CHAPTER VI
IN NORFOLK
“No one knows what capacities they have for doing and suffering till the occasion comes. When water is ice, we have no idea what latent heat is in it.”
. . . . . . . . . .
“Life—all things here are but beginnings.”
I was sixteen years and five months old, when I left home to go to Downham Market, and take my place among the workers of the world. The thought pleased me. I was tired of being a mere looker-on at life’s great game, and wanted my share in it. It was on the fourth of September, A.D. 1847, and my father was to go as far as Hull with me. There he would see me on board a little steamer sailing down the Wash to Lynn Regis, from which place a carriage would carry me the few miles inland to Downham Market.
I had put on long dresses that morning, and coiled my hair in a knot under my bonnet, and looked quite eighteen; and I think Father was proud of me. I certainly was very proud of Father’s company; not entirely because of his beautiful countenance, I valued far more, that air of distinction which never left him, and to which every one deferred. We had a pleasant journey to Hull, where we arrived soon after noon. I had wondered why this way to Downham Market had been chosen for me, but as soon as we reached Hull, I knew why. It was a large seaport, excepting London and Liverpool, the largest in England; and Father wanted me to see the ancient town, and its wonderful docks.
We went to an hotel and had lunch, and then to the Queen’s and Humber docks, and I got my first glimpse of what a great commercial city must be on its water side. I heard all the languages of Northern Europe on those great walls. I saw 70 woolpacks from Germany; hides, hemp and tallow from Russia; corn from Dantzic, and other Baltic ports; and strange thin bars of iron from Sweden. Father told me this metal would all go to Sheffield to be made into steel. On the Humber dock I saw great bales of cotton and woolen cloth from Manchester and the West Riding of Yorkshire; and other bales of lace and net, from Nottingham. They were going to France and Germany, and all over Northern Europe.
After the docks, we went to the famous Trinity House, a very rich and powerful guild, that supports disabled seamen of the merchant service and their widows, and has been doing this good work for nearly five hundred years. For it is not only wealthy in bequeathed property, but receives a shilling a month from the wages of all seamen leaving the port. We went through the wonderful old place, and were told there were nearly one hundred inmates, and nearly one thousand outside pensioners. The whole place was as clean and neat as the decks of a man-of-war and every apartment, even the council room, was strewn with fresh green rushes, after the fashion of the days of its erection.
I noticed in the entrance hall a Greenland kayak hung from the ceiling. It was picked up at sea with a man in it in A.D. 1613. The man refused to eat, and died in a few days; but the figure in the kayak wears his clothes, et cetera. I made some remark to Father afterwards about Hull sailors being in such a latitude at that date, and he said “they were commonly there then, and indeed were famous whalers as early as A.D. 1590.”
“Are they whalers now?” I asked.