VILLAGE SPORTS AND PASTIMES.
It was wonderful the utter stagnation of the village. The chapel was the
only centre of intellectual life; next to that was the alehouse, whither
some of the conscript fathers repaired to get a sight of the county
paper, to learn the state of the markets, and at times to drink more ale
than was good for them. About ten I had my first experience of death. I
had lost an aged grandmother, but I was young, and it made little
impression on me, except the funeral sermon--preached by my father to an
overflowing congregation--which still lives in my recollections of a dim
and distant past. I was a small boy. I was laid up with chilblains and
had to be carried into the chapel; and altogether the excitement of the
occasion was pleasing rather than the reverse. But the next who fell a
victim was a young girl--whom I thought beautiful--who was the daughter
of a miller who attended our chapel, and with whom I was on friendly
terms. On the day of her funeral her little brothers and sisters came to
our house to be out of the way. But I could not play with them, as I was
trying to realise the figure I thought so graceful lying in the grave--to
be eaten of worms, to turn to clay. But I shuddered as I thought of what
we so often say:
There are no acts of mercy past
In the cold grave to which we haste,
But darkness, death, and long despair
Reign in eternal silence there.
I was sick at heart--I am sick at heart now--as I recall the sad day,
though more than seventy years have rolled over my head since then.
I have spoken of the excitement of the Reform struggle. It was to most
of us a time of fear. A mob was coming from Yarmouth to attack Benacre
Hall, and then what would become of Sir Thomas "Guche"? But older heads
began to think that the nation would survive the blow, even if Benacre
Hall were burnt and Sir Thomas "Guche" had to hide his diminished head.
As it happened, we did lose Sir Thomas's services. He was thrown out for
Suffolk, and Mr. Robert Newton Shaw, a Whig, reigned in his stead. How
delighted we all were! Now had come the golden age, and the millennium
was at hand. Pensioners and place men were no longer to fatten on the
earnings of a suffering people, Radical politicians even looked forward
to the time when the parson would lose his tithes.
The villagers rarely left the village; they got work at the neighbouring
farms, and if they did not, they did not do so badly under the old Poor
Laws, which paid a premium to the manufacturers of large families. The
cottages were miserable hovels then, as they mostly are, and charity had
full scope for exercise, especially at Christmas time, when those who
went to the parish church were taught the blessedness of serving God and
mammon. At one time the dear old chapel would hold all the meetingers;
but soon came sectarian divisions and animosities. There was a great
Baptist preacher at Beccles of the name of Wright, and of a Sunday some
of our people walked eight miles to hear him, and came back more sure
that they were the elect than ever, and more contemptuous of the poor
blinded creatures who, to use a term much in common then, sat under my
father. Now and then the Ranters got hold of a barn, and then there was
another secession. Perhaps we had too much theological disputation. I
think we had; but then there was nothing else to think about. The people
had no cheap newspapers, and if they had they could not have read them,
and so they saw signs and had visions, and told how the Lord had
converted them by visible manifestations of His presence and power.
Well, they were happy, and they needed somewhat to make them happy amidst
the abounding poverty and desolation of their lives. By means of a
vehicle--called a whiskey--which was drawn by a mule or a pony, as chance
might determine, the family of which I was a member occasionally visited
Southwold, prettier than it is now, or Lowestoft, which had no port,
merely a long row of houses climbing up to the cliff; or Beccles, then
supposed to be a very genteel town, and where there was a ladies'
boarding school; or to Bungay, where John Childs, a sturdy opponent in
later years of Church rates and Bible monopoly, carried on a large
printing business for the London publishers, and cultivated politics and
phrenology. It was a grand outing for us all. Sometimes we got as far
as Halesworth, where they had a Primitive meeting-house with great
pillars, behind which the sleeper might sweetly dream till the fiddles
sounded and the singing commenced. But as to long journeys they were
rarely taken. If one did one had to go by coach, and there was sure to
be an accident. Our village doctor who, with his half-dozen daughters,
attended our chapel, did once take a journey, and met with a fall that,
had his skull been not so thick, might have led to a serious catastrophe.
Then there was Brother Hickman, of Denton, a dear, good man who never
stirred from the parish. Once in an evil hour he went a journey on a
stage coach, which was upset, and the consequence was a long and
dangerous illness. If home-keeping youths have ever homely wits, what
homeliness of wit we must have had. But now and then great people found
their way to us, such as Edward Taylor, Gresham Professor of Music, who
had a little property in the village, which gave him a vote, and before
the Reform Bill was carried elections were elections, and we knew it, for
did not four-horse coaches at all times, with flags flowing and trumpets
blowing, drive through with outvoters for Yarmouth, collected at the
candidates' expense from all parts of the kingdom? In the summer, too,
we had another excitement in the shape of the fish vans--light four-wheel
waggons, drawn by two horses--which raced all the way from Lowestoft or
Yarmouth to London. They were built of green rails, and filled up with
hampers of mackerel, to be delivered fresh on the London market. They
only had one seat, and that was the driver's. At the right time of year
they were always on the road going up full, returning empty, and they
travelled a good deal faster than the Royal mail. They were an
ever-present danger to old topers crawling home from the village
ale-house, and to dirty little boys playing marbles or making mud pies in
the street. Of course, there was no policeman to clear the way.
Policemen did not come into fashion till long after; but we had the
gamekeeper. How I feared him as he caught me bird-nesting at an early
hour in the Park, and sent me home with a heavy heart as he threatened me
with Beccles gaol.
In the winter I used to go out rabbiting. A young farmer in our
neighbourhood was fond of the sport, and would often take me out with
him, not to participate in the sport, but simply to look on. It might be
that a friend or two would bring his gun and dog, and join in the
pastime, which, at any rate, had this advantage as far as I was
personally concerned, that it gave me a thundering appetite. The ferrets
which one of the attendants always carried in a bag had a peculiar
fascination for me, with their long fur, their white, shiny teeth, their
little sparkling black eyes. The ferret is popped into the hole in which
the rabbit is hidden. Poor little animal, he is between the devil and
the deep sea. He waits in his hole till he can stand it no longer, but
there is no way of escape for him out. There are the men, with their
guns and the dogs eager for the fun. Ah! it is soon over, and this is
often the way of the world.
To us in that Suffolk village the sports of big schools and more
ambitious lads were unknown. For us there was no cricket or football,
except on rare occasions, when we had an importation of juveniles in the
house, but I don't know that we were much the better for that. We
trundled the hoop, and raced one with another, and that is capital
exercise. We played hopscotch, which is good training for the calves of
the legs. We had bows and arrows and stilts, and in the autumn--when we
could get into the fields--we built and flew kites, kites which we had to
make ourselves. If there was an ancient sandpit in the neighbourhood how
we loved to explore its depths, and climb its heights, and in the
freshness of the early spring what a joy it was to explore the hedges, or
the trees of the neighbouring park, when the gamekeepers happened to be
out of sight in search of birds' nests and eggs; and in the long winter
evenings what a delight it was to read of the past, though it was in the
dry pages of Rollin, or to glow over the poems of Cowper. We were, it is
true, a serious family. We had family prayers. No wine but that known
as gingerbeer honoured the paternal hospitable board. Grog I never saw
in any shape. A bit of gingerbread and a glass of water formed our
evening meal. Oh, at Christmas what games we had of snap-dragon and
blind man's buff. I always felt small when a boy from Cockneydom
appeared amongst us, and that I hold to be the chief drawback of such a
bringing up as ours was. The battle of life is best fought by the
cheeky. It does not do to be too humble and retiring. Baron Trench
owned to a too great consciousness of innate worth. It gave him, he
writes, a too great degree of pride. That is bad, but not so bad as the
reverse--that feeling of humility which withers up all the noblest
aspirations of the soul, and which I possessed partly from religion, and
partly from the feeling that, as a Dissenter, I was a social Pariah in
the eyes of the generation around. My modesty, I own, has been in my way
all through life. The world takes a man at his own valuation. It is too
busy to examine each particular claim, and the prize is won by him who
most loudly and pertinaciously blows his own trumpet. At any rate, in
our Suffolk home we enjoyed
Lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day--the easy night--
The spirits pure--the slumbers light--
That fly the approach of morn.
The one drawback was the long-drawn darkness of the winter night. I
slept in an old attic in an old house, where every creak on the stairs,
when the wind was roaring all round, gave me a stroke of pain, and where
ghastly faces came to me in the dark of old women haggard and hideous and
woebegone. De Quincy hints in his numerous writings at boyish times of a
similar kind. I fancy most of us in boyhood are tortured in a similar
way. Fuseli supped on pork chops to procure fitting subjects for his
weird sketches. But we never had pork chops; yet in the visions of the
night what awful faces I saw--almost enough to turn one's brain and to
make one's hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
Country villages are always fifty years behind the times, and so it was
with us. In the farmyard there was no steam engine, and all the work was
done by manual labour, such as threshing the corn with the flail. In
many families the only light was that of the rushlight, often home made.
Lucifer matches were unknown, and we had to get a light by means of a
flint and tinder, which ignited the brimstone match, always in readiness.
Cheap ready-made clothes were unknown, and the poor mother had a good
deal of tailoring to do. In the cottage there was little to read save
the cheap publications of the Religious Tract Society, and the voluminous
writings of the excellent Hannah More, teaching the lower orders to fear
God and honour the king, and not to meddle with those that were given to
change. Her "Coelebs in Search of a Wife" was the only novel that ever
found its way into religious circles--with the exception of "Robinson
Crusoe" and "The Pilgrim's Progress," and that was awfully illustrated.
Anybody who talked of the rights of man at that time was little better
than one of the wicked. One of Hannah More's characters, Mr. Fantom, is
thus described:--"He prated about _narrowness_ and _ignorance_ (the
derisive italics are Hannah's own), and _bigotry_ and _prejudice_ and
priestcraft on the one hand, and on the other of _public good_, the _love
of mankind_, and _liberality_ and _candour_, and above all of
benevolence." Dear Hannah made her hero, of course, come to a shocking
end, and so does his servant William, who as he lies in Chelmsford gaol
to be hung for murder confesses, "I was bred up in the fear of God, and
lived with credit in many sober families in which I was a faithful
servant, till, being tempted by a little higher wages, I left a good
place to go and live with Mr. Fantom, who, however, never made good his
fine promises, but proved a hard master." Another of Hannah's characters
was a Miss Simpson, a clergyman's daughter, who is always exclaiming,
"'Tis all for the best," though she ends her days in a workhouse, while
the man through whose persecution she comes to grief dies in agony,
bequeathing her 100 pounds as compensation for his injustice, and
declares that if he could live his life over again he would serve God and
keep the Sabbath. And such was the literature which was to stop reform,
and make the poor contented with their bitter lot!
But the seed, such as it was, often fell on stony soil. The labourers
became discontented, and began more and more to feel that it was not
always true that all was for the best, as their masters told them. They
were wretchedly clad, and lodged, and fed. Science, sanitary or
otherwise, was quite overlooked then. The parson and the squire took no
note of them, except when they heard that they went to the Baptist, or
Independent, or Methodist chapel, when great was their anger and dire
their threats. Again Hannah More took the field "to improve the habits
and raise the principles of the common people at a time when their
dangers and temptations--social and political--were multiplied beyond the
example of any former period. The inferior ranks were learning to read,
and they preferred to read the corrupt and inflammatory publications
which the French Revolution had called into existence." Alas! all was in
vain. Rachel, weeping for her children who had been torn from her to die
in foreign lands, fighting to keep up the Holy Alliance and the right
divine of kings to govern wrong, or had toiled and moiled in winter's
cold and summer's heat, merely to end their days in the parish workhouse,
refused to be comforted. Good people grew alarmed, and goody tracts were
circulated more than ever. The edifying history of the "Shepherd of
Salisbury Plain" was to be seen in many a cottage in our village. The
shepherd earned a shilling a day; he lived in a wretched cottage which
had a hole in the thatch which made his poor wife a martyr to rheumatism
in consequence of the rain coming through. He had eight children to
keep, chiefly on potatoes and salt, but he was happy because he was pious
and contented. A gentleman says to him, "How do you support yourself
under the pressure of actual want? Is not hunger a great weakener of
your faith?" "Sir," replied the shepherd, "I live upon the promises."
Yes, that was the kind of teaching in our village and all over England,
and the villagers got tired of it, and took to firing stacks and barns,
and actually in towns were heard to cry "More pay and less parsons."
What was the world coming to? said dear old ladies. It was well Hannah
More had died and thus been saved from the evil to come. The
Evangelicals were at their wits' end. They wanted people to think of the
life to come, while the people preferred to think of the life that
was--of this world rather than the next.
I am sure that in our village we had too much religion. I write this
seriously and after thinking deeply on the matter. A man has a body to
be cared for, as well as a soul to be saved or damned. Charles Kingsley
was the first to tell us that it was vain to preach to people with empty
stomachs. But when I was a lad preaching was the cure for every ill, and
the more wretched the villagers became the more they were preached to.
There was little hope of any one who did not go to some chapel or other.
There was little help for any one who preferred to talk of his wrongs or
to claim his rights. I must own that the rustic worshipper was a better
man in all the relationships of life--as servant, as husband, as father,
as friend--than the rustic unbeliever. It astonished me not a little to
talk with the former, and to witness his copiousness of Scripture
phraseology and the fluency of his religious talk. He was on a higher
platform. He had felt what Burke wrote when he tells us that religion
was for the man in humble life, to raise his nature and to put him in
mind of a State in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he
will be equal by nature and more than equal by virtue. Alas! we had soon
Lord Brougham's beershops, and there was a sad falling away. Poachers
and drunkards increased on every side. All around there seemed to be
nothing but poverty, with the exception of the farmers--then, as now,
always grumbling, but apparently living well and enjoying life.
As one thinks of the old country years ago one can realise the truth of
the story told by the late Mr. Fitzgerald of a Suffolk village church one
winter's evening:--
Congregation, with the Old Hundredth ready for the parson's dismissal
words.
_Good Old Parson_ (not at all meaning rhymes): The light has grown so
very dim I scarce can see to read the hymn.
_Congregation_ (taking it up to the first half of the Old Hundredth):
The light has grown so very dim,
I scarce can see to read the hymn.
(Pause as usual.)
_Parson_ (mildly impatient): I did not mean to sing a hymn, I only
meant my eyes were dim.
_Congregation_ (to second part of the Old Hundredth):
I did not mean to read a hymn,
I only meant my eyes were dim.
_Parson_ (out of patience): I did not mean a hymn at all, I think the
devil's in you all.
Curious were the ways of the East Anglian clergy. One of our
neighbouring parsons had his clerk give out notice that on the next
Sunday there would be no service "because master was going to Newmarket."
No one cared for the people, unless it was the woman preacher or
Methodist parson, and the people were ignorant beyond belief. Few could
either read or write. It was rather amusing to hear them talk. A boy
was called bow, a girl was termed a mawther, and if milk or beer was
wanted it was generally fetched in a gotch.
Our home life was simple enough. We went early to bed and were up with
the lark. I was arrayed in a pinafore and wore a frill--which I
abhorred--and took but little pleasure in my personal appearance--a very
great mistake, happily avoided by the present generation. We children
had each a little bed of garden ground which we cultivated to the best of
our power. Ours was really a case of plain living and high thinking. Of
an evening the room was dimly lighted by means of a dip candle which
constantly required snuffing. To write with we had the ordinary
goose-quill. The room, rarely used, in which we received company was
called the parlour. Goloshes had not then come into use, and women wore
in muddy weather pattens or clogs. The simple necessaries of life were
very dear, and tea and coffee and sugar were sold at what would now be
deemed an exorbitant price. Postage was prohibitory, and when any one
went to town he was laden with letters. As little light as possible was
admitted into the house in order to save the window-tax. The farmer was
generally arrayed in a blue coat and yellow brass buttons. The gentleman
had a frilled shirt and wore Hessian boots. I never saw a magazine of
the fashions; nowadays they are to be met with everywhere. Yet we were
never dull, and in the circle in which I moved we never heard of the need
of change. People were content to live and die in the village without
going half-a-dozen miles away, with the exception of the farmers, who
might drive to the nearest market town, transact their business, dine at
the ordinary, and then, after a smoke and a glass of brandy and water and
a chat with their fellow-farmers, return home. Of the rush and roar of
modern life, with its restlessness and eagerness for something new and
sensational, we had not the remotest idea.