[5] I remember once walking from Alton to Petersfield, and passing unwittingly through Selborne.
[8] This was the Samuel Henley, D.D., that translated Beckford’s ‘Vathek’ from the French.
[11] She was hanged on 26th June 1815, for attempting to poison her master’s family; and her story, reprinted from ‘Maga,’ forms a chapter in Paget’s ‘Paradoxes and Puzzles’ (1874). That chapter I read to my father the summer before his death. It disappointed him, for he had always cherished the popular belief in her innocence.
[12] I am reminded of a case, long afterwards, where a clergyman had obtained a wealthy living on the condition that the retiring rector should, so long as he lived, receive nearly half the tithes. An aged man at the time the bargain was struck, that rector lived on and on for close upon twenty years; and his successor would ever and again come over to see my father, and ask his “advice.” “What could I advise him?” said my father; “for we live in Suffolk, not Venice, so a bravo is out of the question.”
[17] A writer in the ‘Athenæum’ (I could make a shrewd guess at his name), after quoting the whist story, goes on: “Dr Belman was the country doctor who, on being asked what he thought of Phrenology, answered with equal promptitude and gravity, ‘I never keep it and never use it. But I have heard that, given every three hours in large doses, it has been very efficacious in certain cases of gout.’”
[20] In 1881 the population was exactly 400. Ten years before it had been 470, ten years later had sunk to 315.
[22] I don’t think it was Tom who employed that truly Suffolk simile—“I look upon this here chapel as the biler, yeou togither as the dumplins, and I’m the spoon that stars yeou up.”
[31] Nicknames are very common—“Wedgy,” “Shadder,” “Stumpy,” “Buskins,” “Colly,” &c.
[33] Seemed.
[39] Amazed.