BETTY TRAPPS COMES TO NOTICE.
The life of Rockville, Woodburn, and their vicinities presented
little to chronicle for some time. Simon Degge was angrily commented
upon by the neighbouring squirearchy, for having thrown open the
game on his estate to the farmers. “This is the way,” they said at
their mutual dinners, “with these plebeians. Having no taste for
gentlemanly sport themselves, they would like to see it annihilated,
and the landed proprietors reduced for amusement to flocking to
Castleborough, and winding cotton-balls, or manufacturing stockings.”
This idea was very much applauded, and made the ladies of the county
very merry. “We must all go to help the gentlemen,” they said,
“and seam hose, and help to ‘take in.’” Mr. Markham, the rector of
Rockville, though agreeing with his landed friends in the main idea,
said he was bound to say that Mr. Degge was rather a keen sportsman,
and a prodigious good shot. He had seen him drop his birds right and
left in a most masterly way; where he had picked up the skill rather
puzzled him. Certainly, it could not come by nature, as Dogberry
thought reading and writing did; but it must be admitted that he was
a prodigiously clever man. And, in fact, unless he had been, how
could he have got on so?
“How do good-looking fellows manage to marry rich heiresses?” asked
Sir Benjamin Bullockshed.
“Ah, well; but that was not altogether the way that Mr. Degge had
mounted into such fortune. No, no; it was too well known that he had
got rich before he got the rich wife. _He_ was not going to be the
panegyrist of Degge; he did not approve of letting either farmers or
hosiers loose on the game. By no means; and, besides, Degge had no
taste at all for coursing, nor for hunting.”
“How should he?” asked Sir Thomas Tenterhook. “Probably, in his
younger days he might manage to leap over a counter, but I should
like to see him take a good hawthorn fence with a ditch on the other
side, or a five-barred gate.”
“But he could do it; nay, I have seen him do it,” said Mr. Markham,
“in riding over his farm one day; and if he had hunted all his life,
he could not have shown himself more at home in the saddle.”
“Gad! Markham,” said Sir Thomas, “but Degge has turned your head
marvellously in a very little time. Why, you are a regular trumpeter
for him. By your account he is possessed of all the graces and
endowments of a specimen man.”
“Oh! don’t you believe it, Sir Thomas. It is nonsense,” replied Mr.
Markham; “it is useless to deny what is plain to everybody; but I
join you in all you say of Degge’s vulgar impudence in presuming to
snatch a property, as it were, out of the hands of such a gentleman
as Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, and in letting loose half the hosiers of
Castleborough on Sir Benjamin’s game.”
“On Sir Benjamin’s game!” said Sir Roger Rockville; “on all our game.
He has encouraged the poachers to an audacity never known before.
They all say, ‘There, Mr. Degge has shown his sense. He knows that
game is everybody’s.’ Our keepers have now no rest day nor night. The
fields, the woods, the copses swarm with poachers. After them, and
they are over the hedges into Degge’s land, and touch ’em there who
dare. Sooner than we should convict them, he would give every man of
them a keeper’s licence. That arch scamp, Joe Scammell, I am told,
sends cart-loads of hares and pheasants to Castleborough every week.
Can no one lay hold of that fellow? His offences are now so many, he
might be transported.”
“But what matters half-a-dozen Scammells being sent out of the
country,” said Sir Thomas Tenterhook, “when every labourer or artizan
is encouraged by the example of Degge, who is only a poacher on a
larger scale? They preach that all must live. Now let me tell you
something. Close to my estate, and by the high road to Castleborough,
there lives a shoemaker, in a village, who was had up and fined for
shooting a hare in his garden last winter but one. That fellow the
very next season took out a licence, for the right of a shot over his
own garden, and he could not be turned out of it. So Degge made him
one of his keepers, and thus qualified him; and all this last autumn
and winter, he has sat at his window and shot my hares and pheasants.
Not content with daylight, he has kept this fine game by moonlight.
Gad! the fellow is making a little fortune out of it.”
There was a universal murmur of indignation at such an instance of
unheard-of audacity.
“Yes,” said Sir Benjamin Bullockshed, “that is precisely the case in
point. My game is drained off by constantly getting into some one
of Degge’s fields, and being killed by one of his stocking-weaver
acquaintances. I say, Mr. Markham, spite of your praises of Simon
Degge, the man is a nuisance, a sheer, intolerable unmitigated
nuisance.”
“Hear! hear!” resounded round the dinner-table, in which Mr. Markham,
rather alarmed for his reputation, joined; and the ladies rose, to
retire to the drawing-room, expressing their hearty approbation.
Simon Degge, meantime, did not trouble himself about these wrathful
comments upon him in the neighbouring great houses. He had the
pleasure of hearing all throughout Hillmartin, that the people there
were highly pleased with the check he had given to Sir Benjamin
Bullockshed, whose injustice to the farmers of this farm had been a
subject of indignant comment for years. As his crops grew, he fenced
off what he wanted to secure from the game, with a wire fencing,
which he found perfectly effectual, leaving a considerable strip
along the woodsides to the depredations of these creatures. When the
harvest was got, he removed his wire-fence, and allowed the game
to wander anywhere, and all autumn and winter he found an abundant
supply for himself and friends, who had thus a great inducement to
come out from Castleborough for a good day’s shooting every now
and then. This was not less irritating to the Bullocksheds and
Rockvilles, than it was delightful to the people and farmers all
round, who not daring to open their mouths, yet saw with evident
satisfaction this poetical justice executed on men who had never
shown the least sense of justice in their own conduct whenever game
was concerned.
The objects of social improvement which interested Mr. and Mrs. Degge
in Castleborough, were introduced by them into the little arena of
Hillmartin. The condition of the poor was looked into, and their
distresses relieved. Their children were afforded a good school, and
many a comfort flowed unostentatiously into the homes of the aged or
the sick that was never known before.
Thus a new link was established between town and country, which,
though it did not extend to the Bullocksheds and Rockvilles, did
extend to the Woodburns, the Claverings, and some other county
families. By the intercourse of the Degges, the Woodburns, the
Heritages, and the Claverings, Sir Emanuel and his brother Thomas,
the rector of Cotmanhaye, his wife and son, a very charming little
circle was formed, in which English country life presented its most
genial aspect. After a few formal visits and dinings, Mr. and Mrs.
Degge began by degrees, one or other of them, or both together, to
drop in at Woodburn Grange unceremoniously, and the Woodburns at
Hillmartin. Simon Degge was glad to have something regarding his
farm or country concerns to ask Mr. Woodburn about, and to take a
ride with Leonard Woodburn when he went to superintend his own farm.
Sometimes they extended their ride to Cotmanhaye Manor, and had a
chat with Sir Emanuel, or, if he were absent, with the rector, who
was a zealous farmer himself, and rented a large farm of his brother,
on which his only son, Charles, resided, a couple of miles off.
They always found Sir Emanuel extremely affable and even jocosely
kind, and always familiar with all the topics of the day, whether
political or concerning the affairs of the country round. His peeps
into the worlds of the heavens did not seem to render him in the
least indifferent to or unobservant of what passed in this. He never
obtruded the display of his extensive knowledge of foreign countries,
or of men and things in the great world of London and the nation at
large, but these were frequently showing themselves in incidental
remarks on the topics under discussion. Frequently he ordered his
horse and accompanied them in their ride, and during the winter he
invited them to join him in snipe and woodcock shooting, these birds
abounding in some swampy places on his property, as did wild geese
and ducks about the reedy back-waterings of the river. On these
occasions he not only showed himself a dead shot, but careless of
weather and capable of enduring amazing exertion.
The festivities of the winter brought these families much together.
Woodburn Grange presented all the genial and gay abundance of
fare—fat turkeys and geese, mince-pies, pork-pies, possets, and a
world of light delicacies, blazing fires, and country sports and
dances, even blind-man’s-buff, turn-trencher, and other romps, which
had been preserved at the Grange from father to son as essential
customs of country-life. These had a novelty, and, therefore, a
greater charm for the young people from the town, than the more
ordinary dinner-parties and dances of the great halls. Even Sir
Emanuel Clavering became a laughing boy again at the rural revels of
the Grange, and vied with the lightsome, butterfly gaiety of Letty,
amid these domestic saturnalia. Sir Emanuel even opened his house to
several gay parties, and embellished his handsome suite of rooms with
a display of arms of richest and quaintest workmanship, caskets of
ivory of most delicate carvings, and others inlaid with jewels and
gold, with silken draperies of richest colours and strange devices,
and china jars and vessels, some of stupendous size, and most superb
forms, and painted enamelings. He himself moved everywhere amongst
his guests, as affable, kind, gracefully courteous and cordial,
as if he, too, never studied anything but to enjoy his fortune
and position as a finished gentleman. Except his brother and his
brother’s wife, he was now alone in his house, for his son was and
had been some time abroad. All were charmed with Sir Emanuel, and
wondered that he had spent so secluded a life in the country. Perhaps
the cause was not far to seek, when it was recollected that Sir Roger
Rockville, the Bullocksheds, and Tenterhooks had been his chief
neighbours.
As the winter passed, and the spring days grew in warmth and
pleasantness, the intercourse of these families grew too. Mr. and
Mrs. Degge would call and join the young people of the Grange in
their walks or rides, and Mrs. Degge would drop in and have a
pleasant chat with Mrs. Woodburn, Ann, and Letty, as they went on
with their different concerns. The great concern of Letty, indeed,
seeming to be to laugh and chatter, as if there were no such things
as care or matter-of-fact duty in the world. She had to show Mrs.
Degge the herds of young ducks and chickens, the birds’ nests in
curious places in the garden, the dogs, and the rabbits kept in the
hutches, as if she had been an actual boy, and to the evident delight
of their visitor, while a flood of intervening small-talk produced
bursts of merry laughter, which, reaching the house, made the graver
mother exclaim, “What _can_ that girl be about?”
A great variety in this little circle was furnished by the Friends’
family of the Heritages. It was not the custom of these worthy
Friends to give festive parties, nor did they frequent those of their
neighbours, if there was to be much worldly amusement, especially
of dancing, cards, or the like. They preferred to make familiar
calls during the day, on which occasions they were always extremely
friendly, and as pleasantly cheerful as any people in the world,
but always with a certain substratum of gravity and soberness.
These visits were generally made by Mrs. Heritage and her daughter
Millicent. The mother was sure to ask about what she saw going on in
farming household affairs. In winter she was very much interested
in Betty Trapps’s spinning-wheel, which, when she had nothing else
very pressing, was sure to be humming away in the warm, clean
house-place, as it was called, a sort of intermediate room between
the kitchen and the parlour, where the farm-men and the servants took
their meals, and where Mr. Woodburn furnished them with suitable
books for their evening’s reading in winter, but where the men
generally stretched their legs before the blazing fire, and dropped
asleep, and then stole off to bed. Betty Trapps greatly amused the
Heritage ladies, mother and daughter, with her country shrewdness and
plain-spokenness.
“Dost thou manage to get good tow?” asked Mrs. Heritage, one day.
“Oh, yes,” Betty said, “as good as I expect.”
“Dost thou not expect it to be good, then?” asked Mrs. Heritage.
“Yes, _I_ expect it,” said Betty, “because I look pretty sharp after
it. They wunna readily find a norp[1] in me.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Heritage, “there cannot be much cheating in tow?”
“There are tricks in all trades,” said Betty, dryly, “and there are
tricks in tow. I get mine from Widow Pechell, in Hillmartin, and as
I scrutinised it pretty closely when I first went to her shop, says
Mrs. Pechell, ‘Ay, thou may look, lass, but nobody is ever deceived
in _my_ tow, for they awlis expect a bit of bad in the middle, and
they are sure to find it there.’”
“That was candid,” said Miss Millicent Heritage, laughing gently.
“But didst thou find some bad in the middle?” asked Mrs. Heritage.
“Yes, sure enough I did,” said Betty; “but I just took it out of the
rock, and laid it on the counter, and said, ‘Now, weigh it, missis,’
and since then I never find any bad in the middle, because Mother
Pechell knows it’s just no use. She may try that on with norps.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Heritage, rising, “when I want to buy tow, Betty, I
will get thee to do it for me.”
Betty turned her wheel more briskly at this compliment to her
sagacity, and added, “You might do worse, Mrs. Heritage; and yet I
think Sukey Priddo can help you in such bargains quite as well.”
Sukey Priddo was Mrs. Heritage’s housekeeper, and a sister Methodist
of Betty’s.
“Oh! Sukey Priddo is a good, careful, managing soul,” said Mrs.
Heritage, turning round and smiling as she went out; “but not half so
sharp as thee, I think. Farewell, Betty.”
The Heritages, though they rarely gave parties, were always glad
to see any of their friends at tea at five o’clock, and after
that, in summer, to a walk in the grounds, and supper at eight,
soon after which they liked their friends to depart, as they had
family reading at nine, and all the house in bed at ten. It was a
hospitable, abundant house. No good things of life were ever wanting
there, for though the Friends have always been a temperate people,
and have had a horror of drunkenness as actually degrading, they
have always maintained luxurious tables—a luxury wedded to moderate
indulgence—and have, combined with their avoidance of agitative
passions, the great and healthy longevity they display.
At the simple but plenteous board of Fair Manor, our friends of
Woodburn and even of Cotmanhaye—for Sir Emanuel had gradually been
drawn out to occasional visits as far as there, and seemed as if he
could not sufficiently admire the grave wisdom of Mr. Heritage, and
the oriental beauty of the fair Millicent—have met quite another
class and circle of persons. These were inhabitants of Castleborough,
chiefly Friends, and their habits of thought, speech, and opinion,
were a curious study to the more general denizens of the every-day
world. There was a tone of what might be called practical and moral
economy about them. Their plain dresses and simple manners were
accompanied by a mode of looking at everything so different from that
of the world—even the religious world in general—as made it rather
a piquant study to those not intimate with them. Having abandoned
all the usual amusements of society, as vain, frivolous, and often
very immoral, and, therefore, unbecoming true Christians,—hunting,
racing, theatres, balls, concerts, cards, and other games of hazard,
or of skill employed for gain,—even abstaining from music, singing,
or other things which might lead to lightness and dissipation,
they were thrown greatly upon trade for a resource against _ennui_
almost as much as for profit. In the domestic life, books of the
most moral and grave kind, and the discussion of the great topics of
philanthropy, of opposition to war, slavery, and political religions,
and plans for prison discipline, and the relief of distress, and the
spread of education amongst the people: these were their favourite
topics; but of these their conversation was of the simplest kind.
There was often a childlike character about it. In all great moral
points they were simple, direct, substantial, and without grace or
ornament,—grand. Brave and able must have been the man who could
compete with them on any of these heads, for they were on the rock
of eternal truth, and no human force could push them from it.
Outside of this they could find amusement in the most simple of
simplicities. You might see them at the tea-table at Fair Manor amuse
themselves—that is, the young people, the elder ones looking on—with
endeavouring to lift, by a close application of fingers and thumb to
their smooth backs, the small dessert or tea-table plates which they
used; or riddles and sober conundrums, could maintain a very innocent
mirth for a whole evening.
There were, however, a number of curious, and one or two remarkable
characters amongst the kind visitors from Castleborough, whom we
shall occasionally meet there. Not the least striking figures in
these parties, however, were David and Dorothy Qualm, and Sylvanus
Crook. These were part and parcel, as it were, of the Fair Manor
circle. David Qualm, as I have said, was the brother-in-law of
Joseph Heritage, Dorothy Qualm being Jasper’s sister. This worthy
couple lived, as we have said, at Still Lodge, just outside the
grounds of Fair Manor. Still Lodge!—a most appropriate name. The
very element of David and Dorothy Qualm was silence. So far as could
be observed, they managed to understand and communicate with each
other at the least expense of words conceivable. Their movements
were as quiet as their words. What they did, said, thought of, what
was their specialty, no one had ever been able to discover. And yet
their specialty was huge, prominent, unavoidable—it was quietude. No
passion, except it were a passion for peaceful inertia, marked, much
less disturbed, their days. Their house was small and modest, but
always exquisitely neat. It seemed a sin to tread on those bright,
nice, unfaded, unworn carpets. On the mat at the entrance-door you
read the large-lettered admonition, “Please, wipe thy shoes.” The
garden was always neatness itself—staid and tempered in the very
colours of its flowers. Dorothy Qualm had once been seen ordering the
gardener to dig up and throw out some gorgeously red peonies, as too
un-Friendly and gaudy in hue. David Qualm never was seen to garden,
to engage in anything active, or visible even, except in tranquilly
smoking his pipe, and in riding out on a small, stout Welsh pony,
called Taffy, by the side of his tall, portly brother-in-law, Jasper
Heritage, who rode, as befitted him, a large black horse. The high
and substantial apparition of Jasper Heritage, and the little figure
of pony and rider inevitably at his side, were familiar objects
around Woodburn. Their striking difference in bulk and stature had
inspired some wag to name them David and Goliath. Once Sylvanus
Crook was greatly scandalised by finding chalked on the wall of
the entrance-lodge where he lived, as he went out early one summer
morning,—
David was a little man,
Goliath he was tall,
And you may see them any day
At Fair Manor Hall.
Sylvanus hurried in for a sponge and bucket of water, and perhaps
never showed more adroitness in his life than in wiping out the
offensive rhyme before his wife could get a glimpse of it. But many
an earlier riser than Sylvanus had already read it, and it had
entered into the oral curiosities of Woodburn, and even travelled to
Castleborough.
In company David Qualm preserved the same solid reticence, the same
inexhaustible capacity for silence as in his own domicile. At home,
his pipe was his constant companion even more inseparable than his
equally quiescent wife. What was he? He was the companion of Jasper
Heritage, and that was all, so far as the most inquisitive mortal
ever knew. Did he and brother Jasper ever converse at home, or in
their rides? No one lives to tell us. Probably, in their own phrase,
they were brought into nearness with each other, as Oliver the
Protector said to George Fox at Whitehall, “Come again, George, come
often; for if thou and I were oftener together, we should be nearer
to each other.” David Qualm, in his brown Quaker suit, with his brown
wig and his cocked hat, with the ample brim suspended by silk cords
in the most orthodox style of that day of Quakerism, was a figure to
be carved in stone, for no stone could surpass him in the abundance
and perpetuity of silence.
Sylvanus Crook, the lodge inhabiter—his wife was the
gate-keeper—Sylvanus, the overlooker of the grounds and gardeners,
the house-steward, the purveyor of all necessaries, and bearer of
all important messages—in a word, the factotum of Fair Manor—was a
middle-sized man of forty, of light build, and clad in light drab,
with short knee-breeches and grey ribbed stockings. His hat, too,
was three-cocked, but had a less precise and more weather-beaten
air than that of David Qualm, but was generally believed to be
David’s, which in due course had descended on Sylvanus. In mind,
in manner, in all else, Sylvanus, however, was the antithesis of
David. Sylvanus had talk enough and busy mind enough for anybody.
He read—having the run of Mr. Heritage’s library, but foraged most
amongst Friends’ books: the histories of their trials, persecutions,
and the expositions of their opinions. Sylvanus was a sturdy champion
of Quaker principles and customs, and skilful must the polemical
acrobat be who ventured a wrestle with him on that familiar and
sacred ground. Many a combat had Sylvanus and Betty Trapps on the
comparative merits of Quakerism and Methodism, and on sundry topics
besides. Betty often turned the laugh against Sylvanus, but he was
like a true Englishman, as described by Napoleon—he never knew when
he was beaten. Sylvanus was the indispensable man at Fair Manor, and
was one of those who, though servants, are acknowledged as brothers,
and was admitted frequently to the society which frequented that
great resort of Castleborough Friends.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An ape; used now by the country people for a simpleton.