“I knew of no town to be compared to Ipswich,” wrote old Cobbett, “except it be Nottingham, and there is this difference that Nottingham stands high and on one side looks over a fine country whereas Ipswich is in a dell, meadows running up above it and a beautiful arm of the sea below it. From the town itself you can see nothing, but you can in no direction go from it a charter of a mile without finding views that a painter might crave, and then the country round is so well cultivated.” A good deal has been done for Ipswich since Cobbett’s day. It has its public promenades and in the neighbourhood of the river there still lingers somewhat of the scenery Gainsborough loved to paint. There is also a good deal of literary association connected with Ipswich. The White Horse Inn still remains in much the same state as it was in the times of Mr. Pickwick, “famous,” wrote Dickens, “in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper chronicled turnip or unwieldy pig for its enormous size.” Any one who has sojourned there will find it easy to understand how the illustrious Pickwick came to mistake a lady’s bed-chamber for his own. Why should not the Great White Horse be as dear to the admirers of Dickens as the Leather Bottle at Cobham? If the admirers of Pickwick rush as they do by hundreds to Cobham to view the room where Pickwick slept, why, it may be asked, should not a similar patronage be extended to the Great White Horse at Ipswich.
Curious people besides Pickwick and his friends have favoured Ipswich. There lived there in the reign of William III., a family known as the “odd family,” a most appropriate name, as the following facts clearly prove. Every event, good, bad, or indifferent, came to that family in an odd year, or on an odd day of the month, and every member of it was odd in person, manner, or behaviour. Even the letters of their christian names always amounted to an odd number. The father and mother were Peter and Rahab; their seven children (all boys) bore the names of Solomon, Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, David, and Ezekiel. The husband possessed only one leg, and his wife only one arm; Solomon was blind in his left eye, and Roger lost his right optic by an accident. James had his left ear pulled off in a quarrel; Matthew’s left hand had but three fingers; Jonas had a stump foot; David was humpbacked; and Ezekiel was 6ft. 2in at the age of 19. Every one of the children had red hair, notwithstanding the fact that the father’s hair was jet black and the mother’s white. Strange at birth all died as strange. The father fell into a deep sawpit and was killed; the wife died five years after of starvation. Ezekiel enlisted, was afterwards wounded in 23 places, but recovered. Roger, James, Matthew, Jonas, and David died in 1713, in different places on the same day; Solomon and Ezekiel were drowned in the Thames in 1723.
Thomas Colson, known to Ipswich people as Robinson Crusoe, died in the year 1811. He was originally a wool-comber, then a weaver, but the failure of that employment induced him to enter the Suffolk Militia, and while quartered in Leicester with his Regiment, he learned the trade of stocking weaving, which he afterwards followed in Suffolk. But this occupation he shortly exchanged for that of fisherman on the Orwell. His little craft, which he made himself, was a curiosity in its way, and seemed too crazy to live in bad weather, and yet in it he toiled day and night, in calm or storm. Subject to violent chronic complaints, with a mind somewhat disordered, in person tall and thin, with meagre countenance and piercing blue eyes, he was thus described by a contemporary poet—
With squalid garments round him flung,
And o’er his bending shoulders hung,
A string of perforated stones,
With knots of elm and horses bones.
He dreams that wizards leagued with hell,
Have o’er him cast their deadly spell;
Though pinching pains his limbs endure,
He holds his life by charms secure,
And, while he feels the torturing ban,
No wave can drown the spell-bound man.
—But this security was the means of his death. In October, 1811, there was a great storm on the Orwell, and he was driven in his boat on the mud. He refused to leave his vessel, though advised and implored to do so. The ebb of the tide drew his boat into deep water, and he was drowned.
Amongst the charitable women of Ipswich must be mentioned Miss Parish, a maiden lady, who died there in 1810. She seems to have relieved everyone who was in distress. At the time of her death she had actually twenty pensioners living in her house, besides children supported at different schools, while numbers were cheered by her occasional donations. She was a good Samaritan indeed. It is to be hoped there are to be found many such in the Ipswich of to-day.
VI.
LIVING NORWICH.
We have heard a good deal of Norwich. When the summer comes, some enterprising journalist manages to find his way there, and if he has a copy of Evelyn, waxes eloquent over its gardens, and market-place, and ancient castle, and its memories of Sir Thomas Browne. I write of the Norwich of to-day—of living Norwich—a city with a population of more than a hundred thousand—that has renewed its youth—that is marching on like John Brown’s soul; a Norwich that was, as I first remember it, a seat of Parliamentary and political corruption, of vice and ignorance, of apathy and sloth. It is a grand old city, none grander anywhere in England. It is a place to me of pleasant memories, and the stranger within its gates must admit the charm of its grey towers and churches, its cathedral, its well-wooded suburbs extending over a wide range of hills. In that respect some claim for Norwich that it resembles Jerusalem. From all I can make out I should be inclined to give Norwich the preference. It has fewer Jews and not so many fleas.
And first let me speak of living Norwich religiously. One of our wise kings said that the spire of Harrow was an outward and visible sign of the Church. Norwich rejoices in many such signs. Perhaps one of the most prominent at this time is the new Roman Catholic Cathedral at the end of St. Giles’s, which has been nine years in building, which is being erected regardless of expense, and which is far from completed yet. I heard Cardinal Manning, who was the most complete exemplification of the union of the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove I ever saw, in one of his sermons compare the Church of Rome to a lamb in the midst of wolves. At Norwich, as in most parts of England, the lamb is by no means a little one, and it may be in time it will develop into a ram, and a ram can do not a little mischief. What sign of life does the State Church give? Norwich is full of parsons; are any of them men of note? It had one it borrowed from dissent, Dr. Cunningham Geikie, but he could not stand the climate, and now lives at Bournemouth. What sign of life, again I ask, does the Norwich State Church exhibit? Alas, the reply is not satisfactory. With the exception of its new Dean, there is no clergyman of note among them. Dean Lefroy is able, earnest, active, a worker in many ways, social as well as religious, and on Sunday evening fills the nave of the Cathedral, where he conducts a service minus the Church prayers, and plus Moody and Sankey hymns. He is Evangelical, and is making that influence felt. He is an Irishman, and as a matter of coarse fervid and eloquent. When he came to Norwich, I am told, he expressed his hope that he should soon empty some of its many chapels. At present he has not succeeded in the attempt. I don’t think his church understands the way to go to work aright in that respect. When I was last in Norwich the Primitive Methodists were in full conference. All the religious bodies in Norwich gave them hearty greeting except the Church, and the intolerance of its attitude naturally occasioned considerable unfriendly comment. Wesleyan Methodism in Norwich and throughout Norfolk is making great headway. Still true to its old policy, which has been defined as a penny a week, a shilling a quarter, and justification by faith, it has gone in heartily for the Forward Movement, and the evidences are to be met with everywhere. Congregationalism is also preparing to commence a new cause in a hitherto neglected district, and it is time it did, as it is nearly forty years since the new Chapel-in-the-Field, now under the ministerial care of the Rev. J. P. Perkins, started on its successful career. It already has two prosperous mission stations as centres of religious activity and life. It is needless to say that Princes Street Chapel flourishes and prospers as it has ever done since Rev. George Barrett—one of the most winning of men in the Congregational ministry—has occupied its pulpit. The establishment of the Pleasant Sunday Afternoons during the past two years has been attended with great success and blessing. The large congregations which crowd the Church Sunday by Sunday prove that this class meets a need. It is a pleasing feature of this work that it has called into active service some members of the church who in the past had engaged in no recognised form of Christian work. I was interested to find that at the old aristocratic Unitarian Chapel, known as the Octagon, they have Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Services and that Rev. J. P. Perkins has conducted a service there. In Norwich, as elsewhere, all the churches of all religious bodies suffer more or less by the tendency of people successful in business to live as much out of the city as possible. Christian young men and women seem well looked after. The Church young men have a good institution in a street leading into Orford Hill, while the others meet in one of the old mansions in St. Giles’s Street. Education prospers in the old city. I found a junior institute in connection with the Church where the classes are well attended; and the Board School educates 12,000 children, while the denominational schools between them muster but 6,000. The School Board has established one of a higher grade, which is a great success, while the great Norwich publishers, Jarrold and Son, by their publications have done much to supply the people with healthy and popular literature.
To commercial Norwich I can devote but little space. The city has flourished by reason of its being placed on two rivers—the Wensum and the Yare. The Great Eastern Railway gave it a tremendous lift, and, next to Mr. Colman, is perhaps the largest employer of labour in the district. The celebrated Carrow Works of Messrs. J. and J. Colman, manufacturers of mustard, starch, corm-flour, and laundry-blue, are known all the world over. Next in importance is the manufactory of Norwich ales, as the county of Norfolk has long been celebrated for its growth of the finest malting barley, and Norwich is, unfortunately, overdone with public-houses. I find that Messrs. Colman have established extensive Sunday and week-day schools for the children of their workpeople, and employ two Bible-women to visit them in their homes. I cannot find that the Norwich brewers have distinguished themselves much in this way, though it is to be feared that the need of such agencies among their workpeople must be greater than it is amongst those employed by Messrs. Colman. Norwich is a great place for clothing and the manufacture of boots and shoes. I suppose Harmer and Co. are at the head of the great clothing factories. Their new factory in St. Andrew’s is an ornament to the city, and is perhaps one of the finest in the world. It boasts a marvellous system of ventilation introduced by an American company, which has never before been tried in this country, and which every one interested in such matters ought to study. Mr. Harmer, who in 1888 was Mayor of Norwich, takes a deep interest in its welfare, and is certainly a man whose opinions deserve consideration. He thinks that the contemplated legislation, which has for its ultimate object the doing away with outdoor work, will press very hardly upon the working classes of the city, and will be more injurious to them than their employers. The practice of the firm has been to take into their employ young girls leaving school, who soon acquire much dexterity in their work, and who, when they marry, can be—and many of them are supplied with sewing machines to use at home. Be that as it may, he has done more than any one in the great work of showing how a factory can be rendered healthy, and is to be held in reverence as one of our greatest practical sanitary reformers. One word more. Norwich is the centre of a great agricultural district, and its cattle market may be described as the largest of the kind in all England. In one year alone as many as 95,000 beasts, 137,000 sheep, and 14,000 pigs were received for the market. Till we all become vegetarians, Norwich will, by reason of its cattle market alone, flourish as a living city famed for its flesh pots, and beloved of John Bull.