A LIFE'S MEMORIES.
Long, long before John Forster wrote to recommend everyone to write
memoirs of himself it had become the fashion to do so. "That celebrated
orator," writes Dr. Edmund Calamy, one of the most learned of our
Nonconformist divines, "Caius Cornelius Tacitus, in the beginning of his
account of the life of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola (who was the
General of Domitian, the Emperor, here in Britain, and the first who made
the Roman part of Britain a Praesidial province), excuses this practice
from carrying in it anything of arrogance." This excellent example was
followed by Julius Caesar, Marcus Antoninus, many emperors who kept
diaries, Flavius Josephus, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Augustine, to
say nothing of Abraham Schultetus, the celebrated professor at
Heidelberg; of the learned Fuetius; of Basompierre, the celebrated
marshal of France; of the ever-amusing and garrulous Montaigne; or of our
own Richard Baxter, or of Edmund Calamy himself. The fact is, it has
ever been the fashion with men who have handled the pen freely to write
more or less about themselves and the times in which they lived, and
there is no pleasanter reading than such biographical recollections; and
really it matters little whether on the world's stage the actor acted
high tragedy or low comedy so that he writes truthfully as far as he can
about himself and his times. If old Montaigne is to be believed there is
nothing like writing about oneself. "I dare," he writes, "not only speak
of myself, but of myself alone," and never man handled better the very
satisfactory theme. If I follow in the steps of my betters I can do no
harm, and I may do good if I can show how the England of to-day is
changed for the better since I first began to observe that working men
and women are better off, that our middle and upper classes have clearer
views of duty and responsibility, that we are the better for the
political and social and religious reforms that have been achieved of
late, that, in fact,
. . . through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
The one great complaint I have to make with respect to my father and
mother, to whom I owe so much, and whose memory I shall ever revere, was
that they brought me into the world forty or fifty years too soon. In
1820, when I first saw the light of day, England was in a very poor way.
It was what the late Earl of Derby used to call the pre-scientific era.
Gross darkness covered the land. The excitement of war was over, and the
lavish outlay it occasioned being stopped, life was stagnant, farmers and
manufacturers alike were at low-water mark, and the social and religious
and political reforms required by the times were as yet undreamed of.
However, one good thing my parents did for me. They lived in a country
village in the extreme east of Suffolk, not far from the sea, where I
could lead a natural life, where I could grow healthy, if not wise, and
be familiar with all the impulses which spring up in the heart under the
influences of rural life. "Boyhood in the country," writes William
Howitt in his autobiography--"Paradise of opening existence! Up to the
age of ten this life was all my own." And thus it was with me.
Existence was a pleasure, and the weather, I believe, was better then
than it is now. We had summer in summer time. We had fine weather when
harvest commenced, and to spend a day at one of the neighbouring farmers
riding the fore horse was a delight which thrilled me with joy; and
winter, with its sliding and snowballing, with its clear skies and its
glittering snows, rendering the landscape lovelier than ever, made me
forget the inevitable chilblains, which was the price we had to pay for
all its glories and its charms.
Our little village was situated on the high road between London and Great
Yarmouth, along which rolled twice a day the London and Yarmouth Royal
Mail, drawn by four horses, and driven by a fat man in red, whom we raw
village lads regarded as a very superior person indeed. Behind sat the
guard, also in red, with a horn, which he blew lustily when occasion
required. There was a time, but that was much later, when a day coach
was put on, and, as it changed horses at our village inn, one of our
chief delights was to see the tired, heated, smoking horses taken out,
and their places filled by a new set, much given to kicking and plunging
at starting, to the immense delight of the juvenile spectators. Even the
passengers I regarded with awe. In fourteen hours would they not be in
London where the King lived--where were the Houses of Parliament, the
Bank and the Tower and the soldiers? What would I not have given to be
on that roof urging on, under the midnight stars, my wild career! Now
and then a passenger would be dropped in our little village. What a nine
days' wonder he was, especially if he were a Cockney and talked in the
language of Cockaigne--if he had heard the Iron Duke, or seen royalty
from afar. Nonconformity flourished in the village in spite of the fact
that the neighbouring baronet, at the gates of whose park the village may
be said to have commenced, was Sir Thomas Gooch--(Guche was the way the
villagers pronounced his dread name)--for was he not a county magistrate,
who could consign people to Beccles Gaol, some eight miles off, and one
of the M.P.'s for the county, and did not he and his lady sternly set
their faces against Dissent? If now and then there were coals and
blankets to be distributed--and very little was done in that way, charity
had not become fashionable then--you may be sure that no Dissenter,
however needy and deserving, came in for a share.
The churches round were mostly filled by the baronet's relatives, who
came into possession of the family livings as a matter of course, and
took little thought for the souls of their parishioners. In fact, very
few people did go to church. In our chapel, of which my father was the
minister for nearly forty years, we had a good congregation, especially
of an afternoon, when the farmers with their families, in carts or gigs,
put in an appearance. One of the ejected had been the founder of
Nonconformity in our village, and its traditions were all of the most
honourable character. A wealthy family had lived in the hall, which Sir
Thomas Gooch had bought and pulled down, one of whom had been M.P. for
the county in Cromwell's time, and had left a small endowment--besides,
there was a house for the minister--to perpetuate the cause, and it was
something amidst the Boeotian darkness all round to have a man of
superior intellect, of a fair amount of learning, of unspotted life, of
devoted piety, such as the old Nonconformist ministers were, ever seeking
to lead the people upward and onward; while the neighbouring gentry and
all the parsons round, I am sorry to say, set the people a very bad
example. In our time we have changed all that, and the Church clergy are
as zealous to do good as the clergy of any other denomination. But that
things have altered so much for the better, I hold is mainly due to the
great progress made all over the land by Dissent, which woke up the
Church from the state of sloth and luxury and lethargy which had
jeopardised its very existence. Really, at the time of which I write and
in the particular locality to which I refer, decent godly people were
obliged to forsake the Parish Church, and to seek in the neighbouring
conventicle the aids requisite to a religious life. At the same time,
there was little collision between Church and Dissent. The latter had
its own sphere, supporting, in addition to its local work, the Bible
Society, the Tract Society, the London Missionary Society, and the
Anti-Slavery Society. It had also its Sunday-school, very much inferior
to what they are now; and, if possible, secured a day school on the
British and Foreign plan. Dissenters paid Church rates, which the
wealthy Churchmen were not ashamed to collect. They gave the parson his
tithes without a murmur, and politically they were all on the side of the
Whigs, to whom they were indebted for the repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts--barbarous laws--which had ostracised intelligent and
conscientious Dissenters from all parochial and municipal and
Parliamentary life. When I was a boy no one could be a parish constable
without going through the hideous farce of taking the Sacrament at his
Parish Church. It was the Dissenters who created the public opinion
which enabled Sir Robert Peel and the Iron Duke to grant Roman Catholic
emancipation. It was they who carried reform and abolished rotten
boroughs, and gave Manchester and Sheffield and Birmingham the
representatives which the Tories, and especially the parsons, would have
denied them. To be a reformer was held by the clergy and gentry to be a
rogue and rascal of the first rank. I cannot call to mind any public
action taken in support of the suffering and the poor to which the clergy
and the gentry in our village, or in any of the villages round, lent any
support whatever. As regards the great Anti-Slavery agitation, for
instance, the only meeting on the subject was held in our chapel, where a
Captain Pilkington came down from London to lecture, and touched all our
hearts as he showed the lash and the chains, and the other instruments of
torture which that cruel system sanctioned and required, and you may be
quite sure that when next day I, with boyish pride, pardonable under the
circumstances, was sent round to get signatures for a petition to
Parliament on the subject, it was not long before I got my paper filled.
Naturally the Dissenters were active in the work, for had not one of
their number--poor Smith, missionary at Demerara--been foully murdered by
Demerara magistrates and planters because he took the part of the black
slave against his white owner and tyrant? Yet I was disgusted, after
remembering the effect produced in our Suffolk village by the captain's
eloquence, to read thirty years after in Sir George Stephens's
"Anti-Slavery Recollections," that "Pilkington was a pleasing lecturer,
and won over many by his amiable manners, but that he wanted power, and
resigned the duty in about six months." In our simple village it was
enough for us that a lecturer or speaker came from London; or as the
country people called it Lunnen. That was a sufficient guarantee for us
of his talent, his respectability, and his power. Since then the scales
have fallen even from the eyes of the rustic, and he no longer sees men
as trees walking. Railways have rendered the journey to London
perilously easy. Hodge, in the vain hope to better himself, has left his
village home, its clear skies, its bracing air, its healthy toil, its
simple hours, and gone to live in the crowded slums. It may be that he
earns better wages, but you may buy gold too dear. A healthy rustic is
far happier in his village. It is there he should strive to live, rather
than in the town; and a time may come when English legislators will have
wisdom enough to do something to plant the people on the land, rather
than compel them to come to town, to be poisoned by its bad air, its
dangerous companionship, and its evil ways.
As regards intelligence, we were in a poor way. On Saturdays _The
Suffolk Chronicle_ appeared, much to the delight of the Radicals, while
the Tories were cheered by _The Ipswich Journal_. At a later time _The
Patriot_ came to our house, and we got an idea of what was going on in
the religious and Dissenting world. Foster's Essays were to be seen on
many shelves, and later on the literary and religious speculations of
Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, and Dick's writings had also a wonderful sale. I
fancy no one cares much now for any of the writers I have named. Such is
fame!
As a boy it seemed to me I had too much of the Assembly's Catechism and
Virgil, to whose poetic beauties I was somewhat blind. I resolved to run
away, as I fancied there was something better and brighter than village
life. Religion was not attractive to me. Sunday was irksome. The land
was barren, from Dan to Beersheba. I longed for the conflict and
excitement and life of the distant town, and I ran away unconscious of
the pain I should inflict on parents I dearly loved. Oh, that running
away! If I live--and there is little chance of that--to the age of
Methuselah I shall never forget it! It took place in the early morn of a
long summer's day. The whole scene rises distinctly before me. I see
myself giving a note to my sister for father and mother when they came
down to breakfast, I see myself casting an eye to the bedroom window to
see if there was any chance of their being up and so stopping the
enterprise on which I had set my mind. Happily, as I thought, the blinds
were down and there was nothing to forbid my opening the garden gate and
finding myself on the London road. I was anxious to be off and yet loth
to leave. I had a small parcel under my arm, consisting of very small
belongings; and I was free of Latin and the Assembly Catechism, free as
the air--my own master. All the world was hushed in slumber. There was
no one to stop me or bid me return to the roof where I had been happy,
and to the parents whom I was to return to, to love more than I had ever
done before, and whom it then saddened me to think that I might never see
again. Not a soul was in the street, and the few shops which adorned it
were shut up--cottagers and shopkeepers, they were all in the arms of
Morpheus. I hastened on, not wishing to be seen by any one; but there
was no fear of that, only cows, horses at grass, and pigs and hens and
birds were conscious of my flight, and they regarded me with the
indifference with which a Hottentot would view an ape. In my path was a
hill on which I stayed awhile to take a last look at the deserted
village. The white smoke was then curling up from the chimneys and the
common round of daily life was about to begin. How peaceful it all
seemed. What a contrast to my beating heart! There was not one of those
cottages behind into which I had not been with my father as he visited
the poor and the afflicted--not a lane or street along which I had not
trundled my hoop with boyish glee--not a meadow into which I had not gone
in search of buttercups and cowslips and primroses or bird's nests. I
only met one man I knew, the miller, as he came from the mill where he
had been at work all night, and of him I stood somewhat in awe, for once
when the mill was being robbed he had sat up alone in darkness in the
mill till the robbers came in, when he looked, through a hole in the
upper floor, as they were at their wicked work below, and had thus
identified them; and I had seen them in a cart on their way to Beccles
gaol. Perhaps, thought I, he will stop me and ask me what I am about;
but he did nothing of the kind, and henceforth the way was clear for me
to London, where I was to fight the battle of life. Did I not write
poetry, and did not I know ladies who were paid a guinea a page for
writing for the Annuals, and could not I do the same? And thus thinking
I walked three miles till I came to a small beershop, where I had a
biscuit and a glass of beer. The road from thence was new to me, and how
I revelled in the stateliness of the trees as I passed a nobleman's (Earl
Stradbrooke's) mansion and park. In another hour or so I found myself at
Yoxford, then and still known as the Garden of Suffolk. There lived a
Mr. Bird, a Suffolk poet of some note in his day. On him I called. He
gave me a cordial welcome, kept me to dinner, and set me to play with his
children. Alas! Yoxford was to me what Capua was to Hannibal--I got no
further; in fact, my father traced me to the house, and I had nothing for
it but to abandon my London expedition and return home. I don't think I
was very sorry that my heroic enterprise had thus miscarried. What
annoyed me most was that I was sent home in an open cart, and as we got
into the street all the women came to their doors to see Master James
brought back. I did not like being thus paraded as a show. I found my
way to the little attic in which I slept, not quite so much of a hero as
I had felt myself in the early morn.
It was a stirring time. The nation was being stirred, as it was never
before or since, with the struggle for Reform. The excitement reached us
in our out-of-the-way village. We were all Whigs, all bursting with
hope. Yet some of the respectable people who feared Sir Thomas Gooch
were rather alarmed by my father's determination to vote against him--the
sitting Member--and to support the Liberal candidate. People do not read
Parliamentary debates now. They did then, and not a line was skipped. I
was a Radical. An old grocer in the village had lent me Hone's "House
that Jack Built," and similar pamphlets, all illustrated by Cruikshank.
My eyes were opened, and I had but a poor opinion of royalty and the Tory
Ministers and the place men and parasites and other creeping vermin that
infest courts. It is impossible to believe anything more rotten than
that glorious Constitution which the Tories told us was the palladium of
our liberties, the glory of our country, and the envy of surrounding
nations. The Ministry for the time being existed by bribery and
corruption. The M.P. bought his seat and sold his vote; the free and
independent electors did the same. The boroughs were almost entirely
rotten and for sale in consequence of the complicated state of voting in
them, and especially in those incorporated by charter. In one borough
the right was acquired by birth, in another by servitude, in another by
purchase, in a fourth by gift, in a fifth by marriage. In some these
rights were exercised by residents, in others by non-residents; in one
place by the mayor or bailiff and twelve aldermen only, as at Buckingham,
Malmesbury, &c.; in another by eight aldermen or ten or twelve burgesses,
as at Bath, Andover, Tiverton, Banbury, &c.; in another by a small number
of burgesses--three or four or five, as at Rye, Winchelsea, Romney, &c.
As to what was called long ago tenure in boroughs there was no end to its
absurdity. At Midhurst the right was in the possession of a hundred
stones erected in an open field; at Old Sarum it was in the remaining
part of the possession of a demolished castle; at Westbury in a long
wall. In many other places it was in the possession of half-a-score or a
dozen old thatched cottages, the conveyances to which were made on the
morning of election to a few trusty friends or dependents, who held a
farcical election, and then returned them to the proprietor as soon as
the business was finished. In the little borough of Aldeburgh, where
Crabbe was born, the number of electors was eighty, all the property of a
private individual; at Dunwich, a little further on the coast, the number
of voters was twelve; at Bury St. Edmunds the number of voters was
thirty-seven; another little insignificant village on the same coast was
Orford, where the right of election was in a corporation of twenty
individuals, composed of the family and dependents of the Marquis of
Hertford. No wonder the popular fury swept away the rotten boroughs, and
no wonder that the long struggle for reform ended in the triumph, not so
much of the people, as the middle-class.