In 1785 Lord Thurlow purchased Brockwell Green Farm, and other lands in the neighbourhood of Dulwich and Norwood, and chose Knight’s Hill as a suitable site for a house. The house was finished, but Lord Thurlow considered it too dear—it is said to have cost £30,000—and would never live in it, but remained in a smaller house, called Knight’s Hill Farm. As he was coming from the Queen’s Drawing-room, a lady asked him when he was going into his new house. ’Madam,’ he replied, ’the Queen has just asked me that impudent question, and, as I would not tell her, I will not tell you.’ Both the mansion and the farmhouse disappeared long ago.
The romantic marriage of Lord Eldon, then plain Mr. John Scott, of the Northern Circuit, forms a pleasant episode in legal history. Bessie Surtees was the daughter of Aubone Surtees, a banker and gentleman of honourable descent at Newcastle. Scott had met and danced with her at the assemblies in that town, and his pretensions were at first favoured by her family; but Sir William Blackett, a patrician but aged suitor, presenting himself, Bessie was urged to throw over Scott and become Lady Blackett. But Bessie was faithful, and one night descended from a window into her lover’s arms, and they were married at Blackshiels, North Britain. The future Lord Eldon came to London with his young and pretty wife, and settled in a humble, small house in Cursitor Street. Their housekeeping at first must have been on a somewhat restricted scale, for Lord Eldon, in after-life, used to relate that, in those days, he frequently ran into Clare Market for sixpennyworth of sprats. It was probably owing to these privations in the early days of their married life that her husband had afterwards to complain of her stinginess and her repugnance to society. In fact, she seems to have ruled him rather sternly, for we read of his often stealing into the George Coffee House, at the top of the Haymarket, to get a pint of wine, as Lady Eldon did not permit him to enjoy it in peace at home. Cyrus Redding, who tells us this, did not like Eldon either as a Tory or as a man. ’His words,’ he writes, ’were no index to his real feelings. He had a sterile soul for all things earthly, except money, doubts, and the art of drawing briefs.’