I have spoken of the excitement of the Reform struggle. It was to most of us a time of fear. A mob was coming from Yarmouth to attack Benacre Hall, and then what would become of Sir Thomas “Guche”? But older heads began to think that the nation would survive the blow, even if Benacre Hall were burnt and Sir Thomas “Guche” had to hide his diminished head. As it happened, we did lose Sir Thomas’s services. He was thrown out for Suffolk, and Mr. Robert Newton Shaw, a Whig, reigned in his stead. How delighted we all were! Now had come the golden age, and the millennium was at hand. Pensioners and place men were no longer to fatten on the earnings of a suffering people, Radical politicians even looked forward to the time when the parson would lose his tithes.
The villagers rarely left the village; they got work at the neighbouring farms, and if they did not, they did not do so badly under the old Poor Laws, which paid a premium to the manufacturers of large families. The cottages were miserable hovels then, as they mostly are, and charity had full scope for exercise, especially at Christmas time, when those who went to the parish church were taught the blessedness of serving God and mammon. At one time the dear old chapel would hold all the meetingers; but soon came sectarian divisions and animosities. There was a great Baptist preacher at Beccles of the name of Wright, and of a Sunday some of our people walked eight miles to hear him, and came back more sure that they were the elect than ever, and more contemptuous of the poor blinded creatures who, to use a term much in common then, sat under my father. Now and then the Ranters got hold of a barn, and then there was another secession. Perhaps we had too much theological disputation. I think we had; but then there was nothing else to think about. The people had no cheap newspapers, and if they had they could not have read them, and so they saw signs and had visions, and told how the Lord had converted them by visible manifestations of His presence and power. Well, they were happy, and they needed somewhat to make them happy amidst the abounding poverty and
desolation of their lives. By means of a vehicle—called a whiskey—which was drawn by a mule or a pony, as chance might determine, the family of which I was a member occasionally visited Southwold, prettier than it is now, or Lowestoft, which had no port, merely a long row of houses climbing up to the cliff; or Beccles, then supposed to be a very genteel town, and where there was a ladies’ boarding school; or to Bungay, where John Childs, a sturdy opponent in later years of Church rates and Bible monopoly, carried on a large printing business for the London publishers, and cultivated politics and phrenology. It was a grand outing for us all. Sometimes we got as far as Halesworth, where they had a Primitive meeting-house with great pillars, behind which the sleeper might sweetly dream till the fiddles sounded and the singing commenced. But as to long journeys they were rarely taken. If one did one had to go by coach, and there was sure to be an accident. Our village doctor who, with his half-dozen daughters, attended our chapel, did once take a journey, and met with a fall that, had his skull been not so thick, might have led to a serious catastrophe. Then there was Brother Hickman, of Denton, a dear, good man who never stirred from the parish. Once in an evil hour he went a journey on a stage coach, which was upset, and the consequence was a long and dangerous illness. If home-keeping
youths have ever homely wits, what homeliness of wit we must have had. But now and then great people found their way to us, such as Edward Taylor, Gresham Professor of Music, who had a little property in the village, which gave him a vote, and before the Reform Bill was carried elections were elections, and we knew it, for did not four-horse coaches at all times, with flags flowing and trumpets blowing, drive through with outvoters for Yarmouth, collected at the candidates’ expense from all parts of the kingdom? In the summer, too, we had another excitement in the shape of the fish vans—light four-wheel waggons, drawn by two horses—which raced all the way from Lowestoft or Yarmouth to London. They were built of green rails, and filled up with hampers of mackerel, to be delivered fresh on the London market. They only had one seat, and that was the driver’s. At the right time of year they were always on the road going up full, returning empty, and they travelled a good deal faster than the Royal mail. They were an ever-present danger to old topers crawling home from the village ale-house, and to dirty little boys playing marbles or making mud pies in the street. Of course, there was no policeman to clear the way. Policemen did not come into fashion till long after; but we had the gamekeeper. How I feared him as he caught me bird-nesting at an early hour in the
Park, and sent me home with a heavy heart as he threatened me with Beccles gaol.
In the winter I used to go out rabbiting. A young farmer in our neighbourhood was fond of the sport, and would often take me out with him, not to participate in the sport, but simply to look on. It might be that a friend or two would bring his gun and dog, and join in the pastime, which, at any rate, had this advantage as far as I was personally concerned, that it gave me a thundering appetite. The ferrets which one of the attendants always carried in a bag had a peculiar fascination for me, with their long fur, their white, shiny teeth, their little sparkling black eyes. The ferret is popped into the hole in which the rabbit is hidden. Poor little animal, he is between the devil and the deep sea. He waits in his hole till he can stand it no longer, but there is no way of escape for him out. There are the men, with their guns and the dogs eager for the fun. Ah! it is soon over, and this is often the way of the world.
To us in that Suffolk village the sports of big schools and more ambitious lads were unknown. For us there was no cricket or football, except on rare occasions, when we had an importation of juveniles in the house, but I don’t know that we were much the better for that. We trundled the hoop, and raced one with another, and that is capital exercise. We
played hopscotch, which is good training for the calves of the legs. We had bows and arrows and stilts, and in the autumn—when we could get into the fields—we built and flew kites, kites which we had to make ourselves. If there was an ancient sandpit in the neighbourhood how we loved to explore its depths, and climb its heights, and in the freshness of the early spring what a joy it was to explore the hedges, or the trees of the neighbouring park, when the gamekeepers happened to be out of sight in search of birds’ nests and eggs; and in the long winter evenings what a delight it was to read of the past, though it was in the dry pages of Rollin, or to glow over the poems of Cowper. We were, it is true, a serious family. We had family prayers. No wine but that known as gingerbeer honoured the paternal hospitable board. Grog I never saw in any shape. A bit of gingerbread and a glass of water formed our evening meal. Oh, at Christmas what games we had of snap-dragon and blind man’s buff. I always felt small when a boy from Cockneydom appeared amongst us, and that I hold to be the chief drawback of such a bringing up as ours was. The battle of life is best fought by the cheeky. It does not do to be too humble and retiring. Baron Trench owned to a too great consciousness of innate worth. It gave him, he writes, a too great degree of pride. That is bad, but not so bad as
the reverse—that feeling of humility which withers up all the noblest aspirations of the soul, and which I possessed partly from religion, and partly from the feeling that, as a Dissenter, I was a social Pariah in the eyes of the generation around. My modesty, I own, has been in my way all through life. The world takes a man at his own valuation. It is too busy to examine each particular claim, and the prize is won by him who most loudly and pertinaciously blows his own trumpet. At any rate, in our Suffolk home we enjoyed
Lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day—the easy night—
The spirits pure—the slumbers light—
That fly the approach of morn.