Rochdale

“ And in this wide parish of Rochdale, in the eastern nook of Lancashire,—once a country fertile in spots of lone and rural prettiness, and thinly inhabited by as quaint, hearty, and primitive a people as any in England,—there is many a picturesque and storied dell; some tales of historic interest; and many an interesting legend connected with the country, or with the old families of the parish;—the Byrons, of Butterworth Hall, barons of Rochdale; the Entwisles, of Foxholes; the Crossleys, of Scaitcliffe; the Holts, of Stubley, Grislehurst, and Castleton ”

“ On a fixed day in every year—in Rochdale on the 19th August—a kind of obtuse pyramid of rushes, erected on a cart, is highly ornamented in front, and surmounted by a splendid garland. To the vehicle so laden, from thirty to forty young men, wearing white jackets and ornamented with ribbons and flowers, are harnessed in pairs. A band of music is always in attendance, which strikes up on the cart moving on, and thousands of spectators, attracted from a distance of ten or even twenty miles around, hail with repeated cheers the showy pageant. ”

“ A strong horse was in the shafts, and behind was a band of other gaily-dressed young men, similarly yoked between ropes, to hold the cart while descending any steep hill. A bugle sounded to summon the dancers from the booth, the revellers from the club-room, and the wandering groups and whispering lovers from the garden. Some miles of road had to be traversed, and all the rush-carts from the neighbouring villages were to meet in Rochdale at noon. ”

“ At intervals one of the party would roll over on his side, produce a pair of prismatic glasses from his pocket, and peer with considerable caution over the ridge of the hollow, focusing the binoculars upon the winding ribbon-like "slag" road that ascended steeply from the town of Rochdale, the factory chimneys of which were just discernible through the murky Lancashire atmosphere. ”

“ But in one of the scenes, where the foolish heroine, in the midst of her vulgar triumph at the Earl of Rochdale's proposals, is suddenly overcome by the remorseful recollection of her love for Clifford, and almost lets the Earl's letter fall from her trembling hands, I heard a voice out of the darkness, and it appeared to me almost close to my feet, exclaiming in a tone, the vibrating depth of which I shall never forget, "Ah, bien, bien, très bien!" ”

“ And, coincidence still more marvellous, Nature had apparently aided and abetted what man's hand had contrived, for in either town a line of hills swept around the sky. The only difference was, that the characteristics of Rochdale were not so marked as those of Hanley. The hills were not so high, nor were they in such close array as those of the Staffordshire town, and the Lancashire valley was not so deep and trench-like as the one that engirdles the potteries. It may be that as much smoke hung over it, but the smoke did not seem so black and poisonous, at least not to Kate's eyes ”

“ Lady Caroline Braymore!
Lady Car. Mr. Shuffleton! Lard! what can bring you into Cornwall?
Shuff. Sympathy:—which has generally brought me near your ladyship, in London at least, for these three winters.
Lady Car. Psha! but seriously?
Shuff. I was summoned by friendship. I am consulted on all essential points, in this family;—and Frank Rochdale is going to be married. ”

“ Revolution needed munitions, parks of artillery, hospital stores. Money could furnish these—it was the sinews of war. If such were the object of Blaquiere’s visit, he should not be disappointed. He possessed, unentailed, Newstead Abbey, the seat of his ancestors, to whose memory he had clung [380] fondly through all his ostracism—and there were his coal lands of Rochdale. The latter could be realized on without difficulty. His sister had a private fortune of her own. Ada, his child, had been provided for at her birth. Rochdale should bring close upon thirty thousand pounds. ”

“ Rochambeau, Comte de, marshal of France, born at Vendôme; commanded the troops sent out by France to assist the American colonies in their rebellion against the mother-country (1725-1807) .
Rochdale (72) , a flourishing town and cotton centre in Lancashire, prettily situated on the Roche, 11 m. NE. Of Manchester; its woollen and cotton trade (flannels and calicoes) dates back to Elizabeth's time; has an interesting 12th century parish church. ”

“ NUTTALL, WILLIAM (d. 1840) , author, son of John Nuttall, master fuller, born at Rochdale, Lancashire, kept a school in that town for many years. He married three times, the last time unhappily. About 1828 he removed to Oldham, but poverty and distress overtook him, and he committed suicide in 1840. He was buried in Oldham churchyard. He wrote: 1. ‘Le Voyageur, or the Genuine History of Charles Manley,’ 1806. 2. ‘Rochdale, a Fragment, with Notes, intended as an Introduction to the History of Rochdale,’ 1810. ”

“ In Wales the short staple wool of the mountain sheep was used, and in Ireland that of the Wicklow variety of the Cottagh breed, but now the New Zealand, Cape and South American wools are extensively employed, and English wools are not commonly used alone. Over 2000 persons are employed in flannel manufacture in Rochdale alone, which is the historic seat of the industry, and a good deal of flannel is now made in the Spen Valley district, Yorkshire. Blankets, which constitute a special branch of the flannel trade, are largely made at Bury in Lancashire and Dewsbury in Yorkshire. ”

“ Roxton had weathered Lent and Easter, and Lady Sophia Gillingham, Dame President of the local habitation of the Primrose League; patroness of all Roxton charities, Dissenting enterprises excepted; and late lady-in-waiting to the Queen; had called her many dear friends together to discuss the coming Midsummer Bazaar that was held annually for the benefit of the Roxton Cottage Hospital. Roxton, like the majority of small country towns, was a veritable complexity of cliques, and by “Roxton” should be understood the superior people who were Unionists in politics, and Church Christians in religion. ”

“ But Rochester is a man of the best English society, courted by wealth and rank, a man of cultivated tastes, of wide experience and refined habits, and lastly of most generous and heroic impulses—and yet such a man swears at his people like a horse-dealer, teases and bullies his little governess, treats his adopted child like a dog, almost kicks his brother-in-law in his rages, plays shocking tricks with his governess at night, offers her marriage, and attempts to commit bigamy in his own parish with his living wife still under the same roof! ”

“ This Sir Thomas Bullen, afterwards, as we have shown, created Baron Rochfort, Viscount Rochfort, Earl of Ormond, and Earl of Wiltshire, married Elizabeth daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and by her had issue one son—George, commonly called Viscount Rochfort, but summoned as Baron Rochfort during the lifetime of his father—and two daughters, Anne and Mary. Lord Rochfort married Jane, daughter of Henry Parker, Earl of Morley. He was beheaded during the lifetime of his father, and left no issue. ”

“ Weak and short-sighted as he was, Rochester experienced its influence at that moment. To be branded with the stain of foul ingratitude for coming times--to be marked out in the annals of the age as one who had betrayed and ruined his friend--to be held up for scorn and reprobation as a base and thankless villain, in the eyes of his children and his children's children, somewhat appalled him ”

“ I am a straightforward, simple man; that's my great disadvantage. I am of a frankness of character quite French."
Rochefort bit his lips in order to prevent a smile.
"Now to the point. I want friends; I want faithful servants. When I say I want, I mean the queen wants them. I do nothing without her commands -- pray understand that; not like Monsieur de Richelieu, who went on just as he pleased. So I shall never be a great man, as he was, but to compensate for that, I shall be a good man, Monsieur de Rochefort, and I hope to prove it to you." ”

“ A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the largest house in March Square—the large grey one at the corner by Lent Street—and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs. Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her boots unbuttoned. ”

“ His devotion to the queen was boundless; men of loyalty are scarce."
"I think so, forsooth," said Rochefort, "and when you find any of them, you march them off to the Bastile. However, there are plenty in the world, but you don't look in the right direction for them, my lord."
"Indeed! explain to me. Ah! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort, how much you must have learned during your intimacy with the late cardinal! Ah! he was a great man."
"Will your eminence be angry if I read you a lesson?"
"I! never! you know you may say anything to me. I try to be beloved, not feared." ”

“ Julius Rohscheimer was an octopus whose tentacles were fastened upon the heart of society. Haredale was so closely in the coils that, short of handing in his papers, he had no alternative but to appear as Rohscheimer's social alter ego. Lord and Lady Vignoles were regular visitors to the house in Park Lane; and although the Marquess of Evershed did not actually visit there, he countenanced the appearance of his daughter, chaperoned by Mrs. Wellington Lacey, at the millionaire's palace. Moreover, Haredale knew why!
What a wondrous power is gold! ”

“ CHAPTER XV ROCHESTER IS INDIGNANT Rochester accepted his wife’s offer of a lift in her victoria after the luncheon party in Cadogan Street.
“Mary,” he said, as soon as the horses had started, “I cannot imagine why you were so civil to that insufferable bounder Saton.”
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“Is he an insufferable bounder?” she asked.
“I find him so,” Rochester answered, deliberately. “He dresses like other men, he walks and moves like other men, he speaks like other men, and all the time I know that he is acting. He plays the game well, but it is a game. ”

“ The government of Roxbury, like the other plantations, was founded on a theocratic basis. Church and state were inseparable. No one could be admitted as a citizen unless he was a member of the church. Many of the first settlers came from Nazing, a small village in England, about twenty miles from London, on the river Lee. Morris, Ruggles, Payson, and Peacock, names read in the earliest records of Woodstock, were old family names in Nazing. Other first inhabitants of Roxbury came from Wales and the west of England, or London and its vicinity. ”

“ Haredale—one of the best-known men in town—worked as few men work to bring the right people to the house in Park Lane (and to save his commission) . This arrangement led Mr. Rohscheimer to rejoice exceedingly over his growing social circle, and made Haredale so ashamed of himself that, so he declared to an intimate friend, he had not looked in a mirror for nine months, but relied implicitly upon the good taste of his man. ”

“ Lieutenant Rockdale was a handsome man—a trifle effeminate, perhaps, with languishing, brown eyes, and a soft voice. He seemed delighted with our visit, and took my husband off to his own quarters, while Mrs. Arnold and I looked over pictures of her friends, over albums, and at all the hundred little curiosities which she had accumulated while in the Territory. The cares of the household seemed to sit very lightly on her; a negro woman, Constantia, and a mulatto boy, of twelve or thirteen, sharing the labor between them. ”

“ I love you not at all, and never shall. 'Tis but your vanity that makes you believe so."
"Nay, I call all these trees to witness," cried Rochester, "of what you acknowledged half an hour ago."
"Oh, women will say what they do not mean," replied the Countess. "I hope no one but the trees did hear me; for I would not have too many witnesses to such a falsehood.--And so you showed the letter to Sir Thomas Overbury, and he it was, I suppose, who said I had written it?"
"No," replied Rochester, "he divined that you were the person spoken of; but he said that it was a man's hand." ”

“ On a division the proposal of Grafton was rejected by the casting vote of one—Lord Rochford. But for this unhappy event, wrote Grafton afterwards, ‘I still think that the separation from America might have been avoided.’ In December 1770 Rochford, though still nominally under Weymouth's direction, showed his accustomed skill in dealing with the politicians of Madrid, Spain conceding everything that England asked, though not until the English minister had left the Spanish capital and had proceeded twenty leagues on his homeward journey. ”

“ Rochefort had a big stake to lose; he had estates in Auvergne, his youth and his position in society. He had no political ambitions, but he had an ambition, ever living and always being gratified, to shine in his own peculiar way. He set the fashion in coats and morals, his sayings were repeated, even though many of them were scarcely worth repetition; his eccentricities, which were genuine and not assumed, were a feature of Paris life. Paris was his true home, and though he was seen frequently at Versailles, he was seen more often at the Café de Régence. ”

“ How great the contrast was between Roxton lying amid its woods and meadows, and the dismal colliery town, Murchison, as a father, realized too soon. The one smelled of the fresh earth, primal and invigorating; the other of soap-works, soot, cabbage-water, and rancid oil. In Roxton the mortality was low; in the colliery town hundreds of infants died yearly before they were four weeks old.
Such realism, the vivid heritage of thousands, might well make a man go grimly through life, the burden of care very heavy on his shoulders. ”