One of his tricks nearly led to unpleasant consequences. Whilst out shooting one day, near Yarmouth, he killed an owl—a bird familiarly known in Yarmouth by the sobriquet of ‘Brother Billy.’ Having arrived at home, he went up into his mother’s room, with the bird concealed behind his coat, and, assuming a countenance full of fear and sorrow, exclaimed, ‘Mother, mother, I’ve shot my brother Billy!’ but the alarm and distress instantly depicted on the distracted countenance of his parent induced him as quickly as possible to pull the owl from under his coat. This at once exposed the truth and allayed the apprehensions of his mother’s mind, but the effects of the shock it caused did not so immediately pass away. Dr. Cooper determined to punish his son, and he therefore confined him, according to his usual mode of correction, in his own house. Astley was, however, but little disposed to remain passive in his imprisonment, and in the wantonness of his ever-active disposition amused himself by climbing up the chimney, and having at length reached the
summit, endeavoured, by imitating the well-known tone of the chimney-sweeper, and calling out as lustily as he could, ‘Sweep, sweep!’ to attract the attention of the people below. Even on his father the incorrigible lad seems on more than one occasion to have tried his little game. One day, while the worthy Doctor was marrying a couple in the church, Master Astley concealed himself in a turret close by the altar, and, imitating his father’s voice, repeated in a subdued tone the words of the marriage-service as the ceremony proceeded, to the consternation of his father, who said that he had never observed an echo in that place before. Once or twice the lad’s life was in peril, as when his foot slipped on the top of the church, and he was unpleasantly suspended for some time between the rafters of the ceiling and the floor of the chancel. On another occasion he had a narrow escape from drowning. It seems that on the Yare are little boats out together very slightly, for the purpose of carrying a man, his gun, and dog over the shallows of Braydon, in pursuit of the flights of wild-fowl which at certain seasons haunt these shoals. When the boat is thus loaded, it only draws two or three inches of water, and is quite unfit for sea. Young Astley nearly lost his life
in attempting to take one of these boats out to open sea. In this way young Astley Cooper, from his fearless and enterprising disposition, soon became a sort of leader of the Yarmouth boys, and at their head, for a time, seems to have devoted himself to every kind of amusement within his reach—riding, boating, fishing, and not unfrequently sports of a less harmless character, such as breaking lamps and windows, ringing the church bells at all hours, disturbing the people by frequent alterations of the church clock, so that if any mischief were committed it was sure, says his admiring biographer, to be set down to him.
The two men who shed most literary fame on the Yarmouth of my childhood were Dawson Turner and Hudson Gurney, who in this respect resembled each other, that they were both bankers and both antiquarians more or less distinguished. Dawson Turner was a man of middle height and of saturnine aspect, who had the reputation of being a hard taskmaster to the ladies of his family, who were quite as intelligent and devoted to literature as himself. He published a ‘Tour in Normandy’—at that time scarcely anyone travelled abroad—and much other matter, and perhaps as an autograph-collector was unrivalled. Most of
his books, with his notes, more or less valuable, are now in the British Museum. Sir Charles Lyell, when a young man, visited the Turner family in 1817, and gives us a very high idea of them all. ‘Mr. Turner,’ he says, in a letter to his father, ‘surprises me as much as ever. He wrote twenty-two letters last night after he had wished us “Good-night.” It kept him up till two o’clock this morning.’ Again Sir Charles writes: ‘What I see going on every hour in this family makes me ashamed of the most active day I ever spent at Midhurst. Mrs. Turner has been etching with her daughters in the parlour every morning at half-past six.’ Of Hudson Gurney in his youth we get a flattering portrait in one of the charming ‘Remains of the Late Mrs. Trench,’ edited by her son, Archbishop of Dublin. Writing from Yarmouth in 1799, she says: ‘I have been detained here since last Friday, waiting for a fair wind, and my imprisonment would have been comfortless enough had it not have been for the attention of Mr. Hudson Gurney, a young man on whom I had no claims except from a letter of Mr. Sanford’s, who, without knowing him, or having any connection with him, recommended me to his care, feeling wretched that I should be unprotected in the first
part of my journey. He has already devoted to me one evening and two mornings, assisted me in money matters, lent me books, and enlivened my confinement to a wretched room by his pleasant conversation. Mr. Sanford having described me as a person travelling about for her health, he says his old assistant in the Bank fancied I was a decrepit elderly lady who might safely be consigned to his youthful partner. His description of his surprise thus prepared was conceived in a very good strain of flattery. He is almost two-and-twenty, understands several languages, seems to delight in books, and to be uncommonly well informed.’ Little credit, however, is due to Mr. Hudson Gurney for his politeness in this case. The lovely and lively widow—she had married Colonel St. George at the age of eighteen, and the marriage only lasted two or three years, the Colonel dying of consumption—must have possessed personal and mental attractions irresistible to a cultivated young man of twenty-two. Had she been old and ugly, it is to be feared his business engagements would have prevented the youthful banker devoting much time to her ladyship’s service.
Yarmouth is intimately connected with literature and the fine arts. It was off Yarmouth that
Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked; and the testimony he bears to the character of the people shows how kindly disposed were the Yarmouth people of his day. ‘We,’ he writes, ‘got all safe on shore, and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, not only by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, but also by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us, sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull, as we thought fit.’ It was from Yarmouth that Wordsworth and Coleridge sailed away to Germany, then almost a terra incognita. Leman Blanchard was born at Yarmouth, as well as Sayers, the first, if not the cleverest, of our English caricaturists. One of the most brilliant men ever returned to Parliament was Winthrop Mackworth Praed, M.P. for Yarmouth, whose politics as a boy I detested as much as in after-years I learned to admire his genius. One of the most fortunate men of our day, Sir James Paget, the great surgeon, was a Yarmouth lad, and the See of Chester was filled by an accomplished divine, also a Yarmouth lad. Southey, when at Yarmouth, where his brother was a student for some time, was so much struck with
the uniqueness of the epitaphs in the Yarmouth Church, that he took the trouble to copy many of them. One was as follows:
‘We put him out to nurse;
Alas! his life he paid,
But judge not; he was overlaid.’