Congregation, with the Old Hundredth ready for the parson’s dismissal words.
Good Old Parson (not at all meaning rhymes): The light has grown so very dim I scarce can see to read the hymn.
Congregation (taking it up to the first half of the Old Hundredth):
The light has grown so very dim,
I scarce can see to read the hymn.(Pause as usual.)
Parson (mildly impatient): I did not mean to sing a hymn, I only meant my eyes were dim.
Congregation (to second part of the Old Hundredth):
I did not mean to read a hymn,
I only meant my eyes were dim.Parson (out of patience): I did not mean a hymn at all, I think the devil’s in you all.
Curious were the ways of the East Anglian clergy. One of our neighbouring parsons had his clerk give out notice that on the next Sunday there would be no service “because master was going to Newmarket.” No one cared for the people, unless it was the woman preacher or Methodist parson, and the people were ignorant beyond belief. Few could either read or write. It was rather amusing to hear them talk. A boy was called bow, a girl was termed a mawther, and if milk or beer was wanted it was generally fetched in a gotch.
Our home life was simple enough. We went early to bed and were up with the lark. I was arrayed in a pinafore and wore a frill—which I
abhorred—and took but little pleasure in my personal appearance—a very great mistake, happily avoided by the present generation. We children had each a little bed of garden ground which we cultivated to the best of our power. Ours was really a case of plain living and high thinking. Of an evening the room was dimly lighted by means of a dip candle which constantly required snuffing. To write with we had the ordinary goose-quill. The room, rarely used, in which we received company was called the parlour. Goloshes had not then come into use, and women wore in muddy weather pattens or clogs. The simple necessaries of life were very dear, and tea and coffee and sugar were sold at what would now be deemed an exorbitant price. Postage was prohibitory, and when any one went to town he was laden with letters. As little light as possible was admitted into the house in order to save the window-tax. The farmer was generally arrayed in a blue coat and yellow brass buttons. The gentleman had a frilled shirt and wore Hessian boots. I never saw a magazine of the fashions; nowadays they are to be met with everywhere. Yet we were never dull, and in the circle in which I moved we never heard of the need of change. People were content to live and die in the village without going half-a-dozen miles away, with the exception of the farmers, who might drive
to the nearest market town, transact their business, dine at the ordinary, and then, after a smoke and a glass of brandy and water and a chat with their fellow-farmers, return home. Of the rush and roar of modern life, with its restlessness and eagerness for something new and sensational, we had not the remotest idea.
CHAPTER V.
Out on the World.
In the good old city of Norwich. I passed a year as an apprentice, in what was then known as London Lane. It was a time of real growth to me mentally. I had a bedroom to myself; in reality it was a closet. I had access to a cheap library, where I was enabled to take my fill, and did a good deal of miscellaneous study. I would have joined the Mechanics’ Institute, where they had debates, but the people with whom I lived were orthodox Dissenters, and were rather afraid of my embracing Unitarian principles. The fear was, I think, groundless. At any rate, one of the most distinguished debaters was Mr. Jacob Henry Tillett, afterwards M.P., then in a lawyer’s office; and another was his friend Joseph Pigg, who became a Congregational minister, but did not live to old age. Another of the lot—who was a great friend of Pigg’s—was Bolingbroke Woodward, who was, I think, in a bank, from which he went to Highbury, thence as a Congregational minister to Wortwell, near Harleston, and died librarian
to the Queen. Evidently there was no necessary connection, as the people where I lived thought, between debating and embracing Unitarian principles.
Norwich seemed to me a wonderful city. I had already visited the place at the time when it celebrated the passing of the Reform Bill, when there was by day a grand procession, and a grand dinner in the open air; where a friend, who knew what boys liked, gave me a slice of plum pudding served up on the occasion; and then in the evening there were fireworks, the first I had ever seen, on the Castle Hill. It was a long ride from our village, and we had to travel by the carrier’s cart, drawn by two horses, and sit beneath the roof on the top of the luggage and baggage, for we stopped everywhere to pick up parcels. The passengers when seated endeavoured to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow. Norwich at that time had a literary reputation, and it seemed to me there were giants in the land in those days. One I remember was the Rev. John Kinghorn, a great light among the Baptists, and whom, with his spare figure and primitive costume, I always confounded with John the Baptist. Another distinguished personage was William Youngman, at whose house my father spent a good deal of time, engaged in the hot disputation in which that grand old Norwich worthy always delighted.
As a boy, I remember I trembled as the discussion went on, for