than drink.
To that “summat” the Victoria Hall Council, all honour to them, have
pointed with quite encouraging success. There is no department of the
Hall which is not in a healthy condition, and the fact that £1800 was
taken in pennies and twopences for admissions during 1887, though
the Hall was closed in the summer for repairs, may well encourage the
Council and their devoted manager to take courage and persevere in their
present effort to purchase the freehold as a fitting memorial to Mr.
Samuel Morley. There was no part of his wide work of philanthropy which
that fine old English merchant valued more than this. He supported it
lavishly during his life, and had he lived till the freehold came into
the market, there would have been little difficulty in raising the
necessary sum, £17,000. Of this, £3500 has already been promised by
members of the Council, and I cannot believe that the opportunity will
be allowed to slip, and the deposit-money of £500 already paid to be
forfeited. It seems that the Charity Commissioners have let it be known
that the old “Vic.” will be accepted by them as one of the People’s
Palaces for South London, if the freehold can only be obtained; and I
cannot for a moment doubt that this will be done if the facts are only
fairly known. The teetotalers ought to do all that remains to be done,
in gratitude for the best story in their quiver, which they owe to the
“Vic.” A short meeting is held, called the “Temperance Hour,” _outside_
the house on Friday nights, at which working men are the speakers. One
of them, a carter, stuck fast at the bottom of a hill in the suburbs one
day. Another man who was passing, unhitched his own team and helped him
up. On an offer to pay being made, the good Samaritan declared he had
been paid beforehand. “Why, I never saw you before in my life, did I?”
“I’ve seen you, though,” said the other; “I heard you speak one night
outside the ‘Vic.’ and I went in and took the pledge--me and my family
has been happy ever since!”
Whitby and the Herring Trade, 30th August 1888.
Any fresh herrings for breakfast, sir? Four a penny this morning, sir!”
Such was my greeting this day, as I turned out of my lodgings for an
early lungs’-full of this inspiring air. I had almost broken out on that
fish-wife with, “Why, you abominable old woman, you asked me twopence
for three yesterday”; but restraining my natural, if not righteous
indignation, I replied meekly, “Four a penny! Why, what makes them so
cheap, ma’am?”
“T’ boats all full--ha’n’t had sech a catch this summer,” which news
gladdened me almost as much as if the catch had been my own. No one can
watch these grand fellows, the Dogger Bank fishermen, and not feel, a
sort of blood-relationship to them, and the keenest sympathy with their
heroic business on the great waters. So, thinks I, I’ll go down to the
quay directly after breakfast, and see them all at their best, those
hard-handed, big-bearded, soft-hearted sea-kings from all the East and
South Coast towns of England, from Sunderland to Penzance. When they are
such grand, silent, kindly creatures on every day in the week, even when
the catch has been poor and light, what will they be to-day?
I had spent most of my mornings for some days on the quay, watching the
fish-market there with much interest. It goes on nearly all the forenoon
on the pavement, just above that part of the harbour-wall to which
the herring-boats run when they come in from their night’s work on the
Dogger Bank. A simple, hand-to-mouth kind of business, the auction;
but well adapted, at any rate, to clear the boats, and get their daily
contents to market in the quickest and cheapest way. As soon as a boat
comes to the quay, one of the crew (generally numbering five men, or
four men and a boy) comes on shore with a basket half-full of herrings,
and turns them out on the pavement. The fish-broker who acts for that
boat comes up, looks at the sample, and makes an offer for the ship’s
take by “the lash” or ten thousand. If this is accepted, the unloading
begins at once; but if not, as is oftenest the case, the take is put
up to auction. The broker rings a bell, which soon brings round him the
seven or eight other brokers like himself, and other buyers (if any) who
are within hearing. Up goes the first last of ten thousand at once, and
no time is lost or talk thrown away. In very few minutes the whole is
sold, and a cart or lorry from the railway is standing by to carry off
the barrels in which the herrings are packed then and there. Now, on the
previous day I had heard the prices ranging from £7: 10s. to £8 for “the
last,” and had not remarked that only some six boats of the whole fleet
had come back from the fishing-grounds, and that none of these had made
anything like a big catch. Consequently, I came down prepared to hear
something like the same prices ruling, and to see most of the crews
drawing at least from £15 to £20 for their night’s work.
Well, in a long life I don’t remember ever to have been more hopelessly
wrong or unpleasantly surprised. I could see at once that all was not
right by the faces of the men and women in the small groups scattered
about the market, which now drew together as the broker’s bell rang for
the sale of the herrings, which lay, a lovely, gleaming mass, at least
three feet deep in the uncovered hold of the _Mary Jane_, as she rocked
gently on the harbour swell, some twenty feet down below us. I could
scarcely believe my ears as I heard the bids slowly rising by 5 s. at a
time till they reached 30s. the last, and there stopped dead. The hammer
fell, and the whole catch of the _Mary Jane_ passed to the purchaser in
about two minutes at that figure. The next boat, and next but one, did
no better. Broker after broker knocked his client’s catch down at 30s.
Once only I heard an advance on that figure, and this was by private
contract. The handsome Hercules, in long leather boots and blue jersey,
who represented one of the Whitby boats, appealed in my hearing to the
broker, who relented with no very good grace, and agreed to give £2 per
last of ten thousand of the catch of Hercules’s boat.
It was a depressing sight, I must own, even in the bright sunshine of
this most picturesque of English harbours, and Sam Weller’s earnest
inquiry to his master, “Ain’t somebody to be wopped for this?” rose
vividly in my mind as the fittest comment on the whole business. Just
then a tug which had been getting up steam was ready to leave the
harbour, and two Hartlepool smacks, whose freights of herrings were
still unsold, hitched on, to be towed out to sea and then run home,
in the hope of finding a better market in the Durham port. An old salt
stood next me, whose fishing days were well over, and who had just taken
a good bite of the blackest kind of pigtail to comfort himself. I looked
inquiringly at him as the tug steamed out between the two lighthouses,
with the smacks in tow; but he shook his head sorrowfully. “Well, but
they can’t do worse than here,” I remonstrated; “herrings maybe scarcer
in the colliery district.” He jerked his head towards the little group
of brokers and buyers,--“They’d know the prices at Hartlepool in five
minutes,” he said. This telegraphing was to his mind the worst thing
that had happened for fishermen in his time. “Did prices often go up and
down like this?” I asked. “Yes,” and worse than this. He had known them
as low as 15s. and as high as £15 within a few days. No, he couldn’t see
what was “to odds it” much for the better. Last time he was across
at Liverpool he had stopped at a big fish-shop where he saw barrels
standing which he recognised. “What’s the price of those herrings?” he
asked. “Eight for 6d.” the man answered. “So I told him I saw they was
from Whitby, and that he got them at Whitby for 6d. a hundred.”
Whitby and the Herring Trade, 31st August 1888.
I had got thus far last night, and posted down again early this morning
to the market, which has a sombre kind of attraction for me. Only two
boats in, with light catches of from one and a half to two lasts each.
The first sold at £5: 5s., which price the second boat refused. Theirs
were a first-rate lot, and they shouldn’t go under £6, for which they
were holding out when I had to leave, and there seemed to be a general
belief that they would get it. This was puzzle enough for any man, to
see under his own eyes the same fish sold on three consecutive summer
days for £7:10s., £1:10s., and £5:5s.!--a sort of thing no fellow can
understand. To add to my bewilderment, I learnt that at Great Grimsby
yesterday (the £1:10s. day here) the last had sold for upwards of £15!
So that my old salt’s view as to the telegraph doesn’t quite hold water,
and the two smacks which shook the water off their bows and sailed for
Hartlepool, may have made a good day’s work of it, after all. Indeed,
a sailor on the quay declared that they had sold at £5, so that, after
paying £2 apiece for the tug, which had towed them all the way, they
still got £3 a last, or double the price they would have realised at
Whitby. “So it comes to this, that the more fish you catch, the less
pay you get,” I said to my informant. “Yes,” he seemed to think that was
mostly the case, adding that to his mind it was the railways that made
all the money out of fish--
Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes.
It is an old story enough, but scarcely less true or sad in 1888 than
when most of the world’s hardest work was done by slaves. However there
are, happily, signs in the air that, here in England at any rate, we are
waking up to the truth, that if we can find no better way of organising
industry than competition run mad, we are going to have real bad times.
Royal Commissions on the sweating system; Toynbee Hall interventions in
great strikes; co-operative effort springing up all over the country,
and finding its most zealous and devoted advocates at least as much
amongst those who don’t work with their hands as those who do,--all go
to prove that the reign of king _laissez faire_, with his golden rule
of “cash payment the sole _nexus_ between man and man,” is over.
Indeed, our danger may soon be from too much meddling with and mothering
industry. Nevertheless, no one can spend a few hours on the quay here in
the herring season and not long for some one--scholar, philanthropist,
political economist (new style), co-operator--to come along and teach
these fine fellows to read their sphinx riddle. It would not be, surely,
such a difficult task as it looks at first sight. There is no need to
begin with the vast herring-fishing industry, with its distant markets
at Billingsgate, Liverpool, and Manchester. The reform might begin at
once on a modest scale. Beside the herrings, one sees every
morning other fish lying on the quay--skate, cod, ling, whiting,
rock-salmon--brought in by the smaller and less venturesome boats by
dozens, not by lasts of ten thousand. Take the cod as the most valuable
of these fish. I saw four fine cod-fish sold by auction yesterday on the
quay for 5s. 3d. Within a few hundred yards, and all over the town, cod
was selling at the shops at 6d. the pound. Surely a very moderate amount
of organising ability would enable those who catch these fish to get the
retail prices prevailing on the same day in the home market, and then
the experience gained might assist materially in the solution of the
larger problem.
Meantime, besides the almost unique interest and beauty of its
surroundings,--the steep cliffs, on which the quaint old red-roofed
houses, with their wooden balconies, are piled in most picturesque and
unaccountable groups; the grand old abbey ruin looking down from the
highest point; the swing-bridge between the two harbours, and the
estuary beyond, running up into a fine amphitheatre of green meadow and
dark wood, dotted with village churches and old windmills, and backed by
the high moors,--there is a joyous side to Whitby harbour, even on days
when the market goes most against the Dogger Bank fishermen. If the
fathers have too often to eat sour grapes, their children’s teeth are
not set on edge,--such merry, well-fed, bare-footed urchins of both
sexes I never remember to have seen elsewhere. They swarm, out of school
hours, along the quays; skim up and down the water-worn harbour-walls
wherever there is a rope hanging; run over the herring boats lying side
by side, as soon as the freights are cleared; and toboggan down the boat
slides at the gangways, dragging themselves along on their stomachs when
these are not slippery enough for the usual method of descent. There
seems, too, to be a large supply of old rickety tubs kept for their
special use; for all day long you see two or three of them scrambling
into one of these, and sculling about the harbour, no man hindering or
apparently noticing them. Finer training for their future life would be
hard to find, and one cannot help doubting as one sees their straight
toes, as handy almost as fingers in their climbing feats, whether the
last word has been spoken as to clothing the human foot, at any rate up
to the age of ten or twelve. It is not often, I think, that one comes
on early surroundings and heroes entirely suited to each other; but
Whitby’s hero--patron saint I had nearly called him--could have found
no such suitable place to have been raised in all the world round. James
Cook was born in a neighbouring village, but first apprenticed on board
a Whitby collier, and to the last days of his life retained a most
loving remembrance of the old town. Every one of his famous ships,
the _Endeavour_, the _Resolution_, and the _Discovery_, were built at
Whitby. The house, of his master, Mr. Walker, with whom he lived during
his apprenticeship as a sailor lad, and to whom most of his letters were
written after he had mapped the Quebec reaches of the St. Lawrence
under the fire of the French guns, and was a gold-medallist of the Royal
Society and the most famous of eighteenth century navigators, is still
fondly pointed out in a narrow street running down to the inner harbour.
Sunday by the Sea, Whitby, 7th September 1888.
We saw something of the industrial life of Whitby last week. The
spiritual is quite as interesting, and certainly, so far as my
observation goes, has a character of its own, distinct from that of any
other of our popular seaside resorts. It may be the presence of so
large a seagoing element; at any rate, unless appearances are quite
misleading, there is an earnest and deep though quiet religious impulse
working amongst the harbour-folk and townspeople, not without its
influence in the new quarter which has grown on to the old town, and
with its casino and large cricket and lawn tennis grounds, is becoming a
popular--though, happily, not a fashionable--summer resort. This is, of
course, most apparent on Sundays, on which the absence of anything like
the annoyances, both religious and secular, which spoil the day of
rest at so many health-resorts, is very noteworthy. Not that Whitby is
without its open-air services. On the contrary, they are at least as
frequent as elsewhere, on quays, shore, cliffs; but after watching them
with some care I do not remember anything fanatical or startling, or
in the bad taste of coarse familiarity with mysteries which so often
revolts one in street and field preaching elsewhere. One of these I had
never seen the like of before, and am inclined to think it may interest
your readers. On my first Sunday afternoon I was watching a crowded
service on the quay, at the foot of the West Cliff, from above. As it
ended, and began to disperse, a man in sailor’s Sunday suit of thick
blue cloth severed himself from the crowd, and came leisurely up the
stone steps, with a Bible and hymn-book in his hand. At the top of the
steps is a public grass-plot, some thirty by twenty yards in size, the
only part of the sea-front which has escaped enclosure on this cliff.
Round it are some fifteen or sixteen benches, very popular with those
who will not pay to go into the casino enclosure. They were all occupied
by people chatting, smoking, courting, looking at the view, when the
newcomer walked into the middle of the plot, took off his fur-trimmed
sailor’s cap, opened his Bible, and looked round. He was good to look
at, with his strong, weather-beaten, bronzed features, short-cropped,
grizzled hair, and kindly blue eye, part-owner and best man in one of
the Penzance boats, I heard. On looking at him, passages in the lives
of Drake and Hawkins, and Wesley and Whitfield, and Charles Kingsley’s
loving enthusiasm for the Cornish sailor-folk, became clearer to me. Not
a soul noticed him or moved from their seats, and the talking, smoking,
courting went on just as though he were not there, standing alone on
the grass, Bible in hand. I quite expected to see him shut his book and
depart. Not a bit of it. Clearly he had come up there to deliver his
testimony. That was his business; whether any one chose to listen to it
or not, was theirs. So he read out two or three verses from the Epistle
to the Romans, and began to preach. His subject was Paul’s conversion,
which he described almost entirely in St. Luke’s and the Apostle’s own
words, which he quoted without referring to his Bible, and then urged
roughly, but with an earnestness which made his speech really eloquent,
that the same chance was open to every one. He himself had heard the
call thirty years ago, and had been happy ever since. He had been in
peril of death again and again since then, had seen boats founder with
all hands, but had no fear, nor need any man have, by sea or land, who
would just hear and follow that call. Then he stopped, wiped his brow,
and looked round. The sitters had all become silent, but not a soul of
them moved or spoke. I was standing, with one or two others, behind the
high rails of the enclosure, or I think we should have gone and stood by
him as he gave out a hymn; but we knew neither words nor tune, so were
helpless. He sang it through by himself, made a short prayer “that the
word that day might not have been spoken in vain,” and then put on his
cap, and went down the steps into the crowd below. One voice from the
benches said “Thank you!” as he left the plot.
The next service I came across was a strange contrast. Under the cliff,
in front of the Union Jack planted in the sands, was a large gathering,
composed mostly of children sitting in rows, with mothers and nurses
interspersed, and a number of men and women standing round the circle.
As I came up, I was handed a leaflet of hymns, which explained that it
was a gathering of the “Children’s Special Service Mission,” which has
its head-quarters, it seems, in London, and is presided over by Mr.
Stuart, the vicar of St. James’s, Holloway. The service was conducted by
a young man not in orders, with a strong choir to help him. He, too, did
his preaching earnestly and well; and though it seemed to me above the
younger children’s heads, who for the most part made sand-castles or
mud-pies furtively, was evidently listened to sympathetically by the
elder part of the audience who stood round. But if the teaching scarcely
touched the children, they all left their mud-pies and enjoyed the
singing. The Mission, I was told, holds these services on the sands
through the seaside season, at all the chief resorts on the coast.
The leaders and organisers are mostly young men and women, and all, I
believe, volunteers. A noteworthy sign of our time the Mission seemed
to me, and I was glad to hear that it is countenanced, if not actively
supported, by the resident Church clergy.
If we turn from the volunteer to the regular side of Church work, Whitby
still has an almost unique attraction for the student of the religious
movement in England. The late Dean Stanley, who loved every phase of the
historical development of the life of the National Church, and mourned
over the thoroughness of recent restorations, which, as he thought,
threaten the entire disappearance of the surroundings and forms of the
worship of the Georgian era, would have thanked God and taken courage
if he could have visited Whitby Parish Church in 1888, for church and
service are a perfect survival. The wave of Victorian ecclesiastical
reform, without destroying anything, seems to have gently removed all
that was really objectionable, and breathed new life into the dry
bones of Georgian worship. I am not sure that I should say “everything
objectionable,” for probably the vast majority of even truly Catholic
church-goers would not agree as to the big shield with the national arms
which hangs over the centre of the chancel arch, dividing the two tables
of the Ten Commandments. I am prepared to admit that this particular
lion and unicorn are not good specimens of discreet beasts of their
respective kinds. But even as they stand they are national symbols, and
no reminder that Church and nation are still one can be spared nowadays;
and they are not half so grotesqile as most of the gurgoyles you will
see in the noblest Gothic cathedrals. And then they vividly remind my
generation of the days when they first toddled to church in the
family procession. The church itself is a gem, though with no orthodox
architectural beauty, for it retains traces of the handiwork of thirty
generations in its walls, pillars, galleries, and stunted square
tower,--from the round arches (there are still two, though the best, a
fine Norman window, has been bricked up) of its earliest builders in the
twelfth, to the white-washed walls and ceilings and square-paned windows
of eighteenth century churchwardens. I should think the three-decker (I
am obliged to use the profane name, having forgotten the correct one),
the clerk’s desk, reading-desk, and pulpit rising one above the other
in front of the chancel, must be unique, the last of its race. The clerk
has, indeed, retired into the choir; but the rector still reads the
prayers and lessons admirably from his desk, and ascends the pulpit,
where he is on a level with the faculty pew of the squire, and the low
galleries, to deliver his excellent short discourses. Long may he and
his successors do so. One is only inclined to regret that he does not
take off his surplice in the reading-desk, and ascend to preach in his
black gown. Curious it is to remember that less than thirty years ago
Bryan King and others excited riots in many parishes by preaching in
the surplice. The pews on the floor are all high oaken boxes with
doors, though the great majority of them are now free. The visitor in
broadcloth is put into one of the larger ones, lined with venerable
baize, once green. These are somewhat narrow parallelograms with seats
round the three sides, so that it requires caution in kneeling to avoid
collision with your opposite neighbour. And the body of the church being
nearly square by reason of the addition of side aisles at different
periods, and the “three-decker” well out on the floor, the pews have
been planned so that they all face towards it, and consequently all the
congregation can see each other. This is supposed to be a drawback to
worship; probably is--must be, where people have been always used to
looking all one way. That it really hinders a hearty service, no one
would maintain who has attended one in Whitby Parish Church. It was
quite full, when I was there, of a congregation largely composed of men,
and the majority of these sailors and other working folk. Let any reader
who still goes to church make a point of ascending the 190 stone steps
which lead up to it from the old town, and looking at the matter with
his own eyes, if ever he should be within reach. The rector is a sort
of successor to the old abbots of St. Hilda, with ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over the whole town, wherein are five or six churches
worked by curates, all in the modern style, seats facing eastward, no
three-deckers, surpliced choirs, and chanted psalms, and canticles.
Indeed, in one place of worship, those who have a taste for gabbled
prayers, bowings and posturings, lighted candles, and the rest of the
most modern ritual, can find it, but in a proprietary chapel not under
the jurisdiction of the rector.
Singing-Matches in Wessex, 28th September 1888.
I remember, sir, that some quarter of a century ago, you were
interested in the popular songs of our English country-folk, and so may
possibly think gleanings in this field still worthy of notice. In that
belief, I send this note of some “singing-matches,” which, by a lucky
chance, I was able to attend last week in West Berks. The matches in
question were for both men and women, a prize of half a crown being
offered in each case. The occasion was the village “veast,” or annual
commemoration of the dedication of the parish church, still the
immemorial day of gathering and social reunion in every hamlet of this
out-of-the-way district. I was glad to find the old word still in use,
for as a Wessex man it would have been an unpleasant shock to me to
find the “veast” superseded by a “festival,” habitation, or other modern
gathering. In some respects, however, I must own that the character of
the “veast” has changed; these singing-matches, for instance, being
a complete novelty to me. There used to be singing enough after the
sports, as the sun went down, and choruses, rollicking and sentimental,
came rolling out of the publicans’ booths--for the most part of dubious
character--but singing-matches for prizes I never remember. I suppose
the craze for competitive examination in every department of life may
account for this new development; anyhow, there were the matches to come
off--so the bills assured us--in the village schoolroom, of all places,
which was thrown open for this purpose, and for dancing, at sunset.
Hither, then, I repaired from the vicar’s fields, where the sports had
been held, in the wake of a number of rustic couples and toffee-sucking
children. The school is a lofty room, fifty feet long, with a smaller
class-room as transept at the upper end, along which ran a temporary
platform. Upon this the Farringdon Blue-Ribbon Band, in neat uniforms,
were already playing a vigorous polka. Presently this first dance ended,
the band stood back, and the three judges coming to the front, announced
the terms of the competition, the men to begin, and a dance to be
interpolated after every two songs, every singer, one at a time, to come
up on the platform. There was no hesitation amongst the singers, the
first of whom stepped up at once, and so the matches went on, two songs
and a dance alternately, until all who cared to compete had sung. Then,
at about 9 P.M., the prizes were awarded, and I left, the dancing going
on merrily for another two hours.
I was amused by the award of the men’s prize to the singer of a
vociferously applauded ditty, entitled “The Time o’ Day,” for it showed
that the keenest zest of the Wessex rustic is still, as it was
thirty years ago, to get a rise out of--or, in modern slang, to score
off--“thaay varmers.” It began:--
A straanger wunst in Worcestershèer,
A gen’lman he professed,
He lived by takin’ o’ people in,
He wuz so nicely dressed.
Wi’ my tol-de-rol, etc.
This stranger, having a gold chain round his neck, swaggers in the
farmers’ room on market-day, till--
He zets un in a big arm-cheer,
And, bein’ precious deep,
Sticks out his legs, drows back his arms,
And “gammots” off to sleep.
The farmers canvas him, and doubt if he has any watch to his chain. His
friend, “by them not understood,” pulls out the chain, shows a piece of
wood at the end, and puts it back. The stranger wakes; the farmers ask
him “the time o’ day”; he excuses himself, on the plea that last night,
having taken a glass too much, he did not wind up his watch. At this--
The varmers said, and did protest,
Ez sure ez we’re alive,