of England. She required a suitable traveling companion for this adventure and, after some discussion with the Carrs, it was agreed that the young Sarah, despite a weakness of constitution, would join her.36 Lady Byron spent four nights at the Carr’s home before setting off with Sarah for Yorkshire from where she planned to journey on to the Lake District. However, no sooner had Sarah left Hampstead than she was overcome with homesickness. She confided in her Journal:
The weather was intensely hot as we left Frognall & excepting in the pleasant conversations and open kindness of my friend, I found little in the day’ Journey to interest, or to divert my thoughts that constantly turned back with regret to those I left behind—Indeed I never remember to have begun a journey with less buoyancy of hopes.37
During the journey, Lady Byron unburdened herself to her young companion. Sarah wrote to her mother, “I had a good deal further conversation with Lady Byron today as to the state of her feelings on one great subject.”38 Baillie later wrote to her friend Anne Millar:
We lost our sweet neighbour Lady Byron about a fortnight ago; and she has taken Miss Carr with her, intending to travel to the Lakes in quest of health which I wish she may find. Her stomach & nerves are in a bad state & she sleeps ill, evets [sic] not to be wondered at in her situation.39
In the event, it was Sarah’s health that became a cause for concern and letters on the subject flew between Hampstead and Derbyshire. In July, Joanna Baillie called on the Carrs with a letter she had received from Lady Byron concerning Sarah. The letter's content was shared with an anxious mother who expressed the hope that her daughter would soon get stronger and that she would not “add to your anxiety which would be defeating the end of your travelling.” Furthermore, although she did not wish that Sarah should return earlier than was originally planned, if she did not recover to full health, Mrs Carr would send her son to fetch his sister home.40 Sarah continued with Lady Byron but, by August, Lady Byron decided to travel on to Scotland alone. Baillie wrote to her encouraging her to visit Sir Walter Scott on this next stage of her journey and then added:
I am glad to hear such favourable accounts of our poor Sarah. I trust she will by & by get entirely free of her complaint. It has been very hard upon her affectionate nature not to have been so long with you nor so useful to you as she wished. She mentions in her letters to her Friends here your kindness of attention to her in the most grateful & gratifying terms.41
A year after her troubled excursion Sarah visited Maria Edgeworth and gave her a full account of the trip which Maria then relayed to her mother:
Miss Carr dined here; we like her very much. She is a particular friend of Lady Byron’s—travelled with her in England the year Lord Byron left her—went with her to the very place where Lady Byron had been married. She gave us a most touching account of Lady Byron’s conduct—of her struggles to repress her feelings—of the absurd conclusion some people drew from her calm manner and composed countenance that she did not feel. Remember that I told you of Lady Byron’s coming as if in her sleep into Miss Carr’s room that night in the dead of night and sitting on the side of her bed—wishing to be able to cry. I cannot write it all—but I am sure I shall remember to tell it you. It made too great an impression ever to be forgotten. Miss Carr is a most engaging unaffected truly feeling young woman and she is extremely well informed and accomplished. She was so good at my request to let her servant bring with her this evening two books large as Allen’s Town print-books of her drawings—sketches she had made in 1816 on a tour through Germany Swisserland [sic] and Italy . . . Miss Carr as we turned them over gave most entertaining notes explanatory—telling us anecdotes of places and people and manners.42
Shortly after this, Stephen Lushington proposed marriage to Sarah Carr.
NOTES
1. Walter Sidney Scott (ed.) Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld Selected from the Lushington Papers (Golden Cockrel Press, 1953), p. 9.
2. Recollections of Sir Stephen Lushington, 1st baronet, and Dr Stephen Lushington.
3. Scott, Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld Selected from the Lushington Papers, p. 10.
4. Lillywhite's Scores and Biographies of Celebrated Cricketers, Volume 1 (1744–1826) (Kent & Co., 1862).
5. Hester Lushington to Lord Melville, 3 May 1804. SHC7854/1/1/1a-b.
6. Vernon Lushington to Richard Monkton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), Houghton Papers, Trinity College, Cambridge, 15/113.
7. Nathaniel S. Weaton, A.M., A Journal of a Residence During Several Months in London; Including Excursions Through Various Parts of England; And A Short Tour in France and Scotland In the Years 1823 And 1824 (H. & F.J. Huntington, 1830).
8. A detailed history of the Eshott estate and the Carr family is in the Newcastle Courant, 21 and 28 September 1877.
9. The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 26 April 1785 carried an announcement of the sale of Eshott estate which was described as “A Capital and very Valuable Freehold Estate . . . of One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Acres”. The estate also contained “a very Excellent Current Colliery, working to great advantage.”
10. In a letter to Catherine Winkworth dated 23 July 1862, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote “Mr V[ernon] L[ushington] came up, & introduced me to his aunt (his mother died in 1837). His Aunt, Miss Carr, well known to my Aunts, in other days, when Hollands & Carrs were near neighbours.” J.A.V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard (eds.) The Letters of Mrs Gaskell (Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 928. For more on Gaskell and the Carrs, see John Chapple, Elizabeth Gaskell. The Early Years (Manchester University Press, 1997).
11. On 6 April 1812 Joanna Baillie wrote to (Sir) Walter Scott, “We have a most agreeable neighbour here, a great favourite of my sisters & mine, and being a Borderer, than English one, claiming (tho’ unknown) some little favour from you: Mr Carr, a learned Barrister, at the head of the excise office.” J.B. Slagle (ed.) The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999).
12. On 9 February 1797, Robert Southey recorded a meeting “At the Chapter Coffee House to which I accompanied Carr and Barbauld.” Southey’s Common-Place Book: Fourth Series, ed. J.W. Warteer (Reeves and Turner, 1876), p. 39. In a letter to Mary Baker in 1811 Southey wrote, “Mrs Carr is a clever woman. She knows me but very little—I once dined at her house,—some fourteen or fifteen years ago, & have met once or twice since.” Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt (eds.) The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Four: 1810–1815. Romantic Circles website.
13. William Wordsworth to Mary Wordsworth, 30 May 1812, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Alan G. Hill (ed.) The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Volume VII, The Later Years, Part IV 1840–1853 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988).
14. I am most grateful to Christopher Wade, an authority on Hampstead’s history, for helping me locate the residences of the Carrs and their friends. His book The Streets of Hampstead, published by the Camden History Society (Second Edition, 1972), has proved immensely helpful.
15. William Wordsworth to Mary Wordsworth, 20 May 1812, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth.
16. Morton Carr became Solicitor to the Excise and moved to Edinburgh. Joanna Baillie wrote to Sir Walter Scott, “Mr Carr’s eldst (sic) Son, Morton Carr, who has just left his Father’s pleasant house & family to be a lonely resident in the good Town of Edinr. as Solicitor for the Excise of Scotland . . . he is a young man of most amiable manner & character & one of my young favourites, I know you will be inclined to speak kindly to him &
