at:
the immediate termination of a dear & long enjoyed neighbourship which I shall always recollect with gratitude & regret. I am thankful that your house in Frognal is to be inhabited by a family which we need not visit; to have crossed its threshold again & seen new faces there would have been very painful.42
Even
