Aunt Barbara’s fireplace

19 June 2010

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Charlotte Moore on her intrepid relative, who numbered many of the great Victorians — Rossetti, Gertrude Jekyll, George Eliot — among her closest friends

Gertrude Jekyll was a more stable friend. She helped nurse Barbara, who in 1877 suffered a stroke, and never fully recovered her vigour. With Miss Jekyll she plotted her next project — a night school for working-class men. Miss Jekyll designed an extension to the ground floor at Scalands, to house the school and its library. Most of the teaching was done by the semi-invalid Barbara and elderly, tiny, deaf Aunt Julia Smith — ‘Aunt Ju takes the big men who can’t read’ — but, surprisingly perhaps, the school was a success. ‘She has educated a generation of agricultural labourers in the principles of liberalism,’ stated Barbara’s obituary, ‘...these classes brought a wholly new element into the lives of the country people she loved so well.’

Barbara died in 1891. Scalands remained in the family for another 60 years. It fell into disrepair, and suffered two fires, but the signatures survived. Aunt Barbara would be pleased to know that it is now the home of a female doctor and her family, and that the names of her friends can still be dimly discerned on the old brick fireplace.

Hancox: A House and a Family by Charlotte Moore is published by Viking/Penguin on 1 July.