Ube Earl of Milton m 



These, however, by no means exhausted the category 

 of Lord Wilton's accomplishments, for, not only did he 

 play the anthem every Sunday during the season at the 

 Chapel Royal, Whitehall, but he had also walked the 

 hospitals and passed his examination as a master 

 mariner. In fact, he was a really excellent surgeon 

 and a first-rate seaman. That there was some ground 

 for the satirical sneer at his attempt to combine piety 

 with pleasure and the saint with the sportsman, I 

 gather from the picture which that incorrigible gossip 

 Fanny Kemble in her ' Record of a Girlhood ' gives of 

 the earl and countess at home, when she was their 

 guest at Heaton Park in 1830. She writes: 'Our 

 Sunday at Heaton terminated with much solemn 

 propriety, by Lord W. reading aloud the evening 

 prayers to the whole family, visitors and servants 

 assembled, a ceremony which, combined with so much 

 of the pomps and vanities of the world, gave me a 

 pleasant feeling towards these people who live in the 

 midst of them without forgetting better things.' 



And again : ' Lord W., in spite of his character of a 

 mere dissipated man of fashion, had an unusual taste 

 for the knowledge of music, and had composed some 

 that is not destitute of merit ; he played well on the 

 organ, and delighted in that noble instrument, a fine 

 specimen of which adorned one of the drawing-rooms 

 at Heaton. Moreover, he possessed an accomplishment 

 of a very different order : a remarkable proficiency in 

 anatomy, which he had studied very thoroughly. He 

 had made himself enough of a practical surgeon on the 

 occasion of the fatal accident which befell Mr Huskisson 

 on the day of the opening of the railroad, to save that 

 unfortunate gentleman from bleeding to death on the 



