LOWESTOFT.
Yarmouth bloaters--George Borrow--The town fifty years ago--The
distinguished natives.
'I'm a-thinking you'll be wanting half a pint of beer by this time, won't
you?'
Such were the first words I heard as I left the hotel where I was a
temporary sojourner about nine o'clock. Of course I turned to look at
the speaker. He wore an oilskin cap, with a great flap hanging over the
back of the neck; his oilskin middle was encased in a thick blue
guernsey; his trousers were hidden in heavy jack-boots, which came up
above his knees; his face was red, and his body was almost as round as
that of a porpoise. When I add that the party addressed was similarly
adorned and was of a similar build, the reader will guess at once that I
was amongst a seafaring community, and let me add that this supposition
is correct. I was, in fact, at Lowestoft, and Lowestoft just now is,
with Yarmouth, the headquarters of the herring fishery. The truth is, as
the poet tells us, 'Things are not what they seem,' and that many of the
Yarmouth bloaters which we are in the habit of indulging in at breakfast
in reality come from Lowestoft.
It is worth going from London at the season of the year when the finest
bloaters are being caught, to realize the peril and the enterprise and
the industry connected with the herring trade, which employs some five
hundred boats, manned by seven to twelve men, who work the business on
the cooperative system, which, when the season is a good one, gives a
handsome remuneration to all concerned, and which drains the country of
young men for miles around. Each boat is furnished with some score of
nets, and each net extends more than thirty-two yards. The boat puts off
according to the tide, and if it gets a good haul, at once returns to the
harbour with its freight; if the catch is indifferent, the boat stays
out; the fish are salted as they are caught, and then the boat, generally
at a distance of about twenty miles from the shore, waits till a
sufficient number have been caught to complete the cargo. When that is
the case, the boat at once makes for Lowestoft, and the fish are unloaded
under a shed in heaps of about half a last (a last is professedly 10,000
herrings, but really much more). At nine a bell rings and the various
auctioneers commence operations. A crowd is formed, and in a very few
minutes a lot is sold off to traders who are well known, and who pay at
the end of the week. The auctioneer then proceeds to the next group,
which is disposed of in a similar way. Other auctioneers in various
parts of the enormous shed erected for their accommodation do the same,
and then, as more boats arrive, other cargoes are sold, the sailors
bringing a hundred as a sample from the boat. And thus all day long the
work of selling goes on, and as soon as a lot are sold they are packed up
with ice, if fresh, or with more salt, if already salted, and despatched
by train to various quarters of England, where, it is to be presumed,
they meet with a speedy and immediate sale. In this way as many as one
hundred and ninety-eight trucks are sometimes sent off in a single day.
But in London we are familiar with the kipper, the red herring, and the
Yarmouth bloater, and to see how they are prepared for consumption I
leave the market--always wet and fishy and slippery--and make my way to
the extensive premises on the beach belonging to Mr. Thomas Brown--the
only Brown whose name is familiar to the fish-dealer in every market in
England, and the extent of whose business may be best realized by the
reader when I state that Mr. Brown sends off from his factory as many as
forty lasts a week.
An intelligent foreman, after I have evaded the attack of a formidable
dog which keeps watch and ward over the premises, explains to me the
mystery of the trade. I find myself in the midst of a square. On one
side are a great stack of oak and many casks of old salt. The latter, I
gather, is sold to be used as manure. The former is applied to the fire,
which gently smokes the Yarmouth bloater. On one side, the herrings, as
they are received, are pickled--that is, first washed in fresh water, and
then immersed in great tubs in which the water is mixed with salt. The
next thing is to take them into a room in which several women are engaged
in spitting them--that is, hanging them on rods--and then they are
carried to the apartment where they are hung up, while oak logs are burnt
beneath. In twelve hours they are sufficiently smoked, and then you have
the real Yarmouth bloater. I am glad I have seen the process, as I have
a horrible suspicion that the costermonger manufactures many a Yarmouth
bloater in some filthy Whitechapel slum, the odour of which by no means
tends to improve the flavour of so delicate a fish.
But we have to discuss the red-herring, not of the artful politician,
anxious to dodge his hearers, but of the breakfast-table. For this
purpose I am taken to a large oven filled with oak sawdust, gathered from
Ipswich, and oak shavings, which are also brought from a distance,
principally from Bass's Brewery, and, indeed, from all the great works
where oak is used; I see heaps of fire made from these ashes, which give
out much heat, and at the same time much smoke. In a loft above are hung
the herrings, and there they hang twelve days, till they gradually become
of the colour of a guinea, when they are packed up and sent away in
casks, while the bloaters go away in baskets of a hundred, in pots
holding a smaller number, and in barrels in which as many as three
hundred are stowed away. As to the kippered herring, he undergoes quite
a different treatment. Some twenty or thirty women get hold of him, cut
him open, take out his gut and wash him, and then he is hung over an oak
fire and smoked for twelve hours, and thus, saturated with smoke inside
and out, is regarded in many circles as a delicacy to be highly prized.
But he must be got off the premises. Well, if we climb to a loft, we
shall see a good many young women hard at work stripping the rods, on
which he and his fellows have been suspended, and stowing the fish away.
In the autumn especially the peculiar industries connected with the trade
are very considerably exercised. All day long carts come in with the
fish; all day long carts go out with the manufactured articles to the
railway-station; day and night the men and women are at work; in one
quarter the women make and mend the nets, which are then boiled in cutch
and put on board the boats; in another quarter coopers are at work making
boxes and casks and barrels. As to the baskets, the country is ransacked
for them, and as soon as they are filled they take the train and away
they go, to give a flavour to the potato dinner of the poor man, or to
form a tasty adjunct to the dishes under which the breakfast table of his
lord and master groans. In London we get the best--the smaller herrings
go to the North, as the dwellers in those parts will not pay the price
the Londoner does. Great is the joy and rejoicing, as well can be
imagined, at Lowestoft when the herring season comes on. It is true, the
Lowestoft fishers do not have it all to themselves. Yarmouth is a fierce
rival in the race, and, as it has now superior accommodation, many a boat
makes for that far-famed port. Then, the Scotch, when they have done
their fishing, make for the English coast, and manage, as Scotchmen ever
do, to gather a fair share of the spoil. As to the foreigners, they are
not such formidable rivals as sometimes we are apt to believe. The
Frenchman or the Dutchman comes, but that is when he is blown off by a
gale from his own happy hunting-ground, and then we know, all the world
over, the cry is, 'Any port in a storm.'
Oh, these storms! how terrible they are! and how little, as we eat our
Yarmouth bloater of a morning, or spread the bloater-paste as a covering
to the thin slice of bread-and-butter, to tempt the languid appetite--how
little do we who sit at home at ease realize their fury and their power!
As I now write, twenty-one orphans are bewailing the loss of fathers who
went out in a craft during the last gale, and of whom no sign has been
seen, nor ever will. Hour by hour the women, weeping and watching on the
sandy shore, saw one and another familiar boat come, more or less
buffeted, into port. On more than one a hand had been washed away, but
the craft and the rest of the crew were saved somehow. But one boat yet
remained missing, and in vain the survivors were questioned as to what
had become of the _Skimmer of the Sea_. Day by day anxious eyes swept
the distant horizon. Day by day a sadder weight came down on weeping
child and broken-hearted wife; and now all hope is gone, and all felt
that in the fury of the gale the _Skimmer of the Sea_ foundered with all
her hands. Well, as the good old Admiral said, as he and his men were
about to perish, 'My lads, the way to heaven is as short by sea as by
land.' But the wounded heart in the agony of its grief is slow to
realize that fact. Sailors ought to be serious men; every halfpenny they
earn is won at the risk of a life. In Lowestoft, I am glad to find, many
of them are. 'The Salvation Army has done 'em a deal of good,' says a
decent woman, with whom I happened to scrape an acquaintance at the most
attractive coffee-house I have ever seen--the Coffee Pot at Mutford
Bridge. 'Not that I holds with the Salvation Army myself, sir, but
they've done the men a deal of good, and they don't spend their wages, as
they used to do, in drink.'
Lowestoft, when I was there last, had just lost one of its heroes--I mean
the late Mr. George Borrow--whose 'Bible in Spain' was the talk of the
season in religious and worldly circles alike, and whose writings on
Gipsies and Wild Wales and the 'Bible in Spain' achieved at one time an
enormous popularity. He lived--I can still remember his tall form--on a
bank a couple of miles out of Lowestoft, sloping down to a large piece of
water known in those parts as Oulton Broad. The tourist, if he looks to
his right just after he has passed Mutford Bridge on the rail from
Lowestoft to Beccles, across the wide sheet of water, which, as I saw it
last, lay calm and blue in the fading glory of an autumnal sun, will
perhaps see a white house at a distance, nestled in among the
fir-trees--that was where George Borrow lived, and where he died, though
he was buried in Brompton Cemetery by the side of his wife. You cannot
make a mistake, for houses are rare in those parts. As his step-daughter
observed to me, the proper way is by water; to get to the house by
land--at least as I did--you walk along the rail for a couple of miles,
then break off across a bit of a swamp, to a little lane that conducts
you to Oulton Church--a very ancient one, which, however, is in a state
of good repair and is noted partly on account of the fact that the
steeple is built in the middle, and partly on account of its containing,
so it is said, the earliest example of a brass to an ecclesiastic which
is to be found in England. A narrow path from the church leads you to
Oulton Hall, which came into the possession of Borrow by marriage, really
a very plain, red-brick, capacious, comfortable-looking old farmhouse,
only of a superior class. Keeping the Hall to the right, you reach a
gate, which opens into a very narrow lane, full of mud in the winter and
dust in the summer. The lane loses itself in the marshland, on the
borders of Lake Lothing--a name supposed to have been derived from a
certain Danish prince, murdered on the spot by a jealous Court retainer;
and it is a fitting place for a murder, as in that lonely district there
was no eye to pity, no ear to hear, no hand to save. Even to-day, as you
look away from the train, there is little sign of life, save the sail of
a distant wherry as it makes sluggishly for Norwich or Beccles, as it
goes either into the Waveney or the Yare; or the gray wing of the heron
as it flies heavily along the marsh; and that is all. Far away, perhaps,
rises a ridge, with a house on it; or a steeple, with a few trees
struggling to yield the barren spot a shelter from the suns of summer or
the howling winds of winter; but all is still life there, and the
habitations of men are few and far between. In the particular lane to
which I have introduced the reader--there are but two--there is a little
cottage on your left, and beyond, under a group of trees, mostly fir,
which almost hide it from view, a home of a rather superior character, in
a very dilapidated condition, with everything around it more or less
untidy--that was where George Borrow lived and worked in his way for many
a long day. The step-daughter and her husband reside there now--very
ancient people, who are to be seen driving about Lowestoft in a little
wicker car, drawn by an amiable and active donkey, an aged dog guarding
the cottage during their temporary absence. The female, an ancient one,
who did for the house, lives in the little cottage which the tourist will
have already observed, and the interior of which presented, when I peeped
in, a far greater idea of comfort than did Oulton Cottage, the residence
of the late George Borrow. The picture one gets is rather a melancholy
one. 'He was a funny-tempered man'--that seems to have been the idea of
the few people around. Latterly he kept no company, and no one came to
see him. All who did call on him, however, tell me that he was well
dressed, but that all the interior of the house was dirty. Well, that
was to be expected of a man who loved to live with the gipsies, and
patter to them in Romany of Egyptian lore, for it could not have been
want of means. Borrow must have made a good deal of money by his books,
and I have heard his landed property estimated at five hundred per year.
The house looked like the residence of a miser who would not lay out a
penny in keeping up appearances or in repairs. It must be remembered,
however, that the grand old man had long become bowed with age; that for
some years before his death he was scarcely able to move himself without
help; that the grasshopper, as it were, had become a burden. In summer
time such a residence, in good repair and well furnished, would be
perfectly charming. The house contains a sitting-room on each side of
the entrance-hall. Behind is the kitchen, and above are four bedrooms
and two attics--none of them large, I own, but at any rate capable of
being made very cosy. On your right, in a little niche in the cliff, is
a small stable. Lower down is a large summer-house, then full of books
(amongst them, I believe, there were a hundred lexicons), where their
learned proprietor loved to write. Farther down the lawn you come to the
lake, where Borrow could enjoy his morning bath without fear of being
disturbed, and where any amount of fish can be got. Just previous to my
last visit to the spot a pike of more than twenty pounds' weight--I am
afraid to say how many pounds more, lest the reader should think I was
exaggerating--had been caught. For a real angler or sportsman such a
house as that in which George Borrow spent the latter years of his long
life must have been a perfect paradise. The world is utterly away from
you, and, what is better still, in such a spot the world has no chance of
finding you out. Approaching by road, you see no sign of the house till
you are in it, so completely is it hidden in the nook of trees in which
it stands. Only to the water is it open. It would be really beautiful
to live there in the summer, and have a gondola to row into Beccles or
Lowestoft or Bungay when you wanted to be gay.
One good anecdote I heard of George Borrow the last time I was in the
neighbourhood, which is worth repeating. My informant was an Independent
minister, at that time supplying the pulpit at Lowestoft, and staying at
Oulton Hall, then inhabited by a worthy Dissenting tenant. One night a
meeting of the Bible Society was held at Mutford Bridge, at which the
party from the Hall attended, and where George Borrow was one of the
speakers. After the meeting was over, all the speakers went back to
supper at Oulton Hall, and my friend among them, who, in the course of
the supper, found himself attacked very violently by the clergyman for
holding Calvinistic opinions. Naturally my friend replied that the
clergyman was bound to do the same. 'How do you make that out?' 'Why,
the Articles of your Church are Calvinistic, and to them you have sworn
assent.' 'Oh yes, but there is a way of explaining them away.' 'How
so?' said my friend. 'Oh,' replied the clergyman, 'we are not bound to
take the words in their natural sense.' My friend, an honest, blunt East
Anglian, intimated that he did not understand that way of evading the
difficulty; but he was then a young man, and did not like to continue the
discussion further. However, George Borrow, who had not said a word
hitherto, entered into the discussion, opening fire on the clergyman in a
very unexpected manner, and giving him such a setting down as the
hearers, at any rate, never forgot. All the sophistry about the
non-natural meaning of terms was held up by Borrow to ridicule, even
contempt; and the clergyman was beaten at every point. 'Never,' says my
friend, 'did I hear one man give another such a dressing as on that
occasion.' It was not always, however, that Borrow thus shone. In the
neighbourhood of Bungay lived a gentleman much given to collect around
him men of literary taste and culture. A lecture was to be given in the
neighbourhood, and all the men of light and leading around were invited.
George Borrow was one of the earliest arrivals, and seated himself before
the fire with a book in his hand, over which he nodded superciliously, as
the host brought up all his guests in succession to be introduced to the
lion of the town. At dinner which followed, which was rather a jovial
one, and at which the bottle went round freely, so loud and general was
the conversation that my friend, a clever lawyer, with remarkably good
ears, was quite unable to catch a sentence from the great author's lips.
Perhaps Borrow really did say nothing, or next to nothing. It is quite
as likely that he did as not, as I have already informed the reader that
'he was a funny-tempered man.'
'Catherine Gurney,' writes Caroline Fox, 'gave us a note to George
Borrow, so on him we called--a tall, ungainly man, with great physical
strength, quick, penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable
tone and pronunciation.' We gather from the same lady that it was Joseph
John Gurney who recommended George Borrow to the Committee of the Bible
Society. 'So he stalked up to London, and they gave him a hymn to
translate into the Manchow language, and the same to one of their people
to translate also. When compared they proved to be very different. When
put before their reader, he had the candour to say that Borrow's was much
the better of the two. On this they sent him to Petersburg to get it
printed, and then gave him business in Portugal.'
One thing is clear--that Borrow was a lonely man, and evidently one who
did not hold the resources of civilization in such esteem as Mr.
Gladstone does. He loved Nature and her ways, and people like the
gipsies, who are supposed to be of a similar way of thinking. He
eschewed the hum of cities and the roar of the 'madding crowd.' He was
big in body and in mind, and wanted elbow-room; and yet what would he
have been if he had not lived in a city, and come under the stimulative
influence of such men as Edward Taylor, of Norwich? It is idle to
complain of cities, however they sully the air, and deface the land, and
pollute the water, and rear the weak and vicious and the wicked--to
remind us how low and depraved human nature can become when it is cut off
from communion with Nature and Nature's God. Borrow owed much to cities,
and was best appreciated by the men who dwelt in them. There is often a
good deal of affectation about the love of rural solitude, nor does it
often last long when there is a wife to have a voice in the matter. Yet
in Borrow undoubtedly the feeling was sincere, and of him Wordsworth
might have written--
'As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die.'
Lowestoft was a frequent attraction for a youthful ramble--perhaps almost
too far, unless one could manage to get a lift in a little yellow-painted
black-bodied vehicle called a whisky, which was grandfather's property,
and into the shafts of which could be put any spare quadruped, whether
donkey, or mule, or pony, it mattered little, and which afforded a
considerable relief when a trip as far as Lowestoft was determined on.
At that time there was no harbour, and the town consisted simply of one
High Street, gradually rising towards the north, with a fine space for
boys to play in between the cliff and the sea, called the denes. I can
well remember being taken to view the works of the harbour before the
water was let in, and not a little astonished at what then was to me a
new world of engineering science and skill. In the High Street there was
a little old-fashioned and by no means flourishing Independent Chapel,
where at one time the preacher was the Rev. Mr. Maurice, the father of
the Mr. Maurice to whom many owe a great awakening of spiritual life, and
whose memory they still regard as that of a beloved and honoured teacher.
Mr. Maurice was a Unitarian, I believe, and, when he retired, handed over
the chapel to my father with the remark that it was no use his preaching
there any longer. The preacher in my time was the Rev. George Steffe
Crisp, a kindly, timid, tearful man, always in difficulties with his
people, and who often resorted to Wrentham for advice. Latterly he
retired from the ministry, and kept a shop and school. In this capacity
one day my old friend John Childs, of Bungay, the far-famed printer--of
whom I shall have much to say anon--called on him, when the following
dialogue took place: 'Good-morning, Mr. Crisp.' 'Good-morning, Mr.
Childs.' 'Well, how are you getting on?' 'Oh, very well; but there is
one thing that troubles me much.' 'What is that?' 'That I am getting
deaf, and can't hear my minister.' 'Oh,' was the cynical reply, 'you
ought to be thankful for your privileges.'
Lowestoft is reported to have been a fishing station as early as the time
of the Romans; but the ancient town is supposed to have been long
engulfed by the resistless sea, for there was to be seen till the 25th of
Henry VIII. the remains of an old house upon an inundated spot--left dry
at low water about four furlongs east of the present beach. The town has
been the birthplace of many distinguished men--of Sir Thomas Allen, for
instance, who was steadily attached to the Royal cause, and who after the
Restoration rose high in command, and won many a victory over the Dutch
and the Algerines; of Sir Andrew Leake, who fell in the attack on
Gibraltar; of Rear-Admiral Richard Utbar, also a renowned fighter when
England and Holland were at war. To the same town also belong Admiral
Sir John Ashby, who died in 1693, and his nephew Vice-Admiral James
Mighells. Nor must we fail to do justice to Thomas Nash, a facetious
writer of considerable reputation in the latter part of the sixteenth
century. The most witty of his productions is a satirical pamphlet in
praise of red herrings, intended as a joke upon the great staple of
Yarmouth, and the pretensions of that place to superiority over
Lowestoft. It must be confessed that Nash is chiefly famous as a caustic
pamphleteer and an unscrupulous satirist. For illustration we may point
to his battle with Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Edmund Spenser, who
desired that he might be epitaphed the inventor of the not yet
naturalized English hexameter; and his other battle with Martin Mar
Prelate, or the writer or writers who passed under that name, and who
have acquired a reputation to which poor Nash can lay no claim. His one
conspicuous dramatic effort is 'Summer's Last Will and Testament.' Nash
wrote for bare existence--to use his own words, 'contending with the
cold, and conversing with scarcity.' Nash lived in an unpropitious age.
A recent French writer has placed him in the foremost rank of English
writers. Dr. Jusserand, the author referred to, in his accounts of the
English novel in the time of Shakespeare, tells us Nash was the most
successful exponent in England of the picturesque novel. The picturesque
novel is the forerunner of the realistic novel of modern times. It
portrays the life and fortunes of the picaro--the adventurer who tries
all roads to fortune. Spanish in its origin, it developed into a school
in which Defoe and Thackeray distinguished themselves. 'Nash,' writes
the French author, 'mingled serious scenes with his comedy, in order that
his romances might more nearly resemble real life.' In fact (he writes),
'Nash does not only possess the merit of learning how to observe the
ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light
picturesque figures--now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot--some fat
and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the
picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have
foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the
novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lilly and Sidney appear to
us to be distant ancestors of Richardson, he understands that a picture
of active life, reproducing only in the Spanish fashion scenes of comedy,
is incomplete and departs from reality. The greatest jesters, the most
arrogant, the most venturesome, have their days of anguish. No hero has
ever yet remained imprisoned from the cradle to the grave, and no one has
been able to live an irresponsible spectator, and not feel his heart
sometimes beat the quicker, nor bow his head unmoved. Nash caught a
glimpse of this.' As an illustration, Dr. Jusserand points to his 'Jack
Wilton'--'The best specimen of the picturesque tale in English literature
anterior to Defoe.' In Lowestoft they ought to keep his memory green.
The writer well remembers the day when Mr., afterwards Sir, Morton Peto,
assembled the inhabitants of Lowestoft in the then dilapidated Town Hall,
and promised that if they would sell their ruined harbour works, and back
him in making a railway, their mackerel and herrings should be delivered
almost alive in Manchester, Liverpool, and London. The inhabitants
believed in the power of the enchanter, and Lowestoft is metamorphosed.
The old town remains upon its beautiful eminence, and memory clings to
the cliffs and to the denes, tenanted only, the one by wild rabbits, the
other by the merry children and the nets of the fishermen. But a new
town has grown up around the harbour--a grand hotel, excellent
lodging-houses, a new church; a great population have upset the romance,
and borne witness to the spirit of enterprise which characterizes this
generation. The new town has spread to Kirkley, has Londonized even
quiet Pakefield, and awakened a sleeping neighbourhood to what men call
life.
At Lowestoft commence what are known to sailors as the Yarmouth Roads--a
grand stretch of sea protected by the sands, where an armada might anchor
secure; and it was a sight not to be seen now, when gigantic steamers do
all the business of the sea, to watch the hundreds of ships that would
come inside the Roads at certain seasons of the year. There, in the
winter-time--that is, from Lowestoft to Covehithe--I have seen the beach
strewed with wrecks, chiefly of rotten colliers, or ships in the corn
trade; but inside 'Lowestoft Roads,' to which they were guided by a
lighthouse on the cliff, they were supposed to be secure. Lowestoft at
that time, with its charming sands, was little known to the gay world,
and depended far more on the fishing than the bathing season. The former
was a busy time, and kept all the country round in a state of excitement.
Many were the men, for instance, who, even as far off as Wrentham, went
herring or mackerel fishing in the big craft, which, drawn up on the
beach when the season was over, seemed to me ships such as never had been
seen by the mariners of Tyre and Sidon; but the chief interest to me were
the vans in which the fish were carried from Lowestoft to London--light
spring-carts with four wheels and two horses, that, after changing horses
at our Spread Eagle, raced like lightning along the turnpike-road, at all
hours, and even on Sundays--a sad grievance to the godly--beating the
Yarmouth mail.
Now and then, even at that remote period, when railways were not, and
when Lowestoft was no port, nothing but a fishing-station, distinguished
people came to Lowestoft, attracted by its bracing air and exceptional
bathing attractions. I can in this way recollect Sir Edward Parry and M.
Guizot. But there were other personages equally distinguished. One of
these was Mrs. Siddons, with whom an old Dissenting minister--the Rev. S.
Sloper, of Beccles, whom I can well remember--contracted quite an
intimacy. She had already passed the zenith of her celebrity.
'Providence,' writes my friend, Mr. Wilton Rix, of Beccles, in his 'East
Anglian Nonconformity,' published as far back as 1851, 'had repeatedly
and recently called her to tread in domestic life the path of sorrow, and
her religious advantages, however few, had taught her that
'"That path alone
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."
'"Sweet, sometimes," said she, "are the uses of adversity. It not only
strengthens family affection, but it teaches us all to walk humbly with
God." It is not surprising that she was disposed to cultivate the
society of those who could blend piety with cheerfulness, and with whom
she might be on friendly terms without ceremony. Such acquaintances she
found in Mr. Sloper's family. Mrs. Siddons, with unassuming kindness,
contributed to their amusement by specimens of her powerful reading. She
joined willingly in the worship of the family, and maintained the same
invaluable practice at her own lodgings.' Mr. Rix continues: 'Just at
that time Mr. Sloper was requested to preach to his own people on an
affecting and mournful occasion, the death of a suicide. Though he
keenly felt the delicacy and difficulty of the task, a sense of duty and
a possibility of usefulness overcame his scruples. He selected for his
text the impressive sentiment of the Apostle, "The sorrow of the world
worketh death." Mrs. Siddons was one of his auditors. She, who had been
the honoured guest of Royalty, who had been enthroned as the Tragic Muse,
and whose voice had charmed applauding multitudes, was seen in the humble
Dissenting meeting-house at Beccles shedding abundant and unaffected
tears at the plain and faithful exhibition of religious truth. Mr.
Sloper's preaching was as powerfully recommended to her by the delightful
illustration of Christian principles exhibited in his private character,
as by the intrinsic importance of those principles, and the simple
gravity and penetrating earnestness with which they were announced from
his lips. He afterwards procured for her, at her request, a copy of
Scott's admirable "Commentary on the Bible," which he accompanied with a
letter, warmly urging upon her attention the great realities her
profession had so manifest a tendency to exclude from her contemplations.
Mrs. Siddons,' again I quote Mr. Rix, 'more than once expressed her
gratitude for the interest Mr. Sloper had evinced in her eternal welfare;
she thanked him in writing for the advice he had given her, adding an
emphatic wish that God might enable her to follow it--a wish which her
pious and amiable correspondent echoed with all the fervour of his heart.
She returned into the glare of popularity, but a hope may easily be
indulged that the pressure of subsequent relative afflictions and of old
age were not permitted to come upon her unaccompanied by the impressions
and consolations of true religion. Her elegant biographer, Mr. Campbell,
draws a veil over the state of her mind during her last hours, which it
would be deeply interesting to penetrate. Would she not then, if reason
were undimmed, reflect upon the faithful counsel she received with
Scott's Bible as being of infinitely greater value than the applause of
myriads or the fame of ages?'
Beccles, where this good Mr. Sloper lived, and where the writer of this
extract was a respectable solicitor--I believe the firm of Rix and Son
still exists--was a small market town about eight miles from Wrentham,
inland. At that time it ranked as the third town in Suffolk. Towards
the west it is skirted by a cliff, once washed by the estuary which
separated the eastern portions of Norfolk and Suffolk. There is every
reason to believe that ages back the mouth of the Yare was an estuary or
arm of the sea, and extended with considerable magnitude for many miles
up the country. The herring fishery was thus a principal source of
emolument to the inhabitants, and in the time of the Conqueror the fee
farm rent of the manor of Beccles to the King was 60,000 herrings, and in
the time of the Confessor 20,000. About 956 the manor and advowson of
Beccles were granted by King Edwy to the monks of Bury, and remained in
their possession until the dissolution of the religious houses under
Henry VIII.
As I have said, and as I repeat, in these languid days--when the old
creeds have lost their power and the old bottles are bursting with new
wine--the glory of East Anglia was that it was the first to stand up in
the face of priest or king for the truth--or what it held to be such.
Amongst the early martyrs under Mary were three burnt at Beccles--Thomas
Spicer, of Winston, labourer, John Deny, and Edmond Poole. This was in
the year 1556. Their crime in the indictment, drawn up by Dr. Hopton,
Bishop of Norwich, and his Chancellor, Dunning, according to Fox, was:
'1. First was articulate against them that they belieued not the Pope of
Rome to bee supreame head immediately in Christ on earth of the
Universall Catholike Church.
'2. That they belieued not holie bread and holie water, ashes, palmes,
and all other like ceremonies used in the Church to bee good and laudable
for stirring up the people to devotion.
'3. Item that they belieued not afterwards of consecration spoken by the
priest, the very naturall body of Christ, and no other substance of bread
and wine to bee in the Sacrament of the altar.
'4. Item that they belieued it to bee idolatry to worship Christ in the
Sacrament of the altar.
'5. Item that they tooke bread and wine in remembrance of Christ's
Passion.
'6. Item that they would not followe the crosse in procession nor bee
confessed to a priest.
'7. Item that they affirmed no mortal man to have in himself free will
to do good or evill.'
It appears that the writ had not come down, nevertheless these brave men
were burnt at the stake. 'When they came,' continues Fox, 'to the
reciting of the creed, Sir John Silliard spake to them, "That is well
said, sirs. I am glad to heare you saie you do belieue the Catholike
Church; that is the best word I heard of you yet."
'To which his sayings Edmond Poole answered, "Though they belieue the
Catholike Church, yet do they not belieue in their Popish Church, which
is no part of Christ's Catholike Church, and, therefore, no part of their
beliefe."
'When they rose from praier they all went joyfullie to the stake, and,
being bound thereto, and the fire burning about them, they praised God in
such an audible voice that it was wonderful to all those who stood bye
and heard them. Then one Robert Bacon, dwelling in the said Beccles, a
very enemy to God's truth, and a persecutor of His people, being then
present, within the hearing thereof willed the tormentors to throwe on
faggots to stop the knaues breathes, as he termed them; so hot was his
burning charitie. But these good men, not regarding their malice,
confessed the truth, and yielded their lives to the death for the
testimonie of the same very gloriouslie and joyfullie.'
These men were the precursors of that Nonconformity which has made
England the home of the free, and such men abounded in East Anglia.
Under Queen Elizabeth they had as bad a time of it almost as under Queen
Mary. For instance, we find under Dr. Freke, Bishop of Norwich, and in
the reign of glorious Queen Bess, as her admirers term her, Mathew
Hammond, a poor ploughwright, of Hethersett, was condemned as a heretic,
had his ears cut off, and after the lapse of a week was committed, in the
Castle ditch at Norwich, to the more agonizing torment of the flames.
The translation of Dr. Whitgift to the See of Canterbury was the signal
for augmented rigour. He was charged by his imperious mistress to
restore religious uniformity, which she confessed, notwithstanding all
her precautions, ran out of square. One of the first victims to this new
_regime_ was William Fleming, Rector of Beccles. The living of Beccles
at this period was vested in Lady Anne Gresham, the widow of Sir Thomas
Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange. Previously to her marriage,
she was the widow of William Rede, merchant, of London and Beccles.
Under James I. and Bishop Wren, men of integrity and conscience fared
worse than under Queen Elizabeth, and naturally the people thus
persecuted formed themselves into a Church. That in Beccles dated from
1652, and in the covenant drawn up on the occasion we find it was
resolved:
'1. That we will for ever acknowledge and admit the Lord to be our God
in Jesus Christ, giving up ourselves to Him to be His people.
'2. That we will alwaies endevour, through the grace of God assisting
us, to walke in all His waies and ordinances, according to His written
Word, which is the only sufficient rule of good life for every man.
Neither will we suffer ourselves to be polluted by any sinful waies,
either publike or private, but endeavour to abstaine from the very
appearance of evill, giving no offence to the Jew or Gentile, or the
Churches of Christ.
'3. That we will humbly and willingly submit ourselves to the government
of Christ in this Church--in the administration of the Word, the seals,
and discipline.
'4. That we will in all love approve our communion as brethren by
watching over one another, and as such shall be; counsel, administer,
relieve, assist, and bear with one another, serving one another in love.
'5. Lastly, we do not covenant or promise these things in our own, but
in Christ's strength; neither do we confine ourselves to the words of
this covenant, but shall at all time account it our duty to embrace any
further light or covenant which shall be revealed to us out of God's
Word.'
This covenant, however, was not to prevent in after time censure being
cast on others who, endeavouring to preserve its spirit, were led to
think differently from the majority. For instance, we find in 1656 two
persons, who had been members of the Independent church at Beccles,
received adult baptism, and in so doing were considered to have given
'offence' to the church, and were desired to appear and give an account
of their practices.
At one time there was little of what we know as congregational singing.
In 1657 it was agreed by the Beccles church 'that they do put in practice
the ordinance of singing in the publick upon the forenoon and afternoon
of the Lord's daies, and that it be between praier and sermon; and also
it was agreed that the New England translation of the Psalmes be made use
of by the church at their times of breaking of bread, and it was agreed
that the next Lord's day, seventh night, might be the day to enter upon
the work of singing in publick.' It is interesting to note that one of
the pastors of the Beccles church was a Mr. Nokes, who had been
trained--where Calamy and many others were trained--at the University of
Utrecht, and that in the same year in which Dr. Watts accepted the
pastoral office, he addressed to Mr. Nokes a poem on 'Friendship,' which
is still included in the Doctor's works. Dissent, when I was a boy, was
considered low. We were contemptuously termed 'pograms,' a term of
reproach the origin of which I have never learnt. The landed gentry, the
small squires, the lawyers and the doctors, and the tradespeople who
pandered to their prejudices and fattened on their patronage, were slow
to say a word in favour of a Dissenter. The poor who went to chapel were
excluded from many benefits enjoyed by their fellow-parishioners. It was
the fashion to treat them with scorn, yet I have heard one of the most
excellent and finished gentlemen in the district declare that he heard
better talk in my father's parlour than he did anywhere else in the
neighbourhood, and I can well believe it, for the Dissenting minister, as
a rule, at that time, was a better read man, and a more studious one,
than the clergyman of the district, in spite of his University education;
and in matters affecting the welfare of the nation, and that came under
the denomination of politics, his views were far more rational than those
of Churchmen in general, and the clergy in particular. We learn from
Milton's State Papers that the churches of East Anglia petitioned Oliver
Cromwell that the three nations might enjoy the blessings of a godly,
upright magistracy; that they might have Courts of Judicature in their
own country; and that honest men of known fidelity and uprightness might
be authorized to determine trivial matters of debt or difference.
Assuredly the East Anglian saints--the latter term was, and, strange to
say, is still, used as a term of reproach--were wise and right-thinking
men where Church government and public policy were concerned. We love to
read the story of the Pilgrim Fathers. With what rapture Mrs. Hemans
wrote:
'What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas? the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine.
'Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They left unstained what there they found--
FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD.'
But it seems to me that a greater glory was won by, and a greater honour
should be paid to, the men who did not cross the Atlantic; who did not
seek an asylum in a foreign land; who remained at home to suffer--to die,
if need be, to uphold the rights of conscience, and to fight the good
fight of faith. It is not even in our tolerant, and, as we deem it, more
enlightened day, that full justice is done to these men. In what calls
itself good society you meet men and women whose ancestors were
Dissenters, and yet who are ashamed of the fact--a fact of which no one
can be ashamed who feels how in East Anglia, at any rate, the religious
teaching of Dissent purified the life of the people, enlarged their
political views, and helped this great land of ours to sweep into a
better and a younger day.