NOCTON HALL Nocton Hall, which was burnt down in 1834. The needlework artist has done one of the trees in the picture most beautifully, but has given the rein to her imagination by working in two fine palm trees in place of the oaks of the picture. There is a sampler done at the vicarage by the dean's daughter, and inscribed:—
"Nocton Priory, 1839.
Louisa C. Hobart."
And two large samplers with the usual pretty floral borders worked by Justinia's daughters, signed "Alice Scholey, 1832, and Betsey Scholey, 1848." The latter has some rather primitive representations of the old Hall and its two lodges; also the Vicarage and the School, and a libellous portrait of Lincoln Minster. Alice Scholey was of a more Scriptural turn of mind and apparently fond of birds, for she has owls in the centre of green bushes, and pheasants or peacocks among her flowers; but her central picture is the temptation, where Adam and Eve, worked in pink silk, au naturel, stand on either side of a goodly tree covered with fruit, a gorgeous serpent twining round the trunk, and one remarkably fine plum-coloured apple temptingly within reach of Eve's hand.
Certainly Justinia's school was in advance of the time, but the art needlework doubtless owed much to the interest taken in it by Sarah Albinia, Countess of Ripon.
Samplers of the eighteenth century are now much sought after. I saw one lately of 1791, on which a little mite of seven, in days when the "three R's" were taught along with the use of the needle in the good old sensible way, had stitched in black silk letters:—
The days were long
The weather hot
Sometimes I worked
And sometimes not.
Seven years my age
Thoughtless and gay
And often much
Too fond of play.
The first stanza with its pathetic little picture is genuine enough, but the second was manifestly dictated by her elders.
Among the treasures long preserved at Nocton was an Anglo-Saxon ornament of great beauty (see illustration, Chap. XXII) in which three discs of silver with a raised pattern of dragons, &c., and with pins four inches long are connected by silver links so as to form a cloak-chain to fasten the garment across the breast.
