Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910. Forwood William Bower

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      The building of the church of St. John the Divine, at Fairfield, greatly interested me, and during my holidays I was taken up to the top of the tower to lay the first stone of the steeple. When the church was consecrated in 1854, Bishop Graham, of Chester, lunched at the "Hollies," my father being the chairman of the Building Committee.

      After spending two years at a dame's school at Kensington, I was sent to the upper school of the Liverpool Collegiate. I was placed in the preparatory school, under the Rev. Mr. Hiley. From the preparatory school I proceeded to the sixth class. My career was by no means distinguished; four times a day I walked up and down from Edge Lane to school. My companions were Tom and Hugh Glynn; they, like myself, made but little headway. Dr. T. Glynn is now one of the leaders of our medical profession, and a short time ago I asked him how it was that we as boys were so stupid. He replied that our walk of eight miles a day exhausted all our physical and mental energies, and we were left good for nothing; and I might add we had in those days little or no relaxation in the shape of games. There was a little cricket in the summer, but this was the only game ever played, so that our school-days were days of unrelieved mental and physical work, which entirely overtaxed our strength. The Rev. J. S. Howson, the principal of the Collegiate, was very much beloved by the boys. I was a very small boy, but not too small for the principal to notice and address to him a few kindly words; in after life, when he became Dean of Chester, he did not forget me. His sympathy and love for boys and his power of entering into their feelings made him a very popular head-master.

      At the age of 14 I was sent to Dr. Heldenmier's school at Worksop, in Nottinghamshire, where the Pestalozzian system of education was carried on. It was a celebrated school; many Liverpool boys were there with me, the Muspratts, Hornbys, Langtons, etc., and though we worked hard we had plenty of relaxation in the workshop and the playing fields, besides long walks in the lovely parks that surround Worksop, and which are known as the Dukeries. During these walks we were encouraged to botanise, collect birds' eggs, etc., and the love of nature which was in this way inculcated has been one of the delights of my life. The noble owners of these parks were most kind to the boys. We were frequently invited to Clumber, the residence of the Duke of Newcastle, who was Minister of War. The Crimean war was then being waged, and we considered the duke a very great person; and a few words of kindly approbation he spoke to me are among the sunny memories of my school days. The Duke of Portland, who was suffering from some painful malady, which caused him to hide himself from the world, was also always glad to see the boys, and to show us the great subterranean galleries he was constructing at Welbeck; but our greatest delights were skating on the lake at Clumber in winter, and our excursions to Roch Abbey and to Sherwood Forest in the summer. The delight of those days will never fade from my memory. We used to return loaded with treasures, birds' eggs, butterflies, fossils, and specimens of wild flowers. In the autumn Sir Thomas White always gave us a day's outing, beating up game for him; this we also greatly enjoyed; and how we devoured the bread and cheese and small beer which the keepers provided us for lunch!

      We were taken by the directors of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway to the opening of the new docks at Grimsby. The directors had a special train which stopped to pick up the boys at Worksop. Charles Dickens was of the party. On the return journey, I was in his carriage; he gave me a large cigar to smoke – the first, and the last cigar I ever smoked, for the effect was disastrous.

      My school days at Worksop were happy days. We spent much time in studying the natural sciences; we became proficient in joinery and mechanics; and there was a nice gentlemanly tone in the school. My great friend was George Pim, of Brenanstown House, Kingstown, Ireland. We never lost sight of each other. He entered the office of Leech, Harrison and Forwood, and became a partner with us in Bombay, and afterwards in New York; he died there in 1877, at the age of 34. A fine, handsome, bright fellow; to me he was more than a brother, and his like I shall never see again. The friend of my boyhood, of my young manhood, my constant companion; he was a good fellow.

      Richard Cobden's only son was at Worksop, a bright, handsome boy. His father doted upon him, and often came down to visit him, when he took some of the boys out to dine with him at the "Red Lion"; he was a very pleasant, genial man, fond of suggesting practical jokes, which we played off on our schoolmates on our return to school. Poor Dick Cobden was too full of animal spirits ever to settle down to serious school work. He had great talent, but no power of application. He died soon after leaving Worksop.

      When at Worksop I distinguished myself in mathematics, and my master was very anxious I should proceed to Cambridge, but my father had other views, and thought a university training would spoil me for a business career. I have ever regretted it. Every young man who shows any aptitude should have the opportunity of proceeding to a university, but in those days the number of university graduates was small, and the advantage of an advanced education was not generally recognised. Life was more circumscribed and limited, and a level of education which suited our forefathers, and had made them prosperous men, was considered sufficient: more might be unsettling. The only thing to be aimed at and secured was the power and capacity to make a living; if other educational accomplishments followed, all well and good, but they were considered of very secondary importance.

      Our home life was quiet and uninteresting, very happy in its way because we knew no other. Our greatest dissipations were evening parties, with a round game of cards; dinner parties were rare, and balls events which came only very occasionally. Sundays were sadly dull days; all newspapers were carefully put away, and as children we had to learn the collect and gospel. Our only dissipation was a short walk in the afternoon. Oh! those deadly dull Sundays; how they come up before me in all their depressing surroundings; but religion was then a gloomy business. Our parsons taught us Sunday after Sunday that God was a God of vengeance, wielding the most terrible punishment of everlasting fire, and only the few could be saved from his wrath. How all this is now happily changed! The God of my youth was endowed with all the attributes of awe-inspiring terror, which we to-day associate with the evil one. It is a wonder that people were as virtuous as they were: there was nothing to hope for, and men might reasonably have concluded to make the best of the present world, as heaven was impossible of attainment. In my own case, partaking of the Holy Communion was fraught, I was taught, with so much risk, that for years after I was confirmed I dare not partake of the Sacrament. What a revolution in feeling and sentiment! How much brighter and more reasonable views now obtain! God is to us the God of Love. We look around us and see that all nature proclaims His love, and the more fully we recognise that love is the governing principle of His universe, the nearer we realise and act up to the ideal of a Christian life. Love and sympathy have been brought back to the world, and we see their influence wrought out in the drawing together of the classes, in the wider and more generous distribution of the good things of life, and in the recognition that heaven is not so far from any of us. We see that as the tree falls so will it lie; that in this life we are moulding the life of our future, and that our heaven will be but the complement of our earthly life, made richer and fuller, freed from care and sin, and overarched by the eternal presence of God, whose love will permeate the whole eternal firmament.

      Charles Kingsley was one of the apostles of this new revelation, which brought hope back to the world, and filled all men with vigour to work under the encouragement which the God of Love held out to us. It has broadened and deepened the channels of human sympathy and uplifted us to a higher level of life and duty.

      During my school days I spent several of my summer holidays in Scotland with my mother, who was a patient of Professor Simpson in Edinburgh, and usually resided two or three months in that city. One summer holiday I stayed with old John Woods, at Greenock. He was the father of shipbuilding on the Clyde. He was then building a wooden steamer for my father to trade between Lisbon and Oporto. Another summer holiday I spent with Mr. Cox, shipbuilder, of Bideford, in Devon, who was building the sailing ship "Bucton Castle," of 1,100 tons, for my father's firm. The knowledge of shipbuilding I obtained during these visits has been of incalculable value to me in after life. Another of my summer vacations was occupied in obtaining signatures to a monster petition to the Liverpool corporation praying them to buy СКАЧАТЬ