THORSBY AMONGST THE WOODBURNS.
Amongst the Castleborough gentlemen who were on terms of intimacy
with the family of Simon Degge, and who, therefore, frequently was
to be met at Hillmartin, was a Mr. Henry Thorsby. This Mr. Thorsby
was a young man of one of the oldest and most leading families of
Castleborough. He was a manufacturing hosier; hosiery being one
of the two great staples of the town—the other being lace. These
hosiers employed a great number of frame-work-knitters in both town
and country. These people, in fact, handloom-weavers, worked in the
stocking-frame, receiving the cotton from the hosier, and bringing
in to the town-warehouse their woven stockings at so much per dozen
every Saturday. A first-rate house, therefore, employed some
hundreds of men or women, as it might he, for both men and women are
stocking-weavers, or, as they are termed, stockingers.
Mr. Henry, or as he was more commonly called, Harry Thorsby, was the
son of a great hosier, who had led a very free and _bon vivant_ life;
had been a fearful sufferer from the gout; and had died recently
from an attack of it which had been driven to the stomach. He had
left only his widow and this one son, who was regarded as one of the
most substantial burghers of the place. He had large warehouses, a
large and handsome house, in which his mother presided, and to whom
he was the apple of her eye. In her eyes her son Harry was one in a
thousand; never was such a handsome, good-hearted fellow; he was, she
said, as good as twenty daughters to her, and always had been.
In fact, Harry Thorsby was a very good-looking and pleasant young
man. He was something above the middle height, rather broadly built,
but extremely active. He had a handsome, somewhat large face, of what
is called the oval contour, well-defined features, a bushy head of
black hair, a rather dark complexion, and well-shaped black whiskers.
Thorsby, like his father, had a very sociable and rather jovial
turn—that was the rock in his path. His mother, indeed, had often
with tears shown him that danger, and implored him to take warning
by his father’s example, who had shortened his life by indulgence
in wine, and what he called good company; and who might have
possessed double the wealth, and the first place in the town,—yes,
not even second to Mr. Simon Degge,—had he avoided the snare of good
fellowship. Harry would not hurt his mother’s feelings for the world,
and he always said,—“Oh, mother, you need not have any anxiety on
my account. I am not by any means fond of wine, though I do like a
little pleasant company; but I shall not forget what I have seen, and
I shall not forget you, mother.”
Harry Thorsby was fond of his horse, and followed the hunt. He
might often be seen during the season, in his scarlet coat riding
out of town on a fine morning to the meet of the day, looking very
gallant and happy; and grave fellow-manufacturers as they passed to
their warehouses, while they nodded and smiled in passing, said to
themselves,—“Thorsby will be Thorsby; what is bred in the bone will
never be out of the flesh. Harry, like his father, finds something
pleasanter than his counting-house.”
But, exclusive of this taste for hunting, and for shooting, which was
equally a passion of his, Harry Thorsby was a good tradesman, and a
steady attendant on his counting-house and warehouse and business
altogether. Business over, however, he was much in the company of
the young men of position in the town. He was an extremely merry,
amusing fellow in company; told an anecdote well, and sung fairly.
His nature seemed to demand life and variety. He was extremely
excitable, but not to anger,—for he was extremely forbearing under
provocation; his tendency was to pleasure, fun—what is termed
larking—and to all the jollity of youth.
One of these larks he often was very merry over amongst his intimate
friends. He and his mother often breakfasted at a small round table,
and the breakfast was brought in on a circular-turned mahogany tray,
which had grown rather rotund at the bottom so that it would easily
turn round on the table. His mother being very fond of a gossip, and
having always a great deal to tell him in his _tête-à-tête_, had
scarcely began her coffee when Harry had despatched his first cup;
unperceived, therefore, he would gently turn the tray round, finish
her cup too, and then remind her that both were empty. This process
went on to the end of Harry’s three cups, when he would spring up and
say he must be off to business. “I hope you’ve made a good breakfast,
Harry,” his mother would say, rising at the same time; “as for me, I
don’t know how it is, but I feel neither fuller nor fatter.”
Harry went laughing slily to himself away, saying, “Well, mother, you
have been amusing me with your talk so much, you don’t know whether
you have breakfasted or not. Get some more. You’re never wrong if you
eat till you are satisfied.” And the old lady would say, “Well, my
lad, I think I must, for I feel quite sinking.” And he would leave
her wondering how it was, but pouring comfortably out another cup.
Another manœuvre was not quite so innocent. Being sent, as a boy,
on his father’s Arab mare, on a disagreeable journey, he dismounted
outside of the town, daubed the poor mare’s face and knees with mud,
and led her back home, saying that she had fallen and thrown him, and
hurt him so much, that he could not go. His clothes being smeared
plentifully, too, added to the probability of the story. But if Harry
had any feeling, he was severely punished for his ruse, for his
father, in a great rage, took the riding-whip and gave the innocent
mare, who never made a false step in her life, a most unmerciful
beating, and soon after sold her. This fact had reached Betty Trapps
through Sylvanus Crook, and she prognosticated something awful of so
cruelly artful a lad. Cruelty, however, was far from one of Harry
Thorsby’s sins of manhood. He showed often very humane feeling.
Thorsby was frequently at Hillmartin; and there was a belief that
he aspired to the hand of a rich Miss Mountain, of Castleborough.
However that might be, he soon had occasion to accompany Ann and
Letty home one evening, and from that day was as frequent and
familiar a visitor at the Grange. George Woodburn had seen something
of him at different times in Castleborough and in the hunting-field,
and there soon grew up a great friendship. They made appointments to
go to the hunt together. George invited him to come and shoot with
him; for, besides the game on Woodburn Farm, Sir Emanuel Clavering
had given George free range on his lands; and in a while Thorsby was
on the most familiar terms at the Grange. Everybody liked him. He was
so intelligent and so full of the spirit of good nature and of life
enjoyment. He often came and passed the night there, that he might
talk with Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn, and sing a variety of popular airs
with Letty, which Ann accompanied on the piano.
George Woodburn was a young man of very pleasing person, but
considered, by young men in general, peculiar. He had been educated
at Repton, the great Derbyshire grammar school, where he had made
the acquaintance of the sons of the principal nobles and gentry of
the county. Henry Clavering, the son of Sir Emanuel, their near
neighbour, had been one of his schoolfellows, and they had ever since
been great friends. They had enjoyed together all the pleasures and
sports of country life. Clavering was now away, and Thorsby was a
very acceptable companion for George. It was in the country and at
home, however, that this companionship was enjoyed, for George could
never be persuaded to join Thorsby’s social circles in town. George
had a steadfast dislike of towns and great companies. From a boy
there had been a certain gravity in his character, combined with
the utmost kindliness of disposition. He loved above everything the
country and country life. His heart and soul were in his profession
of agriculturist. In everything connected with farming and with the
objects of nature lay his whole happiness. He knew every creature,
great and small, that inhabited the fields; their haunts and habits
were as familiar to him as the doings in his own family. Every
species of insect was known to him, and might be said to be loved by
him. As a boy he could tell you not only of every bird that built in
the hedges, the orchard-trees, the cart-sheds, and the eaves, but
the mason-bees that built in the old garden-wall he could show you
passing in and out, and name them by names of his own, knowing every
one individually.
He had from a mere lad accustomed himself to exposure to all kinds
of weather, hot or cold, to battle with the wildest snows in looking
after the sheep, to the most drenching rains, following the plough,
or carting out compost for the land. There was no kind of manual
labour on the farm in which he was not as expert as any labourer or
farm-servant of them all. No one could beat him in mowing, reaping,
ploughing, threshing, or in any kind of work. He could plash a
hedge, cut a ditch or a drain, or fell a tree with any of them. His
strength was prodigious, from constant exercise, and from absence
of any enfeebling indulgence, for he had an innate aversion to much
wine or beer, preferring what he called the mother and staple of all
drinks—the crystal daughter of the rock.
In these respects George Woodburn was a most beneficial companion
for Harry Thorsby, for George’s unequivocal dislike of anything
dissipated, his equally unmistakeable enjoyment of the simplest
pleasures of the country, struck Thorsby with wonder; and when he
saw George’s real pleasure in the moderate number of friends that
he mixed with, and his enormous capacity for enduring exertion, he
wondered the more. In their shooting excursions he would have tired
down a horse, and never appeared to know what fatigue was in himself.
“George,” said Thorsby, “how I do envy you your philosophical
contempt for the pleasures of gay society, for you seem to enjoy what
you do like with such a genuine gusto.”
“But it is no merit, my dear fellow,” George would reply; “for all
those things that you call jollities and gaieties are my aversion.
To spring out of bed on a summer’s morning, and see the sun shining
over the beauteous landscape, steaming and smoking in the ascending
dew; to hear the cuckoo calling me in her quaint foreign tongue,
the thrushes and blackbirds shouting out their delight, some scores
of them, as if they had not hearts big enough for their joy; to
hear all the varied sounds of life, from the larks in the sky, from
the creatures in the yard; to see the cattle and the flocks all
luxuriating in the green or golden fields; to hear human voices
making up the concert of nature, and, above all, the merry tongue
of Letty, and the grave, loving tones of Ann, already out in the
garden; to mount my horse, and ride away through fields and woods
amid all the gladness of heaven and earth; to feel the fulness of
life beating in my veins and gushing through my heart—Ah! what are
all your simpering fine people, and your candle-light companies to
me! Thorsby, I see men solitarily passing their lives in the lonely
fields, or felling and fagoting in the lonely woods, whose very
existence will never be known beyond their own hamlet; and do you
think they are miserable? I tell you, no—so long as they can earn
a decent reward for their labour. I often talk with these men, the
Crusoes of the fields, of whom you fine people never think, or value
them more than the sheep which graze beside them, and I find that
God has breathed into them, frequently, in His silent language, of
the sun, the moon, and stars, of the whispering breezes of evening,
the colours of the sky, and the odours of turf and forest—things the
haunters of crowds and lamplit festivities never dream of. These
humble creatures, amid all their ignorance, in all their unvalued
life, go home at night to loving hearts, and taste a happiness in
communion with a few loved objects, which never can come to those
whose affections are dissipated by running over countless forms and
faces without settling on any. I would rather be one of these poor,
despised, unknown, uncared-for creatures than the finest, wealthiest
man or woman who lives the mere life of fashion and conventionalism.
“Our philosophical poet Wordsworth has exactly hit my idea of the
philosophy of existence:—
“‘Yet life, you say, is life; we have seen and see,
And with a living pleasure we describe;
And fits of sprightly malice do but bribe
The languid mind into activity.
Sound sense, and love itself, and mirth and glee,
Are fostered by the comment and the gibe.
Even be it so: yet still among your tribe,
Our daily world’s true worldlings, rank not me.
“Nor can I not believe but that hereby
Great gains are mine: for thus I live remote
From evil-speaking; rancour never sought,
Comes to me not; malignant truth, or lie.
Hence have I genial seasons; hence have I
Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous
thought.’”
Had George Woodburn been an austere or moping sort of young man,
such conversations as these would not have surprised Harry Thorsby;
but when he saw, that in everything George Woodburn found a pleasure
as fresh as a mountain spring, that he was at home in the evening,
all fun and playfulness, with his sisters, listened with delight to
their music and singing, though he took no share in these things
himself; with what sound sense and early wisdom he entered into the
conversation with his parents and friends on any topic of domestic
or public concern, he was deeply struck by it, and entertained a
profound respect and esteem for so uncommon a specimen of modern
youth.
There was one person, however, in the Woodburn Grange family, who
looked on the introduction of Harry Thorsby on so familiar a footing
as a real misfortune, and that was Betty Trapps. From the first
moment of his entering the house, she regarded him with a cold and
unwelcome eye. “Well,” said she, when asked whether she did not think
him a very pleasant man, “he is not one of my men. I say, if I must
speak my mind, dunna put much faith in him. Beware, I say, beware of
cockatrices.”
“Oh, Betty!” exclaimed the stern Ann, “how can you be so
uncharitable? Mr. Thorsby is a most respectable gentleman, known to
be so to all Castleborough. Surely a friend of the Degges and of the
Heritages cannot be a very bad man.”
“I did not say he was a bad man,” said Betty. “I only said he wasna
one of my sort.”
“Why no,” said Letty, indignantly, “he is not a Methodist; but for
all that, it does not follow that he is a cockatrice. What do you
mean by cockatrices?”
“Ah! Miss Letty, beware! beware!” said Betty, looking very serious.
“I say not to your young fluttering heart more, nor to any one else.
I see a great candle and a little, pretty, very pretty moth, a-flying
round it. If it burns its wings, then it won’t be the fault of Betty
Trapps.”
Letty laughed outright. “Why, Betty, you are growing prophetic; but
what about the cockatrices? I have often heard of such nondescripts,
but I never saw one yet.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Betty. “If you have not I wish you
never may. But as to this Thorsby, he crows when he laughs. He crows
and chuckles, and shakes those black locks of his. Oh! he is too full
of wild fire by half. See if it dunna run clean away with him one of
these days.
“‘A crowing hen and crowing men,
Twist off their heads and sleep again.’”
“Betty!” said Ann, “what do you mean with your superstitious rhymes?
Would you twist off Mr. Thorsby’s head?”
“Oh no!” said Betty. “I would not twist off his head; I’d only turn
it hind before, that when he thought he was coming here he might
be going somewhere else. I would not trust him or his head. I only
mean that crowing hens and crowing men are out of natur. There’s no
sureness of ’em. Mark! I don’t say there’s any guillery in this young
man; but he’s no stop in him.”
“Well,” said the young ladies, “we hope you and Mr. Thorsby will
become better friends as you get to know one another better. He
thinks very much of you, Betty.”
Betty shook her head. “I’ve said my say,” she rejoined. “What must
be, must be. It’s none of my doings nor shapings. Pray God all come
out right.”
Thorsby was always very affable and very pleasantly jocose with
Betty. Of course, he was not apprised of her unfavourable idea of
him; but he saw that she did not willingly converse with him, but
then he knew that she was reckoned an oddity, and he thought it
her way. As time went on Betty seemed to soften down a little. He
frequently offered her money when he had been staying there; but she
would never take it. “It is for the trouble I give it you, Betty,”
said Thorsby.
“You give me no trouble,” answered Betty. “I have just the same to
cook and to do whether you are here or aren’t here. You can give it
to Thomasin”—the other maid.
Thorsby found the very way to call Betty out was to give her a little
wipe about Methodism, when she was sure to take up cudgels, as she
called it, on that point; but this did not seem to raise Mr. Thorsby
in her favour.
As time went on the intimacy of this little circle of families
increased. Sometimes Sir Emanuel rode up to the Grange, and after
chatting for an hour with the ladies, and walking with them round
their garden, noticing their trees and young broods of different
feathered stock, and telling them an anecdote of his foreign
sojourns, and then carrying off the ever-ready Letty for a ride,
and picking up, perhaps, Miss Heritage by the way, he would invite
a number of them, and their parents, brothers, and sisters, to come
up and spend an evening, and see the wonders of the heavens through
his great telescope in the tower. Advancing spring and summer drew
the young people out to rides and walks through the fields and woods,
and to boat sails on the river. Summer made all busy at the Grange:
the swarming of bees, the making of cheese and butter, the labourers
all engaged in weeding the green corn, and coming in in troops for
plentiful dinners and suppers, kept Betty Trapps in constant action,
and in nimble bandying of country wit with these workpeople. Betty
sat at table and carved for them, and dealt out sly hits to one or
another as she dealt out plates well-heaped with boiled beef or
bacon, and plenty of broad beans, cabbage, and other vegetables.
There was often more genuine wit and humour circulating amongst these
sons of the soil than illumines the boards of very great men.
“Ah! you there, Joe Clay,” cried Betty, “let me give you some more
greens.”
“O! no more greens, thank you,” said Joe ruefully, “but a little more
cabbage if you please, Betty.”
There was a loud burst of laughter, which the uninitiated would not
have seen the gist of; but Joe Clay had married a Green, who led him
anything but a green life. Not even Xantippe could have cut gibes
with her.
“How’s your wife’s mother, Nathan Hopcroft?”
Nathan Hopcroft, a stupid-looking fellow, shakes his head. “Th’ owd
ooman’s stark dead, Missis; and I canna bury her; an’ I mun ha’ it
done.”
“Good rest to her,” said Betty, “she had long ceased to know much of
this world—and, Nathan, if you canna bury her, you know where to go.”
“Where?”
“To the club.”
“Ay, I’ve been there, an’ said I mun ha’ it done, but they said, ‘No,
the coffer were empty; I was very able to do’t mysen,’ an’ I ar’n’t.
Th’ pigs hanna done well this year, and ar Jack’s rabbits has been
stown—nothing but ill luck. Nay, they wanted me to pay th’ doctor’s
bill.”
“What doctor had you?”
“Owd Doctor Drawatter.”
“What! him with th’ pigtail and powdered head,” said Betty, “and that
fine gold-headed cane, and that smooth finiking voice? My gracious!
that such a fine powdery peacock sort of a doctor should come to
you, Nathan.”
“Ay, and what do you think he said? When I told him poor folks
couldna pay doctors’ bills—they had enough to do to get bread—he
says, ‘Pooh, pooh, man! the poor are the best off of any people;
they’ve got no dignity to support, like gentlemen, and gentlemen
doctors.’”
“There’s something in that, though,” said Betty, “though you laugh at
it.”
“Ay,” said another man, “if they would na plague us wi’ lawyers and
doctors, we might do. There’s Lawyer Metthard been selling up poor
Judy Selston for rent, poor old soul, and now she must end her days
i’ th’ workhouse.”
“Oh, drat that Lawyer Metthard,” said Betty. “He should be called
Meteasy, for he’s only too easy to meet, and not so easy to get away
from.”
Betty’s sally was warmly applauded, and was sure to be reported all
over the parish. “But, Betty,” says another, “pr’ythee give me just a
spoonful more beer.”
Betty, who was an English female Eulenspiegel, though she never
had heard of him even in his English name of Owlinglass, and often
amused herself by taking people literally at their word, took up a
table-spoon, filled it with beer, and handed it to the astonished
labourer.
“Nay, Missis,” he said, “I did not mean to be so very exact.”
“Why, then, don’t people say what they do mean?” asked Betty,
gravely; “how is one to know?”
The laugh went round at the man’s expense; and Betty suddenly calls
out to a humorous-looking little man in a soldier’s old red jacket,
at the bottom of the table,—
“Well, Tom Boddily, so you are out of the House of Correction again,
I see.”
“Yes, Missis,” says Tom, who had been shut up a few months for
making free with Sir Benjamin Bullockshed’s hares. “Yes, Missis,
and who should I meet as I was coming home that very day, but Sir
Benjamin’s own self. It was on the Furze Bank, where I had snickled
my hares. ‘So Tom,’ says he, ‘you are abroad again, eh? I hope you
have learned, however, now to know your own.’ ‘Oh yes! your worship,’
says I, ‘and a little of other folks’s.’ ‘Ah! thou hast learned too
much by half,’ Sir Benjamin said, says he, and rode on, but suddenly
turning round, ‘Eh! Boddily! here’s a gate thrown off the hooks. Can
you tell me who’s done that?’ ‘Yes, your worship,’ said I, and he
looked all alive to know. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I can tell your worship. As
Sir Roger Rockville says,—“It’s either Bill Newton, or Jack Shelton,
or somebody else.”’ The squire asked no more questions; but before he
could get out of ear-shot, I said, ‘Thank your worship for sending
me to the Stone Jug for three months; there’s better keep there nor
at home. I don’t know how I shall ever make you amends, unless I
come and dine with your worship some day.’ ‘Dine with the devil!’
he exclaimed, turning as red as Farmer Winterwheat’s new-painted
barndoor, and digging his spurs into his innocent horse—wishing, I
reckon, as it had bin me.”
With this anecdote of Tom Boddily’s, the whole rustic company rose,
with a great scraping of feet and scrawling of wooden chairs on the
brick floor; and sallied forth with much laughter and approbation of
Tom’s _tu-quoque_.
The summer was now in its glory. The elder-flower scented the breeze,
the pink wild rose waved in long sprays from the hawthorn hedges. The
breeze fanned deliciously the hot brown cheek of the milkmaid, as she
sang over her milking-pail in the golden-flowered croft. The lark
sung her lustiest and clearest strains over the heads of mowers and
haymakers at the Grange farm.
It was busy time at the Grange in the hay-season. Besides several
fields of mowing-grass on his farm on this side of the river, Mr.
Woodburn had a great extent of hay-meadow on the other side. This
hay they got up and stacked in the field, and it was sold thence to
Castleborough. Mr. Woodburn and George were every day busy with the
workpeople there till it was done. They had access to these great
meadows by a primitive sort of ferry over the Trent, just below
the Grange, to which a winding hollow lane, betwixt high banks and
hedges, led. The boat, or rather punt, was capable of taking a horse,
but not a cart over: carts and wagons they had to take over at the
bridge, lower down the river. Anyone could pass himself over at this
punt, by pulling at a chain which stretched across the river, and
was secured at each end to a post with a pulley. The ferry was known
by the name of “Wink’s Ferry,” from a man who once lived in a cottage
near.
When the haymaking was transferred to the home fields, everybody in
the family took an interest in it. Letty took a part, and joined
George and Betty Trapps in tossing about the grass, and making a
sport of haymaking. Wherever she was, there was plenty of talk and
laughter; and George, who directed the operations of the workpeople,
often saluted her with a shower of hay, from his fork, over her
head, telling her that she would never earn salt to her porridge at
haymaking; whereupon Letty would appeal to Betty Trapps, whether
she did not work famously, and Betty said, “Why, Miss Letty, your
laughter is worth a day’s work. I’m sure it makes me feel young
again.”
Ann would come out, too, and lend a hand soberly, but soon tiring of
it and sitting down with her mother, who brought out her knitting,
and sate under a shady tree, enjoying the scene. Mr. Woodburn was
leisurely at work, too; stopping, every now and then, to lean on his
rake or fork, and wipe his brow, and calling to his wife and the
girls to come and look at a mouse-nest, with a number of sleek young
ones all in motion, or to share the honey of some little colony of
humble-bees, clustered up in its brown cells not unlike a round bunch
of grapes.
The last day of haymaking was always a sort of haymaking fête at
Woodburn Grange. A tent was pitched under a huge-spreading oak-tree,
in a pretty hilly field opposite to the house. A number of young
people of the neighbourhood were invited to dine in the tent in
rural fashion, and also to take tea, if the weather was warm, on
the grass in front. On this occasion there appeared on the ground,
Miss Millicent Heritage, under the guardianship of her mother;
and Sylvanus Crook drove them thither, and was to assist at the
haymaking, which he liked. With them came also a new acquaintance, at
least to the Woodburns; for he was an old friend of the Heritages.
This was a fair, amiable-looking young man, who bore, however, the
learned title of Dr. Frank Leroy, and whom they had all heard of
as a young Quaker physician of Castleborough, who had a very great
reputation for talent, and for skill in his profession, having
obtained diplomas, with testimonials of the highest kind, from two
or three English as well as from foreign schools of medicine. Any
one looking at him at that time of day wondered where the signs of
Quakerdom were, for he dressed and spoke like any other gentleman.
There was nothing, either, very learned or formidable in his
appearance. He was courteous, agreeable in his manners, and, as a
stranger, somewhat retiring. He soon, however, became animated on
joining the other young people, seized a fork, and set manfully
to work; and the group, full of merriment and sport, were soon
reinforced by Harry Thorsby, overflowing with life and frolic. Our
company being collected, we will take a closer view of the rural
gathering in another chapter.