principally social gossip and an exchange of pleasantries between the poet and his friend, whom he addressed familiarly as ‘mine ancient.’ It was a great treat to me, of course, to dine with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Once upon a time a Quaker minister had come to Woodbridge on a preaching tour, and all the Quakers, male and female, small and great, rich and poor, were ranged before him. When Bernard Barton was announced, the good old man said, ‘Barton—Barton—that’s a name I don’t recollect.’ The bearer of the name replied it would be strange if he did, seeing that they had never met before. Suddenly looking up, the minister exclaimed, ‘Art thou the versifying man?’ Unlike the venerable stranger, I had no need to ask the question, as in my mother’s album there was more than one letter from the genial B. B.
I can well recall the room in which I dined with the poet. My host had come into a handsome fortune by marrying a wealthy widow—one of the possibilities of a Dissenting minister’s situation—and he had retired from the ministry to cultivate literature and literary men. As I think of that room and that dinner, I am reminded of the wonderful contrast effected within the last age.
At that time the dinner-table presented a far less picturesque appearance than it does now. We had always pudding before meat; the latter was solid, and in the shape of a joint. Nor was it handed round by servants, but carved by the host or his lady. Silver forks were unknown, and electro-plate had not then been invented. Vegetables, also, were deficient as regards quantity and quality compared with the supply at a respectable dinner nowadays. In manners the change is equally remarkable. It was said of a nobleman, a personal friend of George III., and a model gentleman of his day, that he had made the tour of Europe without ever touching the back of his travelling carriage. That includes an idea of self-denial utterly unknown to all the young people of to-day. The study now is how to make our houses more comfortable, and to furnish them most luxuriously. Then, perhaps, there was but one sofa in the house, and that was repellent rather than attractive. Easy-chairs were few and far between. Lounging of any kind was out of the question. In the drawing-room, the furniture was of the same uncomfortable description, and there were none of the modern appliances which exist to make ladies and gentlemen happy. Couches,
antimacassars, photographs, were unknown. One picture invariably to be seen was a painting of a favourite steed, with the owner looking at it in a state of intense admiration; and a few family portraits might be ostentatiously displayed. As to pianos, there never was but one in the house; and a billiard-table would have been considered as the last refuge of human depravity. In sitting-rooms and bedrooms and passages there was a great deficiency of carpets and of oilcloth. But furniture was furniture then, and could stand a good deal of wear and tear; while as to the spare bed in the best room, with its enormous four posts and its gigantic funereal canopy and its heavy curtains, through which no breath of fresh air could penetrate, all I can say is that people slept in it and survived the operation—so wonderfully does nature adapt itself to circumstances the most adverse.
This reference to Bernard Barton reminds me of a portrait he has left in one of his pleasant letters of a Suffolk yeoman, a class of whose virtues I can testify from personal experience. ‘He was a hearty old yeoman of eighty-six, and had occupied the farm in which he lived and died about fifty-five years. Social, hospitable, friendly, a liberal master to his labourers, a kind neighbour, and a right merry
companion within the limits of becoming mirth. In politics a stanch Whig, in his theological creed as sturdy a Dissenter; yet with no more party spirit in him than a child. He and I belonged to the same book-club for about forty years. . . . Not that he greatly cared about books or was deeply read in them, but he loved to meet his neighbours and get them round him on any occasion or no occasion at all. As a fine specimen of the true English yeoman, I have met with few to equal, if any to surpass him, and he looked the character as well as he acted it, till within a few years, when the strong man was bowed by bodily infirmity. About twenty-six years ago, in his dress costume of a blue coat and yellow buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would rarely see. It was the whole study of his long life to make the few who revolved round him in his little orbit as happy as he seemed to be himself. Yet I was gravely queried when I happened to say that his children had asked me to write a few lines to his memory, whether I could do this in keeping with the general tone of my poetry—the speaker doubted if he was a decidedly pious character! He had at times in his altitude been known to vociferate a song, of which the chorus was certainly not teetotalism:
‘“Sing old Rose, and burn the bellows,
Drink and drive dull care away.”’
Bernard Barton goes on to describe the deceased yeoman as a diligent attendant at the meeting-house, a frequent and serious reader of the Bible, and the head of an orderly and well-regulated house. He is described as knowing Dr. Watts’ hymns almost by heart, and as singing them on Sunday at meeting with equal fervour and unction. Bernard Barton feared in 1847—the date of his epistle—the breed of such men was dying out. It is to be feared in East Anglia the race is quite extinct. In our meeting-house at Wrentham, when I was a lad, there were several such. I am afraid there is not one there now. The sons and daughters have left the old rustic houses, and gone out into the world. They have become respectable, and go to church, and have lost a good deal of the vigour and independence of their forefathers. In all the East Anglian meeting-houses fifty years ago such men abounded. Of a Sunday, with their blue coats and kerseymere knee-breeches, and jolly red laces, they looked more like country squires than common farmers. They drove up to the meeting-house yard with very superior gigs and cattle. In their houses creature comforts of all known kinds
were to be found. Tea—a hearty meal, not of mere bread-and-butter, but of ham and cake as well—was served up in the parlour, with a glass or two of real home-brewed ale, amber-coloured, of a quality now unknown, and which was wonderfully refreshing after a long walk or drive. Then, if it were summer, there was a stroll in the big garden, well planted with fruit-trees and strawberry-beds, and adorned with flowers—old-fashioned, perhaps, but rich, nevertheless, in colour and perfume. In one corner there was sure to be an arbour, all covered with honeysuckle, such as Izaak Walton himself would have approved; and there, while the seniors over their long pipes discussed politics and theology, and corn and cattle, the younger ones would make their first feeble efforts, all unconsciously, perhaps, to conjugate the verb ‘to love.’ Outside the church organizations these old yeomen lived and died. There was a flavour of the world about them. They would dine at market ordinaries, and perhaps would stop an hour in the long room of the public-house, where they put up their horses, to smoke a pipe and take a drop of brandy-and-water for the good of the landlord. Now and then—sometimes to the sorrow of their wives, who were often church-members—they would join, as I have indicated, in
a song of an objectionable character when severely criticised. Perhaps their parson would be much exercised on their behalf; but surely the noble spirit of humanity in these old yeomen, at any rate, was as worthy of admiration as the Puritanic faith of the past—or as the honest doubt of the present age. If I mistake not, the fine old yeoman to whom Bernard Barton referred lived not far from Seckford Hall.