Students and archæologists, it is true, do their best to preserve some record of the old country traditions and ways which have been so ruthlessly destroyed. How dignified and spiritual was the idea which many of them conveyed! Take, for instance, the old belief which formerly prevailed amongst Norfolk fisher-folk, that deaths mostly occurred at the falling of the tide. From this East Anglian legend was it that Dickens drew his beautiful picture of the death of Barkis. “People can’t die along the coast,” said Mr. Peggotty, “except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born unless it’s pretty nigh in—not properly born till flood. He’s agoing out with the tide—he’s agoing out with the tide.” And so Peggotty and David Copperfield watched by Barkis’s bed till, it being low water, the latter went out with the tide.
At rural weddings in some parts of Norfolk it was formerly the custom to strew the path of the happy couple with fern leaves, and to greet them on their exit from church with wedding peals rung on all the handbells of the village, whilst in more remote times an elder sister was by an old custom obliged to dance in a hog’s trough should her younger sister marry before her. Country maidens in Norfolk who were desirous of a swain used also to recite the following spell, “a clover of two”—that is, a piece of clover with but two leaves—being supposed to possess much magical power:—
A clover, a clover of two, put in your right shoe,
The first young man you meet in field, street, or lane
You’ll have him or one of his name.
As has been said, the advent of the school board rang the death-knell of rural tradition and legend, and the rustic of to-day considers himself far above any such superstitions. Strange old tales and folklore handed down from long-dead generations have little interest for the villager of to-day, who seems to spend a good part of his time lolling about the village street, and flattening his nose against the shop windows, which seem mostly to be filled with those brilliantly coloured tins of foreign preserved meats and provisions which our ancestors, happily for themselves, never knew. The countryman takes his pleasures more sadly than of yore. His rough old amusements and sports are gone; about the only excitement which penetrates into rural life being furnished by some realistically dished-up tragedy or cause célèbre imbibed through the medium of a halfpenny paper.
The folklore of East Anglia has been very thoroughly recorded in various publications, amongst them the East Anglian Magazine, which for some time was edited by the late Miss Mary Henniker, who for so many years lived in the little house in Berkeley Street, familiar to a large circle as the residence of her universally popular younger sister. Her death, which occurred but a few months ago, was the cause of much sincere and genuine regret to all her friends. Miss Helen Henniker, though in latter years labouring under considerable physical disability, ever retained an extraordinary amount of good-natured vitality. She was, indeed, one of those people whom it is difficult to realise as being dead. Bright, vivacious, and good-natured to a quite unusual degree, “Helen,” as she was affectionately called, possessed a most comprehensive knowledge of all the different types which make up that motley crowd known as London society. She was welcome everywhere, and the disappearance of this kindly and original personality called forth many a sincere expression of real grief.
CONCLUSION
Within the last few years death has robbed me of many valued friends, some, like that most kindly of men, Lord Haliburton, dying after severe illness, and others, like my dear cousin Sir Spencer Walpole, suddenly struck down in the apparent fulness of health and strength. Sir Spencer, who attained a position of some eminence as a painstaking and accurate writer of contemporary history, was by nature a man of most judicial and well-balanced mind, and was an almost unique instance, as he himself would admit, of what I may call a serious Walpole, for the majority of my family, since the days of Sir Robert, have never been conspicuous for any particular mental stability. Mayhap some of the southern blood of old Pierre Lombard, a native of Nîmes, whose daughter was our ancestress, is the cause of this. Sir Spencer himself used to say that this erratic and impulsive temperament had in his case been modified by the marriage of his great-grandfather to a lady of Dutch nationality, and his even temper and calm mental outlook would certainly seem to have justified such a supposition.
Erratic, and sometimes lacking balance to the verge of eccentricity, the Walpoles were ever a somewhat curious race, their chief characteristic, perhaps, being an intense love of frivolity combined with a real liking for literature and art. For music, however, few of us have cared at all, whilst most have positively hated its more serious side. As a rule, too indolent to grasp the political laurels which their intellects were in several cases easily capable of winning, and not by nature fitted for a public career, the Walpoles have now for many generations scarcely attempted to emerge from the humdrum backwaters of private life, the founder of our fortunes, Sir Robert, remaining the first and last great politician which the family has produced. Nevertheless, there is a compensation in that very nature which has rendered serious effort so unattractive to us, for with something of the child’s dislike of order and restraint, we have also the counterbalancing advantage of the child’s buoyancy of disposition and easy forgetfulness of trouble, retained in some cases to an age when others of more serious temperament have long ceased to take an interest in anything at all. And now, with these somewhat egotistical reflections, I will take leave of my readers, only hoping that their patience will not have been overtaxed by the perusal of these Notes, Memories, and Recollections.