The following words are given verbatim as spoken by an old woman in the parish on the occasion of my first visit soon after I became Rector. "The old man and me never go to bed, sir, without singing the Evening Hymn. Not that I've got any voice left, for I haven't; and as for him, he's like a bee in a bottle; and then he don't humour the tune, for he don't rightly know one tune from another, and he can't remember the words neither; so when he leaves out a word I puts it in, and when I can't sing I dances, and so we gets through it somehow."
Queer letters, too, find a place among the other curiosities of Whittington. Mrs. How received the following remarkable epistle about a poor woman who had been sent to a lady in Oswestry. There is not a stop in the letter from beginning to end:
I am sorry to send to you Ellen Morris which her his heavy afflicted with the favor on the brain which her is not fit to get her living and her did go to Mrs. G—— and I did write a note to go to her and her said if her had a note from a clergyman her would give her 2 6 [two-and-six] what does it matter who write a note for a person when they are in distress people that can write a note and tell the truth which her has got a pair of boots in a shoemaker's shop which her cannot get them out without two shilling and her his very near barefoot and I hope you will bestow your charity this once for my sake and yours what we give to the poor we never shall want which I do give her what I can give her and God will bless us all that will give with a good free willing heart my dear Mrs. How which I hope you will bestow you are a very good to the poor and it his a great charity to give to this poor woman yours truly Mrs. D—— which her does beg her living from one or another and her does do very well considering.
The above is the complete letter, no date, and no other word of any sort. Vicarious begging letters are not unknown to the police of our big towns, but the scribe who could not do better than the above would have small chance of employment. A modern London begging letter is often a work of fine art.
A further note on a curious letter tells how, in December 1875, a good widow in the village received a proposal from a man she had never spoken to, couched in the following terms:
Dear Friend, I am a widower with two little girls, and I want some one to take care of them. I think we could live very comfortably together in this world, & afterwards we could rejoin those we have loved who have gone before. If you accept this, please write & say so on the other side of this sheet. If not, please return this letter, & dont make it public.[3]
[3] Proposal declined.—Ed
The famous and eccentric Jack Mytton lived at Halston, a country house in the parish of Whittington, not very long before Bishop Walsham How went there as Rector. Some of the old servants from that house were still living in the village, and wonderful were the stories that they told. One would relate how he was compelled to go out on a snowy night and crawl over the ice to shoot wild ducks with his master, dressed only in his nightshirt. Another told how, after Jack Mytton's famous roasting match against a professional roaster in Shrewsbury, his master called for him in his carriage on his way home, and drove him up to Halston that he might scrape him where he was burnt. Happily such days were over before 1850, and no doubt the stories of these old servants lost nothing in the telling. One of the last to survive was the subject of the following passage in the notebook:
Mrs. J——, formerly housekeeper at Halston in Mr. Mytton's time, has long been a sufferer from asthma. She lost a sister, and in speaking of arrangements for the funeral told me she had a vault made for four, in which three, including her own husband, had been already buried, and that she wished her sister to have the fourth place. When I said, "Surely, that is meant for yourself," she answered, "No, I never could breathe in a vault. I must have fresh air. She shall have it, and I'll be buried in the open ground, if you please."
While speaking of Halston a good story may find a place concerning the gentleman who owned the property in Bishop Walsham How's time.