Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale

by R. D. Blackmore

Almost every honest man is the rightful owner of a nickname. When he was a boy at school he could not do without one, and if the other boys valued him, perhaps he had a dozen. And afterward, when there is less perception of right and wrong and character, in the weaker time of manhood, he may earn another, if the spirit is within him.

But woe is him if a nasty foe, or somebody trying to be one, annoyed for the moment with him, yet meaning no more harm than pepper, smite him to the quick, at venture, in his most retired and privy-conscienced hole. And when this is done by a Nonconformist to a Doctor of Divinity, and the man who does it owes some money to the man he does it to, can the latter gentleman take a large and genial view of his critics.

This gross wrong and ungrateful outrage was inflicted thus. A leading Methodist from Filey town, who owed the doctor half a guinea, came one summer and set up his staff in the hollow of a limekiln, where he lived upon fish for change of diet, and because he could get it for nothing. This was a man of some eloquence, and his calling in life was cobbling, and to encourage him therein, and keep him from theology, the rector not only forgot his half guinea, but sent him three or four pairs of riding-boots to mend, and let him charge his own price, which was strictly heterodox. As a part of the bargain, this fellow came to church, and behaved as well as could be hoped of a man who had received his money. He sat by a pillar, and no more than crossed his legs at the worst thing that disagreed with him. And it might have done him good, and made a decent cobbler of him, if the parson had only held him when he got him on the hook. But this is the very thing which all great preachers are too benevolent to do. Dr. Upround looked at this sinner, who was getting into a fright upon his own account, though not a bad preacher when he could afford it; and the cobbler could no more look up to the doctor than when he charged him a full crown beyond the contract. In his kindness for all who seemed convinced of sin, the good preacher halted, and looked at Mr. Jobbins with a soft, relaxing gaze. Jobbins appeared as if he would come to church forever, and never cheat any sound clergyman again; whereupon the generous divine omitted a whole page of menaces prepared for him, and passed prematurely to the tender strain which always winds up a good sermon.

Now what did Jobbins do in return for all this magnanimous mercy? Invited to dine with the senior church-warden upon the strength of having been at church, and to encourage him for another visit, and being asked, as soon as ever decency permitted, what he thought of Parson Upround's doctrine, between two crackles of young griskin (come straight from the rectory pig-sty), he was grieved to express a stern opinion long remembered at Flamborough:

“Ca' yo yon mon 'Dr. Uproond?' I ca' un 'Dr. Upandoon.'”

From that day forth the rector of the parish was known far and wide as “Dr. Upandown,” even among those who loved him best. For the name well described his benevolent practice of undoing any harsh thing he might have said, sometimes by a smile, and very often with a shilling, or a basket of spring cabbages. So that Mrs. Upround, when buttoning up his coat—which he always forgot to do for himself—did it with the words, “My dear, now scold no one; really it is becoming too expensive.” “Shall I abandon duty,” he would answer, with some dignity, “while a shilling is sufficient to enforce it?”

Dr. Upround's people had now found out that their minister and magistrate discharged his duty toward his pillow, no less than to his pulpit. His parish had acquired, through the work of generations, a habit of getting up at night, and being all alive at cock-crow; and the rector (while very new amongst them) tried to bow—or rather rise—to night-watch. But a little of that exercise lasted him for long; and he liked to talk of it afterward, but for the present was obliged to drop it. For he found himself pale, when his wife made him see himself; and his hours of shaving were so dreadful; and scarcely a bit of fair dinner could be got, with the whole of the day thrown out so. In short, he settled it wisely that the fishers of fish must yield to the habits of fish, which can not be corrected; but the fishers of men (who can live without catching them) need not be up to all their hours, but may take them reasonably.

His parishioners—who could do very well without him, as far as that goes, all the week, and by no means wanted him among their boats—joyfully left him to his own time of day, and no more worried him out of season than he worried them so. It became a matter of right feeling with them not to ring a big bell, which the rector had put up to challenge everybody's spiritual need, until the stable clock behind the bell had struck ten and finished gurgling.

For this reason, on St. Swithin's morn, in the said year 1782, the grannies, wives, and babes of Flamborough, who had been to help the launch, but could not pull the laboring oar, nor even hold the tiller, spent the time till ten o'clock in seeing to their own affairs—the most laudable of all pursuits for almost any woman. And then, with some little dispute among them (the offspring of the merest accident), they arrived in some force at the gate of Dr. Upround, and no woman liked to pull the bell, and still less to let another woman do it for her. But an old man came up who was quite deaf, and every one asked him to do it.

In spite of the scarcity of all good things, Mrs. Cockscroft had thoroughly fed the little stranger, and washed him, and undressed him, and set him up in her own bed, and wrapped him in her woollen shawl, because he shivered sadly; and there he stared about with wondering eyes, and gave great orders—so far as his new nurse could make out—but speaking gibberish, as she said, and flying into a rage because it was out of Christian knowledge. But he seemed to understand some English, although he could only pronounce two words, both short, and in such conjunction quite unlawful for any except the highest Spiritual Power. Mrs. Cockscroft, being a pious woman, hoped that her ears were wrong, or else that the words were foreign and meant no harm, though the child seemed to take in much of what was said, and when asked his name, answered, wrathfully, and as if everybody was bound to know, “Izunsabe! Izunsabe!”