"Southampton, September 9, 1833.
"My dear Father,—I am extremely sorry that I cannot profit by your directions for swimming. On Friday week I went to bathe at the new baths, being my second attempt in cold water. No one was in the bath at the time, nor was there any rope, but as I thought the place was perfectly safe, I plunged in backwards according to the directions I had received. I sank, of course, and throwing up my chest rose immediately, but when in the water I lay on my back motionless from cramp in my stomach. By no effort that I could make could I force down my feet or turn, and my struggles caused my head to dip so frequently that had assistance been delayed a minute longer I must have been suffocated. I fortunately recollected having read that persons are sure to float if they throw back the head as far as possible, thereby elevating the chest, and remain quite quiet. This
saved me. I mentioned the circumstance to Dr. Shadwell, and he strongly recommended me to abstain from the water at present, as it evidently did not agree with me."
About two years from the date of this letter, Mr. Jones obtained his first important public employment as a secretary to that then itinerant body, the Charity Commissioners. The charitable institutions of England, long corrupted and misused, were receiving a much-needed overhauling, one of the indirect fruits of the Reform agitation. Perambulating bodies of commissioners were traversing the length and breadth of the land, "wanting to know, you know," and eliciting an amount of information which could not have been obtained without the direct personal pressure of inquisitors upon the spot. Their labours produced much excellent fruit, and restored a vast amount of charitable endowment to its legitimate uses. The records survive in ponderous Blue-Books; and the student of general literature may derive an idea of the nature of their investigations, which it is to be hoped he will not take too literally, from the lively ridicule of "Crotchet Castle." When the satirist declared that the labours of the Commissioners did no good to any living soul, he certainly ought to have excepted Mr. Winter Jones, who accepted his appointment—as he told the present writer—mainly in the hope of re-establishing his shattered health by a course of travel and living in the open air. This object he fully attained. The few letters he wrote to his
family on his tour that have been preserved are full of racy humour, and suggest what a page of English life might have been presented by a record of the more private experiences of the Commission, too familiar to be registered in Blue-Books. As nothing of the sort exists, it may not be improper to preserve two specimens here, notwithstanding their want of connection with bibliography:—
"Market Harborough, Nov. 20, 1836.
"Harborough is a monstrously stupid place, possessing no interest that I have yet discovered either in the form of situation or antiquities. The inhabitants of the county are principally graziers and fox-hunters, men of substance, coarse in their manners, and tolerably hospitable. Of the few clergymen I have yet seen, little can be said in praise. One has been suspended for his profligate habits; another drinks so hard that he is incapable of performing the duties of his church, being frequently insane; and a third attended yesterday at our board with his church-warden, both of whom were so fuddled that they could with difficulty make themselves understood. . . . We have a vast deal of business to transact, and every prospect of our work increasing. The labour is not so much occasioned by the extent or intricacy of the charities, as by the provoking stolidity of those who ought to be fully informed upon the subject. There exists in this part of the county a very extraordinary charity founded by a clergyman named Hanbury, who prepared seventeen deeds for the foundation of various branches
of one grand charity. The property settled is directed to accumulate until the proceeds amount to £10,000 per annum (they are at present about £500), when a cathedral is to be erected at a cost of £150,000, and professorships of music, poetry, philosophy, botany, &c. &c., established. One of his deeds he heads, 'Beef for ever,' another, 'Organs for ever,' a third, 'Schools for ever,' with much of the same oddity. He has published a thick octavo volume with an account of his charity and a copy of his foundation deeds. The latter occupy 248 pages of the work, so if I have to abstract the whole of them it is impossible to say when my labours will end."
"Leicester, Feb. 5, 1837.
"Our third and last visit was to a Mr. Hildebrand, a clergyman, and head-master of the Kibworth free grammar school. This poor fellow has just had his wife, mother-in-law, eight children, and two servants confined to their beds with influenza, and I never beheld an assemblage of more ghastly objects than we formed at the dinner-table. With the exception of one, we had all pale cheeks, red eyes, and every other sort of phizzical ugliness, the excepted one had a blue complexion approaching to black. Mr. Hildebrand, however, assured me the next morning at breakfast that the hearty dinner he had made, and drinking as much wine as pleased him (he was, by-the-bye, a long time in being pleased) had completely removed his disorder. I may make the same remark respecting myself. The necessity I