“The April Fool.
“When on the wrong side of fifty I married a second time! My best friends declared it was madness to risk a second family, &c. &c. We married 7th of February, 1807. Early in 1808 it was discovered I should have an increase, and Charles Blomfield, Esq. asked me when it would happen. I answered, in April. ‘Sure,’ says he, ‘it won’t happen on the First!’—I felt the force of the remark—the probability of my being an April Fool—and wrote the following lines, and sent them to Mr. B., from whom I received a note enclosing another, value one pound. The note said, ‘My daughters are foolish enough to be pleased with your April Fool, and I am so pleased to see them pleased, I send the enclosed, &c.’”
Trifles like these are only of importance as traits of the individual. The next is abstracted from a letter to an overseer, with whom George Bloomfield necessarily corresponded, as may be surmised from the contents.
To Mr. Hayward, Thetford.
Bury St. Edmund’s, Nov. 23, 1819.
Sir,—When a perfect stranger to you, you treated me with great condescension and kindness, I therefore enclose some lines I wrote and addressed to the guardians of the poor in this town. They have assessed all such persons as are not legally settled here to the poor and church rates, and they have assessed me full double what I ought to pay. What renders it more distressing, our magistrates say that by the local act they are restrained from interfering, otherwise I should have been exempt, on account of my age and poverty. So I sent my rhymes, and Mr. Gall, one of the guardians, sent for me, and gave me a piece of beef, &c. I had sold the only coat I had that was worth a shilling, and was prepared to pay the first seven shillings and sixpence, but the guardians seem to think, (as I do,) that I can never go on paying—they are confident the gentlemen of St. Peter’s parish will pay it for me—bade me wait a fortnight, &c. The pressure of the times is so great that the poor blame the rich, and the rich blame the poor.
——There is a figure in use called the hyperbole; thus we sometimes say of an old man, “he is one foot in the grave, and t’other out.” I might say I am one foot in Thetford workhouse, and t’other out.—The scripture tells me, that the providence of God rules over all and in all places, consequently to me a workhouse is, on my own account, no such very dreadful thing; but I have two little girls whom I dread to imprison there. I trust in Providence, and hope both rich and poor will see better days.
Your humble servant,
George Bloomfield.
Among George Bloomfield’s papers is the following kind letter to him, from his brother Robert. The feeble, tremulous handwriting of the original corroborates its expressions of illness, and is a sad memorial of the shattered health of the author of the Farmer’s Boy, three years before his death.
“Shefford, July 18, 1820.
“Dear brother George,
“No quarrel exists—be at ease. I have this morning seen your excellent letters to your son, and your poem on the Thetford Waters, and am with my son and daughter delighted to find that your spark seems to brighten as you advance in years. You think that I have been weak enough to be offended—there has been no such thing! I have been extremely unwell, and am still a poor creature, but I now force myself to write these few words to thank you for the pleasure you have just given me.
“My son, or my daughter, shall write for me soon.
“Yours unalterably,
“Brother, and Brother Bard,
“Rob. Bloomfield.”
It may be remembered that Giles, the “Farmer’s Boy,” was Robert Bloomfield himself, and that his master, the “Farmer,” was Mr. W. Austin of Sapiston. In reference to his home at the farm Robert wrote, of himself,
“the ploughman smiles.
And oft the joke runs hard on sheepish Giles,
Who sits joint-tenant of the corner stool,
The converse sharing, though in Duty’s school.”
Farmer’s Boy.
The son of the benevolent protector of Robert in his childhood sunk under misfortune, and George records the fact by the following lines, written in 1820:—