VILLAGE LIFE.
In recalling old times let me begin with the weather, a matter of supreme
importance in country life--the first thing of which an Englishman
speaks, the last thing he thinks of as he retires to rest. When I was a
boy we had undoubtedly finer weather than we have now. There was more
sunshine and less rain. In spring the air was balmy, and the flowers
fair to look on. When summer came what joy there was in the hayfield,
and how sweet the smell of the new-mown hay! As autumn advanced how
pleasant it was to watch the fruit ripening, and the cornfields waving,
far as the eye could reach, with the golden grain! People always seemed
gay and happy then--the rosy-cheeked squire, the stout old farmer with
his knee-breeches and blue coat with brass buttons, and Hodge in his
smock-frock, white as the driven snow, on Sunday, when he went now to his
parish church, or more generally to the meeting-house, where he heard
sermons that suited him better, and where the musical part of the
service, by means of flute and bass violin and clarionet, was ever a
gratification and delight. And even winter had its charms in the shape
of sliding and skating under a clear blue sky--all the trees and hedges
everywhere decked out with diamonds, ever sparkling in the rays of an
unclouded sun. We were all glad when the snow came and covered the earth
with a robe of white. We were glad when it went away, and the birds
began to build their nests, and the plougher went forth to turn up the
soil, which had a fragrant savour after the wet and snow of winter, and
the sower went forth to sow, while the rooks cawed in the morning air as
they followed like an army in search of worms and whatever else they
could feed on, and the graceful swallow, under the eaves of the old
thatched cottage, built her clay nest, and lined it carefully for the
reception of the little ones that were to come. They were always
welcome, for in the opinion of the villagers they brought good luck.
Abroad in the meadows there were the white woolly lambs, always at their
gambols, and leaping all over the meadows.
It was a great happiness to be born in a village. Our village was rather
a pretty one. Afar off we heard the murmurs and smelt the salt air of
the distant sea, and that was something. There were no beerhouses then,
and, alas! few attractions to keep raw village lads under good influence.
My father, as I have said, was a Dissenting minister, painful, godly and
laborious, ever seeking the spiritual welfare of his people, and
relieving as far as possible their temporal wants. I had to accompany
him in his pastoral visits, sometimes an irksome task, as the poor were
numerous and garrulous, and made the most on such occasions of the
infirmities of their lot. Some of the old ones were so worn and withered
that their weird faces often haunted me by night and terrified me in my
dreams.
Another thing that gave me trouble was the fact of being a Dissenter. It
seemed to me a badge of inferiority, as the ignorant farmers and
tradesmen around made Nonconformity the subject of deprecating remarks.
"Dissenters were sly," said the son of the village shopkeeper, the only
boy of my age in the village, whose father was the most servile of men
himself to the parochial dignitaries, and I felt that, as a Dissenter, I
was under a cloud. It was the fashion to call us "Pograms," and the
word--no one knew what it meant--had rather an unpleasant sound to my
youthful ears. This I knew, that most of the leading men of the place
went to church when they went anywhere, and not to our meeting-house,
where, however, we had good congregations. Many of our people were
farmers who came from a distance for the afternoon service, and at whose
homes when the time came I had many a happy day going out ferreting in
the winter and in the autumn riding on the fore-horse. As the harvest
was being gathered in, how proud was I to ride that fore-horse, though I
lost a good deal of leather in consequence, and how welcome the night's
rest after tumbling about in the waggon in the harvest field. Happily
did the morning of my life pass away amidst rural scenes and sights. It
is a great privilege to be born in the country. Childhood in the city
loses much of its zest. Yet I had my dark moments. I had often to walk
through a small wood, where, according to the village boys, flying
serpents were to be seen, and in the dark nights I often listened with
fear and trembling to the talk of the villagers of wretched miscreants
who were to be met with at such times with pitch-plaster, by means of
which they took away many a boy's life for the sake of selling his dead
body to the doctor for the purposes of dissection. But the winter night
had its consolations nevertheless. We had the stories of English history
by Maria Hack and other light literature to read. We had dissecting maps
to put together, and thus acquire a knowledge of geography. And there
was a wonderful game invented by a French _abbe_, which was played in
connection with a teetotum and a map of England and Wales, the benefits
of which even at this distance of time I gratefully record. It is true
cards were looked upon as sinful, but we had chess and draughts. Later
on we had _The Penny Magazine_, and _Chambers's Journal_, and _The
Edinburgh Review_, which had to me all the fascination of a novel. We
had also _The Evangelical Magazine_ and _The Youth's Companion_, a
magazine which, I believe, has long ceased to exist, and the volumes with
illustrations of the Society for Diffusion of Useful and Entertaining
Knowledge, and we had the book club meetings, when it was the fashion for
the members to take tea at each other's homes, and propose books, and
once a year meet to sell the old ones by auction. My father shone on
such occasions. He was a good talker, as times went--conversation not
being much of a gift among the members of the club, save when the ladies
cheered us with their presence. As a Scotchman he had a good share of
the dry humour of his nation. But chiefly did he shine when the brethren
met. Foremost of the party were Sloper of Beccles, who had talked on
things spiritual with Mrs. Siddons, Crisp of Lowestoft, Blaikie of
Bungay, Longley of Southwold, and others, who discussed theology and
metaphysics all the evening, till their heads were as cloudy as the
tobacco-impregnated room in which they sat. At all these gatherings
Alexander Creak of Yarmouth was a principal figure; a fine, tall, stately
man, minister of a congregation supposed to be of a very superior class.
One of his sons, I believe, still lives in Norfolk. As to the rest they
have left only their memories, and those are growing dimmer and fainter
every year.
At that time amongst the brethren who occasionally dawned upon our
benighted village were Mayhew of Walpole, good old Mr. Dennant of
Halesworth (of whom I chiefly remember that he was a bit of a poet, and
that he was the author of a couplet which delighted me as a boy--and
delights me still--"Awhile ago when I was nought, and neither body, soul
nor thought"), and Mr. Ward of Stowmarket, who was supposed to be a very
learned man indeed, and Mr. Hickman of Denton, whose library bespoke an
erudition rare in those times. Most of them had sons. Few of them,
however, became distinguished in after life; few of them, indeed,
followed their fathers' steps as ministers. One of the Creaks did, and
became a tutor, I think, at Spring Hill College, Birmingham; but the fact
is few of them were trained for contest and success in the world. As
regards myself, I own I was led to think a great deal more of the next
world than of this. We had too much religion. God made man to rule the
world and conquer it, to fight a temporal as well as spiritual battle, to
be diligent in business, whilst at the same time fervent in spirit,
serving the Lord. What I chiefly remember was that I was to try and be
good, though at the same time it was awfully impressed upon me that of
myself I could think no good thought nor do one good thing; that I was
born utterly depraved, and that if I were ever saved--a fact I rather
doubted--it was because my salvation had been decreed in the councils of
heaven before the world was. Naturally my religion was of fear rather
than of love. It seems to me that lads thus trained, as far as my
experience goes, never did turn out well, unless they were namby-pamby
creatures, milksops, in fact, rather than men. I have lived to see a
great change for the better in this respect, and a corresponding
improvement of the young man of the day. It may be that he is less
sentimental; but his religion, when he has any, is of a manlier type. I
never saw a copy of Shakespeare till I was a young man. As a child, my
memory had been exercised in learning passages from Milton, the hardest
chapters in the Old or New Testament, and the Assembly Catechism. If
that Assembly Catechism had never been written I should have been happier
as a child, and wiser and more useful as a man. I have led an erratic
life; I have wandered far from the fold. At one time I looked on myself
as an outcast. With the Old Psalmist--with brave Oliver Cromwell--with
generations of tried souls, I had to sing, as Scotch Presbyterians, I
believe, in Northern kirks still sing:--
Woe's me that I in Meshec am
A sojourner so long,
Or that I in the tents do dwell
To Kedar that belong.
Yet nothing was simpler or more beautiful than the lives of those old
Noncons.; I may say so from a wide experience. They were godly men, a
striking contrast to the hunting, drinking, swearing parsons of the
surrounding district. Hence their power in the pulpit, their success in
the ministry. But they failed to understand childhood and youth;
childhood, with its delight in things that are seen and temporal, and
youth with its passionate longing to burst its conventional barriers, and
to revel in the world which looks so fair, and of which it has heard such
evil. Ah, these children of many prayers; how few of them came to be
pious; how many of them fell, some, alas, to rise no more. One reason
was that if you did not see your way to become a church member and a
professor of religion you were cut off, or felt inwardly that you were
cut off, which is much the same thing, and had to associate with men of
loose lives and looser thoughts. There was no _via media_; you were
either a saint or a sinner, of the church or the world. It is not so
now, when even every Young Men's Christian Association has its gymnasium,
and the young man's passions are soothed by temperance and exercise and
not inflated by drink. There may not be so much of early piety as there
was--though of that I am not sure. There is a great deal more of
religion than there was, not so much of sensational enjoyment or of
doctrinal discussion perhaps, but more practical religion in all the
various walks of life.
We had to teach in the Sunday-school. My services were early utilised in
that direction, for the village was badly supplied with the stuff of
which teachers were made, and as the parson's son I was supposed to have
an ex-officio qualification for the task. I fear I was but a poor hand
in the work of teaching the young idea how to shoot, especially when that
idea was developed in the bodies of great hulking fellows, my seniors in
years and superiors in size. However, one of them did turn out well.
Many years after he recognised me in the Gray's Inn Road, London, where
he had made money as a builder, and where, though he never learned to
read--perhaps that was my fault--he figured for a time largely on the
walls as the Protestant churchwarden. "You know, sir," he said to me,
"how poor we all were at W--" (the father, I fear, was a drunkard),
"Well, I came to London, resolving to be either a man or a mouse"; and
here he was, as respectable-looking a man as any you could see, thus
proving what I hold to be the truth, that in this land of ours, however
deep in the mire a man may be, he may rise, if he has the requisite power
of work and endurance and self-denial. I fear he did not much profit by
our Sunday-school, though he told me he had put it down in his will for a
small legacy. Our chief man was a shoemaker named Roberts, who sat with
the boys under the pulpit in face of all the people; the girls, with the
modesty of the sex, retiring to the back seats of the gallery. In his
hand he bore a long wand, and woe to the unfortunate lad who fell asleep
while the sermon was going on, or endeavoured to relieve the tedium of it
by eating apples, sucking sweets, or revealing to his fellows the
miscellaneous treasures of his pocket in the shape of marbles or string
or knife. On such an offender down came the avenging stroke, swift as
lightning and almost as sharp. As to general education, there was no
attempt to give it. Later on, the Dissenters raised enough money to
build a day-school, and then the Churchmen were stirred up to do the
same. There was a school, kept by an irritable, red-faced old party in
knee-breeches, who had failed in business, where I and most of the
farmers' sons of the village went; but I can't say that any of us made
much progress, and I did better when I was taken back to the home and
educated, my father hearing my Latin and Greek as he smoked his pipe,
while my mother--a very superior woman, with a great taste for literature
and art--acted as teacher, while she was at work painting, after the
duties of housekeeping were over. I ought to have been a better boy.
But there were two great drawbacks--one, the absence of all emulation,
which too often means the loss of all worldly success; the other, the
painful and useless effort to be good.