COUNTRY CARRIER’S CART.—INDEPENDENT BREAKFAST.—BEAUTY.—OLD INN.—JACK
UP THE CHIMNEY.—BACON AND BREAD.—BEER AND RUM.—LUDLOW.—AN APOSTOLIC
CHURCH.—THE POOR-HOUSE.—_Case_ OF A BROKEN HEART.—REFRESHMENT.
[Sidenote: _COUNTRY CARRIER’S CART._]
We rose the next morning at daybreak, and walked some miles before
we saw any body else awake. At the first inn that we found open, we
stopped to breakfast. In front of it was a carrier’s cart—a large,
heavy, hooped-canvas-topped cart, drawn by one horse. As any body who
reads Dickens knows, this kind of rural package-express is a common
thing on the English roads, the carrier taking orders of country people
for what they need from the towns, and bringing them any parcels they
send for; taking live freight also when he is not otherwise filled up:
David Copperfield, for instance. The representative of “Mr. Barkis” and
“honest John Peerybingle” was in the kitchen of the public house, and
very glad to see us, pressing us politely to drink from his glass, and
recommending the ale as the best on the road.
The house, however, was of a very humble character; the “good woman”
was gone to market, and the landlord, though very amiable and desirous
to please, was very stupid and ill provided. He could not even find us
an egg, every thing having been swept off to market. There was some
good bread, however, which the carrier had just brought, and milk. We
found a saucepan, cleaned it, and scalded the milk, and, stirring in
the bread with pepper and salt, soon made a comfortable hot breakfast,
greatly to the admiration of our host and the carrier.
Fine English weather to-day: gleams of warm red sunshine alternating
with the slightest possible showers of rain. The country beautiful;
the road running through a rich, well-watered vale, with the same
high, steep hills as yesterday, but now regularly planted with wood to
the summits. Before us, they fall back, one over another, till they
become blue under the thick mists that curl about the tops of the
most distant, and then, again, blush red before the sun, as the wind
sometimes lifts this veil.
Seeing a singular ruin a little distance from the road, we went to
visit it. It had been a castle, with a church or large Gothic chapel
attached. Different parts of it, having received more modern, yet
ruinously decayed, timber and _noggin’_ additions, were occupied as
sheep-stables, barn, granary, and workshop. A moat remained about it,
enclosing also a courtyard; and on the opposite side of this from
the main structure, was a high, four-gabled timber-house, with a
gateway through it, entered across the moat by a bridge, formerly a
draw-bridge, and with some remains of a portcullis. The woodwork of the
gables, and much of the timber, the heavy brackets and the doorways,
were covered with quaint carvings.
[Sidenote: _RUSTY JACK._]
At noon we stopped at a superannuated old stage-coaching house, going
at once to the kitchen, which was a very large room with heavy beams
in the ceiling, from which depended flitches of bacon; a stone floor,
a number of oak benches and tables, rows of pewter-mugs hanging about
the walls, and a great wide fireplace and chimney. A stout, driving
landlady received our orders; a piece of meat was set to roasting
before the fire on the old turnspit, and we were left alone to dry
ourselves. Soon we noticed that one end of the spit with the meat was
being raised, and we attempted in vain to readjust it. It continued
to rise, and I tried to disconnect the chain by which it was turned,
and which was now drawing it up the chimney; I could not, and still it
rose. I clung to it and tried to stop it, and hallooed for assistance.
In rushed the landlady, three maids, and a man-servant, and I yielded
the spit to them; but the power was too strong for them—their united
weight could not long detain it; up it rose—rose—rose, till the
prettiest maid stood first on tiptoe, and then began to scream; then
the landlady, disengaging the meat from it, and dropping it hastily on
a plate, fell back exhausted on one of the oak benches and laughed—oh!
ha, ha! oh! ha, ha! ha, ha! ho, ho! ha, ha, ha!—how the woman did
laugh! As soon as she recovered, she sent the man and maids up to the
machinery, being too much out of breath to go herself; and in a few
minutes the chain, which had fouled on the rusty crank at the chimney
top, was unwound and the spit lowered to its place, the joint put on
and set to turning again, all right.
While we were eating our dinner, five young men—labourers—came in
for theirs; most of them ate nothing but bread and cheese, but some
had thin slices of bacon cut from the flitch nearest the fire, which
they themselves toasted with a fork and ate with the bread they had
brought in their pockets, as soon as it was warmed through. All drank
two pints of beer, and, after dining, smoked, except one, who took hot
rum-and-water.
It appeared that while three of them preferred to spend their money
for beer rather than bacon, none of them chose bacon at the expense of
beer. The man who took rum drank two glasses of it, and the others two
or more pints of beer; but no one who took beer took any rum at all,
nor did he who took rum take any beer. A similar observation I have
frequently made. The habit of beer-drinking seems to weaken the taste
for more alcoholic stimulants.
We remained about the inn, looking at some pretty model cottages
erected by Lord Clive, until C., who had made a quick walk of nearly
thirty miles to overtake us, arrived, and then walked in to Ludlow.
Ludlow is a neat, pleasant town, beautifully planted in a bight of a
broad, shallow, musical stream, amongst high, bluffy hills. It has a
ruined castle, celebrated in Royal history, parts of which, half hidden
by tall old trees among which it stands, and adorned with ivy, are very
picturesque. There are fine avenues and public walks about it, and
just over the river, which is crossed by two bridges, is a very large
common, extending to the top of high and steep hills, which is used
as a public pleasure-ground. In the middle of the town is a venerable
old church, with richly-painted windows and many curious monuments and
effigies of Crusaders and learned doctors sleeping with their wives. In
it I also first saw a beadle in the flesh, and a very funny thing it
was, in cocked hat, red nose, and laced coat. There are many curious
old houses, particularly one of the inns, (“The Feathers;”) and over
the Ludford bridge there is a pretty little rural church and a number
of pretty cottages, both ancient and modern, the modern being built in
the fashion of the timber houses that I described in Cheshire.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH._]
Our chess-playing friend on the ship had given us a note to a relative
residing here, and having left it with our card at his house, he
very soon called upon us. He proved to be a gentleman of education
and refinement, and was extremely kind in his attentions and offers
of service to us. C. had asked with regard to the religious services
which would be holden in the town the coming day; after replying to his
inquiries, he remarked that he belonged to a congregation of Christian
Brethren, whose worship he would be gratified if it would be agreeable
for us to attend. They had no distinct organization, but simply met as
a company of believers in Christ, to worship as they were prompted in
the spirit. They liked to have any one join with them, who loved Jesus
Christ, whatever his theoretical opinions might be.
In this way commenced our intercourse with a body of men, who, even if
I thought their opinions most damnable, I could not help remembering
but with a respect approaching to reverence. During the week that
followed we saw many of them in various circumstances, and of very
different education and habits: some were ignorant, unrefined, coarse
of speech, and plainly narrow-minded, fanatical, and bigoted; others
of them were learned men, large-minded, truly humble, charitable,
generous, and catholic—and gentlemen, with as much ease of manner,
accomplishment, and polish as I ever met; but in our acquaintance with
them there was not one that did not seem to be constantly guided by a
spirit of the warmest love for all his fellow-beings, by the liveliest
and ever-working desire to see them happy and growing better.
The next morning I breakfasted with this gentleman, and afterwards
attended the meeting of the brotherhood with him and his family. It was
held in a plain “upper room,” apparently designed for a school-room,
which was well filled with people, representing every class, except the
aristocratic, in the community, females being slightly preponderant.
The services were extremely simple,—much like those of a Presbyterian
prayer-meeting, with the addition of a rather lengthy exhortation from
one who, I was told, was, like myself, a stranger to the most of those
present, and concluded with the administration of the communion.
Nothing could be greater than the contrast of the place and its
furniture, and the style of the exercises, with what I had seen and
heard at the cathedral the previous Sunday; yet J could not but
notice the marked resemblance between the simple solemnity of manner
and sincere unendeavouring tone of the gentleman who conducted the
ceremony of the communion, and that of his robed and titled brother who
performed the same duty within those aweing walls.
In the afternoon I went with one of the Brethren to the union
poor-house, which is a little out of the town. The inmates, so far
as I saw them, were nearly all aged persons, cripples, or apparently
half-witted, and it all appeared very much like a hospital. The
chilling neatness, bareness, order, and precision, reminded me of the
berth-deck of a man-of-war. Among the sick was a young woman who had
now for four days refused to take food or to speak; when broth was
set before her in our presence, she merely moaned and shook her head,
closed her eyes, and sank back upon her bed. Her disease was a broken
heart. A week ago her cottage was destroyed by fire, and her child
(illegitimate) burned to death in it.
At sunset we found much such a company strolling on the common
opposite the town as that we saw promenading the walls at Chester last
Sunday night. The shaded walks about the castle were also thick with
happy-looking, grateful-looking, orderly men and women, boys and girls,
superabundantly attended by healthy, sturdily-tottering babies.
In the evening C. called on the Independent clergyman. He spoke
highly of the spiritual character of the Brethren, but he evidently
regarded them as rather wild and untractable abstractionists. They had
drawn away several of the leading members of his flock, and, in his
observations upon them, he possibly showed a little soreness on this
account. He continued on terms of friendly intercourse, however, with
them.