“I should be thankful for being able to write at all, and I hope I am; but I am not enough thankful. The failure of my sight has been very gradual, but of late it has been more sudden. Three months ago I could employ myself in reading; now I cannot, save with a book, such as the
Prayer-book, with which I am well acquainted, and which is of clear large type. So that as yet I can take my duty.
“I was born at Framlingham on January 18, 1810, so that I am now nearly seventy-seven years old. The house still stands where I was born, little if at all changed. It is the first house on the left-hand side of the Market Hill, after ascending a short flight of steps. My father, at the time of my birth, was curate to his brother-in-law, Mr Wyatt, who was then rector of Framlingham. I was the younger of two sons, my brother Hindes being thirteen months older than I was.
“As we left Framlingham in 1813, my recollections of it are very indistinct. I have an impression of being taken out to see a fire; but as I have since been told that the fire happened a year before I was born, I suppose that I have heard it so often spoken of that in the end I came to believe that I myself had seen it. Yet one thing I can surely remember, that, being sent to a dame’s school to keep me out of mischief, I used to stand by her side pricking holes in some picture or pattern which had been drawn upon a piece of paper.
“In 1813, after the death of Mr Wyatt, my father took the curacy of Rendlesham, where we lived till the year 1815. The rector of Rendlesham at that time was Dr
Henley, [8] who was also principal of the East India College of Haileybury, so that we lived in the rectory, Dr Henley rarely coming to the parish. That house remains unchanged, as I shall have occasion to tell. Lois Dowsing was our cook, and lived nearly forty years in my father’s service—one of those faithful servants who said little, but cared dearly for us all.
“Of Rendlesham I have clear recollection, and things that happened in it. It was there I first learnt to read. My mother has told me that I could not be taught to know the letter H, take all the pains she could. My father, thinking that the fault lay in the teacher, undertook to accomplish the task. Accordingly he drew, as he thought, the picture of a hog, and wrote a capital H under it. But whether it was the fault of the drawing—I am inclined to think that it was—or whether it was my obstinacy, but when it was shown me, I persisted in calling it ‘papa’s grey mare.’
“There was a high sandbank not far from the house, through which the small roots of the bushes growing protruded. My brother and I never touched these. We believed that if we pulled one of them, a bell would ring and the devil would appear. So we never pulled them.
In a ploughed field near by was a large piece of ground at one end, with a pond in the middle of it, and with many wild cherry-trees near it. I can remember now how pretty they were with their covering of white blossoms, and the grass below full of flowers—primroses, cowslips, and, above all, orchises. But the pond was no ordinary one. It was always called the ‘S pond,’ being shaped like that letter. I suspect, too, that it was a pond of ill repute—perhaps connected with heathen worship—for we were warned never to go near its edge, lest the Mermaid should come and crome us in. Crome, as all East Anglians know, means ‘crook’; and in later years I remember a Suffolk boy at Norwich school translated a passage from the ‘Hecuba’ of Euripides, in which the aged queen is described as ‘leaning upon a crooked staff,’ by ‘leaning upon a crome stick,’ which I still think was a very happy rendering.