Transcribed from the 1898 James Clarke & Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: J. Ewing Ritchie, from a photo by The Parade Studio, Leamington
Spa]
CHRISTOPHER CRAYON'S
RECOLLECTIONS:
_The Life and Times of the late_
JAMES EWING RITCHIE,
_As told by Himself_.
* * * * *
London:
JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET.
* * * * *
1898.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. East Anglia in 1837 3
II. A Life's Memories 33
III. Village Life 51
IV. Village Sports and Pastimes 65
V. Out on the World 83
VI. At College 95
VII. London Long Ago 105
VIII. My Literary Career 127
IX. Cardiff and the Welsh 151
X. A Great National Movement 171
XI. The Old London Pulpit 185
XII. Memories of Exeter Hall 207
XIII. Men I Have Known 217
XIV. How I Put Up for M.P. 229
XV. How I was Made a Fool Of 241
XVI. Interviewing the President 253
XVII. A Bank Gone 261
CHAPTER I.
EAST ANGLIA IN 1837.
In 1837 Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister--the handsomest, the most
cultivated, the most courteous gentleman that ever figured in a Royal
Court. For his young mistress he had a loyal love, whilst she, young and
inexperienced, naturally turned to him as her guide, philosopher and
friend. The Whigs were in office, but not in power. The popular
excitement that had carried the Reform Bill had died away, and the
Ministry had rendered itself especially unpopular by a new Poor-Law Bill,
a bold, a praiseworthy, a successful attempt to deal with the growing
demoralisation of the agricultural population. Lord Melbourne was at
that time the only possible Premier. "I have no small talk," said the
Iron Duke, "and Peel has no manners," and few men had such grace and
chivalry as Lord Melbourne, then a childless widower in his manhood's
prime. He swore a good deal, as all fine gentlemen did in the early days
of Queen Victoria. One day Mr. Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington,
encountered Lord Melbourne as he was about to mount his horse, and called
attention to some required modification in the new Poor-Law Bill. Lord
Melbourne referred him to his brother George. "I have been with him,"
was the reply, "but he damned me, and damned the Bill, and damned the
paupers." "Well, damn it, what more could he do?" was the rejoinder.
And in East Anglia there was a good deal of swearing among the gentry. I
can remember an ancient peer who had been brought up in the Navy, who
resided in the Eastern Counties, and who somehow or other had been
prevailed upon to attend as chairman at a meeting of the local Bible
Society. I have forgotten the greater part of the noble Lord's speech,
but I well remember how his Lordship not a little shocked some of his
hearers by finishing up with the remark--that the Bible Society was a
damned good Society, and ought to be damned well supported. Another
noble Lord, of Norfolk, had some fair daughters, who distinguished
themselves in the hunting field, where they had a habit of swearing as
terribly as an army in Flanders. In this respect we have changed for the
better; ladies never swear now.
In politics bribery and corruption and drunkenness everywhere prevailed.
It was impossible to fight an election with clean hands. In 1837 there
was an election at Norwich; the late Right Hon. W. E. Forster has left us
a good account of it. "Went to the nomination of city candidates this
morning. The nomination was at eight. Went in with the mob into the
lower court. Great rush when the door was opened. When the Crier
demanded attention for the reading of the Act against bribery and
corruption, he burst out laughing at the end, in which he was followed by
the Sheriff, candidates and almost everybody else." The show of hands
was, as was generally the case, in favour of the Liberal. But on the
next day--that of the poll--the Tories were declared to have the
majority. All round the polling booths the rioting was great, as men
were brought up in batches to vote--each party struggling to prevent
their being done by the other, and a good deal of fighting ensued. Mr.
Forster writes:--"About nine I sallied forth to take observations. At
the Magdalen Ward booth I saw some dreadful cases of voting by drunken
people, both Whig and Tory--one in which the man could hardly speak, and
there were two men roaring Smith and Nurse (the names of the Whig
candidates) in his ears. I went to see all the polling places in the
course of time. About three I saw some furious bludgeon-fighting in
Palace Plain, the police taking bludgeons from some Tory hired
countrymen. The Mayor and Sheriff were there. One of the police was
badly wounded by a bludgeon. The soldiers were sent for, and then the
Mayor, thinking he could do without them, sent George Everett, the
Sheriff's son, a boy, and myself to stop them. We very soon met them in
the road leading from the Plain to the barracks trotting forward with
their swords drawn. We held up our hands and partially stopped them, but
the Mayor altered his mind and they came on. The policemen had got the
better, but the soldiers soon cleared the place."
The election over--it is said to have cost 40,000 pounds--the triumphant
Members were borne in chairs on men's shoulders and carried through the
streets--a very unpleasant process, as they had to smile and bow to the
crowd of lookers-on in the streets and in the houses along which they
passed. The old dragon Snap from St. Andrew's Hall figured in the show.
Out-voters were brought from London and other parts of the country in
stage coaches hired for the purpose. Every one showed his colour, and
every one was primed with beer and ready for a row. A General Election
was a saturnalia of the most blackguard character. In all, Norfolk
returned twelve Members--four for the county, the Eastern Division
sending two Members, the influential landlords being Lord Wodehouse, the
Earl of Desart and the Marquis of Cholmondeley, with an electorate of
4,396. In West Norfolk the electors were not so numerous, and the
influence was chiefly possessed by the Earl of Leicester, Lord Hastings,
the Marquis of Cholmondeley, Lord Charles Townshend and the Marquis of
that name. In both divisions Conservatives were returned. In the
Eastern Division of Suffolk, which had its headquarters at Ipswich, the
electorate returned two Members--Lord Henniker and Sir Charles Broke
Vere. The leading landlords were the Earl of Stradbroke, the Duke of
Hamilton, the Marquis of Hertford, the Dysart family, and Sir Thomas
Gooch. Sir Thomas had represented the county up to the time of the
Reform Bill; in 1832 Robert Newton Shawe was elected. West Suffolk,
whose chief electoral town was Bury St. Edmund's, returned Tories, under
the influence of the Marquis of Bristol and other landlords. The
boroughs did a little better; Bury St. Edmund's returned one Liberal,
Lord Charles Fitzroy, elected by 289 votes, and Lord Jermyn (C.), who
polled 277 votes. Colchester, however, a very costly seat to gain, was
held by the Conservatives. Chelmsford and Braintree were the chief
polling places of Essex north and south, and in both divisions
Conservatives were returned. Eye rejoiced in its hereditary
representative, Sir Edward Kerrison, Conservative. It is strange that so
small a borough was spared by the first Reform Bill. In our time it has
been very properly disfranchised. Sudbury, a Suffolk borough, a little
larger, which returned two Conservatives in 1837, was very properly
disfranchised for bribery in 1844. Ipswich was also supposed to be by no
means an immaculate borough. Dodd writes concerning it: "Money has long
been considered the best friend in Ipswich, and petitions on the ground
of bribery, &c., have been frequent." In 1837 it returned one Liberal
and one Conservative, Milner Gibson, whom Sir Thomas Gooch, of Benacre
Hall, recommended to the electors as a promising Conservative colt. He
lived to become M.P. for Manchester, to be one of the leaders of the
Anti-Corn Law Movement, the head of the Society for the Repeal of the
Taxes on Knowledge, a society which owed a great deal of its success to
his Parliamentary skill as a tactician, and to be a Member of a Liberal
Administration. There were few finer, manlier-looking men in the House
of Commons than Thomas Milner Gibson. At any rate, I thought so as I
watched him, after the delivery of a most effective speech in Drury Lane
Theatre on the Corn Laws, step into a little ham and beef shop close by
for a light for his cigar. At that time, let me remind the reader,
waxlights and matches were unknown. The electoral body in Ipswich was
not a large one. At the Reform Act period it consisted of 1,800. At
that time the constituency had been increased by adding to the freemen,
of whom little more than three hundred remained, the ten-pound
householders within the old borough, which included twelve parishes. It
is curious to note that, in 1839, Mr. Milner Gibson, who had resigned his
seat on his becoming a Liberal, was rejected, the numbers being--Sir
Thomas Cochrane (Conservative), 621; Milner Gibson, 615. Ipswich seems
always to have been undergoing the excitement of a General Election--and,
it is to be feared, enjoying the profits of an election contest, as no
sooner was an election over than it was declared void--and a new writ was
issued. In 1837 Thetford, no longer a Parliamentary borough, returned
two M.P.'s, one Conservative and one Liberal. A little more has yet to
be written relative to smaller East Anglian boroughs. Lynn, under the
influence of the Duke of Portland, in 1837 returned two distinguished men
to Parliament: Lord George Bentinck, then a great racing man, but who was
better known as the leader of the Protectionist party, and Sir Stratford
Canning, the great Eltchi, who was to reign imperiously in the East, and
at whose frown Turkish Sultans trembled. Maldon returned two
Conservatives. It has long very properly ceased to exercise that
privilege. Great Yarmouth, which has now an electorate of 7,876, at the
General Election in 1837 returned two Liberals, but the highest Liberal
vote was 790, and the highest Tory vote 699. Money was the best friend
at Yarmouth, as in most boroughs. In accounting for the loss of his seat
at Weymouth in 1837, one of our greatest East Anglians, Sir Thomas Fowell
Buxton, writes:--"My supporters told me that it would be necessary to
open public-houses, and to lend money--a gentle name for bribery--to the
extent of 1,000 pounds. I, of course, declined." Yet, as a boy, I must
own I enjoyed the fun, the excitement, the fighting of the old elections,
much more than the elections of later times. If now and then a skull was
cracked, what mattered, while the Constitution was saved!
In the religious world the change in East Anglia has been immense; the
Church was weak, now it has become strong. In most of the villages were
good Dissenting congregations, but the landlords set their faces against
the Dissenters--"pograms" was what they were contemptuously called--and
the landlord's lady had no mercy on them. The good things in the hall
were only reserved for those who attended the parish church. At that
time we had two bishops; both resided in Norwich. One was the Bishop of
the Diocese; the other was the Rev. John Alexander, who preached in
Princes Street Chapel, where the Rev. Dr. Barrett has succeeded him--a
man universally beloved and universally popular, as he deserved to be.
As for the clergy of that day, I fear many of them led scandalous lives:
there was hardly one when I was a boy, within reach of the parish where I
was born, whom decent women, with any serious thoughts at all, could go
to hear, and consequently they, with their families, went to the nearest
Independent Chapel, where it was a sight to see the farmers' gigs on the
green in the chapel yard. They go to the Church now, as the clergyman is
quite as devoted to his high calling and quite as earnest in his vocation
as his Independent brother. Bishop Bathurst had let things slide too
much, as was to be expected of a man whose great complaint in his old age
was that they had sent him a dean who could not play whist. Bishop
Stanley's wife complained to Miss Caroline Fox how trying was her
husband's position at Norwich, as his predecessor was an amiable,
indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course
they took. It was in his Diocese--at Hadleigh--the Oxford movement
commenced, when in 1833 the Vicar, the Rev. James Rose, assembled at the
parsonage--not the present handsome building, which is evidently of later
date--the men who were to become famous as Tractarians, who had met there
to consider how to save the Church. It was then in danger, as Lord Grey
had recommended the Bishops to put their house in order. Ten Irish
Bishoprics had been suppressed; a mob at Bristol had burnt the Bishop's
palace; and in Norwich the cry had been raised for "more pigs and less
parsons." One of the leaders of the Evangelical party resided at
Kirkley. The Rev. Francis Cuningham--afterwards Rector of Lowestoft--had
established infant schools, which were then a novelty in East Anglia.
His wife was one of the Gurneys, of Earlham, a great power in Norfolk at
that time. Joseph John was well known in London philanthropic circles
and all over the land, especially in connection with the anti-Slavery and
Bible Societies; and at his house men of all religious parties were
welcome. At that time, Clarkson, the great anti-Slavery advocate, had
come to Playford Hall, near Woodbridge, there to spend in quiet the
remainder of his days. In all East Anglian leading towns Nonconformity
was very respectable, and its leading men were men of influence and
usefulness in their respective localities. It was even so at Bury St.
Edmund's in Mr. Dewhurst's time. His son, whom I met with in South
Australia holding a position in the Educational Department, told me how
Rowland Hill came to the town to preach for his father. As there were no
railways the great preacher came in his own carriage, and naturally was
very anxious as to the welfare of his horses. Mr. Dewhurst told him that
he need have no anxiety on that score, as he had a horsedealer a member
of his church, who would look after them. "What!" said Rowland Hill, in
amazement, "a horsedealer a member of a Christian Church; whoever heard
of such a thing?" From which I gather that Rowland Hill knew more of
London horsedealers than East Anglian ones. I can well remember that
many of the old Nonconformist pulpits were filled by men such as Ray of
Bury St. Edmund's, Creak of Yarmouth, Elvin of Bury (Baptist), Notcutt of
Ipswich, and Sloper of Beccles, a friend of Mrs. Siddons. A great power
in Beccles and its neighbourhood was the Rev. George Wright, the father
of the celebrated scholar, Dr. Aldis Wright, of Cambridge, who still
lives to adorn and enlighten the present age. Some of the old
Nonconformist chapels were grotesque specimens of rustic architecture.
This was especially so at Halesworth, which had a meeting-house--as it
was then called--with gigantic pillars under the galleries. It was there
the Rev. John Dennant preached--the grandfather of the popular Sir John
Robinson, of _The Daily News_, a dear old man much given to writing
poetry, of which, alas! posterity takes no heed. The charm of the old
Nonconformist places was the great square pews, lined with green baize,
where on a hot Sunday afternoon many a hearer was rewarded with--I can
speak from experience--a delightful snooze. The great exception was at
Norwich, where there was a fine modern Baptist Chapel, known as "the
fashionable watering-place," where, in 1837, the late William Brock had
just commenced what proved to be a highly-successful pastoral career.
As to the theology of the cottagers in East Anglia at that time, I can
offer no better illustration of it than that given by Miss Caroline Fox
of a cottage talk she had somewhere near Norwich. She writes, "A young
woman told us that her father was nearly converted, and that a little
more teaching would complete the business," adding "He quite believes
that he is lost, which, of course, is a great consolation to the old
man."
Literature flourished in East Anglia in 1837. Bulwer Lytton, an East
Anglian by birth and breeding, had just published "Paul Clifford," and
was about to commence a new and better style of novel. Norwich had long
been celebrated for its Literary Society, and one of the most remarkable
of the literary men of the age was George Borrow, author of the "Bible in
Spain," the materials for which he was then collecting, and who spent
much of his life in East Anglia, where he was born. He was five years in
Spain during the disturbed early years of Isabella II., and he travelled
in every part of Castile and Leon, as well as the southern part of the
Peninsula and Northern Portugal. Again and again his adventurous habits
brought him into danger among brigands and Carlists, as well as Roman
Catholic priests, and he experienced a brief imprisonment in Madrid. At
Norwich also was then living Mrs. Opie--as a Quakeress--after having
spent the greater part of her life in London gaiety. A lady who met her
in Brussels says she spoke with much enthusiasm of the eminent artists,
who, in her part of the world--videlicet, the Eastern Counties--had
become men of mark. Of her husband, who had been dead many years, she
said playfully that if neither Suffolk nor Norfolk could boast of the
honour of being his birthplace, he had done his best to remedy the evil
by marrying a Norwich woman. At Reydon Hall, rather a tumble-down old
place, as I recollect it, lived the Stricklands, and of the six daughters
of the house five were literary women more or less successful. Of these
the best known was Agnes, author of "The Lives of the Queens of England,"
which owed much of its success to being published just after the Princess
Victoria had become Queen of England.
It was amusing to hear her talk, in her somewhat affected and stilted
style, of politics. She was a Jacobin, and hated all Dissenters, whom
she sneered at as Roundheads. With modern ideas she and her sisters had
no sympathy whatever. There never was such an antediluvian family. All
of them were very long-lived, and must have bitterly bewailed the
progress of Democracy and Dissent. I question whether the "Lives of the
Queens of England" has many readers now. Near Woodbridge, as rector of
Benhall, lived the Rev. J. Mitford, an active literary man, the editor of
_The Gentleman's Magazine_, and of some of the standard works known as
Pickering's Classics. As a clergyman he was a failure. It was urged in
his defence, by his friends, that his profession had been chosen for him
by others, and that when it was too late for him to escape from the bonds
which held him in thrall he made the discovery that the life that lay
before him was utterly uncongenial to his tastes and habits. His life,
when in Suffolk, writes Mrs. Houston, author of "A Woman's Memories of
World-known Men," must have been a very solitary one. For causes which I
have never heard explained, his wife had long left him, and his only son
was not on speaking terms with the Rector of Benhall. In his small
lodgings on the second floor in Sloane Street, he was doubtless a far
happier man than, in spite of his well-loved garden and extensive library
at Benhall Rectory, he ever, in his country home, professed to be. But
perhaps the most notable East Anglian author at the time was Isaac
Taylor, of Ongar, whose books--"The Natural History of Enthusiasm" and
"The Physical Theory of Another Life"--were most popular, and one of
which, at any rate, had been noticed in _The Edinburgh Review_. In a
private letter to the editor, Sir James Stephen describes Taylor "as a
very considerable man, with but small inventive but very great diffusive
powers, possessing a considerable mastery of language, but very apt to be
over-mastered by it--too fine a writer to write very well; too fastidious
a censor to judge men and things equitably; too much afraid of falling
into cant and vulgarity to rise to freedom and ease; an over-polished
Dissenter, a little ashamed of his origin among that body; but, with all
this, a man of vigorous and catholic understanding, of eminent purity of
mind, happy in himself and in all manner of innocent pleasure, and
strenuously devoted to the grand but impracticable task of grafting on
the intellectual democracy of our own times the literary aristocracy of
the days that are passed." Quite a different man was dear old Bernard
Barton, the Quaker poet, of Woodbridge, with whom I dined once, who was
more fat than bard beseems, and who seemed to me to enjoy a good dinner,
a glass of port--people could drink port in those days--and a pinch of
snuff, quite as much as any literary talk. Poor Bernard never set the
Thames on fire--he would have been shocked at the thought of doing
anything so wicked; but he was a good man, and quite competent to shine
in "Fulcher's Pocket Book," a work published yearly by Fulcher, of Bury
St. Edmund's, and much better than any of its contemporaries.
In connection with this subject let me quote from Bernard Barton a sketch
of a Suffolk yeoman, very rare in these times: "He was a hearty old
yeoman of about eighty-six, and occupied the farm in which he lived and
died, about fifty-five years. Sociable, hospitable, friendly; a liberal
master to his labourers, a kind neighbour, and a right merry companion
within the limits of becoming mirth; in politics a staunch Whig; in his
theological creed as sturdy a Dissenter; yet with no more party spirit in
him than a child. He and I belonged to the same book club for about
forty years. He entered it about fifteen years before I came into these
parts, and was really a pillar in our literary temple, not that he
greatly cared about books or was deeply read in them, but he loved to
meet his neighbours and get them round him on any occasion or no occasion
at all. As a fine specimen of the true English yeoman I have met few to
equal, hardly any to surpass him, and he looked the character as well as
he acted it, till within a very few years, when the strong man was bowed
with infirmity. About twenty-six years ago, in his dress costume of a
blue coat and yellow buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would
rarely see. It was the whole study of his long life to make the few who
revolved about him in his little orbit as happy as he always seemed to be
himself; yet I was gravely queried with, when I happened to say that his
children had asked me to write a few lines to his memory, whether I could
do so in keeping with the general tenor of my poetry. The speaker
doubted if he was a decidedly pious character. He had at times been
known in his altitudes to vociferate at the top of his voice a song, the
chorus of which was not certainly teetotalish:--
Sing, old Rose, and burn the bellows,
Drink and drive dull care away."
Can anything be finer than this picture of a Suffolk yeoman? Is it not a
pity that such men are no more to be seen? High farming was unknown when
the old Suffolk yeoman lived. I claim for Bernard Barton that this
sketch of the Suffolk yeoman is the best thing he ever wrote. Bernard
Barton's daughter married the great Oriental scholar, Edward Fitzgerald,
the friend of Carlyle and correspondent of Fanny Kemble, who lived in the
neighbourhood of Woodbridge, and whose fame now he is no more is far
greater than when he lived. Little could he have anticipated that in
after years literary men would assemble in the quiet churchyard of Boulge
to erect his monument over his grave, or to found a society to perpetuate
his name.
As I lean back for another glance, my eyes, as Wordsworth writes, are
filled with childish tears--
My heart is idly stirred.
I see the dear old village where I was born, almost encroaching on Sir
Thomas Gooch's park, at Benacre Hall; I see the old baronet, a fine old
bigoted Tory, who looked the picture of health and happiness, as he
ambled past on his chestnut cob, wearing a blue coat, a white hat and
trousers, in summer; his only regret being that things were not as they
were--his only consolation the fact that, wisely, the Eternal Providence
that overrules all human affairs had provided snug rectories for his kith
and kin, however unworthy of the sacred calling; and had hung up the sun,
moon and stars so high in the heavens that no reforming ass
Could e'er presume to pluck them down, and light the world with gas.
Then comes the village medico, healthy and shrewd and kindly, with a firm
belief--alas! that day is gone now--in black draught and blue pill. I
see his six sunny daughters racing down the village street, guarded by a
dragon of a governess, and I get out of their way, for I am a rustic, and
have all the rustic's fear of what the East Anglian peasant was used to
term "morthers"; and then comes the squire of the next parish, in as
shabby a trap as you ever set eyes on, and the fat farmer, who hails me
for a walk, and going to the end of a field, joyously, or as joyously as
his sluggish nature will permit, exclaims, "There, Master James, now you
can see three farms." My friend was a utilitarian, and could only see
the beautiful in the useful. Then I call up the memory of the village
grocer, a stern, unbending Radical, who delights me with the loan of
Cruikshank's illustrations to the "House that Jack Built," mysteriously
wrapped in brown paper and stowed away between the sugar and treacle. He
does not talk much, but he thinks the more. And now it strikes me that
conversation was not much cultivated in the villages of East Anglia in
1837, and yet there were splendid exceptions--on such evenings as when
the members of the Book Club met in our parlour, where the best tea
things were laid, and where a kindly mother in black silk and white shawl
and quakerish cap made tea; where an honoured father, who now sleeps far
away from the scene of his life-long labours, indulged in a genial
humour, which set at ease the shyest of his guests; and again, what a
splendid talk there was when the brethren in black from Beccles, from
Yarmouth, from Halesworth, gathered for fraternal purposes, perhaps once
a quarter, to smoke long pipes, to discuss metaphysics and politics, and
to puzzle their heads over divines and systems that have long ceased to
perplex the world. Few and simple were East Anglian annals then. It was
seldom the London coach, the Yarmouth Mail and Telegraph brought a
cockney down to astonish us with his pert ways and peculiar talk. Life
was slow, but it was kindly, nevertheless. There was no fear of
bacteria, nor of poison in the pot, nor of the ills of bad drainage. We
were poor, but honest. Are we better now?
In 1837 the railways which unite the country under the title of the Great
Eastern had not come into existence.
All is changed in East Anglia except the boys. "You have seen a good
many changes in your time," said the young curate to the old village
clerk. "Yes," was the reply; "everything is changed except the boys, and
they're allus the same." I fear the boys are as troublesome as
ever--perhaps a little more so now, when you cannot touch them with a
stick, which any one might do years ago. When we caught a boy up to
mischief a stick did a deal of good in the good old times that are gone
never to return.
In connection with literature one naturally turns to the Bungay Printing
Press, at the head of which was John Childs, who assembled round his
hospitable board at Bungay many celebrated people, and to whom at a later
period Daniel O'Connell paid a visit. It was Childs who gave to the poor
student cheap editions of standard works such as Burke and Gibbon and
Bacon. It was he who went to Ipswich Gaol rather than pay Church Rates.
It was he who was one of the first to attack the Bible printing monopoly,
and thus to flood the land with cheap Bibles and Testaments. A self-made
man, almost Napoleonic in appearance, with a habit of blurting out sharp
cynicisms and original epigrams, rather than conversing. He was a great
phrenologist, and I well remember how I, a raw lad, rather trembled in
his presence as I saw his dark, keen eyes directed towards that part of
my person where the brains are supposed to be. I imagine the result was
favourable, as at a later time I spent many a pleasant hour in his
dining-room, gathering wisdom from his after-dinner talk, and inspiration
from his port--as good as that immortalised by Tennyson. Mr. Childs had
a numerous and handsome family, most of whom died after arriving at
manhood. His daughter, who to great personal charms added much of her
father's intellect, did not live long after her marriage, leaving one
son, a leading partner in the great City firm of solicitors, Ashurst,
Morris, and Crisp. After John Childs, of Bungay, I may mention another
East Anglian--D. Whittle Harvey, who was a power in his party and among
the London cabbies--to whom the London cabby owes his badge V.R.--which,
as one of them sagely remarked, was supposed to signify "Whittle 'Arvey,"
an etymology at any rate not worse than that of the savant who in his
wisdom derived gherkin from Jeremiah King. In 1837 Mr. Johnson Fox, born
at Uggeshall, near Wangford--better known afterwards as the Norwich
"Weaver Boy," the "Publicola" of _The Weekly Dispatch_--the great orator
of the Anti-Corn Law League, was preaching in the Unitarian Chapel, South
Place, Finsbury, and a leading man in London literary society. One of
the best-known men in East Anglia was Allan Ransome, of Ipswich, the
young Quaker, who was on very friendly terms with the Strickland family,
who cultivated literature and business with equal zest. Nor, in this
category, should I pass over the name of George Bird, of Yoxford, a local
chemist, who found time to write of Dunwich Castle and such-like East
Anglian themes--I fancy now read by none. A Suffolk man who was making
his mark in London at that time was Crabbe Robinson, the pioneer of the
special correspondent of our later day. And just when Queen Victoria
began to reign, Thomas Woolner, the poet-sculptor, was leaving his native
town of Hadleigh to begin life as the pupil of Boehm, sculptor in
ordinary to the Queen. And yet East Anglia was by no means
distinguished, or held to be of much account in the gay circles of wit
and fashion in town. The gentry were but little better than those drawn
to the life in the novels of Fielding and Smollett. I am inclined to
think there was very little reading outside Dissenting circles--where the
book club was a standing institution, and _The Edinburgh Review_ was
looked up to as an oracle, as indeed it was, sixty years ago. There was
little encouragement of manly sports and pastimes--indeed, very little
for any one in the way of amusement but at the public-house. Not that
any one was ever drunk, in the liberal opinion of the landlord of the
public-house, only "a little fresh," and the village policeman was
unknown. It is true there might be a constable, but he was a very
mythical person indeed. Everybody drank, and as a rule the poorer people
were the more they drank.
One of the early temperance lecturers in the district, Mr. Thomas
Whittaker, who was mobbed, especially at Framlingham, tells us Essex and
Suffolk are clayey soils, in some districts very heavy and not easily
broken up, and the people in many cases correspond. It was due to Mr.
Marriage, of Chelmsford, a maltster, who turned his malting house into a
temperance hall, and Mr. D. Alexander, of Ipswich, that the temperance
reformers made way; and at that time James Larner, of Framlingham, aided
by young Mr. Thompson (now the great London surgeon, Sir Henry Thompson),
was quite a power. But the difficulties were great in the way of finding
places for meetings, or of getting to them in muddy lanes, or of getting
the anti-teetotalers to behave decently, or of the lecturers finding
accommodation for the night. Education would have been left almost
alone, had not the Liberals started the British and Foreign schools,
which roused the Church party to action. The one village schoolmaster
with whom I came into contact was--as were most of his class--one who had
seen better days, who wore top boots, and whose chief instrument in
teaching the young idea how to shoot was a ruler, of which he seemed to
me to take rather an unfair advantage. The people were ignorant, and,
like Lord Melbourne, did not see much good in making a fuss about
education. They could rarely read or write, and if they could there was
nothing for them to read--no cheap books nor cheap magazines and
newspapers. Now we have run to the other extreme, and it is to be hoped
we are all the better. Cottages were mostly in an unsanitary state, but
the labourer, in his white smock, looked well on a Sunday at the village
church or chapel, and the children at the Sunday-school were clean, if a
little restless under the long, dry sermon which they were compelled to
hear, the caretaker being generally provided with a long stick to
admonish the thoughtless, to wake up the sleepy, to prevent too much
indulgence in apples during sermon time, or too liberal a display of the
miscellaneous treasures concealed in a boy's pocket. Perhaps the most
influential person in the village was the gamekeeper, who was supposed to
be armed, and to have the power of committing all boys in undue eagerness
to go bird-nesting to the nearest gaol. He was to me, I own, a terror by
night and by day, as he was constantly in my way--when tempted to break
into the neighbouring park in search of flowers or eggs. The farmer
then, as now, was ruined, but he was a picture of health and comfort as
he drove to the nearest market town, where after business he would spend
the evening smoking and drinking, with his broad beaver on his head, his
fat carcase ornamented with a blue coat with brass buttons, and his knee
breeches of yellow kerseymere. It was little he read to wake up his
sluggish intellect, save the county newspaper, which it was the habit for
people to take between them to lessen the expense. A newspaper was
sevenpence, of which fourpence went to pay for the stamp. Everything was
dear--the postage of a letter was 10d. or 1s. The franking of letters by
Members of Parliament existed at that time; they could receive an
unlimited number of letters free of postage, of any weight, even a
pianoforte, a saddle, a haunch of venison, and they might send out
fourteen a day. Loaf sugar was too dear to be in daily use; tea and
coffee were heavily taxed; soap was too dear to use; and wearing apparel
and boots and shoes very expensive; even if you went for a drive there
was the turnpike gate, and a heavy toll to pay. As to geography, it was
a science utterly unknown. Poor people when they talked of the Midland
Counties called them the Shires, and I have heard serious disputes as to
whether you got to America by sea or land. The finest men in East Anglia
were the sailors at the various sea-ports along the coast, well-shaped,
fair-haired, with grand limbs and blue eyes, evidently of Saxon or Norse
descent, and their daughters were as handsome as any girls I ever saw.
The peasant had his little bit of garden, where he could keep a pig and
grow a few vegetables and flowers, but much of the furniture was of the
poorest description, much inferior to what it is now, and his lot was not
a happy one. As to locomotion, it did not exist. To go a few miles from
home was quite an event; on the main roads ran coaches, with two, or
three, or four horses, but the general mode of conveyance was the
carrier's cart, sometimes drawn by one horse and sometimes by two. Some
of the happiest days of my life were spent in the carrier's cart, where
the travellers were seated on the luggage, their feet well protected by
straw, where we were all hail fellows well met, and each enjoyed his
little joke, especially when the rural intellect was stimulated by beer
and baccy. The old village inn where we stopped to water the horses and
refresh the inner man seemed to me all the more respectable when compared
with the pestiferous beershops that had then begun to infest the land, to
increase the crime, the misery, the pauperism of a district which already
had quite enough of them before.
But to return to locomotion. A post-chaise was generally resorted to
when the gentry travelled. It was painted yellow and black, and on one
of the two horses by which it was drawn was seated an ancient, withered
old man, generally known as the post-boy, whose age might be anywhere
between forty and eighty, dressed in a jockey costume, in white hat and
top boots; altogether, a bent, grotesque figure whom Tennyson must have
had in his eye when he wrote--for the post-boy was often as not an
ostler--
Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin,
Here is custom come your way;
Take my brute and lead him in,
Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay.