I confess the advent of this young Thompson from Framlingham was a great event in our small family circle. In the first place he came from a town, and that at once gave him a marked superiority. Then his father kept a horse and gig, for it was thus young Thompson came to Wrentham, and all the world over a gig has been a symbol of the respectability dear to the British heart; and he had been for that time and as an only son carefully and intelligently trained by one of the family who, in the person of the late Edward Miall, founder of theNonconformist, and M.P. for Bradford, was supposed to be the incarnation of what was termed the dissidence of Dissent. Young Thompson was also what would be called a genteel youth, and gave me ideas as to wearing straps to my trousers, oiling my hair, and generally adorningmy person, which had never entered into my unsophisticated head. He also had been to London, and as Framlingham was some twenty miles nearer the Metropolis—the centre of intelligence—than Wrentham, the intelligence of a Framlingham lad was of course expected,à fortiori, to be of a stronger character than that of one born twenty miles farther from the sun of London. There was also a good deal of talent in the family on the mother’s side. Mrs. Thompson was a Miss Medley, and Mr. Medley was an artist of great merit, the son of Mr. Medley, of Liverpool, a leading Baptist minister in his day, and a writer of hymns still sung in Baptist churches. Mr. Medley was also active as a Liberal, and was credited by us boys with a personal acquaintance with no less illustrious an individual than the great Brougham himself. Once or twice he came to lodge during the summer at Southwold; naturally he was visited there by his grandson, who would return well primed with political anecdote to our rustic circle, and was deemed by me more of an authority than ever. Once or twice, too, I had the honour of being a visitor, and heard Mr. Medley, a fine old gentleman, who lived to a very advanced age, talk of art and artists and other matters quite out ofmy usual sphere. It is not surprising, then, that the grandson became in time quite an artist himself, though he is better known to the world, not so much in that capacity, but as Sir Henry Thompson, certainly not the least distinguished surgeon of our day. In Lord Beaconsfield’s last novel, ‘Endymion,’ we have a passing reference to one Wrentham lad, Sir Charles Wetherell, as ‘the eccentric and too uncompromising Wetherell.’ Assuredly the fame of another lad, Sir Henry Thompson, connected with Wrentham, will longer live.
This reference to Sir Henry Thompson reminds me of his early attempts at rhyme, which I trust he will forgive me for rescuing from oblivion. Once upon a time we captured a young cuckoo, and having carefully gorged it with bread-and-milk, and left it in a nest in an outhouse, which we devoted mainly to rabbits, the next morning the poor bird was found to be dead. A prize was offered for the best couplet. Three of us contended. My sister wrote:
‘This lonely sepulchre containsA little cuckoo’s dead remains.’
‘This lonely sepulchre containsA little cuckoo’s dead remains.’
I wrote:
‘To our grief, cuckoo sweetIs lying underneath our feet.’
‘To our grief, cuckoo sweetIs lying underneath our feet.’
Thompson took quite a different and, read by the light of his subsequent career, a far more characteristic view of the case. He took care, as a medical man, to dwell on the cause which had terminated the career of so interesting a bird. According to him,
‘It had a breast as soft as silk,And died of eating bread-and-milk.’
‘It had a breast as soft as silk,And died of eating bread-and-milk.’
Assuredly in this case the child was father to the man.
But the great awakening of the time, that which made the dry bones live, and fluttered the dove-cotes of Toryism—we never heard the word Conservative then—was the General Election. At that time we were always having General Elections. We had one, of course, when George IV. died and King William reigned in his stead; we had another when the Duke was out and the Whigs came in; and then we had another when the cry ran through the land, and reached even the most remote villages of East Anglia, of ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!’ Voters were brought down, or up, as the case might be, from all quarters of the land. Coaches-full came tearing along, gorgeous with election flags, and placarded all over with names of rival candidates.Gentlemen of ancient lineage called to request of the meanest elector the favour of his vote and influence. It was with pain the Liberals of our little village resolved to vote against our Benacre neighbour, Sir Thomas Gooch, who had long represented the county, but of whom the Radicals spoke derisively as Gaffer Gooch, or the Benacre Bull, and chose in his stead a country squire known as Robert Newton Shaw, utterly unknown in our quarter of the county.
It was rather a trying time for the Wrentham Liberals and Dissenters to do their duty, for Sir Thomas was a neighbour, and always was a pleasant gentleman in the parish, and had power to do anyone mischief who went against him. Our medical man did not vote at all. Our squire actually, I believe, supported Sir Thomas, and altogether respectable people found themselves in an extremely awkward position. At Southwold the people were a little more independent, for Gaffer Gooch rarely illuminated that little town with his presence; and as my father, with the economy which is part and parcel of the Scotchman as he leaves his native land, but which rarely extends to his children, had, by teaching gentlemen’s sons and other ways, been able to save alittle, which little had been devoted to the purchase of cottage property in Southwold (well do I remember the difficulty there was in collecting the rents; never, assuredly, were people so much afflicted or so unfortunate when the time of payment came), it was for Southwold that he claimed his vote. I, as the son, was permitted to share in the glories of that eventful day. The election took place at school-time, and my companion was Henry Thompson. We had to walk betimes to Frostenden, where Farmer Downing lived, who was thatrara avisa Liberal tenant farmer; but of course he did not vote tenant farmer, but as a freeholder. It was with alarm that Mrs. Downing saw her lord and master drive off with us two lads in the gig. There had been riots at London, riots as near as Ipswich, and why not at Halesworth? A mile or two after we had started we met, per arrangement, the Southwold contingent, who joined us with flags flying and a band playing, and all the pride and pomp and circumstance of war. We rode in a gig, and our animal was a steady-going mare, and behaved as such; but all had not gigs or steady-going mares. Some were in carts, some were on horseback, some in ancient vehicles furbished up for the occasion;and as the band played and the people shouted, some of the animals felt induced to dance, and especially was this restlessness on the part of the quadrupeds increased as we neared Halesworth, in the market-place of which was the polling-booth, and in the streets of which we out-lying voters riding in procession made quite a show. Halesworth, or Holser, as it was called, was distant about nine miles, lying to the left of Yoxford, a village which its admirers were wont to call the Garden of Suffolk. In 1809 the Bishop of Norwich wrote from Halesworth: ‘The church in this place is uncommonly fine, and the ruins of an old castle (formerly the seat of the Howards) are striking and majestic.’ But when we went there the ruins were gone—the more is the pity—and the church remained, at that time held by no less a Liberal than Richard Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. I used at times to meet with a country gentleman—a brother of a noble lord—who after he had spent a fortune merrily, as country gentlemen did in the good old times, came to live on a small annuity, and, in spite of his enormous daily consumption of London porter at the leading inn of the town, managed to reach a good old age. The hon. gentleman and I were onfriendly terms, and sometimes he would talk of Whately, who had often been at his house. But, alas! he remembered nothing of a man who became so celebrated in his day except that he would eat after dinner any number of oranges, and was so fond of active exercise that he would take a pitchfork and fill his tumbrels with manure, or work just like a labourer on a farm. Of the Doctor’s aversion to church-bell ringing we have a curious illustration in a letter which appeared in theSuffolk Chroniclein 1825: ‘A short time since a wedding took place in the families of two of the oldest and most respectable inhabitants of the town, when it was understood that the Rector had, for the first time since his induction to his living, given permission for the bells to greet the happy pair. After, however, sounding a merry peal a short hour and a half, a message was received at the belfry that the Rector thought they had rung long enough. The tardiness with which this mandate was obeyed soon brought the rev. gentleman in person to enforce his order, which was then reluctantly complied with to the great disappointment of the inhabitants, and mortification of the ringers, several of whom had come from a considerable distance to assist in the festivities of the day.’The Independent chapel was an old-fashioned meeting-house, full of heavy pillars, which, as they intercepted the view of the preacher, were favourable to that gentle sleep so peculiarly refreshing on a Sunday afternoon—especially in hot weather—in the square and commodious family pew. The minister was an old and venerable-looking divine of the name of Dennant, who was always writing little poems—I remember the opening lines of one,
‘A while ago when I was nought,And neither body, soul, nor thought’—
‘A while ago when I was nought,And neither body, soul, nor thought’—
and whose ‘Soul Prosperity,’ a volume of sober prose, reached a second edition. His grandson, Mr. J. R. Robinson, now the energetic manager of theDaily News, may be said to have achieved a position in the world of London of which his simple-hearted and deeply-devotional grandfather could never have dreamed. As I was the son of a brother minister, Mr. Dennant’s house was open to myself and Thompson, though we did not go there on the particular day of which I write. The leading tradesman of the town was a Liberal, and had at least one pretty daughter, and there we went. Most of the day, however, we mixed with the mob which crowded round, while the voters—you may be sure, not all of them sober—were brought up to vote. The excitement was immense; there was the hourly publication of the state of the poll—more or less unreliable, but, nevertheless, exciting; and what a tumult there was as one or other of the rival candidates drove up to his temporary quarters in a carriage and pair, or carriage and four, made a short speech, which was cheered by his friends and howled at derisively by his foes, while the horses were being changed, and then drove off at a gallop to make the same display and to undergo the same ordeal elsewhere! To be sure, there was a little rough play; now and then a rush was made by nobody in particular, and for no particular reason; or, again, an indiscreet voter—rendered additionally so by indulgence in beer—gave occasion for offence; but really, beyond a scrimmage, a hat broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a cockade rudely snatched from the wearer, little harm was done. The voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than ever. Of coursethe shops were shut up. All who could afford to do so kept open house, and at every available window were the bright, beaming faces of the Suffolk fair—oh, they were jolly, those election days of old! Well, in East Anglia, as elsewhere, spite of the parsons, spite of the landlords, spite of the slavery of old custom, spite of old traditions, the freeholders voted Reform, and Reform was won, and everyone believed that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. In ten years, I heard people say, there would be no tithes for the farmer to pay, and welcome was the announcement; for then, as now, the agricultural interest was depressed, and the farmer was a ruined man. Now one takes but a languid interest in the word Reform, but then it stirred the hearts of the people; and how they celebrated their victory, how they hoisted flags and got up processions and made speeches, and feasted and hurrahed, ’twere tedious to tell. All over the land the people rejoiced with exceeding joy. Old things, they believed, had passed away—all things had become new.
Bungay Nonconformity—Hannah More—The Childses—The Queen’s Librarian—Prince Albert.
In the beginning of the present century, a disgraceful attack on Methodism—by which the writer means Dissent in all its branches—appeared in what was then the leading critical journal of the age, theEdinburgh Review. ‘The sources,’ said the writer, a clergyman (to his shame be it recorded) of the Church of England—no less distinguished a divine than the far-famed Sydney Smith—‘from which we shall derive our extracts are the Evangelical and Methodistical magazines for the year 1807, works which are said to be circulated to the amount of 18,000 or 20,000 every month, and which contain the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England. We shall use the general term of Methodism to designate these threeclasses of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them as all in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.’ To East Anglia came the reputed worthy Canon for an illustration of what he termed their policy to have a great change of ministers. Accordingly, he reprints from theEvangelical Magazinethe following notice of an East Anglian Nonconformist ordination, which, by-the-bye, in no degree affects the charge unjustly laid at the door of these ‘fanatics,’ as engaged ‘in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.’ ‘Same day the Rev. W. Haward, from Hoxton Academy, was ordained over the Independent Church at Rendham, Suffolk; Mr. Pickles, of Walpole, began with prayer and reading; Mr. Price, of Woodbridge, delivered the introductory discourse, and asked the questions; Mr. Dennant, of Halesworth, offered the ordinary prayer;Mr. Shufflebottom[the italics are the Canon’s], of Bungay, gave the charge from Acts xx. 28; Mr. Vincent, of Deal, the general prayer; and Mr. Walford, of Yarmouth, preached to the people from Phil. ii. 16.’ As a lad, I saw a good deal of Bungay, though I never knew the Shufflebottomwhose name seems to have been such a stumbling-block and cause of offence to the Reverend Canon of St. Paul’s. I say Reverend Canon of St. Paul’s, because, though the writer had not gained that honour when the review appeared, it was as Canon he returned to the charge when he sanctioned the republication of it in his collected works. It was at Bungay that I had my first painful experience of the utter depravity of the human heart—a truth of which, perhaps, for a boy, I learned too much from the pulpit. The river Waveney runs through Bungay, and one day, fishing there, I lent a redcoat—with whom, like most boys, I was proud to scrape an acquaintance—my line, he promising to return it when I came back from dinner. When I did so, alas! the red-coat was gone.
Nonconformity in Bungay seems to have originated in the days of the Lord Protector, in the person of Zephaniah Smith, who was the author of: (1) ‘The Dome of Heretiques; or, a discovery of subtle Foxes who were tyed tayle to tayle, and crept into the Church to do mischief’; (2) ‘The Malignant’s Plot; or, the Conspiracie of the Wicked against the Just, laid open in a sermon preached at Eyke, in Suffolk, January 23, 1697. Preached and published to set forth the groundswhy the Wicked lay such crimes to the charge of God’s people as they are cleare off’; (3) ‘The Skillful Teacher.’ Beloe says of this Smith that ‘he was a most singular character, and among the first founders of the sect of the Antinomians.’ One of the first leaders of this sect is said by Wood to have been John Eaton, who was a minister and preacher at Wickham Market, in which situation and capacity Smith succeeded him. This Smith published many other tracts and sermons, chiefly fanatical and with fantastical titles. One is described by Wood, and is called ‘Directions for Seekers and Expectants, or a Guide for Weak Christians in these discontented times.’ ‘I shall not give an extract from these sermons,’ writes Beloe, who is clearly, like Wood, by no means a sympathetic or appreciative critic, ‘though very curious, but they are not characterized by any peculiarity of diction, and are chiefly remarkable for the enthusiasm with which the doctrine of the sect to which the preacher belonged is asserted and vindicated. The hearers also must have been endowed with an extraordinary degree of patience, as they are spun out to a great length.’ Mr. Smith’s ministry at Bungay led to a contention, which resulted in an appeal to the young Protector, Richard Cromwell.Then we find Mr. Samuel Malbon silenced by the Act of Uniformity, who is described as a man mighty in the Scriptures, who became pastor to the church in Amsterdam. In 1695 we hear of a conventicle in Bungay, with a preacher with a regularly paid stipend of £40 a year. Till 1700 the congregation worshipped in a barn; but in that year the old meeting-house was built, and let to the congregation at £10 per annum. In 1729 it was made over to the Presbyterians or Independents worshipping there, ‘for ever.’ The founders of that conventicle seem to have suffered for their faith; yet the glorious Revolution of 1688 had been achieved, and William of Orange—who had come from a land which had nobly sheltered the earlier Nonconformists—was seated on the throne.
Bungay, till Sydney Smith made it famous, was not much known to the general public. It was on the borders of the county and out of the way. The only coach that ran through it, I can remember, was a small one that ran from Norwich through Beccles and Bungay to Yarmouth; and, if I remember aright, on alternate days. There was, at any rate, no direct communication between it and London. Bungay is a well-built market town, skirted on the east and west by the navigable river Waveney,which divides it from Norfolk, and was at one time noted for the manufacture of knitted worsted stockings and Suffolk hempen cloth; but those trades are now obsolete. The great Roger Bigod—one of the men who really did come over with the Conqueror—built its castle, the ruins of which yet remain, on a bold eminence on the river Waveney. ‘The castle,’ writes Dugdale, ‘once the residence and stronghold of the Bigods, and by one of them conceived to be impregnable, has become the habitation of helpless poverty, many miserable hovels having been reared against its walls for the accommodation of the lowest class.’ The form of the castle appears to have been octangular. The ruins of two round fortal towers and fortresses of the west and south-west angles are still standing, as also three sides of the great tower or keep, the walls of which are from 7 to 11 feet thick and from 15 to 17 feet high. In the midst of the ruins, on what is called the Terrace, is a mineral spring, now disused, and near it is a vault, or dungeon, of considerable depth. Detached portions of the wall and their foundations are spread in all directions in the castle grounds, a ridge of which, about 40 yards long, forms the southern boundary of a bowling-green which commands delightful prospects.The mounds of earth raised for the defence of the castle still retain much of their original character, though considerably reduced in height. One of them, facing the south, was partly removed in 1840, with the intention of forming a cattle market. As a boy I often heard of the proud boast of Hugh Bigod, second Earl, one of King Stephen’s most formidable opponents, as recorded by Camden:
‘Were I in my castle of Bungay,Upon the river Waveney,I would not care for the King of Cockeney.’
‘Were I in my castle of Bungay,Upon the river Waveney,I would not care for the King of Cockeney.’
In ancient times the Waveney was a much broader stream than it is now, and Bungay was calledLe Bon Eye, or the good island, then being nearly surrounded by water. Hence the name, in the vulgar dialect, of Bungay. To ‘go to Bungay to get a new bottom’ was a common saying in Suffolk.
In 1777 we find Hannah More writing to Garrick from Bungay, which she describes as ‘a much better town than I expected, very clean and pleasant.’ ‘You are the favourite bard of Bungay’—at that time the tragedians of the city of Norwich were staying there—‘and,’ writes Hannah, who at that time had not become serious and renounced the gaieties of the great world, ‘thedramatic furore rages terribly among the people, the more so, I presume, from being allowed to vent itself so seldom. Everybody goes to the play every night,—that is, every other night, which is as often as they perform. Visiting, drinking, and even card-playing, is for this happy month suspended; nay, I question if, like Lent, it does not stop the celebration of weddings, for I do not believe there is a damsel in the town who would spare the time to be married during this rarely-occurring scene of festivity. It must be confessed, however, the good folks have no bad taste.’ It must be recollected that Hannah More in reality belongs to East Anglia. She was the daughter of Jacob More, who was descended from a respectable family at Harleston. He was a High Churchman, but all his family were Nonconformists. His mother used to tell young people that they would have known how to value Gospel privileges had they lived like her, when at midnight pious worshippers went with stealthy steps through the snow to hear the words of inspiration delivered by a holy man at her father’s house; while her father, with a drawn sword, guarded the entrance from violent or profane intrusion, adding that they boarded the minister and kept his horse for £10 a year. An unfortunatelawsuit deprived the Mores of their property, and thus it was that the celebrated Hannah was born at Gloucestershire, and not in Suffolk or Norfolk. The family mansion was at Wenhaston, not very far from Wrentham.
In my young days Bungay owed all its fame and most of its wealth to the far-famed John Childs, who was one of our first Church Rate martyrs, to whom is due mainly the destruction of the Bible-printing monopoly, and to whom the late Edward Miall was much indebted for establishing theNonconformistnewspaper. For many years it was the habit of Mr. Childs to celebrate that event by a dinner, at which the wine was good and the talk was better. Old John Childs, of Bungay, had a cellar of port which a dean might have envied; and many was the bottle that I cracked with him as a young man, after a walk from Wrentham to Bungay, a distance of fourteen miles, to talk with him on things in general, and politics in particular. He was emphatically a self-made man—a man who would have made his way anywhere, and a man who had a large acquaintance with the reformers of his day in all parts of the country. On one occasion the great Dan O’Connell came to pay him a visit, much to the delight of the Suffolk Radicals,and to the horror of the Tories. The first great dinner at which I had the honour of being present, and to which I was taken by my father, who was a great friend of Mr. Childs, was on the occasion of the presentation to the latter of a testimonial by a deputation of distinguished Dissenters from Ipswich in connection with his incarceration in the county gaol at Ipswich, for having refused to pay rates for the support of a Church in which he did not believe, and for the performance of a service in which he took no part. At that time ‘the dear old Church of England,’ while it was compelled to tolerate Dissent, insisted on Dissent being taxed to the uttermost farthing; and that it does not do so now, and that it is more popular in consequence, is due to the firm stand taken by such men as John Childs of Bungay. He was a great phrenologist. In his garden he had a summer-house, which he facetiously termed his scullery, where he had some three hundred plaster casts, many of which he had taken himself of public individuals and friends and acquaintances. My father was honoured in this way, as also my eldest sister. Sir Henry Thompson and I escaped that honour, but I have not forgotten his dark, piercing glance at our heads, when, as boys, we first came into his presence, and how Itrusted that the verdict was satisfactory. Of course the Childses went to Meeting, but when I knew Bungay Mr. Shufflebottom had been gathered to his fathers, and the Rev. John Blaikie, a Scotchman, and therefore always a welcome guest at Wrentham, reigned in his stead. Mr. Childs had a large and promising family, few of whom now remain. His daughter was an exceptionally gifted and glorious creature, as in that early day it seemed to me. She also died early, leaving but one son, Mr. Crisp, a partner in the well-known legal firm of Messrs. Ashurst, Morris, and Crisp. It was in the little box by the window of the London Coffee House—now, alas! no more—where Mr. Childs, on the occasion of his frequent visits to London, always gathered around him his friends, that I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Ashurst, the head of the firm—a self-made man, like Mr. Childs, of wonderful acuteness and great public spirit. In religion Mr. Ashurst was far more advanced than the Bungay printer. ‘It is not a thing to reason about,’ said the latter; and so to the last he remained orthodox, attended the Bungay Meeting-house, invited the divines of that order to his house, put in appearance at ordination services, and openings of chapels, and was to be seen at MayMeetings when in town, where occasionally his criticisms were of a freer order than is usually met with at such places.
‘The Bungay Press,’ wrote a correspondent of theBookseller, on the death of Mr. Charles Childs, who had succeeded his father in the business, ‘has been long known for its careful and excellent work. Established some short time before the commencement of the present century, its founder had, for twenty years, limited its productions to serial publications and books of a popular and useful character, and in the year 1823, soon after Mr. John Childs had taken control of the business, upwards of twenty wooden presses were working, at long hours, to supply the rapidly-increasing demand for such works as folio Bibles, universal histories, domestic medicine books, and other publications then issuing in one and two shilling numbers from the press.’ Originally Mr. Childs had been in a grocer’s shop at Norwich. There he was met with by a Mr. Brightley, a printer and publisher, who, originally a schoolmaster at Beccles, had suggested to young Childs that he had better come and help him at Bungay than waste his time behind a counter. Fortunately for them both the young man acceded to the proposal, and travelled all overEngland driving tandem, and doing everywhere what we should now call a roaring trade. Then he married Mr. Brightley’s daughter, and became a partner in the firm, which was known as that of John and R. Childs, and, latterly of Childs and Son. ‘Uncle Robert,’ as I used to hear him called, was little known out of the Bungay circle. He had a nice house, and lived comfortably, marrying, after a long courtship, the only one of the Stricklands who was not a writer. Agnes was often a visitor at Bungay, and not a little shocked at the atrocious after-dinner talk of the Bungay Radicals. ‘Do you not think,’ said she, in her somewhat stilted and tragic style of talk, one day, to a literary man who was seated next her, author of a French dictionary which the Childses were printing at the time—‘Do you not think it was a cruel and wicked act to murder the sainted and unfortunate Charles I.?’ ‘Why, ma’am,’ stuttered the author, while the dinner-party were silent, ‘I’d have p-p-poisoned him.’ The gifted authoress talked no more that day. Naturally, as a lad, seeing so much of Bungay, I wished to be a printer, but Mr. Childs said there was no use in being a printer without plenty of capital, and so that idea was renounced.
But to return to Mr. John Childs. About the year 1826, in association with the late Joseph Ogle Robinson, he projected and commenced the publication of a series of books known in the trade as the ‘Imperial Edition of Standard Authors,’ which for many years maintained an extensive sale, and certainly then met an admitted literary want, furnishing the student and critical reader, in a cheap and handsome form, with dictionaries, histories, commentaries, biographies, and miscellaneous literature of acknowledged value and importance, such as Burke’s works, Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall,’ Howe’s works, the writings of Lord Bacon—books which are still in the market, and which, if I may speak from a pretty wide acquaintance with students’ libraries fifty years ago, were in great demand at that time. The disadvantage of such a series is that the books are too big to put in the pocket or to hold in the hand. But I do not know that that is a great disadvantage to a real student who takes up a book to master its contents, and not merely to pass away his time. To study properly a man must be in his study. In that particular apartment he is bound to have a table, and if you place a book on a table to read, it matters little the size of the page, or the numberof columns each page contains. Mr. Childs set the fashion of reprinting standard authors on a good-sized page, with a couple of columns on each page. That fashion was followed by Mr. W. Smith—a Fleet Street publisher, than whom a better man never lived—and by Messrs. Chambers; but now it seems quite to have passed away. On the failure of Mr. Robinson, Mr. Childs’ valuable reprints were placed in the hands of Westley and Davis, and subsequently with Ball, Arnold, and Co.; and latterly, I think, the late Mr. H. G. Bohn reissued them at intervals. As to his part publications, when Mr. Childs had given up pushing them, he disposed of them all to Mr. Virtue, of Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, who then secured almost a monopoly of the part-number trade, and thus made a large fortune. ‘I love books that come out in numbers,’ says Lord Montford in ‘Endymion,’ ‘as there is a little suspense, and you cannot deprive yourself of all interest by glancing at the last part of the last volume.’ And so I suppose in the same way there will always be a part-number trade, though the reapers in the field are many, and the harvest is not what it was.
Active and fiery in body and soul, Mr. John Childs, at a somewhat later period, with thesympathy and advocacy of Mr. Joseph Hume and other members of Parliament, and aided to a large extent by Lord Brougham, succeeded in procuring the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the existing King’s Printers’ Patent for printing Bibles and Acts of Parliament, the period for the renewal of which was near at hand. The principle upon which the patent was originally granted appeared to becorrectness secured only by protection—a fallacy which the voluminous evidence of the Committee most completely exposed. The late Alderman Besley, a typefounder, and a great friend of John Childs, as well as Robert Childs, practical printers, gave conclusive evidence on this head, and the result was that, although the patent was renewed for thirty years, instead of sixty as before, the Scriptures were sold to the public at a greatly reduced price, and the trade in Bibles, though nominally protected, has ever since been practically free.
Nor did Mr. Childs’ labours end here. In Scotland the right of printing Bibles had been granted exclusively to a company of private persons, Blaire and Bruce, neither of whom had any practical knowledge of the art of printing, or took anyinterest in the different editions of the Bible. The same men also had the supplying all the public revenue offices of Government with stationery, by which means they enjoyed an annual profit of more than £6,000 a year. When the Government, in an economical mood, ordered them to relinquish the latter contract, not only were they compensated for the loss, but were continued in their vested rights as regards Bible-printing. In Scotland there was no one to interfere with their rights. In England patents had been given not only to the firm of Messrs. Strahan, Eyre and Spottiswoode, but to each of the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Up to 1821 the Bibles of the English monopolists came freely into Scotland, but then a prohibition, supported by decisions in the Court of Sessions and the House of Lords, was obtained. In 1824 Dr. Adam Thompson, of Coldstream, and three ministers were summoned to answer for the high crime and misdemeanour of having, as directors of Bible societies, delivered copies of an edition of Scriptures which had been printed in England, but which the Scotch monopolists would not permit to circulate in Scotland. Bible societies in Scotland had received, in return for their subscription to the London society, copiesof an octavo Bible in large type, to which the Scotch patentees had no corresponding edition, and which was much prized by the aged. And it was because Dr. Thompson and others helped to circulate it, as agents of the London Bible Society, that they were proceeded against. The Scotch Bible, in consequence of the monopoly, was as badly printed as the English one. In order to show how monopoly had failed to secure good work, a gentleman sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury an enormous list of errors which he had found in the Oxford Nonpareil Bible. In an old Scotch edition the apostle is made to say, ‘Know ye not that the righteous shallnotinherit the kingdom of God?’ In another edition ‘The four beasts of the Apocalypse’ are ‘sourbeasts.’ Dr. Lee, afterwards Principal of Edinburgh University, felt deeply the injustice done by the monopoly, and the heavy taxation consequently imposed upon the British and Foreign Bible Society; but he was a man of the study rather than of the street. Yet in 1837 the monopoly, powerfully defended as it was by Sir Robert Inglis, who dreaded cheap editions of the Word of God, as necessarily incorrect and leading to wickedness and infidelity of all kinds, fell, and it was to John Childs, ofBungay, that in a great measure the fall was due, while owing to the repeated labours of Dr. Adam Thompson and others, we got cheaper Bibles and Testaments on the other side of the Tweed.
If you turn to the life of Dr. Adam Thompson, of Coldstream, the man who had the most publicly to do with the fall of the monopoly, there can be no doubt on this head. Though specially interested in the English patents, Mr. Childs was aware that the one for Scotland fell, to be renewed sooner by twenty years, and he kept dunning Joseph Hume on the subject, who, Radical Reformer, at that time had his hands pretty full. Mr. Childs had got so far as to have his Committee, and to get the evidence printed. What was the next step? Dr. Thompson’s biographer shall tell us. ‘Mr. Childs had been looking out for a Scottish Dissenting minister of proved ability, zeal, and influence, who should feel the immense and urgent importance of the question, and after mastering the unjust principles and the injurious results of the monopoly, should testify to these before the Committee, in a weighty and pointed manner, and effectively bring them also before the ministers and people of Scotland. He fixed upon Dr. Thompson, and the letter in which he wrote to the Doctor to preparefor becoming a witness was the beginning of a ten years’ copious correspondence, the first in a series of many hundreds of very lengthy letters, in which Mr. Childs, with great shrewdness, sagacity, and vigour, and with perfect confidence of always being in the right, acted as universal censor, pronouncing oracularly upon all ecclesiastical and political men and organs, expressing unqualified contempt for the House of Lords, and very small satisfaction with the House of Commons, showing no mercy to Churchmen, and little but asperity to Dissenters, and denouncing all British journals as base or blind except theNonconformist.’ Only two of these letters are published in Dr. Thompson’s biography. I give one, partly because it is interesting, and partly because it is characteristic. Unfortunately, of all John Childs’ letters to myself, written in a fine, bold hand, exactly reproduced by his son and grandson, so that I could never tell one from the other, I have preserved none. Childs thus wrote to Dr. Thompson, July 15th, 1839:
‘My dear Friend,‘You will be happy to know that I went into Newgate this morning with my friend Ashurst, and heard their pardon read to the Canadians.They were released this afternoon, and Mr. Parker and Mr. Wixon have been dining with me, and are gone to a lodging, taken for them by Mr. A., where they may remain till their departure on Wednesday. I have just sent to Mr. Tidman to inform him they will worship God and return thanks in his place to-morrow, if all be well. How wonderfully God has appeared for these people! My dear friend, when I first saw them in January all things appeared to be against them, but all has been overruled for good.‘At the time you left on Monday evening, Lord John was making known to the House of Commons, in your own words, the plan proposed by yourself, and adopted by him, to my amazement. Most heartily do I congratulate you on the termination of the event, so decidedly honourable to yourself in every way. I do not expect you will approve of all that I have done, but I felt it to be my duty to address a letter to thePiloton the subject, calling attention to the liberty taken with you, and the manner in which you were humbugged when in concert with the London societies, and the absolute triumph of your cause when conducted with single-handed integrity, intelligence, and energy. If it shall happen that you do not approve of all I havesaid, I am sure you ought, because without you, and with you, if you had left it to the fellows here, Scotland’s Dissenters would have now appeared the degraded things which, on the Bible subject, the English Dissenters have appeared in my eyes for some years past. It is due to you. I was fairly rejoiced when I saw Lord John’s declaration, because I could see from his answer to Sir James Graham that he meant the thing should be done. Scotland ought to have a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving, and as I said to a friend to whom I wrote in Edinburgh, “You ought to have a monument—the Thompson monument.” “That, sir,” the guide would say, “is erected to honour a man by whose honest energy and zeal Scotland was freed from the most degrading tyranny—that of a monopoly in printing the Word of God.” The tablet should bear that memorable sentence of yours on the first day of your examination, “All monopolies are bad.” Of all monopolies religious monopolies are the worst, and of all religious monopolies a monopoly of the Word of God is the most outrageous.’ Alas! I have heard nothing of the Thompson monument.
‘My dear Friend,
‘You will be happy to know that I went into Newgate this morning with my friend Ashurst, and heard their pardon read to the Canadians.They were released this afternoon, and Mr. Parker and Mr. Wixon have been dining with me, and are gone to a lodging, taken for them by Mr. A., where they may remain till their departure on Wednesday. I have just sent to Mr. Tidman to inform him they will worship God and return thanks in his place to-morrow, if all be well. How wonderfully God has appeared for these people! My dear friend, when I first saw them in January all things appeared to be against them, but all has been overruled for good.
‘At the time you left on Monday evening, Lord John was making known to the House of Commons, in your own words, the plan proposed by yourself, and adopted by him, to my amazement. Most heartily do I congratulate you on the termination of the event, so decidedly honourable to yourself in every way. I do not expect you will approve of all that I have done, but I felt it to be my duty to address a letter to thePiloton the subject, calling attention to the liberty taken with you, and the manner in which you were humbugged when in concert with the London societies, and the absolute triumph of your cause when conducted with single-handed integrity, intelligence, and energy. If it shall happen that you do not approve of all I havesaid, I am sure you ought, because without you, and with you, if you had left it to the fellows here, Scotland’s Dissenters would have now appeared the degraded things which, on the Bible subject, the English Dissenters have appeared in my eyes for some years past. It is due to you. I was fairly rejoiced when I saw Lord John’s declaration, because I could see from his answer to Sir James Graham that he meant the thing should be done. Scotland ought to have a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving, and as I said to a friend to whom I wrote in Edinburgh, “You ought to have a monument—the Thompson monument.” “That, sir,” the guide would say, “is erected to honour a man by whose honest energy and zeal Scotland was freed from the most degrading tyranny—that of a monopoly in printing the Word of God.” The tablet should bear that memorable sentence of yours on the first day of your examination, “All monopolies are bad.” Of all monopolies religious monopolies are the worst, and of all religious monopolies a monopoly of the Word of God is the most outrageous.’ Alas! I have heard nothing of the Thompson monument.
Such a man was John Childs. One more busyin body and brain I never knew. That he was disposed to be cynical was natural. Most men who see much of the world, and who do not wear coloured glasses, are so. Take the history of the Bible monopoly. The work of its abolition was commenced by John Childs, of Bungay, carried on and completed as far as Scotland was concerned by Dr. Adam Thompson, while the British public in its usual silliness awarded £3,000 to Dr. Campbell, on the plea—I quote the words of the late Dr. Morton Brown, of Cheltenham—that, ‘God gave the honour very largely to our friend, Dr. Campbell, to smite this bloated enemy of God and man full in the forehead.’ The bloated enemy, as regards Scotland, was dead before Dr. Campbell had ever penned a line. As regards England, I believe it still exists.
It must have been about 1837 that the name of John Childs, of Bungay, was made specially notorious by reason of his refusal to pay Church-rates, and when he had the honour of being the first person imprisoned for their non-payment. He was proceeded against in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and as his refusal to pay was solely on conscientious grounds, he did not contest the matter. The result was, he was sent to Ipswich Gaol for the non-paymentof a rate of 17s. 6d., the animus of the ecclesiastical authorities being manifested by the endorsement of the writ, ‘Take no bail.’ It was the first death-blow to Church-rates. The local excitement it created was intense and unparalleled. In the House of Commons Sir William Foulkes presented several petitions from Norfolk, and Mr. Joseph Hume several from Suffolk, on the subject. One entire sitting of the House of Commons was devoted to the Bungay Martyr, as Sir Robert Peel ironically termed him. The Bungay Martyr had however, right on his side. It was found that a blot had been hit, and it had to be removed.
The excitement produced by putting Mr. Childs into gaol was intense at that time all over the land. ‘I beg to inform you,’ wrote a Halesworth Dissenter, Mr. William Lincoln, to the editor of thePatriot, at that time the organ of Dissent, ‘that my highly-esteemed and talented friend, Mr. John Childs, of Bungay, has just passed through this town, in custody of a sheriff’s officer, on his way to our county gaol, by virtue of an attachment, at the suit of Messrs. Bobbet and Scott, churchwardens of Bungay, for non-payment of 17s. 6d. demanded of him as a Church-rate, and subsequent refusal to obey a citation for appearanceat the Bishop’s Court.’ Naturally the writer remarked: ‘It will soon be seen whether proceedings so well in harmony with the days of fire and faggot are to be tolerated in this advanced period of the nineteenth century.’ When, in due time, Mr. Childs obtained his release, the event was celebrated at Bungay in fitting style. I find in a private diary the following note: ‘This day week was a grand day at Bungay. I heard there were not less than six or seven thousand people there to welcome his return, and the request of the police, that the greatest order might be observed, was fully acted up to. Miss C. did not enter Bungay with her father. I suppose when she found so great a multitude of horsemen, gigs, pedestrians and banners, they thought it better for the young lady and the younger children to retire to the close carriages. Mr. C. during his imprisonment had letters from all parts of the kingdom.’ I remember the leading Dissenters came to Bungay with a piece of plate, to present to Mr. Childs, to commemorate his heroism. A dinner was given by Mr. Childs in connection with the presentation. At that dinner, lad as I was, I was permitted to be present. I had never seen anything so grand or stately before; and thatwas my first interview with John Childs, a dark, restless, eagle-eyed man, whom I was to know better and love more for many a long day. I took to Radical writing, and nothing could have pleased John Childs better. I owed much to his friendship in after-life.
In 1833 the Church-rate question was originally raised in Bungay, and many of the Dissenters refused to pay. The local authorities at once took high ground, and put twelve of the recusants into the Ecclesiastical Court. They caved in, leaving to John Childs the honour of martyrdom. At the time of Mr. Childs’ imprisonment he had recently suffered from a severe surgical operation, and it was believed by his friends impossible that he could survive the infliction of imprisonment. The Rev. John Browne writes: ‘A committee very generously formed at Ipswich undertook the management of his affairs, and when they learned at the end of eleven days’ imprisonment that he had undergone a most severe attack, indicating at least the possibility of sudden death, they sent a deputation to the Court to pay the sum demanded. The Court, however, required, as well as the money, the usual oath of canonical obedience, and this Mr. Childs refused to give. He was told byhis friends that he would surely die in prison, but his reply was, ‘That is not my business.’ But it seems so much had been made of the matter by the newspapers that Mr. Childs was released without taking the oath. Charles Childs, the son, followed in his father’s steps. At Bungay the Churchmen seemed to have determined to make Dissenters as uncomfortable as possible. Actually five years after they had thrown the father into prison, the churchwardens proceeded against the son, having been baffled in repeated attempts to distrain upon his goods, and cited him into the Ecclesiastical Court, where it took two and a half years to determine whether the sum of three shillings and fourpence was due. At the end of that time the judge decided it was not, and the churchwardens had to pay Mr. Childs’ costs as well as their own, which in the course of time amounted to a very respectable sum. Charles Childs, who died suddenly a few years since, and who never seemed to me to have aged a day since I first knew him, was truly a chip of the old block. He was much in London, as he printed quite as much as his father for the leading London publishers. An enlightened patriot, he was in very many cases successful in resisting the obstaclesraised from time to time by party spirit or Church bigotry. On more than one occasion he conducted a number of his workmen through an illegally-closed path, and opened it by the destruction of the fences, repeated appeals to the persistent obstructions having proved unavailing. He was a man of scholarly and literary attainments, a clever talker, well able to hold his own, and during the Corn Law and Currency agitation he contributed one or more articles on these subjects to theWestminster Review, then edited by his friend, the late General Perronet Thompson, a very foremost figure in Radical circles forty years ago, always trying to get into Parliament—rarely succeeding in the attempt. ‘How can he expect it,’ said Mr. Cobden to me one day, ‘when, instead of going to the principal people to support him, he finds out some small tradesman—some little tailor or shoemaker—to introduce him?’ Once upon a time theTimesfuriously attacked Charles Childs. His reply, which was able and convincing, was forwarded, but only procured admission in the shape of an advertisement, for which Mr. Childs had to pay ten pounds. The corner of East Anglia of which I write rarely produced two better men than the Childs, father and son. They are gone,but the printing business still survives, though no longer carried on under the well-known name. By their noble integrity and public spirit they proved themselves worthy of a craft to which light and literature and leading owe so much. It is to such men that England is under lasting obligations, and one of the indirect benefits of a State Church is that it gives them a grievance, and a sense of wrong, which compels them to gird up their energies to act the part of village Hampdens or guiltless Cromwells. All the manhood in them is aroused and strengthened as they contend for what they deem right and just, and against force and falsehood. Poets, we are told, by one himself a poet,
‘Are cradled into poetry by wrong;They learn in suffering what they teach in song.’
‘Are cradled into poetry by wrong;They learn in suffering what they teach in song.’
Nonconformists have cause especially to rejoice in the bigotry and persecution to which they have been exposed, since it has led them by a way they knew not, to become the champions of a broader creed and a more general right than that of which their fathers dreamed. It is easy to swim with the stream; it requires a strong man to swim against it. Two hundred years of such swimming had made the Bungay Nonconformists strong, andgave to the world two such exceptionally sturdy and strengthful men as John and Charles Childs. I was proud to know them as a boy; in advancing years I am prouder still to be permitted to bear this humble testimony to their honest worth. It is because Nonconformity has raised up such men in all parts of the land, that a higher tone has been given to our public life, that politics mean something more than a struggle between the ins and the outs, and that ‘Onward’ is our battle-cry.
Of the young men more or less coming under the influence of the Childs’s, perhaps one of the most successful was the late Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward, Librarian to her Majesty. When I first knew him he was in a bank at Norwich. Thence he passed to Highbury College, and in due time, after he had taken his B.A. degree, settled as the Independent minister at Wortwell, near Harleston, in Norfolk. There he became connected with John Childs, and, amidst much hard work, edited for the firm a new edition of ‘Barclay’s Universal English Dictionary.’ In 1860, on the death of Mr. Glover, who had for many years filled the post of Librarian to the Queen at Windsor Castle, Mr. Woodward’s namewas mentioned to the Prince, in reply to inquiries for a competent successor. Acting on the advice of a friend at head-quarters, Mr. Woodward forwarded to Prince Albert the same printed testimonials which he had sent in when he was a candidate for the vacant secretaryship of a large and popular society, and to those alone he owed his appointment to the office of Librarian to the Queen. An interview took place at Windsor Castle, which was highly satisfactory; but before the appointment was finally made, Mr. Woodward informed Her Majesty and the Prince that there was one circumstance which he had omitted to mention, and which might disqualify him for the post. ‘Pray, what is that disqualification?’ asked the Prince. ‘It is,’ replied Mr. Woodward, ‘that I have been educated for, and have actually conducted the services of an Independent congregation in the country.’ ‘And why should that be thought to disqualify you?’ asked the Prince. ‘It does nothing of the sort. If that is all, we are quite satisfied, and feel perfectly safe in having you for a librarian.’ Am I not justified in saying that at one time Bungay influences reached far and near?
Great Yarmouth Nonconformists—Intellectual life—Dawson Turner—Astley Cooper—Hudson Gurney—Mrs. Bendish.
When David Copperfield, Dickens tells us, first caught sight of Yarmouth, it seemed to him to look rather spongy and soppy. As he drew nearer, he remarks, ‘and saw the whole adjacent prospect, lying like a straight, low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it, and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast-and-water, it would have been much nicer.’ He adds: ‘When we got into the street, which was strange to me, and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tallow, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place injustice.’ In this opinion his readers who knowYarmouth will agree. Brighton and Hastings and Eastbourne might envy Yarmouth its sandy beach, where you can lead an amphibious life, watching the fishing-smacks as they come to shore with cargoes often so heavy as to be sold for manure; watching the merchant-ships and yachts that lie securely in the Roads, or the long trail of black smoke of Scotch or northern steamers far away; watching the gulls ever skimming the surface of the waves; or the children, as they build little forts and dwellings in the sand to be rudely swept to destruction by the advancing tide. In the golden light of summer, how blue is the sky, how green the sea, how yellow the sand, how jolly look the men and handsome the women! What health and healing are in the air, as it comes laden with ozone from the North Sea! You have the sea in front and on each side to look at, to walk by, to splash in, to sail on. The danger is, that you grow too fat, too ruddy, too hearty, too boisterous. As we all know, Venus was born out of the sea, and out there on that eastern peninsula, of which Yarmouth is the pride and ornament, there used to flourish bonny lasses, as if to show that the connection between the ocean and lovely woman is as intimate as of yore. Yarmouth and Lowestoft owe a greatdeal to the Great Eastern Railway, which has made them places of health-resort from all parts of England; and truly the pleasure-seeker or the holiday-maker may go farther and fare worse.
I was a proud boy when first I set foot in Yarmouth. How I came to go there I can scarcely remember, but it is to be presumed I accompanied my father on one of those grand occasions—as far as Nonconformist circles are concerned—when the brethren met together for godly comfort and counsel. It is true Wrentham was in Suffolk, and Yarmouth was in Norfolk, but the Congregational Churches of that quarter had always been connected by Christian fellowship and sympathy, and hence I was taken to Yarmouth—at that time far more like a Dutch than an English town—and wonderful to me was the Quay, with its fine houses on one side and its long line of ships on the other—something like the far-famed Bompjes of Rotterdam—and the narrow rows in which the majority of the labouring classes were accustomed to live. ‘A row,’ wrote Charles Dickens, ‘is a long, narrow lane or alley, quite straight, or as nearly so as may be, with houses on each side, both of which you can sometimes touch with the finger-tips of each hand by stretching out your arms to their full extent.Many and many a picturesque old bit of domestic architecture is to be hunted up among the rows. In some there is little more than a blank wall for the double boundary. In others the houses retreat into busy square courts, where washing and clear-starching are done, and wonderful nasturtiums and scarlet-runners are reared from green boxes filled with that scarce commodity, vegetable mould. Most of these rows are paved with pebbles from the beach, and to traverse them a peculiar form of low cart, drawn by a single horse, is employed.’ This to me was a great novelty, as with waggons and carts I was familiar, but not with a Yarmouth cart—now, I find, replaced by wheelbarrows. In Amsterdam, at the present day, you may see many such quaint old rows. But in Amsterdam you have an evil-smelling air, while in Yarmouth it is ever fresh and crisp, and redolent, as it were, of the neighbouring sea. The market-place and the big church were at the back of this congeries of quays and rows, and the sea and the old pier were at quite a respectable distance from the town. I fancy the Yarmouth of the London bathers has now extended down to the sandy beach, and the rough and rude old pier has given place to one better adapted to the wants and requirements of anincreasingly well-to-do community. Far more Dutch than English was the Yarmouth of half a century ago, I again say.
As to the Yarmouth Independent parson, I shall never forget him. He was a very big man, with great red cheeks that hung over his collar like blown bladders, and was always on stilts. He preached in a big meeting-house, now no more, the pillars of which intercepted alike the view and the sound. One winter evening he was holding forth, in his usual heavy style, to a few good people—with whom, evidently, all pleasure was out of the question—who came there, as in duty bound, and sat like martyrs all the while, and all were as grave as the preacher, when a wicked boy rushed in and, in a hurried manner, called out, ‘Fire! fire!’ The effect, I am told, was electrical. For once the good parson was in a hurry, and moved as quickly and spoke as rapidly as his fellows; but never had there been so much excitement in his chapel since he had been its pastor. Once, I remember, he came to town, and dropped in at the close of a party rather convivially inclined, in the Old London Coffee House. As the reverend gentleman advanced to greet his friends, a London lawyer, with all the impudence of his class, muttered,in a whisper intended to be heard, and which was heard, by everyone, ‘Yarmouth bloater.’ The good man said nothing, but it was evident he thought all the more, as the group were more or less tittering over the fitness of the comparison. The lawyer who made the remark was also the son of a London minister, and, therefore, might have been expected to have known better. I fear the Yarmouth minister never forgave him. Well, it only served him right, as he had a horrible way of making young people very uncomfortable. ‘Well, Master James,’ said he to me on one occasion, when all the brethren had come to dine at Wrentham, and when I was admitted, in conformity with the golden maxim in all well-regulated family circles, that little children were to be seen and not heard (perhaps in our day the fault is too much in an opposite direction), ‘can you inform me which is the more proper form of expression—a pair of new gloves, or a new pair of gloves?’ Of course I gave the wrong answer, as I blushed up to the ears at finding myself the smallest personage in the room, publicly appealed to by the biggest. He meant well, I dare say. His only object was to draw me out; but the question and the questioner gave me a bad quarter of an hour, and I never gotover the unpleasant sensation of which he had unconsciously been the originator in my youthful breast.
At that time Yarmouth people were supposed to be a little superior. They were well-to-do, and lived in good style, and, as was to be expected, considering the sanitary advantages of the situation, were in good health and spirits. They got a good deal of their intellectual character from Norwich, which at the time set the fashion in such matters. In 1790 two societies were established in that city for the private and amicable discussion of miscellaneous questions. One of these, the Tusculan, seems to have devoted the attention of its members exclusively to political topics; while the Speculative, although it imposed no restrictions on the range of inquiry, was of a more philosophical character. William Taylor was a member of both, and it is difficult to say whether he distinguished himself most by his ingenuity in debate, by the novelty of the information which he brought to bear on every point, or by the lively sallies of imagination with which he at once amused and excited his hearers. The papers read by himself embraced an infinite variety of subjects, from the theory of the earth, then unillumined bythe disclosures of modern geologists, to the most elaborate and refined productions of its rational tenants, and he was seldom at a loss to place on new ground or in a fresh light the matter of discussion introduced by others. Writers of every tongue, studied by him with observant curiosity, stored his retentive memory with materials ready to be applied on every occasion, moulded by his Promethean talent into the most animated and alluring forms. As a speaker and converser he was eminently characterized by a constant flow of brilliant ideas, by a rapid succession of striking images, and by a never-failing copiousness of words, often quaint, but always correct. A similar society was formed at Yarmouth, under the auspices of Dr. Aiken, at which William Taylor also occasionally attended. The Rev. Thomas Compton has given the following description of these visits: ‘We were, moreover, sometimes gratified by the presence of our literary friends from Norwich. I have there repeatedly listened to the mild and persuasive eloquence of the late Dr. Enfield. A gentleman, too, still living, who has lately added to his literary fame by a biographical work of high repute (I scarcely need add that I allude to Mr. W. Taylor) would sometimes instruct us by hisvarious and profound knowledge, or amuse us with his ingenious paradoxes.’ When we recollect how at this time the poetical puerilities of Bath Easton flourished in the West, we may claim that Norwich and Yarmouth, if not as favoured by fashion, had at any rate a claim to intellectual reputation at least quite equal to that city of theton. Dr. Sayers, whose biography William Taylor had written, and whose ‘Dramatic Sketches of Northern Mythology’ had created a great sensation at the time, was of Yarmouth extraction.
The Rev. Mr. Compton writes: ‘In Yarmouth, where I lived at this time, and where Lord Chedworth was accustomed to pay an annual visit, there was then a society of gentlemen who met once a fortnight for the purpose of amicable discussion. Our members—alas! how few remain—were of all parties and persuasions, and some of them of very distinguished attainments. A society thus constituted was in those days as pleasant as it was instructive. The most eager disputation was never found to endanger the most perfect goodwill, nor did any bitter feuds arise from this entire freedom of opinion till the prolific period of the French Revolution. On this subject our controversies became very impassioned. The present Sir AstleyCooper, then a very young man, was accustomed to pass his vacations with his most excellent father, Dr. Cooper, a name ever to be by me beloved and revered. It was the amusement of our young friend to say things of the most irritating nature, I believe—like Lady Florence Pemberton in the novel—merely to see who would make the ugliest face. Thus circumstanced, it was not in my philosophy to be the coolest of the party.’ We can well imagine the consequences. There was a row, and the literary society came to grief. As time went on matters became worse instead of better, and the town was split up into parties—Liberal or the reverse, Church or Dissent, but all of one mind as regards their views being correct; and as to the weakness or wickedness of persons who thought otherwise. The evil of this spirit knew no bounds, and the demoralizing effect it produced was especially apparent at election times. When Oldfield wrote his ‘Origin of Parliaments,’ the town, he tells us, was under the influence of the Earl of Leicester, and was for many years represented by some of his Lordship’s family. The right of election was in the burgesses at large, of whom there were at that time one thousand. The Reform Bill did little to improve the state ofaffairs; it led to greater bribery and corruption and intimidation than ever, and now, as a Parliamentary borough, Yarmouth has ceased to exist. ‘Sugar,’ it seems, was the slang term used for money, and the honest voters were too eager to get it. Alas! in none of our seaport towns is the standard of morality very high. Yarmouth, at any rate, is not worse than Deal. In old days the excitement of a Yarmouth election much affected our village. It lasted some days. The out-voters were brought from the uttermost parts of the earth. As there were no railways, stage-coaches were hired to bring them down from town; and when they changed horses at Wrentham, quite a crowd would assemble to look at the flags, and the free and independents on their way to do their duty, overflowing with enthusiasm and beer.
Sir Astley Cooper was much connected with Yarmouth in his young days, when his father was the incumbent of the parish church. Some of his boyish pranks were peculiar. Here is one of them: ‘Having taken two pillows from his mother’s bed, he carried them up the spire of Yarmouth Church, at a time when the wind was blowing from the north-east; and as soon as hehad ascended as high as he could, he ripped them open, and, shaking out their contents, dispersed them in the air. The feathers were carried away by the wind, and fell far and wide over the surface of the market-place, to the great astonishment of a large number of persons assembled there. The timid looked upon it phenomenon predictive of some calamity; the inquisitive formed a thousand conjectures; while some, curious in natural history, actually accounted for it by a gale of wind in the north blowing wild-fowl feathers from the island of St. Paul’s.’ On another occasion he got into an old trunk, which the family had agreed to get rid of as inconvenient in the house. In this case he had to pay the penalty, when he emerged from the chest in the carpenter’s shop. The men, who had complained terribly of its weight, were not inclined to allow young Astley to get off free. One of Astley’s tricks had, however, a good motive, as it was intended to cure an old woman of her besetting sin—a tendency to take a drop too much. In order to cure the old woman of this weakness, he dressed himself as well as he could to represent the sable form of his satanic majesty. Alas! instead of being surprised, the old lady was too far-gone for that, and listened with tipsy gravity to thedistinguished visitor’s discourse. In her case it was true, as Burns wrote:
‘Wi’ tipenny we fear nae evil;Wi’ usquebae we’ll face the deevil.’
‘Wi’ tipenny we fear nae evil;Wi’ usquebae we’ll face the deevil.’
One of his tricks nearly led to unpleasant consequences. Whilst out shooting one day, near Yarmouth, he killed an owl—a bird familiarly known in Yarmouth by the sobriquet of ‘Brother Billy.’ Having arrived at home, he went up into his mother’s room, with the bird concealed behind his coat, and, assuming a countenance full of fear and sorrow, exclaimed, ‘Mother, mother, I’ve shot my brother Billy!’ but the alarm and distress instantly depicted on the distracted countenance of his parent induced him as quickly as possible to pull the owl from under his coat. This at once exposed the truth and allayed the apprehensions of his mother’s mind, but the effects of the shock it caused did not so immediately pass away. Dr. Cooper determined to punish his son, and he therefore confined him, according to his usual mode of correction, in his own house. Astley was, however, but little disposed to remain passive in his imprisonment, and in the wantonness of his ever-active disposition amused himself by climbing up the chimney, and having at length reached thesummit, endeavoured, by imitating the well-known tone of the chimney-sweeper, and calling out as lustily as he could, ‘Sweep, sweep!’ to attract the attention of the people below. Even on his father the incorrigible lad seems on more than one occasion to have tried his little game. One day, while the worthy Doctor was marrying a couple in the church, Master Astley concealed himself in a turret close by the altar, and, imitating his father’s voice, repeated in a subdued tone the words of the marriage-service as the ceremony proceeded, to the consternation of his father, who said that he had never observed an echo in that place before. Once or twice the lad’s life was in peril, as when his foot slipped on the top of the church, and he was unpleasantly suspended for some time between the rafters of the ceiling and the floor of the chancel. On another occasion he had a narrow escape from drowning. It seems that on the Yare are little boats out together very slightly, for the purpose of carrying a man, his gun, and dog over the shallows of Braydon, in pursuit of the flights of wild-fowl which at certain seasons haunt these shoals. When the boat is thus loaded, it only draws two or three inches of water, and is quite unfit for sea. Young Astley nearly lost his lifein attempting to take one of these boats out to open sea. In this way young Astley Cooper, from his fearless and enterprising disposition, soon became a sort of leader of the Yarmouth boys, and at their head, for a time, seems to have devoted himself to every kind of amusement within his reach—riding, boating, fishing, and not unfrequently sports of a less harmless character, such as breaking lamps and windows, ringing the church bells at all hours, disturbing the people by frequent alterations of the church clock, so that if any mischief were committed it was sure, says his admiring biographer, to be set down to him.
The two men who shed most literary fame on the Yarmouth of my childhood were Dawson Turner and Hudson Gurney, who in this respect resembled each other, that they were both bankers and both antiquarians more or less distinguished. Dawson Turner was a man of middle height and of saturnine aspect, who had the reputation of being a hard taskmaster to the ladies of his family, who were quite as intelligent and devoted to literature as himself. He published a ‘Tour in Normandy’—at that time scarcely anyone travelled abroad—and much other matter, and perhaps as an autograph-collector was unrivalled. Most ofhis books, with his notes, more or less valuable, are now in the British Museum. Sir Charles Lyell, when a young man, visited the Turner family in 1817, and gives us a very high idea of them all. ‘Mr. Turner,’ he says, in a letter to his father, ‘surprises me as much as ever. He wrote twenty-two letters last night after he had wished us “Good-night.” It kept him up till two o’clock this morning.’ Again Sir Charles writes: ‘What I see going on every hour in this family makes me ashamed of the most active day I ever spent at Midhurst. Mrs. Turner has been etching with her daughters in the parlour every morning at half-past six.’ Of Hudson Gurney in his youth we get a flattering portrait in one of the charming ‘Remains of the Late Mrs. Trench,’ edited by her son, Archbishop of Dublin. Writing from Yarmouth in 1799, she says: ‘I have been detained here since last Friday, waiting for a fair wind, and my imprisonment would have been comfortless enough had it not have been for the attention of Mr. Hudson Gurney, a young man on whom I had no claims except from a letter of Mr. Sanford’s, who, without knowing him, or having any connection with him, recommended me to his care, feeling wretched that I should be unprotected in the firstpart of my journey. He has already devoted to me one evening and two mornings, assisted me in money matters, lent me books, and enlivened my confinement to a wretched room by his pleasant conversation. Mr. Sanford having described me as a person travelling aboutfor her health, he says his old assistant in the Bank fancied I was a decrepit elderly lady who might safely be consigned to his youthful partner. His description of his surprise thus prepared was conceived in a very good strain of flattery. He is almost two-and-twenty, understands several languages, seems to delight in books, and to be uncommonly well informed.’ Little credit, however, is due to Mr. Hudson Gurney for his politeness in this case. The lovely and lively widow—she had married Colonel St. George at the age of eighteen, and the marriage only lasted two or three years, the Colonel dying of consumption—must have possessed personal and mental attractions irresistible to a cultivated young man of twenty-two. Had she been old and ugly, it is to be feared his business engagements would have prevented the youthful banker devoting much time to her ladyship’s service.
Yarmouth is intimately connected with literature and the fine arts. It was off Yarmouth thatRobinson Crusoe was shipwrecked; and the testimony he bears to the character of the people shows how kindly disposed were the Yarmouth people of his day. ‘We,’ he writes, ‘got all safe on shore, and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, not only by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, but also by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us, sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull, as we thought fit.’ It was from Yarmouth that Wordsworth and Coleridge sailed away to Germany, then almost aterra incognita. Leman Blanchard was born at Yarmouth, as well as Sayers, the first, if not the cleverest, of our English caricaturists. One of the most brilliant men ever returned to Parliament was Winthrop Mackworth Praed, M.P. for Yarmouth, whose politics as a boy I detested as much as in after-years I learned to admire his genius. One of the most fortunate men of our day, Sir James Paget, the great surgeon, was a Yarmouth lad, and the See of Chester was filled by an accomplished divine, also a Yarmouth lad. Southey, when at Yarmouth, where his brother was a student for some time, was so much struck withthe uniqueness of the epitaphs in the Yarmouth Church, that he took the trouble to copy many of them. One was as follows:
‘We put him out to nurse;Alas! his life he paid,But judge not; he was overlaid.’
‘We put him out to nurse;Alas! his life he paid,But judge not; he was overlaid.’