More recently still another busybody endeavoured to deprive the village
of the reputation which it had long enjoyed as the centre of English
longevity. Now it would be impossible for any one to study the dates
on the tombstones in the churchyard without noticing how great was the
number of centenarians who died within the first fifty years of the
nineteenth century in the parish of Thurswell. There were apparently
eighteen men and fourteen women interred after passing their hundredth
year; indeed, one woman was recorded to have reached her hundred and
twenty-seventh year, which is a good age for a woman. The people were
naturally very proud of the constant references made in print to their
longevity; but one day there came down to the village a member of the
Statistical Society, and after busying himself among the musty parish
registers for a month, he announced his discovery that in every case but
one the date of the birth of the alleged centenarians was the date of
the birth of their parents. The investigator had noticed that all the
alleged centenarians had “departed this life” during the rectorship of
the Rev. Thomas Ticehurst, and centenarianism had always been his
fad. He had preached sermon after sermon on Methuselah and other
distinguished multi-centenarians, and he spent his time travelling about
the country in search of evidence in confirmation of the theory that
Methuselah, though somewhat beyond the average in respect of age, might
yet have been exceeded on his own ground by many people living in the
country districts of England. Nothing was easier, the investigator tried
to show, than for a clergyman in charge of the registers, who had such
a hobby, to assume, when any very old man or woman died in his parish,
that he or she actually was twenty years or so older; and as the
Christian names were nearly always hereditary, in nine cases out of
ten he accepted the registry of the birth of the father as that of the
lately deceased man, and the date of the birth of the mother in regard
to the aged woman, the result being a series of the most interesting
inscriptions.
I must confess that I myself felt that I had a personal grievance
against this busybody statistician. There is nothing so comforting to
the middle-aged as a stroll through a cemetery of centenarians; and I
had the most uncharitable feelings against the person who could make
such an attempt to deprive me of the pleasant hope of living another
sixty or seventy years.
But while we were still talking about the danger of permitting strangers
to have access to the registers, I was told one morning that a man who
had once been the gardener at the place which I had just acquired
would like to see me. Now, I had had already some traffic with the
superannuated gardener of my predecessor, and so I was now surprised to
find myself face to face with quite a different person.
“You were not the gardener here,” I said. “I saw him; his name is
Craggs, and he still lives in the hollow.”
“Oh ay, Jonas Craggs--young Joe, we called him; I knew his father,”
replied my visitor. “He was only here a matter of six-and-thirty years.
I was superann'ated to make way for him. Young-Joe, we called him, and I
was curious to see how things had come on in the garden of late.”
“You were superannuated thirty-six years ago,” said I. “What age are you
now?”
“I'm ninety-eight, sir,” he replied with a smirk.
I showed him round the garden. He said he could see that the things he
had planted had grown summut; and I walked through the churchyard the
next Sunday with the greatest complacency.
When I told the Rector that my experience of this grand old gardener
tended to make me take the side of Thurswell and the neighbourhood
against scientific investigation in regard to longevity, he assured
me that if I paid a visit to a certain elderly lady who lived with a
middle-aged granddaughter in a cottage on the road to Cransdown I should
find ample confirmation of the faith for which I had a leaning. The
lady's name was, he said, Martha Trendall, and she really was, he
thought, a genuine centenarian, for she had a vivid recollection of
events which had happened quite ninety years ago; and, unlike most
reputed centenarians, she remembered many details of the historical
incidents that had taken place in her young days; she was a most
intelligent person altogether, and had evidently been at one time a
great reader, though latterly her eyesight had shown signs of failing.
I made up my mind to pay a visit to this Mrs. Trendall, and thought that
perhaps I might get material for a letter to the _Times_ that should not
leave the scientific investigator a leg to stand on. A month, however,
elapsed before I carried out my intention, though the Rector thought
this was not a case for procrastination: when a lady is anything over a
hundred her hold upon life shows a tendency to relax, he said, for even
the most notorious centenarians cannot be expected to live for ever. But
when I managed to make my call I must confess that I was amply repaid
for the time I spent in the company of Mrs. Trendall.
I found her sitting in her chair in what is called the chimney corner
when it exists in its original condition in a cottage, but is termed the
“ingle nook” in those red brick imitation cottages which are being flung
about the country by those architects who concern themselves in the
development of estates. I saw at once that such a figure would be out of
place anywhere except in the chimney corner of a cottage kitchen, with
immovable windows, but a “practicable” iron crane for the swinging
of pots over the hearth fire. The atmosphere--thanks to the immobile
casements--was also all that it should be: it was congenially
centenarian, I perceived in a moment. It had a pleasant pungency of old
bacon, but though I looked about for a genuine flitch maturing in
the smoke, I failed to see one--still, the nail on which it should be
hanging was there all right.
The old woman was quite alert. There was nothing of the wheezy gammer
about her. Only one ear was slightly deaf, she told me when I had been
introduced by her granddaughter--a woman certainly over fifty. She
smiled referring to her one infirmity, and when she smiled the parchment
of her face became like the surface of the most ancient palimpsest: it
was seamed by a thousand of the finest lines, and made me feel that
I was looking at an original etching by Rembrandt or Albert Dürer--a
“trial proof,” not evenly bitten in places; and the cap she wore added
to the illusion.
She was, I could see, what might be called a professional centenarian,
and so might retain some of those prejudices which existed long ago
against “talking shop” and therefore I refrained from referring in any
way to her age: I felt sure that when the right moment came she would
give me an opening, and I found that I had not misjudged her. I
had scarcely told her how greatly we all liked our house before she
gratified me by a reminiscence of the antepenultimate owner: he had
died, I happen to know, thirty-eight years ago, and Mrs. Trendall
remembered the morning he first rode his black horse to hounds--that was
the year before he married, and his son was now a major-general. “A
long time ago,” I remarked, and she smiled the patronising smile of the
professional at the feeble effort of an incompetent amateur. “Long
ago? Oh no; only a bit over sixty years--maybe seventy.” The difference
between sixty and seventy years ago was in her eyes not worth taking any
account of. Her treatment of this reminiscence gave me warning of what
she could do when she had her second wind and got into her stride.
“You must have a great memory, Mrs. Trendall,” I remarked. “Was there
much stir in this neighbourhood when Queen Victoria got married? I heard
something about a big bonfire on Earl's Beacon.”
“'Twere no more'n a lucifer match in compare with the flare up after
Waterloo,” was her complacent reply; and I felt as if I had just had an
audacious pawn taken by my opponent's Queen. “Ay, Thurswell lost three
fine youngsters at Waterloo. There was Amos Scovell, him with the red
hair.”
“The one they used to call Carrots?” I suggested.
She brightened up.
“The very same--Carrots they called him sure enough,” she said, nodding.
“But you couldn't have knowed'un; you're no more'n a stripling as yet.
Doan't you list to all that you hear from them that calls theirselves
ancient old venerables; there's not a one of'un that's truthfully
old--I'm the only one; take my word for it, sir.”
I gave her to understand (I hope) by my confidential smile and shake
of the head that I was aware of the many fraudulent claims to longevity
advanced by some of our friends about Thurswell.
“Age? Age is an empty thing without a memory,” I remarked. “But what a
memory you have, Mrs. Trendall! I shouldn't wonder if you recollected
the news of Nelson's victory at Trafalgar arriving in England--oh no:
that was too long ago even for you.”
She bridled up in a moment.
“Too long ago for me?--too long, quotha! Don't I mind it as if it
happened no earlier'n last week? It were before I married my first. It
were my father that came a-bustling hasty like and wi' a face rosy
wi' beer and hurry, and says he, 'Nelson has broke the Frenchies on
us--broke them noble, and we may look for'un coming home any day
now,' says he; and there wasn't a sober man in the five parishes that
night--no, not a one. Ay, those was times!”
“Surely--surely,” I acquiesced. “But now that you can look back on them
quite calmly in the afternoon of your life, would you really say that
they were more lively times than when the Duke of Marlborough was doing
his fighting for us? You've heard your mother speak of Marlborough, I'm
sure.”
“My mother--speak! Why, I see'un for myself wi' these very eyes when he
come home from the wars--a nice, well-set-up gentleman, if so be that I
know what'tis to be a gentleman. It was when he come to pay his respex
to Squire Longden at Old Deane--the squire that married thrice, as
they said, the first for love, the second for lucre, and the third
for--for--now was it for liquor or learning?--Well, 'twere one of the
two. Ay, sir, those was the times--before there was any talk about
Prince Albert and the Christian Palace in London.”
“I should rather think so. And if you are old enough to remember seeing
the great Duke of Marlborough, I am sure that you may remember seeing
Oliver Cromwell when he came through Thurswell with his army?”
“Oliver Cromwell? You've spoke the truth, sir. I see'un once--on'y once,
to be exact. I mind'un well.'Twere in the mid o' hay harvest, and father
come up to us in a mortial great haste, and says he, 'Martha lass,
throw down that rake and I'll show you the greatest sight o' your
life--Cromwell hisself on a mighty skewbald.' And, sure enough, there he
was a-galloping at the head of a fine army o' men, with guns a-rumbling
and the bugles blowing--grand as a circus--ay, Batty's Circus with all
the fun about Jump Jim Crow and Billy Barlow and the rest. Oh, I saw'un
sure.”
“And Queen Elizabeth--I wonder if you ever chanced to see her?”
“Never, sir--never! 'Twere always the sorrow o' my life that the day
she passed through Ticebourne, where I was living with my grand-aunt
Martha--her that I was named after--I had been sent with a basket o'
three dozen eggs--one dozen of'em turkeys--to the big house, and her
ladyship not being at home I had to wait the best part of a whole hour,
and by the time I got back the Queen had driven away, so I missed
the chance o' my life; for being since my early years noteworthy for
speaking the truth to a hairs-breadth, I couldn't bring myself to say
that I had seen a royal person when I hadn't. But what I can say is that
I on'y missed seeing of her by twenty minutes, more or less.”
I began to feel that I might be overwhelmed if I were borne much farther
in the current of the pellucid stream of Mrs. Trendall's veracity; so I
rose and thanked the good woman for her courtesy, and expressed the hope
that the efforts she had made on my behalf to be rigidly accurate had
not fatigued her.
She assured me that all she had said was nothing to what she could say
if I had a mind to listen to her.
When I acknowledged to the Rector that the memory of Martha had
surpassed my most sanguine hopes, he was greatly delighted. I thought it
well, however, to neglect the opportunity he gave me of going into the
details of her interesting recollections. Before we dropped the subject,
he said what a pity it was that an historian of the nineteenth century
could not avail himself of the services of Martha to keep him straight
on some points that might be pronounced of a contentious nature.
Not many days after my interesting interview with Martha, the
professional centenarian, the decease of an unobtrusive amateur was
notified to me. It came about through the temporary disorganisation of
our bread service, which I learned was due to the sudden death of the
baker's mother. Entering his shop a week or two later, I ventured to say
a word of conventional condolence to him, and this was responded to
by him with a mournful volubility that made me feel as if I had just
attended a funeral oration, or an inefficient reading of “In Memoriam.”
It was a terrible blow to him, he said--a cruel blow; and he went on to
suggest that it was such an apparently gratuitous stroke that it made
even the most orthodox man doubt the existence of mercy in the Hand that
had inflicted it.
“No doubt, no doubt,” I acquiesced. “But, after all, we must all die
some day, Martin, and your good mother could scarcely be said to have
been cut off long before she had reached the allotted span. You know you
can hardly call yourself a young man still, Martin.”
He shook his head as if to hint that he had heard this sort of thing
before. I think it very probable that he had: I know that I had, more
than once. But I thought that there was no occasion for him to suggest
so much, so I boldly asked him what age his mother had reached.
He shook his head, not laterally this time, but longitudinally, and
distributing the flies more evenly over a plate of jam tarts with a
mournful whisk of his feather duster, he replied--
“She was a hundred and four last February, sir.”