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diff --git a/32806-0.txt b/32806-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2120606 --- /dev/null +++ b/32806-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4936 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christopher Crayon's Recollections, by J. +Ewing Ritchie + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Christopher Crayon's Recollections + The Life and Times of the late James Ewing Ritchie as told by himself + + +Author: J. Ewing Ritchie + + + +Release Date: June 14, 2010 [eBook #32806] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER CRAYON'S +RECOLLECTIONS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1898 James Clarke & Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org + +[Picture: J. Ewing Ritchie, from a photo by The Parade Studio, Leamington + Spa] + + + + + + CHRISTOPHER CRAYON’S + RECOLLECTIONS: + + + _The Life and Times of the late_ + JAMES EWING RITCHIE, + _As told by Himself_. + + * * * * * + + London: + JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. + + * * * * * + + 1898. + + + + +CONTENTS. + +CHAPTER PAGE +I. East Anglia in 1837 3 +II. A Life’s Memories 33 +III. Village Life 51 +IV. Village Sports and Pastimes 65 +V. Out on the World 83 +VI. At College 95 +VII. London Long Ago 105 +VIII. My Literary Career 127 +IX. Cardiff and the Welsh 151 +X. A Great National Movement 171 +XI. The Old London Pulpit 185 +XII. Memories of Exeter Hall 207 +XIII. Men I Have Known 217 +XIV. How I Put Up for M.P. 229 +XV. How I was Made a Fool Of 241 +XVI. Interviewing the President 253 +XVII. A Bank Gone 261 + + + + +CHAPTER I. +EAST ANGLIA IN 1837. + + +In 1837 Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister—the handsomest, the most +cultivated, the most courteous gentleman that ever figured in a Royal +Court. For his young mistress he had a loyal love, whilst she, young and +inexperienced, naturally turned to him as her guide, philosopher and +friend. The Whigs were in office, but not in power. The popular +excitement that had carried the Reform Bill had died away, and the +Ministry had rendered itself especially unpopular by a new Poor-Law Bill, +a bold, a praiseworthy, a successful attempt to deal with the growing +demoralisation of the agricultural population. Lord Melbourne was at +that time the only possible Premier. “I have no small talk,” said the +Iron Duke, “and Peel has no manners,” and few men had such grace and +chivalry as Lord Melbourne, then a childless widower in his manhood’s +prime. He swore a good deal, as all fine gentlemen did in the early days +of Queen Victoria. One day Mr. Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington, +encountered Lord Melbourne as he was about to mount his horse, and called +attention to some required modification in the new Poor-Law Bill. Lord +Melbourne referred him to his brother George. “I have been with him,” +was the reply, “but he damned me, and damned the Bill, and damned the +paupers.” “Well, damn it, what more could he do?” was the rejoinder. +And in East Anglia there was a good deal of swearing among the gentry. I +can remember an ancient peer who had been brought up in the Navy, who +resided in the Eastern Counties, and who somehow or other had been +prevailed upon to attend as chairman at a meeting of the local Bible +Society. I have forgotten the greater part of the noble Lord’s speech, +but I well remember how his Lordship not a little shocked some of his +hearers by finishing up with the remark—that the Bible Society was a +damned good Society, and ought to be damned well supported. Another +noble Lord, of Norfolk, had some fair daughters, who distinguished +themselves in the hunting field, where they had a habit of swearing as +terribly as an army in Flanders. In this respect we have changed for the +better; ladies never swear now. + +In politics bribery and corruption and drunkenness everywhere prevailed. +It was impossible to fight an election with clean hands. In 1837 there +was an election at Norwich; the late Right Hon. W. E. Forster has left us +a good account of it. “Went to the nomination of city candidates this +morning. The nomination was at eight. Went in with the mob into the +lower court. Great rush when the door was opened. When the Crier +demanded attention for the reading of the Act against bribery and +corruption, he burst out laughing at the end, in which he was followed by +the Sheriff, candidates and almost everybody else.” The show of hands +was, as was generally the case, in favour of the Liberal. But on the +next day—that of the poll—the Tories were declared to have the majority. +All round the polling booths the rioting was great, as men were brought +up in batches to vote—each party struggling to prevent their being done +by the other, and a good deal of fighting ensued. Mr. Forster +writes:—“About nine I sallied forth to take observations. At the +Magdalen Ward booth I saw some dreadful cases of voting by drunken +people, both Whig and Tory—one in which the man could hardly speak, and +there were two men roaring Smith and Nurse (the names of the Whig +candidates) in his ears. I went to see all the polling places in the +course of time. About three I saw some furious bludgeon-fighting in +Palace Plain, the police taking bludgeons from some Tory hired +countrymen. The Mayor and Sheriff were there. One of the police was +badly wounded by a bludgeon. The soldiers were sent for, and then the +Mayor, thinking he could do without them, sent George Everett, the +Sheriff’s son, a boy, and myself to stop them. We very soon met them in +the road leading from the Plain to the barracks trotting forward with +their swords drawn. We held up our hands and partially stopped them, but +the Mayor altered his mind and they came on. The policemen had got the +better, but the soldiers soon cleared the place.” + +The election over—it is said to have cost £40,000—the triumphant Members +were borne in chairs on men’s shoulders and carried through the streets—a +very unpleasant process, as they had to smile and bow to the crowd of +lookers-on in the streets and in the houses along which they passed. The +old dragon Snap from St. Andrew’s Hall figured in the show. Out-voters +were brought from London and other parts of the country in stage coaches +hired for the purpose. Every one showed his colour, and every one was +primed with beer and ready for a row. A General Election was a +saturnalia of the most blackguard character. In all, Norfolk returned +twelve Members—four for the county, the Eastern Division sending two +Members, the influential landlords being Lord Wodehouse, the Earl of +Desart and the Marquis of Cholmondeley, with an electorate of 4,396. In +West Norfolk the electors were not so numerous, and the influence was +chiefly possessed by the Earl of Leicester, Lord Hastings, the Marquis of +Cholmondeley, Lord Charles Townshend and the Marquis of that name. In +both divisions Conservatives were returned. In the Eastern Division of +Suffolk, which had its headquarters at Ipswich, the electorate returned +two Members—Lord Henniker and Sir Charles Broke Vere. The leading +landlords were the Earl of Stradbroke, the Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis +of Hertford, the Dysart family, and Sir Thomas Gooch. Sir Thomas had +represented the county up to the time of the Reform Bill; in 1832 Robert +Newton Shawe was elected. West Suffolk, whose chief electoral town was +Bury St. Edmund’s, returned Tories, under the influence of the Marquis of +Bristol and other landlords. The boroughs did a little better; Bury St. +Edmund’s returned one Liberal, Lord Charles Fitzroy, elected by 289 +votes, and Lord Jermyn (C.), who polled 277 votes. Colchester, however, +a very costly seat to gain, was held by the Conservatives. Chelmsford +and Braintree were the chief polling places of Essex north and south, and +in both divisions Conservatives were returned. Eye rejoiced in its +hereditary representative, Sir Edward Kerrison, Conservative. It is +strange that so small a borough was spared by the first Reform Bill. In +our time it has been very properly disfranchised. Sudbury, a Suffolk +borough, a little larger, which returned two Conservatives in 1837, was +very properly disfranchised for bribery in 1844. Ipswich was also +supposed to be by no means an immaculate borough. Dodd writes concerning +it: “Money has long been considered the best friend in Ipswich, and +petitions on the ground of bribery, &c., have been frequent.” In 1837 it +returned one Liberal and one Conservative, Milner Gibson, whom Sir Thomas +Gooch, of Benacre Hall, recommended to the electors as a promising +Conservative colt. He lived to become M.P. for Manchester, to be one of +the leaders of the Anti-Corn Law Movement, the head of the Society for +the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge, a society which owed a great deal +of its success to his Parliamentary skill as a tactician, and to be a +Member of a Liberal Administration. There were few finer, +manlier-looking men in the House of Commons than Thomas Milner Gibson. +At any rate, I thought so as I watched him, after the delivery of a most +effective speech in Drury Lane Theatre on the Corn Laws, step into a +little ham and beef shop close by for a light for his cigar. At that +time, let me remind the reader, waxlights and matches were unknown. The +electoral body in Ipswich was not a large one. At the Reform Act period +it consisted of 1,800. At that time the constituency had been increased +by adding to the freemen, of whom little more than three hundred +remained, the ten-pound householders within the old borough, which +included twelve parishes. It is curious to note that, in 1839, Mr. +Milner Gibson, who had resigned his seat on his becoming a Liberal, was +rejected, the numbers being—Sir Thomas Cochrane (Conservative), 621; +Milner Gibson, 615. Ipswich seems always to have been undergoing the +excitement of a General Election—and, it is to be feared, enjoying the +profits of an election contest, as no sooner was an election over than it +was declared void—and a new writ was issued. In 1837 Thetford, no longer +a Parliamentary borough, returned two M.P.’s, one Conservative and one +Liberal. A little more has yet to be written relative to smaller East +Anglian boroughs. Lynn, under the influence of the Duke of Portland, in +1837 returned two distinguished men to Parliament: Lord George Bentinck, +then a great racing man, but who was better known as the leader of the +Protectionist party, and Sir Stratford Canning, the great Eltchi, who was +to reign imperiously in the East, and at whose frown Turkish Sultans +trembled. Maldon returned two Conservatives. It has long very properly +ceased to exercise that privilege. Great Yarmouth, which has now an +electorate of 7,876, at the General Election in 1837 returned two +Liberals, but the highest Liberal vote was 790, and the highest Tory vote +699. Money was the best friend at Yarmouth, as in most boroughs. In +accounting for the loss of his seat at Weymouth in 1837, one of our +greatest East Anglians, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, writes:—“My supporters +told me that it would be necessary to open public-houses, and to lend +money—a gentle name for bribery—to the extent of £1,000. I, of course, +declined.” Yet, as a boy, I must own I enjoyed the fun, the excitement, +the fighting of the old elections, much more than the elections of later +times. If now and then a skull was cracked, what mattered, while the +Constitution was saved! + +In the religious world the change in East Anglia has been immense; the +Church was weak, now it has become strong. In most of the villages were +good Dissenting congregations, but the landlords set their faces against +the Dissenters—“pograms” was what they were contemptuously called—and the +landlord’s lady had no mercy on them. The good things in the hall were +only reserved for those who attended the parish church. At that time we +had two bishops; both resided in Norwich. One was the Bishop of the +Diocese; the other was the Rev. John Alexander, who preached in Princes +Street Chapel, where the Rev. Dr. Barrett has succeeded him—a man +universally beloved and universally popular, as he deserved to be. As +for the clergy of that day, I fear many of them led scandalous lives: +there was hardly one when I was a boy, within reach of the parish where I +was born, whom decent women, with any serious thoughts at all, could go +to hear, and consequently they, with their families, went to the nearest +Independent Chapel, where it was a sight to see the farmers’ gigs on the +green in the chapel yard. They go to the Church now, as the clergyman is +quite as devoted to his high calling and quite as earnest in his vocation +as his Independent brother. Bishop Bathurst had let things slide too +much, as was to be expected of a man whose great complaint in his old age +was that they had sent him a dean who could not play whist. Bishop +Stanley’s wife complained to Miss Caroline Fox how trying was her +husband’s position at Norwich, as his predecessor was an amiable, +indolent old man, who let things take their course, and a very bad course +they took. It was in his Diocese—at Hadleigh—the Oxford movement +commenced, when in 1833 the Vicar, the Rev. James Rose, assembled at the +parsonage—not the present handsome building, which is evidently of later +date—the men who were to become famous as Tractarians, who had met there +to consider how to save the Church. It was then in danger, as Lord Grey +had recommended the Bishops to put their house in order. Ten Irish +Bishoprics had been suppressed; a mob at Bristol had burnt the Bishop’s +palace; and in Norwich the cry had been raised for “more pigs and less +parsons.” One of the leaders of the Evangelical party resided at +Kirkley. The Rev. Francis Cuningham—afterwards Rector of Lowestoft—had +established infant schools, which were then a novelty in East Anglia. +His wife was one of the Gurneys, of Earlham, a great power in Norfolk at +that time. Joseph John was well known in London philanthropic circles +and all over the land, especially in connection with the anti-Slavery and +Bible Societies; and at his house men of all religious parties were +welcome. At that time, Clarkson, the great anti-Slavery advocate, had +come to Playford Hall, near Woodbridge, there to spend in quiet the +remainder of his days. In all East Anglian leading towns Nonconformity +was very respectable, and its leading men were men of influence and +usefulness in their respective localities. It was even so at Bury St. +Edmund’s in Mr. Dewhurst’s time. His son, whom I met with in South +Australia holding a position in the Educational Department, told me how +Rowland Hill came to the town to preach for his father. As there were no +railways the great preacher came in his own carriage, and naturally was +very anxious as to the welfare of his horses. Mr. Dewhurst told him that +he need have no anxiety on that score, as he had a horsedealer a member +of his church, who would look after them. “What!” said Rowland Hill, in +amazement, “a horsedealer a member of a Christian Church; whoever heard +of such a thing?” From which I gather that Rowland Hill knew more of +London horsedealers than East Anglian ones. I can well remember that +many of the old Nonconformist pulpits were filled by men such as Ray of +Bury St. Edmund’s, Creak of Yarmouth, Elvin of Bury (Baptist), Notcutt of +Ipswich, and Sloper of Beccles, a friend of Mrs. Siddons. A great power +in Beccles and its neighbourhood was the Rev. George Wright, the father +of the celebrated scholar, Dr. Aldis Wright, of Cambridge, who still +lives to adorn and enlighten the present age. Some of the old +Nonconformist chapels were grotesque specimens of rustic architecture. +This was especially so at Halesworth, which had a meeting-house—as it was +then called—with gigantic pillars under the galleries. It was there the +Rev. John Dennant preached—the grandfather of the popular Sir John +Robinson, of _The Daily News_, a dear old man much given to writing +poetry, of which, alas! posterity takes no heed. The charm of the old +Nonconformist places was the great square pews, lined with green baize, +where on a hot Sunday afternoon many a hearer was rewarded with—I can +speak from experience—a delightful snooze. The great exception was at +Norwich, where there was a fine modern Baptist Chapel, known as “the +fashionable watering-place,” where, in 1837, the late William Brock had +just commenced what proved to be a highly-successful pastoral career. + +As to the theology of the cottagers in East Anglia at that time, I can +offer no better illustration of it than that given by Miss Caroline Fox +of a cottage talk she had somewhere near Norwich. She writes, “A young +woman told us that her father was nearly converted, and that a little +more teaching would complete the business,” adding “He quite believes +that he is lost, which, of course, is a great consolation to the old +man.” + +Literature flourished in East Anglia in 1837. Bulwer Lytton, an East +Anglian by birth and breeding, had just published “Paul Clifford,” and +was about to commence a new and better style of novel. Norwich had long +been celebrated for its Literary Society, and one of the most remarkable +of the literary men of the age was George Borrow, author of the “Bible in +Spain,” the materials for which he was then collecting, and who spent +much of his life in East Anglia, where he was born. He was five years in +Spain during the disturbed early years of Isabella II., and he travelled +in every part of Castile and Leon, as well as the southern part of the +Peninsula and Northern Portugal. Again and again his adventurous habits +brought him into danger among brigands and Carlists, as well as Roman +Catholic priests, and he experienced a brief imprisonment in Madrid. At +Norwich also was then living Mrs. Opie—as a Quakeress—after having spent +the greater part of her life in London gaiety. A lady who met her in +Brussels says she spoke with much enthusiasm of the eminent artists, who, +in her part of the world—videlicet, the Eastern Counties—had become men +of mark. Of her husband, who had been dead many years, she said +playfully that if neither Suffolk nor Norfolk could boast of the honour +of being his birthplace, he had done his best to remedy the evil by +marrying a Norwich woman. At Reydon Hall, rather a tumble-down old +place, as I recollect it, lived the Stricklands, and of the six daughters +of the house five were literary women more or less successful. Of these +the best known was Agnes, author of “The Lives of the Queens of England,” +which owed much of its success to being published just after the Princess +Victoria had become Queen of England. + +It was amusing to hear her talk, in her somewhat affected and stilted +style, of politics. She was a Jacobin, and hated all Dissenters, whom +she sneered at as Roundheads. With modern ideas she and her sisters had +no sympathy whatever. There never was such an antediluvian family. All +of them were very long-lived, and must have bitterly bewailed the +progress of Democracy and Dissent. I question whether the “Lives of the +Queens of England” has many readers now. Near Woodbridge, as rector of +Benhall, lived the Rev. J. Mitford, an active literary man, the editor of +_The Gentleman’s Magazine_, and of some of the standard works known as +Pickering’s Classics. As a clergyman he was a failure. It was urged in +his defence, by his friends, that his profession had been chosen for him +by others, and that when it was too late for him to escape from the bonds +which held him in thrall he made the discovery that the life that lay +before him was utterly uncongenial to his tastes and habits. His life, +when in Suffolk, writes Mrs. Houston, author of “A Woman’s Memories of +World-known Men,” must have been a very solitary one. For causes which I +have never heard explained, his wife had long left him, and his only son +was not on speaking terms with the Rector of Benhall. In his small +lodgings on the second floor in Sloane Street, he was doubtless a far +happier man than, in spite of his well-loved garden and extensive library +at Benhall Rectory, he ever, in his country home, professed to be. But +perhaps the most notable East Anglian author at the time was Isaac +Taylor, of Ongar, whose books—“The Natural History of Enthusiasm” and +“The Physical Theory of Another Life”—were most popular, and one of +which, at any rate, had been noticed in _The Edinburgh Review_. In a +private letter to the editor, Sir James Stephen describes Taylor “as a +very considerable man, with but small inventive but very great diffusive +powers, possessing a considerable mastery of language, but very apt to be +over-mastered by it—too fine a writer to write very well; too fastidious +a censor to judge men and things equitably; too much afraid of falling +into cant and vulgarity to rise to freedom and ease; an over-polished +Dissenter, a little ashamed of his origin among that body; but, with all +this, a man of vigorous and catholic understanding, of eminent purity of +mind, happy in himself and in all manner of innocent pleasure, and +strenuously devoted to the grand but impracticable task of grafting on +the intellectual democracy of our own times the literary aristocracy of +the days that are passed.” Quite a different man was dear old Bernard +Barton, the Quaker poet, of Woodbridge, with whom I dined once, who was +more fat than bard beseems, and who seemed to me to enjoy a good dinner, +a glass of port—people could drink port in those days—and a pinch of +snuff, quite as much as any literary talk. Poor Bernard never set the +Thames on fire—he would have been shocked at the thought of doing +anything so wicked; but he was a good man, and quite competent to shine +in “Fulcher’s Pocket Book,” a work published yearly by Fulcher, of Bury +St. Edmund’s, and much better than any of its contemporaries. + +In connection with this subject let me quote from Bernard Barton a sketch +of a Suffolk yeoman, very rare in these times: “He was a hearty old +yeoman of about eighty-six, and occupied the farm in which he lived and +died, about fifty-five years. Sociable, hospitable, friendly; a liberal +master to his labourers, a kind neighbour, and a right merry companion +within the limits of becoming mirth; in politics a staunch Whig; in his +theological creed as sturdy a Dissenter; yet with no more party spirit in +him than a child. He and I belonged to the same book club for about +forty years. He entered it about fifteen years before I came into these +parts, and was really a pillar in our literary temple, not that he +greatly cared about books or was deeply read in them, but he loved to +meet his neighbours and get them round him on any occasion or no occasion +at all. As a fine specimen of the true English yeoman I have met few to +equal, hardly any to surpass him, and he looked the character as well as +he acted it, till within a very few years, when the strong man was bowed +with infirmity. About twenty-six years ago, in his dress costume of a +blue coat and yellow buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would +rarely see. It was the whole study of his long life to make the few who +revolved about him in his little orbit as happy as he always seemed to be +himself; yet I was gravely queried with, when I happened to say that his +children had asked me to write a few lines to his memory, whether I could +do so in keeping with the general tenor of my poetry. The speaker +doubted if he was a decidedly pious character. He had at times been +known in his altitudes to vociferate at the top of his voice a song, the +chorus of which was not certainly teetotalish:— + + Sing, old Rose, and burn the bellows, + Drink and drive dull care away.” + +Can anything be finer than this picture of a Suffolk yeoman? Is it not a +pity that such men are no more to be seen? High farming was unknown when +the old Suffolk yeoman lived. I claim for Bernard Barton that this +sketch of the Suffolk yeoman is the best thing he ever wrote. Bernard +Barton’s daughter married the great Oriental scholar, Edward Fitzgerald, +the friend of Carlyle and correspondent of Fanny Kemble, who lived in the +neighbourhood of Woodbridge, and whose fame now he is no more is far +greater than when he lived. Little could he have anticipated that in +after years literary men would assemble in the quiet churchyard of Boulge +to erect his monument over his grave, or to found a society to perpetuate +his name. + +As I lean back for another glance, my eyes, as Wordsworth writes, are +filled with childish tears— + + My heart is idly stirred. + +I see the dear old village where I was born, almost encroaching on Sir +Thomas Gooch’s park, at Benacre Hall; I see the old baronet, a fine old +bigoted Tory, who looked the picture of health and happiness, as he +ambled past on his chestnut cob, wearing a blue coat, a white hat and +trousers, in summer; his only regret being that things were not as they +were—his only consolation the fact that, wisely, the Eternal Providence +that overrules all human affairs had provided snug rectories for his kith +and kin, however unworthy of the sacred calling; and had hung up the sun, +moon and stars so high in the heavens that no reforming ass + + Could e’er presume to pluck them down, and light the world with gas. + +Then comes the village medico, healthy and shrewd and kindly, with a firm +belief—alas! that day is gone now—in black draught and blue pill. I see +his six sunny daughters racing down the village street, guarded by a +dragon of a governess, and I get out of their way, for I am a rustic, and +have all the rustic’s fear of what the East Anglian peasant was used to +term “morthers”; and then comes the squire of the next parish, in as +shabby a trap as you ever set eyes on, and the fat farmer, who hails me +for a walk, and going to the end of a field, joyously, or as joyously as +his sluggish nature will permit, exclaims, “There, Master James, now you +can see three farms.” My friend was a utilitarian, and could only see +the beautiful in the useful. Then I call up the memory of the village +grocer, a stern, unbending Radical, who delights me with the loan of +Cruikshank’s illustrations to the “House that Jack Built,” mysteriously +wrapped in brown paper and stowed away between the sugar and treacle. He +does not talk much, but he thinks the more. And now it strikes me that +conversation was not much cultivated in the villages of East Anglia in +1837, and yet there were splendid exceptions—on such evenings as when the +members of the Book Club met in our parlour, where the best tea things +were laid, and where a kindly mother in black silk and white shawl and +quakerish cap made tea; where an honoured father, who now sleeps far away +from the scene of his life-long labours, indulged in a genial humour, +which set at ease the shyest of his guests; and again, what a splendid +talk there was when the brethren in black from Beccles, from Yarmouth, +from Halesworth, gathered for fraternal purposes, perhaps once a quarter, +to smoke long pipes, to discuss metaphysics and politics, and to puzzle +their heads over divines and systems that have long ceased to perplex the +world. Few and simple were East Anglian annals then. It was seldom the +London coach, the Yarmouth Mail and Telegraph brought a cockney down to +astonish us with his pert ways and peculiar talk. Life was slow, but it +was kindly, nevertheless. There was no fear of bacteria, nor of poison +in the pot, nor of the ills of bad drainage. We were poor, but honest. +Are we better now? + +In 1837 the railways which unite the country under the title of the Great +Eastern had not come into existence. + +All is changed in East Anglia except the boys. “You have seen a good +many changes in your time,” said the young curate to the old village +clerk. “Yes,” was the reply; “everything is changed except the boys, and +they’re allus the same.” I fear the boys are as troublesome as +ever—perhaps a little more so now, when you cannot touch them with a +stick, which any one might do years ago. When we caught a boy up to +mischief a stick did a deal of good in the good old times that are gone +never to return. + +In connection with literature one naturally turns to the Bungay Printing +Press, at the head of which was John Childs, who assembled round his +hospitable board at Bungay many celebrated people, and to whom at a later +period Daniel O’Connell paid a visit. It was Childs who gave to the poor +student cheap editions of standard works such as Burke and Gibbon and +Bacon. It was he who went to Ipswich Gaol rather than pay Church Rates. +It was he who was one of the first to attack the Bible printing monopoly, +and thus to flood the land with cheap Bibles and Testaments. A self-made +man, almost Napoleonic in appearance, with a habit of blurting out sharp +cynicisms and original epigrams, rather than conversing. He was a great +phrenologist, and I well remember how I, a raw lad, rather trembled in +his presence as I saw his dark, keen eyes directed towards that part of +my person where the brains are supposed to be. I imagine the result was +favourable, as at a later time I spent many a pleasant hour in his +dining-room, gathering wisdom from his after-dinner talk, and inspiration +from his port—as good as that immortalised by Tennyson. Mr. Childs had a +numerous and handsome family, most of whom died after arriving at +manhood. His daughter, who to great personal charms added much of her +father’s intellect, did not live long after her marriage, leaving one +son, a leading partner in the great City firm of solicitors, Ashurst, +Morris, and Crisp. After John Childs, of Bungay, I may mention another +East Anglian—D. Whittle Harvey, who was a power in his party and among +the London cabbies—to whom the London cabby owes his badge V.R.—which, as +one of them sagely remarked, was supposed to signify “Whittle ’Arvey,” an +etymology at any rate not worse than that of the savant who in his wisdom +derived gherkin from Jeremiah King. In 1837 Mr. Johnson Fox, born at +Uggeshall, near Wangford—better known afterwards as the Norwich “Weaver +Boy,” the “Publicola” of _The Weekly Dispatch_—the great orator of the +Anti-Corn Law League, was preaching in the Unitarian Chapel, South Place, +Finsbury, and a leading man in London literary society. One of the +best-known men in East Anglia was Allan Ransome, of Ipswich, the young +Quaker, who was on very friendly terms with the Strickland family, who +cultivated literature and business with equal zest. Nor, in this +category, should I pass over the name of George Bird, of Yoxford, a local +chemist, who found time to write of Dunwich Castle and such-like East +Anglian themes—I fancy now read by none. A Suffolk man who was making +his mark in London at that time was Crabbe Robinson, the pioneer of the +special correspondent of our later day. And just when Queen Victoria +began to reign, Thomas Woolner, the poet-sculptor, was leaving his native +town of Hadleigh to begin life as the pupil of Boehm, sculptor in +ordinary to the Queen. And yet East Anglia was by no means +distinguished, or held to be of much account in the gay circles of wit +and fashion in town. The gentry were but little better than those drawn +to the life in the novels of Fielding and Smollett. I am inclined to +think there was very little reading outside Dissenting circles—where the +book club was a standing institution, and _The Edinburgh Review_ was +looked up to as an oracle, as indeed it was, sixty years ago. There was +little encouragement of manly sports and pastimes—indeed, very little for +any one in the way of amusement but at the public-house. Not that any +one was ever drunk, in the liberal opinion of the landlord of the +public-house, only “a little fresh,” and the village policeman was +unknown. It is true there might be a constable, but he was a very +mythical person indeed. Everybody drank, and as a rule the poorer people +were the more they drank. + +One of the early temperance lecturers in the district, Mr. Thomas +Whittaker, who was mobbed, especially at Framlingham, tells us Essex and +Suffolk are clayey soils, in some districts very heavy and not easily +broken up, and the people in many cases correspond. It was due to Mr. +Marriage, of Chelmsford, a maltster, who turned his malting house into a +temperance hall, and Mr. D. Alexander, of Ipswich, that the temperance +reformers made way; and at that time James Larner, of Framlingham, aided +by young Mr. Thompson (now the great London surgeon, Sir Henry Thompson), +was quite a power. But the difficulties were great in the way of finding +places for meetings, or of getting to them in muddy lanes, or of getting +the anti-teetotalers to behave decently, or of the lecturers finding +accommodation for the night. Education would have been left almost +alone, had not the Liberals started the British and Foreign schools, +which roused the Church party to action. The one village schoolmaster +with whom I came into contact was—as were most of his class—one who had +seen better days, who wore top boots, and whose chief instrument in +teaching the young idea how to shoot was a ruler, of which he seemed to +me to take rather an unfair advantage. The people were ignorant, and, +like Lord Melbourne, did not see much good in making a fuss about +education. They could rarely read or write, and if they could there was +nothing for them to read—no cheap books nor cheap magazines and +newspapers. Now we have run to the other extreme, and it is to be hoped +we are all the better. Cottages were mostly in an unsanitary state, but +the labourer, in his white smock, looked well on a Sunday at the village +church or chapel, and the children at the Sunday-school were clean, if a +little restless under the long, dry sermon which they were compelled to +hear, the caretaker being generally provided with a long stick to +admonish the thoughtless, to wake up the sleepy, to prevent too much +indulgence in apples during sermon time, or too liberal a display of the +miscellaneous treasures concealed in a boy’s pocket. Perhaps the most +influential person in the village was the gamekeeper, who was supposed to +be armed, and to have the power of committing all boys in undue eagerness +to go bird-nesting to the nearest gaol. He was to me, I own, a terror by +night and by day, as he was constantly in my way—when tempted to break +into the neighbouring park in search of flowers or eggs. The farmer +then, as now, was ruined, but he was a picture of health and comfort as +he drove to the nearest market town, where after business he would spend +the evening smoking and drinking, with his broad beaver on his head, his +fat carcase ornamented with a blue coat with brass buttons, and his knee +breeches of yellow kerseymere. It was little he read to wake up his +sluggish intellect, save the county newspaper, which it was the habit for +people to take between them to lessen the expense. A newspaper was +sevenpence, of which fourpence went to pay for the stamp. Everything was +dear—the postage of a letter was 10d. or 1s. The franking of letters by +Members of Parliament existed at that time; they could receive an +unlimited number of letters free of postage, of any weight, even a +pianoforte, a saddle, a haunch of venison, and they might send out +fourteen a day. Loaf sugar was too dear to be in daily use; tea and +coffee were heavily taxed; soap was too dear to use; and wearing apparel +and boots and shoes very expensive; even if you went for a drive there +was the turnpike gate, and a heavy toll to pay. As to geography, it was +a science utterly unknown. Poor people when they talked of the Midland +Counties called them the Shires, and I have heard serious disputes as to +whether you got to America by sea or land. The finest men in East Anglia +were the sailors at the various sea-ports along the coast, well-shaped, +fair-haired, with grand limbs and blue eyes, evidently of Saxon or Norse +descent, and their daughters were as handsome as any girls I ever saw. +The peasant had his little bit of garden, where he could keep a pig and +grow a few vegetables and flowers, but much of the furniture was of the +poorest description, much inferior to what it is now, and his lot was not +a happy one. As to locomotion, it did not exist. To go a few miles from +home was quite an event; on the main roads ran coaches, with two, or +three, or four horses, but the general mode of conveyance was the +carrier’s cart, sometimes drawn by one horse and sometimes by two. Some +of the happiest days of my life were spent in the carrier’s cart, where +the travellers were seated on the luggage, their feet well protected by +straw, where we were all hail fellows well met, and each enjoyed his +little joke, especially when the rural intellect was stimulated by beer +and baccy. The old village inn where we stopped to water the horses and +refresh the inner man seemed to me all the more respectable when compared +with the pestiferous beershops that had then begun to infest the land, to +increase the crime, the misery, the pauperism of a district which already +had quite enough of them before. + +But to return to locomotion. A post-chaise was generally resorted to +when the gentry travelled. It was painted yellow and black, and on one +of the two horses by which it was drawn was seated an ancient, withered +old man, generally known as the post-boy, whose age might be anywhere +between forty and eighty, dressed in a jockey costume, in white hat and +top boots; altogether, a bent, grotesque figure whom Tennyson must have +had in his eye when he wrote—for the post-boy was often as not an ostler— + + Wrinkled ostler, grim and thin, + Here is custom come your way; + Take my brute and lead him in, + Stuff his ribs with mouldy hay. + + + + +CHAPTER II. +A LIFE’S MEMORIES. + + +Long, long before John Forster wrote to recommend everyone to write +memoirs of himself it had become the fashion to do so. “That celebrated +orator,” writes Dr. Edmund Calamy, one of the most learned of our +Nonconformist divines, “Caius Cornelius Tacitus, in the beginning of his +account of the life of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola (who was the +General of Domitian, the Emperor, here in Britain, and the first who made +the Roman part of Britain a Præsidial province), excuses this practice +from carrying in it anything of arrogance.” This excellent example was +followed by Julius Cæsar, Marcus Antoninus, many emperors who kept +diaries, Flavius Josephus, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Augustine, to +say nothing of Abraham Schultetus, the celebrated professor at +Heidelberg; of the learned Fuetius; of Basompierre, the celebrated +marshal of France; of the ever-amusing and garrulous Montaigne; or of our +own Richard Baxter, or of Edmund Calamy himself. The fact is, it has +ever been the fashion with men who have handled the pen freely to write +more or less about themselves and the times in which they lived, and +there is no pleasanter reading than such biographical recollections; and +really it matters little whether on the world’s stage the actor acted +high tragedy or low comedy so that he writes truthfully as far as he can +about himself and his times. If old Montaigne is to be believed there is +nothing like writing about oneself. “I dare,” he writes, “not only speak +of myself, but of myself alone,” and never man handled better the very +satisfactory theme. If I follow in the steps of my betters I can do no +harm, and I may do good if I can show how the England of to-day is +changed for the better since I first began to observe that working men +and women are better off, that our middle and upper classes have clearer +views of duty and responsibility, that we are the better for the +political and social and religious reforms that have been achieved of +late, that, in fact, + + . . . through the ages one increasing purpose runs, + And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. + +The one great complaint I have to make with respect to my father and +mother, to whom I owe so much, and whose memory I shall ever revere, was +that they brought me into the world forty or fifty years too soon. In +1820, when I first saw the light of day, England was in a very poor way. +It was what the late Earl of Derby used to call the pre-scientific era. +Gross darkness covered the land. The excitement of war was over, and the +lavish outlay it occasioned being stopped, life was stagnant, farmers and +manufacturers alike were at low-water mark, and the social and religious +and political reforms required by the times were as yet undreamed of. +However, one good thing my parents did for me. They lived in a country +village in the extreme east of Suffolk, not far from the sea, where I +could lead a natural life, where I could grow healthy, if not wise, and +be familiar with all the impulses which spring up in the heart under the +influences of rural life. “Boyhood in the country,” writes William +Howitt in his autobiography—“Paradise of opening existence! Up to the +age of ten this life was all my own.” And thus it was with me. +Existence was a pleasure, and the weather, I believe, was better then +than it is now. We had summer in summer time. We had fine weather when +harvest commenced, and to spend a day at one of the neighbouring farmers +riding the fore horse was a delight which thrilled me with joy; and +winter, with its sliding and snowballing, with its clear skies and its +glittering snows, rendering the landscape lovelier than ever, made me +forget the inevitable chilblains, which was the price we had to pay for +all its glories and its charms. + +Our little village was situated on the high road between London and Great +Yarmouth, along which rolled twice a day the London and Yarmouth Royal +Mail, drawn by four horses, and driven by a fat man in red, whom we raw +village lads regarded as a very superior person indeed. Behind sat the +guard, also in red, with a horn, which he blew lustily when occasion +required. There was a time, but that was much later, when a day coach +was put on, and, as it changed horses at our village inn, one of our +chief delights was to see the tired, heated, smoking horses taken out, +and their places filled by a new set, much given to kicking and plunging +at starting, to the immense delight of the juvenile spectators. Even the +passengers I regarded with awe. In fourteen hours would they not be in +London where the King lived—where were the Houses of Parliament, the Bank +and the Tower and the soldiers? What would I not have given to be on +that roof urging on, under the midnight stars, my wild career! Now and +then a passenger would be dropped in our little village. What a nine +days’ wonder he was, especially if he were a Cockney and talked in the +language of Cockaigne—if he had heard the Iron Duke, or seen royalty from +afar. Nonconformity flourished in the village in spite of the fact that +the neighbouring baronet, at the gates of whose park the village may be +said to have commenced, was Sir Thomas Gooch—(Guche was the way the +villagers pronounced his dread name)—for was he not a county magistrate, +who could consign people to Beccles Gaol, some eight miles off, and one +of the M.P.’s for the county, and did not he and his lady sternly set +their faces against Dissent? If now and then there were coals and +blankets to be distributed—and very little was done in that way, charity +had not become fashionable then—you may be sure that no Dissenter, +however needy and deserving, came in for a share. + +The churches round were mostly filled by the baronet’s relatives, who +came into possession of the family livings as a matter of course, and +took little thought for the souls of their parishioners. In fact, very +few people did go to church. In our chapel, of which my father was the +minister for nearly forty years, we had a good congregation, especially +of an afternoon, when the farmers with their families, in carts or gigs, +put in an appearance. One of the ejected had been the founder of +Nonconformity in our village, and its traditions were all of the most +honourable character. A wealthy family had lived in the hall, which Sir +Thomas Gooch had bought and pulled down, one of whom had been M.P. for +the county in Cromwell’s time, and had left a small endowment—besides, +there was a house for the minister—to perpetuate the cause, and it was +something amidst the Bœotian darkness all round to have a man of superior +intellect, of a fair amount of learning, of unspotted life, of devoted +piety, such as the old Nonconformist ministers were, ever seeking to lead +the people upward and onward; while the neighbouring gentry and all the +parsons round, I am sorry to say, set the people a very bad example. In +our time we have changed all that, and the Church clergy are as zealous +to do good as the clergy of any other denomination. But that things have +altered so much for the better, I hold is mainly due to the great +progress made all over the land by Dissent, which woke up the Church from +the state of sloth and luxury and lethargy which had jeopardised its very +existence. Really, at the time of which I write and in the particular +locality to which I refer, decent godly people were obliged to forsake +the Parish Church, and to seek in the neighbouring conventicle the aids +requisite to a religious life. At the same time, there was little +collision between Church and Dissent. The latter had its own sphere, +supporting, in addition to its local work, the Bible Society, the Tract +Society, the London Missionary Society, and the Anti-Slavery Society. It +had also its Sunday-school, very much inferior to what they are now; and, +if possible, secured a day school on the British and Foreign plan. +Dissenters paid Church rates, which the wealthy Churchmen were not +ashamed to collect. They gave the parson his tithes without a murmur, +and politically they were all on the side of the Whigs, to whom they were +indebted for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts—barbarous +laws—which had ostracised intelligent and conscientious Dissenters from +all parochial and municipal and Parliamentary life. When I was a boy no +one could be a parish constable without going through the hideous farce +of taking the Sacrament at his Parish Church. It was the Dissenters who +created the public opinion which enabled Sir Robert Peel and the Iron +Duke to grant Roman Catholic emancipation. It was they who carried +reform and abolished rotten boroughs, and gave Manchester and Sheffield +and Birmingham the representatives which the Tories, and especially the +parsons, would have denied them. To be a reformer was held by the clergy +and gentry to be a rogue and rascal of the first rank. I cannot call to +mind any public action taken in support of the suffering and the poor to +which the clergy and the gentry in our village, or in any of the villages +round, lent any support whatever. As regards the great Anti-Slavery +agitation, for instance, the only meeting on the subject was held in our +chapel, where a Captain Pilkington came down from London to lecture, and +touched all our hearts as he showed the lash and the chains, and the +other instruments of torture which that cruel system sanctioned and +required, and you may be quite sure that when next day I, with boyish +pride, pardonable under the circumstances, was sent round to get +signatures for a petition to Parliament on the subject, it was not long +before I got my paper filled. Naturally the Dissenters were active in +the work, for had not one of their number—poor Smith, missionary at +Demerara—been foully murdered by Demerara magistrates and planters +because he took the part of the black slave against his white owner and +tyrant? Yet I was disgusted, after remembering the effect produced in +our Suffolk village by the captain’s eloquence, to read thirty years +after in Sir George Stephens’s “Anti-Slavery Recollections,” that +“Pilkington was a pleasing lecturer, and won over many by his amiable +manners, but that he wanted power, and resigned the duty in about six +months.” In our simple village it was enough for us that a lecturer or +speaker came from London; or as the country people called it Lunnen. +That was a sufficient guarantee for us of his talent, his respectability, +and his power. Since then the scales have fallen even from the eyes of +the rustic, and he no longer sees men as trees walking. Railways have +rendered the journey to London perilously easy. Hodge, in the vain hope +to better himself, has left his village home, its clear skies, its +bracing air, its healthy toil, its simple hours, and gone to live in the +crowded slums. It may be that he earns better wages, but you may buy +gold too dear. A healthy rustic is far happier in his village. It is +there he should strive to live, rather than in the town; and a time may +come when English legislators will have wisdom enough to do something to +plant the people on the land, rather than compel them to come to town, to +be poisoned by its bad air, its dangerous companionship, and its evil +ways. + +As regards intelligence, we were in a poor way. On Saturdays _The +Suffolk Chronicle_ appeared, much to the delight of the Radicals, while +the Tories were cheered by _The Ipswich Journal_. At a later time _The +Patriot_ came to our house, and we got an idea of what was going on in +the religious and Dissenting world. Foster’s Essays were to be seen on +many shelves, and later on the literary and religious speculations of +Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, and Dick’s writings had also a wonderful sale. I +fancy no one cares much now for any of the writers I have named. Such is +fame! + +As a boy it seemed to me I had too much of the Assembly’s Catechism and +Virgil, to whose poetic beauties I was somewhat blind. I resolved to run +away, as I fancied there was something better and brighter than village +life. Religion was not attractive to me. Sunday was irksome. The land +was barren, from Dan to Beersheba. I longed for the conflict and +excitement and life of the distant town, and I ran away unconscious of +the pain I should inflict on parents I dearly loved. Oh, that running +away! If I live—and there is little chance of that—to the age of +Methuselah I shall never forget it! It took place in the early morn of a +long summer’s day. The whole scene rises distinctly before me. I see +myself giving a note to my sister for father and mother when they came +down to breakfast, I see myself casting an eye to the bedroom window to +see if there was any chance of their being up and so stopping the +enterprise on which I had set my mind. Happily, as I thought, the blinds +were down and there was nothing to forbid my opening the garden gate and +finding myself on the London road. I was anxious to be off and yet loth +to leave. I had a small parcel under my arm, consisting of very small +belongings; and I was free of Latin and the Assembly Catechism, free as +the air—my own master. All the world was hushed in slumber. There was +no one to stop me or bid me return to the roof where I had been happy, +and to the parents whom I was to return to, to love more than I had ever +done before, and whom it then saddened me to think that I might never see +again. Not a soul was in the street, and the few shops which adorned it +were shut up—cottagers and shopkeepers, they were all in the arms of +Morpheus. I hastened on, not wishing to be seen by any one; but there +was no fear of that, only cows, horses at grass, and pigs and hens and +birds were conscious of my flight, and they regarded me with the +indifference with which a Hottentot would view an ape. In my path was a +hill on which I stayed awhile to take a last look at the deserted +village. The white smoke was then curling up from the chimneys and the +common round of daily life was about to begin. How peaceful it all +seemed. What a contrast to my beating heart! There was not one of those +cottages behind into which I had not been with my father as he visited +the poor and the afflicted—not a lane or street along which I had not +trundled my hoop with boyish glee—not a meadow into which I had not gone +in search of buttercups and cowslips and primroses or bird’s nests. I +only met one man I knew, the miller, as he came from the mill where he +had been at work all night, and of him I stood somewhat in awe, for once +when the mill was being robbed he had sat up alone in darkness in the +mill till the robbers came in, when he looked, through a hole in the +upper floor, as they were at their wicked work below, and had thus +identified them; and I had seen them in a cart on their way to Beccles +gaol. Perhaps, thought I, he will stop me and ask me what I am about; +but he did nothing of the kind, and henceforth the way was clear for me +to London, where I was to fight the battle of life. Did I not write +poetry, and did not I know ladies who were paid a guinea a page for +writing for the Annuals, and could not I do the same? And thus thinking +I walked three miles till I came to a small beershop, where I had a +biscuit and a glass of beer. The road from thence was new to me, and how +I revelled in the stateliness of the trees as I passed a nobleman’s (Earl +Stradbrooke’s) mansion and park. In another hour or so I found myself at +Yoxford, then and still known as the Garden of Suffolk. There lived a +Mr. Bird, a Suffolk poet of some note in his day. On him I called. He +gave me a cordial welcome, kept me to dinner, and set me to play with his +children. Alas! Yoxford was to me what Capua was to Hannibal—I got no +further; in fact, my father traced me to the house, and I had nothing for +it but to abandon my London expedition and return home. I don’t think I +was very sorry that my heroic enterprise had thus miscarried. What +annoyed me most was that I was sent home in an open cart, and as we got +into the street all the women came to their doors to see Master James +brought back. I did not like being thus paraded as a show. I found my +way to the little attic in which I slept, not quite so much of a hero as +I had felt myself in the early morn. + +It was a stirring time. The nation was being stirred, as it was never +before or since, with the struggle for Reform. The excitement reached us +in our out-of-the-way village. We were all Whigs, all bursting with +hope. Yet some of the respectable people who feared Sir Thomas Gooch +were rather alarmed by my father’s determination to vote against him—the +sitting Member—and to support the Liberal candidate. People do not read +Parliamentary debates now. They did then, and not a line was skipped. I +was a Radical. An old grocer in the village had lent me Hone’s “House +that Jack Built,” and similar pamphlets, all illustrated by Cruikshank. +My eyes were opened, and I had but a poor opinion of royalty and the Tory +Ministers and the place men and parasites and other creeping vermin that +infest courts. It is impossible to believe anything more rotten than +that glorious Constitution which the Tories told us was the palladium of +our liberties, the glory of our country, and the envy of surrounding +nations. The Ministry for the time being existed by bribery and +corruption. The M.P. bought his seat and sold his vote; the free and +independent electors did the same. The boroughs were almost entirely +rotten and for sale in consequence of the complicated state of voting in +them, and especially in those incorporated by charter. In one borough +the right was acquired by birth, in another by servitude, in another by +purchase, in a fourth by gift, in a fifth by marriage. In some these +rights were exercised by residents, in others by non-residents; in one +place by the mayor or bailiff and twelve aldermen only, as at Buckingham, +Malmesbury, &c.; in another by eight aldermen or ten or twelve burgesses, +as at Bath, Andover, Tiverton, Banbury, &c.; in another by a small number +of burgesses—three or four or five, as at Rye, Winchelsea, Romney, &c. +As to what was called long ago tenure in boroughs there was no end to its +absurdity. At Midhurst the right was in the possession of a hundred +stones erected in an open field; at Old Sarum it was in the remaining +part of the possession of a demolished castle; at Westbury in a long +wall. In many other places it was in the possession of half-a-score or a +dozen old thatched cottages, the conveyances to which were made on the +morning of election to a few trusty friends or dependents, who held a +farcical election, and then returned them to the proprietor as soon as +the business was finished. In the little borough of Aldeburgh, where +Crabbe was born, the number of electors was eighty, all the property of a +private individual; at Dunwich, a little further on the coast, the number +of voters was twelve; at Bury St. Edmunds the number of voters was +thirty-seven; another little insignificant village on the same coast was +Orford, where the right of election was in a corporation of twenty +individuals, composed of the family and dependents of the Marquis of +Hertford. No wonder the popular fury swept away the rotten boroughs, and +no wonder that the long struggle for reform ended in the triumph, not so +much of the people, as the middle-class. + + + + +CHAPTER III. +VILLAGE LIFE. + + +In recalling old times let me begin with the weather, a matter of supreme +importance in country life—the first thing of which an Englishman speaks, +the last thing he thinks of as he retires to rest. When I was a boy we +had undoubtedly finer weather than we have now. There was more sunshine +and less rain. In spring the air was balmy, and the flowers fair to look +on. When summer came what joy there was in the hayfield, and how sweet +the smell of the new-mown hay! As autumn advanced how pleasant it was to +watch the fruit ripening, and the cornfields waving, far as the eye could +reach, with the golden grain! People always seemed gay and happy +then—the rosy-cheeked squire, the stout old farmer with his knee-breeches +and blue coat with brass buttons, and Hodge in his smock-frock, white as +the driven snow, on Sunday, when he went now to his parish church, or +more generally to the meeting-house, where he heard sermons that suited +him better, and where the musical part of the service, by means of flute +and bass violin and clarionet, was ever a gratification and delight. And +even winter had its charms in the shape of sliding and skating under a +clear blue sky—all the trees and hedges everywhere decked out with +diamonds, ever sparkling in the rays of an unclouded sun. We were all +glad when the snow came and covered the earth with a robe of white. We +were glad when it went away, and the birds began to build their nests, +and the plougher went forth to turn up the soil, which had a fragrant +savour after the wet and snow of winter, and the sower went forth to sow, +while the rooks cawed in the morning air as they followed like an army in +search of worms and whatever else they could feed on, and the graceful +swallow, under the eaves of the old thatched cottage, built her clay +nest, and lined it carefully for the reception of the little ones that +were to come. They were always welcome, for in the opinion of the +villagers they brought good luck. Abroad in the meadows there were the +white woolly lambs, always at their gambols, and leaping all over the +meadows. + +It was a great happiness to be born in a village. Our village was rather +a pretty one. Afar off we heard the murmurs and smelt the salt air of +the distant sea, and that was something. There were no beerhouses then, +and, alas! few attractions to keep raw village lads under good influence. +My father, as I have said, was a Dissenting minister, painful, godly and +laborious, ever seeking the spiritual welfare of his people, and +relieving as far as possible their temporal wants. I had to accompany +him in his pastoral visits, sometimes an irksome task, as the poor were +numerous and garrulous, and made the most on such occasions of the +infirmities of their lot. Some of the old ones were so worn and withered +that their weird faces often haunted me by night and terrified me in my +dreams. + +Another thing that gave me trouble was the fact of being a Dissenter. It +seemed to me a badge of inferiority, as the ignorant farmers and +tradesmen around made Nonconformity the subject of deprecating remarks. +“Dissenters were sly,” said the son of the village shopkeeper, the only +boy of my age in the village, whose father was the most servile of men +himself to the parochial dignitaries, and I felt that, as a Dissenter, I +was under a cloud. It was the fashion to call us “Pograms,” and the +word—no one knew what it meant—had rather an unpleasant sound to my +youthful ears. This I knew, that most of the leading men of the place +went to church when they went anywhere, and not to our meeting-house, +where, however, we had good congregations. Many of our people were +farmers who came from a distance for the afternoon service, and at whose +homes when the time came I had many a happy day going out ferreting in +the winter and in the autumn riding on the fore-horse. As the harvest +was being gathered in, how proud was I to ride that fore-horse, though I +lost a good deal of leather in consequence, and how welcome the night’s +rest after tumbling about in the waggon in the harvest field. Happily +did the morning of my life pass away amidst rural scenes and sights. It +is a great privilege to be born in the country. Childhood in the city +loses much of its zest. Yet I had my dark moments. I had often to walk +through a small wood, where, according to the village boys, flying +serpents were to be seen, and in the dark nights I often listened with +fear and trembling to the talk of the villagers of wretched miscreants +who were to be met with at such times with pitch-plaster, by means of +which they took away many a boy’s life for the sake of selling his dead +body to the doctor for the purposes of dissection. But the winter night +had its consolations nevertheless. We had the stories of English history +by Maria Hack and other light literature to read. We had dissecting maps +to put together, and thus acquire a knowledge of geography. And there +was a wonderful game invented by a French _abbé_, which was played in +connection with a teetotum and a map of England and Wales, the benefits +of which even at this distance of time I gratefully record. It is true +cards were looked upon as sinful, but we had chess and draughts. Later +on we had _The Penny Magazine_, and _Chambers’s Journal_, and _The +Edinburgh Review_, which had to me all the fascination of a novel. We +had also _The Evangelical Magazine_ and _The Youth’s Companion_, a +magazine which, I believe, has long ceased to exist, and the volumes with +illustrations of the Society for Diffusion of Useful and Entertaining +Knowledge, and we had the book club meetings, when it was the fashion for +the members to take tea at each other’s homes, and propose books, and +once a year meet to sell the old ones by auction. My father shone on +such occasions. He was a good talker, as times went—conversation not +being much of a gift among the members of the club, save when the ladies +cheered us with their presence. As a Scotchman he had a good share of +the dry humour of his nation. But chiefly did he shine when the brethren +met. Foremost of the party were Sloper of Beccles, who had talked on +things spiritual with Mrs. Siddons, Crisp of Lowestoft, Blaikie of +Bungay, Longley of Southwold, and others, who discussed theology and +metaphysics all the evening, till their heads were as cloudy as the +tobacco-impregnated room in which they sat. At all these gatherings +Alexander Creak of Yarmouth was a principal figure; a fine, tall, stately +man, minister of a congregation supposed to be of a very superior class. +One of his sons, I believe, still lives in Norfolk. As to the rest they +have left only their memories, and those are growing dimmer and fainter +every year. + +At that time amongst the brethren who occasionally dawned upon our +benighted village were Mayhew of Walpole, good old Mr. Dennant of +Halesworth (of whom I chiefly remember that he was a bit of a poet, and +that he was the author of a couplet which delighted me as a boy—and +delights me still—“Awhile ago when I was nought, and neither body, soul +nor thought”), and Mr. Ward of Stowmarket, who was supposed to be a very +learned man indeed, and Mr. Hickman of Denton, whose library bespoke an +erudition rare in those times. Most of them had sons. Few of them, +however, became distinguished in after life; few of them, indeed, +followed their fathers’ steps as ministers. One of the Creaks did, and +became a tutor, I think, at Spring Hill College, Birmingham; but the fact +is few of them were trained for contest and success in the world. As +regards myself, I own I was led to think a great deal more of the next +world than of this. We had too much religion. God made man to rule the +world and conquer it, to fight a temporal as well as spiritual battle, to +be diligent in business, whilst at the same time fervent in spirit, +serving the Lord. What I chiefly remember was that I was to try and be +good, though at the same time it was awfully impressed upon me that of +myself I could think no good thought nor do one good thing; that I was +born utterly depraved, and that if I were ever saved—a fact I rather +doubted—it was because my salvation had been decreed in the councils of +heaven before the world was. Naturally my religion was of fear rather +than of love. It seems to me that lads thus trained, as far as my +experience goes, never did turn out well, unless they were namby-pamby +creatures, milksops, in fact, rather than men. I have lived to see a +great change for the better in this respect, and a corresponding +improvement of the young man of the day. It may be that he is less +sentimental; but his religion, when he has any, is of a manlier type. I +never saw a copy of Shakespeare till I was a young man. As a child, my +memory had been exercised in learning passages from Milton, the hardest +chapters in the Old or New Testament, and the Assembly Catechism. If +that Assembly Catechism had never been written I should have been happier +as a child, and wiser and more useful as a man. I have led an erratic +life; I have wandered far from the fold. At one time I looked on myself +as an outcast. With the Old Psalmist—with brave Oliver Cromwell—with +generations of tried souls, I had to sing, as Scotch Presbyterians, I +believe, in Northern kirks still sing:— + + Woe’s me that I in Meshec am + A sojourner so long, + Or that I in the tents do dwell + To Kedar that belong. + +Yet nothing was simpler or more beautiful than the lives of those old +Noncons.; I may say so from a wide experience. They were godly men, a +striking contrast to the hunting, drinking, swearing parsons of the +surrounding district. Hence their power in the pulpit, their success in +the ministry. But they failed to understand childhood and youth; +childhood, with its delight in things that are seen and temporal, and +youth with its passionate longing to burst its conventional barriers, and +to revel in the world which looks so fair, and of which it has heard such +evil. Ah, these children of many prayers; how few of them came to be +pious; how many of them fell, some, alas, to rise no more. One reason +was that if you did not see your way to become a church member and a +professor of religion you were cut off, or felt inwardly that you were +cut off, which is much the same thing, and had to associate with men of +loose lives and looser thoughts. There was no _via media_; you were +either a saint or a sinner, of the church or the world. It is not so +now, when even every Young Men’s Christian Association has its gymnasium, +and the young man’s passions are soothed by temperance and exercise and +not inflated by drink. There may not be so much of early piety as there +was—though of that I am not sure. There is a great deal more of religion +than there was, not so much of sensational enjoyment or of doctrinal +discussion perhaps, but more practical religion in all the various walks +of life. + +We had to teach in the Sunday-school. My services were early utilised in +that direction, for the village was badly supplied with the stuff of +which teachers were made, and as the parson’s son I was supposed to have +an ex-officio qualification for the task. I fear I was but a poor hand +in the work of teaching the young idea how to shoot, especially when that +idea was developed in the bodies of great hulking fellows, my seniors in +years and superiors in size. However, one of them did turn out well. +Many years after he recognised me in the Gray’s Inn Road, London, where +he had made money as a builder, and where, though he never learned to +read—perhaps that was my fault—he figured for a time largely on the walls +as the Protestant churchwarden. “You know, sir,” he said to me, “how +poor we all were at W—” (the father, I fear, was a drunkard), “Well, I +came to London, resolving to be either a man or a mouse”; and here he +was, as respectable-looking a man as any you could see, thus proving what +I hold to be the truth, that in this land of ours, however deep in the +mire a man may be, he may rise, if he has the requisite power of work and +endurance and self-denial. I fear he did not much profit by our +Sunday-school, though he told me he had put it down in his will for a +small legacy. Our chief man was a shoemaker named Roberts, who sat with +the boys under the pulpit in face of all the people; the girls, with the +modesty of the sex, retiring to the back seats of the gallery. In his +hand he bore a long wand, and woe to the unfortunate lad who fell asleep +while the sermon was going on, or endeavoured to relieve the tedium of it +by eating apples, sucking sweets, or revealing to his fellows the +miscellaneous treasures of his pocket in the shape of marbles or string +or knife. On such an offender down came the avenging stroke, swift as +lightning and almost as sharp. As to general education, there was no +attempt to give it. Later on, the Dissenters raised enough money to +build a day-school, and then the Churchmen were stirred up to do the +same. There was a school, kept by an irritable, red-faced old party in +knee-breeches, who had failed in business, where I and most of the +farmers’ sons of the village went; but I can’t say that any of us made +much progress, and I did better when I was taken back to the home and +educated, my father hearing my Latin and Greek as he smoked his pipe, +while my mother—a very superior woman, with a great taste for literature +and art—acted as teacher, while she was at work painting, after the +duties of housekeeping were over. I ought to have been a better boy. +But there were two great drawbacks—one, the absence of all emulation, +which too often means the loss of all worldly success; the other, the +painful and useless effort to be good. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. +VILLAGE SPORTS AND PASTIMES. + + +It was wonderful the utter stagnation of the village. The chapel was the +only centre of intellectual life; next to that was the alehouse, whither +some of the conscript fathers repaired to get a sight of the county +paper, to learn the state of the markets, and at times to drink more ale +than was good for them. About ten I had my first experience of death. I +had lost an aged grandmother, but I was young, and it made little +impression on me, except the funeral sermon—preached by my father to an +overflowing congregation—which still lives in my recollections of a dim +and distant past. I was a small boy. I was laid up with chilblains and +had to be carried into the chapel; and altogether the excitement of the +occasion was pleasing rather than the reverse. But the next who fell a +victim was a young girl—whom I thought beautiful—who was the daughter of +a miller who attended our chapel, and with whom I was on friendly terms. +On the day of her funeral her little brothers and sisters came to our +house to be out of the way. But I could not play with them, as I was +trying to realise the figure I thought so graceful lying in the grave—to +be eaten of worms, to turn to clay. But I shuddered as I thought of what +we so often say: + + There are no acts of mercy past + In the cold grave to which we haste, + But darkness, death, and long despair + Reign in eternal silence there. + +I was sick at heart—I am sick at heart now—as I recall the sad day, +though more than seventy years have rolled over my head since then. + +I have spoken of the excitement of the Reform struggle. It was to most +of us a time of fear. A mob was coming from Yarmouth to attack Benacre +Hall, and then what would become of Sir Thomas “Guche”? But older heads +began to think that the nation would survive the blow, even if Benacre +Hall were burnt and Sir Thomas “Guche” had to hide his diminished head. +As it happened, we did lose Sir Thomas’s services. He was thrown out for +Suffolk, and Mr. Robert Newton Shaw, a Whig, reigned in his stead. How +delighted we all were! Now had come the golden age, and the millennium +was at hand. Pensioners and place men were no longer to fatten on the +earnings of a suffering people, Radical politicians even looked forward +to the time when the parson would lose his tithes. + +The villagers rarely left the village; they got work at the neighbouring +farms, and if they did not, they did not do so badly under the old Poor +Laws, which paid a premium to the manufacturers of large families. The +cottages were miserable hovels then, as they mostly are, and charity had +full scope for exercise, especially at Christmas time, when those who +went to the parish church were taught the blessedness of serving God and +mammon. At one time the dear old chapel would hold all the meetingers; +but soon came sectarian divisions and animosities. There was a great +Baptist preacher at Beccles of the name of Wright, and of a Sunday some +of our people walked eight miles to hear him, and came back more sure +that they were the elect than ever, and more contemptuous of the poor +blinded creatures who, to use a term much in common then, sat under my +father. Now and then the Ranters got hold of a barn, and then there was +another secession. Perhaps we had too much theological disputation. I +think we had; but then there was nothing else to think about. The people +had no cheap newspapers, and if they had they could not have read them, +and so they saw signs and had visions, and told how the Lord had +converted them by visible manifestations of His presence and power. +Well, they were happy, and they needed somewhat to make them happy amidst +the abounding poverty and desolation of their lives. By means of a +vehicle—called a whiskey—which was drawn by a mule or a pony, as chance +might determine, the family of which I was a member occasionally visited +Southwold, prettier than it is now, or Lowestoft, which had no port, +merely a long row of houses climbing up to the cliff; or Beccles, then +supposed to be a very genteel town, and where there was a ladies’ +boarding school; or to Bungay, where John Childs, a sturdy opponent in +later years of Church rates and Bible monopoly, carried on a large +printing business for the London publishers, and cultivated politics and +phrenology. It was a grand outing for us all. Sometimes we got as far +as Halesworth, where they had a Primitive meeting-house with great +pillars, behind which the sleeper might sweetly dream till the fiddles +sounded and the singing commenced. But as to long journeys they were +rarely taken. If one did one had to go by coach, and there was sure to +be an accident. Our village doctor who, with his half-dozen daughters, +attended our chapel, did once take a journey, and met with a fall that, +had his skull been not so thick, might have led to a serious catastrophe. +Then there was Brother Hickman, of Denton, a dear, good man who never +stirred from the parish. Once in an evil hour he went a journey on a +stage coach, which was upset, and the consequence was a long and +dangerous illness. If home-keeping youths have ever homely wits, what +homeliness of wit we must have had. But now and then great people found +their way to us, such as Edward Taylor, Gresham Professor of Music, who +had a little property in the village, which gave him a vote, and before +the Reform Bill was carried elections were elections, and we knew it, for +did not four-horse coaches at all times, with flags flowing and trumpets +blowing, drive through with outvoters for Yarmouth, collected at the +candidates’ expense from all parts of the kingdom? In the summer, too, +we had another excitement in the shape of the fish vans—light four-wheel +waggons, drawn by two horses—which raced all the way from Lowestoft or +Yarmouth to London. They were built of green rails, and filled up with +hampers of mackerel, to be delivered fresh on the London market. They +only had one seat, and that was the driver’s. At the right time of year +they were always on the road going up full, returning empty, and they +travelled a good deal faster than the Royal mail. They were an +ever-present danger to old topers crawling home from the village +ale-house, and to dirty little boys playing marbles or making mud pies in +the street. Of course, there was no policeman to clear the way. +Policemen did not come into fashion till long after; but we had the +gamekeeper. How I feared him as he caught me bird-nesting at an early +hour in the Park, and sent me home with a heavy heart as he threatened me +with Beccles gaol. + +In the winter I used to go out rabbiting. A young farmer in our +neighbourhood was fond of the sport, and would often take me out with +him, not to participate in the sport, but simply to look on. It might be +that a friend or two would bring his gun and dog, and join in the +pastime, which, at any rate, had this advantage as far as I was +personally concerned, that it gave me a thundering appetite. The ferrets +which one of the attendants always carried in a bag had a peculiar +fascination for me, with their long fur, their white, shiny teeth, their +little sparkling black eyes. The ferret is popped into the hole in which +the rabbit is hidden. Poor little animal, he is between the devil and +the deep sea. He waits in his hole till he can stand it no longer, but +there is no way of escape for him out. There are the men, with their +guns and the dogs eager for the fun. Ah! it is soon over, and this is +often the way of the world. + +To us in that Suffolk village the sports of big schools and more +ambitious lads were unknown. For us there was no cricket or football, +except on rare occasions, when we had an importation of juveniles in the +house, but I don’t know that we were much the better for that. We +trundled the hoop, and raced one with another, and that is capital +exercise. We played hopscotch, which is good training for the calves of +the legs. We had bows and arrows and stilts, and in the autumn—when we +could get into the fields—we built and flew kites, kites which we had to +make ourselves. If there was an ancient sandpit in the neighbourhood how +we loved to explore its depths, and climb its heights, and in the +freshness of the early spring what a joy it was to explore the hedges, or +the trees of the neighbouring park, when the gamekeepers happened to be +out of sight in search of birds’ nests and eggs; and in the long winter +evenings what a delight it was to read of the past, though it was in the +dry pages of Rollin, or to glow over the poems of Cowper. We were, it is +true, a serious family. We had family prayers. No wine but that known +as gingerbeer honoured the paternal hospitable board. Grog I never saw +in any shape. A bit of gingerbread and a glass of water formed our +evening meal. Oh, at Christmas what games we had of snap-dragon and +blind man’s buff. I always felt small when a boy from Cockneydom +appeared amongst us, and that I hold to be the chief drawback of such a +bringing up as ours was. The battle of life is best fought by the +cheeky. It does not do to be too humble and retiring. Baron Trench +owned to a too great consciousness of innate worth. It gave him, he +writes, a too great degree of pride. That is bad, but not so bad as the +reverse—that feeling of humility which withers up all the noblest +aspirations of the soul, and which I possessed partly from religion, and +partly from the feeling that, as a Dissenter, I was a social Pariah in +the eyes of the generation around. My modesty, I own, has been in my way +all through life. The world takes a man at his own valuation. It is too +busy to examine each particular claim, and the prize is won by him who +most loudly and pertinaciously blows his own trumpet. At any rate, in +our Suffolk home we enjoyed + + Lively cheer of vigour born; + The thoughtless day—the easy night— + The spirits pure—the slumbers light— + That fly the approach of morn. + +The one drawback was the long-drawn darkness of the winter night. I +slept in an old attic in an old house, where every creak on the stairs, +when the wind was roaring all round, gave me a stroke of pain, and where +ghastly faces came to me in the dark of old women haggard and hideous and +woebegone. De Quincy hints in his numerous writings at boyish times of a +similar kind. I fancy most of us in boyhood are tortured in a similar +way. Fuseli supped on pork chops to procure fitting subjects for his +weird sketches. But we never had pork chops; yet in the visions of the +night what awful faces I saw—almost enough to turn one’s brain and to +make one’s hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. + +Country villages are always fifty years behind the times, and so it was +with us. In the farmyard there was no steam engine, and all the work was +done by manual labour, such as threshing the corn with the flail. In +many families the only light was that of the rushlight, often home made. +Lucifer matches were unknown, and we had to get a light by means of a +flint and tinder, which ignited the brimstone match, always in readiness. +Cheap ready-made clothes were unknown, and the poor mother had a good +deal of tailoring to do. In the cottage there was little to read save +the cheap publications of the Religious Tract Society, and the voluminous +writings of the excellent Hannah More, teaching the lower orders to fear +God and honour the king, and not to meddle with those that were given to +change. Her “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife” was the only novel that ever +found its way into religious circles—with the exception of “Robinson +Crusoe” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and that was awfully illustrated. +Anybody who talked of the rights of man at that time was little better +than one of the wicked. One of Hannah More’s characters, Mr. Fantom, is +thus described:—“He prated about _narrowness_ and _ignorance_ (the +derisive italics are Hannah’s own), and _bigotry_ and _prejudice_ and +priestcraft on the one hand, and on the other of _public good_, the _love +of mankind_, and _liberality_ and _candour_, and above all of +benevolence.” Dear Hannah made her hero, of course, come to a shocking +end, and so does his servant William, who as he lies in Chelmsford gaol +to be hung for murder confesses, “I was bred up in the fear of God, and +lived with credit in many sober families in which I was a faithful +servant, till, being tempted by a little higher wages, I left a good +place to go and live with Mr. Fantom, who, however, never made good his +fine promises, but proved a hard master.” Another of Hannah’s characters +was a Miss Simpson, a clergyman’s daughter, who is always exclaiming, +“’Tis all for the best,” though she ends her days in a workhouse, while +the man through whose persecution she comes to grief dies in agony, +bequeathing her £100 as compensation for his injustice, and declares that +if he could live his life over again he would serve God and keep the +Sabbath. And such was the literature which was to stop reform, and make +the poor contented with their bitter lot! + +But the seed, such as it was, often fell on stony soil. The labourers +became discontented, and began more and more to feel that it was not +always true that all was for the best, as their masters told them. They +were wretchedly clad, and lodged, and fed. Science, sanitary or +otherwise, was quite overlooked then. The parson and the squire took no +note of them, except when they heard that they went to the Baptist, or +Independent, or Methodist chapel, when great was their anger and dire +their threats. Again Hannah More took the field “to improve the habits +and raise the principles of the common people at a time when their +dangers and temptations—social and political—were multiplied beyond the +example of any former period. The inferior ranks were learning to read, +and they preferred to read the corrupt and inflammatory publications +which the French Revolution had called into existence.” Alas! all was in +vain. Rachel, weeping for her children who had been torn from her to die +in foreign lands, fighting to keep up the Holy Alliance and the right +divine of kings to govern wrong, or had toiled and moiled in winter’s +cold and summer’s heat, merely to end their days in the parish workhouse, +refused to be comforted. Good people grew alarmed, and goody tracts were +circulated more than ever. The edifying history of the “Shepherd of +Salisbury Plain” was to be seen in many a cottage in our village. The +shepherd earned a shilling a day; he lived in a wretched cottage which +had a hole in the thatch which made his poor wife a martyr to rheumatism +in consequence of the rain coming through. He had eight children to +keep, chiefly on potatoes and salt, but he was happy because he was pious +and contented. A gentleman says to him, “How do you support yourself +under the pressure of actual want? Is not hunger a great weakener of +your faith?” “Sir,” replied the shepherd, “I live upon the promises.” +Yes, that was the kind of teaching in our village and all over England, +and the villagers got tired of it, and took to firing stacks and barns, +and actually in towns were heard to cry “More pay and less parsons.” +What was the world coming to? said dear old ladies. It was well Hannah +More had died and thus been saved from the evil to come. The +Evangelicals were at their wits’ end. They wanted people to think of the +life to come, while the people preferred to think of the life that was—of +this world rather than the next. + +I am sure that in our village we had too much religion. I write this +seriously and after thinking deeply on the matter. A man has a body to +be cared for, as well as a soul to be saved or damned. Charles Kingsley +was the first to tell us that it was vain to preach to people with empty +stomachs. But when I was a lad preaching was the cure for every ill, and +the more wretched the villagers became the more they were preached to. +There was little hope of any one who did not go to some chapel or other. +There was little help for any one who preferred to talk of his wrongs or +to claim his rights. I must own that the rustic worshipper was a better +man in all the relationships of life—as servant, as husband, as father, +as friend—than the rustic unbeliever. It astonished me not a little to +talk with the former, and to witness his copiousness of Scripture +phraseology and the fluency of his religious talk. He was on a higher +platform. He had felt what Burke wrote when he tells us that religion +was for the man in humble life, to raise his nature and to put him in +mind of a State in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he +will be equal by nature and more than equal by virtue. Alas! we had soon +Lord Brougham’s beershops, and there was a sad falling away. Poachers +and drunkards increased on every side. All around there seemed to be +nothing but poverty, with the exception of the farmers—then, as now, +always grumbling, but apparently living well and enjoying life. + +As one thinks of the old country years ago one can realise the truth of +the story told by the late Mr. Fitzgerald of a Suffolk village church one +winter’s evening:— + + Congregation, with the Old Hundredth ready for the parson’s dismissal + words. + + _Good Old Parson_ (not at all meaning rhymes): The light has grown so + very dim I scarce can see to read the hymn. + + _Congregation_ (taking it up to the first half of the Old Hundredth): + + The light has grown so very dim, + I scarce can see to read the hymn. + + (Pause as usual.) + + _Parson_ (mildly impatient): I did not mean to sing a hymn, I only + meant my eyes were dim. + + _Congregation_ (to second part of the Old Hundredth): + + I did not mean to read a hymn, + I only meant my eyes were dim. + + _Parson_ (out of patience): I did not mean a hymn at all, I think the + devil’s in you all. + +Curious were the ways of the East Anglian clergy. One of our +neighbouring parsons had his clerk give out notice that on the next +Sunday there would be no service “because master was going to Newmarket.” +No one cared for the people, unless it was the woman preacher or +Methodist parson, and the people were ignorant beyond belief. Few could +either read or write. It was rather amusing to hear them talk. A boy +was called bow, a girl was termed a mawther, and if milk or beer was +wanted it was generally fetched in a gotch. + +Our home life was simple enough. We went early to bed and were up with +the lark. I was arrayed in a pinafore and wore a frill—which I +abhorred—and took but little pleasure in my personal appearance—a very +great mistake, happily avoided by the present generation. We children +had each a little bed of garden ground which we cultivated to the best of +our power. Ours was really a case of plain living and high thinking. Of +an evening the room was dimly lighted by means of a dip candle which +constantly required snuffing. To write with we had the ordinary +goose-quill. The room, rarely used, in which we received company was +called the parlour. Goloshes had not then come into use, and women wore +in muddy weather pattens or clogs. The simple necessaries of life were +very dear, and tea and coffee and sugar were sold at what would now be +deemed an exorbitant price. Postage was prohibitory, and when any one +went to town he was laden with letters. As little light as possible was +admitted into the house in order to save the window-tax. The farmer was +generally arrayed in a blue coat and yellow brass buttons. The gentleman +had a frilled shirt and wore Hessian boots. I never saw a magazine of +the fashions; nowadays they are to be met with everywhere. Yet we were +never dull, and in the circle in which I moved we never heard of the need +of change. People were content to live and die in the village without +going half-a-dozen miles away, with the exception of the farmers, who +might drive to the nearest market town, transact their business, dine at +the ordinary, and then, after a smoke and a glass of brandy and water and +a chat with their fellow-farmers, return home. Of the rush and roar of +modern life, with its restlessness and eagerness for something new and +sensational, we had not the remotest idea. + + + + +CHAPTER V. +OUT ON THE WORLD. + + +In the good old city of Norwich. I passed a year as an apprentice, in +what was then known as London Lane. It was a time of real growth to me +mentally. I had a bedroom to myself; in reality it was a closet. I had +access to a cheap library, where I was enabled to take my fill, and did a +good deal of miscellaneous study. I would have joined the Mechanics’ +Institute, where they had debates, but the people with whom I lived were +orthodox Dissenters, and were rather afraid of my embracing Unitarian +principles. The fear was, I think, groundless. At any rate, one of the +most distinguished debaters was Mr. Jacob Henry Tillett, afterwards M.P., +then in a lawyer’s office; and another was his friend Joseph Pigg, who +became a Congregational minister, but did not live to old age. Another +of the lot—who was a great friend of Pigg’s—was Bolingbroke Woodward, who +was, I think, in a bank, from which he went to Highbury, thence as a +Congregational minister to Wortwell, near Harleston, and died librarian +to the Queen. Evidently there was no necessary connection, as the people +where I lived thought, between debating and embracing Unitarian +principles. + +Norwich seemed to me a wonderful city. I had already visited the place +at the time when it celebrated the passing of the Reform Bill, when there +was by day a grand procession, and a grand dinner in the open air; where +a friend, who knew what boys liked, gave me a slice of plum pudding +served up on the occasion; and then in the evening there were fireworks, +the first I had ever seen, on the Castle Hill. It was a long ride from +our village, and we had to travel by the carrier’s cart, drawn by two +horses, and sit beneath the roof on the top of the luggage and baggage, +for we stopped everywhere to pick up parcels. The passengers when seated +endeavoured to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would +allow. Norwich at that time had a literary reputation, and it seemed to +me there were giants in the land in those days. One I remember was the +Rev. John Kinghorn, a great light among the Baptists, and whom, with his +spare figure and primitive costume, I always confounded with John the +Baptist. Another distinguished personage was William Youngman, at whose +house my father spent a good deal of time, engaged in the hot disputation +in which that grand old Norwich worthy always delighted. As a boy, I +remember I trembled as the discussion went on, for + + Mr. MacWinter was apt to be hot, + And Mr. McKenzie a temper had got. + +Yet their friendship continued in spite of difference of opinion, and +well do I remember him in his square pew in the Old Meeting, as, with his +gold-headed cane firmly grasped, the red-faced fat old man sat as solemn +and passionless as a judge, while in the pulpit before him the Rev. Mr. +Innes preached. But, alas! the parson had a pretty daughter, and I lost +all his sermon watching the lovely figure in the pew just by. Another of +the deacons, tall and stiff as a poker, Mr. Brightwell, had a pew just +behind, father of a young lady known later as a successful authoress, +while from the gallery opposite a worthy man, Mr. Blunderfield, gave out +the hymn. Up in the galleries there were Spelmans and Jarrolds in +abundance, while in a pew behind the latter was seated a lad who in after +life attained, and still retains, some fame as a lecturer against +Christianity, and later in its favour, well known as Dr. Sexton. To that +Old Meeting I always went with indescribable awe; its square pews, its +old walls with their memorial marbles, the severity of the aspect of the +worshippers, the antique preacher in the antique pulpit all affected me. +But I loved the place nevertheless. Even now I am thrilled as I recall +the impressive way in which Mr. Blunderfield gave out the hymns, and I +can still remember one of Mr. Innes’ texts, and it was always a matter of +pride to me when Mr. Youngman took me home to dinner and to walk on his +lawn, which sloped down to the river, and to view with wonder the peacock +which adorned his grounds. The family with which I was apprenticed +attended on the ministry of the Rev. John Alexander, a man deservedly +esteemed by all and beloved by his people. He was a touching preacher, +an inimitable companion, and was hailed all over East Anglia as its +Congregational bishop, a position I fancy still held by his successor, +the Rev. Dr. Barrett. Dissent in Norwich seemed to me much more +respected than in my village home. Dr. Brock, then plain Mr. Brock, also +came to Norwich when I was there, and had a fine congregation in St. +Mary’s, which seemed to me a wonderfully fine chapel. I was always glad +to go there. Once I made my way to the Octagon, a still nobler building, +but my visit was found out by my master’s wife, and henceforth I was +orthodox, that is as long as I was at Norwich. The Norwich of that time, +though the old air of depression, in consequence of declining +manufacture, has given place to a livelier tone, in its essential +features remains the same. There are still the Castle and the old +landmarks of the Cathedral and the Market Place. The great innovation +has been the Great Eastern Railway, which has given to it a new and +handsome quarter, and the Colman mustard mills. Outside the city, in the +suburbs, of course, Norwich has much increased, and we have now crowded +streets or trim semidetached villas, where in my time were green fields +or rustic walks. London did not dominate the country as it does now, and +Norwich was held to be in some quarters almost a second Athens. There +lived there a learned man of the name of Wilkins, with whom I, alas! +never came into contact, who had much to do with resuscitating the fame +of the worthy Norwich physician, Sir Thomas Browne, immortal, by reason +of his “Religio Medici” and “Urn Burial,” especially the latter. The +Martineaus and the Taylors lived there. Johnson Fox—the far-famed +Norwich weaver boy of the Anti-Corn League, and Unitarian minister, and +subsequently M.P. for Oldham—had been a member of the Old Meeting, whence +he had been sent to Homerton College to study for the ministry, and a +sister and brother, if I remember aright, still attended at the Old +Meeting. When I was a lad there still might be seen in the streets of +Norwich the venerable figure of William Taylor, who had first opened up +German literature to the intelligent public; and there had not long died +Mrs. Taylor, the friend of Sir James Mackintosh and other distinguished +personages. “She was the wife,” writes Basil Montagu, “of a shopkeeper +in that city; mild and unassuming, quiet and meek, sitting amidst her +large family, always occupied with her needle and domestic occupations, +but always assisting, by her great knowledge, the advancement of kind and +dignified sentiment. Manly wisdom and feminine gentleness were united in +her with such attractive manners that she was universally loved and +respected. In high thoughts and gentle deeds she greatly resembled the +admirable Lucy Hutchinson, and in troubled times would have been +specially distinguished for firmness in what she thought right.” Dr. +Sayers was also one of the stars of the Norwich literary circle, and I +recollect Mrs. Opie, who had given up the world of fashion and frivolity, +had donned the Quaker dress, and at whose funeral in the Quaker +Meeting-house I was present. The Quakers were at that time a power in +Norwich, and John Joseph Gurney, of Earlham, close by, enjoyed quite a +European reputation. It was not long that Harriet Martineau had turned +her back on the Norwich of her youth. The house where she was born was +in a court in Magdalen Street. But it never was her dwelling-place after +her removal from it when she was three months old. Harriet was given to +underrating everybody who had any sort of reputation, and she certainly +underrated Norwich society, which, when I was a lad, was superior to most +of our county towns. I caught now and then a few faint echoes of that +world into which I was forbidden to enter. Norwich ministers were yet +learned, and their people were studious. A dear old city was Norwich, +with much to interest a raw lad from the country, with its Cathedral, +which, as too often is the case, sadly interfered with the free life of +all within its reach, with its grand Market Place filled on a Saturday +with the country farmers’ wives, who had come to sell the produce of +their dairy and orchard and chickenyard, and who returned laden with +their purchases in the way of grocery and drapery; and its Castle set +upon a hill. It was there that for the first time I saw judges in ermine +and crimson, and learned to realise the majesty of the law. Then there +was an immense dragon kept in St. Andrew’s Hall, and it was a wonder to +all as he was dragged forth from his retirement, and made the rounds of +the streets with his red eyes, his green scales, his awful tail. I know +not whether that old dragon still survives. I fear the Reformers, who +were needlessly active in such matters, abolished him. But the sight of +sights I saw during my short residence at Norwich was that of the +chairing of the M.P.’s. I forget who they were; I remember they had red +faces, gorgeous dresses, and silk stockings. Norwich was a corrupt +place, and a large number of electors were to be bought, and unless they +were bought no M.P. had a chance of being returned. The consequence was +party feeling ran very high, and the defeated party were usually angry, +as they were sure to contend that they had been beaten not by honest +voting, but by means of bribery and corruption, and thus when the +chairing took place there was often not a little rioting, and voters +inflamed with beer were always ready for a row. The fortunate M.P.’s +thus on chairing days were exposed to not a little danger. The chairs in +which they were seated, adorned with the colours of the party, were borne +by strapping fellows quite able to defend themselves, and every now and +then ready to give a heave somewhat dangerous to the seat-holder, who all +the time had to preserve a smiling face and bow to the ladies who lined +the windows of the street through which the procession passed, and to +look as if he liked it rather than not. The sight, however, I fancy, +afforded more amusement to the spectators than to the M.P.’s, who were +glad when it was over, and who had indeed every right to be, for there +was always the chance of a collision with a hostile mob, and a +_dénouement_ anything but agreeable. But, perhaps, the sight of sights +was Norwich Market on Christmas Day, and the Norwich coaches starting for +London crammed with turkeys outside and in, and only leaving room for the +driver and the guard. At that time London was chiefly supplied with its +turkeys from Norfolk, and it was only by means of stage coaches that the +popular poultry could be conveyed. In this respect Norwich has suffered, +for London now draws its Christmas supplies from all the Continent. It +was not so when I was a lad, but from all I can hear Norwich Market Place +the Saturday before Christmas is as largely patronised as ever, and they +tell me, though, alas, I have no practical knowledge of the fact, the +Norwich turkeys are as good as ever. As long as they remain so Norwich +has little to fear. I have also at a later time a faint recollection of +good port, but now I am suffering from gout, and we never mention it. In +these teetotal days “our lips are now forbidden to speak that once +familiar word.” + + + + +CHAPTER VI. +AT COLLEGE. + + +What more natural than that a son should wish to follow in his father’s +steps? I had a minister for a father. It was resolved that I should +become one. In Dissenting circles no one was supposed to enter the +ministry until he had got what was denominated a call. I persuaded +myself that I had such a call, though I much doubt it now. I tried to +feel that I was fitted for this sacred post—I who knew nothing of my own +heart, and was as ignorant of the world as a babe unborn. I was sent to +a London college, now no more, and had to be examined for my +qualifications by four dear old fossils, and was, of course, admitted. I +passed because my orthodoxy was unimpeachable, and I was to preach—I, who +trembled at the sound of my own voice, who stood in terror of deacons, +and who had never attempted to make a speech. I hope at our colleges +they manage these things better now, and select men who can show that the +ministry is in them before they seek to enter the ministry. As it was, I +found more than one of my fellow-students was utterly destitute of all +qualifications for the pastorate, and was simply wasting the splendid +opportunities placed within his reach. The routine of college life was +not unpleasant. We rose early, attended lectures from our principal and +the classes at University College, and took part in conducting family +service in the hall. Occasionally we preached in the College chapel, the +principal attendant at which was an old tailor, who thereby secured a +good deal of the patronage of the students. By attending the classes at +University College we had opportunities of which, alas! only a minority +made much use. They who did so became distinguished in after life, such +as Rev. Joseph Mullens, Secretary of the London Missionary Society; and +John Curwen, who did so much for congregational singing; Dr. Newth, and +Philip Smith, who was tutor at Cheshunt, and afterwards Headmaster at +Mill Hill. Nor must I forget Rev. Andrew Reed, a preacher always +popular, partly on his own and partly on his father’s account; nor Thomas +Durrant Philip, the son of the well-known doctor whose splendid work +among the Hottentots is not yet forgotten; nor Dr. Edkins, the great +Chinese scholar; nor the late Dr. Henry Robert Reynolds, who won for +Cheshunt a world-wide reputation. As regards myself, I fear I took more +interest in the debates at University College, where I made acquaintance +with men with whose names the world has since become familiar, such as +Sir James Stansfeld, Peter Taylor, M.P. for Leicester, Professor Waley, +of Jewish persuasion, C. J. Hargreaves, Baron of the Encumbered Estates +Court, and others who seemed to me far superior to most of my +fellow-students training for the Christian ministry. I was much +interested in the English Literature Class under the late Dr. Gordon +Latham, the great Anglo-Saxon scholar, who would fain have had me +Professor in his place. + +I cannot say that I look back with much pleasure on my college career. +We had two heads, neither of whom had any influence with the students, +nor did it seem to me desirable that they should. One of them was an +easy, pleasant, gentlemanly man, who was pleased to remark on an essay +which I read before him on Christianity, and which was greeted with a +round of applause by my fellow-students, that it displayed a low tone of +religious feeling. Poor man, he did not long survive after that. The +only bit of advice I had from his successor was as to the propriety of +closing my eyes as if in prayer whenever I went into the pulpit to +preach, on the plea, not that by means of it my heart might be solemnised +and elevated for the ensuing service, but that it would have a beneficial +effect on the people—that, in fact, on account of it they would think all +the better of me! After that, you may be sure I got little benefit from +anything the good man might feel fit to say. As a scholar he was +nowhere. All that I recollect of him was that he gave us D’Aubigné’s +History of the Reformation in driblets as if we were rather a superior +class of Sunday scholars. Mr. Stowell Brown tells us that he did not +perceive that the members of his church were in any respect better than +those who were hearers alone. And to me something similar was manifested +in college. We pious students were not much better than other young men. +It seemed to me that we were a little more lazy and flabby, that was all. +As a rule, few of us broke down morally, though such cases were by no +means rare. I cannot say, as M. Renan did, that there was never a breath +of scandal with respect to his fellow-students in his Romanist Academy; +but the class of young men who had come to study for the ministry was +not, with very rare exceptions, of a high order, either in a religious or +intellectual point of view. In this respect I believe there has been a +great improvement of late. + +My pulpit career was short. At times I believe I preached with much +satisfaction to my hearers; at other times very much the reverse. De Foe +writes: “It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set +apart from, the honour of that sacred employ.” My experience was +something similar. I never had a call to a charge, nor did I go the +right way to work to get one. I felt that I could gladly give it up, and +yet how could I do so? I had a father whom I fondly loved, who had set +his heart on seeing me follow in his honoured steps. I was what they +called a child of many prayers. How could I do otherwise than work for +their fulfilment? And if I gave up all thought of the ministry, how was +I to earn my daily bread? At length, however, I drifted away from the +pulpit and religious life for a time. I was not happy, but I was happier +than when vainly seeking to pursue an impossible career. I know more of +the world now. I have more measured myself with my fellows. I see what +ordinary men and women are, and the result is—fortunately or not, I +cannot tell—that I have now a better conceit of myself. I often wish +some one would ask me to occupy a pulpit now. How grand the position! +how mighty the power! You are out of the world—in direct contact with +the living God, speaking His Word, doing His work. There in the pew are +souls aching to be lifted out of themselves; to get out of the mud and +mire of the world and of daily life; to enter within the veil, as it +were; to abide in the secret place of the Most High. It is yours to aid +them. There are those dead in trespasses and sins; it is yours to rouse +them. There are the aged to be consoled; the young to be won over. Can +there be a nobler life than that which makes a man an ambassador from God +to man? + +Yet they were pleasant years I spent at Coward College, Torrington +Square, supported by the liberality of an old wealthy merchant of that +name, the friend of Dr. Doddridge, and at Wymondley—to which Doddridge’s +Academy, as it was termed, was subsequently moved—where were trained, at +any rate, two of our most distinguished Nonconformists, Edward Miall and +Thomas Binney. I am sorry Coward College ceased to exist as a separate +institution. We were all very happy there. We had a splendid old +library at our disposal, where we could learn somewhat of + + Many an old philosophy + On Argus heights divinely sung; + +and for many a day afterwards we dined together once a year. I think our +last dinner was at Mr. Binney’s, who was at his best when he gathered +around him his juniors, like himself, the subjects of old Coward’s +bounty. It was curious to me to find how little appreciated was the good +merchant’s grand bequest. I often found that in many quarters, +especially among the country churches, the education given to the young +men at Coward’s was regarded as a disqualification. It was suspected +that it impeded their religious career, that they were not so sound as +good young men who did not enjoy these advantages, that at other colleges +the preachers were better because not so learned, more devotedly pious +because more ignorant. It was held then that a student might be +over-educated, and the more he knew the more his religious zeal +diminished. In these days the feeling has ceased to exist, and the +churches are proud of the men who consecrate to the service of their Lord +all their cultivated powers of body and mind. The Christian Church has +ceased to fear the bugbear of a learned ministry. One can quite +understand, however, how that feeling came into existence. The success +of the early Methodists had led many to feel how little need there was +for culture when the torpor of the worldly and the poor was to be broken +up. The Methodists were of the people and spoke to them in a language +they could understand. Learning, criticism, doubt—what were they in the +opinion of the pious of those days but snares to be avoided, perils to be +shunned? For good or bad, we have outgrown that. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. +LONDON LONG AGO. + + +In due time—that is when I was about sixteen years old—I made my way to +London, a city as deadly, as dreary as can well be conceived, in spite of +the wonderful Cathedral of St. Paul’s, as much a thing of beauty as it +ever was, and the Monument, one of the first things the country cousin +was taken to see, with the exception of Madame Tussaud’s, then in Baker +Street. In the streets where the shops were the houses were mean and +low, of dirty red brick, of which the houses in the more aristocratic +streets and squares were composed. Belgravia, with its grand houses, was +never dreamt of. The hotels were of the stuffiest character; some of +them had galleries all round for the sleeping chambers, which, however, +as often as not were over the stables, where the coach horses were left +to rest after the last gallop into London, and to be ready for the early +start at five or six in the morning. Perhaps at that time the best way +of coming into London was sailing up the Thames. As there were few +steamers then the number of ships of all kinds was much greater than at +present, when a steamer comes up with unerring regularity, discharges her +cargo, takes in a fresh one, and is off again without a moment’s delay. +You saw Greenwich Hospital, as beautiful then as now, the big docks with +the foreign produce, the miles of black colliers in the Pool, the Tower +of London, the Customs House, and Billingsgate, a very inconvenient hole, +more famed for classic language then than now. Yet it was always a +pleasure to be landed in the city after sitting all day long on the top +of a stage coach. In many ways the railway was but a poor improvement on +the stage coach. In the first place you could see the country better; in +the second place the chances were you had better company, at any rate +people talked more, and were more inclined to be agreeable; and the third +place, in case of an accident, you felt yourself safer. As an old Jehu +said, contrasting the chances, “If you have an accident on a coach there +you are, but if you are in a railway carriage where are you!” And some +of the approaches to London were almost dazzling. Of a winter’s night it +was quite a treat to come into town by the East Anglian coaches, and to +see the glare of the Whitechapel butchers’ shops all lit up with gas, and +redolent of beef and mutton. It was wonderful in the eyes of the young +man from the country. + +The one great improvement in London was Regent Street, from Portland +Place and Regent’s Park to the statue an infatuated people erected to a +shady Duke of York in Trafalgar Square. Just by there was the National +Gallery, at any rate in a situation easy of access. Right past the +Mansion House a new street had been made to London Bridge, and there the +half-cracked King William was honoured by a statue, which was supposed to +represent the Royal body and the Royal head. In Cornhill there was an +old-fashioned building known as the Royal Exchange, which kept alive the +memory of the great civic benefactor, Sir Thomas Gresham, and the maiden +Queen; but everywhere the streets were narrow and the houses mean. +Holborn Hill led to a deep valley, on one side of which ran a lane filled +with pickpockets, and cut-throats and ruffians of all kinds, into which +it was not safe for any one to enter. And as you climbed the hill you +came to Newgate Market, along which locomotion was almost impossible all +the early morning, as there came from the north and the south and the +east and the west all the suburban butchers for their daily supply. Just +over the way on the left was that horror of horrors, Smithfield, where on +a market day some thousands of oxen and sheep by unheard of brutality had +been penned up, waiting to be purchased and let loose mad with hunger and +thirst and fright and pain all over the narrow streets of the city, to +the danger of pedestrians, especially such as were old and feeble. +Happily, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was close by, and the sufferer had +perhaps a chance of life. The guardians of the streets were the new +police, the Peelers or the Bobbies as they were sarcastically called. +The idiotic public did not think much of them; they were the thin edge of +the wedge, their aim was to destroy the glorious liberty of every man, to +do all the mischief they could, and to enslave the people. Was not Sir +Robert Peel a Tory of the Tories and the friend of Wellington, so beloved +by the people that he had to guard his house with iron shutters? At that +time the public was rather badly off for heroes, with the exception of +Orator Hunt, who got into Parliament and collapsed, as most of the men of +the people did. Yet I was a Liberal—as almost all Dissenters were with +the exception of the wealthy who attended at the Poultry or at Walworth, +where John and George Clayton preached. + +In the City life was unbearable by reason of the awful noise of the +stone-paven streets, now happily superseded by asphalte. Papers were +dear, but in all parts of London there were old-fashioned coffee and chop +houses where you could have a dinner at a reasonable price and read the +newspapers and magazines. Peele’s, in Fleet Street, at the corner of +Fetter Lane, was a great place for newspapers and reporters and special +correspondents. Many a newspaper article have I written there. Then +there were no clubs, or hardly any, and such places as the Cheshire +Cheese, with its memories of old Dr. Johnson, did a roaring trade far +into the night. There was a twopenny post for London, but elsewhere the +charge for letters was exorbitant and prohibitory. Vice had more +opportunities than now. There was no early closing, and in the Haymarket +and in Drury Lane these places were frequented by prostitutes and their +victims all night long. A favourite place for men to sup at was Evans’s +in Covent Garden, the Cider Cellars in Maiden Lane, and the Coal Hole in +the Strand. The songs were of the coarsest, and the company, consisting +of lords and touts, medical students, swell mobsmen, and fast men from +the City, not much better. At such places decency was unknown, and yet +how patronised they were, especially at Christmas time, when the country +farmer stole away from home, ostensibly to see the Fat Cattle Show, then +held in Baker Street. Of course there were no underground railways, and +the travelling public had to put up with omnibuses and cabs, dearer, more +like hearses than they are now. + +I should be sorry to recommend any one to read the novels of Fielding or +of Smollet. And yet in one sense they are useful. At any rate, they +show how much the England of to-day is in advance of the England of 150 +years ago. For instance, take London. It is held that London is in a +bad way in spite of its reforming County Council. It is clear from the +perusal of Smollet’s novels that a purifying process has long been at +work with regard to London, and that if our County Councillors do their +duty as their progenitors have done, little will remain to be done to +make the metropolis a model city. “Humphry Clinker” appeared in 1771. +It contains the adventures of a worthy Welsh Squire, Matthew Bramble, who +in the course of his travels with his family finds himself in London. +The old Squire is astonished at its size. “What I left open fields, +producing corn and hay, I now find covered with streets and squares, and +palaces and churches. I am credibly informed that in the space of seven +years 11,000 new houses have been built in one quarter of Westminster, +exclusive of what is daily added to other parts of this metropolis. +Pimlico is almost joined to Chelsea and Kensington, and if this +infatuation continues for half-a-century, I suppose, the whole county of +Middlesex will be covered with brick.” A prophecy that has almost come +to pass in our time. At that time London contained one-sixth of the +entire population of the kingdom. “No wonder,” he writes, “that our +villages are depopulated and our farms in want of day labourers. The +villagers come up to London in the hopes of getting into service where +they can live luxuriously and wear fine clothes. Disappointed in this +respect, they become thieves and sharpers, and London being an immense +wilderness, in which there is neither watch nor ward of any +signification, nor any order or police, affords them lurking-places as +well as prey.” The old Squire’s complaint is to be heard every day when +we think or speak or write of the great metropolis. + +The poor Squire writes bitterly of London life: “I start every hour from +my sleep at the horrid noise of the watchmen calling the hour through +every street, and thundering at every door.” “If I would drink water I +must quaff the mawkish contents of an open aqueduct, exposed to all +manner of defilement, or swallow that which comes from the Thames, +impregnated with all the filth of London and Westminster. Human +excrement is the least offensive part of the concrete, which is composed +of all the drugs, minerals and poisons used in mechanics and +manufactures, enriched with the putrefying carcases of beasts and men, +and mixed with the scourings of all the washtubs, kennels, and common +sewers within the bills of mortality.” The City churches and churchyards +were in my time constant sources of disease, and the chapels were, where +they had burying-grounds attached, equally bad. One need not remark in +this connection how much better off we are in our day. Again the Squire +writes: “The bread I eat is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, +alum and bone ashes.” Here, again, we note gladly a change for the +better. The vegetables taste of nothing but the dung-hills from whence +they spring. The meat the Squire holds to be villainously bad, “and as +for the pork, it is an abominable carnivorous animal fed with horseflesh +and distillers’ grains, and the poultry is all rotten in consequence of +fever, occasioned by the infamous practice of sewing up the guts, that +they may be the sooner fattened in crops in consequence of this cruel +restriction.” Then there is the butter, a tallowy, rancid mass, +manufactured with candle grease and butcher’s stuff. Well, these +enormities are permitted no longer, and that is a step gained. We have +good water; the watchman is gone, and the policeman has taken his place; +but London as I knew it was little better than it was in the Squire’s +time. I fear in eggs we have not improved. The old Squire complains +that they are imported from Scotland and France. We have, alas! for our +fresh eggs to go a good deal further now. Milk, he tells us, was carried +through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings discharged +from doors and windows, and contaminated in many other ways too horrible +to mention. No wonder the old Squire longed to get back to his old +mansion in Wales, where, at any rate, he could enjoy pure water, fresh +eggs and real milk. It is hard to conceive how the abominations he +describes could have been tolerated an hour. There was no Holborn +Viaduct—nothing but a descent into a valley—always fatal to horses, and +for many reasons trying to pedestrians. One of the sights of London +which I sorely missed was the Surrey Gardens, with its fireworks and +half-starved and very limited zoological collection. It has long been +built over, but many is the happy summer evening I have spent there +witnessing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, or some other representation +equally striking and realistic. In the City Road there were tea-gardens, +and at Highbury Barn was a dancing establishment, more famous than those +of the Eagle or White Conduit Fields, and all at times made the scene of +political demonstrations and party triumphs. In this way also were much +celebrated the London Tavern and Freemasons’ Hall. There was no +attention paid to sanitation, and Lord Palmerston had not horrified all +Scotland by telling the clergy who waited on him that it was not days of +humiliation that the nation wanted, but a more intimate acquaintance with +the virtues of soap and water. The clergy as a rule looked upon an +outbreak of disease, not as an illustration of the evils of want and +water and defective drainage, but as a sign of the Divine disgust for and +against a nation that had admitted Dissenters in Parliament, and +emancipated the Roman Catholics. Perhaps the greatest abomination of all +was the fearful custom which existed of burying the dead in the midst of +the living. The custom died hard—churches and chapels made a lot of +money in this way, careless of the fact that the sickly odours of the +vault and the graveyard filled up the building where, on Sunday, men and +women and children came to worship and pray. Yet London got more country +air than it does now. The Thames was not a sewer, and it was all open +fields from Camden Town to Hampstead Heath, and at the back of the +Holloway Road, and such-like places. There was country everywhere. As a +whole, the London of to-day is a far statelier city than the London of my +earlier years. Everything was mean and dirty. I miss the twopenny +postman, to whom I had always to entrust a lot of letters—when I came up +from my village home—as thus the writers save a good sum of money on +every letter. There were few omnibuses, and they were dear. Old hackney +coaches abounded, and the cabs were few and far between, and very dirty +as well, all of which have immensely improved of late. The cab in which +I rode when I was set down by the coach at the White Horse, Fetter Lane, +then a much-frequented hotel of the highest respectability, was an awful +affair, hooded and on two high wheels, while the driver was perched on a +seat just outside. I was astonished—as well I might be—when I got to +that journey’s end in safety. + +In London and the environs everything was dull and common-place, with the +exception of Regent Street, where it was tacitly assumed the force of +grandeur could no further go. There was no Thames Embankment, and only a +collection of wharves and coal agencies, and tumble-down sheds, at all +times—especially when the tide was out—hideous to contemplate. The old +Houses of Parliament had been burnt down, and no costly palace had been +erected on their site. The Law Courts in Westminster Hall were crowded +and inconvenient. Where now Queen Victoria Street rears its stately head +were narrow streets and mean buildings. Eating-houses were close and +stuffy, and so were the inns, which now we call by the more dignified +name of hotels. + +As to the poor sixty years ago, society was indifferent alike as to the +state of their souls or bodies. In Ratcliff Highway the sailor was +robbed right and left. The common lodging-house was a den of thieves. +The poor shirt-maker and needlewoman lived on starvation wages. Sanitary +arrangements were unknown. There was no decency of any kind; the +streets, or rather lanes, where the children played, with their open +sewers, were nurseries of disease. Even in Bethnal Green, the Sanitary +Commission found that while the mean age of death among the well-to-do +residents was forty-four, that of the working-classes was twenty-two; and +yet Bethnal Green with its open spaces was a garden of Eden compared with +the lodging-houses in some of the streets off Drury Lane. Perhaps the +most unfortunate classes in the London of that time were the poor +chimney-sweeps—little children from four to eight years of age, the +majority of them orphans, the rest bartered or sold by brutal parents. +In order to do their work they had to move up and down by pressing every +joint in their bodies against the hard and often broken surface of the +chimneys; and to prevent their hands and knees from streaming with blood, +the children were rubbed with brine before a fire to harden their flesh. +They were liable to a frightful disorder—the chimneysweeper’s cancer, +involving one of the most terrible forms of physical suffering. They +began the day’s work at four, three, and even two in the morning; they +were half suffocated by the hot sulphurous air in the flues; often they +would stick in the chimneys and faint; and then if the usual remedy—straw +lighted to bring them round—failed, they were often half killed, and +sometimes killed outright, by the very means used to extricate them. +They lived in low, ill-drained, ill-ventilated, and noxious rooms and +cellars, and often slept upon the soot heaps. They remained unwashed for +weeks, and on Sundays they were generally shut up together so that their +neighbours might not see their miserable condition. Perhaps the worst +part of London when I knew it was Field Lane, at the bottom of Holborn +Hill, now happily improved off the face of the earth. It was known as +“Jack Ketch’s Warren,” from the fact that the greater part of the persons +hanged at Newgate came from the lanes and alleys in the vicinity. The +disturbances that occurred in these low quarters were often so great that +from forty to fifty constables armed with cutlasses were marched down, it +being often impossible for officers to act in fewer numbers or disarmed. +Some of the houses close beside the Fleet Ditch were fitted with dark +closets, trapdoors, sliding panels, and other means of escape, while +extensive basements served for the purpose of concealing goods; and in +others there were furnaces used by coiners and stills for the production +of excisable spirits. It was here that in 1843 the Ragged School +movement in London commenced its wonderful and praiseworthy career. + +Naturally in this connection I must speak of the Earl of Shaftesbury, the +great philanthropist of the Victorian era, a nobleman whose long and +honourable life was spent in the service of man and the fear of God. He +was somewhat narrow-minded, an Evangelical Churchman of a now almost +extinct type, not beloved by Cobden and the Free Traders, occasionally +very vehement in his utterances, a man who, if he had stuck to the party +game of politics, would have taken a high place in the management of +public affairs. I knew him well, and he was always friendly to me. In +his prime he must have been a remarkably handsome man, tall, pale, with +dark hair and a commanding presence. Perhaps he took life a little too +seriously. To shake hands with him, said his brother, was a solemn +function. But his earnestness might well make him sad, as he saw and +felt the seriousness of the great work to which he had devoted his life. +He had no great party to back him up. The Dissenters regarded him with +suspicion, for he doubted their orthodoxy, and in his way he was a +Churchman to the core. He was too much a Tory for the Whigs, and too +Radical a philanthropist for the old-fashioned Tory fossils then +abounding in the land. On one occasion Lord Melbourne, when dining with +the Queen in his company, introduced him to royalty as the greatest +Jacobin in her dominions. In Exeter Hall he reigned supreme, and though +dead he still lives as his works survive. He was the friend of all the +weak, the poor, the desolate who needed help. He did much to arouse the +aristocracy to the discharge of their duties as well as the maintenance +of their rights. All the world is the better for his life. It was a +miracle to me how his son, the eighth Earl, came to commit suicide, as he +always seemed to me the cheerfullest of men, of the rollicking sailor +type. I often met him on board the steamer which took us all down the +river to the _Chichester_ and _Arethusa_, founded by the late Mr. William +Williams in 1843—a good man for whom Earl Shaftesbury had the most ardent +esteem—as refuges for homeless and destitute children to train up for a +naval career. + +London poverty and London vice flourished unchecked till long after Queen +Victoria had commenced her reign. When I first knew London the streets +after dark were fearful, and a terrible snare to all, especially the +young and idle and well-to-do. The public-houses were kept open till a +late hour. There were coffee-houses that were never closed; music-halls, +where the songs, such as described in Thackeray’s “Cave of Harmony,” were +of a most degrading character; Judge and Jury Clubs, where the low wit +and obscenity of the actors were fearful; saloons for the pickpocket, the +swell mobsman, and the man about town, and women who shone in evening +dress, and were alike fair and frail. It is only within the last twenty +years that the Middlesex magistrates refused Mr. Bignell a licence for +the Argyle Rooms; that was not until Mr. Bignell had found it worth while +to invest £80,000 in the place. Year after year noble lords and +Middlesex magistrates had visited the place and licensed it. Indeed, it +had become one of the institutions of the metropolis, one of the places +where Bob Logic and Corinthian Tom—such men still existed, though they +went by other names—were safe to be found of an evening. The theatre was +too staid and respectable for them, though dashing Cyprians, as they were +termed, were sure to be found at the refreshment saloon. When the Argyle +was shut up, it was said a great public scandal was removed. Perhaps so; +but the real scandal was that such a place was ever needed in the capital +of a land which handsomely paid clergymen and deans and bishops and +archbishops to exterminate the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the +eye, and the pride of life, which found their full development in such +places as the Argyle Rooms. It was a scandal and a shame that men who +had been born in English homes, and nursed by English mothers, and +confirmed by English bishops, and had been trained in English public +schools and Universities, and worshipped in English churches and +cathedrals, should have helped to make the Argyle Rooms a successful +public institution. Mr. Bignell created no public vices; he merely +pandered to what was in existence. It was the men of wealth and fashion +who made the place what it was. It was not an improving spectacle in an +age that sacrificed everything to worldly show, and had come to regard +the brougham as the one thing needful—the outward sign of respectability +and grace—to see equipages of this kind, filled with fashionably dressed +women, most of them + + Born in a garret, in a kitchen bred— + +driving up nightly to the Argyle, or the Holborn, or the Piccadilly, or +Bob Croft’s in the Haymarket, with their gallants or protectors or +friends, or whatever they might term themselves, amidst a dense crowd of +lookers-on, rich or poor, male or female, old or young, drunk or sober. +In no other capital in Europe was such a sight to be seen. It was often +there that a young and giddy girl, with good looks and a good +constitution, and above all things set on fine dresses and gay society, +and weary of her lowly home and of the drudgery of daily life, learned +what she could gain if she could make up her mind to give her virtue; +many of them, indeed, owing to the disgusting and indecent overcrowding +in rustic cottages and great cities having but little virtue to part +with. Then assailed her the companionship of men of birth and breeding +and wealth, and the gaiety and splendour of successful vice. I knew of +two Essex girls, born to service, who came to town and led a vicious +life, and one became the wife of the son of a Marquis, and the other +married a respectable country solicitor; the portrait of the lady I have +often seen amongst the photographs displayed in Regent Street. The +pleasures of sin, says the preacher, are only for a season, but a similar +remark, I fancy, applies to most of the enjoyments of life. It is true +that in the outside crowd there were in rags and tatters, in degradation +and filth, shivering in the cold, wan and pale with want, hideous with +intemperance, homeless and destitute, and prematurely old, withered hags, +whom the policemen ordered to move on—forlorn hags, who were once +_habitués_ of the Argyle and the darlings of England’s gilded youth—the +bane and the antidote side by side, as it were. But when did giddy youth +ever realise that riches take to themselves wings and fly away, that +beauty vanishes as a dream, that joy and laughter often end in despair +and tears? The amusements of London were not much better when the +music-hall—which has greatly improved of late—came to be the rage. One +has no right to expect anything intellectual in the way of amusements. +People require them, and naturally, as a relief from hard work, a change +after the wearying and wearisome drudgery of the day. A little amusement +is a necessity of our common humanity, whether rich or poor, saintly or +the reverse. And, of course, in the matter of amusements, we must allow +people a considerable latitude according to temperament and age, and +their surroundings and education, or the want of it; and it is an +undoubted fact that the outdoor sports and pastimes, in which ladies take +part as well as men, have done much to improve the physical stamina and +the moral condition of young men. Scarcely anything of the kind existed +when I first knew London, and the amusements of the people chiefly +consisted in drinking or going to see a man hanged. At one time there +were many debating halls, where, over beer and baccy, orators, great in +their own estimation, settled the affairs of the nation, at any rate, let +us hope, according to their own estimation, in a very satisfactory +manner. In Fleet Street there was the Temple Forum, and at the end, just +out of it, was the Codgers’ Hall, both famous for debates, which have +long ceased to exist. A glance at the modern music-hall will show us +whether we have much improved of late. It is more showy, more +attractive, more stylish in appearance than its predecessors, but in one +respect it is unchanged. Primarily it is a place in which men and women +are expected to drink. The music is an afterthought, and when given, is +done with the view to keep the people longer in their places, and to make +them drink more. “Don’t you think,” said the manager of one of the +theatres most warmly patronised by the working classes, to a clerical +friend of mine—“don’t you think that I am doing good in keeping these +people out of the public-house all night?” and my friend was compelled to +yield a very reluctant consent. When I first knew London the music-hall +was an unmitigated evil. It was there the greenhorn from the country +took his first steps in the road to ruin. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. +MY LITERARY CAREER. + + +I drifted into literature when I was a boy. I always felt that I would +like to be an author, and, arrived at man’s estate, it seemed to me +easier to reach the public mind by the press than by the pulpit. I could +not exactly come down to the level of the pulpit probationer. I found no +sympathetic deacons, and I heard church members talk a good deal of +nonsense for which I had no hearty respect. Perhaps what is called the +root of the matter was in me conspicuous by its absence. I preached, but +I got no call, nor did I care for one, as I felt increasingly the +difference between the pulpit and the pew. Now I might use language in +one sense, which would be—and I found really was—understood in quite an +opposite sense in the pew. My revered parent had set his heart on seeing +me a faithful minister of Jesus Christ; and none can tell what, under +such circumstances, was the hardness of my lot, but gradually the +struggle ceased, and I became a literary man—when literary men abode +chiefly in Bohemia, and grew to fancy themselves men of genius in the low +companionship of the barroom. Fielding got to a phase of life when he +found he had either to write or get a living by driving a hackney coach. +A somewhat similar experience was mine. + +It is now about sixty years since I took to writing. I began with no +thought of money or fame—it is quite as well that I did not, I am +inclined to think—but a new era was opening on the world, a new divine +breath was ruffling the stagnant surface of society, and I thought I had +something to say in the war—the eternal war of right with wrong, of light +with darkness, of God and the devil. I started a periodical. In the +prospectus I stated that I had started it with a view to wage war with +State Church pretensions and class legislation. I sent some copies of it +to Thomas Carlyle—then rising into prominence as the great teacher of his +age. He sent me a short note back to the effect that he had received and +read what I had written, and that he saw much to give his cordial consent +to, and ended by bidding me go on and prosper. Then I sent Douglas +Jerrold a paper for his _Shilling Magazine_, which he accepted, but never +published it, as I wanted it for a magazine which came out under my own +editorship. One of my earliest patrons was Dr. Thomas Price, the editor +of the _Eclectic_, who had formerly been a Baptist minister, but who +became secretary of an insurance society, and one of a founders of the +Anti-State Church Association, a society with which I was in full accord, +and which, as I heard Edward Miall himself declare, owed not a little to +my literary zeal. We had a fine time of it when that society was +started. We were at Leicester, where I stayed with a dear old college +friend, the Rev. Joseph Smedmore, and fast and furious was the fun as we +met at the Rev. James Mursell’s, the popular pastor of the Baptist +Chapel, and father of a still more popular son. Good company, good +tobacco, good wine, aided in the good work. Amongst the company would be +Stovel, an honoured Baptist minister Whitechapel way, at one time a +fighter, and a hard hitter to the end of his lengthy life; John Burnett +of Camberwell, always dry in the pulpit, but all-victorious on the public +platform, by reason of his Scotch humour and enormous common-sense; +Mursell in the Midlands was a host in himself; and Edward Miall, whose +earnestness in the cause led him to give up the Leicester pulpit to found +the London _Nonconformist_. John Childs, the well-known Bungay printer, +assisted, an able speaker himself, in spite of the dogmatism of his face +and manner. When the society became rich and respectable, and changed +its name, I left it. I have little faith in societies when they become +respectable. When on one occasion I put up for an M.P., I was amused by +the emissary of the society sending to me for a subscription on the plea +that all the Liberal candidates had given donations! “Do you think,” +said I, “that I am going to bid for your support by a paltry £5 note? +Not, I, indeed! It is a pity M.P.’s are not made of sterner staff.” One +of my intimate friends at one time was the late Peter Taylor, M.P. for +Leicester. He was as liberal as he was wealthy, yet he never spent a +farthing in demoralising his Leicester constituents by charity, or, in +other words, bribery and corruption. The dirty work a rich man has to do +to get into Parliament—especially if he would represent an intelligent +and high-toned democracy—is beyond belief. + +The ups and downs of a literary career are many. Without writing a good +hand it is now impossible to succeed. It was not so when I first took to +literature; but nowadays, when the market is overstocked with starving +genius in the shape of heaven-born writers, I find that editors, +compositors, readers, and all connected with printing, set their faces +rigidly against defective penmanship. I look upon it that now the real +literary gent, as _The Saturday Review_ loved to call him, has ceased to +exist altogether; there is no chance for him. Our editors have to look +out for articles written by lords and ladies, and men and women who have +achieved some passing notoriety. They often write awful stuff, but then +the public buys. A man who masters shorthand may get a living in +connection with the Press, and he may rise to be editor and +leader-writer; but the pure literary gent, the speculative contributor to +periodical literature, is out of the running. If he is an honourable, if +he is a lord or M.P., or an adventurer, creditable or the reverse, he has +a chance, but not otherwise. A special correspondent may enjoy a happy +career, and as most of my work has been done in that way, I may speak +with authority. As to getting a living as a London correspondent that is +quite out of the question. I knew many men who did fairly well as London +correspondents; nowadays the great Press agencies keep a staff to +manufacture London letters on the cheap, and the really able original has +gone clean out of existence. Two or three Press agencies manage almost +all the London correspondence of the Press. It is an enormous power; +whether they use it aright, who can say? + +I had, after I left college, written reviews and articles. But in 1850 +Mr. John Cassell engaged me as sub-editor of the _Standard of Freedom_, +established to promote the sale of his coffees, or rather, in consequence +of the sale of them—to advocate Free Trade and the voluntary principle, +and temperance in particular, and philanthropy in general. In time I +became chief editor, but somehow or other the paper was not a success, +though amongst the leader writers were William Howitt and Robertson, who +had been a writer on the _Westminster Review_. It was there also I saw a +good deal of Richard Cobden, a man as genial as he was unrivalled as a +persuasive orator, who had a wonderful facility of disarming prejudice, +and turning opponents into friends. I fancy he had a great deal of +sympathy with Mr. John Cassell, who was really a very remarkable man. +John Cassell may be described as having sprung from the dregs of the +people. He had but twopence-halfpenny in his pocket when he came to +town; he had been a carpenter’s lad; education he had none. He was tall +and ungainly in appearance, with a big head, covered with short black +hair, very small dark eyes, and sallow face, and full of ideas—to which +he was generally quite unable to give utterance. I was always amused +when he called me into his sanctum. “Mr. Ritchie,” he would say, “I want +you to write a good article on so-and-so. You must say,” and here he +would wave his big hand, “and here you must,” and then another wave of +his hand, and thus he would go on waving his hand, moving his lips, which +uttered no audible sound, and thus the interview would terminate, I +having gained no idea from my proprietor, except that he wanted a certain +subject discussed. At times he had a terrible temper, a temper which +made all his friends thankful that he was a strict teetotaler. But his +main idea was a grand one—to elevate morally and socially and +intellectually the people of whose cause he was ever an ardent champion +and true friend. He died, alas too soon, but not till he saw the firm of +Cassell, Petter, and Galpin one of the leading publishing firms of the +day. _The Standard of Freedom_ was incorporated with _The Weekly News +and Chronicle_, of which the working editor was Mr. John Robinson—now Sir +John Robinson, of _The Daily News_—who was at the same time working +editor of _The Inquirer_. I wrote for _The Weekly News_—Parliamentary +Sketches—and for that purpose had a ticket for the gallery of the House +of Commons, where, however, I much preferred to listen to the brilliant +talk of Angus Reach and Shirley Brooks, as they sat waiting on the back +bench to take their turns, to the oratory of the M.P.’s below. Let me +not, however, forget my obligations to Sir John Robinson. It was to him +that I owed an introduction to _The Daily News_, and to his kindness and +liberality, of which many a literary man in London can testify, I owe +much. Let me also mention that again I became connected with Mr. John +Cassell when—in connection with Petter and Galpin—the firm had moved to +Playhouse Yard, next door to _The Times_ printing office, and thence to +the present magnificent premises on Ludgate Hill. At that time it became +the fashion—a fashion which has been developed greatly of late years—to +print for country papers a sheet of news, or more if they required it, +which then was filled with local intelligence, and became a local paper. +It was my duty to attend to the London paper, of which we printed fresh +editions every day. In that position I remained till I was rash enough +to become a newspaper proprietor myself. Mr. John Tallis, who had made a +handsome fortune by publishing part numbers of standard works, was +anxious to become proprietor of _The Illustrated London News_. For this +purpose he desired to make an agreement with Mr. Ingram, M.P., the +proprietor of the paper in question, but it came to nothing, and Mr. +Tallis commenced _The Illustrated News of the World_. When he had lost +all his money, and was compelled to give it up, in an evil hour I was +tempted to carry it on. It came to an end after a hard struggle of a +couple of years, leaving me a sadder and a wiser and a poorer man. Once, +and once only, I had a bright gleam of sunshine, and that was when Prince +Albert died, of whom and of the Queen I published fine full-length +portraits. The circulation of the paper went up by leaps and bounds; it +was impossible to print off the steel plates fast enough to keep pace +with the public demand, but that was soon over, and the paper sank +accordingly. Next in popularity to the portraits of Royalty I found were +the portraits of John Bright, Cobden, Spurgeon, and Newman Hall. For +generals, and actors and actresses, even for such men as Gladstone, or +Disraeli, or Charles Kingsley, the public at the time did not seem +greatly to care. But that was an episode in my career on which I do not +care to dwell. I only refer to it as an illustration of the fact that a +journalist should always stick to his pen, and leave business to business +men. Sir Walter Scott tried to combine the two, and with what result all +the world knows. In my small way I tried to do the same, and with an +equally disastrous result. Happily, I returned to my more legitimate +calling, which if it has not led me to fame and fortune, has, at any +rate, enabled me to gain a fair share of bread and cheese, though I have +always felt that another sovereign in any pocket would, like the Pickwick +pen, have been a great blessing. Alas! now I begin to despair of that +extra sovereign, and fall back for consolation on the beautiful truth, +which I learned in my copy-book as a boy, that virtue is its own reward. +When I hear people declaim on the benefits the world owes to the Press, +and say it is a debt they can never repay, I always reply, “You are +right, you can never repay the debt, but I should be happy to take a +small sum on account.” But it is a great blessing to think and say what +you like, and that is a blessing enjoyed by the literary man alone. The +parson in the pulpit has to think of the pew, and if a Dissenter, of his +deacons. The medical man must not shock the prejudices of his patients +if he would secure a living. The lawyer must often speak against his +convictions. An M.P. dares not utter what would offend his constituents +if he would secure his re-election. The pressman alone is free, and when +I knew him, led a happy life, as he wrote in some old tavern, (Peele’s +coffee-house in Fleet Street was a great place for him in my day), or +anywhere else where a drink and a smoke and a chat were to be had, and +managed to evolve his “copy” amidst laughter and cheers and the fumes of +tobacco. His clothes were shabby, his hat was the worse for wear; his +boots had lost somewhat of their original symmetry, his hands and linen +were—but perhaps the less one says about them the better. He had often +little in his pocket besides the last half-crown he had borrowed of a +friend, or that had been advanced by his “uncle,” but he was happy in his +work, in his companions, in his dreams, in his nightly symposium +protracted into the small hours, in his contempt of worldly men and +worldly ways, in his rude defiance of Mrs. Grundy. He was, in reality, a +grander man than his cultured brother of to-day, who affects to be a +gentleman, and is not unfrequently merely a word-grinding machine, who +has been carefully trained to write, whereas the only true writer, like +the poet, is born, not made. We have now an Institute to improve what +they call the social status of the pressman. We did not want it when I +began my journalistic career. It was enough for me to hear the chimes at +midnight, and to finish off with a good supper at some Fleet Street +tavern, for as jolly old Walter Mapes sang— + + Every one by nature hath a mould that he was cast in; + I happen to be one of those who never could write fasting. + +Let me return to the story of my betters, with whom business relations +brought me into contact. One was Dr. Charles Mackay, whose poetry at one +time was far more popular than now. All the world rejoiced over his +“Good time coming, boys,” for which all the world has agreed to wait, +though yearly with less prospect of its realisation, “a little longer.” +He was the editor of _The Illustrated News_ till he and the proprietor +differed about Louis Napoleon, whom Mackay held to be an impostor and +destined to a speedy fall. With Mr. Mackay was associated dear old John +Timbs, every one’s friend, the kindliest of gossips, and the most +industrious of book-makers. Then there was James Grant, of _The Morning +Advertiser_, always ready to put into print the most monstrous _canard_, +and to fight in the ungenial columns of the licensed victualler’s organ +to the bitter end for the faith once delivered to the saints. And then +there was marvellous George Cruikshank, the prince of story-tellers as +well as of caricaturists to his dying day. It is curious to note how +great was the popularity of men whom I knew—such as George Thompson, the +M.P. for the Tower Hamlets and the founder of _The Empire_ newspaper—and +how fleeting that popularity was! Truly the earth has bubbles as the +water hath! Equally unexpected has been the rise of others. Sir Edward +Russell, of _The Liverpool Daily Post_, when I first knew him was a +banker’s clerk in the City, which situation he gave up, against my +advice, to become the editor of _The Islington Gazette_. Mr. Passmore +Edwards, of _The Echo_, at one time M.P. for Salisbury, and one of the +wisest and most beneficent of philanthropists, when I first knew him was +a struggling publisher in Horse Shoe Court, Ludgate Hill; Mr. Edward +Miall, M.P. for Bradford, the founder of _The Nonconformist_ newspaper +and of the Anti-State Church Association, as the Society for the +Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control loved to describe +itself—(good heavens, what a mouthful!)—was an Independent minister at +Leicester. How many whom I knew as pressmen are gone! Of one of them I +would fain recall the memory, and that is Mr. James Clarke, of _The +Christian World_, with whom it was my privilege to be associated many a +long year. In all my experience of editors I never knew a more +honourable, upright man, or one of greater clearness of head and +kindliness of heart. He died prematurely, but not till he had +revolutionised the whole tone of our popular theology. It was an honour +to be connected with such a man. He commenced life as a reporter, and +lived to be a wealthy man by the paper he conducted with such skill. And +what a friend he was to the struggling literary man or reporter! I lay +emphasis on this, because my reviewers sometimes tell me I am cynical. I +ask, How can a man be otherwise who has been behind the scenes, as I have +been, for nearly fifty years? + +One meets with curious characters among the gentlemen of the Press. I +recall the memory of one who was often to be seen in Fleet Street at the +time I was in Mr. Cassell’s employ. He was fair-haired, short and stout +in figure, very good-natured, with an amount of cheek only equalled by +his ignorance. Originally, I think he had been a printer, till his +ambition soon led him to fly at higher game, and under a military +_nom-de-plume_ he compiled several handbooks of popular games—games of +which, by the bye, he knew as little as a Hottentot—and, I believe, came +to be the sporting correspondent of a London paper—a position he held at +the time of his death. For statements that were rather unreliable he had +a capacity which almost bordered on the sublime. On one occasion he +walked up Ludgate Hill with an acquaintance of my own, and nodded +familiarly to certain individuals. That was Dickens, he said to my +friend, after one of these friendly encounters. Of another he explained, +that was Thackeray, and so on. Unfortunately, however, my friend knew +that the individual thus pointed was engaged as a bookseller’s assistant +in the Row. Once when I happened to meet him he was rather seedy, which +he accounted for to me by the remark that he had been dining with a +lord—a statement about as true as the generality of his remarks. He was +very good-natured—it was impossible to offend him—and wrote touching +poems in cheap journals about this “fog-dotted earth,” which never did +anybody any harm so far as I was aware of. He was one of the numerous +tribe who impose on publishers by their swagger till they are found out. +Another of the same class was a gentleman of a higher station and with +scholarly pretensions. On one occasion he served me rather a scurvy +trick. I had published a volume of sketches of British statesmen. One +of the characters, a very distinguished politician, died soon after. My +gentleman at that time was engaged to write biographical sketches of such +exalted personages when they died, and accordingly he wrote an article +which appeared the next day in one of the morning papers. On reading it, +I found it was almost word for word the sketch which I had written in my +own book, without the slightest acknowledgment. On my remonstrating, he +complained that the absence of acknowledgment was quite accidental. +Owing to the hurry in which he wrote, he had quite forgotten to mention +my name, and if I would say nothing about it, he would do me a good +service at the first opportunity. My friend failed to do so. Indeed, I +may say that as a literary man his career was somewhat of a failure, +though he managed for a time to secure appointments on good newspapers, +and became connected with more than one or two distinguished firms of +publishers. He was known to many, yet I never heard any one say a good +word on his behalf. + +I always avoided literary society. Perhaps in that respect I did wrong +as regards my own interest, for I find the pressmen who belong to clubs +are always ready to give each other a helping hand in the way of +good-natured reference, and hence so much of that mutual admiration which +forms so marked a feature in the literary gossip of our day, and which is +of such little interest to the general reader. When I read such stuff I +am reminded of the chambermaid who said to a lady acquaintance, “I hear +it is all over London already that I am going to leave my lady,” and of +the footman who, being newly married, desired his comrade to tell him +freely what the town thought of it. It is seldom that literary men shine +in conversation, and that was one reason I cared little to belong to any +of the literary clubs which existed, and I dare say exist now. Dean +Swift seems to have been of a similar opinion. He tells us the worst +conversation he ever remembered to have heard in his life was that at +Wells’ Coffee House, where the wits, as they were termed, used formerly +to assemble. They talked of their plays or prologues or Miscellanies, he +tells us, as if they had been the noblest effort of human nature, and, as +if the fate of kingdoms depended on them. When Greek meets Greek there +comes, we are told, the tug of war. When literary men meet, as a rule, +the very reverse is the case. I belonged to the Whittington Club—now, +alas! extinct—for it was the best institution of the kind ever started in +London, of which Douglas Jerrold was president, and where young men found +a home with better society than they could get elsewhere, and where we +had debates, in which many, who have since risen to fame and fortune, +learned how to speak—perhaps a questionable benefit in those days of +perpetual talk. One of our prominent members was Sir J. W. Russell, who +still, I am happy to say, flourishes as the popular editor of _The +Liverpool Daily Post_. + +As a writer, unpleasant experiences have been few. I have had letters +from angry correspondents, but not more than two or three of them. One +of the most amusing was from a clergyman now deceased—a very great man in +his own opinion—a controversialist whom none could withstand. Once upon +a time he had a controversy with the late Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, a man of +whom I knew a little, and for whose honesty I had a high regard. I was +present at the discussion, and in my account of it intimated that, in my +humble opinion, the clergyman was hardly the man to grapple with Mr. +Bradlaugh. I had a letter from the clergyman thanking me in the name of +all the devils in hell—of whom he informed me I should shortly be one—for +the article I had written. On another occasion a distinguished +Congregational minister attacked me bitterly in a journal that soon came +to grief, which was intended to supersede the newspaper with which it is +my pride to have been connected more than thirty-five years. I commenced +an action against him for libel; the reverend divine paid damages into +court, and I dropped the action. I had no wish to harm the worthy +divine, for such undoubtedly he was, by getting him branded as a +convicted libeller. I only wanted to teach him that while in the pulpit +a man was free to say what he liked, it was quite a different thing to +rush hastily and angrily into print. One letter amused me rather. My +usual signature was “Christopher Crayon.” Once, as I had a paper under +that signature, I had written another with a different signature, which +appeared in the same issue, and immediately a correspondent wrote to +complain that the latter article was but a poor imitation of “Christopher +Crayon.” Once a reviewer on a leading London morning newspaper referred +to me as a young lady. I refer to that soft impeachment simply as an +illustration of the carelessness with which London reviewers often write. +I can quite understand such blunders. A reviewer has so many books to +look at, and such little time allowed him for the right discharge of his +duty, that it is no wonder he often errs. + +I have written several books. Perhaps here I ought to refer to Mr. +Burton, of Ipswich, who was the first to anticipate the growing demand +for good and cheap literature by the publication of the “Run and Read +Library,” which deserved a better sale than it really secured. He +published my first book—a reprint of sketches of leading ministers of all +denominations, which had appeared in a London weekly paper, and paid me +for it in the most liberal manner. I fear Mr. Burton was a little in +advance of his age. At any rate, he soon disappeared from Ipswich and +the publishing trade. Surely such a spirited town as Ipswich might have +better supported such a thoroughly deserving man. Possibly my +experiences may be useful. One thing is clear, that a review may one day +praise you highly, and another day as strongly condemn. How is this?—a +matter of personal prejudice say the public. I don’t believe it. +Personal prejudice is not so common in reviews as the ignorant public +thinks. Accident has a great deal to do with it. A newspaper proprietor +once told me he had two reviewers, one of whom always cut up all the +books sent for review, while the other praised them, and it depended upon +the chance into whose hands your book might fall, whether you were +praised or censured. Again, it is much easier to find fault than to +praise. A youthful reviewer is specially gratified when he can “slate” +an author, and besides how it flatters his own self-esteem! It is true +the reviewer in doing so often blunders, but no one finds it out. For +instance, many years ago no man was better known in certain circles than +Mr. John Morley, the brother, the philanthropic brother of that great +philanthropist, Mr. Samuel Morley. I had written in a book on City life +that a certain portion of the Gospels had been given away by Mr. John +Morley on a certain occasion. Our great Mr. John Morley was then only +known to a select few. The general public would perfectly understand who +was the Mr. John Morley to whom I referred. The reviewer who deprecated +my book, briefly, as somewhat gloomy—it had not become the fashion then +to expose the sores of City life—sneeringly observed that it would be +interesting if I would state what were the portions of the Gospels given +away by Mr. John Morley, evidently ignorant that there could be any John +Morley besides the one he knew. I do not for a moment suppose that the +reviewer had any personal pique towards myself. His blunder was simply +one of ignorance. In another case it seemed to me that the reviewer of a +critical journal which had no circulation had simply made his review a +ground of attack against a weekly paper of far greater circulation and +authority than his own. I had published a little sketch of travel in +Canada. The review of it was long and wearisome. I could not understand +it till I read in the closing sentence that there was no reason why the +book should have been reprinted from the obscure journal in which it +originally appeared—that obscure journal at the time being, as it is to +this day, one of the most successful of all our weeklies. In his case +the _motif_ of the ill-natured criticism was very obvious. + +In some cases one can only impute a review of an unfavourable character +to what the Americans call “pure cussedness.” For instance, I had +written a book called “British Senators,” of which _The Pall Mall +Gazette_ had spoken in the highest terms. It fell into the hands of the +_Saturday_ reviewer when _The Saturday Review_ was in its palmy days, +always piquant and never dull. It was a fine opportunity for the +reviewer, and he wielded his tomahawk with all the vigour of the Red +Indian. I was an unknown man with no friends. It was a grand +opportunity, though he was kind enough to admit that I was a literary +gent of the Sala and Edmund Yates type (it was the time when George +Augustus Sala was at the bottom—the _Saturday_ took to praising him when +he had won his position), a favourable specimen if I remember aright. So +far so good, but the aim of the superfine reviewer was of course to make +“the literary gent” look like a fool. As an illustration of the way in +which we all contract our ideas from living in a little world of our own, +I said that I had heard the late Mr. Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, say at +a peace meeting at Edinburgh that there were more tears shed on the +occasion of the death of Mr. Bradshaw of the Railway Guide than when the +Duke of Wellington died. The _Saturday_ reviewer exultingly wrote “Here +is a blunder of Ritchie’s; what Mr. Sturge said, and what Ritchie should +have said, was that there were more tears shed when Mr. Braidwood of the +Fire Brigade died, than when the Duke of Wellington died.” No doubt many +a reader of the _Saturday_ chuckled over the blunder of “the literary +gent” thus held up to derision. But unfortunately for the _Saturday_ +reviewer, Mr. Sturge died before Mr. Braidwood, and thus it was +impossible that he could have referred to the tears shed on the occasion +of the death of the latter. The laugh really ought to have been the +other way. But the mischief was done, “the literary gent” snubbed, and +that was all the _Saturday_ superfine reviewer cared about. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. +CARDIFF AND THE WELSH. + + +In 1849 I lived at Cardiff. I had come there to edit _The Principality_, +a paper started, I believe, by Mr. David Evans, a good sort of man, who +had made a little money, which, I fear, he lost in his paper speculation. +His aim was to make the paper the mouthpiece for Welsh Nonconformity. I +must own, as I saw how Cardiff was growing to be a big place, my aim was +to make the paper a good local organ. But the Cardiff of that time was +too Conservative and Churchified for such a paper to pay, and as Mr. John +Cassell offered me a berth on his paper, _The Standard of Freedom_, my +connection with Cardiff came to an end. I confess I left it with regret, +as I had some warm friends in the town, and there was a charming little +blue-eyed maid—I wonder if she is alive now—the daughter of an alderman +and ex-mayor, with whom I had fallen desperately in love for a time. + +At that time Cardiff had a population of some 14,000. Lord Bute had +built his docks, not by any means as extensive as they are now, and it +was beginning to do an extensive trade in coal brought down by the Taff +Vale Railway. There was no rail to Cardiff then. To get to it from +London I had to take the rail to Bristol, spend the night there, and go +to Cardiff by the steamer which plied daily, according to the state of +the tide, between that port and Bristol, at that time the commercial +capital of the South Wales district. The mails from London came by a +four-horse coach, which plied between Gloucester and Cardiff. I felt +rather miserable when I landed at the docks and looked at the sad expanse +of ground behind me and the Bristol Channel. A long street led up to the +town, with shabby houses on one side and a large expanse of marshy land +on the other. I had heard so much of the romance of Wales that when I +realised where I really was my heart quite sank within me. At the end of +St. Mary Street was a very primitive old town hall, where I gave a +lecture on “The Progress of the Nation,” the only time I ever gave a +lecture in my life. The chairman was Mr. Vachell, father of the late Dr. +Vachell, an old resident in Cardiff, a man of considerable eminence in +the town—as he was supposed to be very wealthy—and in the Cardiff of that +day wealth was regarded as the only claim to respect; he, at the end of +my lecture, expressed an opinion favourable to my talents, but at the +same time intimating that he had no sympathy with much I had uttered. +Especially he differed from me in the estimate I had given of the “Rights +of Man,” by Tom Paine. Once more I had an opportunity of lifting up my +voice in the Old Town Hall. It was on the subject of Teetotalism. My +opponent was a worthy, sturdy teetotaler known as Mr. Cory, whose sons +still flourish as the great coal merchants of our day. Cardiff was a +town of publicans and sinners, and I am sorry to say I secured an easy +triumph; and Mr. Cory created great laughter as he said, in the course of +his oration, that if he were shut up in a cask he would cry out through +the bunghole, “Teetotalism for ever!” He kept a place at the lower end +of the town to supply ships’ stores, and was in every way, as I +afterwards found by the friendship that existed between us, a sterling +character. + +Just opposite the Town Hall, on the other side of the way, was the +Castle, then in a very neglected condition, with a large enclosure which +was open to the public as a promenade. The street between them contained +the best shops in the town. It extended a little way to Crockherbtown on +one side and to the Cardiff Arms Hotel on the other, and then you were in +the country. Beyond the Cardiff Arms was a pleasant walk leading to +Llandaff Cathedral, then almost in a state of decay; and to Penarth a +charming hill, overlooking the Bristol Channel, on the other, with a +little old-fashioned hotel; much frequented in the summer. There was +only one good house, that built by Mr. Parry, of the firm of Parry and +Brown, ship brokers, where Mrs. Parry, a fine, handsome lady, dispensed +graceful hospitality. Her brother, Mr. David Brown, afterwards removed +to London to a fine office in Leadenhall Street, and lived and died at a +charming retreat he built for himself in Harrow. There I one day met +Lord Shaftesbury, who came to a drawing-room meeting held in connection +with the London City Mission, and where we were all handsomely regaled. + +Perhaps at that time the most active man in Cardiff was Mr. John +Batchelor—whose statue, erected by his admirers, still adorns the place—a +sad thorn in the side of the old-fashioned people who then ruled the +town, especially the Marquis of Bute’s trustees or the men who +represented them in Cardiff. Mr. John Batchelor was a keen critic, a +good speaker, a sturdy Nonconformist, and a man of high character and +great influence. His death was a great loss to the town. Just outside +the town lived Mr. Booker, the proprietor of tin-works at Velindra, a +fine well-made man, and a good speaker, who got into Parliament to +maintain Protection, in which attempt he failed. His admirers had a full +portrait of him painted by Mr. John Deffet Francis, who afterwards lived +in Swansea. Mr. Francis was a very versatile genius, and got up an +amateur performance in which he acted the part of a vagabond to +perfection, somewhat to the confusion of some of the ladies, who had +never witnessed such a realistic performance before. In connection with +myself quite a storm in a teacup took place. In St. Mary Street there +was an Athenæum, as the local reading-room was called. It was thought by +some of my friends that I ought to be on the committee, but as I was not +qualified a motion was made to set the standing rules on one side in +order that I might be elected. The little town was quite excited on the +occasion, and the great Mr. Booker was appealed to to use his influence +against me, which he did, but I was elected nevertheless. In my capacity +of committee-man I did something to get up some lectures, which were a +great success. One of the lecturers was Mr. George Dawson, with whom I +spent a pleasant day. Another was my old and comic friend, Mr. George +Grossmith, the celebrated father of a yet more celebrated son. Another +was Mrs. Balfour, the mother of the Balfour who, in later times, was to +do a lot of misdeeds and to attain a very disagreeable notoriety in +consequence. On another occasion I was also enabled to do the town some +service by getting Mr. James Taylor, of Birmingham, to come and explain +his scheme for the formation of Freehold Land Societies, an idea then in +its infancy, but which has been for the social and moral elevation of the +working classes, who used to spend in drink what they now devote to a +better purpose. There was a great deal of drinking in Cardiff. Indeed, +it was the chief amusement of the place. The sailors, at that time +consisting of representatives of almost every nation under heaven, were +much given to drinking, and some of the boarding-houses were by no means +of a respectable character. There was no other form of social enjoyment +unless you belonged to the strict religious bodies who, as +Congregationalists, or Baptists, or Calvinistic Methodists, had many +chapels, which were well filled. It was in one of these chapels Harry +Vincent came to lecture when I was at Cardiff, and electrified the town. + +The Member of Parliament for the town lived a very quiet life, and seemed +to take but little interest in political affairs. One of the most +accomplished and certainly best-educated men in the place was Mr. Chas. +Bernard, architect and surveyor; without him life would have been very +dull to me at Cardiff. I imagine that his chief reason for pitching his +tent in what must have been to him a very ungenial clime was that his +sister was married to the late Mr. Reece, local Coroner. It grieves me +to state that he has long since joined the majority. Another great +friend of mine was Mr. Peter Price—now, alas! no more, who was destined, +however, to do much good before he passed away. The Public Library, +which he did much to establish, still retains his portrait. Another of +the excellent of the earth was Mr. W. P. James, the brother-in-law of Mr. +Peter Price, who came to Cardiff to build the new Town Hall. They were +all gentlemen who had come from a distance to settle in Cardiff, the +character of which they did much to improve and elevate. We all did +something to get up an Eisteddfod, which, if it did nothing else, had +this advantage, that it did something to develop the powers of a Cardiff +artist—Mr. D. Marks—who, when I saw him last, had a studio in Fitzroy +Square, London, and was engaged to paint several portraits of +distinguished personages, one of these being a fine portrait of the great +and good Earl of Shaftesbury. It was presented to his lordship at a +great meeting held in the Guildhall, presided over by the Lord Mayor, Sir +William Macarthur, in April, in 1881. The committee of the Ragged School +Union took the initiative to do honour to their president. + +As a newspaper man in Cardiff and a comparative stranger to the town I +had a somewhat unscrupulous opponent, the editor of the local organ, _The +Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian_. He was a very unscrupulous man, +apparently all smiles and friendship, but I never could trust him. Nor +was I surprised to learn that when he became secretary of the Cardiff +Savings Bank there was a very serious defalcation in the funds. The man +always seemed to me utterly untrustworthy, but his civil manners +apparently won him many friends. As editor of a Liberal newspaper I had +to fight the battle under very great disadvantages. It was no easy thing +to run a newspaper then. The taxes on knowledge were a great impediment. +On every paper a penny stamp had to be paid, and the advertisement duty +was eighteenpence on every advertisement. The repeal of these taxes was +a great boon for the local papers; and then there was a tax on paper, +which was an additional obstacle. As to telegraphs, they were unheard +of; and it was to the London dailies that we had to trust for foreign +news. One of the most important events when I was at Cardiff was the +opening of the South Wales Railway as far as Swansea. The first train +was driven by Mr. Brunel, the eminent engineer, accompanied by a +distinguished party of directors and local magnates. I joined the train +at Cardiff. At Swansea the event was celebrated in grand style. All the +population seemed to me to have turned out to witness the arrival of the +train. There were flags and decorations everywhere, and later on a grand +banquet, at which I was privileged to assist so far as eating and +drinking and cheering the speakers went. And thus my reminiscences +close. I cannot look back on my career at Cardiff with unmixed +satisfaction. I was by no means the steady old party I have since +become. It is not always easy to put an old head upon young shoulders, +but at any rate in my small way I did something for the advent of that +brighter and better day which has dawned not only upon Cardiff but on all +the land. + +In this connection I may naturally add a few particulars of worthy +Welshmen I have known. The Scotchman who prayed that the Lord would give +them a good conceit of themselves, had he lived among the Welsh, would +have found that portion of his prayer superfluous. It is to the credit +of the Welsh that they always have a good conceit of themselves. As a +rule, the world takes people at their own valuation, and the man who +assumes a superiority over his fellows—at any rate, till he is found +out—has his claim allowed. A Welshman has a profound faith in his +country and himself, especially as regards oratory. There are no such +preachers as those of Wales, and I was quite amused when I first lived in +Cardiff with the way in which a Welshman, who lodged in the house where I +had taken up my abode, descanted on the gifts of Welshmen in London of +whom I had never heard, and I felt quite ashamed of my ignorance as he +rolled forth one Welsh name after another, and had to admit my ignorance +of the eminent men whose names he had at his fingers’ ends. Why, there +were no such clever men anywhere, according to his account, and yet I +knew not the name of any of them! At the same time I had come into +contact with some Welshmen who had made their mark in London. First on +my list is that of Caleb Morris, who preached in Fetter Lane Chapel, now +in a declining state, but at times filled with a large and very +respectable congregation. He was much given to discuss the objective and +subjective, a novelty to me at that time in pulpit discourse. The state +of his health latterly interfered with his pulpit success; and before he +died he had taken to preaching in a room in Mecklenburg Square, where a +large number of his admirers flocked to hear him. He was an amiable and +thoughtful man, universally esteemed. Another Welshman of whom I used to +know more was the Rev. Henry Richard, who was then a young man, preaching +with a great deal of fire, in the Congregational Chapel in the +Marlborough Road, on the other side of the water. He lived to become the +popular M.P. for Merthyr, and to be known all the world over as the +advocate of Peace. He was the secretary for many years of the Peace +Society. He became a successful platform speaker, and his speeches were +full of a humour which always told at public meetings. Short and sturdy +in build, he was always fit for work, and had a long and laborious public +life. He was a Welshman to the core—always ready with his pen or tongue +to do battle for his native land when aspersed by ignorant or partisan +writers, and he did much to help on the Liberation Society, being after +all a much more popular speaker—especially in the House of Commons—than +his fellow-worker Edward Miall, and his loss to the Nonconformists all +over the land was very great. + +But, after all, the Welshman with whom I was most intimate, and whom I +most admired, was Joseph Edwards, the sculptor. He came from the +neighbourhood of Merthyr, where he had many relatives, whom he never +forgot, and whose poverty he was always ready to relieve. He had a +studio in Robert Street, Hampstead Road, and lived in the house close by. +He had an uphill work to fight, and to lead a life of labour and +self-denial, relieved by a few intervals of sunshine, as when at a dinner +party he had the privilege of meeting Mr. Gladstone—or as when staying at +the Duke of Beaufort’s, from whom he had a commission, he had the honour +of escorting the Duchess into the drawing-room—an honour on which I never +forgot to chaff him as I used to sit in his studio watching him at work. +He must have had to work hard to make both ends meet; and when I went to +see him on his death-bed, as it proved to be, I was shocked with grief to +see a man of such rare and lofty genius have to sleep in a little room at +the very top of the house. But commissions were rare, and the material +on which he had to work (marble) was very costly, and the sculptor works +at a great disadvantage compared with the popular portrait painter. I +believe he derived a great part of his income by going to the studio of a +more successful artist, and giving finishing touches to what work might +be on hand, much to the astonishment of the assistants, who, when they +returned in the morning, were astonished to find what progress had been +made in the night, which they attributed to the visitation of a ghost. +Edwards was an enthusiastic poet, and many of his works in +plaster—waiting, alas! for the commission to transfer to the marble which +never came—were exquisitely beautiful, and were often engraved in _The +Art Journal_. Both Mr. Hall, the editor, and his wife, the clever +authoress, were great admirers of Mr. Edwards’ lofty and poetical +idealisms, which sometimes soared a little above my poor prosaic +qualities. As I listened to his rapt and ardent speech, I felt impelled +somewhat to make a few remarks to bring him down from his starry heights, +and the result ended in a hearty peal of laughter, for no man better +loved a joke. I have a medallion of myself which he gave me after it had +been exhibited at the Royal Academy, which I cherish as the most +beautiful work of art in my possession; but he was too modest and +retiring, and never gained the public esteem to which he had an undoubted +claim. I was present at the unveiling of his fine marble bust of Edith +Wynne, then radiant in her glory as the Welsh Nightingale, of whom I saw +enough to learn that she was as charming in private as in public life. +The place was Hanover Square Rooms. My friend Edwards received quite an +ovation, the Sir Watkin Wynne of that day presiding; but on the whole I +fear that Edwards by his genius did more for Wales than ever Wales did +for him. His life ought to have been written. Young men, I am sure, +would have learned many a useful lesson. He was a true genius, with, as +far as I could see, none of the failings which by some are supposed to be +associated with genius. It was my painful privilege to be one of the +mourners at his funeral in Highgate Cemetery. His works he left to the +Cymmrodorion Society, where I hope that they are guarded with tender +care. South Wales has reason to rejoice in having had born to her such a +son. Let me mention another Merthyr man whom I knew, who, if not such a +genius as Joseph Edwards, had at any rate as great an enthusiasm for the +literature and language of Wales. He was a chemist and druggist, named +Stephens, and found time to write a work on Wales, which was deemed +worthy of the prize offered on the subject by some Welshman of wealth and +position, whose name has, alas, escaped my treacherous memory. At that +time Wales had failed to attract much attention on the part of England. +It was far away and difficult to get at. Now and then an adventurous +Englishman made his way thither, and wrote a book to show how grand was +the scenery and hospitable the people, and how cheap it was as a place of +residence. But as a rule the average Englishman knew as little of it as +he did of Timbuctoo. Since then Wales has learnt the art of advertising +and is better known, and that is an advantage not to be overlooked, for +it is now all the richer. Then few English resided there, and those +chiefly from motives of economy. + +Another Welshman whom I had the honour to reckon as a friend was Sir Hugh +Owen, an earnest worker in the Temperance cause, and for the social +elevation of the people and righteousness. In his case his high position +on the Poor-Law Board was won by merit, and by merit alone, as he entered +the Department in a subordinate capacity, and gradually worked his way up +to the top of the tree, not having the advantage of aristocratic birth +and breeding. I first met him in Claremont Chapel—a Congregational place +of worship in Pentonville—at one time one of the most flourishing +churches of that body, though I fear it has somewhat declined of late. +He was a man of kindly speech and presence, always ready to help whatever +was worthy of help, and lived in the Holloway Road, where I once spent +with him a pleasant Sunday, and was much charmed with one of his married +daughters, who happened to be there at the time. No Temperance gathering +in general, and no Welsh gathering in particular, was complete without +Mr. Hugh Owen, as he then was called. In all London there was no more +genial representative of gallant little Wales. He lived to a good old +age, beloved and respected. The last time I met him was in the +Farringdon Road, when he complained that he felt a little queer in his +head. My reply was that he had no need to trouble himself on that +account, as I knew many people who were in the same condition who seemed +to get on very well nevertheless. + +Another Welshman who yet lives—in a far-off land—was Dr. Llewellen Bevan, +the popular Congregational minister in the beautiful city of Melbourne, +where he is, as he justly deserves to be, a great power. He commenced +his labours in London as co-pastor with Mr. Thomas Binney. Thence he +moved to Tottenham Court Chapel, which became very prosperous under his +popular ministry. From there he went to America, where he did not remain +long. He now lives in a beautiful bungalow a few miles out of Melbourne, +where I once spent with him a very pleasant night, chatting of England +and old times. A curious memory occurs to me in connection with my visit +to the reverend and popular divine at Melbourne. On one occasion I heard +him at a public meeting in Tottenham Court Road Chapel declare, amidst +the cheers of the great audience, that he had given up smoking because +one of his people complained to him that her son had come home the worse +for liquor, which he had taken while smoking, and he thought there could +be no harm in smoking, because he had seen Mr. Bevan smoking. “From that +hour,” said Mr. Bevan, amidst prolonged applause, “I resolved to give up +smoking,” and the deacons looked at me to see if I was not ashamed of my +indulgence in a habit which in the case alluded to had produced such +disastrous results. I must own that the reason adduced by the reverend +gentleman was not to me convincing, for as far as my experience goes the +smoker infinitely prefers a cup of coffee with his cigar or pipe to any +amount of alcoholic liquor. Judge, then, of my surprise when at +Melbourne, after our evening meal, Mr. Bevan proposed to me that we +should adjourn to his study and have a smoke—an invitation with which I +gladly complied. After my recollection of the scene in the London chapel +I was glad to find the Doctor, as regards tobacco, sober and in his right +mind. Long may he be spared after the labours of his busy life to soothe +his wearied mind with the solace of the weed! The Doctor has a noble +presence, and seemed to me when I saw him last to be getting in face more +and more like England’s greatest orator—as regards latter days—Mr. John +Bright. In his far-away home he seemed to me to retain his love for +Wales and the sense of the superiority of the Welshman to any one on the +face of the earth. The Doctor is an ardent Gladstonite—and people of +that way of thinking are not quite as numerous in the Colonies as they +are at home. + +Another Welshman who made his mark in London was the Rev. Dr. Thomas, a +Congregational minister at Stockwell, a fine-looking young man when I +first knew him as a minister at Chesham. He developed the faculty of his +countrymen for lofty ideas and aims to an extent that ended in disastrous +failure. It was he who originated the idea of _The Dial_—which was to be +a daily to advocate righteousness, and to beat down and to supplant _The +Times_. The motto was to be “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is +a reproach to any people.” He got a great many people to take shares, +and commenced the publication of _The Dial_ in the first place as a +weekly. But the paper was a failure from the first. Another idea of his +was to raise a million to build workmen’s institutes and recreation halls +all over the kingdom, but as the late Earl of Derby, when appealed to on +the subject, replied, it carried its own condemnation in the face of it. +A society, however, was started, but it never came to much. The real +fact is that institutions established for working men, not by them, are +rarely a success. Dr. Thomas also claimed to have started the idea of +the University for Wales, and was very angry with me when I, after some +inquiry, failed to support his claim. His great success was the +publication of a magazine for preachers, under the title of _The +Homilist_. The writer was a great man, not so much so, perhaps, as he +thought, and had his full share of Welsh enthusiasm and fire. But he +made a terrible blunder over his _Dial_ scheme. He had done better had +he kept to the pulpit. Parsons are not always practical, and the +management of successful daily newspapers is not exactly in their line. +The shoemaker should stick to his last; but in spite of Welsh poetic +geniuses, the great fact which always strikes men in London is the +commercial successes of the Welshmen who venture to try their fortune on +the metropolitan stage. This especially strikes me with regard to the +drapery trade. Many of the largest establishments in that way are owned +at this present time by Welshmen—such as Jones, of Holloway; Evans, of +Oxford Street, and many more. Few of them had capital or friends to help +them, yet few men have done better in the pleasant art of money-making—an +art rare, alas! to the class to which I have the honour to belong. + + + + +CHAPTER X. +A GREAT NATIONAL MOVEMENT. + + +One national movement in which I took a prominent part was the formation +of freehold land societies, which commenced somewhere about 1850, and at +which _The Times_, after its manner in those days, sneered, asking +scornfully what was a freehold land society. The apostle of the new +movement, which was to teach the British working man how to save money +and buy a bit of land on which to build a house and secure a vote, was +Mr. James Taylor, born in Birmingham in 1814. Like all other Birmingham +boys, James was early set to work, and became an apprentice in one of the +fancy trades for which Birmingham was famed. His industrious habits soon +acquired for him the approbation of his master, who, on retiring from +business before Taylor was of age, gave him his indentures. About that +time Taylor, earning good wages and not having the fear of Malthus before +his eyes, got married and lived happily till, like too many of his class, +he took to drink. After years of utter misery and degradation, Taylor, +in a happy hour for himself and society, took the temperance pledge and +became a new man. Nor was he satisfied with his own reform alone. He +was anxious that others should be rescued from degradation as he had +been. For this purpose he identified himself with the Temperance cause, +and was honorary secretary to the Birmingham Temperance Society till he +became the leader and originator of the Freehold Land Movement, and then +for years his life was given to the public. He had but one speech, but +it was a racy one, and his voice was soon lifted up in every town in the +land. The plan pursued was to buy an estate, cut it up into allotments, +and offer them almost free of legal expense. There never was such a +chance for the working man as an investment, and thousands availed +themselves of it—and were all the better for it—especially those who to +pay their small subscriptions became teetotalers and gave up drink. And +yet a learned writer in _The Edinburgh Review_ had the audacity to write, +“Notwithstanding this rapid popularity, however, notwithstanding also the +high authorities which have been quoted on their behalf, we cannot look +on these associations with unmixed favour, and we shall not be surprised +if any long time elapses without well-grounded disappointment and +discontent arising among their members. However desirable it may be for +a peasant or an artisan to be possessor of the garden which he cultivates +and of the house he dwells in, however clear and great the gain to him in +this case, it is by no means equally certain that he can derive any +pecuniary advantage from the possession of a plot of ground which is too +far from his daily work for him either to erect a dwelling on it or to +cultivate it as an allotment, and which from its diminutive size he will +find it difficult for him to let for any sufficient remuneration. In +many cases a barren site will be his only reward for £50 of saving, and +however he may value this in times of excitement it will in three +elections out of four be of little real interest or moment to him.” +Happily the working men knew better than the _Edinburgh_ reviewer, and +the societies flourished all the more. The Conservatives were, of +course, utterly indignant at this wholesale manufacture of faggot votes, +as they were contemptuously termed, which threatened the seats of so many +respectable Conservative county members, but in the end they thought +better of it, and actually started a Conservative Freehold Land Society +themselves, a fact announced to me in a letter from Mr. Cobden, which I +have or ought to have somewhere in my possession. The societies +increased so greatly that a journal was started by Mr. Cassell, called +_The Freeholder_, of which I was editor, and was the means of often +bringing me into contact with Mr. Cobden, a man with whom no one ever +came in contact without feeling for him the most ardent admiration. At +one time I saw a good deal of him, as it was my habit, at his request, to +call on him each morning at his house in Westbourne Park, to talk over +with him matters connected with the Freehold Land Movement, in which he +took, as in everything that increased human progress, the deepest +interest. As he once remarked half the money spent in gin would give the +people the entire county representation, and besides provide them with +desirable investments against a rainy day. Mr. James Taylor was always +cheered as he showed his hearers how a man who drank a quart of ale a day +engulfed at the same time a yard of solid earth. Land at that time was +to be had remarkably cheap, and great profits were made by the early +investors, and the moral benefit was great. Men learned the value of +economy and thrift, and were all the better for gaining habits of +forethought and self-denial. In our days the societies have become +chiefly building societies, the political need of getting a vote in that +way not being of so much importance as it was then. + +In the early days of the Victorian era the workman had no inducement to +save, and he spent his money foolishly because he had no opportunity of +spending it better. The Poor-laws as they were till they were reformed +by the Whigs—a heroic reform which made them everywhere +unpopular—actually offered a premium on immorality, and the woman who had +a number of illegitimate children—the parish rewarding her according to +their number—was quite a prize in the matrimonial market. The old +Poor-law administration became the demoralising agency to such an extent +for the manufacture of paupers that honest wage-earners were at a +discount, while numbers of the rate-paying classes found their lot so +intolerable that they elected to swell the pauper ranks, and thereby much +increased their pecuniary, if not their social, condition. The earlier a +labourer became a married man and the father of a family the better off +he became and the more he got out of his parish. We can scarcely credit +it, yet it is an undoubted fact that under the old Poor-law, if a +labourer was known to be thrifty or putting away his savings, he was +refused work till his money was gone and he was reduced to his proper +level. Even the labourer usually at work received parish pay for at +least four children, and if he worked on the roads instead of the fields +he received out of the highway rates a pound a-week instead of the usual +nine shillings. If a working man joined a benefit club it generally met +in a public-house, and a certain proportion of the funds were spent in +refreshments—rather for the benefit of the landlords than for that of the +members. It was not till 1834 that a reformed Poor-law made the practice +of thrift possible. In many quarters law and custom have combined to +prevent its growth among rural labourers who had been taught to live on +the rates—to extract as much permanent relief as they could out of a +nearly bankrupt body of ratepayers and to do in return as little hard +work as was possible. The condition of things was then completely +changed. The industrious man had a little better chance, and the idlers +were put to the rout and, much to their disgust, forced to work, or at +any rate to attempt to do so. Even the best benefit societies remained +under a cloud and, till Parliament later on took the matter in hand, +worked under great disadvantages. Frauds were committed; funds were made +away with, and no redress could be obtained. Thrifty habits were +discouraged on every side. + +All England is ringing with the praise of thrift. Not Scotland, for a +Scotchman is born thrifty—just as he is said to be born not able to +understand a joke. And as to Irishmen, it is to be questioned whether +they have such a word in their dictionary at all. No class of mutual +thrift institution has flourished there, says the latest writer on the +subject, Rev. Francis Wilkinson; and mostly our earlier thrift societies +were started by a landlord for his own benefit, rather than for that of +the members. Those were drinking days, says Mr. Wilkinson. The +public-house was not only the home, but the cause of their existence; and +as an evidence of the value of benefit clubs to the publican, we find the +establishment of such advertised as one of the assets when the house is +put up for sale. Then there was the competition of rival houses. The +“Blue Boar” must have its “friendly” as well as the “Black Lion” over the +way; and thus the number of clubs, as well as of public-houses, increased +beyond the requirements of the village or parish, and deterioration was +the natural result; and this was the humorous way in which the past +generation acquired the habit of thrift, of which nowadays we hear so +much. + +It is very hard to be thrifty. He who would become so has to fight +against tremendous odds. Let me illustrate my case by my own unpleasant +experiences. I had a friend who was a mining broker. One day I had been +studying the late Captain Burton’s valuable work on Brazil, which seemed +to me a country of boundless resources and possibilities. The next day +when I got into the train to go to town, there was my friend the broker. +I talked with him about Brazil in a rather enthusiastic strain. He +agreed with everything I said. There was no such place in the world, and +I could not do better than buy a few General Brazilian shares. They were +low just at that time, but if I were to buy some I should be certain to +make ten shillings a share in a month, at any rate, and by a fortunate +coincidence he had a few hundreds he had bought for an investment, and as +a friend he would let me have a few. I am not a speculating man. The +fact is I have never had any cash to spare; but was tempted, as our +Mother Eve was by the old serpent, and I fell. I bought a few General +Brazilians. As soon as I had paid for them there came a call for a +shilling a share, and a little while after another call, and so it went +on till the General Brazilians went down to nothing. Shortly after this +my friend left the neighbourhood. He had got all his acquaintances to +invest in shares, and the neighbourhood was getting unpleasant for him. +He began life in a humble way; he now lives in a fine place and keeps his +carriage, but he gets no more money out of me, though occasionally he did +send me a circular assuring me of an ample fortune if I would only buy +certain shares which he recommended. I may have stood in my own light, +as he told me I did, but I have bought no more mining shares since. + +Again, take the case of life assurance. Every one ought to insure his +life when he marries. Like a wise man, I did, but like a fool I took the +advice of a friend who recommended me a society which paid him a +commission for his disinterested and friendly advice. After a time it +declared a bonus which, instead of receiving in cash, I thought it better +to add to the principal. In a few years, that insurance society was +wound up. After the affairs of the company had been carefully +investigated at an enormous and surely unnecessary expense by a +distinguished firm of City accountants, another company took over our +policies, marking them about a fourth of their original value. My bonus +was not even added to my principal; and now, being too old to go anew +into a life assurance company, a paltry sum is all I can look forward to +to leave my family on my decease. It is really very ludicrous the little +games played by some of these insurance companies. It is not every one +who raises the cry of thrift who is anxious to promote that saving +virtue. It is too often the case that even the professed philanthropist, +feeling how true it is that charity begins at home, never troubles +himself to let it go any further. We have Scriptural authority for +saying that one who neglects to provide for his own house has denied the +faith, and is worse than an infidel. We are abundantly justified, then, +in looking after the cash. A great philosopher remarked that there are +times when a man without money in his pocket may find himself in a +peculiarly unpleasant position. It was, I think, Hazlitt who said it, +and he was right. Be that as it may, it is a melancholy truth many of us +have learned by experience. I can send to gaol the poor wretch who in +the street picks my pocket, but the company promoter who offers me a +premium for thrift, and then robs me of my all, or as much of it as he +can lay hold of, gets off scot free. Friendly societies, as they are +called, are on this account often to be much suspected. The story of one +that smashed up is interesting and amusing. The chief promoter early in +life displayed his abilities as a rogue. He became a letter-carrier, +only to lose his situation and undergo a severe term of imprisonment for +stealing letters. Subsequently, he entered the service of an Assurance +Company, but had eventually to be dismissed. Then he got a new +character, and started afresh as a Methodist preacher. Afterwards he +founded a friendly society, by means of which he raised large funds for +the benefit of himself, and apparently no one else. + +Let me give another case out of my own personal experience. Last year I +received a prospectus of a company that was formed to purchase the +business of a firm which had an immense number of shops engaged in +carrying on a business in various parts of the metropolis. A firm of +accountants reported that the gross returns of the firm in 1894 amounted +to over £103,000, and it was added that the profit of the company would +admit of annual dividends at the rate of nine per cent., and allow of +£1,300 for the expenses of management and reserve. It was further shown +that a considerable saving of expenditure could be effected, which would +ensure an additional dividend of three per cent. Well, the thing looked +so feasible that I wrote for and obtained five shares, thinking I had +done a sensible thing. A few months afterward a West-end firm offered me +a large number of shares at par, stating that the company were about to +pay a dividend, and that the profit on the year’s earnings would be some +fifty per cent. However, I did not accept the promising offer, and I +thought no more of the matter. In January of this year a gentleman sent +me a circular offering me shares at a shilling under par, assuring me +that the company was about to pay a dividend of ten per cent. in the +course of the next week. Again I declined to increase my holding, and it +is well I did, as no dividend has been paid, although the circular stated +that the business was of “a most profitable nature,” and “sure to +considerably increase in value in the course of a few months.” Since +then a Manchester firm has twice written to me to offer the pound shares +at sixteen shillings each. These tempting offers I have declined, and +the promised dividend seems as far off as ever. Surely outside brokers +who put forward such lying statements ought to be amenable to law, as +well as the promoters of the company itself. To my great disgust, since +the above was written I have received another letter from another outside +firm, offering me fifty shares in the precious company at thirteen +shillings a share. The writers add, as the dividend of ten per cent. +will be paid almost immediately, they are well worth my attention. I +suppose this sort of thing pays. The worst of it is that the class thus +victimised are the class least able to bear a pecuniary loss. I happen +to know of a case in which a man with an assumed name, trading at the +West End, gained a large sum of money—chiefly from clergymen and +widows—by offering worthless shares, certain to pay large dividends in a +week or two, at a tremendous sacrifice. As a rule the victims to this +state of things say nothing of their losses. They are ashamed when they +think how easily they have been persuaded to part with their cash. It is +time, however, that public attention should be called to the matter, that +the eyes of the public were opened, and that the game of these gentry +were be stopped. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. +THE OLD LONDON PULPIT. + + +I doubt whether the cynical old poet who wrote “The Pleasures of Memory,” +would have included in that category the recollections of the famous +preachers whom he might have heard. Yet possibly he might, as his +earliest predilections, we were told, were for the pulpit, and all have, +more or less, of the parsonic element in them. The love to lecture, the +desire to make their poor ignorant friends as sensible as themselves, the +innate feeling that one is a light and guide in a wildering maze exist +more or less in us all. “Did you ever hear me preach?” said Coleridge +one day to Lamb. “Did I ever hear you do anything else?” was the reply. +And now, when we have got an awakened Christianity and a forward +ministry, it is just as well to run over the list of our old popular +ministers to remind the present generation that great men have filled the +London pulpits and quickened the London conscience and aroused the London +intellect before ever it was born. It is the more necessary to do this +as the fact is that no one has so short-lived a popularity as the orator: +whether in Exeter Hall, whether on the stage, whether in the pulpit, what +comes in at one ear soon goes out at the other. The memory of a great +preacher dies as soon as his breath leaves the body—often before. The +pulpit of to-day differs in one respect _in toto_ from the past. The +preacher who would succeed now must remember that this is the age of +advertisement, that if he has a talent he must not wrap it in a napkin. +He must write letters to newspapers; he must say odd things that make men +talk about him; he must manage to be the subject of newspaper gossip; he +must cling to the skirts of some public agitation—in fact, his light must +be seen and his voice heard everywhere. + +It was not so in the times when, half a century ago, I had more to do +with the London pulpit than I have now. Some of the men in it were +giants. One was Melville, who preached somewhere over the +water—Camberwell way. He was a High Churchman; he had a grand scorn of +the conventicle. I should say he was a Tory of the Tories—a man who +would be impossible in a London suburban church now; but what a crowd he +drew to hear him, as he, like a mighty, rushing wind, swept over the +heads of an audience who seemed to hang upon his lips! He was tall, +dark, with a magnificent bass voice that caused every sentence he +read—for he read, and rapidly—to vibrate from the pulpit to the furthest +corner of the church. His style was that of the late Dr. Chalmers, +always sweeping to a climax, which, when reached and mastered, was a +relief to all. I think he was made Canon of St. Paul’s. He also was the +Golden Lecturer somewhere near the Bank—an appropriate locality. His +sermons were highly finished—I am told he laboured at them all the week. +He was a preacher—nothing less, nothing more. + +Next there rises before me the vision of Howard Hinton—a big, cadaverous, +grey-haired man, preaching in a small chapel on the site in Shoreditch +now occupied by the Great Eastern Railway. The congregation was not +large, but it was very select; I fancy it represented the _élite_ of the +London Baptists. He was a very fascinating preacher by reason of his +great subtlety of thought, and at times he was terribly impressive, as +his big, burly frame trembled with emotion, and his choked-up utterance +intimated with what agony he had sought to deliver his soul from +blood-guiltiness, as, wailing and weeping, he anticipated the awful doom +of the impenitent. I must own I got wearied of his metaphysical +subtleties, which seemed to promise so much, and whose conclusions were +so lame and impotent, ever disappointing; and it often seemed to me that +his celebrated son—the late James Hinton—too soon removed, as it seemed +to many of us—inherited not a little of his father’s ingenuity in this +respect. But he was a grand man; you felt it in his presence, and still +more as you walked home thinking of what he said. + +Amongst the Independents—as they were termed—the leading men were the +Brothers Clayton: one preaching at the Poultry, the other in Walworth, to +large congregations—fine portly men, and able in their way, though it was +an old-fashioned one. Nor must Dr. Bengo Collyer be forgotten—a fat, +oily man of God, as Robert Hall called him, who had at one time great +popularity, and whom the Duke of Kent had been to hear preach. + +It is a curious sign of the times—the contrast between what exists now +and what existed then—as regards theological speculation. We are now +sublimely indifferent whether a preacher is orthodox or the reverse, +whatever that may mean, so long as we feel his utterances are helpful in +the way of Christian work and life. It was not so fifty years ago. +Ministers scanned their brethren in the ministry severely, and the +deacon, with his Matthew Henry and Doddridge, sat grimly in his pew, +eager to note the deflection of the preacher in the pulpit from the +strait and narrow line of orthodoxy, and to glow with unholy zeal as he +found him missing his footing on the tight-rope. In London there was +such a man in the shape of Thomas Binney, who had come from the Isle of +Wight to the King’s Weigh House Chapel, now swept away by the underground +railway just opposite the Monument. Binney was a king among men, +standing head and shoulders above his fellows. All that was intelligent +in Dissenting London, among the young men especially, heard him gladly. +Yet all over the land there were soulless deacons and crabbed old +parsons, whose testimony no man regarded, who said Binney was not +orthodox. He lived long enough to trample that charge down. He lived to +see the new era when men, sick of orthodoxy, hailed any utterance from +whatever quarter, so that it were God-fearing and sincere. As you +listened to Binney struggling to evolve his message out of his inner +consciousness, you felt that you stood in the presence of a man who dwelt +in the Divine presence, to whom God had revealed Himself, whose eye could +detect the sham, and whose hot indignation was terrible to listen to. + +Let me chronicle a few more names. Dr. Andrew Reed, whose occasional +sermons at other places—I never heard him at Wycliffe Chapel—were most +effective; Morris of Fetter Lane, who preached to a crowded audience with +what seemed to me at the time a slight touch of German mysticism; +Stratten, far away in Paddington, whom rich people loved to listen to, as +he was supposed to be a man of means himself; and old Leifchild at Craven +Chapel, filled to overflowing with a crowd who knew, however the dear old +man might prose in the opening of his sermon, he would go off with a bang +at the end. But I may not omit two Churchmen who, if they had not +Melville’s power, had an equal popularity. One was the Hon. and Rev. +Baptist Noel, who preached in a church, long since pulled down, in +Bedford-row. He was tall, gentlemanly, silver-tongued, and perfectly +orthodox. His people worshipped him, for was he not the son of a lord? +His influence in London was immense, but he left the Church for +conscientious reasons, and became a Baptist minister. That was a blow to +his popularity which he never got over, though he lived to a grand old +age. Another popular Evangelical preacher was Dale, who preached at St. +Bride’s, Fleet Street. He was a poet and more or less of a literary man; +but he had more worldly wisdom than Baptist Noel. Dale was a Professor +of Literature at University College; but it was understood that +University College, with its liberal institutions, with its Dissenters +and Jews, was no place for a Churchman who wished to rise. Dale saw +this, gave up his professorship in Gower Street, and reaped a rich +reward. + +London was badly off for _illuminati_ fifty years ago. The only pulpit +effectually filled was that of South Place, Finsbury, where W. Johnson +Fox, the celebrated orator and critic, lectured. He had been trained to +be an orthodox divine at Homerton. One day he said to me, “The students +always get very orthodox as they get to the end of their collegiate +career, and are preparing to settle, as the phrase is.” Fox, it seems, +was the exception that proves the rule. He was eloquent and attractive +as preacher and lecturer. Dickens and Macready and Foster were, I +believe, among his hearers. At any rate, he had a large following, and +died an M.P. Lectures on all things sacred and profane were unknown in +London fifty years ago. I once heard Robert Dale Owen somewhere at the +back of Tottenham Court Road Chapel, but he was a weariness of the flesh, +and I never went near him again. The provinces occasionally sent us +popular orators; one was Raffles, of Liverpool, a man who looked as if +the world had used him well. I well remember how he dealt in such +alliteration as “the dewdrop glittering in the glen.” Then there was +Parsons of York, with his amazing rhetoric, all whispered with a thrill +that went to every heart, as he preached in Surrey Chapel, where also I +heard Jay of Bath, who, however, left on me no impression other than he +was a wonderful old man for his years. Sherman, the regular preacher +there, was a great favourite with the ladies—almost as much as Dr. +Cumming, a dark, scholarly-looking man, who held forth in a court just +opposite Drury Lane Theatre, and whose prophetic utterances obtained for +him a popularity he would otherwise have sought in vain. It makes one +feel old to write of these good men who have long since passed away, not, +however, unregretted, or without failing to leave behind them + + Footprints on the sands of Time. + +When I first became familiar with the Dissenting world of London the most +bustling man in it was the Rev. Dr. John Campbell, who preached in what +was then a most melancholy pile of buildings known as the Tottenham Court +Road Chapel, the pulpit of which had been at one time occupied by the +celebrated George Whitfield. In or about 1831 Dr. Campbell became the +minister, and at the same time found leisure to write in _The Patriot_ +newspaper; to fight and beat the trustees of the Tottenham Court Road, +who had allowed the affairs of the chapel to get into a most disorderly +state; to make speeches at public meetings; to write in a monthly that +has long ceased to exist—_The Eclectic Review_—a review to which I had +occasionally the honour of contributing when it was edited by Dr. +Price;—and to publish a good many books which had a fair sale in his day. +Dr. Campbell had also much to do with the abolition of the Bible printing +monopoly—a movement originated by Dr. Adam Thomson, of Coldstream, +powerfully supported by one of my earliest friends, Mr. John Childs, a +spirited and successful printer at Bungay, whose one-volume editions of +standard authors, such as Bacon’s works, Milton’s, and Gibbon’s “Decline +and Pall of the Roman Empire,” are still to be seen on the shelves of +second-hand booksellers. The Queen’s Printer affected to believe that +the Bible could not be supplied to the public with equal efficiency or +cheapness on any other system than that which gave him the monopoly of +printing, but as it was proved before a Committee of the House of Commons +that the Book could be printed at much less cost and in every way equal +to the copies then in existence, the monopoly was destroyed. + +In 1830 there came into existence the Congregational Union of England and +Wales, of which Dr. Campbell became one of the leading men. He was at +the same time editor of _The Christian Witness_ and _The Christian’s +Penny Magazine_—the organs of the Union—both of which at that time +secured what was then considered a very enormous sale. When in 1835 Mr. +Nasmith came to London to establish his City Mission Dr. Campbell was one +of his earliest supporters and friends. The next great work which he +took in hand was the establishment of _The British Banner_, a religious +paper for the masses, in answer to an appeal made to him by the committee +of _The Patriot_ newspaper. The first number of the new journal appeared +in 1848, and gained a circulation hitherto unknown in a weekly paper, and +this in time was succeeded by _The British Standard_. As time passed on +Dr. Campbell became less popular. He had rather too keen a scent for +what was termed neology. In one case his zeal involved him in a libel +suit and the verdict was for the plaintiff, who was awarded by the jury +forty shillings damages instead of the £5,000 he had claimed. In the +Rivulet Controversy, as it was termed, Dr. Campbell was not quite so +successful. Mr. Lynch was a poet, and preached, as his health was bad, +to a small but select congregation in the Hampstead Road. He published a +volume of refined and thoughtful poetry which has many admirers to this +day. The late Mr. James Grant—a Scotch baker who had taken to literature +and written several remarkably trashy books, the most popular of which +was “Random Recollections of the House of Commons,”—at that time editor +of the publican’s paper, _The Morning Advertiser_, in his paper described +the work of Mr. Lynch as calculated to inspire pain and sadness in the +minds of all who knew what real religion was. Against this view a +powerful protest was made by many leading men of the body to which Mr. +Lynch belonged. At this stage of the controversy Dr. Campbell struck in +by publishing letters addressed to the principal professors of the +Independent and Baptist colleges of England, showing that the hymns of +Mr. Lynch were very defective as regards Evangelical truth—containing +less of it than the hymns ordinarily sung by the Unitarians. The +excitement in Dissenting circles was intense. The celebrated Thomas +Binney, of the King’s Weigh House Chapel, took part with Mr. Lynch and +complained of Dr. Campbell in the ensuing meetings of the Congregational +Union, and so strong was the feeling on the subject that a large party +was formed to request the Congregational Union formally to sever their +official connexion with Dr. Campbell—a matter not quite so easy as had +been anticipated. One result, however, was that Dr. Campbell gave up the +editing of _The British Banner_ and established _The British Standard_ to +take its place, in which the warfare against what is called Neology was +carried on with accelerated zeal. In 1867 the Doctor’s laborious career +came to an end happily in comfort and at peace with all. His biographers +assure the reader that Dr. Campbell’s works will last till the final +conflagration of the world. Alas! no one reads them now. + +To come to later times, of course my most vivid recollections are those +connected with the late Mr. Spurgeon. In that region of the metropolis +known as “over the water” the Baptists flourish as they do nowhere else, +and some of their chapels have an interesting history. Amongst many of +them rather what is called high doctrine is tolerated—not to say admired. +They are the elect of God, preordained before the world was formed to +enjoy an existence of beatific rapture, that shall continue when the +world has passed away. Of one of the most popular preachers in that +locality, the late Jemmy Wells, it is said that when told that one of his +hearers had fallen out of a cart and broken his leg his reply was, “Oh, +what a blessed thing it is he can’t fall out of the Covenant.” When one +of the chapels in that locality was at low-water mark, there came to it +the Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon—then little more than a boy, but already +famous in East Anglia as a boy preacher—and never had a preacher a more +successful career. There was no place in London that was large enough to +contain the audiences that flocked to hear him. I first heard him at the +Surrey Music Hall, and it was wonderful to see what hordes came there of +saints and sinners, lords and ladies, City magnates and county squires, +Anonymas from St. John’s Wood, Lady Clara Vere de Veres from Belgravia. +It was the fashion to go there on a Sunday morning, just as it was the +fashion a generation previously to rush to Hatton Garden to hear Edward +Irving. The hall was handsome and light and airy, free from the somewhat +oppressive air of Cave Adullam and Little Bethel, and there upon the +platform which did duty for a pulpit stood a young man short of stature, +broadly built, of a genial though not handsome countenance, with a big +head and a voice it was a treat to listen to and audible in every part of +that enormous building. What was the secret of his success? He was +bold, he was original, he was humorous, and he was in earnest. He said +things to make his hearers laugh, and what he said or did was magnified +by rumour. Old stories of Billy Dawson and Rowland Hill were placed to +Mr. Spurgeon’s credit. The caricaturists made him their butt. There was +no picture more commonly displayed at that time than one entitled +“Brimstone and Treacle”—the former representing Mr. Spurgeon, the latter +Mr. Bellew, then a star of the first order in many an Episcopalian +pulpit. Bellew soon ran through his ephemeral popularity—that of Mr. +Spurgeon grew and strengthened day by day. Do you, like the late Sir +James Graham, want to know the reason why? The answer is soon given. “I +am going into the ministry,” said a youthful student to an old divine. +“Ah, but, my dear friend, is the ministry in you?” Well, the ministry +was in Mr. Spurgeon as it rarely is in any man; hence his unparalleled +success. + +One little anecdote will illustrate this. I have a friend whose father +had a large business in the ancient city of Colchester. Mr. Spurgeon’s +father was at one time in his employ. Naturally, he said a good deal of +the preaching talent of his gifted son, and of the intention beginning to +be entertained in the family circle of making a minister of him. The +employer in question was a Churchman, but he himself offered to help Mr. +Spurgeon in securing for his son the benefits of a collegiate education. +The son’s reply was characteristic. He declined the offered aid, adding +the remark that “ministers were made not in colleges but in heaven.” + +In connection with Mr. Spurgeon’s scholastic career let me knock a little +fiction on the head. There is a house in Aldeburgh, in Suffolk, famous +now as the birthplace of Mrs. Garrett Anderson and her gifted sisters, +which at one time was a school kept by a Mr. Swindell, and they told me +at Aldeburgh this last summer that Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil there. This +is not so. It is true Mr. Spurgeon was a pupil at Mr. Swindell’s, but it +was at Newmarket, to which the latter had moved from Aldeburgh. + +One or two Spurgeon anecdotes which have not yet appeared in print may be +acceptable. At Hastings there are, or were, many High Church curates. A +few years ago one of them did a very sensible thing. He had a holiday; +he was in town and he went to the Tabernacle, getting a seat exactly +under Mr. Spurgeon’s nose, as it were. It seems that during the week Mr. +Spurgeon had been attending a High Church service, of which he gave in +the pulpit a somewhat ludicrous account, suddenly finishing by giving a +sort of snort, and exclaiming, “Methinks I smell ’em now,” much to the +delight of the curate sitting underneath. Referring to Mr. Spurgeon’s +nose, I am told he had a great admiration of that of his brother, a much +more aristocratic-looking article that his own. “Jem,” he is reported to +have said on one occasion, “I wish I had got your nose.” “Do you?” was +the reply; “I wish I had got your cheek.” Let me give another story. On +one occasion an artist wanted to make a sketch of Mr. Spurgeon for +publishing. “What are you going to charge?” asked the preacher, as the +artist appeared before him. “You must not make the price more than +twopence; the public will give that for me—not a penny more. A +photographer published a portrait of me at eighteenpence, and no one +bought it.” This conversation took place on the occasion of a week-night +service. At the close of the service the artist came up into the vestry +to show his sketch. “Yes,” said Mr. Spurgeon, “it is all very well, but +I should like to hear what others say about it. They say women and fools +are the best judges of this kind of thing,” and accordingly the likeness +was referred to a friend who happened to come into the room in the nick +of time. + +It always seemed to me the great characteristic of Mr. Spurgeon was +good-natured jollity. He was as full of fun as a boy. I saw him once +before getting into a wagonette pitch all the rugs on his brother’s head, +who naturally returned the compliment—much to the amusement of the +spectators. On one occasion I happened to be in the Tabernacle when the +Baptist Union dined there, as it always did at the time of the Baptist +anniversaries. I suppose there would be many hundreds present who +enjoyed the ample repast and the accompanying claret and sherry. After +the dinner was over Mr. Spurgeon came up to where I was sitting and, +laying his hand on my shoulder and pointing to the long rows of empty +bottles left standing on the table, with a twinkle in his eye, said, +“Teetotalism does not seem to flourish among the brethren, does it?” And +he was as kind as he was cheerful. Once and once only I had to write to +him. He returned me a reply addressed to me in my proper name, and +then—as I was writing weekly articles under a _nom de plume_ in a highly +popular journal—added, in a postscript, “Kind regards to —” (mentioning +my _nom de plume_). The anecdote is trivial, but it shows how genial and +kind-hearted he was. + +And to the last what crowds attended his ministry at the Tabernacle! One +Saturday I went to dine with a friend living on Clapham Common. Going +back to town early in the morning I got into an omnibus, and was amused +by hearing the conductor exclaim, “Any more for the Tabernacle!” “Now, +then, for the Tabernacle!” “This way for the Tabernacle!” and, sure +enough, I found all my fellow-passengers got out when we arrived at the +Tabernacle; nor was the ’bus in which I was riding the only one thus +utilised. There was no end of omnibuses from all quarters drawing up at +the entrance. According to the latest utterance of Mr. Herbert Beerbohm +Tree, in this age of ours faith is tinged with philosophic doubt, love is +regarded as but a spasm of the nervous system, life itself as the refrain +of a music-hall song. At the Tabernacle the pastor and people were of a +very different way of thinking. + +And Mr. Spurgeon was no windbag—_vox et præterea nihil_; no darling pet +of old women whose Christianity was flabby as an oyster. He was an +incessant worker, and taught his people to work as well in his enormous +church. Such was the orderly arrangement that, as he said, if one of his +people were to get tipsy, he should know it before the week was out. He +never seemed to lose a moment. “Whenever I have been permitted,” he +wrote on one occasion, “sufficient respite from my ministerial duties to +enjoy a lengthened tour or even a short excursion, I have been in the +habit of carrying with me a small note-book, in which I have jotted down +any illustrations that occurred to me on the way. The note-book has been +useful in my travels as a mental purse.” Yet the note-book was not +intrusive. A friend of mine took Mr. Spurgeon in his steam yacht up the +Highlands. Mr. Spurgeon was like a boy out of school—all the while +naming the mountains after his friends. + +It is also to be noted how the public opinion altered with regard to Mr. +Spurgeon. When he came first to London aged ministers and grey-haired +deacons shook their heads. What could they think of a young minister who +could stop in the middle of his sermon, and say, “Please shut that window +down, there is a draught. I like a draught of porter, but not that kind +of draught”? It was terrible! What next? was asked in fear and +trepidation. These things were, I believe, often said on purpose, and +they answered their purpose. “Fire low,” said a general to his men on +one occasion. “Fire low,” said old Jay, of Bath, as he was preaching to +a class of students. Mr. Spurgeon fired low. It is astonishing how that +kind of preaching tells. I was travelling in Essex last summer, and in +the train were two old men, one of whom lived in Kelvedon, where Mr. +Spurgeon was born, who had sent the Baptist preacher some fruit from +Kelvedon, which was, as he expected, thankfully received. “Did you see +what Mr. Spurgeon says in this week’s sermon?” said he to the other. +“No.” “Why, he said the devil said to him the other day, ‘Mr. Spurgeon, +you have got a good many faults,’ and I said to the devil, ‘So have +you,’” and then the old saints burst out laughing as if the repartee was +as brilliant as it seemed to me the reverse; but I leave censure to the +censorious. In his early youth, Sadi, the great Persian classic, tells +us, he was over much religious, and found fault with the company sleeping +while he sat in attendance on his father with the Koran in his lap, never +closing his eyes all night. “Oh, emanation of your father,” replied the +old man, “you had better also have slept than that you should thus +calumniate the failings of mankind.” + + + + +CHAPTER XII. +MEMORIES OF EXETER HALL. + + +As the season of the May Meetings draws near, one naturally thinks of +Exeter Hall and its interesting associations. When I first came to +London it had not long been open, and it was a wonder to the young man +from the country to see its capacious interior and its immense platform +crowded in every part. It had a much less gorgeous interior than now, +but its capacities for stowing away a large audience still remains the +same; and then, as now, it was available alike for Churchmen and +Dissenters to plead the claims of the great religious societies, but it +seems to me that the audiences were larger and more enthusiastic at that +early date, though I know not that the oratory was better. Bishops on +the platform were rare, and the principal performer in that line was +Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, a grotesque-looking little man, but not so +famous as his distinguished son, the Dean of Westminster. Leading +Evangelical ministers from the country—such as James, of Birmingham, who +had a very pathetic voice, and Hugh McNeile, of Liverpool, an Irishman, +with all an Irishman’s exuberance of gesture and of language—were a great +feature. At times the crowds were so great that a meeting had to be +improvised in the Lower Hall, then a much darker hall than it is now, but +which, at any rate, answered its end for the time being. The missionary +meetings were the chief attraction. Proceedings commenced early, and +were protracted far into the afternoon; but the audience remained to the +last, the ladies knitting assiduously all the while the report was being +read, and only leaving off to listen when the speaking began. Perhaps +the most crowded meeting ever held there—at any rate, in my time—was when +Prince Albert took the chair to inaugurate Sir Fowell Buxton’s grand, but +unfortunate, scheme for the opening up of the Congo. He spoke in a low +tone, and with a somewhat foreign accent. Bishop Wilberforce’s oratory +on that occasion was overpowering; the Prince’s eyes were rivetted on him +all the while. Sir Robert Peel spoke in a calm, dignified, statesmanlike +manner, but the expression of his face was too supercilious to be +pleasing. And there was Daniel O’Connell—big, burly, rollicking—who +seemed to enjoy the triumph of his own presence, though not permitted to +speak. The other time when I remember an awful crush at Exeter Hall was +at an anti-slavery meeting, when Lord Brougham took the chair; an M.P. +dared to attack his lordship, and his reply was crushing, his long nose +twitching all the while with a passion he was unable to repress. He +looked as angry as he felt. Amongst the missionaries, the most popular +speakers were John Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, and William Knibb, +the famous Baptist missionary from Jamaica, and Livingstone’s +father-in-law, the venerable Dr. Moffat, who, once upon his legs, seemed +as if he could never sit down again. Williams was a heavy man in +appearance, but of such evident goodness and earnestness that you were +interested in what he said nevertheless. William Knibb was, as far as +appearance went, quite the reverse; a fiery speaker, the very picture of +a demagogue, the champion of the slave, and a terrible thorn in the sides +of the slave-owners. Of women orators we had none in those primitive +times, and some of the American women who had come to speak at one or +other of the Anti-Slavery Conventions—at that time of constant +occurrence—were deeply disappointed that, after coming all the way from +America on purpose to deliver their testimony, they were not allowed to +open their mouths. It was at Exeter Hall that I first heard Mr. Gough, +the Temperance advocate—an actor more than an orator, but of wonderful +power. + +It was at Crosby Hall that I first heard George Dawson. I think it was +at one of the meetings held there in connection with what I may call the +anti-Graham, demonstration. On the introduction, in 1843, by Sir James +Graham of his Factories Education Bill, the Dissenters assailed it with +unexpected vehemence. They denounced it as a scheme for destroying the +educational machinery they had, at great expense, provided, and for +throwing the care of the young into the hands of the clergy of the Church +of England. It was in the East of London that the opposition to this +measure originated, and a committee was formed, of which Dr. Andrew Reed +was chairman, and his son, afterwards Sir Charles, who lived to become +Chairman of the London School Board, was secretary. The agitation spread +all over the country, and delegates to a considerable number on one +occasion found their way to Crosby Hall. In the course of the +proceedings a young man in the gallery got up to say that he came from +Birmingham to show how the popular feeling had changed there from the +time when Church-and-State mobs had sacked the Dissenting chapels, and +driven Dr. Priestley into exile. “Your name, sir?” asked the chairman. +“George Dawson,” was the reply, and there he stood in the midst of the +grave and reverend seigneurs, calm, youthful, self-possessed, with his +dark hair parted in the middle, a voice somewhat husky yet clear. He was +a Baptist minister, he said, yet he looked as little like one as it was +possible to imagine. + +It was a little later, that is, in 1857, Mr. Samuel Morley made his +_début_ in political life, at a meeting in the London Tavern, of which he +was chairman, to secure responsible administration in every department of +the State, to shut all the back doors which lead to public employment, to +throw the public service open to all England, to obtain recognition of +merit everywhere, and to put an end to all kinds of promotion by favour +or purchase. Mr. Morley’s speech was clear and convincing—more +business-like than oratorical—and he never got beyond that. The tide was +in his favour—all England was roused by the tale _The Times_ told of +neglect and cruel mismanagement in the Crimea. Since then Government has +done less and the people more. Has the change been one for the better? + +One of the most extraordinary meetings in which I ever took a part was an +Orange demonstration in Freemasons’ Hall, the Earl of Roden in the chair. +I was a student at the time, and one of my fellow-students was Sir Colman +O’Loghlen, the son of the Irish Master of the Rolls. He was a friend of +Dan O’Connell’s, and he conceived the idea of getting all or as many of +his fellow-students as possible to go to the meeting and break it up. We +walked accordingly, each one of us with a good-sized stick in his hand, +to the Free-Mason’s Tavern, the mob exclaiming, as we passed along, +“There go the Chartists,” and perhaps we did look like them, for none of +us were overdressed. In the hall we took up a conspicuous position, and +waited patiently, but we had not long to wait. As soon as the clergy and +leading Orangemen on the platform had taken their seats, we were ready +for the fray. Apart from us, the audience was not large, and we had the +hall almost entirely to ourselves. Not a word of the chairman’s address +was audible. There was a madman of the name of Captain Acherley who was +in the habit, at that time, of attending public meetings solely for the +sake of disturbing them, who urged us on—and we were too ready to be +urged on. With our voices and our sticks we managed to create a hideous +row. The meeting had to come to a premature close, and we marched off, +feeling that we had driven back the enemy, and achieved a triumph. +Whether we had done any good, however, I more than doubt. There were +other and fairer memories, however, in connection with Freemasons’ Hall. +It was there I beheld the illustrious Clarkson, who had come in the +evening of his life, when his whole frame was bowed with age, and the +grasshopper had become a burden, to preside at the World’s Anti-Slavery +Convention. All I can remember of him was that he had a red face, grey +hair, and was dressed in black. There, and at Exeter Hall, Joseph +Sturge, the Apostle of Peace, was often to be seen. He was a well-made +man, with a singularly pleasant cast of countenance and attractive voice, +and, as was to be expected, as cool as a Quaker. Another great man, now +forgotten, was Joseph Buckingham, lecturer, traveller, author, and +orator, M.P. for Sheffield. + +In the City the places for demonstrations are fewer now than they were. +The London Tavern I have already mentioned. Then there was the King’s +Arms, I think it was called, in the Poultry, chiefly occupied by +Dissenting societies. At the London Coffee House, at the Ludgate Hill +corner of the Old Bailey, now utilised by Hope Brothers, but interesting +to us as the scene of the birth and childhood of our great artist, Leech, +meetings were occasionally held; and then there was the Crown and Anchor, +in the Strand, on your left, just before you get to Arundel Street, where +Liberals, or, rather, Whigs, delighted to appeal to the people—the only +source of legitimate power. It was there that I heard that grand +American orator, Beecher, as he pleaded, amidst resounding cheers, the +cause of the North during the American Civil War, and the great +Temperance orator, Gough, who took Exeter Hall by storm. But it was to +Exeter Hall that the tribes repaired—as they do now. When I first knew +Exeter Hall, no one ever dreamt of any other way of regenerating society. +Agnosticism, Secularism, Spiritualism, and Altruism had not come into +existence. Their professors were weeping and wailing in long clothes. +Now we have, indeed, swept into a younger day, and society makes lions of +men of whom our fathers would have taken no heed. We have become more +tolerant—even Exeter Hall has moved with the times. Perhaps one of the +boldest things connected with it was the attempt to utilise it for public +religious worship on the Sunday. Originally some of the Evangelical +clergy had agreed to take part in these services, but the rector of the +parish in which Exeter Hall was situated disapproved, and consequently +they were unable to appear. The result was the services were conducted +by the leading ministers of other denominations, nor were they less +successful on that account. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. +MEN I HAVE KNOWN. + + +It is the penalty of old age to lose all our friends and acquaintances, +but fortunately our hold on earth weakens as the end of life draws near. +In an active life, we see much of the world and the men who help to make +it better. Many ministers and missionaries came to my father’s house +with wonderful accounts of the spread of the Gospel in foreign parts. At +a later time I saw a knot of popular lecturers and agitators—such as +George Thompson, the great anti-slavery lecturer, who, born in humble +life, managed to get into Parliament, where he collapsed altogether. As +an outdoor orator he was unsurpassed, and carried all before him. After +a speech of his I heard Lord Brougham declare it was one of the most +eloquent he had ever heard. He started a newspaper, which, however, did +not make much way. Then there was Henry Vincent, another natural orator, +whom the common people heard gladly, and who at one time was very near +getting into Parliament as M.P. for Ipswich, then, as now, a go-ahead +town, full of Dissenters and Radicals. He began life as a Chartist and +printer, and, I believe, was concerned in the outbreak near Newport. Of +the same class was a man of real genius and immense learning, considering +the disadvantages of his lowly birth, Thomas Cooper, the Chartist, and +author of that magnificent poem, “The Purgatory of Suicides,” written +when he was in gaol for being connected with a Chartist outbreak. He had +been a Methodist, he became a Freethinker, and, when I knew him, was +under the influence of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, a book which George Eliot +had translated, and which made a great sensation at the time of its +appearance, though it is utterly forgotten now. Cooper and I were +members of an obscure club, in one of the Fleet Street courts, where he +used to declaim with great eloquence on the evil doings of the Tories and +the wrongs of the poor, while at the same time he had a true appreciation +of the utter worthlessness of some of the Chartist leaders. As he +advanced in years he gave up his infidel opinions and became an earnest +advocate of the faith he once laboured to destroy. The last time I saw +him was at his house in Lincoln shortly before he died. He seemed sound +in body, considering his years, but his mind was gone and he remembered +no one. At the same time I saw a good deal of Richard Lovett—a noble +character—who worked all his life for the mental and moral improvement of +the working man, of whom he was such an illustrious example. Cooper and +Vincent and Lovett did much between them to make the working man +respected as he had never been before. + +One of the grandest old men I ever knew was George Cruikshank, the +artist, in his later years an ardent advocate of Temperance, but a real +Bohemian nevertheless, enjoying life and all its blessings to the last. +At a dinner-party or at a social gathering of any kind he was at his +best, full of anecdote, overflowing with wit and mimicry; as an orator +also he had great power, and generally managed to keep his audience in a +roar of laughter. While perfectly sober himself, he was very happy in +taking off the drunkard’s eccentricities, and would sing “We are not +fou,” or “Willie brewed a peck o’ malt,” as if he deemed a toper the +prince of good fellows. In his old age he had persuaded himself that to +him Dickens owed many of his happiest inspirations, a remark which the +author of “The Pickwick Papers” strongly resented. At his home I met on +one occasion Mrs. Dickens, a very pleasant, motherly lady, with whom one +would have thought any husband could have happily lived, although the +great novelist himself seemed to be of another way of thinking. +Cruikshank’s wife seems to have been devoted to him. She was proud of +him, as well she might be. He had a good head of hair, and to the last +cherished a tremendous lock which adorned his forehead. He was rather +square-built, with an eye that at one time must have rivalled that of the +far-famed hawk. He lived comfortably in a good house just outside +Mornington Crescent, in the Hampstead Road; but he was never a wealthy +man, and was always publishing little pamphlets, which, whatever the fame +they brought him, certainly yielded little cash. He had seen a good deal +of life, or what a Cockney takes to be such, and when he was buried in +Kensal Green, the attendance at the funeral showed how large was the +circle of his friends and admirers. To the last he was proud of his +whiskers. + +Another friend of mine buried in the same place was Dr. Charles Mackay, +the original editor of _The Illustrated London News_, and who differed so +much with the proprietor, Mr. Ingram, M.P., on the character of the late +French Emperor, for whom Dr. Mackay had a profound contempt, that he had +to resign, and commenced _The London Review_, which did not last long. +At one time his songs, “There’s a good time coming, boys,” and “Cheer +boys, cheer,” were played on every barrel-organ, and were to be heard in +every street. Another of the workers on _The Illustrated News_ was John +Timbs, the unwearying publisher of popular books of anecdotes, by which, +I fear, he did not make much money, as he had to end his days in the +Charter House. His department was to look after the engravings, a duty +which compelled him to sit up all night on Thursdays. Before he had +joined Mr. Ingram’s staff, he had edited a small periodical called _The +Mirror_, devoted to useful and amusing literature. I fancy his happiest +hours were passed chatting with the literary men who were always hovering +round the office of the paper—like Mr. Micawber, in the hope of something +turning up. You could not be long there without seeing Mark Lemon—a +mountain of a man connected with _Punch_, who could act Falstaff without +stuffing—who was Mr. Ingram’s private secretary. A wonderful contrast to +Mark Lemon was Douglas Jerrold, a little grey-haired, keen-eyed man, who +seemed to me to walk the streets hurriedly, as if he expected a bailiff +to touch him on the back. Later, I knew his son, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, +very well, and always found him a very courteous and pleasant gentleman. +With Hain Friswell, with the ever-sparkling, black-eyed George Augustus +Sala, with that life-long agitator Jesse Jacob Holyoake, for whom I had a +warm esteem, I was also on very friendly terms. Once, and once only, I +had an interview with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh who, when he recognised me as +“Christopher Crayon” of _The Christian World_, gave me a hearty shake of +the hands. Had he lived, I believe he would have become a Christian. At +any rate, of later years, his hostility to Christianity seemed to have +considerably toned down. Be that as it may, I always held him to be one +of the most honest of our public men. I had also the pleasure once of +sitting next Mr. Labouchere at a dinner at a friend’s. He talked much, +smoked more, and was as witty as Waller, and like him on cold water. +Another teetotaler with whom I came much into contact was the late Sir +Benjamin Ward Richardson, a shortish, stout man to look at, a good public +speaker, and warmly devoted alike to literature and science. Another +distinguished man whom I knew well was Mr. James Hinton, the celebrated +aurist and a writer on religious matters which at one time had great +effect. He was the son of the celebrated Baptist preacher, the Rev. John +Howard Hinton, and I was grieved to learn that he had given up his +practice as an aurist in Saville Row, and had bought an orange estate far +away in the Azores, where he went to die of typhoid fever. + +On the whole I am inclined to think I never had a pleasanter man to do +with than Mr. Cobden. “Why don’t you commence a movement in favour of +Free Trade in land?” I one day said to him. “Ah,” was his reply, “I am +too old for that. I have done my share of work. I must leave that to be +taken up by younger men.” And, strange to say, though this has always +seemed to me the great want of the age, the work has been left undone, +and all the nation suffers in consequence. As an illustration of Mr. +Cobden’s persuasiveness let me give the following. Once upon a time he +came to Norwich to address an audience of farmers there—in St. Andrew’s +Hall, I think. On my asking an old Norfolk farmer what he thought of Mr. +Cobden as a speaker, his reply was, “Why he got such a hold of us that if +he had held up a sheet of white paper on the platform and said it was +black, there was not a farmer in the hall but would have said the same.” +Cobden never irritated his opponents. He had a marvellous power of +talking them round. In this respect he was a wonderful contrast to his +friend and colleague, John Bright. + +A leading teetotaler with whom I had much to do was the late Mr. +Smithies, founder of _The British Workman_ and publications of a similar +class. At an enormous expense he commenced his illustrated paper, full +of the choicest engravings, and published at a price so as to secure them +a place in the humblest home. For a long while it was published at a +loss. But Mr. Smithies bravely held on, as his aim, I honestly believe, +was to do good rather than make money. He was a Christian social +reformer, a Wesleyan, indifferent to politics, as Wesleyans more or less +were at one time. Square-built, of rather less than medium height, with +a ruddy face, and a voice that could be heard all over Exeter Hall—he +looked the picture of health and happiness. I never saw him frown but +when I approached him with a cigar in my mouth. Mr. Smithies was one of +the earliest to rally round the Temperance banner. His whole life was +devoted to doing good in his own way. He never married, and lived with +his mother, a fine old lady, who contrived to give her dutiful and +affectionate son somewhat of an antiquated cast of thought, and never was +he happier than when in the company of Lady Burdett Coutts or great Earl +Shaftesbury. + +I had also a good deal to do with Mr. W. H. Collingridge, who founded +that successful paper, _The City Press_, which his genial son, Mr. G. +Collingridge, still carries on. By means of my connection with _The City +Press_ I came into contact with many City leaders and Lord Mayors, and +saw a good deal of City life at the Mansion House and at grand halls of +the City Companies. I think the tendency in these days is much to run +down the City Corporation. People forget that the splendid hospitality +of the Mansion House helps to exalt the fame and power of England all the +world over. Once upon a time I attended a Liberal public meeting at +which two M.P.’s had spoken. One of the committee said to me, “Now you +must make a speech.” My reply was that there was no need to do so, as +the M.P.’s had said all that was required. “Oh, no,” said my friend, +“not a word has been said about the Corporation of London. Pitch into +them!” “No, no,” I replied. “I have drunk too much of their punch and +swallowed too much of their turtle-soup.” I will never run down the City +Fathers, many of whom I knew and respected, and at whose banquets men +gathered—not merely City people, but the leading men of all the world. +The glory of the Mansion House is the glory of the land. + +I could go on for a long while. Have I not been to _soirées_ at great +men’s houses and met all sorts and conditions of people? Only two men +have I given myself the trouble to be introduced to—one was Barnum, +because he frankly admitted he was a humbug, though he seemed a decent +fellow enough in private life. Another was Cetewayo, the +jolliest-looking Kaffir I ever saw, and I went to see him because our +treatment of him was a shame and a national disgrace. Once on a time as +we were waiting for Royalty on a distant platform, one of the committee +offered to introduce me to H.R.H. I declined, on the plea that I must +draw the line somewhere, and that I drew it at princes, but oh! the +vanity of wasting one’s time in society. Of the gay world, perhaps the +wittiest and pleasantest, as far as my personal experience is concerned, +was the late Charles Mathews. I had seen him on the stage and met him in +his brougham and talked with him, and once I was invited to a grand party +he gave to his friends and admirers. As I went into the reception-room I +wondered where the jaunty and juvenile actor could be. All at once I saw +a venerable, bald-headed old man coming down on me. Oh! I said to +myself, this must be the butler coming to account for his master’s +absence. Lo, and behold! it was Charley Mathews himself! + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. +HOW I PUT UP FOR M.P. + + +By this time people have got sick of electioneering. It is a great +privilege to be an English elector—to feel that the eyes of the world are +on you, and that, at any rate, your country expects you to do your duty. +But to the candidate an election contest is, at any rate, fraught with +instruction. Human nature is undoubtedly a curious combination, and a +man who goes in for an election undoubtedly sees a good deal of human +nature. I was put up for a Parliamentary borough—I who shudder at the +sound of my own voice, and who have come to regard speechmakers with as +much aversion as I should the gentleman in black. A borough was for the +first time to send a member to Parliament. It had been hawked all over +London in vain, and as a _dernier ressort_ the Liberal Association of the +borough—a self-elected clique of well-meaning nobodies—had determined to +run a highly respectable and well-connected gentleman whose name and +merits were alike unknown. Under such circumstances I consented to fight +the battle for freedom and independence, as I hold that our best men +should be sent to Parliament irrespective of property—that candidates +should not be forced on electors, and that unless our Liberal +Associations are really representative they may be worked in a way +injurious to the country and destructive of its freedom. At my first +meeting, like another Cæsar, I came, I saw, I conquered. The chiefs of +the Liberal Association had assembled to put me down. I was not put +down, and, amidst resounding cheers, I was declared the adopted +candidate. The room was crowded with friends. I never shook so many +dirty hands in my life. A second meeting, equally successful, confirmed +the first, and I at once plunged into the strife. I am not here to write +the history of an election, but to tell of my personal experiences, which +were certainly amusing. The first result of my candidature led to a +visit from an impecunious Scot at my suburban residence, who had read my +programme with infinite delight. He came to assure me of his best wishes +for my success. He was, unfortunately, not an elector, but he was a +Scotchman, as he was sure I was, and sadly in want of a loan, which he +was certain, from my Liberal sentiments, I would be the last to refuse to +a brother Scot. I had hardly got rid of him before I was called upon by +an agent of one of our great Radical societies—a society with which I had +something to do in its younger days before it had become great and +powerful, but which, like most people when they got up in the world, +forgot its humble friends. Ah, thought I, the society is going to give +me a little aid to show its appreciation of my ancient service, and I +felt pleased accordingly. Not a bit of it. Mr. P. was the collector of +the society, and he came to see what he could get out of me, assuring me +that almost all the Liberal candidates had responded to his appeal. “Do +you think I am going to buy the sanction of your society by a paltry +fiver?” was my reply; and the agent went away faster than he came. My +next visitor was a pleasant, plausible representative of some workmen’s +league, to assure me of his support, and then, with abundance of promise, +he went his way, leaving me to look for a performance of which I saw no +sign. Then came the ladies. Would I give them an interview? Some of +them wanted to set me right on Temperance questions; others on topics on +which no right-minded woman should care to speak, and on which few would +speak were it not for the morbid, sensational, hysterical feeling which +often overcomes women who have no families of their own to look after, no +household duties to discharge, no home to adorn and purify. As I had no +town house, and did not care to invite the ladies to the smoking-room of +my club, I in every such case felt bound to deny myself the pleasure of +an interview. But my correspondents came from every quarter of the land. +Some offered me their services; others favoured me with their views on +things in general. It was seldom I took the trouble to reply to them. +One gentleman, I fear, will never forgive me. He was an orator; he sent +me testimonials on the subject from such leading organs of public opinion +as _The Eatanswill Gazette_ or _The Little Pedlington Observer_, of the +most wonderful character. Evidently as an orator he was above all Greek, +above all Roman fame, and he was quite willing to come and speak at my +meetings, which was very kind, as he assured me that no candidate for +whom he had spoken was ever defeated at the poll. I ought to have +retained his services, I ought to have sent him a cheque, or my thanks. +Doubtless he would have esteemed them, especially the latter. Alas! I +did nothing of the kind. + +But oh! the wearisome canvassing, which seems to be the only way to +success. Meetings are of little avail, organisation is equally futile, +paid agency simply leads the candidate into a Serbonian bog, where + + Whole armies oft have perished. + +It is house-to-house visitation that is the true secret now. As far as I +carried it out I was successful, though I did not invariably embrace the +wife of the voter or kiss the babies. The worst of it is, it takes so +much time. Now and then your friend is supernaturally wise. You must +stop and hear all he has to say, or you make him an enemy. Some +people—and I think they were right—seemed to think a candidate has no +business to canvass electors at all. One highly respectable voter seemed +really angry as he told me, with a severity worthy of a judge about to +sentence a poor wretch to hanging, it was quite needless for me to call, +that he was not going to disgrace his Baptist principles. Passing a +corner public one Saturday I was met with a friendly recognition. “We’re +all going to oblige you, Sir,” said the spokesman of the party, in a tone +indicating that either he had not taken the Temperance pledge, or that he +was somewhat lax in his observance of it, “and now you must oblige us +will you?” Him I left a sadder and a wiser man, as I had to explain that +the trifling little favour he sought at my hands might invalidate my +election. One female in a Peabody Building was hurt because I had in my +haste given a postman’s rap at the door, instead of one more in use in +genteel society. In many a model lodging-house I found a jolly widow, +who, in answer to my appeal if there were any gentlemen, seemed to +intimate that the male sex were held in no particular favour. The +Conservative female was, as a rule, rather hard and sarcastic, and I was +glad to beat a retreat, as she gave me to understand that she was not to +be deceived by anything I might say, and that she should take care how +her husband voted. Now and then I was favoured with a dissertation on +the evil of party, but I could always cut that short by the remark, “Oh, +I see you are going to vote for the Conservative candidate!”—a remark +which led to a confession that in reality such was the case. The newly +enfranchised seemed proud of their privilege. It was not from them I got +the reply which I often heard where I should have least expected it, “Oh, +I never interfere in politics.” People who had fads were a great bore. +One man would not vote for me because I was not sound on the Sunday +question; others who were of the same political opinions as myself would +not support me because I laughed at their pet theories. But the great +drawback was that I had come forward without leave from the party chiefs, +and hence their toadies, lay or clerical, sternly held aloof. Barely was +I treated uncourteously, except when my declaration that I was a Radical +led to an intimation on the part of the voter that the sooner I cleared +out the better. + +I would suggest that all canvassing be prohibited—you want to get at the +public opinion of the borough, and that you do not obtain when you extort +a promise from a voter who has no definite opinion himself. Public +meetings and an advertisement or circular should be sufficient; but there +are many voters who will not take the trouble to attend, and a public +meeting, even if enthusiastic, is no criterion of what the vote will be. +It is easy to get up a public meeting if a candidate will go to the +necessary expense; and it is easier still to spoil one if the opposition +committee can secure the services of a few roughs or an Irishman or two. +Democratic Socialists I also found very efficient in that way, unable as +they would have been to carry a candidate, or to hold a public meeting +themselves. One of the funniest performances was, after you had had your +say, to reply to the questions. As a rule, the questioner thinks chiefly +of himself. He likes the sound of his voice, and he sits down with a +self-satisfied smile—if he be an old hand—as if he had made it +self-evident that he knew a thing or two, and that he was not the sort of +man you could make a fool of. But heckling, as it is called, is a +science little understood. It is one of the fine arts. A candidate, for +instance, likes to make a statement when he replies to a question. The +questioner, if he is up to the mark, will gain a cheer, as he denounces +all attempts at evasion, and demands a straightforward, Yes or No. A man +asks you, for instance, Have you left off beating your wife yet? How are +you to answer Yes or No in such a case? As a rule, the questioners are +poor performers, and ask you what no one need ask who hears a candidate’s +speech, or reads his programme. One thing came out very clearly—that is, +the terror platform orators, lay or clerical, have of any body calling +itself a Liberal Association, whether it is really that or not. You can +get any number of orators, on the condition that you have an association +at your back. But they dare not otherwise lend you a helping hand. +Liberalism is to have the stamp of Walbrook on it. It must be such as +the wirepullers approve. I said to a Radical M.P.: “I am fighting a sham +caucus.” “Ain’t they all shams?” was his reply. There is a danger in +this; even though there are still men left in this age of mechanical +organism who value the triumph of principles more even than that of +party. + +My experience is anybody can get into Parliament if he will keep pegging +away and has plenty of money. Let him keep himself before the public—by +writing letters to the newspapers, and by putting in an appearance at all +public meetings, and by promising wholesale as to what he will do. If he +can bray like a bull, and has a face of brass, and has money or friends +who have it, he may be sure of success. As a rule, the best way is to +get yourself known to the public in connection with some new development +of philanthropic life. But a little money is a great help. Gold touches +hearts as nothing else can. The biggest Radical of two candidates +naturally prefers the richer. Men who can crowd into all meetings, and +shout “Buggins for ever,” are useful allies, and men of that stamp have +little sympathy with the poor candidates. Once in Parliament you are +useless, at the beck and call of the whipper-in, a slave to party; but +you are an M.P. nevertheless, and may not call your soul your own. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. +HOW I WAS MADE A FOOL OF. + + +At length I am in the home of the free, where all men are equal, where +O’Donovan Rossa may seek to blast the glories of a thousand years, where +a Henry George may pave the way for an anarchy such as the world has +never yet seen, where even Jem Blaine, as his admirers term him, passes +for an honest man, and claims to have a firm grip on the Presidential +chair. + +I am unfortunate on my landing. I have the name of one of Cook’s hotels +on my lips, and as I know Mr. John Cook makes better terms for his +customers than they can do for themselves, I resolve to go there, but +every one tells me there is no such hotel as that I ask for in New York, +and I am taken to one which is recommended by a respectable-looking +policeman. Unfortunately, it is the head-quarters of the veteran corps +of the Army of the Potomac, who swarm all over the place, as they did all +over the South in the grand times of old. I am not fond of heroes; +heroes are the men who have kept out of danger, while their less +fortunate comrades have been mowed down, and who appropriate the honours +which belong often to the departed alone. Well, these heroes are holding +the fort so tightly that I resolve to leave my quarters and explore the +Broadway, one of the most picturesque promenades in the world. Suddenly +I meet a stranger, who asks me how I am. I reply he has the advantage of +me. “Oh,” says he, “you were at our store last night.” I reply that was +impossible. He tells me his name is Bodger, I tell him my name, which, +however, he does not catch, whereupon he shakes my hand again, says how +happy he is to have met me, and we part to meet no more. I go a few +steps farther, and go through the same process with another individual. +I bear his congratulations with fortitude, but when, a few minutes after, +the same thing occurs again, I begin to wish I were in Hanover rather +than in New York, and I resolve to seek out Cook’s Agency without further +delay. Of course I was directed wrong, and that led to a disaster which +will necessarily shorten my visit to Uncle Sam. Perhaps I ought not to +tell my experience. People generally are silent when they have to tell +anything to their own discredit. If I violate that rule, it will be to +put people on their guard. If I am wrong in doing so, I hope the rigid +moralist will skip this altogether. + +Suddenly, a young man came rushing up to me, with a face beaming with +joy. “Good morning, Mr.—,” he exclaimed; “I am so glad we have met.” I +intimated that I did not recollect him. “Oh!” said he, “we came over in +the _Sarnia_ together.” Well, the story was not improbable. Of the +1,000 on board the _Sarnia_ I could not be expected to remember all. “My +name is G.,” mentioning a well-known banker in London, and then he began +to tell me of his travels, at what hotel he was staying, and finally +added that he had been presented with a couple of Longfellow’s _Poems_, +handsomely bound, as a prize, and that he would be glad if I would accept +one. Well, as my copy of Longfellow was rather the worse for wear, I +told him I would accept it with pleasure. But I must come with him for +it. I did so, and while doing so learned from him that the prize had +been given in connection with a lottery scheme for raising money to build +a church down South. The idea seemed to me odd, but Brother Jonathan’s +ways are not as ours, and I was rather pleased to find that I had thus a +new chance of seeing religious life, and of having something fresh to +write about. I am free to confess, as the great Brougham was wont to +say, I jumped at the offer. In a few minutes we were inside a +respectable-looking house, where a tall gentleman invited us to be +seated, regretting that the copies of Longfellow had not come home from +the binder’s, and promising that we should have them by noon. Next he +unfolded what I thought was a plan of the proposed church, but which +proved to be a chart with figures—with prizes, as it seemed to me, to all +the figures. To my horror my friend took up the cards, and asked me to +select them for him. This I did, and he won a thousand dollars, blessing +me as he shook hands with me warmly, and saying that as I had won half I +must have half. Well, as the ticket had certain conditions, and as I +felt that it was rather hard on the church to take all that money, I +continued the game for a few minutes, my young friend being eager that I +should do so, till the truth dawned upon me that I had been drawn into a +swindlers’ den, and that I and my friend were dupes, and I resolved to +leave off playing, much to the regret of my friend, who gave the keeper +of the table a cheque for £100, which he would pay for me, as I would +not, and thus by another effort retrieve my loss. There was one spot +only on the board marked blank, and that, of course, was his. Burning +with indignation I got up to go, my friend following me, saying how much +he regretted that he had led me into such a place, offering to pay me +half my losses when he returned to town, and begging me not to say a word +about the subject when I got back to London, as it might get him into a +row. I must say, so great has been my experience of honour among men, +and never having been in New York before, I believed in that young man +till we parted, as I did not see how he could have gained all the +knowledge he displayed of myself and movements unless he had travelled +with me as he said, and had never heard of Bunkum men. I had not gone +far, however, before I was again shaken by the hand by a gentlemanly +young fellow, who claimed to have met me at Montreal, where he had been +introduced to me as the son of Sir H— A—. He had been equally lucky—had +got two books, and, as he was going back to Quebec that very afternoon, +would give me one of them if I would ride with him as far as his +lodgings. Innocently I told him my little tale. He advised me to say +nothing about it, as I had been breaking the law and might get myself +into trouble, and then suddenly recollecting he must get his ticket +registered, and saying that he would overtake me directly, left me to go +as far as the place of our appointed rendezvous alone. Then the truth +flashed on me that both my pretended friends were rogues, and that I had +been the victim of what, in New York, they call the Bunkum men, who got +300 dollars out of Oscar Wilde, and a good deal more out of Mr. Adams, +formerly American Ambassador in England. I had never heard of them, I +own, and both the rogues had evidently got so much of my history by heart +that I might well fancy that they were what they described themselves to +be. As to finding them out to make them regorge that was out of the +question. Landlords and policemen seemed to take it quite as a matter of +course that the stranger in New York is thus to be done. Since then I +have hardly spoken to a Yankee, nor has a Yankee spoken to me. I now +understand why the Yankees are so reserved, and never seem to speak to +each other. They know each other too well. I now understand also how +the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can’t sleep at nights. +We are not all saints in London. Chicago boasts that it is the wickedest +city in the world, but I question whether New York may not advance a +stronger claim to the title. Yet what an Imperial city is New York! How +endless is its restless life! and how it runs over with the lust of the +flesh, the lust of the eye, and worldly pride! As I wandered to the spot +in Wall Street (where, by the bye, the stockbrokers and their clerks are +not in appearance to be compared to our own) I felt, sad as I was, a +thrill of pleasure run through me, as there Washington took the oath as +the first President of the young and then pure Republic; and then, as the +evening came on, I strolled up and down in the park-like squares by means +of which New York looks like a fairy world by night, with the people +sitting under the shade of the trees, resting after the labours of the +day; while afar the gay crowds are dining or supping at Delmonico’s, or +wandering in and out of the great hotels which rear their heads like +palaces—as I looked at all that show and splendour (and in London we have +nothing to compare with it), one seemed to forget how evanescent was that +splendour, how unreal that show! I was reminded of it, however, as I +retired to rest, by the announcement that in one part of my hotel was the +way to the fire-escape, and by the notice in my bedroom that the +proprietor would not be responsible for my boots if I put them outside +the door to be blackened. In New York there seems to be no confidence in +anybody or anything. + +As I told my story to a sweet young American lady she said, “Ah, you must +have felt very mean.” “Not a bit of it,” said I; “the meanness seemed to +be all on the other side.” Americans talk English, so they tell me, +better than we do ourselves! Since then I have seen the same game played +elsewhere. In Australia I have heard of many a poor emigrant robbed in +this way. A plausible looking gentleman tried it on with me at Melbourne +when I was tramping up and down Burke Street one frying afternoon. He +had come with me, he said, by the steamer from Sydney to Melbourne. I +really thought I had met him at Brisbane. At any rate, his wife was ill, +and he was going back with her to London by the very steamer that I was +travelling by to Adelaide. Would I come with him as far as the Club? Of +course I said yes. The Melbourne Club is rather a first-class affair. +But somehow or other we did not get as far as the Club. My friend wanted +to call on a friend in a public-house on the way. Would I have a drink? +No, I was much obliged, but I did not want a drink. I sat down smoking, +and he came and sat beside me. Presently a decent-looking man came up to +my new friend with a bill. “Can’t you wait till to-morrow?” asked my +friend. “Well, I am rather pressed for money,” said the man, +respectfully. “Oh, then, here it is,” said my friend, pulling a heap of +gold, or what looked like it, out of his pocket. “By the bye,” said he, +turning to me, “I am a sovereign short; can you lend me one?” No, I +could not. Could I lend him half-a-sovereign? No; I could not. Could I +lend him five shillings? I had not even that insignificant sum to spare. +“Oh, it does not matter,” said my friend; “I can get the money over the +way, I will just go and fetch it, and will be back in five minutes.” And +he and his confederate went away together to be seen no more by me. +Certainly he was not on board the _Austral_, as I took my passage in her +to Adelaide. + +As I left I met a policeman. + +“Have you any rogues in these parts?” I innocently asked. + +“Well, we have a few. There was one from New York a little while ago, +but he had to go back home. He said he was no match for our Melbourne +rogues at all.” It was well that I escaped scot-free. On the steamer in +which I returned there was a poor third-class passenger who had lost his +all in such a way. He was fool enough to let the man treat him to a +drink, and that little drink proved rather a costly affair. All his +hard-earned savings had disappeared. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. +INTERVIEWING THE PRESIDENT. + + +It is about time, I wrote one day in America, I set my face homeward. +When on the prairie I was beginning to speculate whether I should ever be +fit to make an appearance in descent society again. Now, it seems to me, +the question to be asked is, Whether I have not soared so high in the +world as to have lost all taste for the frugal simplicity of that home +life, where, in the touching words of an American poet I met with this +morning, it is to be trusted my + + Daughters are acting day by day, + So as not to bring disgrace on their papa far away. + +Here, in Washington, I am made to pass for an “Honourable,” in spite of +my modest declarations to the contrary, and have had the honour of a +private interview with the greatest man in this part of the world—the +President of the United States. One night, when I retired to rest, I +found my bedroom on the upper storey—contiguous to the fire-escape, a +convenience you are always bound to remember in the U.S.—had been changed +for a magnificent bedroom, with a gorgeous sitting-room attached, on the +first floor, and there loomed before me a terrific vision of an hotel +bill which I supposed I should have to pay: but then, “What’s the odds so +long as you are happy?” The question is, How came the change to be made? +Well, the fact is, I had a letter to a distinguished politician, the Hon. +Senator B—, and he, in his turn, sent me a packet addressed to the Hon. +J. E— R—; and all at once I became a great man myself in the hotel. In a +note Mr. B— sent to the President he informed him that I had been for +thirty years a correspondent of certain papers; and in another note to +officials he has the goodness to speak of me as “the Hon. Mr. R—, a +distinguished citizen and journalist of England.” Certainly, then, I +have as good a right to the best accommodation the hotel affords as any +other man, and accordingly I do take my ease in my inn, and not dream, +but do dwell, in marble halls, while obsequious blackies fan me as I eat +my meals, which consist of all the dainties possible—the only things a +fellow can eat this hot weather. I am glad I have put up at Ebbet House, +Washington, where I am in clover. Like Bottom, I feel myself +“translated.” At Baltimore, the only night I was there, I did not get a +minute’s sleep till daylight, because the National Convention of Master +Plumbers was holding its annual orgy just beneath, and I seriously +believed the place would be burned down before the morning. In the +dignified repose of Ebbet House I have no such fear; my only anxiety is +as to how I can ever again reconcile myself to the time-honoured cold +mutton of domestic life after all this luxurious living. What made +Senator B— confer the dignity of Hon. on me I am at a loss to understand. +I know there are times when I think it right and proper to blow my own +trumpet in the unavoidable absence of my trumpeter; but, in the present +instance, I must candidly confess to have done nothing of the kind. It +is to be presumed that my improved position, as regards lodging in Ebbet +House, Washington, is to be attributed to the social status given me by +Senator B—, a gentleman who, in personal appearance and size, bears +somewhat of a resemblance to our late lamented Right Hon. W. E. Forster, +with the exception that Mr. B— brushes his hair—a process which evidently +our Bradford M.P. disdained. + +This morning I have shaken hands with the President at the White House—a +modest building not larger than our Mansion House, and, like that, +interesting for its many associations. Mr. Arthur is in the prime of +life—a tall, well-made man, with dark-brown hair and eyes, of rather +sluggish temperament, apparently. He did not say much to me, nor, I +imagine, does he say much to anybody. His plan seems to be to hear and +see as much, and say as little as he can. We met in a room upstairs, +where, from ten to eleven, he is at home to Congress men, who would see +him on public affairs before Congress meets, as eleven in the morning is +the usual hour when it commences business. There were seven or eight +waiting to speak to the President as he stood up at his table, so as to +get the light on his visitors’ faces, while his own was shaded as much as +possible; and, owing to the heat in Washington, the houses are kept so +shaded that, coming out of the clear sunlight, it is not always easy at +the first glance to see where you are. The President did not seem +particularly happy to see anybody, and looked rather bored as the +Senators and Congress men buttonholed him. Of course, our conversation +was strictly private and confidential, and wild horses shall never tear +the secret from me. Posterity must remain in the dark. It is one of +those questions never to be revealed, as much so as that which so +provoked the ancients as to the song the syrens sang to Ulysses. The +President’s enemies call him the New York dude, because he happens to be +a gentlemanly-looking man, and patronises Episcopalianism, which in +America, as in England, is reckoned “the genteel thing.” The Americans +are hard to please. Mr. James Russell Lowell had got the gout, and the +New York writers said, when I was there, he had attained the object of a +snob’s ambition. It is thus they talked of one of their country’s +brightest ornaments. But to return to the President. He is a wise man, +and keeps his ears open and his mouth shut—a plan which might be adopted +by other statesmen with manifest advantage to themselves and the +community. The President wore a morning black coat, with a rose in his +buttonhole, and had the air about him of a man accustomed to say to one, +“Come,” and he comes; to another, “Go,” and he goes. I made some few +remarks about Canada and America, to which he politely listened, and then +we shook hands and parted, he to be seized on by eager Congress men, I to +inspect the public apartments of the White House. He has rather a hard +life of it, I fancy, as he has to work all day, and his only relaxation +seems to be a ride in the evening, as there are no private grounds +connected with the House. In the model Republic privacy is unknown. +Everything is open and aboveboard. Intelligent citizens gain much +thereby. + +As to interviewing Royalty, that is another affair. An American +interviews his President as a right. In the Old World monarchs keep +people at arm’s-length. And they are right. No man is a hero to his +valet. But I have interviewed the President of the United States; that +is something to think of. The interview was a farce—but such is life. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. +A BANK GONE. + + +“Was there much of a sensation there when you left B— this morning?” said +the manager of a leading daily to me as I was comfortably seated in his +pleasant room in the fine group of buildings known to all the world as +the printing and publishing offices of _The West Anglian Daily_, where I +had gone in search of a little cash, which, happily, I obtained. + +“None at all,” said I, in utter ignorance of what he was driving at. +“None at all; no one knew I was leaving,” and I smiled as if I had said +something good. + +“No, I did not mean that,” said the manager. “It seems you have not +heard the news. Brown and Co. have suspended payment. We have just had +a telegram to that effect,” which he handed me to read. “Do you bank +there?” he asked. + +“Upon my word,” I said, “I don’t know. I never read the name of the +firm; I only know that I pay a small sum in monthly, and write a few +cheques as occasion requires.” + +“You’re a pretty fellow,” said the manager. + +“Now I come to think of it,” said I, “that must be my bank, as there is +no other in the place, except a small branch which has just been opened +within the last few months by Burney and Co.” + +“Well, I am sorry for you,” said my friend. + +“Oh, it don’t matter much to me,” I replied, with a vain attempt at a +smile. Yet I was terribly annoyed, nevertheless. I had let my deposit +increase more than was my general habit, thinking as Christmas was coming +I would postpone settling little accounts till after the festivities of +the Christmas season were over. I was now lamenting I had done anything +of the kind. I was not very happy. Our little town of B— is a rising +place, where people come and spend a lot of money in the summer. Some +spirited individual or other is always putting up new buildings. +Speculation is rife, and the tradesmen hope to grow prosperous as the +place prospers. Anybody with half-a-crown in his pocket to spare is +hardly ever seen. They all bank at Brown’s. I daresay such of them as +are able overdraw. Private bankers who are anxious to do business offer +great facilities in this respect; but still there are many, chiefly poor +widows and sailors who make a little money in the summer, and they bank +it all. We have a church that is about to be enlarged, and the money +that has been raised for the purpose was placed in the bank, and we have +a few retired officers and tradesmen who have their money there. “They +ha’ got £300 of my money,” said an angry farmer, as he banged away at the +closed door, on which a notice was suspended that, in consequence of +temporary difficulties, the bank had stopped payment for a few days. +“You might ha’ given a fellow the hint to take out his money,” said +another irritated individual to the manager, whom persistent knocking had +brought to the door. I was sorry for the manager; he always wore a smile +on his face. That smile had vanished as the last rose of summer. No one +in B— was more upset than he was when the catastrophe occurred. Some of +the knowing ones in town had smelt a rat; one or two depositors had drawn +out very heavily. Our smiling manager had no conception of what was to +happen till, just as he was sitting down to his breakfast, with his +smiling wife and ruddy, fat-cheeked little ones, there came to him a +telegram from headquarters to the effect that he was not to open, +followed by a messenger with despatches of which he was as ignorant as +the merest ploughboy. I must say that in the headquarters the secret was +well kept, whatever the leakage elsewhere. + +Coming back to B—, the bright little town seemed sitting in the shadow of +death. “Any news?” said I to the station-master as I got out of the +train. “Only that the bank is broke,” was the reply. “Ah! that won’t +matter to you,” said one to me, “your friends will help you.” In vain I +repeated that I had no friends. “Ah, well,” said another, “you can work; +it is the old, the infirm, the sick, who are past work, for whom I am +sorry.” And thus I am left to sleep off my losses as best I may, trying +to believe that the difficulty is only temporary, and positively assured +in some quarters that the bank will open all right next day. Alas! hope +tells a flattering tale. Next morning, after a decent interval, to show +that, like Dogberry, I am used to losses, I take my morning walk and +casually pass the bank, only to see that the door is as firmly closed as +ever; I read all the morning papers, and they tell me that the bank will +be opened as usual at ten. I know better, and all I meet are sorrowing. +One melancholy depositor, who tells me that the bank has all the money he +has taken this summer and his pension besides, assures me that the bank +will open at twelve. I pass two hours later, and it is still shut. +Women are weeping as they see ruin staring them in the face. Woe to me; +my butcher calls for his little account. I have to ask him to call +again. I see the tax-gatherer eyeing me from afar, likewise the +shoemaker; but I rush inside to find that the midday mail has arrived, +bringing me a letter from town, as follows: “With respect to your cheque +on Brown’s Bank, received yesterday, I regret to hear this day of the +suspension of the bank. Under these circumstances your cheque will not +be cleared, so that we shall have to debit your account with it.” This +is pleasant. I have another cheque sent by the same post as the other. +I begin to fear on that account. Happily, no more letters of that kind +come in, and I take another turn in the open air. Every one looks grave. +There are little knots of men standing like conspirators in every street. +They are trying to comfort one another. “Oh, it will be all right,” I +hear them exclaim; but they look as if they did not believe what they +said, and felt it was all wrong. Now and then one steals away towards +the bank, but the door is still shut, and he comes back gloomier-looking +than ever. I am growing sad myself. I have not seen a smile or heard a +pleasant word to-day, except from my neighbour, who chuckles over the +fact that his account is overdrawn. He laughs on the other side of his +mouth, however, when he realises the fact that he has cheques he has not +sent in. Another day comes, and I know my fate. Some banks have agreed +to come to the rescue. They will pay all bank-notes in full, and will +make advances not exceeding 15s. in the pound in respect of credit +accounts as may be necessary. Happily, our little town is safe. Another +day or two of this strain on our credit must have thrown us all into a +general smash. This is good as far as it goes, but I fail to see why the +holder of one of Brown’s banknotes is to have his money in full, while I +am to accept a reduction of five shillings in the pound or more. +However, I have no alternative. I would not mind the reduction if my +friends the creditors would accept a similar reduction in their little +accounts. Alas! it is no use making such a proposal to them; I must grin +and bear it. One consolation is that my wife—bless her!—is away +holiday-making and does not need to ask me for cash. On the third day we +begin to fear that we may not get ten shillings in the pound, and the +post brings me back another cheque with a modest request for cash by +return. All over the country there is weeping and wailing. One would +bear it better a month hence. Christmas is coming! Already the bells +are preparing to ring it in. I must put on the conventional smile. +Christmas cards are coming in, wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy +New Year! and, oh dear! I must say, Thank you! Alas! alas! troubles are +like babies—the more you nurse them, the bigger they grow. + +And now it is time for me to make my bow and retire. Having said that my +bank was smashed up, I cannot expect any one to be subsequently +interested in my proceedings. We live in a commercial country and a +commercial age, and the men whom the society journals reverence are the +men who have made large fortunes, either by their own industry and +forethought and self-denial, or by the devil’s aid. And I am inclined to +think that he has a good deal to do with the matter. If ever we are to +have plain living and high thinking, we shall have to give up this +wonderful worship of worldly wealth and show. Douglas Jerrold makes one +of his heroes exclaim, “Every man has within him a bit of a swindler.” +When Madame Roland died on the scaffold, whither she had been led by the +so-called champions of liberty and equality and the rights of man, she +exclaimed, as every school-boy knows, or ought to know, “Oh, Liberty, +what crimes are done in thy name!” So say I, Oh, wealth, which means +peace and happiness, and health and joy (Sydney Smith used to say that he +felt happier for every extra guinea he had in his pocket, and most of us +can testify the same), what crimes are done in thy name; not alone in the +starvation of the poor, in the underpaying of the wage-earning class who +help to make it, but in the way in which sharks and company promoters +seek to defraud the few who have saved money of all their store. You +recollect Douglas Jerrold makes the hero already referred to say, “You +recollect Glass, the retired merchant? What an excellent man was Glass! +A pattern man to make a whole generation by. What could surpass him in +what is called honesty, rectitude, moral propriety, and other gibberish? +Well, Glass grows a beard. He becomes one of a community, and +immediately the latent feeling (swindling) asserts itself.” And the +worst of it is that Glass as a company director and promoter is +worshipped as a great man, especially if he secures a gratuitous +advertisement by liberality in religious and philanthropic circles, and +exercises a lavish liberality in the way of balls and dinners. Society +crawls at his feet as they used to do when poor Hudson, the ex-draper of +York, reigned a few years in splendour as the Railway King. Glass goes +everywhere, gets into Parliament. Rather dishonest, a sham and a fraud +as he is, we make him an idol, and then scorn far-away savages who make +idols of sticks and stones. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + _W. Speaight & Sons_, _Printers_, _Fetter Lane_, _London_. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTOPHER CRAYON'S RECOLLECTIONS*** + + +******* This file should be named 32806-0.txt or 32806-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/8/0/32806 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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