Wehave heard a good deal of Norwich. When the summer comes, some enterprising journalist manages to find his way there, and if he has a copy of Evelyn, waxes eloquent over its gardens, and market-place, and ancient castle, and its memories of Sir Thomas Browne. I write of the Norwich of to-day—of living Norwich—a city with a population of more than a hundred thousand—that has renewed its youth—that is marching on like John Brown’s soul; a Norwich that was, as I first remember it, a seat of Parliamentary and political corruption, of vice and ignorance, of apathy and sloth. It is a grand old city, none grander anywhere in England. It is a place to me of pleasant memories, and the stranger within its gates must admit the charm of its grey towers and churches, its cathedral, its well-wooded suburbs extending over a wide range of hills. In that respect some claim for Norwich that it resembles Jerusalem. From all I can make out I should be inclined to give Norwich the preference. It has fewer Jews and not so many fleas.
And first let me speak of living Norwich religiously. One of our wise kings said that the spire of Harrow was an outward and visible sign of the Church. Norwich rejoices in many such signs. Perhaps one ofthe most prominent at this time is the new Roman Catholic Cathedral at the end of St. Giles’s, which has been nine years in building, which is being erected regardless of expense, and which is far from completed yet. I heard Cardinal Manning, who was the most complete exemplification of the union of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove I ever saw, in one of his sermons compare the Church of Rome to a lamb in the midst of wolves. At Norwich, as in most parts of England, the lamb is by no means a little one, and it may be in time it will develop into a ram, and a ram can do not a little mischief. What sign of life does the State Church give? Norwich is full of parsons; are any of them men of note? It had one it borrowed from dissent, Dr. Cunningham Geikie, but he could not stand the climate, and now lives at Bournemouth. What sign of life, again I ask, does the Norwich State Church exhibit? Alas, the reply is not satisfactory. With the exception of its new Dean, there is no clergyman of note among them. Dean Lefroy is able, earnest, active, a worker in many ways, social as well as religious, and on Sunday evening fills the nave of the Cathedral, where he conducts a service minus the Church prayers, and plus Moody and Sankey hymns. He is Evangelical, and is making that influence felt. He is an Irishman, and as a matter of coarse fervid and eloquent. When he came to Norwich, I am told, he expressed his hope that he should soon empty some of its many chapels. At present he has not succeeded in the attempt. I don’t think his church understands the way to go to work aright in that respect. When I was last in Norwich the Primitive Methodists were in full conference. All the religious bodies in Norwich gave them hearty greeting except the Church, and the intolerance of its attitude naturally occasioned considerable unfriendly comment. Wesleyan Methodism in Norwich and throughout Norfolk is making great headway. Still true to its old policy, which has been defined as a penny a week, a shilling a quarter, and justification by faith, it has gone in heartilyfor the Forward Movement, and the evidences are to be met with everywhere. Congregationalism is also preparing to commence a new cause in a hitherto neglected district, and it is time it did, as it is nearly forty years since the new Chapel-in-the-Field, now under the ministerial care of the Rev. J. P. Perkins, started on its successful career. It already has two prosperous mission stations as centres of religious activity and life. It is needless to say that Princes Street Chapel flourishes and prospers as it has ever done since Rev. George Barrett—one of the most winning of men in the Congregational ministry—has occupied its pulpit. The establishment of the Pleasant Sunday Afternoons during the past two years has been attended with great success and blessing. The large congregations which crowd the Church Sunday by Sunday prove that this class meets a need. It is a pleasing feature of this work that it has called into active service some members of the church who in the past had engaged in no recognised form of Christian work. I was interested to find that at the old aristocratic Unitarian Chapel, known as the Octagon, they have Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Services and that Rev. J. P. Perkins has conducted a service there. In Norwich, as elsewhere, all the churches of all religious bodies suffer more or less by the tendency of people successful in business to live as much out of the city as possible. Christian young men and women seem well looked after. The Church young men have a good institution in a street leading into Orford Hill, while the others meet in one of the old mansions in St. Giles’s Street. Education prospers in the old city. I found a junior institute in connection with the Church where the classes are well attended; and the Board School educates 12,000 children, while the denominational schools between them muster but 6,000. The School Board has established one of a higher grade, which is a great success, while the great Norwich publishers, Jarrold and Son, by their publications have done much to supply the people with healthy and popular literature.
To commercial Norwich I can devote but little space. The city has flourished by reason of its being placed on two rivers—the Wensum and the Yare. The Great Eastern Railway gave it a tremendous lift, and, next to Mr. Colman, is perhaps the largest employer of labour in the district. The celebrated Carrow Works of Messrs. J. and J. Colman, manufacturers of mustard, starch, corm-flour, and laundry-blue, are known all the world over. Next in importance is the manufactory of Norwich ales, as the county of Norfolk has long been celebrated for its growth of the finest malting barley, and Norwich is, unfortunately, overdone with public-houses. I find that Messrs. Colman have established extensive Sunday and week-day schools for the children of their workpeople, and employ two Bible-women to visit them in their homes. I cannot find that the Norwich brewers have distinguished themselves much in this way, though it is to be feared that the need of such agencies among their workpeople must be greater than it is amongst those employed by Messrs. Colman. Norwich is a great place for clothing and the manufacture of boots and shoes. I suppose Harmer and Co. are at the head of the great clothing factories. Their new factory in St. Andrew’s is an ornament to the city, and is perhaps one of the finest in the world. It boasts a marvellous system of ventilation introduced by an American company, which has never before been tried in this country, and which every one interested in such matters ought to study. Mr. Harmer, who in 1888 was Mayor of Norwich, takes a deep interest in its welfare, and is certainly a man whose opinions deserve consideration. He thinks that the contemplated legislation, which has for its ultimate object the doing away with outdoor work, will press very hardly upon the working classes of the city, and will be more injurious to them than their employers. The practice of the firm has been to take into their employ young girls leaving school, who soon acquire much dexterity in their work, and who, when they marry, can be—and many of them are supplied with sewing machines to use at home.Be that as it may, he has done more than any one in the great work of showing how a factory can be rendered healthy, and is to be held in reverence as one of our greatest practical sanitary reformers. One word more. Norwich is the centre of a great agricultural district, and its cattle market may be described as the largest of the kind in all England. In one year alone as many as 95,000 beasts, 137,000 sheep, and 14,000 pigs were received for the market. Till we all become vegetarians, Norwich will, by reason of its cattle market alone, flourish as a living city famed for its flesh pots, and beloved of John Bull.
Norwich has been a famous city ever since, at any rate, the time when Sir Thomas Browne wrote his famedReligio de Medicithere. It was to the house of Mrs. Taylor, wife of a Norwich tradesman, that Sir James Mackintosh and the other leading Liberals of the day used to repair to hold high discourse on the origin of society and the rights of man. Windham, one of the greatest statesmen of his day, the friend of Johnson and Burke, represented Norwich. There lived William Taylor, the friend and correspondent of Southey, who was the first to open up to the public the vast treasury of German thought. Harriet Martineau was born there, as was likewise her more celebrated brother James, who still lives to illustrate the mental and religious speculation of our day. A grand old city is Norwich, with its castle, now a museum, looking over it all, with its St. Andrew’s Hall, now utilised for concerts and public meetings, with its great markets, with its Colman’s Mustard Mills, with its old houses and narrow streets. The workman, with his strikes, has driven away from Northampton a good deal of its boot and shoe manufacture. What Northampton has lost Ipswich, Colchester, and especially Norwich, have gained. There is beautiful country round Norwich; and Norwich ought to be eminently holy, for there are forty churches there, many of them very ancient. We hear a good deal of the piety of our forefathers. In Norwich we realise that fact as well as anywhere. Norwich,consequently, is the home of bell-ringers. Mr. Suffling tells us, “I suppose no other place in England can boast of so many bell-ringers, or such good ones, as Norwich.” On certain occasions you are deafened by the clamour of its bells.
Away from Ipswich, and Colchester, and Norwich there is a delicious sleepiness about the old East Anglian towns, as if they feel they have done their duty in their day and are out of the world. They are all in a declining way. They have all seen better days. They have not quite died out, because the Great Eastern Railway has connected them all together and insists on their sharing in the labours and triumphs of the present day. But they had rather not. They would rather live on their past glories—Bungay, with its renowned castle, Framlingham with its castle still more renowned, Bury with its memories of its martyr king, Woodbridge mildly illuminated by the fame of Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, Beccles with its fine church, Halesworth where Archbishop Whateley was for many years the rector. They are all places to live in happily if you have had enough of excitement and would shun the wicked world and its ways.
Oneof the most curious corners of old England is known, and has been known to the community for many years, as King’s Lynn, Norfolk, on the borders of the Wash. It was a great place for traders. By means of it in the olden time many a tun of good red wine came into the country, and it is still a great place for trade, as it has fine docks, available to steamers with a tonnage of 2,000 tons. Thus Lynn is a great port for the landing of foreign sugar (which ought to be made at home) from Hamburg. A hundred years ago its annual shipping revenue was only exceeded by the ports of London, Liverpool, Bristol and Hull. It is also easily available by means of railway communication, which renders it accessible from all quarters—the Great Northern, the Midland, and the Great Eastern all find their way to Lynn. The population has rather declined since the last census; but still the town is a large one—upwards of 18,000 in population—and one wonders how all the people hidden away in its shops and narrow streets can manage to find a living. The fact is, it is the centre of an enormous agricultural district, and thus twice a week has a large extra population, drawn thither by the attractions of its Saturday and Tuesday markets. There seems to be no great manufacturing industry, the chief being that of Mr. Savage, who employs about three hundred people, all engaged in the manufacture of variouskinds of roundabouts and steam velocipedes, such as are seen at our country fairs. It is the most important business of the kind in the Eastern Counties, and of it the people of the Town of Lynn are justly proud. Nevertheless, to most of us the charm of Lynn is chiefly antiquarian. Its wonderful old churches are well worth visiting. In the good old times Lynn was a fortified town, and there are still abundant remains of the old walls, as well as a handsome Gothic structure, known as the South-gate. Unfortunately the East-gate, an equally fine specimen of ancient architecture, was demolished in the first year of the present century. In the centre of one of the public walks, well shaded by trees, which in summer cast a grateful shade, stands an ancient chapel, known as the Red Mount, a great resort for pilgrims. Stowe tells us it was in the reign of King John that Lynn was fortified. The cup used by the Mayor on the occasion of municipal festivities is said to have been the gift of that monarch, as is likewise the sword usually borne before the Mayor. In the Museum is preserved one of the old ducking stools, which have gone out of fashion in consequence of the increasing good temper of the ladies in these latter days. There is an immense deal to see in Lynn. I would gladly have tarried there longer, especially as I obtained good quarters at the Temperance Hotel, which seemed to be much patronised by commercial men. I found many of them there after the day’s work was over, reading one or other of the good books provided for them by the Christian Commercial Travellers’ Society, a society which does much good in many ways. Lynn has a good hospital and a fine library.
Lynn has given birth to some notabilities, at any rate. In 1752 Fanny Burney was born there, who wrote novels which still find readers. The fair Fanny lived to be the friend of Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, and, as Madame D’Arblay, left us diaries and letters which give us a vivid idea of life when George III. was king. As is the case generally, nothing in her childhoodindicated that she would, while still a young woman have secured for herself an honourable and permanent place among English writers. Then there is the great African explorer and artist, Thomas Baines, whose name, says a writer inThe Cape Monthly Magazine, must ever be associated with the explorers of the country north of the Cape Colony, in the same rank with Livingstone, Chapman, Anderson, and Green—a man to whom the wilderness brought gladness and the mountains peace. He was a native of that nursery of the Anglo-Saxon race whose energy he so truly inherited—Norfolk. He was born at Lynn in 1822. “His father,” writes his biographer, “also a man of considerable energy, was the master of a small vessel belonging to that port, and no doubt his marine life, as well as the striking scenery of the Norfolk coast, gave a tinge to the early artistic tendencies of his son.” As was the case with our great painter of cattle, it was while he was learning coach painting that he became an artist. He landed at the Cape, where he managed to obtain a scanty living by painting African landscape, and teaching drawing. And then, when there was war with the natives, he won reputation by painting the leading incidents of the engagements. It is to the credit of Lynn that on his return to his native town, in 1857, he was presented with the Freedom of the Borough. Alas! his career as an explorer and discoverer was cut short by African fever, and he now sleeps in Durban Cathedral, where a monument records his memory. Eugene Aram was an usher in the Lynn Grammar School; Sawtree, a Wycliffe priest, burnt at Smithfield in 1400, came from Lynn; and Bishop Goodwin, just deceased, was born at Lynn in 1818. John Copegrave, a Provincial of the Austin Friars, and author of theChronicle of England, and Geoffry, a great grammarian, and author of a Latin-English Dictionary, were natives of Lynn.
Politically, Lynn has rather a celebrated history. Formerly it was a close borough, belonging to the Walpole family. The great Whig Minister representedit in Parliament, as did also his equally celebrated son. Lord George Bentinck, it may be remembered, sat for Lynn, also the great diplomatist Sir Stratford Canning, known and feared in Turkey. But Lynn has opened its eyes and burst its old traditions. For the first time in its history it has a Liberal majority on its Town Council; of course the Noncons. in the place have had much to do with this. I find that no less than six of the members of the Congregational church, under the care of Rev. A. Furner, are members of the Corporation. Congregationalism in such a city of churches and antiquity as Lynn is, has not been much of a success. Baptists and Independents were both at a low ebb, but they are reviving greatly, and the night I was there I attended a meeting in the mission-hall, where I found a clergyman and his Dissenting brethren standing side by side. The Baptists, who are now doing well since Rev. Thomas Perry has been amongst them, have an interesting history. In 1687, Mr. Thomas Grantham, a General Baptist Minister, well-known in Lincolnshire, and related to some of the first families in that county, came to Lynn at the period referred to, and obtained permission to preach in the town-hall. He died at Norwich in 1692. In 1690, a persecution broke out against the Baptists at Lynn, and James Markam, their minister, was proceeded against under the Conventicle Act, for attempting to establish “a new religion,” on the deposition of two informers, and a fine of £20 was levied on the house in which they met, £20 on the preacher, and 5s. on each hearer. In 1818, there were many high Calvinists among the Lynn Baptists, and some of the most devoted friends of the cause, believing such sentiments to be an unfair view of the Gospel and injurious, withdrew, and went to the Independent Chapel. In 1839, the veteran preacher, Thomas Wigner, came to Lynn, little anticipating, he tells us, that in the then state of his health he would be there long, but he was there many years. Lynn has a Union chapel, and it must be remembered, to its credit, that its pulpit was occupied by Rev. William Hull, a very superior preacher indeed,of whom the late Dean Stanley declared that he was the Robertson of the Nonconformist Church.
One of the most celebrated of Lynn residents was, perhaps, the Rev. William Richards, M.D., who was for twenty years pastor of the General Baptist Church in that town. He commenced his career in Wales, not many miles from Haverford West. In 1773, at the age of 24, he entered the Bristol “Academy.” Two years later he became co-pastor at Pershore, with the late Dr. John Ash, author of the English Dictionary. Perhaps it was through contact with Dr. Ash that he first conceived the idea of writing his very popular Welsh-English Dictionary. In 1776, he settled at Lynn, and during his residence there wrote, besides many other works, a “History of Lynn” in two octavo volumes, printed in 1812, at Lynn, by W. G. Whittingham. He willed his library to the Brown University, Rhode Island, from which university he received his doctor’s degree. He died in 1818, in Wales, where for supposed unsoundness in the faith—a groundless charge, however—he suffered a good deal. Dr. Richards was a man of exemplary life, of much learning and of downright independence of judgment, and from all I can learn of him he deserved to be remembered at Lynn and throughout the country. Since his time, there has been advance in politics in Lynn, as well as elsewhere. When the judicious Dod published hisElectoral Facts, the town had one newspaper—Conservative, of course—with a circulation of 654 copies; now it has a Liberal newspaper as well, and both papers enjoy a large circulation; and owing to the facilities afforded by the Great Eastern Railway, Lynn has its London morning papers down by nine o’clock. At the period of the passing of the Reform Act, Lynn had a voting force of 660. One of the best things I saw in Lynn, as I was groping my way in the uncertain light, was the fine schoolroom of the Congregational Church, filled with a cluster of clean, happy looking girls, all hard at work sewing. I knew no living soul. I felt I was an intruder, and popped out as speedily as I popped in; but I have the picturebefore me as I write, of happy girls under the sanction of the Christian Church, preserved from the contagion of the streets, learning to work. Christianity has been dogmatic long enough, a little mild and benevolent socialism will not do it much harm. This old world town may be described as a city of churches, and one of its most characteristic remains is Road Mount Chapel, a curious octangular structure containing a beautiful but tiny perpendicular apartment, that once contained the rood of our lady of Lynn. Every schoolboy knows how unwarily, King John nearly lost his life in crossing Lynn Wash, and did lose all his baggage, devoured by the unexpected flood.
“Ioftenwonder,” said a local tradesman to me the other day as I was contemplating the majestic ruins of Framlingham Castle and the seat of power in the Eastern Counties, “that the Great Eastern Railway does not run excursion trains here.” I must own that I shared in that feeling. I am sure thousands would rush from town to see the place if they had a day excursion there. The railway in question has done a good deal for Framlingham. When I knew it as a lad it was out of the world altogether. It laid quite off the turnpike road. To get to London a Framlingham resident had to make his way to Wickham Market. Now it has a railway to itself, and that railway takes you to London, and thus makes Framlingham a living part of the British Empire of to-day. In one respect this has been a great gain for the town, as it led to the establishment, in 1864, of the Albert Memorial College, a handsome pile of buildings adapted for the accommodation of 500 boys. The object of the institution is to provide for the middle classes, at a moderate cost, a practical training, which shall prepare the pupils for the active duties of agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial life, and qualification for the Civil Service and other competitive examinations. The religious instruction is in accordance with the doctrines and practice of the Church of England. But I am glad to find that there is a conscience clause for the sons of Dissenters who are exempted from Church of England teachingand from Sunday attendance at the parish church or college chapel. It speaks well for the school that, though at one time it was in a declining state, for the last few years it has been in a very prosperous condition. It is interesting, as you stand on the lawn in front of the college and look at the decaying ruins of Framlingham Castle, to note how we have swept into a younger day. Ages have passed away since Hugh Bigod lived there; indeed, the origin of the castle is somewhat obscure. Its last royal occupant was Queen Mary. Thence she proceeded in state to take possession of her crown, amidst crowds of misguided men, who had rallied round her standard in the hope that she would respect the work of Reformation begun by her father, and continued by her brother. When the castle was built, brute force ruled the land. When the new college was erected, it had come to be understood that knowledge was power. The college flourishes; the old castle is a ruin. The world moves, after all.
I find Framlingham itself but little changed. There was a barber who, in my youth, had a picture of Absalom caught by his hair in the wood, while David cries—
Oh, Absalom, my son, my son,Thou wouldst not have died,Hadst thou a periwig on!
Oh, Absalom, my son, my son,Thou wouldst not have died,Hadst thou a periwig on!
—That barber is no more, and I know not what has become of his sign. As an object lesson in history, undying interest attaches to Framlingham Castle and its adjacent church. The castle must have been one of the largest in England. As our Quaker poet, Bernard Barton, wrote—
Still stand thy battlemented towers,Firm as in bygone years;As if within yet ruled the powersOf England’s haughtiest peers.
Still stand thy battlemented towers,Firm as in bygone years;As if within yet ruled the powersOf England’s haughtiest peers.
When I first knew the castle it was used as a poor-house. The home of the Bigods and the Howards isutilised in this way no longer. The castle hall is now devoted to the recovery of small debts and other equally local matters. In the good old times the nobles settled debts, small or great, in a much easier way.
The church was erected by one of the Mowbrays, and the tower, which is a handsome one, and from the top of which, on a clear day, you get a view as far as Aldeburgh, contains a clock presented by Sir Henry Thompson, our great surgeon, in memory of his father, a highly-respected inhabitant of Framlingham, who did much for the Congregational cause in that town. “Sir Henry Thompson was my Sunday School teacher,” said an intelligent tradesman to me, “and I have the book in which he signed his name as having taken the Temperance Pledge.” Framlingham—let me state by way of parenthesis—early gave in her adhesion to the Temperance movement. In the cemetery there is a monument to a worthy inhabitant of the name of Larner. He was the great Apostle of Temperance in the Eastern Counties. “He was for years,” Mr. Thomas Whittaker writes, in hisLife’s Battles in Temperance Armour, “the man of Suffolk, the moving power, the undaunted spirit, the unwearied defender; and when it is remembered how special were the difficulties and how numerous the foes, the way in which he brought the whole district under his influence, and even to treat him with loving respect, it is the more remarkable. When he died the heart pulsation seemed to stop.” Out of the world as Framlingham is, and old-fashioned as is the town even to this day, there is a good deal of life in it, and especially so in religious matters. Including the college chapel, there are nine places of worship in it, for a population not much over two thousand. As far as I can make out, the Salvation Army here, as elsewhere, has helped to thin the attendance at most of the existing places of worship. If they can show a more excellent way it is rather a reflection upon the existing pulpits of the place. In spite of the Salvation Army, I met a man in the street who complained to me that Framlingham was dull. “Yousee, sir,” said he, “we are in an agriculturists’ district, and the farmers ha’n’t got any money.” It seems to me that they ought to have—at any rate, the public has to pay quite enough for its beef and mutton, and such farming produce as butter, and milk, and eggs. One odd thing in Framlingham is a tomb in a garden, which you pass on your way from the station, which preserves the memory of one Thomas Mills, a native, who seems to have made money, which he bequeathed to charitable purposes. Normans and Saxons seem to have had between them a good deal to do with Framlingham Castle and Church. At one time or other one of the parsons connected with the place was Catholic and Protestant, and thus went with the times. At a later period one had a more sensitive conscience, and was one of the ejected. Framlingham, like most English towns, seems to have been inhabited by all sorts and conditions of men. But its castle ought to be a rare place for excursionists to visit, and the country round is rich in rural charms. In the world, Framlingham, now that its castle is a ruin, and the power of the feudal lords gone, does not seem to have done much. It has had its day, and that day with its lords and ladies, and fighting men, must have been a grand one. Perhaps it’s as well that they
Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,Morn of toil, nor night of waiting.
Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking,Morn of toil, nor night of waiting.
Inthe year 1727 there was born in Sudbury, and baptized in the Independent Meeting there, Thomas Gainsborough, one of the earliest and the greatest of English painters. The family were Dissenters, and in the meeting-house, now under the care of the Rev. Ira Bosely, who seems very happy and successful in his new sphere of labour, are the memorials of two of them who were buried in the graveyard attached. There are two bequests of the Gainsborough family for the support of the minister for the time being, of which the present incumbent made favourable mention when I saw him the other day, in the comfortable manse attached to the meeting-house. One of the items in the ancient account-book seemed to be curious. It was as follows: “Four shillings for tobacco.” I have only to assume in the good old times our pious ancestors had an idea of Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Services, and for that purpose possibly the tobacco had been acquired. Be that as it may, we may be sure the Gainsborough family were as remarkable as any that then attended on the means of grace. In person, Mr. Gainsborough’s father is represented as a fine old man, who wore his hair carefully parted, and was remarkable for the whiteness and regularity of his teeth. According to the custom of the last century he always wore a sword and was an adroit fencer, possessing the fatal facility of using the weapon in either hand. He introduced into Sudbury the straw trade from Coventry, andhe managed to keep it in his own hands. He had a large family of five sons and four daughters. One of the latter married a Dissenting Minister at Bath. One son, John, was a great mechanical genius, and invented wings, by means of which he essayed to fly, but, to the amusement of the spectators, found himself, instead of soaring into the air, dropped in a ditch by the way. Humphrey Gainsborough, the painter’s second brother, settled as a Dissenting Minister at Henley-on-Thames. Of him, the celebrated Edgeworth, the father of the equally celebrated daughter, says he had never known a man of a more inventive mind. Thomas, the artist, must have inherited something of his artistic skill from his mother, for she herself loved to paint fruit and flowers, but with the boy, painting became the one great object of his life, and he was always at it, even when he should have been studying at the ancient grammar school where he was a pupil; and thus it is Sudbury has two great men to boast of—Thomas Gainsborough, the artist, and Simon de Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was beheaded by the populace in Wat Tyler’s rebellion, and whose skull is still shown you in St. Gregory’s Church. I have known many thick skulls in East Anglia, but surely that of the martyred Archbishop must have been one of the thickest to have lasted all this time.
Sudbury was the painter’s studio. It is now a clean, well-built, and slightly uninteresting provincial town, with a population of about eight thousand. But, said a commercial traveller to me, as I was deploring the barrenness of the land, “It is a good place for business.” It lies in the flat country of the valley of the Stour, a river which expands into a lake when the waters are out. When Gainsborough was a boy it was ancient and picturesque—and dirty. At any rate it is thus described in a poem written by Daniel Herbert, one of the old Noncons., a bunting manufacturer, and occasional preacher in the old meeting-house, who tells us
I live at Sudbury, that dirty place,Where are a few poor sinners saved by grace.
I live at Sudbury, that dirty place,Where are a few poor sinners saved by grace.
—Well, the dirt is gone; but when as late as the disfranchisement of the burgh, for bribery and corruption, which took place early in the reign of Queen Victoria, when the free and independent returned to Parliament a gentleman of colour, renowned for his vanity and wealth, it was evident that a good many poor sinners remained who had not been saved by grace.
Allan Cunningham treats the marriage of Gainsborough as all conventional writers do. The lady—her name was Margaret Burr, and she had £200 a year of her own—made Gainsborough “a prudent, a kind, and a submissive wife.” As the lady was but sixteen, and her husband was eighteen, at the time of their wedding, one cannot be surprised to find at a later period Gainsborough looking upon his wife as a somewhat unsuitable companion. Cunningham writes, “The courtship was short. The young pair left Sudbury, leased a small house at a rent of £24 a year in Ipswich, and, making themselves happy in mutual love, conceived they were settled for life.”
Sudbury was the birth-place of Enfield, whoseSpeakerwas a well-known text book in the past generation. Then our William Durbyn, author of the well-knownCommentary on the Epistle of Jude, was also born there. He died a martyr for the truth’s sake in Newgate in 1685. The Grammar School of Sudbury dates as far back as 1591. Protestant as the town was, the Sudbury burghers marched to Framlingham to defend Mary’s rights against the attempted usurpation of Northumberland and his faction, she assuring them of her protection in the observance of their religion—a promise she shamefully failed to keep. It seems that Wilson, the Sudbury lecturer and preacher, was so harassed by the Bishop and Archbishop, that with Winthrop, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, he went over with a large band of the later Pilgrim Fathers to New England. Sudbury itself at one time seems to have rejoiced in a Christian toleration as refreshing as it was rare. In 1670, or thereabouts, itwas the practice of the Nonconformists to preach in All Saints Church, while one of the early pastors of the Congregational Church lived with his family in All Saints Vicarage for eleven years. It appears from the town records that this church was without a regular incumbent for a long time, and that after the Dutch war, the church was used as a prison for the Dutch prisoners, there being at one time 500 of them quartered in the town.
The country round the old town—the town of Gainsborough’s boyhood—must have been singularly picturesque. The boy painter saw in it a beauty which he never forget; he told Thicknesse, his first patron, that “there was not a picturesque clump of trees, nor even a single tree of any beauty; no, nor hedge-row, stem or root,” in or around his native town, which was not from his earliest years treasured in his memory. It is interesting to note the painter’s progress. As you walk from the railway you come to Friar Street, where the painter married and took a house for a short while. A few steps further on bring you to Sepulchre Street, and you see the site of the house where he was born, opposite which is now the Christopher Inn. There was a large garden behind the house; and it was there the young artist sketched the face of the culprit whom he watched steal his father’s pears. That was his first attempt at portrait-painting, and a very successful one, as it led to the conviction of the culprit. The Pear Tree is still shown. Apparently Sudbury is famous for its pears. I saw many of them in the gardens belonging to some of the better houses. It was a pleasure for me to attempt to follow in the artist’s steps. For instance, I made my way to Brandon Wood, where the poet loved to go sketching. If the town is improved so as to be almost unrecognisable, the features of the country remain the same; nature builds more enduringly than man. There are trees in Brandon Wood that might have been there in Gainsborough’s time. Over the Essex border, a couple of miles off, is a landscape which still remains as it is drawn in our NationalGallery. His paintings of a view near Sudbury and a neighbouring church are more or less still true to life.
Modern Sudbury seems to know but little of her most distinguished son. It is true that he left it at the age of eighteen to take up his residence at Ipswich, then at Bath, and afterwards in London, where he was somewhat of a rival to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and where he achieved fame and fortune as one of the founders of the Royal Academy. It is true that he sleeps not on the banks of the Stour, but on those of the Royal Thames at Kew, the village dear to his patron, George III. But Sudbury is singularly careless of the artist’s memory. As I passed the Liberal Club I accosted a respectable individual—I assume he was such, as he was evidently a member of the club—and in answer to my enquiries (he was an elderly man) he said, “I have lived in Sudbury all my life, and have no idea where Gainsborough was born,” but he did point me out the residence of Mr. Duport, a relative of the artist’s, and where some of his family portraits were preserved; but I am unable to state whether they are there now, as the house was shut up. There ought to be a good many of Gainsborough’s early attempts to be found in Sudbury, as he was very liberal in giving them to his friends. It is not too late for Sudbury to wipe off the reproach of her neglect. It is not too late to mark the sites illustrated by his genius; or to do honour to the memory of her greatest glory; or to show to the lads of the Grammar School there what one of its alumni did, and how he did it, and what he became. In these days culture and education are supposed to work wonders. In the career of Gainsborough, we note the success of one who had little of either, but who did wonders, nevertheless, by his industry and genius alone. We may note that after Gainsborough left his native town he rarely seems to have visited the place, only occasionally to give his vote on the Tory side.
There may yet be letters of Gainsborough to appear, to interest the reading public. The latest published is that which Mr. Redgrave has reprinted. It bears thedate of 1776. It was written to his sister in what Mr. Redgrave describes as a clear, graceful hand. It throws a little light on his character.
“What will become of me, time must show; I can only say that my present position with regard to encouragement is all that heart can wish; but as all worldly success is precarious, I don’t build happiness or the expectation of it upon present appearances. I have built upon sandy foundations all my life long. All I know is that I live at a full thousand a year’s expense, and will work hard and do my best to get through withal; and if that will not do let them take their lot of blame and suffering that fall short of their duty both towards me and themselves. Had I been blessed with your penetration and blind eyes towards foolish pleasures, I had steered my course better; but we are born with different passions and gifts, and I have only to hope that the great Giver of all will make better allowances for us than we make for one another.”
“What will become of me, time must show; I can only say that my present position with regard to encouragement is all that heart can wish; but as all worldly success is precarious, I don’t build happiness or the expectation of it upon present appearances. I have built upon sandy foundations all my life long. All I know is that I live at a full thousand a year’s expense, and will work hard and do my best to get through withal; and if that will not do let them take their lot of blame and suffering that fall short of their duty both towards me and themselves. Had I been blessed with your penetration and blind eyes towards foolish pleasures, I had steered my course better; but we are born with different passions and gifts, and I have only to hope that the great Giver of all will make better allowances for us than we make for one another.”
So far it is clear Gainsborough feels the helpless and unsatisfactory character of his past life. We then have an insight—not very pleasant—into his family relationships. He speaks of his wife as “weak and good, and never much forward to humour his happiness.” His eldest daughter, Peggy, “is a sensible good girl, but insolent and proud in her behaviour to me at times.” Then his second daughter, Molly, he detects apparently writing letters to a Mr. Fischer, against whom the painter had long been on his guard. “I have never suffered that worthy gentleman ever to be in their company since I came to London, and behold, while I had my eye upon Peggy, the other slyboots has, I suppose, been the object all along.” And Molly wins the day and marries Mr. Fischer after all. Of domestic felicity the great artist seems to have had but a small share. Perhaps that was his own fault.
Sudbury ought to be more patronised than it is. Its river affords ample opportunities for boating; and it has a Temperance Hotel—perhaps the best in all Suffolk—where the tourist may rest and be thankful.
As tenants of uncertain stay,So may we live our little dayThat only grateful hearts shall fillThe homes we leave in Haverhill.
As tenants of uncertain stay,So may we live our little dayThat only grateful hearts shall fillThe homes we leave in Haverhill.
Thuswrites the poet Whittier, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the City of Haverhill in America. Most of us know there is a Haverhill in England, where resided Mr. D. Gurteen, who died recently in his eighty-fourth year, one of the grand old men—occasionally met with—who have spent all their lives in promoting the best interests, moral and pecuniary, of the community amongst whom they live. He was born when Haverhill was in a state of decay, its chief manufacture, that of silk, having dwindled all to nothing. He has almost rebuilt the place, and made it one of the most prosperous of our East Anglian towns. Haverhill, in a remote corner of East Anglia, is intimately connected with the American Haverhill. That was founded by the grandson of a well-known Haverhill clergyman—Rev. John Ward—one of the early Puritans who suffered for conscience sake, and against whom Romanising archbishops like Laud—in whose seat the present Archbishop of London tells us he is proud to be placed—made constant war. John Ward, whose monument is still to be seen in Haverhill Church, had a descendant named Nathaniel, who was educated at Cambridge, and went out into the wilderness of New England rather than remain the victim of persecution in the old country. He was a ripe scholar, and a man ofgreat practical ability, a Puritan of the Puritans, who helped to mould the character and make the laws of the people of whom he became the minister. The hardy settlers, who had hitherto toiled in hope, overjoyed at Ward’s coming, insisted on naming their plantation—hitherto called Pentucket, after the Indian tribe who had lived there till bought out by the whites—Haverhill, from the birthplace of their honoured minister. In the recent celebration Haverhill in England was not forgotten. Mr. Alderman Gurteen and the rector were invited. The rector could not go. Mr. Alderman Gurteen could, and he crossed the Atlantic, bearing with him an address, handsomely got up, to the New England Haverhill. He was received with open arms, and on his return was honoured with a dinner in the Town Hall, presided over by his respected father, Mr. D. Gurteen, J.P., and there he delivered himself of his American experiences, and was listened to eagerly by a sympathetic audience, among whom I had the good luck to be one.
New Haverhill stands on the banks of the Merrimack, at a distance of some sixteen miles from the sea. The Merrimack deserves a line as the most noted water-power stream in the world. Haverhill lies on the north edge of Essex county, itself the north-eastern corner of Massachusetts. In the Haverhill of to-day there are over 250 firms engaged in the manufacture of shoes, and giving employment to 18,000 operatives, and distributing annually over 2,225,000 dollars in wages, and shipping 300,000 cases of completed boots and shoes. It is a big city, thirty-three miles off Boston by rail. The situation is picturesque, with an undulating surface, watered by lovely lakes and the glorious river. Haverhill rejoices in a Town Hall, one of the handsomest of its kind in New England, and twenty-four church organisations divided among eleven different denominations. No city in the commonwealth has grown so fast within the last ten years. I learn from a local paper that its population is “energetic, prosperous, and cultivated.” One of the things which seem to have struckMr. Alderman Gurteen, as indeed it would some of us, was a handsome and commodious building known as the Old Ladies’ Home, intended to provide for such women as need it, a home in their declining years. Again, there is a Children’s Aid Society, formed and managed by women, to furnish a real home for destitute children. Haverhill has also a noble hospital, where almost every religious society in the city supports free beds. Such is the Haverhill of to-day. It has suffered from fire; from Indians, who rushed through it with their murderous tomahawks: (one of the things Mr. Alderman Gurteen was taken to see at the exhibition in connection with the anniversary, was the basket of grass in which Hannah Duston, one of Haverhill’s ancient heroines, carried the scalps of the Indians in the course of an unnatural conflict with the English). It was, too, a little Haverhill girl, saved in a cellar from massacre of the Indians by a negro girl, that was the ancestress of John Lothrop Motley. The whole world owes Haverhill much.
Of course, Mr. Alderman Gurteen was taken to see Whittier, the poet, who lived in a house with his three cousins and a little niece at Haverhill, where they yet show you the photograph of the cottage in which he was born, and the barn-like school in which he was educated. The poet, he has passed away since this was written, at the ripe age of eighty-two, enjoyed life; took an interest in all that passes, and, tall and thin, certainly did not look his age. He had written for the celebration a poem from which I have quoted above. Haverhill is proud of her shoes—but of her poet more. His way of life is familiar to them all—his early hours, his simple habits, his pet squirrels, who come to be fed, his plain living, and high thinking. He is a Quaker in speech, and talks to Englishmen of Henry Vincent, whom he knew, and George Thompson, with whom he fought for the anti-slavery cause. He is a charming old man, says Mr. Gurteen, and upright as a dart. He was much interested in the address from the English Haverhill. In fact, all whom Mr. Gurteen met within his international trip acted as friends. They were, he says, a downright good lot of men and women, and what pleased him most was their devotion to the old country. He was delighted with everything he saw, “They are a right noble people, and our sort to a T.” It was the same everywhere. For instance, at Albany Mr. Gurteen and his daughter (who I should have said, accompanied him, and was as much charmed with America as he was) put their heads into a chapel, which happened to be open, and were accosted by a gentleman, with the remark that there was “no service to-night.” He told him in return that he was a stranger, and had only looked in from curiosity. “Where from”? he asked, and when the reply was “England,” the gentleman put out both hands, and said, “Welcome, welcome; I am glad to shake hands with any one from the old country,” and lit up the whole place in the twinkling of an eye.
Am I not right in calling such a visit an international one? Such visits are the true peacemakers, and strengthen the bonds of unity between nations better than can be done in any other way. Mr. Alderman Gurteen is a fair representative of what is best in a social and commercial and political and religious life. Old Haverhill could not have sent the new Haverhill a better specimen of the English citizen of to-day. The more we send such men to America on international visits, and the more America sends such men to us—whatever politicians on both sides the Atlantic may say or do to create bad feeling—the stronger and more lasting will be the tie that makes England and America—mother and daughter—one in heart and aim. Haverhill is deeply associated with Puritan History and the Pilgrim Fathers. Its greatest preacher was the Rev. John Ward, who is still commemorated by a tomb in Haverhill Church. One of his sons, Samuel, was a town preacher to the Corporation of Ipswich for thirty years. Another celebrated preacher was the saintly Samuel Fairclough, who was born at Haverhill in 1594, and passed from CambridgeUniversity to become successively Lecturer at Lynn and Clare, which latter post he vacated to become Rector of Kedington, until he was ejected thence in 1692 by the iniquitous Act of Uniformity.
Our Essex Haverhill may be quoted as a remarkable illustration of what a man can do for his native town. The late Mr. Gurteen was often called the King of Haverhill, this title being based upon the fact that he was practically the maker of that flourishing town. The firm of which he was the head employ three thousand hands in the manufacture of drabbets and other fabrics, both linen and cotton, and in the making-up of clothes for the home and export trade. Mr. Gurteen’s liberality was commensurate with his business success. He presented the inhabitants with a Town Hall, costing £5,000, as a thank-offering on the jubilee of his wedding-day; built a Congregational Church at something like the same expenditure, and was the originator and principal supporter of many other improvements for the benefit of his native town.
Oneof the famous books of the last generation was that ofDr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. If the Doctor had extended his journey as far as Maldon, in Essex, he would have been well rewarded for his pains. Essex can boast of two towns set upon a hill. One is Colchester, the other is Maldon; but as regards picturesqueness, Maldon bears away the palm. Everywhere you have a fine view of the country—on one side the Chelmer reaching away to Chelmsford, on the other the Blackwater making its winding way to the German Ocean. At one time this Blackwater was a source of trouble, as by means of it the Danes used to sail up, as it were, into the very bowels of the land, murdering, and plundering, and ravishing, and pillaging everywhere. There is no fear of that now; it is a thing of the past. Said a friend of mine the other day, as we stood admiring the peaceful prospect lying at our feet, “from my bedroom window I can see eight churches,” and, strict Noncon. as he is, I fancy the sight is pleasanter to him than that of Danish pirates landing from their ships to carry terror and devastation all over the land. Maldon claims to be the oldest borough in Essex, and to have a history, if rather a dull one. Up to the time of the last Reform Bill it returned two members, and as a matter of fact, the candidate who bribed most freely was the winning man.Now-a-days it is only at an election that the passions of the people are aroused. There is a rector who preaches in an ancient church, there is a Congregational chapel, which I am told is in a flourishing condition; there are Baptists and Wesleyans, and all work together pleasantly excepting when an election ensues. Then the people are aroused, and bad passions come into play, and friends quarrel never to be friendly again, although the cynical observer might exclaim—
Strange such difference there should be’Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.
Strange such difference there should be’Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.
There was a time when it was otherwise. For instance, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we find the Maldon electors petitioning their representatives on their sufferings from Prelatic parsons. “They are crueller,” so they affirm, “than the ostriches of the wilderness, and more unkind than the dragons.” They ask to be relieved of the teaching of ungodly men such as have been “Popish priests, taylors, fletchers, serving-men, wheelwrights, and many of these alehouse haunters, dicers, quarrellers, whoremongers, and full of gross sins.” Moved by this and similar appeals, the friends of the Puritans in the House of Commons endeavoured to obtain them some relief, but in vain—the Queen and her Bishops were of quite another way of thinking. For taking their part the Maldon M.P. was committed to the Tower. Matters became worse rather than better under James I., and it was not till the Civil War that a Commission was formed by Parliament for the purpose of investigating complaints against the existing ministry; and of that Commission Sir Henry Mildmay, M.P., for Maldon, was one. Essex was full of Puritan divines. One of these was Thomas Horrocks, the rector of Maldon, where, says Calamy, he was “a diligent and powerful preacher twelve years together, and was an instrument for converting many souls.” After his ejectment he continued to preach, and was at length cast into the dungeon of the town, where he lay ten days. A court being held in the town, he was accused of all sorts of crimes, andcalled by some of the aldermen heretic, schismatic, and traitor; and when he was pleading for himself, one of them rose from the bench and gave him a box on the ear, and beat off his satin cap. At the time of the Revolution Mr. Joseph Billio came to Maldon to gather together under his ministry those whom Mr. Horrocks had prepared for separation. On the site of the present meeting-house, one was erected to hold four hundred persons. When Mr. Billio was succeeded by a minister of Unitarian sentiments, there was a split in the congregation, and a small place of worship was erected elsewhere. In 1778 the congregation returned to their old place of worship. In 1801 a new place of worship was erected on the site of the old one, which had now become insufficient. It is there the present minister, the Rev. H. H. Carlisle, preaches. The place will hold eight hundred hearers, and is well attended. Attached to it is a fine modern lecture-hall and day-schools, which are well filled. I was particularly struck with the bright and happy appearance of the boys and girls being trained there to become men and women. With such training the old joke about Essex calves undoubtedly will lose a good deal of its point and power.
A very quiet place is Maldon—at one time a great centre of the corn trade, which, in consequence of railways, has shifted elsewhere—and which the Great Eastern Railway has brought within an hour and a half’s ride of London. The population is about six thousand, and, by the last census, it seems slightly to have declined. In the Town Hall are portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne, Charles II. and George III., and Dr. Plume, a Maldon celebrity, of whose career I have no particulars, save that he was a clergyman, and presented a library of over 6,000 volumes to the town. It is open daily from 10 till 12. The great artist, J. R. Herbert, R.A., was a native of the place, and Landseer studied there in his early days. Its chief claim to fame seems to have been that it was the birthplace of Edward Bright, a shopkeeper in the town, who died in 1750, and was so enormously fat that he weighed about 616 lbs.and seven men were on one occasion buttoned in his waistcoat without breaking a stitch or straining a button.
Remains around Maldon testify to the antiquity of the place. On the west side are the remains of a camp formed by Edward the Elder as far back as 920. Near the town are the remains of a Lepers’ Hospital, which makes one note with thankfulness that, thanks to sanitary science in England, we have no need of such buildings now, and we rejoice that the good old times are gone. By the side of the river, about a mile from the town, are the remains of Beeleigh Abbey, founded for monks of the Premonstratensian order in 1180; considerable remains still exist, but have been much altered in the process of converting the building into a farmhouse, still there is a good deal remaining well worthy the attention of the antiquary, though at one time the chapter-house, which has a fine groined roof, was used as a pig-sty. In the Abbey was buried Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, in 1483. One of the Maldon churches has a triangular tower. It is said that only in Italy is there another tower of the same kind. I may also state, as one of the peculiarities of Maldon, that the custom of Borough English, by means of which the youngest son succeeds to the copyhold estates of his father, still prevails there. Thus altogether a pleasant ancient flavour attaches to the place, in spite of its Reform Club, which dates from 1874. One might do worse than live at Maldon, where good houses are to be had at a bargain, and where in the summer-time, far from the wicked world, there is a good deal of boating, and where in the winter time, in the coming glacial era, which Sir Robert Ball confidently predicts as reserved for the people of England, you may skate as far as Chelmsford, a consummation by no means devoutly to be wished. For bicycles Maldon is by no means favourable, incredible as it may seem to those who will persist in believing that Essex is a flat country. There are two hills in the town, one of which is pronounced to be the most dangerous hill in all Essex for bicyclists.
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