[220] By shear ability, industry, and steadiness, Mr Bokenham had worked himself up from a humble position to high rank in the Post Office. One day a rough but pleasant-looking man of the lower agricultural class came to London from his and Mr Bokenham's native East Anglia, and called at St Martin's-le-Grand. “What! Bill Bokenham live in a house of this size!” he exclaimed. He had taken the imposing, but far from beautiful edifice built in 1829 for his cousin's private residence.
[221] “Life,” ii. 288.
[222] In Edmund Yates's “Recollections” many pleasant stories are told of Lord Clanricarde, to whose kindness indeed the author owed his appointment to the Post Office.
[223] “The close of his career as Postmaster-General,” wrote my father many years later, “was highly characteristic. For some reason it was convenient to the Government that he should retain his office until the very day of his departure for the East. Doubtless it was expected that this retention would be little more than nominal, or that, at most, he would attend to none but the most pressing business, leaving to his successor all such affairs as admitted of delay. When I found that he continued to transact business just as usual, while I knew that he must be encumbered with every kind of preparation, official, personal, and domestic, I earnestly pressed that course upon him, but in vain; he would leave no arrears, and every question, great or small, which he had been accustomed to decide was submitted to him as usual to the last hour of his remaining in the country. Nor was decision even then made heedlessly or hurriedly, but, as before, after full understanding. ... In common with the whole world, I regarded his premature death as a severe national calamity. He was earnest and energetic in the moral reform of the Post Office, and had his life been longer spared, might perhaps have been the moral reformer of India.... That such a man, after acquiring a thorough knowledge of myself, should have selected me for the difficult and responsible post of Secretary to the Post Office, and have continued throughout my attached friend, is to me a source of the highest gratification.” (“Life,” ii. 353-355.)
[224] He had been still further crippled in 1860 by a paralytic seizure which necessitated entire abstention from work for many months, and from which he rallied, but with impaired health, although he lived some nineteen years longer.
[225] “Life,” ii. 353-363. Yates, in his “Recollections,” gives a vivid character sketch of this political head of the office. The portrait is not flattering. But then Yates, who, like other subordinates at St Martin's-le-Grand, had grievances of his own against the man who was probably the most unpopular Postmaster-General of his century, does not mince his words.
CHAPTER IX
THE SUNSET OF LIFE