Christopher Crayon's Recollections. J. Ewing Ritchie

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СКАЧАТЬ racing down the village street, guarded by a dragon of a governess, and I get out of their way, for I am a rustic, and have all the rustic’s fear of what the East Anglian peasant was used to term “morthers”; and then comes the squire of the next parish, in as shabby a trap as you ever set eyes on, and the fat farmer, who hails me for a walk, and going to the end of a field, joyously, or as joyously as his sluggish nature will permit, exclaims, “There, Master James, now you can see three farms.” My friend was a utilitarian, and could only see the beautiful in the useful. Then I call up the memory of the village grocer, a stern, unbending Radical, who delights me with the loan of Cruikshank’s illustrations to the “House that Jack Built,” mysteriously wrapped in brown paper and stowed away between the sugar and treacle. He does not talk much, but he thinks the more. And now it strikes me that conversation was not much cultivated in the villages of East Anglia in 1837, and yet there were splendid exceptions—on such evenings as when the members of the Book Club met in our parlour, where the best tea things were laid, and where a kindly mother in black silk and white shawl and quakerish cap made tea; where an honoured father, who now sleeps far away from the scene of his life-long labours, indulged in a genial humour, which set at ease the shyest of his guests; and again, what a splendid talk there was when the brethren in black from Beccles, from Yarmouth, from Halesworth, gathered for fraternal purposes, perhaps once a quarter, to smoke long pipes, to discuss metaphysics and politics, and to puzzle their heads over divines and systems that have long ceased to perplex the world. Few and simple were East Anglian annals then. It was seldom the London coach, the Yarmouth Mail and Telegraph brought a cockney down to astonish us with his pert ways and peculiar talk. Life was slow, but it was kindly, nevertheless. There was no fear of bacteria, nor of poison in the pot, nor of the ills of bad drainage. We were poor, but honest. Are we better now?

      In 1837 the railways which unite the country under the title of the Great Eastern had not come into existence.

      All is changed in East Anglia except the boys. “You have seen a good many changes in your time,” said the young curate to the old village clerk. “Yes,” was the reply; “everything is changed except the boys, and they’re allus the same.” I fear the boys are as troublesome as ever—perhaps a little more so now, when you cannot touch them with a stick, which any one might do years ago. When we caught a boy up to mischief a stick did a deal of good in the good old times that are gone never to return.

      In connection with literature one naturally turns to the Bungay Printing Press, at the head of which was John Childs, who assembled round his hospitable board at Bungay many celebrated people, and to whom at a later period Daniel O’Connell paid a visit. It was Childs who gave to the poor student cheap editions of standard works such as Burke and Gibbon and Bacon. It was he who went to Ipswich Gaol rather than pay Church Rates. It was he who was one of the first to attack the Bible printing monopoly, and thus to flood the land with cheap Bibles and Testaments. A self-made man, almost Napoleonic in appearance, with a habit of blurting out sharp cynicisms and original epigrams, rather than conversing. He was a great phrenologist, and I well remember how I, a raw lad, rather trembled in his presence as I saw his dark, keen eyes directed towards that part of my person where the brains are supposed to be. I imagine the result was favourable, as at a later time I spent many a pleasant hour in his dining-room, gathering wisdom from his after-dinner talk, and inspiration from his port—as good as that immortalised by Tennyson. Mr. Childs had a numerous and handsome family, most of whom died after arriving at manhood. His daughter, who to great personal charms added much of her father’s intellect, did not live long after her marriage, leaving one son, a leading partner in the great City firm of solicitors, Ashurst, Morris, and Crisp. After John Childs, of Bungay, I may mention another East Anglian—D. Whittle Harvey, who was a power in his party and among the London cabbies—to whom the London cabby owes his badge V.R.—which, as one of them sagely remarked, was supposed to signify “Whittle ’Arvey,” an etymology at any rate not worse than that of the savant who in his wisdom derived gherkin from Jeremiah King. In 1837 Mr. Johnson Fox, born at Uggeshall, near Wangford—better known afterwards as the Norwich “Weaver Boy,” the “Publicola” of The Weekly Dispatch—the great orator of the Anti-Corn Law League, was preaching in the Unitarian Chapel, South Place, Finsbury, and a leading man in London literary society. One of the best-known men in East Anglia was Allan Ransome, of Ipswich, the young Quaker, who was on very friendly terms with the Strickland family, who cultivated literature and business with equal zest. Nor, in this category, should I pass over the name of George Bird, of Yoxford, a local chemist, who found time to write of Dunwich Castle and such-like East Anglian themes—I fancy now read by none. A Suffolk man who was making his mark in London at that time was Crabbe Robinson, the pioneer of the special correspondent of our later day. And just when Queen Victoria began to reign, Thomas Woolner, the poet-sculptor, was leaving his native town of Hadleigh to begin life as the pupil of Boehm, sculptor in ordinary to the Queen. And yet East Anglia was by no means distinguished, or held to be of much account in the gay circles of wit and fashion in town. The gentry were but little better than those drawn to the life in the novels of Fielding and Smollett. I am inclined to think there was very little reading outside Dissenting circles—where the book club was a standing institution, and The Edinburgh Review was looked up to as an oracle, as indeed it was, sixty years ago. There was little encouragement of manly sports and pastimes—indeed, very little for any one in the way of amusement but at the public-house. Not that any one was ever drunk, in the liberal opinion of the landlord of the public-house, only “a little fresh,” and the village policeman was unknown. It is true there might be a constable, but he was a very mythical person indeed. Everybody drank, and as a rule the poorer people were the more they drank.

      One of the early temperance lecturers in the district, Mr. Thomas Whittaker, who was mobbed, especially at Framlingham, tells us Essex and Suffolk are clayey soils, in some districts very heavy and not easily broken up, and the people in many cases correspond. It was due to Mr. Marriage, of Chelmsford, a maltster, who turned his malting house into a temperance hall, and Mr. D. Alexander, of Ipswich, that the temperance reformers made way; and at that time James Larner, of Framlingham, aided by young Mr. Thompson (now the great London surgeon, Sir Henry Thompson), was quite a power. But the difficulties were great in the way of finding places for meetings, or of getting to them in muddy lanes, or of getting the anti-teetotalers to behave decently, or of the lecturers finding accommodation for the night. Education would have been left almost alone, had not the Liberals started the British and Foreign schools, which roused the Church party to action. The one village schoolmaster with whom I came into contact was—as were most of his class—one who had seen better days, who wore top boots, and whose chief instrument in teaching the young idea how to shoot was a ruler, of which he seemed to me to take rather an unfair advantage. The people were ignorant, and, like Lord Melbourne, did not see much good in making a fuss about education. They could rarely read or write, and if they could there was nothing for them to read—no cheap books nor cheap magazines and newspapers. Now we have run to the other extreme, and it is to be hoped we are all the better. Cottages were mostly in an unsanitary state, but the labourer, in his white smock, looked well on a Sunday at the village church or chapel, and the children at the Sunday-school were clean, if a little restless under the long, dry sermon which they were compelled to hear, the caretaker being generally provided with a long stick to admonish the thoughtless, to wake up the sleepy, to prevent too much indulgence in apples during sermon time, or too liberal a display of the miscellaneous treasures concealed in a boy’s pocket. Perhaps the most influential person in the village was the gamekeeper, who was supposed to be armed, and to have the power of committing all boys in undue eagerness to go bird-nesting to the nearest gaol. He was to me, I own, a terror by night and by day, as he was constantly in my way—when tempted to break into the neighbouring park in search of flowers or eggs. The farmer then, as now, was ruined, but he was a picture of health and comfort as he drove to the nearest market town, where after business he would spend the evening smoking and drinking, with his broad beaver on his head, his fat carcase ornamented with a blue coat with brass buttons, and his knee breeches of yellow kerseymere. It was little he read to wake up his sluggish intellect, save the county newspaper, which it was the habit for people to take between them to lessen the expense. A newspaper was sevenpence, of which fourpence went to pay for the stamp. Everything was dear—the postage СКАЧАТЬ