on the contrary, desired to lead a virtuous life with Margaret.
Accordingly, when he was free of the navy, he brought his prize money
and left it at Mr. Cobbold’s house, but Margaret, who had now become
cook and had got into trouble by entertaining too many sailors, refused
to see her lover--of course not knowing it was he. Luff then turned up,
and, as she refused to give him information about Laud, threw her into
a well from which she was rescued with difficulty. Luff was killed soon
after in a desperate encounter with the preventive men, and from what
Margaret’s brother Edward could gather Luff had murdered Laud. Margaret
did not believe it; but her conduct became so unsatisfactory from grief
and disappointment that Mrs. Cobbold, despite all she had done for the
family, was compelled to dismiss her from her service. Laud in the
meantime had reformed and settled down as a boat builder, and on his
uncle’s death he came into the business. But the habit of smuggling
was too strong, and he returned to his old courses. This brings us to
the tragedy. Margaret has heard that Laud is alive from an old servant
of the Cobbolds. She longs for an explanation and is determined to see
him. Instead of consulting any of her reputable friends she goes to
Ipswich and is persuaded that Laud is in London waiting for her there.
Even a letter from him is produced expressing his readiness to marry
her if she would join him. This clumsy fraud was devised by a man named
Cook in order to induce Margaret, whose fame as a rider was known to
him, to steal a horse from Mr. Cobbold, and to ride him up to London.
Regardless of the consequences, Margaret took her old master’s best
horse, named Rochford, and rode him to London, seventy miles, in eight
hours. Of course the loss of the horse was known at once, and handbills
were issued offering a reward. Margaret, dressed as a groom, was
arrested soon after her arrival in London, and sent back to Ipswich to
be tried at the Assizes. On August 9, 1797, she pleaded guilty at Bury
St. Edmunds and was condemned to death. Her crime was then considered
a most serious one, but she made a very favourable impression, and
the witnesses for character gave such good testimony that the judge
commuted the death sentence to one of transportation for seven years.
For three years Margaret remained in Ipswich gaol; and it is probable
that her sentence would have been remitted altogether but for what
ensued.
Laud was now smuggling on a large scale. He was deeply concerned with
an affair in which two preventive men were beaten and thrown into the
sea at Southwold for reporting that they had seen forty carts and
horses ready to take a cargo which was to be “run” near Dunwich. A
reward of £100 for his apprehension was offered in the newspapers
on March 2d, 1799. Shortly after this 880 gallons of gin were seized
and the guilt of smuggling it brought home to Laud. All his property
was confiscated and he was given a year’s imprisonment and sentenced
to pay £100. He was committed to Ipswich gaol, and would have to
stay there after his sentence had expired till the fine was paid. Of
course Margaret, whose good conduct had made her practically free of
the prison, discovered that her lover was an inmate; and, as she had
kept intact the prize money he had given her, she was able to give
him the means of obtaining his liberation at the end of his year’s
imprisonment. Laud persuaded her to try to escape and join him, and
the way she did this is one of the most extraordinary in her romantic
career. The wall of the prison was twenty-five feet high and protected
at the top with iron spikes. Margaret succeeded in getting a flower
stand, which placed endways raised her to within thirteen feet of the
top. She had made herself a garment like a shepherd’s smock and a pair
of trousers so as to be unincumbered in her movements. By casting a
clothes-line over the _chevaux-de-frise_ on the top of the wall she
managed to climb up to the iron spikes. Then, lowering the line on
the other side, she turned over between the revolving spikes and let
herself down on the opposite side. She and Laud made for a place called
Sudbourn; but were overtaken on the beach where, after a desperate
fight, Laud was killed by Edward Barry, and Margaret arrested and taken
back to the gaol.
It was one of the strange anomalies of the cruel law of that age that
whereas ruffians like Cook, and desperados like Laud escaped the
capital sentence, comparatively innocent persons were hanged without
mercy. For a reprieved person to escape from prison was death, and,
though Margaret was ignorant of the terrible penalty which she
had incurred, there seemed no hope of her meeting with any further
leniency. She was again brought before the same judge, Lord Chief Baron
Sir Archibald Macdonald, who had condemned her in August, 1797, on the
third day of the same month in 1800. Again she pleaded guilty, and when
the judge condemned her in very stern language she made a short speech
accepting his sentence, which impressed everyone present in the court
house. Her eloquence and her whole demeanour profoundly impressed the
judge, and again he obtained power to respite her, sentencing her this
time to lifelong transportation.
Throughout her trials Margaret found in Mrs. Cobbold a constant friend,
one who never allowed her for a moment to feel forsaken. The letters
which passed between her and her former mistress are preserved, and
on reading them one cannot but fail to note how in style and diction
the maid had been influenced by Mrs. Cobbold. Margaret continued to
write from Australia, and her letters are marvellous when one considers
her antecedents and lack of early education. She collected specimens
to send to her mistress, some of which were presented to the Ipswich
Museum. Once more she was able to save life by an act of desperate
daring, from which the men shrank, at the time of a flood. At last,
according to the story, “John Barry,” who had prospered in the colony,
found that she was there, sought her out, and married her. The last
letter published in the book is dated June 25th, 1812, and announces
her marriage to John Barry. It contains these words: “Should you
ever think fit, as you once hinted in your letter to me, to write
my history, or to leave it to others to publish, you have my free
permission at my decease, whenever that shall take place, to do so. But
let my husband’s name be concealed, change it, change it to any other
... for mine and my children’s sake.” She died September 10th, 1841, in
the sixty-eighth year of her age.
The book raises problems of exceptional literary interest. In the
first place, it was written by a man of unimpeachable character, who
wrote with a distinctly religious aim, in view mainly to shew that
the heroine after having violated “the laws of God and man” became by
“the inculcation of Christian faith and virtue conspicuous for the
sincerity of her reformation.” He avers that his narrative is strictly
true and based on facts “well known to many persons of the highest
respectability still living” and that he himself received the letters
he quotes. He has no motive for deviating from his intention to tell
the truth except that, as we have seen, Margaret Catchpole desired
her married name to be concealed. That the author studiously carried
out this natural wish is proved by the fact that a wealthy lady in
New South Wales, named Mrs. Reiby, who had left Bury in Lancashire as
a girl, was declared to be the true Margaret Catchpole, to her great
annoyance, as she naturally had no desire to figure as a “convict
heroine.” In 1910 the story of Margaret was dramatised in London and
acted by the late Mr. Laurence Irving and his wife. A correspondence
thereupon appeared in the _East Anglian Daily Times_ in which it was
hinted that Mrs. Reiby, a Staffordshire girl, was transported in 1791
for the same offence of horse stealing.[14]
No one can read the book without perceiving that all the conversations
are fictitious. Mr. Cobbold was no Shakespeare, and he makes all his
characters talk in the same style as (if report be true) he conversed
himself. The whole of the Barry incidents may be fictitious; for if
the details given were true, everybody in Suffolk must have known who
Margaret’s husband was. The father of Edmund and John “Barry” was the
discoverer of crag shells as manure and was a farmer and miller at
Levington Hill, the next parish to Nacton. But even then the author may
have used pardonable license. Still the last letter of Margaret’s which
the author declares he received from his mother cannot be genuine. It
is signed Margaret “Barry,” and it says expressly that she was married
to the man who had loved her fruitlessly when the family lived at
Nacton. In point of fact Margaret never married.
Had the book been a document written many centuries ago, there would be
suggested grave doubts whether such a woman ever existed; as it is, the
Cobbold family have lived in Ipswich in unbroken succession during the
past century; and documents, like the original gaol-delivery in 1797
and the exemption of Mr. Cobbold from any parish offices for arresting
the culprit, prove beyond doubt the existence of Margaret Catchpole.
As, however, the subject of these lectures is ‘English social life,’ I
shall now give some extracts from the book before me, and from Crabbe’s
biography to shew how the peasantry lived in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century.[15]
Even to this day if you enter a harvest field in Suffolk at reaping
time you will hear the old Norman French demand for “_Largess_”
and you will be expected to give it. Mr. Cobbold gives in his book
a description of a harvest home, many features of which are still
remembered. The farmer lodged all the single men in his house, but
the married men (known as hinds) lived in the neighbouring cottages.
When the last sheaf of corn was conveyed to the stack-yard, the barn
was covered with green leaves and the sheaf brought in with shouting
and blowing of the harvest horn. The farmer then gave an ample supper
to the labourers, and he, his wife, and daughters waited on their
guests. The head man of the harvest field acted as “lord of the feast.”
The chief song was called “Hallo Largess,” and was in honour of the
division of the Largess obtained in harvest time among the reapers.
Here is a verse of the song quoted by our author:
“Now the ripening corn
In the sheaves is borne,
And the loaded wain
Bring home the grain.
The merry, merry reapers sing
And jocund shouts the happy harvest hind
Hallo Large, Hallo Large, Hallo Largess.”
“At evening when the work of the day is over,” to quote from “Margaret
Catchpole,” “all the men collect in a circle, and Hallo, that is cry,
“Largess.” Three times they say in a low tone, “Hallo Large! Hallo
Large! Hallo Large!” and all, hand in hand, bow their heads almost
to the ground; but after the third monotonous yet sonorous junction,
they lift up their heads, and, with one burst of their voices, cry out
“Gess.” I cannot help wondering whether this semi-barbarous custom
which prevailed in Suffolk survive in those marvellous yells in which
the exuberant spirits of youth in the highly civilized universities of
America now find a vent.
Allusion has been made to the superstition of the East Anglian
peasantry, and a most interesting example is given in Thomas Colson,
better known in Ipswich as Robinson Crusoe, the fisherman on the
Orwell. He had built a boat for himself of the strangest materials
and was constantly at work on the river. His skill was wonderful, and
he is described as a perfect fisherman, quiet, steady, active, and
thoughtful. In character he was singularly benevolent, never refusing
to help anyone in distress. To quote Mr. Cobbold: “The writer of these
pages knew Colson well. He has often as a boy been in a boat with him,
and always found him kind and gentle.”
The old man’s mania was probably only an exaggeration of the belief of
his time or at any rate of his youth. He was a firm believer in wizards
and witchcraft. He fancied himself surrounded by evil spirits. He
knew their names, their propensities, how they afflicted men, and his
great study was to prevent their malign influence. His trust in charms
was absolute, and his whole body was hung with amulets, rings, bones
of horses, verses, etc., each of which he declared to be efficacious
against a certain spirit. If he lost one of his many charms, he
believed himself specially liable to attack by the demon, against
whom it was a prophylactic. That he had learned much from folklore is
evident from the fact that though often questioned about the different
demons who tormented him, he never deviated from his ordinary account
of them; and no one ever found him tripping as to their names or
attributes. Though subject to hallucinations, he must have learned his
demonology somewhere; and there seems to me little doubt that among the
less educated folk in East Anglia there was, down to the end of the
eighteenth century, a belief and a knowledge of the different powers
of evil little different from that of the Middle Ages or the days when
witchcraft was dreaded by all the inhabitants of England of every
class.[16]
The primitive character of rural life at a comparatively late period
is seen in the admirable description of Mr. Tovell’s house in the
Life of the Poet Crabbe, written by his son, which fully attests the
accuracy of his younger contemporary--Mr. Cobbold. Mr. Tovell, whose
property Mrs. Crabbe inherited, was a yeoman farmer possessed of a very
considerable freehold property whose income, £800 ($4000), for those
days was considerable. A landowner of such comparative wealth in the
eighteenth century might well aspire to a place among the gentry of the
county, but Mr. Tovell possessed a sturdy independence which forbade
him taking any position in which he might feel himself ill at ease.
A yeoman he was by education and such he was determined to remain:
“Jack,” he said, “will never make a gentleman.” Nevertheless, says Mr.
Crabbe, he possessed a native dignity of his own. The following is a
description of his and his worthy wife’s menage at Parham. I quote
somewhat at length.
“His house was large and the surrounding moat, the rookery, the ancient
dovecot, and the well-stored fishponds were such as might have suited
a gentleman’s seat of some consequence; but one side of the house
immediately overlooked the farm-yard, full of all sorts of domestic
animals and the scene of constant bustle and noise. On entering the
house, there was nothing at first sight to remind one of the farm: a
spacious hall paved with black and white marble, etc., etc. But the
drawing room, a corresponding dining parlour, and a handsome sleeping
apartment upstairs, were all _tabooed_ ground and made use of on great
and solemn occasions only--such as rent days and an occasional visit
with which Mr. Tovell was honoured by a neighbouring peer. At all other
times the family and their visitors lived entirely in the old-fashioned
kitchen along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied an arm
chair.... Mrs. Tovell sat at a small table on which, in the evening
stood one small candle in an iron candlestick...; in winter a noble
block of wood, sometimes the whole circumference of a pollard, threw
its comfortable warmth and cheerful blaze over the whole apartment.
“At a very early hour in the morning, the alarm called the maids and
their mistress also:... After the important business of the dairy and a
hasty breakfast, their respective employments were again resumed: that
which the mistress took for her especial privilege being the scrubbing
of the floors of the state-apartments.”
Once a new servant was found doing this, and thus spoke the good lady:
“_You_ wash such floors as these? Give me the brush this instant and
troop to the scullery and wash that, madam.... As true as G--d’s in
heaven, here comes Lord Rochford to call on Mr. Tovell. Here, take my
mantle (a blue woollen apron), and I’ll go to the door.”
The family dined together--the heads sat at the old kitchen table--the
maids at a side table, called a bouter, the farm men stood in the
scullery. With the principals at the table any stranger who happened
to come in dined, even if he was a travelling ratcatcher, tinker, or
farrier. “My father,” Mr. Crabbe goes on to say, “well describes in the
‘Widow’s Tale,’ my mother’s situation when living in her younger days
at Parham:
“But when the men beside their stations took,
The maidens with them, and with these the cook;
When one huge wooden bowl before them stood,
Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food;
With bacon, mass saline! where never lean
Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen:
When from a single horn the party drew
Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new;
When the coarse cloth, she said, with many a stain,
Soil’d by rude hands who cut and came again;
She could not breathe, but, with a heavy sigh,
Reined the fair neck, and shut the offended eye;
She minced the sanguine flesh in pastimes fine
And wondered much to see the _creatures_ dine.”
Then Mr. Crabbe goes on to describe Mr. Tovell’s cronies, who came
after dinner, and enjoyed their punch, prosperous farmers or wealthy
yeomen like himself. Their talk was at times too much for Mrs. Tovell,
who withdrew; but “the servants, being considered much in the same
point of view as the animals dozing on the hearth, remained.”
The life of Crabbe the poet as told by his son is an admirable piece of
biography, and the Rev. George Crabbe, junr., was to my mind at least
as good a realist in prose as his father in poetry. I wonder if I am
right in conjecturing that you in New England had at the same time old
farmers not very unlike Mr. Tovell who lived in prosperous simplicity
like the old Suffolk Yeoman, rough in manner, coarse in expression,
and blunt in sensibility, yet with an honest independence of character
which redeemed much which to our eyes may seem repulsive.[17]
But the object of my remarks in this lecture has been to endeavour to
give you an idea of what England, or part of it, was like about 1800;
because I have another side of the picture to shew in my next lecture.
The primitive simplicity of the peasant and the farmer was doomed to
disappear, and the process had already begun. Still, side by side
with a luxurious civilisation there were many traces of a roughness
belonging to an early period in human development. To bring these facts
into light, I do not think that the choice of my native county of
Suffolk is a bad one.
When we turn from the peasant and trader, who in those days had little
influence in controlling the country, to the classes which exercised
power in the land, we come, as it were, to the surface of things; but,
to use an agricultural metaphor, we cannot explain the crop without
some knowledge of the soil. The explanation of many things, strange
now to us in the most highly polished social circles, can be found in
the character of the middle and lower classes of the time. When we
come in my next lecture to deal with academic life we shall find men of
the highest intellect marked by much of the uncouthness of the people
described by Crabbe or Cobbold, for many scholars had passed their
early days in the same surroundings; and when we go a step higher and
associate with the wits, dandies, and politicians of the Regency, I
think we shall acknowledge that only a very thin crust of superficial
polish lay between them and the people whom they affected to despise.
But this similarity does not merely extend to the faults of society; it
is to be found in its virtues also. There is no lack of virile strength
in the characters to which I have drawn your attention to-day; their
good qualities are as marked as their defects, and we recognise in
nearly every one of them qualities which brought England safe through a
great crisis in its history.
APPENDIX TO “MARGARET CATCHPOLE”
The literary history of “Margaret Catchpole” is somewhat remarkable.
The book was published as a true romance in 1845. It immediately
attained widespread popularity and passed through several editions.
It was dramatised in 1846 in London; and a play bill in the Harvard
library shews that it was acted in the National Theatre, Boston,
Mass., April 11 and 12, 1859. Mr. Richard Cobbold, the author,
was involved in a dispute with Mr. Gedge, the editor of the _Bury
Post_, on the historical accuracy of the story; both sides admitting
that Margaret had married well in Australia, and that her son had
visited Suffolk as a wealthy man desirous of purchasing an estate.
The author nearly became involved in legal proceedings because a
lady in Australia had been frequently mistaken for his heroine, and
subjected to some annoyance on this account. In 1910 the story was
again dramatised by the late Laurence Irving, and it was proved
that Margaret Catchpole had died a spinster: the certificate of
burial, dated 1819, being produced. This and the documents in the
Ipswich Museum--viz. a letter written by her to Mrs. Cobbold when
in prison, and a handbill offering a reward for her apprehension
after her escape--give an unfavourable opinion of the accuracy of
the author. The account of her arrest in the _Ipswich Journal_ of
April, 1800, makes no mention of the death of her smuggler lover. I
have, however, through the kindness of Suffolk friends and my own
relations discovered the documents used by Mr. Richard Cobbold, which
had been carefully filed by his mother; and I have seen the sketches
he made (he was no mean artist) to illustrate the novel, with notes
made by himself in his 77th year. He died in 1877. Upon the whole, I
am convinced that, though he made some serious mistakes, especially
about Margaret’s age and marriage, he believed that he was writing
a perfectly true account of her. The subject seemed to me of such
interest to students of literary problems that I had the hardihood to
submit it as a prelection to that respectable body the Council of the
Senate of the University of Cambridge (England) under the title of
“St. Luke as a Modern Author” (Cambridge: Heffer and Sons). If some of
that august body considered the introduction of this romance in humble
life as an illustration of a serious subject an impertinence, I can
only tender my apologies. In America it has been suggested by many
theological professors that “Margaret Catchpole” has a real bearing
on the question of the composition of the Acts of the Apostles, and
may prove a clue to that thorny problem, as well as to others which
can be illustrated by the use of illiterate materials for literary
purposes. Margaret’s letters from Australia, despite the fact that she
had been totally uneducated as a girl, are wonderfully interesting,
and the naturalness of her style renders them far more readable than
the polished periods which her biographer has put into her published
letters.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The lecture was delivered March, 1916.
[12] This seems impossible from what is known of the Crabbe family.
(See Huchon’s “George Crabbe.”) The poet had no brother who could have
taught Laud.
[13] An example of Mr. Cobbold’s local knowledge and the skill with
which he weaves it into his story is seen in the fact that he makes the
Barrys the sons of a farmer who first used crag shells for manure. In a
Suffolk gazetteer, about 1855, I discovered that this had really been
done at Levington, but in 1712, a generation or so before the Barrys
could have appeared.
[14] The case of horse stealing tried in Lancashire in 1791 was a
peculiarly hard one. A young lady of good family was condemned to
transportation for mounting a stranger’s horse, having been dared to do
so by a friend. She was only fourteen years of age! She was apparently
sent to Australia rather as a passenger than a convict; and married the
captain of the ship.
[15] See Appendix on the literary problem of Mr. Cobbold’s novel.
[16] Mr. Cobbold in a private document says that Colson derived
his knowledge of the names of demons from Glanvil’s _Sadducismus
Triumphatus_. I looked over the book and found no names of demons.
[17] I have been privileged to see kitchens in old houses in New
England, which must have been used in very much the same way as Mr.
Tovell’s. The house now preserved by the Colonial Dames at Quincy is a
good example.
LECTURE IV
GUNNING’S “REMINISCENCES OF CAMBRIDGE”