In 1874 the Hopkinsons moved into Grove House on Oxford Road. John and Alice were now fifty years old. Alice had left childbearing behind and her family was complete. Thirteen children had been born; little Alice and baby William Henry had died. Poor Ellen, now aged twenty and too tired to rejoice in the lovely new storage space, was the eldest of the nine children still living at home. Harry, aged eight, was the youngest.
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| OS map 1892: Grove House & the Union Chapel [National Library of Scotland] |
Alice had found it very hard when the first of the children left home for good. In 1871 as Alice faced the prospect of seeing her eldest son move away, she wrote to John
I cannot endure the thought of losing John from my home. However it is no use forestalling our sorrows: we have enough to gladden us at present.[1]
The following year young John left for Birmingham, where he had been offered the post of Lighthouse Engineer with Messrs Chance Brothers, a major pioneering firm of glassmakers. For a year he lived in an inn a few miles from the glassworks, but in 1873 he married Evelyn Oldenbourg and they set up home together.
As might be expected, partings grew easier and by May 1882, when Edward had finished at Cambridge and was hesitating as to what to do next, Alice was more concerned with his prospects than her own
One feels very anxious that Edward should be guided to a right decision in this matter. For ultimate worldly advancement, it strikes me that a London settlement, even with small pay at present, would be best. But my impression is that home life would be beneficial to character; London life seems such a whirl. [2]
Though they only had nine children living at home, John and Alice hadn't chosen a smaller house. Grove House seems to have been bigger, if anything, than the house they had just left. I haven't been able to find out any details of its interior – how many bedrooms, how many reception rooms – but the 1881 census shows that they now had four living-in domestic servants plus a gardener and his wife. This was quite an increase in expenditure from ten years earlier when they had three domestic servants, which was a very usual number for middle-class families of their type.
One old habit hadn't changed. In spite of having four domestic servants, a letter of 20 June 1885 reveals Mary describing to her mother how she, Gertrude and May were carrying out the spring cleaning. They were spending their days doing housework and mending, she wrote, and
I am sure your heart would be quite satisfied could you see me finding out dust in nooks and crannies and looking sideways to discover its whereabouts.[3]
The grandchildren had thought Grove House "very palatial indeed" when they spent the Christmas of 1883 there.
Too grand, so they thought, for all the small economies that were enforced at table and elsewhere [4]
wrote Ellen Ewing, looking back over the years. Of course the size of the family probably meant small economies were necessary – Albert Hopkinson's daughter Alice Bragg remembered
At table, nothing less than a baron of beef, my father used to say, fed the family [5]
but John and Alice had always tended to frugality, and plainness of living had a moral aspect for them.
Perhaps for them the main point of Grove House was the garden. As Manchester extended southwards and more and more houses were being built, Grove House still stood in the sanctuary of its garden and the surrounding fields, which would be laid out as today's Whitworth Park soon after John and Alice left. Grove House was part of the estate of Edmund Crompton-Potter, Beatrice Potter's uncle. He lived in neighbouring Rusholme House, which lay to the south, and he kept the large and carefully laid-out gardens of both Rusholme House and Grove House well maintained. So it isn't surprising to find that John and Alice needed the services of the gardener.
If the house seems generally to have represented work to Alice, the garden was a great source of pleasure to her and to John. Ellen Ewing quotes a letter written by Alice, describing a moment of family life to John as she gazed out at the garden and at Norah the cow. The letter is undated, but possibly dates from 1878 to 1880, as the third volume of William Blanche Jerrold's biography of Napoleon III was published in 1877, and 1879 was the year of financial crisis in the family, when Lily was 19 years old. Alice's tone is so light-hearted and attractive – what a pity we don't have the rest of the letter
Our garden is lovely; the shadows fall so beautifully. There are some special elements of beauty about this place; it is a privilege to have something to feast the eye upon …
The pigeons are laying eggs and the cockroaches are decreasing. Norah looks charming, as if she enjoyed life. Mary is better today; she is pacing the lawn, book in hand. Lily has been working away very diligently, only giving herself time for her meals. The full occupation has, I am sure, been wholesome, combined as it has been, with the satisfaction of being really helpful to you. She seems to be managing the large tracing very nicely. I do think our girls would make a very good shift for a living if put to it ...
I will enclose Charles's letter from Carlsruhe. I am amused at the Hopkinson energy in ascending heights and taking cold baths in contrast with the Wren temperament ...
I have finished the third volume of Napoleon 3rd and find it interesting and profitable. I ought to read one of the strong books on the other side and take the balance [6]
The garden was clearly an important part of the grandchildren's visit in Christmas 1883. There were five of them: Bertram was nearly ten, Alice was eight, Ellen (Ewing) seven, Lina was approaching five and Jack was three. Ellen writes about the stay in detail [7] – it seems likely that she merged later impressions into this account, given that she was only seven at the time. She describes how their mother had drilled them to be on their best behaviour and had made sure the little girls' frocks would have no frills or furbelows, as this was the way Grandmama like it. They found Grandmama generally lying on a sofa and carefully protected from them by their aunts, and "Grandmama would not like it" was the usual prohibition. Ellen wrote that nevertheless
they all experienced something of her sweetness and fun and the older children of her moral beauty and her intellectual vigour.
But they could always see Grandpapa. They loved to go on walks round the garden with him, and he loved to take them. He could tell them in his booming voice all about the things he found to show them, the "little forms of life of all sorts", entertaining them with stories and explanations – "reminiscences and wise explanations and illustrations, highly interesting and instructive".
We don't know what little forms of life John was showing the children but there would be plenty to choose from. In Fallowfield, a mile and a half further south, his grandson Arthur (Alfred's eldest, born 1874) could remember that at The Grove in Egerton Road, where they lived from 1882, there was "a large garden with lots of birds' nests" and a pond in which he used to fish for sticklebacks – "there was a kingfisher on the pond, and I have put up snipe in a field opposite the back-gate, where there is now a maze of streets". [8]
Ellen Ewing, born in 1876, had a clear memory of her grandfather
It was wholesome and pleasant, also, just to gaze on his countenance where sagacity, dignity, obstinacy and great benignity had printed their record. He had a very pink face with masses of beautiful white hair. He often wore a becoming round smoking cap of black velvet and a black velvet coat, and was good to look upon. So was Grandmama, even more so. If he was like a first-rate cart horse, she was like a race horse.
Those who knew, said that, as a young woman, she was not particularly handsome. As an old one she undoubtedly was, or, rather, lovely. Her eyes must have always been beautiful, large and deep set as they were and expressive to a remarkable degree of her eager enquiring mind and her rich, humble spirit. Very little provocation would stain her cheeks with a delicate flush emphasising the ethereal quality of her face. [9]
The children could feel John's "spoken and unspoken sympathy" with them. And Ellen was struck by his "lover-like attentions to his wife" when he presented her every day with a nosegay of flowers.
Notes
[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 65
[2] ibid., p. 78
[3] ibid., p. 66
[4] ibid., p. 84
[5] Crystal Clear: The Autobiographies of Sir Lawrence and Lady Bragg, ed. A M Glazer and Patience Thomson (2015), pub. OUP
[6] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 76
[7] ibid., p. 85
[8] Arthur W Hopkinson, Pastor's Progress (1942) pub. Michael Joseph Ltd., Religious Book Club edition, p. 213
[9] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 84
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