Thomas James

21 Burton Crescent
Bloomsbury
London From The James, Pyne, Dixon Family Book - the Reminiscences of Edith Elizabeth Chaplin, 1913:

I was just over eight years old at the time, and as he had had a long illness before his death, when I scarcely saw him, my memories of him are those of a young child, though most agreeable. They are very clear, of a most delightful person whom one was always glad to see and to be with. I remember walking alone in the Crescent garden with him with great enjoyment, while he talked to me as to a companion. He was perfectly courteous in his manner and never said anything to hurt one's feelings, a great contrast to the average attitude of the adult to the child in those days. Personal remarks from old to young were then frequent and free.

Our Mother was his favourite child, and he must, to some extent, have enjoyed her childhood over again in ours; he was very fond of taking us about with him as he had done with her, and I believe preferred us to our cousins, the Dixons, as he considered we had more brains. Our Grandmother thought more of the Dixons as having undoubtedly more beauty; the Dixons also numbered four boys to four girls, while we were six girls and Grandmama had the very common preference of women for their male off-spring.

Grandfather James, as we called him in distinction from Grandpapa Pyne, was a frequent visitor to our home in Crescent Place. It was a quaint house which had been built by the well-known architect, Burton, for his own residence and had the advantage of a large entrance hall in which we used to play, and a fine well staircase lighted by a large round skylight. Many a delightful ride did one have on the baluster rail of this staircase, which ran continuously in a double sweep from the second to the ground floor, enabling one to get up a most delightful speed. It was a forbidden enjoyment but we constantly availed ourselves of it, and without the least sense of guilt. This house had been bought by my Grandfather, who gave it to my parents, to tempt them back to live near him, from their early house in Porchester Place near Hyde Park.

I was born in Porchester Place and so were my three elder sisters; the two youngest were born in Crescent Place. Our Grandfather had settled in Burton Crescent upon his own marriage, buying the house No. 21. The Crescent was then quite newly built-on land just outside the Bedford Estate, bordering on nursery gardens where Endsleigh Gardens and Euston Square now stand; the Marylebone Road and its continuation must have been almost a country road. Later, Burton Crescent was renamed after Major Cartwright, the Radical, to whom his admirers put up a monument on which he is recorded as desiring 'vote by ballot' - an unfathomable mystery to us - and Universal Suffrage (read as 'suffering', which seemed a strange desire in so good a man).*
[*No. 21 Cartwright Gardens was bombed during the 1939-45 War: Connaught Hall, belonging to the University of London, is built on the site. A.C.P].

Thomas James, our Grandfather, was the eldest son of Dr. Thomas James, whose talents and reputation raised Rugby School, of which he was Head Master, from an insignificant grammar school in a small country town to the position of one of the best known of the English public schools. (This was in the 18th century, long before Arnold) [see Longer Account, ACP]. Grandfather James must have been a very able man, with a marked streak of unconventionality and simplicity, which - combined with a lack of ambition and easy pecuniary circumstances in early life, took away much of the usual motives for exertion, and so prevented his rising to eminence in his profession - the Bar. He must, however, have had the reputation of being a sound lawyer; Mr. Austen, the friend of Disraeli's early life, a solicitor in large practice, is reported as saying there was no man whose opinion on a legal point he valued so much as Mr.James's, 'when he could get him'. Another tribute to his ability came from the Great London and North Western Railway Co. He was offered the law business of the Company, subject to taking a few shares in the concern. But he did not like the new railways and still less did he like to be tied; so he declined the offer, and with it the chance of making a fortune. As a Bencher of Gray's Inn, I have understood that his fine taste in wine was of service to his fellow Benchers, and his social charm would have been in its right element.

It was at the Benchers' table that he used to meet Mr. Chaplin, Reader to Gray's Inn - this position did not necessarily confer the right of dining at the Benchers' table but an exception was made for the Rev. Edward Chaplin due to his personal popularity and the respect in which he was held. The acquaintance thus made ultimately led to the marriage of their grandchildren, Ayrton Chaplin and Edith Pyne.

Thomas James was the eldest son of Dr. James by his first wife, Miss Mander. Tradition goes that the Doctor had already shown some attention to a lady in the neighbourhood of Rugby, Miss Arabella Caldecott, but before he had taken any decided steps, he happened to pay a visit to Bath, where he was captivated by the charms of Miss Mander, one of the Beauties of Bath. The lady was staying at Bath with her father, and her sister had, I believe, already married a country gentleman, Mr. Mallory. There was one son of this marriage, Henry Mallory, who died unmarried and whom my mother recollected in her youth; his sister was married to Mr. Ricardo, a relative of the Ricardos of Gatcombe, Minchinhampton, and she was still alive when we were living in Gloucestershire in 1885. Miss Mander did not long survive her marriage to Dr. James. She died after giving birth to a son and a daughter; the daughter was later married to Dr. Wingfield, Head Master of Westminster School and a Canon of Worcester. Their youngest daughter, Fanny Wingfield, seems to have inherited her grandmother's beauty. She married W.G. Ward, known in his day as 'Ideal' Ward, from his book, The Ideal of a Christian Church. [For notes on the Ward and Wingfield families, see Longer Accounts: ACP.]

I have heard that Grandfather James was a very good scholar, having been educated under his Father at Rugby, but his childhood does not seem to have been a happy one. After his first wife's death, Dr.James married Arabella Caldecott, whom he had previously courted, and the family tradition was that she 'spited' the children of the first marriage. This tradition, however, may have exaggerated the facts, as our Grandmother obviously did not like her husband's relations. There was a certain touch of pomposity about them, I gather (in great contrast to Grandfather's charming simplicity), which would have been most distasteful to Grandmama and provoked her trenchant wit. On the other hand, I gathered from our Cousin Sophy [Morris, later Macauley] many years later, that Grandfather's unconventional ways somewhat put out his more solemn brothers. There must however have been a considerable amount of good feeling to have kept such dissimilar natures on family terms with each other.

The story about the Bishop's hat is relevant here. Dr.James's second son, the eldest of his second marriage, was going out to India as Bishop of Calcutta [see later, The Account and Memoir] and was paying a farewell visit to my grandparents in Burton Place before embarking. My Mother, a lively child, the indulged darling of a grown-up household, happened to spy out the Bishop's hat on the hall table and, immensely taken by its peculiar shape, ran upstairs with it into her Mother's bed-room, immediately above the drawing-room where the Bishop was being entertained. Tying a string to the cord of the hat, she opened the window, let down the hat and danced it about before the eyes of the astonished party in the drawing-room.