-. ANNU 
 
VICTORIAN RECOLLECTIONS 
 
By the same Author 
 
 WET DAYS (1879) 
 
 IN A VILLAGE (1898) - POEMS 
 
 THE LOST PARSON (1902) 
 
 IDYLLS OF A LOST VILLAGE (1889) 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF A COUNTRY 
 
 POLITICIAN (1906) 
 A SPORTSMAN OF LIMITED INCOME 
 
 (1910) 
 
 BRUMMAGEM BARON (1890) \ 
 
 POETS ALL (1895) L NOVELS 
 
 MYRTLE AND IVY (1898) 
 
VICTORIAN 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. BRIDGES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 G. BELL tf SONS, LTD. 
 1919 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE first incentive to writing this book was the 
 slighting way in which people, who very likely 
 know little about the matter, are accustomed to 
 write and talk about the Victorian era, as if every- 
 thing done during that period by those whom we 
 had been brought up to honour and respect was 
 quite futile and absurd. Probably the same class 
 of people will if the earth should last so long 
 in the twenty-first century be disparaging and 
 sneering at the present era, with as much or as 
 little reason. 
 
 It is perhaps better to be a laudator temporis 
 acti se puero of which genus I consider myself 
 quite a mild specimen than to cast an undeserved 
 stigma on one's ancestors. I have, at any rate, 
 admitted the error of the Victorian statesmen in 
 their neglect of agriculture fully acquiesced in 
 by our present-century rulers during the fourteen 
 years preceding the War, which would have been 
 ample time, given the necessary inclination and 
 ability, to restore the land to its former prosperity. 
 
 I should be the last to belittle the immense 
 advance in engineering and other sciences which 
 followed on the introduction of steam. It is not 
 
 "49100 
 
Preface 
 
 England's fault that our inventors have during 
 the last five years used their talents rather in 
 facilitating and rendering more horrible the 
 slaughter of mankind than in cultivating the arts 
 of peace. We were, of course, forced, unwillingly, 
 to follow suit. The world's outlook would be 
 more promising if there were good reason for 
 hoping that if wars between rival nations cannot 
 be entirely averted there might be a return to 
 the primeval fists and clubs with which weapons 
 England would doubtless achieve easy victories, 
 and at the cost of a few broken heads and black eyes. 
 
 A further incentive to writing this book was 
 that I had recently, as is often the case with old 
 people, been thinking a good deal about my 
 youthful days, and it struck me that these reminis- 
 cences might, from their contrast with much which 
 is now occurring, be found not uninteresting 
 reading. 
 
 In this hope I may be disappointed ; but they 
 must now take their chance. Liberavi animam 
 meam* 
 
 J. A. BRIDGES. 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. THE VICTORIAN ERA .... 
 
 II. SOCIETY IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 in. CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN THE LAST 
 
 CENTURY 
 
 IV. AT SCHOOL IN FRANCE 
 
 V. A HIGHGATE SCHOOL. 
 
 VI. ETON MYTHS 
 
 VII. THE PASSING OF THE * DON ' . 
 
 VIII. A MID-VICTORIAN BISHOP . 
 
 IX. COUNTRY EDITORS IN THE PAST 
 
 X. DOCTORS AND PARSONS 
 
 XI. THE BRITISH FLEET IN 185! 
 
 XII. THE * RANK AND FILE * IN THE LAST 
 
 CENTURY 
 
 XIII. CANADA 
 
 XIV. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN 1857 
 
 XV. POLITICAL CHANGES .... 
 
 XVI. A LAPSED OFFICIAL .... 
 
 XVII. SEVEN YEARS ON THE SALOP CLAY 
 
 XVIII. A SURVIVAL 
 
 I 
 
 16 
 
 Vll 
 
VICTORIAN RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE VICTORIAN ERA 
 
 IT has become the fashion for writers in the 
 Press and elsewhere to allude to what they 
 term the Victorian Era in terms of acute ~y 
 disparagement, as if all the happenings of that / 
 prolonged reign were utterly futile and absurd. 
 I think these critics might have been charitable 
 enough to remember our disadvantages. No 
 doubt the chief motive of their sarcasm was the 
 want of a target at which to aim the shafts of 
 what they imagine their humour a little of 
 which would have served better had it provided 
 a substitute. I was born in 1833, and remember 
 our parish church being hung with black on 
 the day of King William IV's funeral, and must 
 therefore be supposed to have suffered from 
 the blight which was about to envelop the long 
 reign just dawning. I confess to our disadvan- 
 tages; but as far as these resulted from the lack 
 
:/ ; T/ : ictorian / Recollections 
 
 of discoveries and inventions which were still 
 in nubibus it must be allowed we were not to 
 blame. 
 
 The introduction of steam, hitherto only known 
 to us, or rather to our mothers, through the agency 
 of the humble but useful kettle, made an imme- 
 diate revolution in country life, and it came, as 
 inventions and discoveries always do, at the right 
 moment. Stage coaches, well ordered as they 
 doubtless were, would have been unable longer 
 to bear the strain of dealing with the increasing 
 population, already seething with the desire to 
 look beyond the boundary of their village, or even 
 of their county town, and to visit one or other of 
 the great cities of which they had heard such 
 astonishing tales. A journey to London was 
 getting increasingly difficult for ordinary people, 
 from the uncertainty of being able to secure post- 
 horses, though the rich could still manage to 
 travel in comfort. It would sometimes be annoy- 
 ing to find that you had to change horses at the 
 half-way houses which Dibdin described as * hedge 
 alehouses,' and at these you would see the poor 
 horses brought out for another stage almost before 
 they had been rubbed down after their exertions 
 in the last. Dibdin's lines would recur painfully 
 to the traveller : 
 
 * While the saddle-sore galls, and the spurs his 
 
 sides goad, 
 The high-mettled racer's a hack on the road.' 
 
 2 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 Railroads were indeed a boon to these poor slaves 
 who were driven and spurred so mercilessly to 
 death, and if steam had done nothing more than 
 release them from their tortures it would not have 
 come in vain. 
 
 From post-horses to aeroplanes is a far cry. 
 It seems only the other day that a little squire in 
 our neighbourhood waxed indignant at the pre- 
 sumption of an airman who flew over his territory 
 his proprietory rights extending, so he urged, to 
 the sky. We advised him to put up a wire fence 
 to keep off trespassers. This he appeared to take 
 quite seriously, and I think he would have taken 
 our advice but for the rise, almost prohibitive, in 
 the price of wire, and perhaps a suspicion that 
 the fence might have to be rather a high one. 
 
 No doubt the introduction of steam put our 
 engineers on their metal, and it was not very long 
 before there were attempts at challenging the new 
 monopoly. When I had been going to and from 
 my school near London for a year or two by the 
 newly-instituted South Eastern Railway instead of 
 the four-horsed coach from Dover, I noticed, 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood of Croydon, a 
 number of newly-erected buildings of red brick at 
 intervals of two or three miles, with spires which 
 gave them quite a church-like appearance a 
 novelty which I was moved to inquire into. The 
 little buildings, I learnt, were the stations on 
 the new and rather grandly named Atmospheric 
 
 3 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 Railway. The centre of the line was occupied by 
 an enormous tube, in which was a slit into which 
 grease had to be inserted by hand after the passing 
 of one of the tiny trains an operation which no 
 doubt accounted for the long intervals elapsing 
 between them. The line was a very short one, 
 and the duration of the Atmospheric Railway was 
 not very long. I looked out for the little churches 
 one day, and they had disappeared ! The collapse, 
 I suppose, occurred from the want of a genius 
 sufficiently inventive to supply a mechanical sub- 
 stitute for the man with the pail. I wondered 
 where the little churches had got to. They may 
 have been bought up by some religious sect to 
 whose views their cheerful exteriors appealed, and, 
 if so, the competition for them was probably not 
 very keen. They are probably remembered by 
 very few, but a survivor here and there may still 
 be smarting from the disappointment resulting 
 from the unsuccessful attempt to reorganise the 
 new railway system. It must be allowed that this 
 was a freak which the engineering talent of the 
 Victorian Era did not often indulge in. (I never 
 heard any mention of the Atmospheric Railway 
 from the day of its disappearance about 1847 
 till a day or two after penning the above paragraph, 
 when having chanced upon Eden Phillpott's tale, 
 4 Brunei's Tower/ I found the whole story told in 
 that favourite author's lucid style, not omitting the 
 grease.) 
 4 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 Another disadvantage, to be lessened if not 
 entirely removed by the agency of steam, was the 
 scarcity of coal. This was bad enough for those 
 who, like us, lived on the sea coast. How people 
 who lived even a few miles inland got any coal 
 at all is hard to imagine. Yet I can only recall 
 one occasion when the shortage was really serious. 
 Of course the supply was entirely sea-borne. 
 Collier schooners would run up on the shelving 
 beach near Deal Castle at high tide, to be speedily 
 unloaded, . and hurried off to sea again. As may 
 be supposed, rough weather put an end to any 
 arrivals of coal. There was a small coal-dealer, 
 with whom my father did not usually deal, at 
 Kingsdown, a tiny village on the coast two miles 
 nearer Dover. This man occasionally had a ship- 
 load of coal, and I remember when quite a small 
 boy being sent on my pony to beg a ton or two, as 
 we were quite without. The little dealer obliged 
 us at thirty-five shillings a ton an enormous price 
 in those days. These collier schooners were tubby 
 affairs, but splendid sea-boats, and they appeared 
 to last for ever. About forty years ago, I saw a 
 schooner, trading on the Welsh coast, on which 
 Captain Cook had made one of his voyages, and 
 as his last was made in 1779 this must have been 
 a record ! To all appearance, she was still quite 
 seaworthy. 
 
 A real grievance one of the few which was a 
 perpetual trouble to dwellers in the country was 
 
 5 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 the want of a cheap postage. This, while the 
 custom of franking lightened it for the well-to-do, 
 made it hard, and in many cases impossible, for 
 the poor either to send or receive letters. It was 
 as someone has recently written the poor 
 folks' letters that should have been * franked.' 
 I remember the delight with which the elaborate 
 illustrated envelope was welcomed, to be shortly 
 exchanged for the penny postage stamp. If one 
 could only have foreseen the price to which col- 
 lectors are to-day sending the superseded wrapper, 
 what a fortune one might have made ! 
 
 Another of our deprivations (of which, as we 
 had not visualised it, we did not feel the want) 
 was the bicycle, which has since done so much 
 to quicken the plodding feet everywhere, and to 
 enliven the youth of cottage and of hall to-day, 
 almost all the children of my village tumble out 
 of their perambulators, so to speak, on to their 
 bicycles. Even the velocipede, its predecessor, 
 was only known to a select few. I used to ride 
 to Dover occasionally to stay with a school friend, 
 when we would seat ourselves as quickly as possible 
 in the midst of the four enormous wheels, and 
 commence to work the clumsy pedals up and down 
 till bedtime. How the thing used to rattle ! 
 When we got back to school at Highgate, we 
 were looked on with envy, and nothing was talked 
 of but ' Leland's velocipede,' of which none of 
 our schoolmates appeared to have heard before. 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 Pipes were lit by flint and steel. Matches are 
 scarce now 1918 but I think they were scarcer 
 with us. There was a match, called a ' Vesuvian,' 
 which was peculiarly unsavoury. The commonest 
 description of match was made of a long, broad 
 slip of pine, trimmed to a point at one end, and 
 dipped in some preparation of brimstone. I 
 remember when the two-horsed coach from Deal 
 to Dover stopped at the top of the hill running 
 down to the latter town, to enable the passengers 
 to admire the view, the driver would also call 
 attention to an old man who was seen selling 
 matches by the road-side, and who was menda- 
 ciously reported, owing to his blindness, to have 
 extended the sharpening process to his fingers. 
 
 Guns were fired with flint and steel, of which 
 a good number of sportsmen continued to avail 
 themselves long after the invention of percussion 
 caps. There were no breech-loading guns. The 
 loading of ' Brown Bess * as the military musket 
 was called what with biting the cartridge, ram- 
 ming down the bullet, and returning the ramrod 
 to its place, took quite a long time. Occasionally 
 a recruit would omit the last of the series, when 
 the militia colonel, riding in front of his regiment 
 on parade, had to run the risk of being spitted. 
 
 Yet even our traducers must allow there were 
 compensations. There was, at any rate, no lack 
 of great personalities sufficient, indeed, to pre- 
 serve the national honour intact, and to hand down 
 
 7 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 a substratum for their successors to build upon 
 and improve and the names of those who assisted 
 that benighted age to struggle through the dark- 
 ness are not yet forgotten. To begin with, there 
 was the Queen, who, if not a ruler of the type 
 which had been made famous in history by queens 
 of Egypt and elsewhere which, indeed, our 
 Constitution would scarcely have allowed set an 
 example to her subjects as wife and mother, which 
 the majority were careful to follow. This example 
 the new century humourists pass by with a sneer; 
 yet it may be asked what she could have done that 
 would have been of more service to her people. 
 
 We children had a weekly, and occasionally a 
 more frequent, reminder that all the glory had not 
 yet departed. On Sundays, in church, by stand- 
 ing on tiptoe, we could look across the aisle and 
 into the pew where the great Duke of Wellington 
 then nearly worn out by the stress of his long 
 term of duty, during which he had successfully 
 defended the country from an attack second only 
 to the one now merging, after four long years, 
 into victory was politely fixing his ear-trumpet 
 (as the parson commenced his ascent of the three- 
 decker) before resigning himself to what most of 
 us allowed to be well-earned slumber. On week- 
 days we would meet him on the Castle front, and 
 be the proud recipients of the salute with two 
 fingers which he never failed to give us in return 
 
 for our childish adulation. The last time I saw 
 8 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 him was one Sunday, a few weeks before his death, 
 when on his way out of church he stopped, and, 
 leaning over the door of our pew, which was just 
 opposite his own, made my mother a low and, 
 as it proved, a farewell bow. 
 
 For others there were Peel, Brougham, 
 Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone, Cobden, and 
 Bright these last not everyone's money the great 
 Lord Salisbury, and others of views sufficiently 
 varied to enable every country politician to choose 
 a statesman to his mind. 
 
 Most of these are already forgotten, though 
 they may have deserved to be kept in memory 
 a little longer. The one still best remembered, 
 who was during his lifetime less famous than two 
 or three of his colleagues or opponents, appears 
 to have been more or less indebted for his survival 
 to his connection with a common wildflower, 
 which before the alliance had not been specially 
 popular. April 19 has long been known as 
 ' Dizzy's day,' and even the long continuance of 
 the War did not cause the date to be overlooked. 
 Indeed, on the last anniversary, in 1918, more of 
 our community than usual were sporting a prim- 
 rose in their button-holes, while some old fellows 
 had quite a bunch. Yet we are far from being a 
 political village, and there can be but few amongst 
 us who knew more of Lord Beaconsfield than that 
 he was a Tory Minister a long time ago, who was 
 reported to have had a great affection for the 
 
 9 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 primrose. Some of his admirers may have been 
 touched by the idea of a bond of sympathy between 
 their humble selves and a great Prime Minister. 
 In this district, when the primrose is gemming 
 the fields and hedgerows, you cannot be long in 
 the company of an old or middle-aged farmer 
 without hearing an allusion to * Old Dizzy.' 
 1 They'll last till the igth, won't they?' in a 
 tone that almost suggests that the primrose's 
 failure to * stick it out ' would be a misfortune 
 for him and for agriculture. And they do last ; 
 though when there is an early spring and the 
 little yellow flowers begin to appear early in 
 February, it must be hard for them to hold out. 
 Even away from our village those who could have 
 heard * Dizzy ' in the House of Commons are 
 now very few, and those who honoured him on 
 the strength of what their fathers told them are 
 getting middle-aged. Yet his fame is at least as 
 secure as that of any leading statesman of the 
 last or the present generation. He had, and still 
 has, his enemies de mortuis nil nisi bonum not- 
 withstanding. What great man would wish to be 
 without them ? It is the Minister who hopes to 
 cling to office by pleasing everyone, or rather by 
 offending no one, who has no enemies and no 
 friends, and who is forgotten, or only remembered 
 with scorn. 
 
 The question has been asked, * Did Disraeli 
 really care for the primrose ? Did he care a jot 
 10 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 for any wildflower ? ' The answer is not of 
 much importance. If he did not care, how he 
 must have laughed in his sleeve at the exuberance 
 of some of his admirers who decided, against 
 evidence, that a sentimental affection for a simple 
 and common wildflower was the motive power on 
 which a versatile and not very simple politician, 
 whom some regarded as an inferior Macchiavelli, 
 chiefly depended. Not that anyone has suggested 
 that his supposed love for the primrose was due 
 to any pretence on his part. When the idea had 
 once taken root, it grew ; and it continues to grow, 
 and the memorial, springing freshly every year, 
 has the advantage over those built, apparently, of 
 more lasting materials, yet in frequent need of 
 repair. There comes a time when economical 
 ratepayers begin to inquire why So-and-so's statue 
 is allowed to outlive the memory which it has 
 been unable to foster. Yet the memory of even 
 an eminent statesman is seldom assisted when it 
 is unable to keep itself alive by recollections of 
 his personal habits and predilections. Palmerston, 
 in his way a great Prime Minister, was wont, if 
 Punch's caricatures can be trusted, to carry a straw 
 in his mouth. The primrose has outlasted the 
 straw. 
 
 Gladstone is now little spoken of, though he 
 had his enormous collars, his little bags, and his 
 cheap claret to depend on. But these, like their 
 author, are out of fashion, I suppose that when 
 
 ii 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 a so- called great man is forgotten almost as soon 
 as dead, it means that he was rather a great 
 tactician than a great Minister, and that his work 
 has been recognised as ephemeral. 
 
 It is a question whether ' Dizzy * has not done 
 as much for his little favourite as the latter 
 undoubtedly did for him. There are more and 
 more primroses every year, and though the flower 
 cannot increase in beauty, the beauty it undeniably 
 owns is more noticed than before, and one might 
 almost say more respected. Other spring flowers 
 have no chance with it. It appears one spring- 
 time where it is not particularly wanted, but it 
 is almost always allowed to stay and multiply. 
 This is due to * Dizzy's ' favouritism, real or 
 supposed. There must have been something, at 
 any rate, in the man if not in the statesman, whose 
 regard could protect an insignificant flower which 
 one would have thought was far beneath his notice. 
 
 We are grateful to the primrose, and wish that 
 other deserving men ignoti longa nocte carent quia 
 flore sacro could have hit on this way, simpler 
 and more pleasing than a mausoleum, of keeping 
 themselves alive. It does one good, it does the 
 country good, to find the name of a man who 
 did his best for England remembered and 
 honoured long after he is dead and gone. Yet, 
 what flower would have worked for his patron 
 like the primrose ? 
 
 For us, as yet with no taste for Ministers, 
 
 12 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 there were our mothers, modelled as closely as 
 might be on the example of the Great Queen 
 a little too closely it may have seemed to the elder 
 amongst us, yet, taken altogether, the finest and 
 best women of any epoch in the world, and quite 
 sufficient of themselves to save the country from 
 ignominy, if not to endow it with glory. 
 
 If they were not always either beautiful or wise, 
 they gained love and respect everywhere without 
 being either. They were true and affectionate 
 women, without pretence to any very great know- 
 ledge of literature or science. They believed every 
 word of the Bible, and may have had good cause for 
 feeling assured that the records of favoured mortals 
 holding communion with God were not necessarily 
 fables. They had little ambition, except for their 
 children that they should grow up good, honest 
 men and women ; and what ambition could be 
 more praiseworthy ? The teasing arrows of spite 
 and meanness glanced off them as if from some 
 invisible armour ; nor did they ever seem conscious 
 of having been aimed at. They never ridiculed 
 anyone, and it was only their example that made 
 their children so often laugh at themselves. They 
 carried out to the utmost the Christian principle 
 of forgiving ; they only did not forgive often 
 because it was almost impossible to make them 
 see that anyone had injured them, and quite 
 hopeless to induce them to think that the injury 
 was intentional. And if the mothers had faith, 
 
 13 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 hope, and chanty, surely some fragments of these 
 virtues will have been retained by their sons. 
 
 Our mother never underwent the troubles and 
 anxieties caused by the * servant question.' Almost 
 every young girl who took service with her stayed 
 till she either got married or retired from service. 
 To have lived in her house was a certificate of 
 virtue and capacity. After having been away for 
 many years, I went down with my daughters, a 
 short time ago, to the place where I had lived in 
 boyhood. Two of the old servants, sisters, both 
 getting old, were living together in the little town. 
 They found us out, and seemed at once to look 
 on my daughters as their belongings. Of me, 
 whom they had last seen as a schoolboy, they 
 could not make enough They recalled sayings 
 of my mother's, and how she had always thought 
 of their welfare as her own. These were by no 
 means exceptional cases. Even now there are a 
 few of these jewels left, and they are priceless 
 indeed. Naturally, young girls nowadays want 
 to get about and see the world. I am afraid they 
 sometimes find it a poor place to wander in. 
 
 No doubt what chiefly amuses the critics of 
 the Victorian Era is the dress then worn by women. 
 I grant that the crinoline was absurd, the clothes 
 generally too voluminous, and that beauty was in 
 those days so closely veiled that it could not always 
 even be guessed at. There is little left now to 
 the imagination ; and this is a mistake. A via 
 14 
 
The Victorian Era 
 
 media would have been to most people a more 
 welcome settlement. The other day I was in a 
 London motor-bus, when a stout lady, who might 
 once have been good-looking, got in. She had very 
 little on, and that little was arranged to display 
 rather than to veil what she may have imagined 
 her charms. I think most of the passengers, 
 young women some of them, were rather offended 
 than pleased by the exposure. In mid-Victorian 
 days the woman would have been hooted, if she 
 had not been put down for a figure escaped from 
 a waxwork or a travelling show. This was a case 
 which the via media could scarcely have dealt with. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SOCIETY IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 LIFE in the country, for all its lack of excite- 
 ment, was yet not unhappy. It was not, 
 indeed, till I went to Eton that I began to 
 find the country dull when I came home for the 
 holidays. Eton, of course, was a good deal livelier, 
 and we used to think an * extra week ' which our 
 patrons, from not understanding our feelings on 
 the matter, would sometimes insist on asking for, 
 a terrible nuisance. Dull or not, we had to make 
 the best of it. Little country towns and villages 
 stuck together, young and old, poor and well-to-do 
 except for a cantankerous old fellow here and 
 there and formed little societies of their own. 
 Farmers, if rather uncouth and of little use socially, 
 were good fellows, adepts at their trade, and with 
 the * character ' now so seldom to be met with 
 that writers in search of copy have to substitute 
 inventions of their own, which are too often 
 laborious failures. The country was fairly pros- 
 perous, and might have remained so if it had had 
 
 its fair share of attention. 
 16 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 Perhaps the greatest reproach that can be 
 levelled at the Victorian Era is its neglect of 
 agriculture, but this only in the latter part of 
 the reign. The swift and astonishing growth of 
 the big towns, and the spread of commercial in 
 opposition to the landed interests, made -the latter 
 appear small and even negligible. There was no 
 combination, worthy of the name, among farmers, 
 and their loyalty prevented them from making 
 themselves obnoxious even to a Government which 
 neglected or harassed them, and which judicious 
 opposition and perpetual heckling, now so well 
 managed, might have caused to pay some atten- 
 tion to their needs. 
 
 The collapse was sudden; in 1867 everything 
 had seemed prosperous; two or three years later 
 there was scarcely anything left to preserve. The 
 cultivation of wheat had been discontinued on the 
 strong soils from which our best crops had hitherto 
 been drawn. Parts of Shropshire, Essex, Sussex, 
 and Wales were already derelict or turned into 
 poor pasture, and there was no sign of any states- 
 man with the required ability, or, apparently, with 
 the wish, to stem the tide. People were contented 
 to grow up and die with the idea that England 
 would always be able to get her supplies of wheat 
 from abroad. What necessity was there for 
 growing it at home ? It was, at any rate, certain 
 that if our farmers were to grow it they must in 
 some way be subsidised. This was considered by 
 
 c 17 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 the great majority to settle the matter. The 
 people of the big towns were not sufficiently 
 patriotic, or they were, at any rate, too shortsighted 
 to allow themselves to be taxed for the saving of 
 the farmers. A few schemes were suggested: 
 granaries in which to store the wheat from over- 
 seas, and a bounty on its home cultivation. This 
 last was talked of for some time, but the details 
 were various and confusing ; it never came to 
 anything, and the country, with the exception of 
 the farmers, got used to the idea of buying by far 
 the greatest part of our necessary food from abroad. 
 This was a bad preparation for the trouble that 
 was slowly but surely coming upon us; and the 
 Kaiser, even then busy with his preparations, 
 doubtless did not omit to notice the signs of decay 
 in our agriculture. We were, indeed, laying our- 
 selves open to the blow. 
 
 Still, as I said, country life was not unhappy. 
 We managed to live contented, without greatly 
 desiring excitements, or rushing to and fro without 
 reason. Village * society,' if it could be so called, 
 made no attempt at being anything but homely; 
 that, after all, was what we were used to. Our 
 neighbours were neither very wise nor very witty 
 I find at this distant date, and with all their advan- 
 tages, that there are still quite a number of silly 
 people in the towns. We knew a few people well, 
 instead of knowing very little of a great many. 
 
 It was quite possible to get along with two or 
 18 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 three friends of long standing, who instead of 
 wearying grew dearer year by year. The nice 
 people were sometimes very nice ; nor need it be 
 supposed that because they were not fashionable 
 they were therefore coarse or undignified. It can 
 at least be said for them that they were never 
 affected or snobbish. A family living in the 
 country, with nothing but a second-rate two- 
 horsed coach to take them on the first stage of a 
 journey, generally preferred to stop at home, 
 from whence it was so tiresome and expensive 
 to get away. 
 
 For us there were the retired admirals to 
 assist in our enlivening. We children found them 
 very amusing. There were numbers of them, 
 hale old fellows for the most "part, some just 
 retired from active service ; others, after passing 
 many years as post-captains which people got to 
 interpret as captains without a post eventuating 
 in some miraculous way into admirals, when they 
 at once put up a flagstaff to overshadow the little 
 house as if it were a vine or fig-tree. These 
 were careful, as far as possible, to keep up the 
 traditions of the Service, and would roar their 
 * good morning * to you across the road, as if they 
 were hailing a ship. They spent most of their 
 time reading the newspapers or talking over naval 
 matters in the little * reading-room,' with its 
 flagstaff, of course, on the sea-front, in proximity 
 to the two rickety old bathing-machines. Two 
 
 19 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 or three of them were great friends of my father, 
 and could be depended on to drop in for a chat 
 or game of chess at short intervals. 
 
 I suppose we children had more sources of 
 amusement than the generality who lived farther 
 inland. We had no cinemas, without which every 
 little country town would to-day think itself 
 desolate indeed. You may see the young folk 
 waiting impatiently outside for the show to open, 
 and it is a pity that up to the present time it has 
 shown few signs of developing into an educational 
 aid. We had something better than cinemas. 
 From the garden and from the windows of our 
 house, which stood on high ground about half a 
 mile from the beach, we had a good view of the 
 Downs and of the shipping sometimes 1000 or 
 1500 ships waiting for a wind. The sight, when 
 on a change of wind they all set sail, instantaneously 
 as it were, for their destinations, was one which 
 the beholder will never forget, and which will 
 never be seen again. Occasionally there would be 
 the spectacle of ships that had run on the Goodwin 
 Sands being towed off by the famous Deal luggers, 
 twenty or thirty of them in a line. 
 
 The windows of the little shops facing the 
 beach were often crowded with strange mer- 
 chandise picked up from the wrecks. Once I 
 remember a big box of gloves being washed up on 
 shore to the disappointment of the finders, there 
 
 was not a pair in the lot ; they were all for the 
 20 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 right or the left hand. There was always talk of 
 having a lighthouse on the Goodwins to supersede 
 the, old light-boats ; but no one has even yet 
 succeeded in supplying the want permanently. 
 An engineer, who thought he had solved the 
 difficulty, came to stay at our house, from whence 
 he had a good view of his new lighthouse a slight 
 iron erection conspicuous in its red paint. When 
 on coming down to breakfast he looked for it 
 one morning, he found that it had disappeared. 
 
 One of our most frequent excursions on 
 birthdays and other great occasions was to Pegwell 
 Bay a wet, swampy patch of sand and sour grass 
 lying between Ramsgate and Sandwich, where a 
 little river, the Stour, soaked itself away into the 
 sand. It was a barren spot, except for the sea- 
 shells, of which we could always depend on finding 
 a great variety. I read in yesterday's paper that 
 this hitherto useless tract had been during the last 
 two years or so converted into a sea-port, denomi- 
 nated Richboro' (from the Roman ruins of that 
 name near Sandwich), and has for some time been 
 used for sending munitions and food supplies over 
 to France in big barges, thereby relieving the 
 strain on Dover. The secret of the new port 
 had been so well kept that it had not suffered 
 from air raids, though the neighbouring town of 
 Ramsgate had been attacked more than a hundred 
 times. I think that fact will do something towards 
 opening people's eyes to the wonders our engineers 
 
 21 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 have been doing since the commencement of the 
 War. No doubt there are many more instances 
 no less convincing which will be heard of now 
 that there is no reason for keeping them secret, 
 which gives us assurance that our engineers are 
 no less capable of holding their own against any 
 rivals than our soldiers and sailors have proved 
 themselves. It looks as if the great contest for 
 the retention of trade that will be waged after the 
 settlement of peace will not be so one-sided as 
 our Bolsheviks would lead us to imagine. 
 
 We children used to have what we considered 
 a good time at the Christmas parties, of which no 
 family of even the slightest pretentions failed to 
 have one or more, and which were long looked 
 forward to, and still longer held in memory. For 
 the boys there was calf-love, with all its joys and 
 miseries. The little houri, as she seemed, hoyden, 
 as she may have been in reality, who first taught 
 us to love laugh as you will, you cynics, as 
 indeed my sisters did the first shy glance, the 
 not yet utterly despised polka, the first kiss 
 snatched hurriedly behind the curtains, or boldly, 
 in sight of all, under the mistletoe : was there ever 
 another kiss like it ? And to think that the dear 
 little creature I was to have adored for ever, has 
 been lying for about sixty years in the quiet 
 little churchyard, to which I had scarcely given a 
 thought till I read her name there on a tombstone 
 a few months ago. 
 22 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 There was at Christmas a good deal of excite- 
 ment about the school feast, the arrangements for 
 which were generally undertaken by my mother. 
 One year our careless Scotch cook spoilt the 
 puddings, without which the feast would have 
 been like Hamlet in the absence of the Prince of 
 Denmark. On the night before the great day 
 they were found to be in the fluid state, which I 
 afterwards discovered to be de rigueur at American 
 banquets. Scarcely had the damage been dis- 
 covered before my mother had left her bed and 
 betaken herself to the kitchen, where her magic 
 art, with the assistance of the household, restored 
 the puddings to their proper consistency, so that 
 they were enabled to travel comfortably to the 
 school, in the farm cart, as usual, on the morrow. 
 
 For our children's parties my mother was 
 always inventing some novelty to vary the monotony 
 of * Christmas-trees.* Once she went so far as to 
 undertake the building up, at the back of a large 
 room on the ground floor, of a panorama of Swiss 
 scenery, with mountains and valleys all complete, 
 and including even a small lake. The gardener 
 was engaged for some days, to his great surprise, 
 carrying in the various requisites, which included 
 barrow-loads of earth and material for the miniature 
 forests. Vast quantities of brown paper were also 
 required, to be moulded into peaks and valleys. 
 The affair was a credit to all concerned, and made 
 quite a sensation. It was indeed such a success 
 
 23 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 that it was left undisturbed for a few days after 
 the party, when my sister's drawing master an 
 artist above the common came over from Dover 
 and took a sketch of it in water-colours, which is 
 still in my possession. 
 
 On another occasion the governess, quite a 
 tall young English woman, was persuaded to 
 transform herself into a French dwarf, supposed 
 to be travelling about the country and making a 
 living by selling her needlework in reality the 
 odds and ends of the family wardrobes. She had 
 her cards, which were handed round : * Madame 
 de Chambon, nee dans les Landes, agee de trente- 
 deux ans.' She stood between two tables, her 
 supposed feet, in reality her hands, encased in a 
 pair of slippers. A great deal of pity was wasted 
 on the supposed dwarf, whom almost everyone 
 present had known intimately for years, but with 
 whom no one could converse, as of course she 
 spoke no English. The affair passed off without 
 the slightest suspicion being aroused, but I think 
 some of the grown-ups were a little offended when 
 they heard how completely they had been taken in. 
 
 One law rigorously imposed in early Victorian 
 days, to which I greatly objected, and which nas 
 no doubt long since been abrogated, was that all 
 the daughters of the family, whether they had any 
 turn for music or not, must learn to sing and to 
 play the piano. Boys were not counted * musical,' 
 
 and were therefore left without any instruction of 
 24 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 the sort, for which reason I have been deprived 
 of what during a long life might have been a great 
 source of amusement and pleasure. If I could but 
 have had a portion of the seed that was lavished 
 on ungrateful soil ! I am not at all sure that 
 one or two of my sisters either gained much 
 pleasure themselves,- or imparted much to others 
 after all the trouble and money that was spent 
 on them. 
 
 What we called * musical evenings ' were held 
 at short intervals at the houses of our friends in 
 the neighbourhood. These I used carefully to 
 avoid, but when it came to our turn to do the 
 entertaining, I was forced to put in an appearance. 
 A girl used to figure at these ' evenings ' whom I 
 might have adored if it had not been for ' Annie 
 Laurie.* How often did I almost wish * to lay 
 me down an' dee ' when she obliged the company 
 with what was then a too familiar song ! At 
 these entertainments, girls without a grain of 
 music in their souls would run their practised 
 fingers up and down the keys, when they might 
 and should have been doing useful work with 
 them in other directions. Of course they got 
 their meed of praise, good and bad alike, and the 
 latter got very likely to fancy they were something 
 out of the common, and went on entertaining 
 village audiences of several generations to quite a 
 ripe age. 
 
 Perhaps one of the reasons of our comparative 
 
 25 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 happiness was that there was no talk about 
 1 woman's rights,' or even about her wrongs. I 
 don't mean as to such matters as a bricklayer's 
 wife being beaten by her husband that would 
 be regrettable, no doubt, but will still occur as 
 long as women marry bricklayers or others who 
 don't know how women should be treated. I 
 cannot recall any discontent with the position 
 occupied by women, and this was certainly not 
 owing to any want of spirit or energy on their 
 part. My recollection is that while women were 
 supreme in everything connected with the home, 
 the grey mare was frequently the better horse in 
 matters supposed to appertain to males. I don't 
 think it entered women's heads in those days that 
 there were not matters which men were best fitted 
 to manage, as there were many things with which 
 the latter would not have dreamt of interfering, 
 It was certainly not the Victorian Era that started 
 claiming equality with males. It strikes one as 
 droll and a little ungenerous that the claim should 
 have been made at the close of the Great War, in 
 which millions of our soldiers and sailors have 
 died heroes' deaths in France and other countries 
 to save our women from the horrors which the 
 Huns would certainly have inflicted on them had 
 they been successful. Precedence on many points 
 has readily been granted, and indeed has never 
 been disputed, but to claim absolute equality every- 
 where seems going too far. 
 26 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 Propositions likely to have an important out- 
 come should be worked out to their probable or 
 possible issue before being adopted. If women, 
 being in the majority of voters, choose to elect 
 themselves as Premiers, Judges, Commanders-in- 
 Chief, Admirals of the Fleet, and other important 
 offices, would the state of this Empire be the 
 better or the worse for the change ? 
 
 But whatever happens, women will still be 
 women, and men men. It appears impossible for 
 women to renounce what were till lately considered 
 her chief duties, and which it was supposed 
 (wrongly, it now appears) that a large proportion 
 did not greatly object to. But the attempt to 
 carry out these old-fashioned and discredited duties 
 to the home, together with the new political 
 engagements they have so joyfully accepted, may 
 mean a failure in both. It is to be hoped that 
 only a small number, and these with exceptional 
 capacity and it must be added exceptional 
 deficiencies, will attempt the combination. I am 
 not sure that I believe all women to be possible 
 Portias. Even so, there might be too much of 
 a good thing. There are, at any rate, two matters 
 in which they may be able to please their admirers 
 without, I trust, doing much violence to their new 
 political aspirations. They might relinquish in 
 the few cases in which it has found a footing 
 the habit, when smoking cigarettes, of propelling 
 the smoke through the nose, and, at any rate 
 
 27 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 during the coal famine, they might give up poking 
 the fire from the top. 
 
 Even an apologist of the Victorian Era must 
 regretfully allow that up to the middle of the last 
 century, and even later, a great part of the popu- 
 lation of the United Kingdom was far too much 
 addicted to the use of alcohol. In the absence of 
 light wines, vast quantities of port were drunk by 
 people whom one would have expected to see 
 quenching their thirst with ale. At the bars of 
 hotels, which were crowded by farmers on market 
 days, port was the favourite drink. It must be 
 allowed that farmers had some excuse for their 
 weekly orgy. A week's hard work, with no 
 companionship but that of their farm hands, 
 caused them to welcome the relaxation of market 
 days. But the true port-wine drinker was not so 
 easily satisfied. In those days the port -wine 
 complexion, now so seldom seen, competed almost 
 everywhere with the wholesome English colour. 
 Anyone with a fairly large acquaintance among 
 country magnates would be able to decide, without 
 much hesitation, whether the flabby hand he had 
 just shaken was that of a one- or a two-bottle man. 
 Terrible as it may sound, there were even a few 
 three-bottle men that is, men who persisted in 
 drinking three bottles of port at a sitting! One 
 would have thought that no constitution would 
 have stood it, but they continued the practice for 
 a long time, and then died of old age like other 
 28 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 people. I was only once a spectator of this 
 accomplishment. The curate of a neighbouring 
 parish, who was a friend of my father, called one 
 day on the latter to ask him, as a great favour, 
 to invite a relation who was staying with him to 
 dinner. The guest was an old squire, bearing a 
 well-known name, and one of the last of the 
 three-bottle men. He had come down in the 
 world, as might have been expected, but still 
 managed to get his quantum. A difficulty had 
 now arisen. Said the curate, * He has cleared 
 out my cellar/ I feel sure it was the curate's 
 idea that everything possible should be done 
 rather than allow his friend to go without what 
 had become almost a necessity. My father, I 
 imagine from curiosity, acceded. I was home 
 from Eton, and paid special attention to the 
 performance, which the old fellow accomplished 
 without turning a hair, walking afterwards with- 
 out difficulty into the drawing-room, where he 
 astonished my mother by giving her a recipe for 
 a draught to be taken in the morning after 
 imbibing too much good liquor. 
 
 Many of the farmers in a county where I 
 lived for some years confined their potations 
 entirely to port. A neighbour, farming his own 
 land of three or four hundred acres, used to begin 
 drinking port about eleven o'clock in the morning, 
 and would keep at it all day, and never without 
 
 a friend to accompany him, so that he was no 
 
 29 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 doubt the means of spreading the port-wine habit 
 over some miles of country. At his death he 
 owed a local wine merchant 400. 
 
 Cider, considered by some to be a non- 
 intoxicant, was seldom bought or sold. The 
 best hogsheads were reserved for the farmer and 
 grower, while the labourers consumed the worse, 
 till they were bent double with rheumatism. On 
 some farms the allowance to the men in harvest 
 time was a gallon every load that came into the 
 rickyard ; but they could have as much more as 
 they liked. At this rate a hogshead did not last 
 long. Some farmers would make from fifty to a 
 hundred hogsheads, and these must be emptied, 
 or there would be no barrels ready for the next 
 year's crop of cider. 
 
 For many years the number of men who 
 drank to excess has been decreasing. For one 
 thing there has been a spread of education which 
 causes drunken men to be looked upon as fools 
 and nuisances. It must not be supposed that 
 the three-bottle men got drunk. Then there is 
 the fact that constitutions are not so strong as 
 they used to be. Recently, of course, there has 
 been a scarcity of liquor, but there are still plenty 
 of people who manage to get more than is good 
 for them. Not that there is at present, or likely 
 to be in the future, any need for a prohibition 
 measure, nor should a set of men who have dis- 
 covered that beer and spirits disagree with them 
 30 
 
Society in the Country 
 
 be allowed to deprive others of a moderate amount 
 of either. * The trade * is a lawful trade, and has 
 certain uses in addition to brewing and distilling, 
 though these are always minimised by teetotal 
 opponents. 
 
 The Maine liquor law was not such a success 
 that we should wish to copy it. There was a man 
 who advertised a wonderful striped pig, which 
 was kept in a cellar where it was only allowed to 
 be visited by one person at a time. * Your pig 
 is a fraud,' said one of the visitors on returning, 
 1 and you are a rascal 1 ' ' Very sorry you don't 
 like my pig,' the showman would respond ; 
 * allow me to offer you a drink.' 
 
 During the Crimean War soldiers and sailors 
 on foreign service used to be called up one by 
 one to drink a more or less compulsory ration of 
 rum once in the twenty-four hours. Anyone 
 objecting to the custom was allowed to pass it 
 behind his back to a friend, with the makings of 
 a three-bottle man, who would relieve him of the 
 disagreeable duty. It should be remembered that 
 there are old people, and some who are not old, 
 who in this climate of ours are professionally 
 advised to take a moderate amount of alcohol. 
 
 Many people are of opinion that a country 
 that stands in need of a prohibition law is not 
 worth legislating for at all. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE IN THE LAST CENTURY 
 
 IF the children of to-day are sometimes inclined, 
 as is very likely the case, to be dissatisfied 
 with the mental pabulum provided for them, 
 it may comfort them to know that their literary 
 advantages are a great improvement on those 
 enjoyed by their youthful ancestors sixty or 
 seventy years ago. In those days, writers or 
 draughtsmen who undertook to cater for children 
 were not expected to display any very striking 
 amount of talent. Certainly there was Lear's 
 Book of Nonsense,' which was and still is my 
 delight; but I have heard on good authority that 
 the present race of children think it foolish and 
 unworthy of their attention. We had, of course ? 
 our nursery rhymes, * Robin and Richard,' and 
 the rest. In some of these there was a touch of 
 clumsy wit, which makes me laugh even now 
 when I recall them. Nowadays, I should imagine 
 children are quite capable of making their own 
 nursery rhymes, supposing that they required any, 
 which is absurd. Harmless as ours appeared, 
 32 
 
Children's Literature in the Last Century 
 
 they were not permitted to reach us without being 
 Bowdlerised. In those days everything got Bowd- 
 lerised sooner or later, while now it is the fashion 
 to print a good deal of matter that the Victorian 
 Era would have blushed at. 
 
 One of my earliest recollections is of being 
 taken with a family party to a neighbouring town 
 on my birthday, and there invited to make choice 
 of a present. I must have had some latent literary 
 taste, for I chose a book of nursery rhymes. This 
 was duly purchased, but the presentation was 
 deferred for a day or two, the interval being spent i 
 by someone probably the governess in carefully V, 
 erasing all the words that could to the most sensi- / 
 tive mind suggest the slightest hint of vulgarity. 
 Of these there appeared to be such a number, 
 that very little of my new book remained legible, 
 and so thoroughly was the work of obliteration 
 performed, that the most careful scrutiny did not 
 avail to discover the identity of the * missing 
 word/ except in the few cases where it was arrived 
 at through the medium of the word it should have 
 rhymed with. This we thought was going a 
 little too far. 
 
 When we had outgrown it is to be hoped 
 without much contamination our nursery rhymes, 
 there were plenty of people to cater for us, but it 
 would have been considered little short of a crime 
 to offer us amusement entirely divorced from 
 instruction. What we should have thought of 
 
 D 33 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 ' Alice in Wonderland ' I cannot imagine, but I 
 feel sure our seniors would have considered it 
 unfit for us, or rather, perhaps, that something 
 inferior would have served the purpose equally 
 well, if not better. I had an idea myself, on 
 Alice's appearance, that she was a little above 
 the rising generation though this, of course, 
 claims to be sharper than we had been but I 
 have been informed that it is immensely popular 
 with such of the agricultural labourers' children 
 as are fortunate enough to get a sight of it. 
 Genius had not in our day hit on the happy idea 
 of stooping to conquer the children. There was 
 no one who could or would have written for them 
 the * Just so ' stories, or given them such charming 
 peeps into history as they can now enjoy in the 
 pages of * Puck of Pook's Hill.' It seems that, 
 as writers were formerly content to dedicate their 
 rubbish to the young, so they now reserve it for 
 the grown-ups, many of whom accept the offering 
 with equanimity if not with gratitude. Yet what 
 our literature lacked in quality was made up to 
 us in quantity. For our behoof on Sundays and 
 weekdays, Messrs. Grossman, Magnall & Co. 
 asked sacred and profane riddles, to which they 
 were so obliging as to supply answers. To the 
 query in the former as to why Ash Wednes- 
 day was so called, the reply was appended : 
 4 Because the ancient Christians used on that 
 day to sprinkle ashes on their heads, or sit in 
 34 
 
Children's Literature in the Last Century 
 
 embers or ashes/ We hoped they preferred 
 the latter. 
 
 Our literature was divided into two parts, 
 sacred and profane. For week-days the elder 
 among us had ' Elegant Extracts/ in two big 
 volumes of prose and poetry. We cared little 
 for the former ; the volume containing poetry 
 was greatly enjoyed. Scarcely any poet who had 
 attained even minor distinction in his day was 
 omitted, and the extracts from Shakespeare in- 
 cluded all the best-known and oft-quoted passages. 
 Here, too, quite a number of forgotten, or 
 nearly forgotten poets found what was to be an 
 escape, if not a very complimentary one, from 
 complete oblivion. Cotton rests here with his 
 
 * Visions ' ; and Young, who has still some admirers 
 and ought to have more ; Dryden, his * Religio 
 laici ' with the versification very rude, but the 
 matter fine and quite above us children ; Thomson, 
 quite forgotten, with Churchill, ' the comet of a 
 season ' ; Collins, Crabbe, Gray I once got half 
 a crown from my father for repeating the * Elegy ' 
 without a mistake and others too numerous to 
 mention. 
 
 For week-day prose we had ' Robinson Crusoe,* 
 which is not a children's book ; the priggish 
 
 * Sandford and Merton ' ; * Parents' Assistant ' ; 
 Miss Edgeworth's tales these must still have 
 some measure of popularity, Simple Susan's advice 
 to * take a spoon pig ' being to some extent a 
 
 35 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 household word ; ' Evenings at Home ' good of 
 its kind ; and * Peter Parley's Annual,' which was 
 a familiar present at Christmas. I forget for how 
 long the yearly instalment of * The Adventures of 
 Neddy Bray ' continued its course, but it never 
 lost its interest for us, though I believe c Peter 
 Parley ' was poor stuff, and children, nowadays, 
 would fail to be excited over the long-deferred 
 and commonplace adventures of a donkey. 
 
 We were fortunate in not being entirely 
 dependent on outsiders for our literature. We 
 had our own paper, entitled the .... News, which 
 came out at irregular intervals, and took special 
 note of such local occurrences as could be made 
 by a stretch of youthful imagination to present a 
 ridiculous side. This test it was found that the 
 majority of village happenings were enabled to 
 pass without much difficulty. Since the circula- 
 tion of the paper was restricted to members of 
 our family, it could not give offence to any of 
 the doubtless worthy but rather dull people who 
 figured in its pages ; while it was a great source 
 of amusement to the Editor and his contributors. 
 Even my father, while objecting to our * making 
 fun ' of our neighbours, generally ended by 
 laughing. In its pages all members of the family, 
 infants excepted, tried their 'prentice hands, not 
 infrequently in verse, and it is possible that one 
 or two of us were warned by the failure of these 
 early attempts to turn their attention in good time 
 36 ' 
 
Children's Literature in the Last Century 
 
 to some other accomplishment or industry in 
 which they were more fitted to shine. I should 
 like to read the .... News again, and see from 
 its hand-written pages typewriters were not yet 
 in general use how far the promise of the 
 youthful contributors was fulfilled or disappointed. 
 But, as far as I am aware, no copy of this precious 
 periodical is in existence. Especially should I 
 like to read again the verses contributed by a 
 younger brother, who never, to my knowledge, 
 wrote another line for publication, and which I 
 am unable to recall in their entirety. The subject 
 of this poem, so to call it, was a black girl where 
 he found her I can't imagine and the last lines 
 ran thus : 
 
 * Though my poor Susannah's as ugly as sin, 
 Yet she's got a kindly heart within.' 
 
 I was the privileged possessor of a * Comic 
 Latin Grammar,' before being introduced to the 
 serious one. It was sent by my grandfather as 
 part and the best part of a hamper of game, 
 and for many years it smelt very high, as it prob- 
 ably does still, one of its compagnons de voyage 
 having been a hare that was a little too long on 
 the cross-country journey from Suffolk to Kent, 
 which in those days, before railroads, took a con- 
 siderable time. The * Comic Latin Grammar ' 
 was an exception to the general rule of children's 
 book of that date, and there was no lack of humour 
 
 37 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 either in the letterpress or the accompanying 
 illustrations. I took it to London a year or two 
 ago to be re-bound, and asked the bookbinder 
 (and bookseller) what it was worth, expecting him 
 to say five pounds or so. To my disgust, he said 
 that if I wanted any more he could supply me, as 
 he had about forty on his shelves. I had never 
 seen any copy but my own, and I am not sure 
 that I believed him. Booksellers (and buyers) will 
 never allow that what you have is of any value. 
 
 Chief among the books reserved for Sunday 
 reading was the * Pilgrim's Progress,' with its 
 funny little engravings it would surprise me 
 very much to see a * young person ' reading it 
 now, though old folk will continue to look into 
 it occasionally from old associations ; Samuel 
 Wilberforce's * Agathos,' ' The Spring Morn- 
 ing,' and other allegories, for which Bunyan no 
 doubt supplied the inspiration. We spent Sunday 
 evening reading or reciting sacred poetry, of which 
 we had numerous collections, each of them with 
 some arresting favourites. Indeed, a book of 
 sacred poetry was quite an acceptable present on 
 one of our numerous birthdays, though one or 
 two of us may have been more inclined to pro- 
 fanity. When ' The Assyrian came down,' he 
 also brought down the house. It is strange that 
 Byron and Moore should have cared to write 
 sacred poetry ; stranger still that they succeeded 
 so well, since neither of them was eminently pious. 
 38 
 
Children's Literature in the Last Century 
 
 But they had the gift, given to few, of partaking 
 ' all passions as they pass,* without which a poet 
 should hardly expect to make more than a bare 
 living. A good many poets, from Tennyson 
 downwards, have since tried their hands at this 
 branch of poetry, but with only occasional success. 
 Moreover, their sacred emanations have generally 
 been so few, compared with their profane ones, 
 as to suggest that a large spoonful of jam was, 
 in their opinion, required to make the powder go 
 down. Five or six of us would crowd round the 
 piano, and sing hymns till bedtime. I can't 
 imagine the children of the present century doing 
 so. No doubt we clearly saw the difference 
 between hymns and sacred poetry. 
 
 Hymns were the one thing in which children, 
 fifty years ago, were in as good a position as the 
 present run of youngsters. One does not hear of 
 many new hymns nowadays ; which looks as if 
 the taste for hymns, like that for sacred poetry, 
 was dying out. Every now and then some Church 
 dignitary is proclaimed, with a flourish of trumpets, 
 the writer of a wonderful new hymn. When the 
 noise of the trumpets dies down, the new hymn 
 dies too. Probably it was written to order, in 
 which case it could scarcely help being a failure 
 like some of the poems on the War or on the 
 Kaiser's more startling murders. Some of the hymns 
 of my childhood were bad. They are bad still, 
 and indeed they are the same hymns. But people, 
 
 39 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 who are supposed to be more intellectual than 
 their grandfathers, go on singing them as if they 
 liked them. We children had the sense to stick 
 to the good ones. 
 
 I am afraid the idea is prevalent that anyone 
 who feels * goody-goody ' can write a hymn, and 
 that when he has overcome the difficulty of finding 
 a rhyme to * sweet,' his work is half done. In 
 truth, exceptional qualities are demanded of the 
 man who would write a good hymn. He should 
 be something more, and perhaps something less, 
 than a mere poet. Keble, no doubt, was some- 
 thing more, but then he can hardly be said to have 
 been a poet. In addition to having poetical 
 feeling and the power of expressing it, the writer 
 of hymns should be able and willing to keep his 
 talent in subjection, lest, like the greedy actor, it 
 should force itself upon and monopolise the atten- 
 tion of the audience. He should also have or be 
 able to simulate the deepest love for, and, as far 
 as possible, understanding of religion. The poet's 
 art should be limited to preventing religious ideas 
 from appearing in a rude or elementary garb, 
 while taking care not to direct attention to the 
 clothes. The religious feeling, or knowledge, 
 should be tempered with a certain vagueness 
 as of a picture hinting at beauties seen dimly 
 through a mist lest the writer fall into the error 
 of saying too much on a subject of which so little 
 is known and succeed only in evolving a sort of 
 40 
 
Children's Literature in the Last Century 
 
 metrical Athanasian Creed. These qualities, which 
 include, in a true poet, a certain amount of self- 
 effacement, are not so common but that plenty of 
 people have not feared to tread the path of hymn 
 writer without them. I said * a true poet,* since 
 there are minor poets in plenty who would, no 
 doubt, if honours and rewards were attached to 
 the role, be quite ready to turn their attention to 
 hymn-writing. And the majority of these might 
 be trusted not to offend by too much display of 
 poetical art, though that is quite another thing to 
 the exercising, by one who really possesses it, of 
 self-restraint and self-denial. It would be a good 
 thing to discontinue the use of these objectionable 
 hymns till a little good taste, some attention to 
 metre, and some knowledge of the meaning of 
 words has made them more sensible and harmonious, 
 and less of a careless and meaningless insult to the 
 Being they are intended to propitiate. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 AT SCHOOL IN FRANCE 
 
 I LIVED, during my boyhood, within sight of 
 the coast of France, and had occasionally seen 
 from our house, in a mirage, people walking 
 on their heads on Calais Pier. It is strange how 
 ignorant the great majority of Englishmen used 
 to be about their nearest neighbours, whom we 
 despised without knowing why. And now so 
 many of our countrymen, who never expected to 
 catch even a distant glimpse of her shores, have 
 crossed that narrow channel never to return. 
 
 I was an exception to the generality, in that 
 I was at school in France for some time before 
 making the acquaintance of any English peda- 
 gogue. I was about eight years old when, in the 
 early 'forties, our family started from Boulogne 
 for a prolonged trip on the Continent. The 
 cavalcade consisted of two carriages drawn by 
 seven or eight horses the first containing my 
 father and mother, and the second two nurses 
 and quite a lot of young children. We had also 
 a courier, Michel, a very fine young Frenchman, 
 42 
 
At School in France 
 
 who sometimes rode ahead, with a great jingling 
 of bells, to arrange about the horses, and at other 
 times sat with me in the rumble of the second 
 carriage. I made great friends with him from 
 the first, and soon found that if I wanted to learn 
 French he was still more bent on learning English. 
 No sooner had I taught him a few sentences than 
 he began, to my intense delight, to make love to 
 the more elderly of the two nurses, neglecting her 
 younger and better-looking companion. But for 
 all his youth and good looks he could make no 
 impression on her, even when he followed us back 
 to England. 
 
 We stopped a few days in Paris, which we 
 soon left for Bagneres-de-Bigorre. Arrived there, 
 I was at once packed off to school I suppose to 
 get me out of the way. The head master, or 
 whatever he called himself, spoke no English, 
 and I knew nothing of French, and should have 
 had a bad time but for the fact that the son of 
 the people in whose house we were living had 
 picked up a little English, and looked after me in 
 his spare moments. I used to leave home after 
 breakfast, and was supposed to dine at the school. 
 Instead, I used to watch the others dining. The 
 meal, generally greasy-looking soup with a few 
 beans ran nantes in it, was so unappetising that 
 I soon gave up all thought of eating anything 
 until I got home, faint with hunger, in the evening. 
 Sometimes in the afternoon, I went for a long walk 
 
 43 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 into the beautiful country with the other boys, 
 which I should doubtless have enjoyed had I been 
 a little less empty. 
 
 I got on better with my French than might 
 have been expected. No doubt the French dis- 
 liked the English in those days, Waterloo being 
 still an unpleasant memory. I was fairly well 
 treated rather, perhaps, like a strange animal that 
 it would have been safer to keep in a cage. My 
 recollections of Bagneres are, first and foremost, 
 the soup; then the Pic du Midi, as seen from the 
 Eau ferrigeneuse (a little temple in the woods to 
 which visitors resorted to drink the waters), and 
 an unfortunate vulture chained to a wall opposite 
 the entrance to the school, which was doubtless 
 recalled a few years later, when I came across the 
 less lethargic fowl in Prometheus Vinctus. I also 
 remember M. Jabot, a fat, bald, little man who 
 gave my elder sister lessons in drawing, and who 
 I am sure was possessed of exceptional talent. 
 He used to show us marvellous landscapes in pen 
 and ink; but even more notable was the twang of 
 his bien when he intended it which was very 
 seldom to convey approval. 
 
 Leaving Bagneres, we removed to Nice. Look- 
 ing at the map it seems strange that we could have 
 posted such a distance, but except by diligence 
 there was no other way of travelling. Certainly, 
 we seemed always to be galloping, or we should 
 never have got so far. At Nice we took a pretty 
 44 
 
At School in France 
 
 house outside the town. It was approached by a 
 drive lined by rose-trees, and surrounded by a 
 large plantation of orange-trees. Nice was then 
 in Italy, the little river Var being the boundary 
 between the two countries a fact advertised by 
 a rather dilapidated wooden signpost in the centre 
 of the bridge, as we still see the boundary between 
 two counties proclaimed in England. 
 
 In a few days I was at school again : this time 
 at quite a superior establishment, the Ecole de 
 Commerce, at the far end of the Champs de Mars 
 a big gravelled square, used, I suppose, for 
 drilling troops, though I never saw any there. 
 Here there were two more English boys, and the 
 youthful Italians, having no doubt heard of le boxe, 
 thought it a good joke to set us to fight one another. 
 It was Italian now instead of French, and as hard 
 as ever to get to understand anything, so I was 
 left once more to my own devices. I wandered 
 about the place during school hours ; once, I 
 remember, I opened a door, and, looking in, saw 
 all the boys kneeling at their devotions, and fled 
 precipitately. I took my dinner with me now, 
 so had no more pangs of hunger to endure, though 
 there was some jealousy aroused when my basket 
 disclosed a delicacy such as a remnant of cold 
 turkey. Somehow, I got into touch with the 
 professor of English, a charming little middle-aged 
 Frenchman, and after that I had quite a good 
 time. Like M. Jabot, he stands out from the 
 
 45 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 rest of the crowd, in his black blouse, his dark 
 face marked with smallpox. He let me sit in his 
 room not only when he was there to keep me 
 company, but when he was engaged elsewhere, 
 and lent me some of his English books, of which 
 he had quite a store. It was here that I first 
 read * The Vicar of Wakefield,' and, aged eight 
 or nine think of it ! ' Tom Jones/ Twenty 
 years later, when I read the latter again, I recalled 
 my studies in little M. Astier's chamber. He 
 became quite a friend of the family, and used 
 frequently to visit us on holidays. He taught us 
 lots of French riddles and wonderful ' magic 
 squares,' of which one or other of us has still, no 
 doubt, preserved a specimen or two. Going home 
 by myself in the dark evenings was not very 
 pleasant, as our house was far away on the other 
 side of the town. Some queen or other I had 
 never sufficient curiosity to inquire which was 
 contemplating a visit to the ' Palace/ and the 
 roadway over the bridge was being repaired in 
 her honour, so I was for some time obliged to 
 use the footpath when crossing it. This I had 
 hitherto avoided, as it was always occupied by a 
 villainous crew of beggars, who sat with their feet 
 in the roadway. They were mostly blind, or, 
 rather, pretended to be, for they could see quite 
 well enough to grab at me as I ran past, and once 
 or twice I thought I was done for. M. Astier 
 would sometimes see me safe through the town, 
 46 
 
At School in France 
 
 and never without treating me to a glass of 
 eau sucre. 
 
 It was at this school that I had my first intro- 
 duction to sport. The boys were awful gamblers 
 a prevision, I suppose, of Monte Carlo. The 
 medium for speculation was marbles. There were 
 games to suit all tastes. If you were of a timid 
 disposition you could limit your gains or losses 
 to a dozen or so ; if bolder, you might eventuate 
 into quite a little capitalist. I suppose I belonged 
 to the latter class, for I remember surprising my 
 people by appearing one evening with an enormous 
 bag full of marbles. Generally it was the other 
 way about, when I was at my wit's end to get 
 together a few sous wherewith to recommence 
 business. 
 
 We gave up Nice after a prolonged stay, and 
 betook ourselves home again carriages, nurses, 
 courier, and all complete. My recollections of 
 Nice, apart from the school, are rather hazy. Nice 
 is no doubt a very different place now. It must 
 have been very quiet in those days. My chief 
 amusement on holidays was pelting old Dominic, 
 the barefooted gardener, with rotten oranges. I 
 never saw signs in the neighbourhood of any 
 farming, though there were little square-tiled 
 floors near the sea front for treading out corn. 
 How strange to me was the lifeless sea, always 
 calm and sunny, without even a boat, and nothing 
 but a few oranges floating on it, after the stormy 
 
 47 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 Kentish coast, with its hundreds of sailing-ships 
 all waiting for a wind ! 
 
 Apart from Bagneres and Nice, I have a few 
 stray recollections of our trip. I suppose there 
 must have been some English folk making the 
 grand tour, but I cannot remember meeting more 
 than three or four during our stay in France. 
 Except in the evenings, I never spoke or heard a 
 word of any language except French. That is 
 one way, and not a very bad one, to learn a 
 language. I remember the immense flocks of 
 goats at Roquefort, the shrill cries of despair 
 when on reaching our stopping-place for the night 
 someone would rush out to catch the chicken 
 for our supper, and the ducks promenading in 
 quite stately fashion after they had been decapi- 
 tated like Charles I. in the riddle ; the people 
 walking on stilts in Les Landes, afterwards recalled 
 by Marriot's * Peter Simple ' ; the paved roads, 
 on which we were shaken to pieces for days which 
 seemed years ; Michel stopping the carriage for a 
 minute or two while he dived into the vineyard 
 adjoining the road, to return with an armful of 
 splendid grapes for which he had paid a few sous; 
 the Pond du Gard, where Dumas located the 
 meeting between Abbe* Busoni and Caderouse 
 the author mentions wild fig-trees in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the auberge y and I well remember 
 leaving the carriage and scrambling about on the 
 stony banks to gather some. I have never seen 
 48 
 
At School in France 
 
 a wild fig-tree since. Then there was the fat 
 French boy in the Paris hotel, who was twice 
 my size, and wanted me to fight him or 
 said he did and who almost persuaded me to 
 have a go. 
 
 Only once since that time have I set foot in 
 France, and that was during the Exhibition of 
 1862. A Salop friend and I took rooms in 
 Batignolles, and engaged a connection of the 
 former, a teacher of English, to show us about. 
 We should have done better to choose another 
 time if we wished to see anything of French 
 manners and customs. We felt in honour bound 
 to pay occasional visits to the Exhibition, which 
 both of us considered a bore, yet we managed to 
 see something of Paris. After breakfast our little 
 guide would remark : * Now I am going to show 
 you a bit of old Paris.' It always happened that 
 adjoining the bit of old Paris was an equally 
 ancient wine-shop, which our friend would never 
 permit us to pass unvisited. I had had an idea 
 that these bits were getting scarce, as Housman 
 was then reconstructing the city with a view to 
 the prevention of barricades ; but there must have 
 been a good many left. At any rate there were 
 a good number of wine-shops. By the end of 
 our trip the whites of the eyes of our little guide 
 were quite red, showing that he was filled to the 
 brim with claret. 
 
 We saw the Emperor Napoleon several times, 
 E 49 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 generally on foot, when his personality was not 
 very taking. His legs were too short, and his 
 eyes decidedly fishy. Even on horseback he did 
 not come up to one's idea of an Emperor. But 
 he was a maker of history such as it was, and the 
 means of providing Germany with a truly enjoy- 
 able feast, since when she has always been craving 
 another. I hope that now she has had one that 
 will suffice her for a long time. 
 
 We had cause to remember crossing the 
 Channel on our way home. Five hours and a 
 half from Calais to Dover ! We got to London 
 at six A.M. on Sunday morning, cold, miserable, 
 and soaked through, as we stayed on deck 
 throughout, not daring to trust ourselves below. 
 We stayed two or three days in town before we 
 felt equal to facing the journey home. It may 
 have had something to do with our little guide 
 and his bits of old Paris. I remember that after 
 a meal of devilled whitebait, washed down with 
 champagne, we went for a walk in Kensington 
 Gardens, and I came near murdering my friend 
 when he insisted on my looking at his tongue. 
 But for that passage I should never have known 
 the real meaning of sea-sickness, though I have 
 crossed the Atlantic several times, and spent three 
 stormy days in Biscay's Bay. And now it seems 
 that we are to have a Channel tunnel after the War. 
 With all my heart, if it will please our French 
 friends. But surely a pleasure is the more valued 
 50 
 
At School in France 
 
 when arrived at through a little or even a good 
 deal of unpleasantness. 
 
 There were formerly numerous difficulties to 
 be surmounted by travellers who strayed out of 
 the beaten track, and it seems a pity that a Channel 
 tunnel should be called in to remove the last and 
 most deterrent. It is surely better that people 
 who cannot stand sea-sickness should stop ashore 
 than that real travellers should be brought down 
 to the dead level. Real * travellers ' don't want 
 to travel with the ruck. 
 
 When I was a boy I used to take a friend, who 
 was staying with me and wanted amusing, for the 
 seven miles' drive from our house to Dover, where 
 we would stroll down to the little old pier, now 
 high and dry, at the base of the new Harbour of 
 Refuge, and watch the Frenchmen land after a 
 boisterous passage on one of the small paddle- 
 boats then plying between the two countries. It 
 was impossible to imagine that the yellow, ghastly- 
 looking men who crawled on shore could ever be 
 invaders to be feared. Certainly in those days 
 there were three castles since reduced to two 
 built by Henry VIII, not to mention the towers 
 of Julius on the hill near the harbour to protect 
 our shores. 
 
 It must be allowed that any invasion of our 
 country by our neighbours on the other side of 
 the Channel is likely to be of a more friendly 
 character than that contemplated by Napoleon. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A HIGHGATE SCHOOL 
 
 IT was not until some months after our return 
 from France that I went to school again. I 
 was packed off to Dover one morning in our 
 carnage, then put outside a four-horsed coach for 
 London, where I waited half an hour in the coffee- 
 room of a gloomy inn, till someone, whom I after- 
 wards found was my new head-master's footman, 
 called for me, and took me off to Highgate in a 
 hackney coach. I think if I had known the sort 
 of place I was going to I should have started 
 off home again on the Dover Road, like David 
 Copperfield. I should think I was about David's 
 age, and I had the advantage of him in that there 
 was no thief to rob me of my little store of pocket- 
 money, so that I might have arrived at the end 
 of my journey without even the loss of my * little 
 veskit.' Having had quite a long time for con- 
 sideration, I fear I must allow that the Victorian 
 Era, while scarcely accountable for some of its 
 failings, cannot shake off responsibility for the 
 great number of bad schools, or rather of bad 
 52 
 
A Highgate School 
 
 schoolmasters, which were allowed to flourish 
 throughout the country. Charles Dickens opened 
 people's eyes to what was going on. Squeers may 
 have been an exaggeration, but there was Creakle, 
 who, though in a higher line of business, was 
 almost as bad. Evidently in those days there were 
 numbers of cowardly brutes in different classes, 
 high and low, who could find no safer vent for 
 their cruelty than by turning schoolmaster. Some 
 of these, if they could have restrained their tempers, 
 would have made good schoolmasters, but a good 
 temper is the one thing necessary in dealing with 
 boys. A man who knows that he cannot control 
 his temper, should adjure schoolkeeping; but there 
 may be a few yet who find in thrashing boys their 
 chief if not their only joy. 
 
 I have never understood why I was sent to 
 such a place. It was one hundred miles away 
 from home, and there were plenty of schools kept 
 by humane, or fairly humane masters at least, I 
 should suppose so within twenty miles. My 
 father was a kind and worthy man, but he probably 
 knew little about schools, and thought one very 
 like another. I may have had the same idea, for 
 which reason very likely it never came into my 
 head to tell the secrets of my prison-house, which 
 I am sure would have shocked him exceedingly. 
 It was all in the day's work, and I tried to grin 
 and bear it. The bearing after a time became 
 fairly easy, but the grinning was another matter. 
 
 53 
 
Victorian Recol lections 
 
 The school was a large one, originally intended 
 for the education of the poorer classes of whom 
 a number still attended as day boys ; I remember 
 two red-haired, freckled boys from the * Mother 
 Red Cap,' a famous public-house a little farther 
 down the hill towards London but chiefly 
 diverted to the sons of the well-to-do, for whose 
 accommodation there were quite a number of 
 boarding-houses. I was an infant of ten years, 
 and, being considered too young to be admitted 
 to one of these establishments, I was sent to the 
 head-master's house as a private pupil. There I 
 enjoyed the society of two young men one of 
 whom had been expelled from Sandhurst, while 
 the other was a young baronet, about twenty 
 years old, of dissolute habits on whom their 
 friends may have fondly hoped the Doctor's 
 special methods would have a good effect. The 
 latter was an evil-tempered brute, who should 
 never have been allowed to have the charge of 
 boys' bodies, much less of their souls. I was 
 called ' the child ' ; the young men did not bully 
 me, but they would have been bad influences had 
 not my youth and innocence prevented them from 
 harming me. The Doctor, though he had his 
 eye on me, kept his hands off, as a butcher might 
 do in the case of a calf he judged too immature 
 for profitable slaughter. Looking back, I seem to 
 see his mouth watering as he watched me growing 
 chubbier and chubbier. I can't remember that 
 54 
 
A Highgate School 
 
 I learnt anything at all at this period. My only 
 friends were the Doctor's sister, a frightened old 
 maid, who was also stone deaf, and the footman 
 who had brought me from the London inn, and 
 who, in his leisure moments, condescended to 
 amuse me. 
 
 Fisher, as he was called, was by way of a 
 humorist. He would take me on his knee and 
 tell me stories. I only remember one of these 
 I suppose it was the most striking. It concerned 
 a young woman who had a silver arm an echo, 
 perhaps, of Miss Kilmansegg and her precious 
 leg of which, after her death, her lover possessed 
 himself by disenterment. She visited him one 
 night to upbraid him, when he was shocked at 
 her ghastly appearance. 
 
 ' Where/ he inquired, * are those beautiful 
 rosy cheeks that you had ? ' 
 
 ' All mouldered into dust.' 
 
 ' Where are those lovely blue eyes of yours ? ' 
 
 ' All mouldered into dust.' 
 
 ' Where is that fine silver arm that you had ? ' 
 
 Fisher would catch, shake me violently, and 
 shout into my ear, * You've got it ! ' 
 
 After some time as private pupil, I was admitted 
 to one of the boarding-houses, when the Doctor 
 began at once to take notice of me. Without 
 being too particular, he preferred a fat boy to a 
 lean one. I happened, unfortunately, to be rather 
 plump. Once he struck a boy * tasted blood,' 
 
 55 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 so to speak he never stopped striking him till 
 he was out of breath. He had a ghastly way of 
 catching a fat little boy under his arm, so that his 
 chubbiness became more apparent and more get- 
 at-able. He was a prototype in his small way of 
 the Kaiser, and would have revelled in the horrors 
 of Belgium. How he used to make us poor little 
 chaps writhe and shriek ! An artist, too ! He 
 could cut a boy's hand open with a blow of his 
 cane. 
 
 Monday was his great day, when all the sins 
 of the week, mostly imagined or pardonable, were 
 atoned for. I may be mistaken, but it seems to 
 me that every boy not counting, of course, the 
 two young men who were at the bottom of all 
 the mischief that called for this excess of fury, 
 but whom the bully feared to meddle with was 
 whacked on Monday morning ; certainly, very few 
 escaped. Many years afterwards, a young fellow 
 came to live near us. It came out that he had 
 been at the Doctor's, and that his father had taken 
 him away because his life was made a burden to 
 him owing, I suppose, to his plumpness. That 
 must have been thirty years after my time. * Oh 
 yes/ he said, in answer to my question, * the old 
 villain is still going on. He must have flogged 
 over a million boys ! ' 
 
 For all this, wonderful to narrate, we were not 
 very unhappy. We got used to our troubles, like 
 the proverbial eel. The more we were flogged, 
 56 
 
A Highgate School 
 
 the less we cared for it. We were rather a savage 
 lot, and usually either engaged in fighting or in 
 arranging a contest for the morrow. The head 
 bully's example had the effect of raising up quite 
 a number of would-be imitators. Sometimes two 
 or three little chaps would combine against a big 
 bully, causing him to give up temporarily, at any 
 rate his evil ways. There was a little gravelled 
 court close to the entrance of the school a two- 
 penny, or perhaps only a penny, edition of the 
 Eton ' sixpenny,' and as bloody if less famous. 
 Here we would pound one another till neither 
 could see. The vanquished one would then be 
 hurried into the baker's shop adjoining the school 
 buildings, when the kindly proprietor would bring 
 first-aid to the wounded. He was wont -with 
 what efficacy I have forgotten to apply cold steel 
 to our bruises and contusions, and even to resign 
 at any rate, temporarily for our behoof the raw 
 beefsteak which had been provided for his dinner. 
 The baker, when I first knew him, was a 
 middle-aged man of vast strength ; his stature 
 slightly bowed from the weight of the sacks of 
 flour which he was accustomed to carry in from 
 the miller's wagon. He was grey-haired, kind- 
 eyed, with a perpetual peachlike bloom on his 
 rugged face, which was no doubt the combined 
 effect of his oven, and the potations which it 
 incited. I never saw him in a coat, and the 
 sleeves of his blue linen shirt were rolled high on 
 
 57 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 his muscular and hairy arms. His wife was a 
 sour-faced, elderly woman, who was reported to 
 don metaphorically the lower garments which are 
 indued in reality by man. No doubt he made a 
 good living by catering for the hundred or so of 
 hungry fellows ; for whose needs he provided huge 
 trays of hot buns and other delicacies, brought 
 up smoking from the oven on our release from 
 school. To us, the baker appeared a harmless, 
 good-natured man, though his good-nature was, 
 perhaps, chiefly in evidence when evading the 
 regulations laid down by the authorities. It was 
 a shock, on re-assembling after the holidays, to 
 find him transformed, as if by magic, into * The 
 wicked baker/ From that time, no boy was 
 allowed, under penalty of severe punishment, to 
 enter his shop. His trade for he had made 
 little attempt at gaining any patronage but ours 
 was ruined at a blow, and the baker from that 
 day was a ruined man. I was too young to know 
 accurately what his sin was apparently, it did not 
 lay him open to the penalties of the law but 
 it was noticed that he aged rapidly, instead of 
 flourishing, as might have been expected, like a 
 green bay-tree. 
 
 While the baker is, let us hope, at rest, and 
 the potentate aforesaid has at last ceased from 
 troubling, there must be survivors to whom both 
 of these ministered after their manner who still 
 shudder at the intruding recollections of those 
 58 
 
A Highgate School 
 
 Monday mornings whose anticipated misery 
 brought but little joy to Sunday ; of the glass 
 door whose veiling with a green baize curtain was 
 but a meaningless tribute to decency, since few 
 indeed were ignorant of the hideous rites cele- 
 brated with such fateful regularity within. 
 
 c Hinc exaudiri gemitus et soeva sonore 
 Verbera.' 
 
 Most assuredly in those days, I never doubted but 
 that of the two sinners the butcher was worse 
 than the baker. 
 
 I almost wish I had left the baker alone. The 
 usher I never think of him if I can help it 
 was sure to follow. The baker, if he was really 
 wicked, and I have always had my doubts about 
 it, may have been deserving of some punishment. 
 But the usher ! I should wonder if there are any 
 ushers nowadays, only, if there are, I had rather 
 not know. 
 
 While one or two of the boarding-houses were 
 presided over by a real live M.A., wearing an 
 official gown and regulation mortar-board, mine 
 was looked after by a being supposed to be of 
 quite an inferior order. The usher was a shy, 
 kindly helot, tall, thin, and pale, clothed in a 
 shabby black suit, who had to do all the drudgery 
 of the school, and to bear the blame of everything 
 that went wrong. After school work was over it 
 was his duty to superintend the big boarding-house 
 
 59 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 with its thirty or forty boys, and he never had a 
 minute to himself until his young plagues had 
 disappeared for the night. It used to be said 
 that he intended ' going into the Church/ and 
 there was a rumour that he wrote sermons at his 
 desk when he ought to have been correcting 
 exercises, but I feel sure that he was too con- 
 scientious for that. I am afraid he was miserably 
 underpaid, or rather that he was scarcely paid at 
 all. The head-master never stood up for him, and 
 therefore the boys, miserable little wretches that 
 they were, thought it safe to insult and worry him. 
 Going down the hill towards the great city, 
 you first left behind you the red-brick residences 
 of the older inhabitants, surrounded by high- 
 walled gardens which seemed to frown on the 
 gayer and more ambitious mansions of the nouveaux 
 riches. Then came the fashionable repositories, 
 with the plate-glass windows. From fashionable 
 the shops dropped gradually to pure useful, and 
 from useful degenerated into downright shabby. 
 Some of these last may have seen better days, 
 they could not well have seen worse. They 
 retired modestly from the footpath and carriage- 
 way, thrusting forward little bare enclosures, 
 which might once have been lawns, between 
 themselves and the broken palings which fronted 
 the enclosures. In one of these, two quarrelsome, 
 dissipated goats might be seen strutting about. 
 The little shop before which they strutted was 
 60 
 
A Highgate School 
 
 one of the poorest of a very poor class indeed, 
 and the goats had but few opportunities of butting 
 their master's customers, though what they had 
 they made the most of. If you looked in you 
 saw a counter with a dingy pair of scales thereon, 
 an empty barrel which might once have contained 
 herrings, a bundle or two of tallow candles (too 
 few in number to account for the prevailing odour 
 to which that of the goats was as incense), and a 
 dirty little grey old man who shuffled about with 
 slippered feet and hands in pockets, while his 
 little twinkling black eyes were apparently on the 
 look-out for customers who never came. Our 
 boys nice boys, some of them ! never passed the 
 shop without hailing him in uncomplimentary 
 terms, when he would come to the door and curse 
 them (I have no doubt they richly deserved it) 
 in what was reputed to be Norwegian, and indeed 
 no other language could possibly have broken 
 more bones. That there was some special reason, 
 or that he thought so, for his animosity, and for 
 the attentions paid him by our fellows, was evident 
 enough, and I had not long been an inmate of the 
 boarding-house before I learnt that the old gentle- 
 man was the father of the usher. . 
 
 On Saturdays, when we went off to cricket on 
 the common, the usher used to go quietly down 
 the hill to visit his old parent in the goat-defended 
 shop. I hoped he enjoyed his half-holiday, but it 
 
 scarcely appeared likely. He never had anything 
 
 61 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 approaching to fun that we could see ; he never 
 laughed, and hardly even smiled, yet he never 
 looked cross. There was a kind, long-suffering 
 look in his eyes which should have made him 
 friends of the little imps he was so forbearing 
 with. He got to like me 1 cannot imagine why 
 in his quiet way; but Hhink his preference made 
 me feel rather ashamed than proud, though I got 
 before long to see what a fine fellow he must have 
 been. I wished that I had not known about the 
 old father and the goats, or at all events that he 
 had not known that I knew. I am glad to 
 remember now that I never insulted him as some 
 did. Poor fellow ! He died soon after I left, and 
 that was the best thing he could do. Dying, 
 I fancy, was his only chance of 'joining the 
 Ministry/ which was, if I remember rightly, the 
 exact form his earthly aspirations had taken. Few 
 tears probably were shed for him he would not 
 have expected or understood such lamentations 
 but as a type of the old-fashioned usher, long 
 since, I hope, done away with, he has always had 
 a soft nook in my memory. 
 
 As subsidiaries to the fighting, we had cricket 
 and hockey which last the small boys ' enjoyed ' 
 as it is the custom for some people to ' enjoy ' 
 bad health, since the bullies found it a good 
 opportunity for whacking us on the shins ; and 
 there was * the Heath ' a mile or so away, over 
 
 which we were allowed to wander once a week, 
 62 
 
A Highgate School 
 
 On the verge of ' the Heath * was an inn, * The 
 Spaniards/ which some of my readers may have 
 visited in their perambulations, and the interior 
 of which was occasionally penetrated by two or 
 three of the big boys. If only the Doctor could 
 have caught them ! There was an old Irish 
 costermonger, * Warlike * by name, who was 
 allowed to bring his barrow to the boarding-house 
 on Saturdays and exchange his commodities for 
 our ' allowances/ One day some of us, meeting 
 him on ' the Heath,' sent him to * The Spaniards ' 
 for cigars. I don't remember their effect on my 
 companions; on me it was direful. I have often 
 wondered what they could have been made of. 
 To think of it ! But for old Warlike, I might 
 never have taken to smoking, and, owing to his 
 good offices, it might have happened that I should 
 never have smoked again. But for that cigar, I 
 might almost have forgotten the Doctor. I have 
 often visited * the Heath ' since, but never without 
 taking a look at the tree whereby I smoked it. 
 For some reason it has been singled out for special 
 notice, and provided with a board fence to 
 preserve it, I suppose, from damage. I should 
 hardly be surprised to find, on my next visit, that 
 as is the case with houses where someone lived 
 who afterwards became famous it had been 
 adorned with an inscription commemorating the 
 moving incident to which it was witness so many 
 years ago. 
 
 63 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ETON MYTHS 
 
 AFTER Highgate came Eton a rather over- 
 powering contrast. But it was not until 
 I had got over the nuisance to which 
 every new boy was subjected, and which the 
 
 fighting habit at D 's led me at first to think 
 
 of resenting of answering every few seconds the 
 three queries as to my name, my tutor, and my 
 boarding-house, that I began to realise fully the 
 gulf between the two rival seats of learning as 
 I suppose they should be called. I have not 
 visited Eton for some years ; but I should be 
 surprised to learn that it is a better or happier 
 place than when I first entered Dame Vavasour's 
 house, facing Barnes's Pool, one evening in the 
 'forties. 
 
 I have written a great deal about Eton, and 
 am not going to repeat myself ; but I am fre- 
 quently reminded, not very agreeably, that I, was 
 an eyewitness to many things which the present 
 generation only reads about, and then generally in 
 
 an incorrect account. Somebody writes to The 
 64 
 
Eton Myths 
 
 Times to say he has heard that this or that used 
 to happen at Eton. I could often prove the 
 writer wrong, from my own recollections ; but it 
 is not worth while, and might put an end to an 
 amusing, if unprofitable, correspondence. Not 
 long ago there was a discussion in the Press on 
 no less a person than Joby Joel. A writer, who 
 may have thought he was very clever, compressed 
 all the reports he could gather of J. J. into an essay, 
 which proved triumphantly as had been done 
 before with Napoleon that Joby never existed, 
 but was a myth which had grown up in the course 
 of ages. Joby, in my day, was a thickset man of 
 forty or fifty, with a deep-red complexion, always 
 dressed in a short jacket and corduroy trousers, 
 and seldom in the season without a football 
 under his arm. A part of his living was derived 
 from blowing footballs for the boys of the Lower 
 School thence, no doubt, his red complexion 
 of whose sports he was a rather patronising sup- 
 porter. Why it should have been worth while 
 to prove that he never existed is hard to imagine. 
 His personality was not very mythical. 
 
 Once the myth idea is fully developed, there 
 will always be something new to say about Eton. 
 I find it hard to avoid trying my hand on Spankey, 
 the fat gentleman who traded ' on the Wall ' in the 
 'forties, with his unctuous and complacent smile, 
 or assumption of de haut en las, who has hitherto 
 not received from writers on Eton the attention 
 
 65 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of which he was, and is deserving ; and he may 
 one day be exalted or degraded into another 
 myth by someone who, finding himself short of 
 copy, will prove, to his own satisfaction, that such 
 a snob as Spankey could never have been born. 
 With what feelings of surprise and gratitude 
 Thackeray, had he chanced to hear of him, would 
 have added him to a collection of which he would 
 have been, if not the chief ornament, yet certainly 
 one of the most delightful ! Spankey's omission 
 from * Eton Sketches * was a deplorable oversight 
 on the part of the talented draughtsman, who 
 might have been trusted to omit nothing in his 
 portrayal, while he could not have improved on 
 the amusing pomposity or vulgarity of the reality. 
 Spankey, one hand resting affably on his tin 
 can, whose contents were of less admirable quality 
 than the wares of his competitors on the Wall 
 who had nothing but their culinary efforts to rely 
 upon with the other patting a newly-arrived 
 lordling condescendingly on the shoulder, or turn- 
 ing his fat back on a new boy of whose lack of 
 family and fortune he had become, as it seemed, 
 instinctively aware! Spankey was the Eton * Kelly,' 
 with the improvement that his news, while equally 
 dependable, was kept more closely up to date than 
 the editor of that famous and reliable compilation 
 can arrange for. Spankey's information, whence- 
 soever derived, would enable him to congratulate 
 
 you on the arrival of a new olive-branch to your 
 66 
 
Eton Myths 
 
 family tree while silently expressing the opinion 
 that these had been already too numerous as soon 
 or even sooner than his customer received the 
 intelligence from home. How did he manage it ? 
 What were his sources of information ? For what 
 reason did he collect it ? since it could hardly have 
 been a source of profit save when a knowledge of 
 the family finances may have warned him not to 
 allow an impecunious scion to run up a big * tick.' 
 
 Yet only a few yards away, Spankey, had he 
 been minded, might have found an example, that 
 should have taught him better ways, in old Bryant, 
 the captain of the numerous caterers at the Wall, 
 with his kindly old face, and the enormous barrow 
 from which he dispensed quite superior dainties. 
 Bryant was a * character,' as far as possible, removed 
 from snobbishness. Besides * sock,' his trade was 
 carving heads on sticks, like another and more 
 capable Jogglebury Crowdey. Boys who were 
 leaving, frequently ordered a likeness of Doctor 
 Hawtrey or their tutor to take away with them. 
 These mementoes were not caricatures, but admir- 
 able likenesses. I had one of my tutor, but lost 
 it somehow before leaving Eton. I wish I had 
 been less careless, for it would have been a valuable 
 memorial. 
 
 Another possible original for a myth is * the 
 Eton poet,' reputed to have been a protege of 
 Palmerston's, to whose credit he did not greatly 
 redound, and who was himself probably ignorant 
 
 67 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of poetry. * The Eton poet/ I am sorry to say, 
 was an awful fraud, and a very dirty one too. His 
 poems, as he called them, had neither rhyme nor 
 reason to recommend them, and his only attribute 
 of poet was his crop of long and greasy black hair. 
 
 But suitable foundations for myths inasmuch 
 as there are few to remember them are no longer 
 easy to supply. I have pleasure in suggesting 
 Gaffer Kempster, Tolladay's partner at the boat- 
 building yard which did most of the wet-bobbing 
 business at Eton before the advent in the late 
 'forties of Searle, who was a * character,' and once, 
 when in his cups, puzzled Stephen Hawtrey, the 
 mathematical master, by inquiring of him, ' How 
 many yards of skim milk does it take to make a 
 bull a flannel jacket ? ' Tolladay was a silly young 
 man, but both were excellent boat-builders. 
 
 The draughtsman of * Eton Sketches ' hailed 
 from a little * sock ' shop Vacher's -just within 
 bounds. I happened to be there one day when 
 he was standing in the shop with one of the 
 sketches, unfinished, in his hand, and he handed 
 it over to me from curiosity, no doubt to hear 
 what I thought about it. ' The sketch ' was that 
 of Tom Bott, one of the two Eton policemen in 
 the 'forties. The artist must have had consider- 
 able talent to produce these lifelike drawings. 
 They have since been copied and photographed 
 by all writers of books on Eton, whose name is 
 legion, till now the originals are not worth much. 
 68 
 
Eton Myths 
 
 One of them represents the old cricketer, Pickey 
 Powell, who had been an * All-England ' player, 
 and come down to be lob bowler and * Professor 
 of Cricket ' to the boys of Lower School. About 
 forty years ago his portrait wanted cleaning, and 
 I sent it to a * restorer/ who put his foot, or perhaps 
 it was only his thumb, through it. The others 
 are Harry Adkins, the caterer for Lower Club, 
 chiefly remembered for his * Water boils ! ' replied 
 to by a shout of * Then make tea ! ' and Fen- 
 more, Doctor Hawtrey's factotum, whom the few 
 survivors of those days no doubt still keep in 
 remembrance. 
 
 It is hard for an old Etonian once started to 
 stop going, but I will end with recalling a hitherto 
 unnoted peculiarity of my tutor, W. A. Carter 
 to whom I have previously drawn attention both 
 in prose and verse, and to whose house I was 
 removed after about two years at * my dame's ' 
 which may have been shared by other Eton 
 masters, and which we greatly resented. Carter 
 was quite a fair specimen of the Eton master of 
 those days, not at all a bad fellow in his way, 
 except when he lost his temper ; in his calmer 
 moments he could be quite genial, and, like the 
 generality, I have no doubt he did his best in a 
 profession for which he had neither aptitude nor 
 liking. He was a collector of miscellaneous 
 articles, and this hobby frequently leads the rider 
 
 to disregard the laws of* meum and tuum.' Three 
 
 69 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of us messed together, and, finding breakfast at 
 * The Christopher ' or Webber's too expensive for 
 our finances, decided on purchasing a frying-pan 
 in which to cook the chops and other viands 
 obtained from the butcher up town. W. A. C. 
 had a strong objection to any hot breakfast except 
 his own, and, sniffing the fragrance from afar, 
 would rush hotfoot upstairs to secure whatever 
 might remain of our meal. While generally too 
 late to capture more than a negligible portion of 
 the edibles, we found it almost impossible to 
 arrange for the safety of the indispensable medium, 
 and he must have collected a sufficient number of 
 these to have started him, had he so desired, in a 
 small way as a dealer in hardware. A meeting 
 was held to consider the matter, when our financier 
 stated that we could afford to sacrifice a frying-pan 
 the cost, if I remember rightly, was about 
 ninepence every three days. My tutor gave out 
 that these utensils were sent to the poor of 
 Boveney, a small hamlet on the banks of the 
 Thames, near Upper Hope, of which he was the 
 incumbent. Imagine the surprise of these cot- 
 tagers at receiving about once a week a tantalising 
 gift which they were almost certainly unable to 
 utilise that is, if they really had them, and * my 
 tutor ' did not keep them as heirlooms. 
 
 Whether we gave up hot breakfasts, or my 
 tutor grew tired of stealing frying-pans, I don't 
 
 remember, but he soon made a new and still 
 70 
 
Eton Myths 
 
 more annoying appearance in the guise of book- 
 collector. There was never the slightest attention 
 given to providing us with books, improving or 
 amusing, to fill the leisure time of which, on winter 
 evenings and Sundays, we sometimes had a good 
 deal. We were left to do nothing, or perhaps 
 something worse. My tutor would prowl round 
 in the evenings, and, snatching up whatever book 
 we were reading, would turn over a few pages, 
 and then calmly put it in his pocket. Whatever 
 excuse he may have found for himself, he never 
 made any to us. 
 
 One day, I was reading a book entitled ' One 
 Thousand and One Songs/ my father's property, 
 which I had brought from home. It was, I am 
 sure, quite a good collection of the best songs and 
 ballads in the language a humble predecessor of 
 ' The Golden Treasury.' This book W. A. C. put 
 in his pocket and carried off, without a word of 
 apology, and I never saw it again. Perhaps if I 
 had remembered to inquire for it, when painfully 
 shedding the five-pound notes which were obliga- 
 tory on leaving, he would have returned it. As an 
 example of its quality it contained the ballad of 
 ' Hosier's Ghost ' of which some great man said, 
 ' I had rather have written the ballad of " Hosier's 
 Ghost " than the " Annals of Tacitus." ' I think 
 that is putting the * Ghost ' far too high, or Tacitus 
 too low ; but it was no doubt worthy of being 
 remembered, as were other poems in the book, 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 which were swept away, as far as I was concerned, 
 into at least partial oblivion. 
 
 I am thankful for having early recognised that 
 there is a love of sport implanted in every breast, 
 which, while some are enabled to gratify it in 
 luxurious and, what may be termed legitimate 
 ways, others are compelled to feed on a less liberal 
 diet. The latter may be true sportsmen, who 
 put up with what they can get rather than have 
 no sport at all. * Bread has been made, indifferent, 
 from potatoes/ but even a slice of potato bread, 
 as many people have recently found, is better than 
 nothing ; and some of the eaters appear to be as 
 well nourished as those who have been dieted 
 on wheaten flour. A good deal depends on the 
 disposition of the sportsman. 
 
 The delight which that fine old man, Dr. 
 Hawtrey, found in his wielding of the birch the 
 only form of sport allowed him by his position 
 was perhaps not much less than that of the racing 
 magnate after being proclaimed the winner of a 
 big race at Epsom or Ascot. When this is under- 
 stood, our laughter, or even our pity for these 
 sportsmen, is turned to envy. 
 
 I can imagine ' my tutor ' emerging stealthily 
 from his study, and picking up the scent like a 
 hound thrown into a covert certain to hold a fox, 
 sniffing as he tiptoed up the stairs, till on opening 
 the door he could hardly refrain from giving 
 
 tongue and feeling as pleased with his capture 
 72 
 
Eton Myths 
 
 as an M.F.H. after a kill in the open, following 
 on a fast thing in the shires. Peace to his Manes. 
 I trust that during the sixty or seventy years that 
 have passed since my * One Thousand and One 
 Songs ' came into his possession, his heirs and 
 assigns have enjoyed and profited by them. As I 
 said, but for a quick temper he was quite a * good 
 sort.' 
 
 When I left, he gave me a Chalmers's edition 
 of Shakespeare, in eight volumes, which must have 
 accounted for a good deal of the honorarium with 
 which I had to endow him on leaving, and I have 
 long since forgiven him even the frying-pans. 
 
 73 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PASSING OF THE ' DON ' 
 
 A CHANGE came over Oxford in the later 
 part of the last century, which would have 
 rendered it almost unrecognisable to any- 
 one who had not witnessed its gradual development. 
 True, the old buildings remain, as in the days 
 when I was * at the " House " in the 'fifties,* but 
 the Don of that period is as extinct as the dodo. 
 New suburbs have arisen, with handsome streets, 
 in which reside the new, or not very new, professors, 
 with their wives and families formerly interdicted 
 luxuries. Humanising as the change must be, I 
 am so far a laudator temporis acti as to wish that one 
 or two of the type of Dean Gaisford could some- 
 how have been preserved, if only as a memento of 
 the qualities once deemed not unfitting for the 
 Head of a great college. But for this it is now 
 too late. There must have been something in the 
 Dean worth preserving, since our feeling for him 
 amounted almost to reverence which he appeared 
 an unlikely man to inspire, and we the least likely 
 to entertain. This feeling, oddly enough, has 
 74 
 
The Passing of the ' 
 
 increased rather than lessened in the course of 
 years. Boys we were little more seem some- 
 times readier at diagnosing than their elders. We 
 came to the conclusion that under a rugged 
 exterior he concealed a kind heart, as of a bear 
 that should hug you in sport. I remember him 
 a heavy, round-shouldered old man, little addicted 
 to smiling. The Deanery dinners, to which we 
 were invited in batches, were not very jovial affairs, 
 though occasionally brightened by the intrusion of 
 a little comedy. The shy undergraduates used to 
 collect together at the door, and the Dean would 
 make little rushes at them from time to time, 
 like a butting-ram. His attempts at conversation, 
 from not being adapted to the tastes of his guests, 
 were frequently nipped in the bud. Occasionally 
 he hit the mark. V., who was wholly given up 
 to shooting, was once present at one of these 
 parties, and the Dean, probably from knowing 
 his people, had heard of his skill with the gun. 
 
 1 A good country for snipe, Mr. V.,' he began 
 gruffly. 
 
 ' It is that/ responded V., and the conversa- 
 tion ended. 
 
 The following is a fair instance of the Dean's 
 liking for a sort of clumsy fun. Lord A.'s son, 
 who was at * the House,' was invited to a wedding 
 in the middle of term, and his tutor called at the 
 Deanery to request leave of absence for him. 
 
 ' You think, Mr. B.,' the Dean inquired 
 
 75 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 blandly, * that it would do no harm to disturb 
 his studies in the middle of term ? ' 
 
 1 I think not, Mr. Dean,* replied the tutor 
 confidently. 
 
 4 Ah, well, it might freshen him up ! And his 
 father wishes him to go ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, Mr. Dean/ 
 
 ' And you wish him to go ? * 
 
 * Certainly, Mr. Dean/ 
 
 * Very well, Mr. B., then he can't go.' 
 
 The Dean's determination to uphold the 
 dignity of * the House ' was fully appreciated, and 
 no wonder, since it occasionally acted as a most 
 useful shield. Some few may remember the advent 
 into Hall during collections of the Junior Univer- 
 sity Proctor, Mr. X., of College, eager to 
 
 detect some delinquent who had escaped him on 
 the previous night. The Dean, who was standing 
 with his back to the big fire-place, and his gown 
 tucked under his arms, moved slowly across to 
 the intruder, who had not uncovered. His gruff 
 * Take off your cap, young man ! ' was very effective. 
 The youthful proctor turned and fled, his ears 
 waxing redder and redder until we lost sight of 
 them. 
 
 An excellent portrait of the Dean in his 
 favourite attitude was in my time exhibited in the 
 window of R., the clever silhouettist's shop in < the 
 High.' It was reported that some nobleman 
 
 had been sent down to induce the Dean to accept 
 76 
 
The Passing of the 'Don' 
 
 a bishopric which the latter had already refused. 
 The well-known figure of Venables then the 
 host of the Mitre Hotel was introduced to 
 represent the noble ambassador, kneeling before 
 the Dean, to whom he was holding out a mitre. 
 The Dean, hands behind him, back to the fire, 
 was depicted as saying : 
 
 * Stand off my rug, my lord 1 ' 
 
 In his epistolatory efforts the Dean was some- 
 times more curt even than F.M. the Duke of 
 
 Wellington. Lord , who wrote to inquire 
 
 how his son's studies were progressing, must have 
 been rather astonished to receive for answer : 
 
 * MY LORD, 
 
 Such letters give much trouble to 
 Your humble servant, 
 
 THE DEAN OF CHRIST CHURCH/ 
 
 On another occasion he was even briefer, the 
 sole reference to Christ Church in the voluminous 
 report of the Oxford and Cambridge Commission 
 being : 
 
 * From the Dean of Christ Church we 
 have received no communication. 1 
 
 In Peckwater resided a genial old canon, 
 Barnes, who was always asking, with the view 
 perhaps of one day refuting some Malthusian or 
 other heresy how many children one's father 
 had ; to repeat the inquiry at the next opportunity. 
 I think he must sometimes have been astonished 
 
 77 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 at the rapid increase in the tale of fabulous 
 olive-branches. * Twenty children ! ' he would 
 ejaculate, tendens ad sidera palmas, ' Dear me, 
 dear me ! ' 
 
 An example of a different sort of Don to 
 Dean Gaisford, and less worthy of surviving, was 
 Osborne Gordon, senior censor of * the House ' in 
 the 'fifties. He, too, was a c character ' in his way, 
 but as unpopular with the undergraduates, whose 
 nerves it seemed his delight to set on edge, as the 
 Dean was the reverse. Men have before become 
 famous from one speech or one poem, but ' O. G.' 
 was probably the only man who ever gained a 
 reputation for humour from one joke, and that a 
 very poor one. At any rate, it was the only one 
 that the memories of his most ardent admirers 
 have been able to retain. * There is the cow 
 story,' they used to tell you triumphantly. It 
 seems that on the senior censor's milkman asking 
 for assistance to replace a cow that died from 
 feeding on a mackintosh cape, the former pointed 
 out that her diet had not the effect of making 
 her milk waterproof. If he was really the 
 humorist some people put him down for, the 
 evanescent effect of his good things may be 
 explained by the fact that the listener's attention 
 was diverted by his comical aspect. His long, 
 thin person, decked in shabby black, his long, 
 slightly reddish nose, bright eyes, and humorous 
 
 mouth made him practically independent of 
 78 
 
The Passing of the 'Don' 
 
 humour, which however he evoked in the dullest 
 minds, and some of ours were exceedingly dull. 
 It may have been humility that led him carefully 
 to discount a reputation for an egregious amount 
 of learning by ignoring the eighth letter of the 
 alphabet except on those occasions when it is 
 customary to do so. 
 
 ' Mr. 'Ow, Mr. 'Ow, bring me a 'undred lines 
 of 'Omer in your own 'and, Mr. 'Ow ! ' 
 
 I have often thought that this failing such a 
 droll one when his position is considered may 
 have acted inversely to charity, and covered a 
 multitude of good qualities. As it was, we put 
 him down as a square peg in a round hole a 
 formula descriptive of far too many of his con- 
 temporaries. As a rule he was ready for any 
 emergency, and I only remember one instance 
 when he was unequal to the occasion. This was 
 when, on entering the lecture-room one morning, 
 he found the seats and desks had all been removed 
 they had been burnt in Peckwater on the previous 
 night ! For some reason, though I had seen 
 several bonfires in Peckwater, I saw nothing of 
 this one, which public opinion considered went 
 a little too far. Marius amongst the ruins of 
 Carthage must have looked quite jovial compared 
 with c O. G.' in his denuded room. 
 
 The junior censor was a mild, harmless, 
 spectacled little man, with a perpetual blush on 
 his rather chubby cheeks, and absolutely useless 
 
 79 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 as far as keeping order among the undergraduates, 
 or imparting any useful information to them, was 
 concerned. He had the amount of popularity that 
 can be achieved by one who is known to be good- 
 natured because he is too shy or too timid to 
 be anything else. He appeared to be without 
 opinions of his own, while diffident in accepting 
 other people's. A nice and intelligent woman 
 who cared for him might have done wonders for 
 him, for he was, no doubt, at bottom a worthy 
 and well-meaning man ; but he wanted someone 
 to tell him so. I suppose he went down to his 
 grave without guessing, or even wishing to guess, 
 what the forbidden influence would have done for 
 him. Even had such a scandal been permitted, 
 the idea of * proposing ' to a member of the oppo- 
 site sex could never have occurred to him. In 
 these days some woman cruel to be kind would 
 snap him up, and make a man of him. 
 
 A contrast to these, and of a type even less 
 likely to survive than our honoured Dean, was 
 one of the tutors at * the House/ who was later 
 to eventuate into a humorist of the first water. 
 He was an intimate friend of a connection of 
 mine, then at * the House/ who however never 
 hinted to me that the author-to-be of * Alice in 
 Wonderland ' was anything out of the common. 
 It was not until ' Alice ' had been for some time 
 famous, that it dawned on me that I used to see 
 
 the author frequently strolling about in Tom Quad 
 80 
 
The Passing of the 
 
 like the other tutors, without anyone, as far as I 
 was aware, having a premonition of his quality. 
 Possibly the wonderful gift had not then been 
 granted him, or he may have taken considerable 
 trouble to hide it from his contemporaries. Indeed 
 c O. G.,' with his one joke and comical aspect, would 
 have struck a passer-by as likely to be the more 
 humorous personality. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A MID-VICTORIAN BISHOP 
 
 THE following sketch of a mid- Victoria! 
 bishop was written many years ago. Ii 
 was probably a digest of three or foui 
 men who varied so little one from the other, that 
 if they had changed places, the effect would have 
 been neither disturbing or even noticeable. A 
 few bishops there were who differed so entirel} 
 from the components of this sketch, that theii 
 inclusion would have made the resulting average 
 m'sleading. These men stood a head and shoulders 
 above their compeers, and their names will present 
 themselves at once to my readers. They were, 
 however, scarcely more popular than would be ar 
 average Victorian bishop, if brought to life again, 
 with the clergy of a modern go-ahead diocese. ] 
 must suppose that the commonplace Victorian bishop 
 was fairly suited to the age in which he officiated, 
 It is uncertain whether the bishops are responsible 
 for changes in the rank and file of the clergy, or 
 the latter impose their virtues or the reverse on 
 
 their bishops. Perhaps it is a little of both. 
 82 
 
A Mid-Victorian Bishop 
 
 Certainly a set of quite ordinary old-fashioned 
 clergy could hardly co-exist with a bishop of very 
 advanced views. The former would not know 
 what to make of the latter, any more than a diocese 
 served by * Priests ' and * Holy Fathers ' would be 
 able to work with a bishop possessing only the 
 ordinary good qualities which, however, would 
 once have been amply sufficient to recommend 
 him. During the last fifty or sixty years there 
 has probably been as great a change in bishops 
 as in everything else. It is some time since I have 
 foregathered with any of them. 
 
 Our bishop is a little, dry, old man, very worn 
 and thin, and the episcopal gaiters encase the 
 merest apology for legs. Care and anxiety (there 
 is no greater trouble in the life of some people 
 than the ever-present fear of over-acting or over- 
 doing anything) have scratched his face and brow 
 with numberless tiny wrinkles. The face would 
 have been a kind one if he had not lived in an 
 age which imposes even on bishops the duty of 
 looking, or at least trying to look, shrewd. He 
 has a pair of bright, intelligent, brown eyes, which 
 suggest a capacity for insight, but if he possesses 
 this gift he must sometimes forgo the use of it. 
 
 We country folk do not find it easy to see 
 into the bishop, and I have sometimes amused 
 myself by wondering whether the successful gazer 
 would be repaid for his pains. When he recog- 
 nises an opponent, which he seems to do intuitively 
 
 83 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 (though, like other doctors who pride themselves 
 on their ' diagnosis/ he sometimes jumps too 
 quickly to a conclusion), he draws back into his 
 shell like a snail. He seems to be always expecting 
 a trap, but I have never heard a rumour of one 
 being laid for him, and it is certain that he is 
 seldom caught. Though he avoids, somewhat too 
 elaborately, any display of feeling, it is quite 
 possible that there may be a spring deep down. 
 Humour he never attempts, though I am mistaken 
 if he could not sometimes say a good thing if he 
 chose. But he is of the race which thinks fun out 
 of place in a bishop as in a churchyard. He has 
 no doubt heard, in the course of his travels, many 
 excellent jokes, but he has never been known to 
 laugh at any one of them, though possibly he may 
 enjoy them in his own way. Once, indeed, I my- 
 self saw his sober face light up with a momentary 
 twinkle, and alone by his palatial fireside he may 
 occasionally thaw into a chuckle, like the frozen 
 notes in the horn of the celebrated Baron. Sup- 
 posing him to have been possessed, when newly 
 appointed, of a sense of humour, he, no doubt, 
 thought it proper to suppress what he may have 
 considered an unworthy and inappropriate adjunct. 
 The awful thought might have arisen that indul- 
 gence in it might one day lead him to make fun 
 of himself, and though a bishop's sleeves are of 
 a sufficient size to hide any but the most uncon- 
 trollable burst of merriment, yet they were not 
 84 
 
A Mid-Victorian Bishop 
 
 intended for that purpose, and it is only the clown 
 who does not irritate us when he laughs at his 
 own calling. Yet if a bishop can learn the lesson 
 not to smile at himself, it must be hard sometimes 
 for him to refrain from laughing at his admirers. 
 A bishop (who of all men should be most capable 
 of insight and self-knowledge) must surely be 
 aware that his high and sacred office does not 
 necessarily place him above all human frailty. It 
 may certainly be more confidently expected from 
 a bishop than from a judge, that he should be 
 above pride and anger, and it is to the credit of 
 the former that the expectation is not too frequently 
 disappointed. People have long got to know that 
 judges, however honest, are often very human 
 indeed. Those who are disappointed in their 
 bishops have generally themselves to thank in that 
 they expected too much from even the best of men. 
 Laymen are occasionally sarcastic, and the sarcasm 
 of the evil-minded can only be met by a confident 
 assumption of superiority. If such can be really 
 felt, so much the better; if not, it must be counter- 
 feited. A bishop is one of the very few people 
 who is improved when he values himself at the 
 price with which he is ticketed by his blindest and 
 most subservient constituent. 
 
 I used to fancy, from knowing that when 
 plain Rev. John Smith, our bishop, had been one 
 of the simplest of men, that the episcopal state 
 must bore him immensely. I am now not at all 
 
 85 
 
V 
 
 Victorian Recollections 
 
 sure that such is the case. I think I have once 
 or twice caught him regarding himself with some 
 complacency in a mirror, making a somewhat 
 elaborate arrangement of his sleeves before preach- 
 ing, or glancing, if not at his lean legs, yet at 
 their official coverings in a manner suggesting that 
 his get-up was not obnoxious to him. Yet starch 
 is only a modern necessity of Christianity. A 
 bishop (the founder of whose religion knew 
 how to move men without lawn) seems to com- 
 mon folk sadly out of place amongst pomps and 
 vanities. 
 
 Our bishop lives in a palace in a deer park, 
 near a country village, which is some distance 
 from a railway station, at which only slow trains, 
 and but few of these, ever stop. He is almost 
 always going somewhere, and, as he is the most 
 punctual of men, while the trains are unfortunately 
 quite the reverse, he appears to spend a great 
 deal of his time at the little station. Passing 
 slowly up or down the line, to or from the village 
 at which his ministrations are required, must be 
 trying to the spirit and to the flesh. He seldom 
 on these excursions enters into conversation with 
 anyone, but appears to amuse himself sadly, and 
 chiefly, by looking down at his knees. 
 
 He seemed aware that he was rather a wet 
 blanket at the luncheon given by our jovial vicar 
 the other day, on the mirth-inspiring occasion of 
 the opening of the new cemetery, and hurried 
 86 
 
A Mid-Victorian Bishop 
 
 away as quickly as decency permitted, though, as 
 usual, he had to wait some time at the station. 
 There is no doubt that many of his functions 
 could be quite as ably and more cheerfully per- 
 formed by the Registrar, who is a jolly fellow 
 enough, and would not object to going about. 
 The bishop does not throw himself with any 
 warmth into the affairs of his clergy. If what you 
 imagine a wrong in your parish wants redressing 
 he wishes you well he could not possibly wish 
 ill to anyone but he is too careful of offending to 
 take sides in the matter. This vexes those who 
 think that a bishop should stand up for his diocese 
 and for his clergy, as a former Dean of Christ 
 Church used to stand up for * the House.' The 
 fact is that even in a bishop caution may be over- 
 done. It would be far better to make an occasional 
 mistake than never to show any brilliancy, to fall 
 than never attempt to soar, to make an enemy 
 here and there what straightforward man can 
 avoid doing so ? than never to make any warm 
 friends. 
 
 Our bishop has a fear of, or an objection to, 
 churchwardens. It is impossible to do more than 
 guess at his reasons. He may find some of the 
 poor fellows rustic or ill-bred, so when he has 
 said ' How-d'ye-do ? ' (with his hands under his 
 silk apron) he walks off to exchange nothings with 
 somebody else. The zeal of churchwardens would 
 
 be augmented by a little courtesy shown to them 
 
 87 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 by a real live bishop. This courtesy would also 
 be a graceful and cheap way of remunerating them 
 for labours often disagreeable and seldom acknow- 
 ledged. You notice a cloud on the weather-beaten 
 face of old Farmer Jones, who has just been 
 introduced to his lordship. * I told him/ says 
 the hearty old fellow afterwards, * as I was down- 
 right glad to see him, and as how we were getting 
 on very well down here, and he never said nothing 
 at all ! I believe he's an old stick/ It would 
 have been better for the interests of the Church 
 in Farmer Jones's parish if the bishop had shut 
 himself up in his palace that day, since even the 
 humblest of men object to the snub direct. Masters 
 of hounds are not nowadays above recognising 
 that without the goodwill of the tenant-farmer 
 there would be no more fox-hunting. 
 
 After all, I should not like to be too hard on 
 the bishop, who has no doubt the good of the 
 Church at heart, though his heart is not worn 
 on his sleeve. His life, for a not inconsiderable 
 remuneration, is given up to her service. He 
 never complains of the long hours spent by him- 
 self or in uncongenial company in the slow train. 
 However disgusted he may sometimes feel at 
 finding himself part of a pageant, an actor in a 
 sort of ecclesiastical Lord Mayor's Show, he plays 
 his role without wincing. He has an immense 
 amount of trouble of which he might be relieved 
 without any damage being done to the interests 
 88 
 
A Mid-Victorian Bishop 
 
 of the Church. He is always writing long letters, 
 from which, as from the speeches of a late eminent 
 statesman, there is frequently very little meaning 
 to be extracted. But from the careful way in 
 which he lays down ecclesiastical law (when he 
 can be induced to give his opinion) I have often 
 thought that a good lawyer was spoilt on the day 
 he took orders. 
 
 I would not dream of being so rude as to 
 inquire into the creed held by our bishop, nor, 
 as long as he is so reticent, does it much matter. 
 He may have or he may lack the firmest pos- 
 sible belief in matters on which the advanced 
 school has long decided to doubt. It is scarcely 
 fair to accuse him of evasion because he has decided 
 that these questions had better not be raised by 
 him. There are articles in the Church's creed 
 which he has accepted the duty of believing.- He 
 is too honest and too true a gentleman to set fire 
 to the rickyard while he is receiving the good- 
 man's pay. -7 
 
 My chief objection to him is that he raises no 
 enthusiasm. These are ticklish times, and it 
 seems to me that a bishop who cannot raise a 
 little enthusiasm has no raison d'etre. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 COUNTRY EDITORS IN THE PAST 
 
 WHATEVER widely diversified opinions 
 people may hold on the matter of 
 National Education, the fact remains 
 that it has made considerable progress during the 
 last fifty years. For this the improvement in the 
 Provincial Press is largely responsible, and some 
 of these papers, conducted by editors of the 
 highest ability and intelligence, run their London 
 rivals very close. Perhaps, as there were once 
 too few newspapers, there are now too many, and 
 I should be in favour of a law forbidding anyone 
 to own more than 150 newspapers. It is only 
 from survivals in a few bucolic districts where 
 the inhabitants take no interest in anything but 
 farming-sales and other local matters, that it is 
 possible for the present generation to realise the 
 sort of literary food served out by country editors 
 to their fathers. 
 
 The editor, sixty years ago, of a county paper 
 which shall be nameless, was a quiet, apologetic 
 
 little man, a sort of editorial Snagsby, who resided 
 90 
 
Country Editors in the Past 
 
 as a matter of course in the Cathedral city, and 
 who, by perpetual bowing and scraping to the 
 Dean and Chapter and the Mayor and Corpora- 
 tion, had lost any portion of starch he may have 
 been born with. For each and all of these func- 
 tionaries he had a distinct and special bow. He 
 kept a little stationer's shop, at which could be 
 purchased notepaper, albums, * gift-books ' which 
 no one even in those days would have bought 
 except to give away and daguerreotypes of the 
 Cathedral and the Dean. From the sale of these 
 last he probably derived the greater part of a 
 somewhat precarious income. When the Dean 
 chanced to be unpopular, the portraits, growing 
 dingier day by day, suggested anything but a 
 roaring trade. 
 
 The county paper appeared weekly, on Tues- 
 day, and therein, elbowed into a corner by the 
 more interesting district intelligence, would appear 
 a short summary of what had occurred in distant 
 and therefore less important localities. The editor 
 was reported to write his own ' leaders,' and- if 
 his personality did not suggest that these would 
 be of a specially lively character, they seldom 
 disappointed expectation. They were made up 
 of a few vapid remarks on something that had 
 occurred in the last week, or perhaps the week 
 before the county was not particular to a day 
 or two. Political news would be generally con- 
 fined to the speech of the County Member in 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 Parliament. The County Member was not elected 
 on political grounds, but out of respect for his 
 ancient lineage, and it was thought a duty to 
 stick to him as long as no scion of a still older 
 family came forward. The county did not want 
 new men, or talking men, or even party men, but 
 fine old crusted family men. For the reason, 
 perhaps, that the County Member never opened 
 his lips, politically speaking, in the county, it got 
 to be reported and this view would have been 
 confirmed by a glance at the reports of the debates 
 in the London papers that he followed the 
 custom, which some may wish was still general, 
 of sending his speeches to the editor of the county 
 paper instead of delivering them in the House of 
 Commons, where as appears to have been the 
 case recently with a Nationalist Member he may 
 have been unable to catch the Speaker's eye. 
 
 In the silly season it is not now always the 
 non-parliamentary season that appears the silliest- 
 failing a flower show or a yeomanry inspection 
 (and these joys were of infrequent occurrence), the 
 place of honour in the county paper would be 
 occupied by descriptions of toads found embedded 
 in solid rocks of which naturalists made such 
 opportune discoveries that the poor creatures must 
 have known to a day when Parliament ceased to 
 sit miraculous showers of ladybirds, and a state- 
 ment relating to the dimensions of a mammoth 
 gooseberry, which was reported to be always in 
 92 
 
Country Editors in the Past 
 
 type and to go with the * goodwill ' when the 
 paper, as, alas ! occasionally happened, changed 
 hands. There was as yet no Yankee or other 
 humour for the editor to draw upon, but there 
 was a * Poet's Corner,' which was both small and 
 badly filled. The days when everyone was to 
 write verse was in the dim and distant future. 
 It is also probable that the * penny-a-liner,' after- 
 wards to become famous, was then unborn. 
 Certainly no one ever saw anything in the paper 
 for which a sane person would have paid one 
 penny per line. There was very little thunder 
 about the editor, but then the sky was clear, 
 and to thunder out of a clear sky takes a Jove. 
 Possibly, under other circumstances, he might 
 have developed a turn for spite, sarcasm, and 
 other virtues which editors subjected to competi- 
 tion are accustomed to utilise. He developed 
 nothing of the sort, and yet, if he had known it, 
 he had his rivals. 
 
 It requires a fortunate combination of circum- 
 stances to produce a truly original character. 
 Such was Mr. Measdy, one of the county editor's 
 rivals and the opportune product of a seaside 
 village, fifteen miles or so from the Cathedral 
 town, whose inhabitants, with the keenest desire 
 for news, had the smallest possible opportunities 
 for obtaining any. Elsewhere Mr. Measdy might 
 have sunk into a mere gossip or tale-bearer, instead 
 of being, as was generally allowed, a beneficial 
 
 93 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 institution. He resided in a board shanty near 
 the beach, and was a sort of sea-farmer or land- 
 fisherman. In fine weather the roof of his tar- 
 soaked domicile could be seen from afar sparkling 
 gaily in the sun. Adjoining it was a little field 
 by courtesy roughly penned in with pieces of 
 broken-up boats and the poles of old windlasses. 
 The enclosure was neither pasture nor shingle, but 
 appeared able to support a piebald calf or two of 
 not very epicurean tastes, which might have been 
 indebted to the tar brush for their black patches. 
 Mr. Measdy also rented a little field some distance 
 inland, which he had probably taken in anticipation 
 of advantages likely to accrue to the news business 
 from walking to and fro. About half a mile from 
 the shanty was a spot where three roads met. Mr. 
 Measdy would have welcomed a fourth, but the 
 fourth would have run into the sea. Here, with 
 a truss of hay on his shoulder if homeward bound, 
 or a barrow of seaweed before him when making 
 his way inland, he would stand and talk by the 
 hour to any passer-by who could be induced to 
 listen. It was seldom that he arrived at the 
 ' three ways ' without finding that there was 
 someone in sight. The white roads stretched 
 before him for about three miles, and it would 
 not be long before the miller's man from the 
 windmill on the hill, or the butcher who was 
 always in a hurry but would put it ofT or, failing 
 these, the parson would heave in sight. The 
 94 
 
Country Editors in the Past 
 
 parson was not above a gossip, though Mr. Measdy 
 was not sufficiently imbued with a belief in recip- 
 rocity to respond by attending church. A spectator 
 strange to the village would marvel to see two 
 black signposts, as he had thought them, after 
 remaining motionless for an hour or two, separate 
 and move off briskly in opposite directions. Very 
 little time was lost by either party in disseminating 
 the new tidings. * They tell me as . . . ' was 
 the simple formula with which Mr. Measdy 
 would commence his recital. The parson would 
 begin with * I am truly grieved to have to 
 record . . .' 
 
 Mr. Measdy was rather a strange figure. He 
 had a large bald head, fringed with brown locks 
 unacquainted with the art of the barber ; a large 
 round face, ruddy with sun and wind and intended 
 by nature to express good-humour ; an enormous 
 smiling mouth, and big gleaming teeth. He was 
 at least half way between sixty and seventy, but 
 he had probably never looked young, and had his 
 recompense now in not looking old. He was about 
 five feet ten inches in height, broad shouldered, and 
 deep chested. His dress was a suit of corduroy, 
 which had presumably seen better days, though 
 the oldest inhabitant might have been unable to 
 recall them. Portions of his clothes which had 
 been subjected to extra friction had risen to the 
 occasion, taken the colour and, apparently, the 
 consistency of mahogany, and become as imper- 
 
 95 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 vious as tar and grease could make them to all 
 assaults of rain or salt water. There was the 
 same indefinable suggestion of the sailor about 
 his get-up that was observable in all the inhabitants 
 of the seaside village. Not that, taken piecemeal, 
 there was anything specially sailor-like in the gait 
 or roll of the man to suggest that he had ever 
 handled any rope except a cart-rope ; yet if he 
 had been encountered, which was highly improb- 
 able, in an inland village, or in the Midlands, many 
 people would have put him down for a sailor. 
 There were patches of tar on his roomy garments 
 as there were patches of everything else, but he 
 was distinguished by the cognoscenti from the 
 majority of the inhabitants in that he was not 
 accustomed to signal his approach so much by the 
 odour of tar as by that of the cowhouse or pigsty. 
 There may have been days, however, when the 
 tar predominated over its rivals. 
 
 Even newsagents must live though some 
 might deny the necessity and since the profes- 
 sion, however creditable and enjoyable, brought no 
 grist, directly, to the mill, Mr. Measdy combined 
 it with another which, while fairly remunerative, 
 was also of great assistance to the calling in which 
 he chiefly delighted. Mr. Measdy was a pig- 
 dealer or middleman. Putting pecuniary results on 
 one side, it is hard to say which business was of 
 most assistance to the other, but it is certain that 
 
 they worked well together. The pig business was 
 96 
 
Country Editors in the Past 
 
 an excuse for going anywhere at any time. Even 
 if Mr. Measdy, as was frequently the case, had 
 no pigs to sell, he could hardly be supposed to 
 know though he probably knew very well that 
 the farmer whom it was his pleasure to interview 
 had none to part with. He used to ' hear of * 
 pigs for those who wanted them, and he would 
 find customers for those who possessed a super- 
 abundance. He made no fixed charge for his 
 mediation, with the result that he was sometimes 
 recompensed by both parties. The prolongation 
 of a * deal ' gave opportunity for the investigation 
 or even the manufacture for he was not without 
 a touch of imagination of a scandal, and he 
 seldom showed any anxiety to bring matters to a 
 conclusion. * Well/ he would remark as he went 
 off this going off was sometimes an illusory pro- 
 ceeding, as he would stop round the corner to 
 confer, by arrangement, with the cow-man or the 
 groom * you'll, maybe, think it over before I'm 
 round again.' 
 
 Mr. Measdy, though by no means ignorant 
 or uneducated indeed, some people thought he 
 knew a great deal too much had been born 
 before the days of compulsory ' three R's,' and 
 could neither read nor write. But he had developed 
 an old-fashioned memory, which supplied the 
 place of these modern luxuries remarkably well. 
 In addition to his memory, and, as it were, a 
 concession to popular prejudice, he carried about 
 
 H 97 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 with him wherever he went a short hazel stick. 
 This would start without a scratch on it on Monday, 
 but would gradually get covered with notches as 
 the week drew to a close. There would be a big 
 notch for Farmer Denne's old sow, and ten little 
 notches for the farrow. Middling-sized pigs had 
 middling-sized notches. One end of the stick 
 was reserved for items of news relating to bipeds. 
 Mr. Measdy would very likely have tied knots in 
 his handkerchief but for the all-sufficient reason 
 that he never carried one. On Saturday evening, 
 instead of going, as everyone else did, to the 
 public-house, he would remain at home in company 
 with the wife of his bosom. After supper the 
 hazel wand would be taken from the corner and 
 the notches gone through one by one. Negotia- 
 tions that had not been concluded, and scandals 
 imperfectly developed, would be carried over 
 like the minutes of a meeting to next week's 
 stick. In winter Mr. Measdy would then put 
 the old stick in the fire ; in summer he would 
 whittle it thoughtfully into shreds which Mrs. 
 Measdy had afterwards the pleasure of sweeping 
 up and it may be presumed that either process was 
 equivalent to putting away another number of his 
 weekly diaries on the crowded shelf of his memory. 
 The pig-dealer was but one of two rivals with 
 whom the editor of the county paper had to reckon, 
 who dispensed news, and even distributed adver- 
 tisements free of charge. Mr. Measdy's colleague 
 98 
 
Country Editors in the Past 
 
 was a fat, blind man, by name Purvis, brother to 
 a small farmer in the neighbourhood, who had lost 
 his sight years ago after an attack of scarlet fever. 
 He made a living by buying eggs from the farmers 
 and cottagers, and retailing them to the gentry 
 who did not keep hens, or whose hens were not 
 prolific. He used to walk down the village street 
 with his basket on his arm, tapping in front or on 
 either side with the stick held in the other hand. 
 He would feel along the hedge till he touched the 
 post of the gate he wanted, and through this he 
 would pass without hesitation to the house door. He 
 knew you before you spoke to him, by your step, 
 or your horse's, or by something in the air, or by 
 the absence of it. This was strange in a district 
 where so many of the inhabitants were redolent 
 of tar or fish. He looked you straight in the 
 face, with the clear eyes that saw nothing. Many 
 folk who are by no means blind use their eyes 
 to as little purpose. He had an air of knowing 
 everything, which may have been a mistake, as it 
 may sometimes have prevented people from telling 
 him news. It was thought that he knew whether 
 you were in good or bad spirits, that he puzzled 
 out the reason when he had passed you, and 
 retailed it with his next batch of eggs. What 
 connection he supposed to exist between the two 
 pursuits of egg and news peddling it is hard to 
 say, but he certainly knew everything ab ovo. He 
 was assisted in his wanderings by his recollection 
 
 99 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of the state of affairs that had existed before he 
 lost his sight ; but his head-map of the parish had 
 to be occasionally corrected. It was amusing to 
 see him feeling about for the corner of a cottage 
 which he had heard was to be erected, but which 
 was not there. Dunghills he considered were 
 invented to plague him ; nor was he greatly 
 mollified by their removal just as he had got used 
 to them, though an impartial mind would have 
 allowed that their disappearance in the course of 
 time might have been foreseen. The year in 
 which he lost his sight was to him a sort of A.D. 
 ' Squire Smith, he got married the third year as 
 I went blind. 1 He used to wonder when an old 
 villager died. * He was quite young and lusty,' 
 he would say. Many a rich grumbler with the 
 use of all his senses, only he did not use them 
 might have profited by the example of his cheerful 
 temper, which not the direst scarcity of eggs 
 could disturb provided that a bit or two of news 
 was forthcoming. 
 
 It is a pity to be obliged to confess that neither 
 Measdy nor Purvis were quite as good-natured as 
 they looked. Tale-bearing so often makes mis- 
 chief though there are, of course, tales the 
 proclaiming of which from the housetops could 
 do no one any harm that the science has got a 
 bad name, and the tale-bearers, on the principle 
 that it is as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, 
 get to prefer tales which are likely to annoy or do 
 
 100 
 
Country Editors irr tfre Past 
 
 harm to more innocent recitals. There soon gets 
 to be a spice of devilment in a tale-bearer, and the 
 fee the price, so to speak, of his news-sheet is 
 the look of annoyance, possibly of anger, which 
 he soon learns to detect, though his hearer may 
 do his best to hide it. 
 
 The two editors were made use of in ways of 
 which they may have been only imperfectly aware. 
 Had anyone a report that he wished spread he 
 had but to resort to the cross roads at the proper 
 time, or to encounter the egg-dealer in the village, 
 and tell his story under a vow of secrecy, when 
 he would get an advertisement free of charge. 
 With all this the newsmongers were fine, honest- 
 looking fellows who appeared worthy of a better 
 trade. Mr. Measdy especially had a face that it 
 was almost impossible to connect with evil-speaking, 
 to say nothing of lying. Neither of them was 
 above doing a neighbour a good turn if it came 
 in the way of news, or did not interfere with it. 
 Once they conjointly got up a subscription for 
 the widow Mullins, who had lost her cow. It is 
 to be feared that to them also might be traced the 
 scandalous tale, to the disadvantage of the poor 
 widow's daughter, which drove her and her 
 mother out of the parish before the subscription 
 had come to much. But it is well known that 
 business requirements may cause charity not only 
 to begin at home, but also not infrequently to 
 also end there. 
 
 101 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 DOCTORS AND PARSONS 
 
 ANYONE who in those days took up his 
 residence in a country village of which 
 he had no special knowledge would feel 
 some confidence that the doctor and the parson 
 would not fail him, and that both of them would 
 prove to have a certain amount of breeding and 
 education apart from their professions. Only 
 occasionally was this confidence misplaced and 
 then because the new-comer had placed his hopes 
 too high when it became necessary to poach on 
 the next parish. There was a little sameness in 
 the doctors, owing, no doubt, to the fact that the 
 country practitioner frequently brought up his son, 
 sometimes his two sons, to succeed him, so that 
 a youth who had left the village might, on his 
 return after forty or fifty years* absence, find to 
 his surprise until he recalled the local custom 
 an exactly similar doctor, with the same smile, or 
 the same objection to smiling, facing him in the 
 old surgery. 
 
 There was seldom anything very striking about 
 102 
 
Doctors and Parsons 
 
 the country doctor's professional methods, as on 
 the infrequent occasions when an operation was 
 necessary he would call in the rather more up-to- 
 date services of a friend from the county town. 
 He may be supposed to have filled the usual 
 number of bottles with what were then the usual 
 medicines, to be consumed with the usual effect 
 which, while occasionally quite negligible, was 
 never very violent. 
 
 The great Insurance Bill which started our 
 Premier on his road to fame, was not even dreamt 
 of, nor has it done much more even now than to 
 increase enormously the income of the country 
 practitioner, who, by the time that three or four 
 sons have followed their fathers in the practice, 
 will since it is a maxim of country doctors to be 
 entertained rather than to entertain others surely 
 eventuate as millionaires. 
 
 Politically, the country doctor was generally a 
 Tory, but without any knowledge of politics or 
 of the reasons which made that political creed the 
 only possible or respectable one for dwellers in the 
 country. He was also contrary to the ideas of 
 some people that doctors are invariably unbelievers 
 a fairly regular attendant at church, except when 
 an epidemic was ravaging the village, when he 
 had to spend a little more than the usual half hour 
 in mixing his medicines, of which the component 
 parts were confined almost entirely to magnesia, 
 
 rhubarb, and senna. I well remember, when 
 
 103 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 scarcely past babyhood, being held tightly by 
 one of our two nurses, while the other fixed a 
 tin funnel into my mouth through which she 
 administered an ample dose of the latter beverage, 
 notwithstanding my screams and objurgations. 
 
 For some reason, even in the days when 
 ' characters ' were beginning to get scarce, it was 
 seldom that the author in search of copy, on 
 meeting our doctor, turned his back for a moment 
 to scribble a surreptitious line or two in his 
 notebook. For the rest country doctors were 
 generally good-natured, with the knowledge where 
 too much good nature would lead them, and without 
 any sense of humour, which last, if it left him a 
 not necessarily disagreeable neighbour, made him, 
 as my father would sometimes complain, a very 
 boring companion. 
 
 If he was a man of ordinary intelligence the 
 doctor had not, except in the case of a perfect 
 stranger, much use for any gift of diagnosis with 
 which he may have been endowed. It may have 
 been an advantage or the reverse that, having 
 been brought up in the place where his father 
 practised before him, he knew the weak spot in 
 all his old and probable patients. When the 
 parson's fat pony was seen bustling up in a lather 
 there was no need to tell him what was the matter. 
 The colchicum was ready almost before the boy 
 had dismounted from the fat pony. Young 
 
 Ashford's spavined mare coming up the street at 
 104 
 
Doctors and Parsons 
 
 a hand gallop meant that his father, the old farmer, 
 had been going too fast again, like his mare. 
 While getting ready to accompany or follow the 
 messenger, the doctor would make a somewhat 
 elaborate show of inattention to any explanatory 
 remarks, and indeed would have been hurt, if not 
 mortally offended, to find that the old friend he was 
 preparing to treat for asthma had broken his leg. 
 
 The new parson generally came from outside, 
 but instead of proving a round peg in a square 
 hole he would generally fit into his place as if it 
 had been made for him. He would not have 
 thought of taking a country living had he been 
 in perfect ignorance of the many subtle differences 
 existing between the country and the town. He 
 was generally an honest, simple man, more zealous 
 for goodness than for doctrine, or at least he talked 
 very little about the latter. He was content to 
 be a friend of, but a little below the squire who 
 in his turn was not greatly above the farmers to 
 relieve to the best of his ability the troubles, 
 spiritual or worldly, of the local gentry, without 
 affecting to be above sharing in their simpler 
 pleasures, and a far more difficult task to be a 
 real friend in adversity, or comparatively good 
 fortune, to the poor, without even the slightest 
 touch of superiority or patronage. 
 
 It should always be remembered to his credit 
 that the parson was in those days responsible 
 for everything' it was not very much that was 
 
 105 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 done towards educating what would soon be the 
 manhood of the country. The school buildings 
 and the expenses appertaining to them were in 
 the hands of the parson, who subsidised the sub- 
 scriptions of the few parishioners who had anything 
 to spare from an income even less able to meet 
 the call. If these subscribers were few in number 
 those who took a real interest in the school were 
 fewer still. Some villages were not possessed of 
 a school ; there would be a cottage or two, very 
 likely, to which children would be sent at irregular 
 intervals the attendance officer was in the dim 
 and distant future to learn their ABC, which 
 was as far as the old woman who kept what she 
 called her ' school ' could lead them on the road 
 to knowledge. Some of the village schools were 
 fairly good, and then it would be found that the 
 parson was above the average. No Government 
 had as yet seen the necessity for educating the 
 people, a great number of whom did not even 
 aspire to the ABC. 
 
 But a change was coming over the parsons, 
 the first sign of which was the renunciation of the 
 time-honoured name. The parting of the ways 
 came when country parsons developed into priests. 
 Oddly enough, preaching in a white surplice, 
 instead of a black gown, was the accepted sign 
 of an intention to exchange the perhaps too 
 unimpressive rustic service for a more striking 
 
 ceremonial. I remember, when I was a small 
 106 
 
Doctors and Parsons 
 
 boy, a new-comer taking this step, when the sailors 
 who crowded the gallery stood up in a body and 
 hissed him. It was droll that they should have 
 considered themselves capable judges of Church 
 discipline. Not that all or even many of these 
 white-surpliced gentry went over to Rome ; the 
 majority preferred to sit on the fence. But from 
 that date the old-fashioned, but honest and faith- 
 ful, country parson petered out. It was now the 
 priest with the newest thing in stoles and attitudes. 
 All these things, especially the candles (which 
 played a prominent part in the new religion, as 
 if salvation might be by tallow as well as by oil), 
 attracted the female portion of the congregation, 
 to whom the priest paid such deference that he 
 had very little time for the males. It might 
 almost be imagined that there was no male con- 
 gregation, and this may one day be the case. 
 
 Nowadays the incumbent of a country village 
 frequently knows nothing of country life, of which 
 indeed he apparently prefers to remain in absolute 
 ignorance. It sounds incredible, but, no doubt, 
 some might be found who had officiated for years 
 in country villages without noticing the mani- 
 festation of nature entitled ' the fall of the leaf,* 
 and who wonders, when their attention is called 
 to the bare branches, whether they can have been 
 hand-picked. 
 
 Without being of very inquiring minds, people 
 
 began to ask how a man could dare to talk about 
 
 107 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 heaven, which he has not seen, when he had 
 noticed nothing on earth whereon he had lived, 
 with his eyes shut, for forty or perhaps fifty years. 
 
 Parsons are now demanding increased stipends, 
 which should surely only be granted to those who 
 have shown a certain amount of fitness for the 
 duties which they have undertaken, and to which 
 many of them perhaps with the best intentions- 
 appear incapable of doing justice. They are also 
 claiming the right of presenting themselves as 
 candidates for the House of Commons ! This 
 would mean for them more talking, for which the 
 majority of laymen consider that they, the parsons, 
 have already sufficient opportunities. Indeed, 
 about two sermons a year are as much as could 
 be extracted from the brains of the majority with 
 any prospect of benefit to their hearers. Yet these 
 unfortunate men are called on, or imagine they 
 are called on, for at least a hundred sermons 
 annually. No doubt their admission to the House 
 of Commons would have the effect of diminishing 
 the flow of pulpit eloquence ; but as politicians I 
 have always found parsons lamentable failures, 
 from their inability to understand the ABC of 
 a science which even its lifelong students are 
 sometimes unable to master. There are certainly 
 but few parsons who would be anything but a 
 nuisance if promoted to the House of Commons, 
 though some might not improbably attain success 
 on the stage. 
 108 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE BRITISH FLEET IN 1 
 
 IT would be hard for anyone, who had not 
 witnessed the gradual development, to realise 
 the complete change that has taken place in 
 naval matters since the 'sixties. In a period of 
 about sixty years we have passed from wooden 
 ships entirely dependent on sails : first to ships 
 with auxiliary steam power, then to armoured 
 vessels at first only partially protected (as in the 
 American North and South War), then to iron 
 ships gradually becoming larger, and with arma- 
 ments daily increasing in size and range. It 
 seems certain that the size of battleships, after the 
 War, will diminish; while the range of the guns 
 may go on increasing and quite possibly the 
 Kaiser, in his enforced retirement, is already con- 
 templating the ordering of emplacements for his 
 guns, for the next war, to carry across the Atlantic. 
 On the wall of the room where I am now 
 sitting hangs a water-colour drawing of some of 
 the warships which were present at the Great 
 Review at Spithead in 1851. At this review the 
 
 Queen was present on board the Duke of Wellington^ 
 
 109 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 a wooden ship carrying 131 guns pop-guns they 
 would now be considered and with auxiliary 
 steam. She appears in the drawing with one very 
 small funnel. In a naval engagement to-day she 
 would not survive five minutes, while she would 
 certainly do no harm to her opponents. 
 
 The drawing includes the Algiers^ ninety guns; 
 Imperieuse, fifty guns ; Flying Fish, six guns this 
 last the only vessel with two funnels. All these 
 ships had a certain amount of steam power in addi- 
 tion to their sails. There are other naval drawings 
 on the wall, including one of the Royal Yacht 
 Victoria and Albert^ and another of the ' Bombard- 
 ment of Bomarsund * a rather futile undertaking. 
 
 These records of another age recall to me the 
 draughtsman, my younger brother, who joined the 
 Navy as midshipman immediately after leaving 
 school, and, as was frequently the case with lads 
 born and bred on the sea coast, had determined 
 from childhood to become a sailor. He first 
 served on the Phaeton^ a fifty-gun sailing-frigate, 
 the best and fastest of half a dozen which were 
 thought to be the ne plus ultra of naval archi- 
 tecture. These must have been nearly the last 
 wooden ships without auxiliary steam. He was 
 afterwards on the Duke of Wellington^ which was 
 the reason for my being on board that ship during 
 the Review an experience I am not likely to 
 forget. I used to row out in the morning from 
 Portsmouth to Spithead in a little dinghy (which, 
 
 attached to the stern of H.M.S. Duke of Wellington, 
 no 
 
The British Fleet in 1851 
 
 may have looked rather absurd), returning to 
 Portsmouth in the evening. It was during this 
 visit to Portsmouth that I saw in the dockyard a 
 wooden ship, the Nelson^ with a figure-head repre- 
 senting the great Admiral. She was built after 
 the close of the Peninsular War, had been nearly 
 forty years on the stocks, and was never launched. 
 My brother next served on a gunboat, the 
 Geyser^ with the Baltic Fleet under * Charlie * 
 Napier, whose baggage when he took command 
 was reported to have been limited to a cake of 
 soap and a night-shirt. After the Crimean War 
 my brother was appointed to the Royal Yacht. 
 One of his first duties was the rescue of the tobacco 
 I had smuggled on my way home from Malta, 
 where I had been serving with the East Kent 
 Militia, when he came aboard the transport which 
 was moored in close proximity to the Royal Yacht, 
 and, putting the parcel under the short cloak then 
 worn in the Navy, carried it away to the Victoria 
 and Albert^ from which I afterwards salved it. 
 He had been some time in the Mediterranean, 
 and seldom passed a notable view or headland 
 without transferring it to his scrap-book, for which 
 Her Majesty would frequently send when there 
 were guests on board the Yacht. Unfortunately, 
 he caught a cold in the Baltic, which, being care- 
 lessly treated, settled on his lungs, and he died a 
 short time afterwards while I was absent in America. 
 Had he lived he would undoubtedly have made 
 
 his mark, for he was devoted to his profession ; 
 
 in 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 besides being, even at that early age, nearly if 
 not quite the best naval draughtsman in the 
 Service. From the date of his entering the Service, 
 I seldom missed visiting him when his ship came 
 home. Once I got leave from Oxford for a week 
 and went down to Hull, where the old Geyser 
 had put in for repairs. We amused ourselves 
 driving about the country. One day we found 
 ourselves at Beverley, where I was astonished to 
 see the story of Adam and Eve quaintly told 
 by stone pictures along the roof of the fine old 
 Minster. Some of these statues were in rather 
 a ruinous state. I sometimes wonder if they 
 have since been repaired, or are now considered 
 unsuitable for modern ideas of propriety, or, it 
 may be, for modern belief. 
 
 When I was a small boy, I was walking a little 
 way from the beach at Walmer, at low tide, when 
 I heard a strange noise, and saw a queer-looking 
 vessel passing close to the shore. She had two 
 funnels, from which smoke was rising. She was 
 going at what I considered a great pace; and when 
 I got down the shelving beach to the edge of the 
 water, I could only see her in the distance. This 
 was, I believe, the first steamer unassisted by sails. 
 She was called the Springheeled Jack) though 
 whether that was truly her name, or only what 
 the sailors called her, I cannot remember. 
 
 The change to steam was still in progress, 
 
 after the Crimean War. At the close of the war, 
 112 
 
The British Fleet in 1851 
 
 we, the East Kent Militia, were taken back in 
 the Etna> a large iron steamer ; while another 
 regiment, the Fifty-first, was towed behind us in 
 a wooden ship one of Green's liners. 
 
 I find it impossible to recall the glorious days 
 of our old wooden ships without giving a thought 
 to Charles Dibdin, who did so much to steel the 
 hearts of our sailors and to gain for them the 
 honour and glory which they would never have 
 sought for themselves. Many years ago, when J[ 
 was busily engaged in politics in the Midlands, 
 I sought a brief distraction by holding forth at 
 an inn in one of the most Radical sections of 
 East Worcestershire to the few residents (and 
 voters) who were adherents of the Conservative 
 cause, on Charles Dibdin and his songs. There 
 were present the local sweep all whose soot I 
 had purchased that year for my wheat a publican, 
 who may still have considered that beer was the 
 rightful appanage of the Conservative Party, and 
 about a dozen others rather a shamefaced lot. 
 Doubtless with the view of doing something to 
 conserve the memory of the great musician and 
 song-writer, as well as to assist towards the success 
 of the meeting, the Radicals had arranged that 
 a barrel organ of exceptional power should be 
 brought up by a melodious donkey and stationed 
 in the road exactly opposite the room in which I 
 was speaking. The combined strains were hard 
 to overcome, but I managed to make myself heard. 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 This was about A.D. 1876. I don't suppose any 
 member of my audience supposing me to have 
 been audible with the exception of the chairman, 
 a Baliol double first, had ever heard of Dibdin, 
 who had died as long ago as 1814, was kid to 
 rest quietly at Camden Town, and in whose 
 honour, in 1829 a somewhat long delay a 
 memorial was subscribed for, which was to be 
 seen, in 1841, in the Veterans' Library at Green- 
 wich Hospital. 
 
 On this occasion, after giving as full an 
 account as I could gather of Dibdin's life, I 
 recited some of his best poems * Tom Bowling,' 
 ' Who cares ? ' (which the meeting especially 
 appreciated), ' Poor Jack!' and a few others. Surely 
 some of Dibdin'^s songs are true poems. There 
 are people, no doubt, who will tell you exactly 
 where to draw the line between songs and poems. 
 Songs are often poems; but poets would probably 
 object to any of their effusions being called songs, 
 though no greater compliment could be paid them. 
 Naturally, in such a vast number of songs, all 
 confined to one subject, some of Dibdin's are of 
 inferior quality. Is there any voluminous poet of 
 whom this cannot be affirmed ? Dibdin's inferior 
 songs have sometimes too much grog, and quite 
 enough Poll in them; but I suppose these were 
 the two things, next to patriotism and a love of 
 their calling, which attracted the heroes he wished 
 
 to impress. A ship in full sail was * a thing of 
 114 
 
The British Fleet in 1851 
 
 beauty ' (though, alas ! not ' a joy for ever '), which 
 can scarcely be said of its superseders. The loss 
 of this beauty, no doubt, accounts for the fact 
 that Dibdin has never had a successor. Our iron 
 ships have been described and praised by writers 
 of every calibre, the fine qualities of our sailors 
 are more than ever appreciated ; but it seems to 
 be acknowledged that it is easier, if not more 
 fitting, to write of them in prose than in verse. 
 When there were no more sailing-ships, when 
 1 Hearts of oak are our ships * was no longer true, 
 there could not be another Dibdin. The day for 
 naval poets had gone by. Fortunately, England 
 has not lost the command of the sea caret quia 
 vate sacro I 
 
 Dibdin's critics should remember that he wrote 
 under the instruction of the Government, and for 
 a beggarly pittance. It is a wonder that he wrote 
 so well. He is, at any rate, worthy of being 
 remembered; yet the name of Tertaeus is perhaps 
 better known. 
 
 The inclusion of some of his best poems in 
 the first series of the ' Golden Treasury ' would 
 have been some palliation of our neglect. Another 
 opportunity of doing him late honour occurred 
 on the publication of the second series. This also 
 was allowed to pass. Let us hope that if ever, 
 as it is to be hoped may be the case, a third series 
 is called for, a place will be found for Charles 
 Dibdin. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE * RANK AND FILE ' IN THE LAST CENTURY 
 
 MEMORIES of the Peninsular War stayed 
 with us till quite late in the last century, 
 kept alive at first by officers still on active 
 service Lord Raglan, who had lost an arm when 
 chief of the Duke of Wellington's staff, at Waterloo, 
 was afterwards Commander-in-Chief in the Crimea 
 by the survivors of the rank and file scattered 
 about in the towns and villages throughout the 
 country, and later by the frequent notices in the 
 papers of the * death of a Waterloo veteran ' ; the 
 intervals between these notices gradually becoming 
 longer, until they ceased altogether. Retired 
 soldiers seem to have a longer lease of life than 
 ordinary mortals. (I remember meeting in a 
 little village on the Illinois prairie, in 1860, an 
 old Russian soldier who had served against 
 Napoleon in the retreat from Moscow, in 1812, 
 and who must have reached a considerable age.) 
 The Duke of Wellington was one of the last to 
 retire from the scene of his arduous and patriotic 
 labours. 
 116 
 
'Rank and File' in the Last Century 
 
 The local veteran, if not too generously 
 rewarded by his country, was yet looked on with 
 appreciation by his neighbours. Our representa- 
 tive was a little, wiry old man, who used to walk 
 about the village dragging one leg after him. He 
 was only about five feet five in height, but he made 
 the most of it. His hair was white as snow, and 
 there were many furrows on his withered old 
 cheeks, but it is unlikely that they served as is 
 supposed to be their office as channels for tears. 
 He seemed always as merry as a grasshopper. 
 He did odd jobs about the village, here to-day 
 and there to-morrow, and had somehow acquired 
 the position of village gardener, though for this 
 office he had little more aptitude than an old hen. 
 He knew nothing of any business but that of 
 hero, and of this his knowledge, always elementary, 
 had been deprived, by the revolution in the materials 
 and methods of slaughter, of its slight original 
 value. It was his privilege to take things easily, 
 and he sometimes utilised it by leaning on his 
 spade and telling a story. These stories he may 
 originally have invented as is the custom in the 
 commercial world after creating the demand. 
 
 He lived by himself his wife, who had 
 followed the Colours, and may have been a heroine 
 in her way, had been dead many years in a little 
 two-roomed cottage at the end of the village, 
 through the window of which if one peeped in 
 
 after working hours he might be espied at his 
 
 117 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 evening meal. He had one chair, and the cat sat 
 on that. He was proud of his talent for sitting 
 on anything that came handy ; though in truth his 
 makeshifts were of the rudest and least ingenious 
 kind. It was much if he could boil coffee if 
 given to him ready ground. He certainly could 
 not have roasted it, but he would have gone with- 
 out, and no grumbling, or he would have eaten 
 it green. He would live for days on cold boiled 
 broad-beans, which he picked out of a cracked basin 
 with his pocket-knife. * Saved trouble/ he told 
 you. His dress, except on Sundays, was a patch- 
 work of rags which he mended himself, if mend- 
 ing it could be called. But what did he care for 
 appearances ? * What though with hoary locks, I 
 must stand the winter's shocks ! ' 
 
 His cold beans and rags served as introduction 
 to recollections of a night spent in the wet rye- 
 fields without fire or anything to eat. ' I was 
 that stiff, sir, in the morning, that I didn't think 
 I could march a mile to save my life, but, bless 
 you, it wore off.' From the moral heights of that 
 rye-field, he could look down on a lord with his 
 twenty thousand a year. Only a common soldier, 
 but with glory enough to retire upon. So we 
 thought, and he was a little of our opinion. But 
 the men who stood firm, when the French devils 
 (as he called them) were riding round the squares, 
 looking for a gap to break in at, were no common 
 
 soldiers. I met him one day with another old 
 118 
 
'Rank and File' in the Last Century 
 
 man taking a cart-wheel to the wheelwright's shop. 
 The two old men were laughing. * It minds 
 me,' said our hero, ' of them artillerymen trund- 
 ling the guns into our square.' It seems our 
 gunners at Waterloo, after discharging their pieces 
 when the enemy were upon them, unlimbered the 
 near wheel of each cannon, and retired, rolling 
 the wheel into the nearest square. The French 
 horsemen galloped up and threw ropes prepared 
 for the purpose, like the American lasso, over the 
 gun ; but they could not move it away on one 
 wheel before a deadly volley from the square 
 stretched half of them on the ground, and sent 
 the rest headlong down the slope. This joke 
 never lost its zest for our hero. When we talked 
 to him of the Red Cross, the Ambulance Corps, 
 and the giving of chloroform before operations, he 
 used to smile. * We never had nothing of them 
 sorts,' he would say ; * I suppose people's got 
 softer.' We used to shudder at his tales of the 
 wounded lying out for days without help, and then 
 being jolted miles across the rough country in 
 farmers' carts, to some improvised hospital full 
 of indescribable abominations. He would not 
 perhaps he could not say whether he had killed 
 anyone ; and I fancy he was no fire-eater, but a 
 simple country lad who had enlisted for glory, 
 and who, when he had * taken the shilling,' did 
 his duty, following in his humble way in the steps 
 
 of his Great Commander. His accomplishments 
 
 119 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 were not many. He could neither read, write, 
 sum, fiddle, nor preach. He was long before the 
 days of Board schools ; and perhaps he had the 
 greater confidence in those who led him for the 
 reason that he had no opinion of his own. He 
 had the old-world gift of faith, now obsolete, or, 
 like content, thought to be almost a crime. Poor, 
 unreasoning virtue ! and if not in itself heroic, 
 yet, surely, the cause of heroism in others, since 
 faith alone makes it possible for anyone to lead. 
 
 He had never been in want ; his pension just 
 kept him from that, and the work (so-called) that 
 he did provided for his one luxury his pipe, 
 that he was never without. What beer he had 
 was given him by an appreciative public. Charity 
 he would never have accepted. He faded away 
 by slow degrees, but it was only three days before 
 he died that he took to his bed. An old woman, 
 some relation of his wife, came in to nurse him. 
 He was leaving little behind him, so she didn't 
 pity him much. He didn't pity himself at all. 
 4 The wonder is,' he said at the last, ' that it wasn't 
 all those years ago.' 
 
 We had our wars in the last century, though 
 not equalling in importance the struggle with 
 Napoleon, or the still more determined effort of 
 the Kaiser, now happily concluded or nearly so 
 at world domination. Almost immediately after 
 my leaving * the House,' the Crimean War broke 
 
 out, and I found myself learning the ' goose-step ' 
 120 
 
'Rank and File' in the Last Century 
 
 and * manual platoon ' under the eye of a sergeant 
 at the depot of the East Kent Militia at Canterbury. 
 It was but a short time before I was thought 
 capable, with the assistance of a steady young 
 private promoted for the occasion to corporal 
 of taking a draft out to Malta, where the regiment 
 was already in barracks. A few days after my 
 arrival, I met in the Strada Reale a well-set-up 
 young fellow in uniform, who saluted me with a 
 broad grin. It was a minute or two before I 
 recognised him for an Oxford ' cad ' so called 
 one of a few more or less privileged ' tramps,' for 
 the most part a disreputable and ragged lot, who 
 were permitted to stand at Canterbury Gate, and 
 to earn a precarious living by running errands or 
 holding horses for the undergraduates. He was 
 now quite a smart-looking private, a transformation 
 as complete as it must have been speedy. Of 
 course in those days the Army was dependent, as 
 it had been during the Peninsular War, on * volun- 
 tary ' enlistment. The farm labourer would slouch 
 into the market town in his smock and heavy boots 
 covered with the local variety of clay, when he 
 would be accosted by the ribbon-bedecked sergeant, 
 and after ' taking the shilling ' and imbibing at 
 the latter's expense a quart or two of ale, would 
 become ' a soldier of the Queen.' This without 
 knowing anything of the cause of the war, in what 
 quarter of the world it was to be waged, taking 
 
 any interest in the sergeant's glib talk of glory, 
 
 121 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 or with the slightest expectations of finding a 
 Field Marshal's baton whatever that might be 
 in his knapsack. In many cases the poor fellow 
 was driven from his village by the pangs of dis- 
 appointed love, but more often from utter weariness 
 of a sordid and hopeless existence, eked out in 
 some counties on a wage of twelve, or perhaps 
 only nine, shillings a week an amount still further 
 reduced when the weather was too bad for any 
 work to be continued on the farm, when he would 
 have to sit in his cottage under a leaking roof 
 very likely, and do nothing. 
 
 No doubt the sergeant's stereotyped palaver 
 was not quite without effect, but it was probably 
 the beer to one who, unless a native of one of 
 the cider-growing counties, had not touched a 
 drop of intoxicating liquor for ages that settled 
 the matter. To remember one's misery no more, 
 is as near as a good many can get, even in these 
 days, to happiness. 
 
 One would have thought these poor slaves, 
 broken-hearted as some of them appeared to be, 
 would have had little spirit for fighting ; but, as 
 a fact, they made excellent soldiers, as had been 
 proved in the Peninsular War, and was now to 
 be proved again in the Crimean. It is hard to 
 imagine that they were assisted to enlistment by 
 any feeling of patriotism such as moved the nation 
 as one man to fight the brutal Hun. They could 
 
 have had no feeling against Russia, and it is 
 122 
 
'Rank and File' in the Last Century 
 
 unlikely that the majority had ever heard the 
 name. It was something, of course, to know they 
 would be clothed and fed, and would be able to 
 obey the commandment, which some few of them 
 may have listened to, to take no thought for the 
 morrow. Beyond this there must have been some- 
 thing of the feeling which an Englishman is 
 seldom without, urging them to play the man, 
 and never say die. 
 
 The Oxford * tramp ' was of a different species. 
 He was always, no doubt, dirty and ragged, but 
 he had his good days, when some careless under- 
 graduate would chuck him * half a quid,' and his 
 speedy development into a smart soldier was, if 
 anything, more remarkable than that of the farm 
 labourer. 
 
 It was left to the present War, by substituting 
 conscription for the ribbon-bedecked sergeant and 
 his shilling, to bring a different class of men to 
 the colours and so sever the alliance between beer 
 and recruiting. Many years after the Crimean 
 War, I used occasionally to visit a friend of mine 
 who was recruiting-officer for the Navy of a 
 populous district in the Midlands. His office was 
 in a public-house ; the big room where the candi- 
 dates were examined being decorated with an 
 enormous and soul-stirring stack of pewter pots, and 
 other utensils to assist intoxication, and it must have 
 been hard for the young fellows, after acceptance 
 
 or rejection, to escape without sampling the brew. 
 
 123 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 Together with other militia regiments serving 
 in the Mediterranean, we had volunteered for the 
 front, but peace being proclaimed we got no 
 farther than Malta. I have always regretted the 
 sweeping away of the militia a force which, it 
 seems to me, was worthy rather of being fostered 
 than destroyed. In our shortage of troops, towards 
 the end of the Crimean War, it did good service 
 in garrisoning the Mediterranean, and as a force 
 from which troops could be drawn in considerable 
 numbers for the regular Army it was not without 
 its value. In the present War, with troops counted 
 by millions instead of thousands, it might have 
 appeared * contemptible,' but it is to be hoped we 
 are not soon to have another war on the same 
 scale, and that we shall never have another little 
 one is, for all the talk about a ' League of Nations/ 
 unlikely. 
 
 I confess I should have anticipated our going 
 to the front with more confidence than was the 
 case if our officers had been a little more capable. 
 The colonel was a fine old fellow, an M.F.H. at 
 home, but too good-natured to be a good dis- 
 ciplinarian. The major, though his service had 
 been in a cavalry regiment, may have known 
 something of infantry drill, but the captains were 
 without exception a sorry lot. The captain of my 
 company, a fine-looking fellow enough, was an 
 ex-bagman, and stone-deaf. This last failing was 
 
 always getting us into hot water with the general, 
 124 ' 
 
'Rank and File' in the Last Century 
 
 a peppery old chap, with what was even then an 
 old-fashioned taste for strong language. In vain 
 did our sergeant-major a splendid fellow who was 
 sent to us from a crack regiment keep close to 
 his elbow on parade ; in vain did the captain march 
 with head turned towards the rear and curved 
 hand at his ear ; the required information never 
 seemed to reach him. He went on his way 
 regardless of what other regiments were doing, 
 and without seeing that he was leading us on 
 what, in real warfare, would have been the path 
 to destruction. 
 
 We returned to England on a big iron ship, 
 the Etna, which towed a wooden ship, one of 
 Green's liners, with the Fifty-first Regiment on 
 board. I suppose it was thought that we were 
 less able to resist seasickness than the Regulars, 
 and certainly the latter had a terrible time in the 
 Bay of Biscay. On reaching Canterbury we were 
 disbanded, when the Grenadier company, mostly 
 navvies, splendid fellows, who had enlisted on the 
 completion of the Crystal Palace, appeared on 
 parade without their moustaches, so proclaiming 
 themselves to be once more civilians. 
 
 There have been plenty of costly mistakes 
 made in the big War, now supposed to have reached 
 its conclusion ; but I think, having regard to its 
 comparatively small size, that the record of inepti- 
 tude in the Crimean War was not easy to surpass. 
 The thanks of the nation were due to the talented 
 
 125 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 and patriotic war correspondent who exposed 
 some of the worst of these mistakes, though too 
 late to save thousands of lives that were lost 
 through the want of necessary food and clothing. 
 As usual, Punch expressed the national feeling on 
 the discovery of what had been going on. There 
 are some still left who remember the cartoon 
 depicting the men shovelling snow from the roof 
 of a house on to the head of the unhappy, 
 but doubtless well-meaning, Prime Minister, walk- 
 ing on the pavement below. * Cauld kail in 
 Aberdeen ! ' I was witness, while at Malta, of 
 the reckless waste of everything for the want of 
 which our soldiers in the Crimea were dying. I 
 insert a passage from an article on the Militia, 
 printed in 1906, which tells what was going on, 
 incredible as it may appear to the many who never 
 heard of it. 
 
 * Perhaps the most wonderful sight to be 
 seen at Malta in those days was the vast 
 stores of good things intended for the soldiers 
 in the Crimea, a considerable portion of which 
 had been to Balaclava, and arrived as far as 
 Malta on the return journey. Perhaps at 
 Balaclava there had been no time to unload 
 them, or the bill of lading may have been 
 mislaid, and to interfere with them in its 
 absence would have been a crime of the first 
 magnitude. Perhaps but there was then no 
 lack of perfectly proper reasons for doing the 
 most idiotic things, and leaving the obviously 
 126 
 
'Rank and File' in the Last Century 
 
 sensible undone. These stores were to be 
 seen heaped high as haystacks around the 
 harbour, and exposed which certainly in that 
 climate mattered little to the weather. Cases 
 of port and sherry, champagne, whiskey, 
 potted meats, bales of socks, jerseys, water- 
 proof coats and boots, together with tons and 
 tons of all possible and impossible necessaries 
 and luxuries, lay heaped together in inextric- 
 able confusion. What might have been the 
 means of saving thousands of lives if served 
 out to the troops during the dreadful winter 
 season was now only a source of almost 
 irresistible temptation to the sentries. Officers 
 got thoroughly sick of the courts martial 
 necessitated by these peccadilloes, but there 
 was a strong feeling against treating the 
 offenders harshly. What ultimately happened 
 to these stores I never heard. I don't suppose 
 that they are there now, but as an inquiry 
 is now (1906) being instituted into the waste 
 of stores during the South African War, 
 which terminated in June 1902, it would 
 scarcely surprise me to hear of some M.P. 
 say Mr. McNeill rising to ask for an 
 account of the stores landed at Malta in 1855, 
 after a fruitless journey to the Crimea/ 
 
 127 
 
CHAPTERJKIII 
 
 CANADA 
 
 WHEN I first crossed the Atlantic, in 
 1857, I intended staying for some time 
 in Canada West, with a view to eventu- 
 ally settling in the Dominion. It chanced that 
 one of my fellow travellers by the Inman Line 
 was an Old Etonian, who appealed to me with 
 his talk of * bruzering my dame/ and other pass 
 words. He had evidently spent a good deal of 
 his time in the U.S.A., and urged me to see some- 
 thing of the Prairie States, where, he said, there 
 was any amount of the. richest land in the world 
 lying idle, and only needing stocking ; while in 
 Canada, I should have to spend the best part of 
 a lifetime in clearing, at the most, a few acres of 
 primeval forest. The Old Etonian left me at 
 Quebec, on his way to Chicago, where he promised 
 to meet me in a few weeks' time, and to give me 
 his assistance as to location and other matters. 
 After spending a few days in Quebec and Montreal 
 and visiting Hamilton, Toronto, and other embryo 
 
 cities, I went on by easy stages to Chicago, where 
 128 
 
Canada 
 
 I commenced a search for my Old Etonian. He 
 had, however, apparently forgotten all about me, 
 and I never saw or heard of him again. After 
 waiting some days for him to turn up, I started 
 off by myself on the Illinois Central Railroad, 
 then in the embryo state, with my gun and a dog 
 I chanced on, which fortunately proved a very 
 good one, and served me faithfully for several 
 years, during which I had some excellent sport in 
 Illinois and the neighbouring State of Michigan. 
 On this occasion I got south as far as Centralia, 
 and might have been seen one morning at the 
 rude hotel there, hurrying half-dressed after the 
 girl (who would not have liked to be called a 
 housemaid) who was sweeping my boots before 
 her down the long passage, as a rebuke to me 
 for placing them outside my door to undergo the 
 routine as yet unknown to dwellers on the prairie. 
 The idea of settling in Canada West died 
 gradually, and I saw nothing more of the country 
 than was to be picked up in a few short visits at 
 various times. Colonisation in Canada West was 
 then proceeding in a somewhat leisurely fashion, 
 while in the old settlements about Quebec and 
 Montreal things were almost if not quite stationary. 
 In the neighbourhood of the embryo cities in the 
 West the forest was being gradually driven back, 
 but there were still few manufacturers of any but 
 the cheapest and commonest necessaries. Every- 
 thing else, even to chairs and tables, was obtained 
 
 K 129 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 from the United States or from Europe. The 
 chief, if not the only, export was potash, obtained 
 by burning the trees which had been laboriously 
 cut down by the new settlers. The few bushels 
 of wheat harvested from seed hoed in among the 
 stumps being trodden out in the rude farm build- 
 ings by horses, and transported on the farmer's 
 back to a distant mill. 
 
 I have always had a feeling of regret that I 
 had not given Canada a fair chance before going 
 to the States. I have fancied that I might have 
 found in Canada friends who would have appealed 
 to me more than those I made in the States ; in 
 fact, men more like Englishmen. But nothing 
 could have been kinder or more generous than 
 the treatment the Americans accorded me during 
 the years I dwelt among them ; and perhaps the 
 one thing that prevents Englishmen from being 
 perfect colonists is that they are always looking 
 out for and desiring something or somebody to 
 remind them of the Old Country, whereas what 
 they should be wanting is a perfect change of men, 
 manners, and customs, without which they might 
 as well have stopped at home. 
 
 However, something of this feeling came over 
 me again on visiting St. Paul's one day in 1917, 
 and finding the cathedral crowded with Canadian 
 troops, who were being shown round by the 
 officials. I had some talk with the leader of the 
 party, and had he not been evidently much occu- 
 130 
 
Canada 
 
 pied with his duties I should have asked him to 
 tell me what had happened of late years to the 
 Opeongo Road, though very likely he would have 
 been unable to inform me. 
 
 When I was first thinking of going to America 
 a friend, who may have had no very ardent wish 
 to see me again, sent me a newspaper cutting 
 informing intending settlers that they could get 
 1 60 acres free of cost on the Opeongo Road, 
 some distance west of Montreal. Going up from 
 Quebec the train stopped at a station labelled 
 * Opeongo Road ' ; I looked out with some 
 curiosity, and saw a corduroy road stretching 
 away into the forest. On a small dealing, in 
 close proximity to the station, was a row of about 
 twelve log houses. To each of them was attached 
 a narrow strip of land, carefully fenced off from 
 its neighbour. Here, I suppose, some French 
 Canadian had taken up land years ago ; on his 
 death it had been divided, according to local 
 custom, between the surviving members of his 
 family. This would be subdivided again and 
 again, until there would be little room to run a 
 plough between the fences. I did not care for 
 this sort of thing, nor did I feel confident of 
 my ability to hew my road to fortune, literally, 
 with an axe. There were, moreover, no stump- 
 extractors in those days. Some ten years later I 
 passed by Opeongo Road again, coming over from 
 England for a brief visit. The place was exactly 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 as I had first seen it. Apparently no more settlers 
 had arrived, while none of the old ones had died, 
 and the narrow strips of land had not been again 
 subdivided. Now, sixty years later, the forest 
 has no doubt long since retired, and the Opeongo 
 Road taken its part in the advancement which has 
 made Canada one of England's most prosperous 
 colonies, and enabled her to take a glorious and 
 patriotic part in the Great War. 
 
 In 1866, when journeying from New York 
 to Chicago, I came across an elderly American, a 
 favourable type of the old Pioneer class. He 
 seemed to have been everywhere, knew the Southern 
 States well, and had lived some time in South 
 America. He took the first ship loaded with 
 wheat down the lakes to Montreal, after the open- 
 ing of the Canal. There was no elevator there, 
 and only bushel baskets with which to unload. 
 He went to report the arrival of his ship to some 
 body answering to a Chamber of Commerce, and, 
 following the American rule on entering an office, 
 kept his hat on. They took no notice of him till 
 at last someone said he had better conform to 
 custom and take his hat off. He apologised for 
 making a mistake, but said * Guess I'll stick to 
 it now.' They continued to ignore him. When 
 he got back to his ship he found Custom House 
 officers on board, sealing up everything. These 
 he drove off, and was then taken into custody 
 
 and fined one dollar, for which he got a receipt. 
 132 
 
Canada 
 
 He told them they were fools to take so much 
 trouble about a dollar, and that no Yankee would 
 believe it. I suppose he was eventually allowed 
 to unload, but it seemed to me a strange method 
 of welcoming trade. 
 
 There was a story going about when I was 
 staying in Hamilton, about 1858, which shews 
 how an old manufacturing country may force a 
 new country into supplying her own wants, and 
 later into exporting and so turning the tables on 
 the old one. The Canadian and American axe 
 was a splendid tool, quite different from the 
 clumsy affair still used by woodsmen in the Old 
 Country. A large order for axes was sent to 
 England, with a pattern. The order was com- 
 pleted by sending back axes of the English type, 
 which the English manufacturer, poor man, doubt- 
 less considered far superior to the sample. They 
 were at once returned, and it was said that since 
 that date no more orders for axes had been sent 
 to England. This was one way of helping a new 
 country to take away our trade, and as likely to 
 be successful as any other. It is a good thing for 
 the new country, no doubt, and one is glad to see 
 our colonies become self-supporting, just as one 
 likes to see a son successful when he leaves the 
 old home. Canada can now make her own axes, 
 and a good many other things as well which 
 England used to send her. We may have got 
 sharper since those days, and we shall have to get 
 
 133 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 sharper still. After this ruinous war we shall 
 want all the trade we can get. But America will 
 be wanting it too, and will get a good deal of it 
 of course, in quite a friendly way. The great 
 objection I saw to Mr. J. Chamberlain's scheme 
 of Tariff Reform, so far as it meant keeping out 
 foreign goods by putting heavy taxes on their 
 wares, was that it seemed to offer a premium to 
 the slowness and want of energy of our home 
 manufacturers, who would have no need to sharpen 
 their wits if Britons were forced to take whatever 
 was offered them, at any price the maker chose 
 to ask. It would be surely better if our manu- 
 facturers were able to find the necessary energy 
 and ability, so that our goods would be purchased 
 because they were not too highly priced considering 
 their make and material. 
 
 This will never be the case without foreign 
 competition, though this should not, of course, 
 be allowed to exceed what I will call a healthy 
 amount. 
 
 134 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN 1857 
 
 ON my first introduction to the United 
 States of America, in 1857, slavery was 
 an institution upheld by law, but there 
 were signs that its continuance would shortly be 
 challenged. The territory of * Bleeding Kansas/ 
 as it was euphemistically called, was attracting 
 crowds of new settlers, supporters of slave-holders 
 or abolitionists, both parties eager to gain the 
 vote of the new State-to-be for its side. John 
 Brown, of Ossawattomie, was still unmartyred ; 
 the * Underground Railroad ' was moving thou- 
 sands of blacks into Canada and the Free States 
 in winter, to their great discomfort. While great 
 cities were rising here and there, the Prairie States, 
 Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, &c., were for the 
 greater part as sparsely inhabited as in the days 
 of Cooper's Red Indian. The wooden vessels of 
 the Collins Line were drawn up high and dry near 
 Sandy Hook, and the contest of wood against iron 
 had come to a disastrous finish. The United 
 States had a standing army of a few thousand men, 
 chiefly occupied in looking after the Indian Reser- 
 
 135 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 vations, and opposing the occasional ententes of 
 such survivors as Sitting Bull, and another chief 
 or two. There were a few seedy-looking half- 
 breeds selling moccasins around the Illinois Central 
 Railroad Depot in Chicago, near which might still 
 have been seen, by anyone who cared to look for 
 it, the old historic log fort, with its marks of 
 Indian bullets. There were no trusts, no sporting 
 estates, and very few were to be found in the 
 Western States who shot flying. There were 
 comparatively few American prose-writers ; but of 
 these, two or three stood out from the rank and 
 file, and were already more appreciated in England 
 than at home. American poets, while not without 
 merit, were inferior to those of older countries, 
 whose classic and hall-marked poems they had 
 made no serious attempt at rivalling. American 
 musicians had struck a new note with their negro 
 melodies, some of which were at least equal to the 
 Scotch and Irish tunes which Burns and Moore 
 had assisted to fame with their immortal poems. 
 American humour was dry and rather grim ; of a 
 quality quite distinct from other varieties. I don't 
 think that wealthy Americans, who were then 
 comparatively few in number, were greatly addicted 
 to it, but as used by the farmers and backwoodsmen 
 I found it delightful. 
 
 In a period of about sixty years changes have 
 occurred which, in the case of a duller or less 
 energetic people, would have taken centuries to 
 156 
 
United States of America in 1857 
 
 accomplish. The long-continued slavery of the 
 imported African race has come to an end, and 
 its place taken by the Trusts, while it is left for a 
 few survivors to tell which was the worse evil of 
 the two. The unsettled Prairie States are now 
 ' full up/ and even in Montana as was said to 
 me years ago by a disappointed would-be settler 
 there is scarcely room for a newcomer to slide down 
 the slope into the Pacific. It seems there is already 
 an opening for a new Columbus. The United 
 States are building ships much faster than Eng- 
 land, and it looks as if the * Mistress of the Seas ' 
 will soon have to look to her laurels. President 
 Wilson's decision, though come to after a regret- 
 table delay, proves him a not unworthy successor 
 of Lincoln, and instead of a standing army of 
 about 12,000, America is now sending millions 
 across the Atlantic to determine a European war. 1 
 American prose-writers have made a great 
 advance not only in quality, but in quantity. 
 Indeed, it seems that for the first time there is a 
 possibility that the world itself will not be able 
 to contain the books that will be written. A few 
 of her army of novelists need fear no rivalry from 
 more than half a dozen or so of English writers. 
 Some of the remainder fail by not realising that a 
 capable and striking description of a mining-camp 
 or a New York interior falls flat after a third or 
 fourth repetition, while American slang soon proves 
 1 Written in 1917. 
 
 137 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 wearisome to educated readers. There has always 
 been a tendency to exaggeration in American 
 virtues and vices. If other people are doing a 
 thing well and quietly the American will try to 
 do it better if possible, certainly more noisily. 
 But if American prose-writers are attempting 
 to change the English language which, though 
 Waller complained that it was subject to per- 
 petual change 
 
 ' But who can hope his line shall long 
 Last in a daily changing tongue ? * 
 
 has in reality altered little in the last three hundred 
 years it must be allowed that we are doing our 
 share of the wrecking, and assisting the more or 
 less rapid approach towards Argot. One day it 
 is Mr. Churchill, I think, with * meticulous,' 
 which was quite popular for a time, though no 
 one seemed to know the meaning of the word. 
 To-day it is * camouflage/ which one is quite 
 wearied of seeing in print. So rapidly has the 
 word become prominent that everyone, from Prime 
 Minister to speakers on Trades Union Congresses, 
 uses it on every occasion ; so that Mr. Havelock 
 Wilson was enabled to state at Derby, in Septem- 
 ber last, that * the four gentlemen who had spoken 
 had been camouflaging each other all the time/ 
 If the speaker had referred to Victor Hugo's 
 masterly survey, in * Les Mis^rables,' of the Argot 
 of civilised nations which book was, of course, 
 138 
 
United States of America in 1857 
 
 written before the advent of the American variety 
 he would have discovered the real origin and 
 meaning of the word. 
 
 Not content with assisting us to change our 
 language, the Americans are going very near to 
 beating us in melody, and, as might be expected, 
 the American tunes are without any hint of imita- 
 tion, slavish or other. They came, too, just when 
 they were wanted ; when we had got to the end 
 of our tunes, and had been living on variations 
 for a generation or two. We have still our old 
 melodies, Scotch and Irish, for which we cannot 
 be too thankful, as our source is now dried up. 
 Tout est dit. Even with the best of these the 
 American strains compete, not without success, 
 though it will be allowed that the words attached 
 to them are for the most part unworthy of their 
 setting. But Burns and Moore are, and will 
 continue to be, hard to beat. I shall never forget 
 hearing some of the negro melodies played by a 
 local band when I was passing through a prairie 
 village during my first stay in the States. * Home, 
 sweet Home ' could not have affected me more. 
 
 It may seem to some strange that the Americans 
 did not prefer to use these fine tunes for the 
 glorification of a free and enlightened people. But 
 it will be allowed that the sorrows and joys of a 
 captive race, like those of the Jewish captives in 
 Babylon, have been the most touching episodes in 
 the national career. 
 
 139 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 The change in American poetry since my first 
 visit to America is far less remarkable than in 
 prose. There are, of course, more poets than 
 sixty years ago, but it is doubtful whether the 
 quality shows much improvement. Every reader 
 could then name a few American poets who wrote 
 well and nobly. Even in 1857, striking poems 
 were frequently to be met with in Harper's and 
 other periodicals which must have been the work 
 of true poets. Whether Americans will venture so 
 far as to storm Parnassus, as their troops are now 
 storming the Hindenburg line, and oust quite a 
 number of the present tenants who think them- 
 selves secure of immortality, is hard to say; but 
 they may go far towards doing so if they set their 
 minds to it. English poetry has had a start of 
 some centuries, and a stern chase is proverbially 
 a long one. As to an American defeat of English 
 modern poets, it depends entirely on the progress 
 or retrogression of the latter. It is easy to descend, 
 but hard to climb. A few English poets appear 
 to have set themselves the task of wedding English 
 poetry to new metres or to none at all. There are 
 others, too, who appear to consider sense an 
 unnecessary ingredient. The admirers of a style 
 detached from sense and melody will not be very 
 many, or their allegiance of much value. An art 
 built up by centuries of thought and genius is not 
 to be destroyed in a day by raising, as it were, a 
 jerry-built tenement in front of an old cathedral. 
 140 
 
United States of America in 1857 
 
 If Americans follow the lead of modern English 
 poets they will have to strip themselves of their 
 humour, and the mantle remaining to them might 
 prove an insufficient garb. It would be better to 
 stick to their last. There is surely an idea among 
 modern English poets that a free use of humour 
 would be little short of a crime. It seems a 
 wonderful dispensation that poets who could make 
 a finer use of it than any class should apparently 
 be themselves so often without the sense of humour. 
 Yet some may have it, and consider it an unworthy 
 attribute for a poet. Tennyson had it in plenty, 
 but he seldom allowed it to peep out. One wishes 
 he had been more appreciative of a gift which was 
 surely intended to leaven what is sometimes rather 
 a heavy loaf. The determination to be serious at 
 all costs, and so keep back the thought that was 
 tickling him, and would have tickled his readers, 
 has, no doubt, spoilt many a poet, who would have 
 gained immensely by letting himself go on occa- 
 sion. Hood, a true poet if ever there was one, 
 is, on the contrary, an example of too great fond- 
 ness for humour, much of which was worked up, 
 and not spontaneous. But that only shows that 
 a poet should keep an extravagant sense of humour 
 under subjection, just as carefully as others should 
 avoid hiding it under a bushel, as if it were 
 something shameful and degrading. 
 
 For all that there are poets quite considerable 
 poets, too who are absolutely without any sense 
 
 141 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of humour. To give an instance, I was busy 
 hay-making one summer, many years ago, when a 
 young man came to pay me a visit whom I did 
 not know how to amuse. He was shaping for a 
 poet, and he either couldn't or wouldn't haymake ; 
 so I asked him if he had read Sterne. He said 
 he hadn't, and would like to. So I set him to 
 work, his back against a haycock, thinking he 
 would have a good time, while I went on with 
 my haymaking. I passed him in an hour or so, 
 fast asleep, and Sterne chucked away in the grass. 
 I was aware that there were plenty of things he 
 would not like in Sterne. I don't like them myself 
 very few people do. But I have always thought 
 that the wonderful humour made up for much 
 that was objectionable, and left something a good 
 deal over. Not so my poet. He would not 
 allow poor Sterne any humour, which proved 
 incontestably that he himself had none. There 
 may be Americans of whom this could be truth- 
 fully said, but it has not been my lot to come 
 across any of them. 
 
 American humour has changed during the last 
 sixty years, at least as much as anything else. All 
 things must have a beginning, but it is hard to 
 say from whence American humour got its start. 
 The Red Indian was too little given to verbosity 
 to have given its origin to any but the grimmest 
 kind of humour. The Dutch so-called who 
 
 form such a large proportion of the population of the 
 142 
 
United States of America in 1857 
 
 U.S.A., were, and still are, quite without humour, 
 and therefore could not have imparted it. The 
 Mayflower could have had but little room in her 
 cargo for it, and the generality of Englishmen are 
 scarcely less wanting in humour than the inhabi- 
 tants of Germany or Holland. Irishmen and 
 Scotchmen may have assisted at its birth, though 
 the former have for some time abandoned the 
 culture of humour to take up with political 
 bitterness. Perhaps, as two negatives make an 
 affirmative, various degrees of dullness have com- 
 bined to make one humorous whole. Or it may 
 have ' growed,' like ' Topsy.' It was at any rate 
 a great possession, and it would be well to keep 
 it as far as possible unsoiled. There are, no 
 doubt, plenty of people who get on quite com- 
 fortably without a sense of humour. Yet to be 
 without it is to lack the salt of life, to live in a 
 world of which you can never know the joy. 
 Americans are rightly proud of their humour, for 
 which reason, no doubt, they are now treating it 
 like a spoilt child. 
 
 Of late years an enormous amount of novels 
 and other literature has been sent to us across the 
 Atlantic: too much of which appears to me to be 
 made up of a clever exposure of the style in which 
 American millionaires live. Exposing the follies 
 of their countrymen across the water is an industry 
 from which it would be more patriotic to abstain. 
 Moreover, a good deal of this is poor stuff, and we 
 
 143 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 would gladly exchange the lot of it for another 
 volume or two of Hawthorne's careful studies. 
 
 During my first stay in America, I saw Lincoln 
 several times: once in 1858, when he met 
 Senator Douglas ( the little giant ') in a debating 
 contest in a specially erected wooden building in 
 Chicago. It was then the general opinion that the 
 decision between war and peace would be deter- 
 mined by the event of the contest between Lincoln 
 and Douglas for the Presidentship ; as, indeed, 
 proved to be the case. On the occasion of the 
 Chicago debate Lincoln's supporters had provided 
 a surprise intended, no doubt, to be humorous, 
 but which struck me as quite childish. An 
 enormous log was brought from outside into the 
 hall, on the shoulders of some of Lincoln's sup- 
 porters. Astride of this log was a figure intended 
 to represent Lincoln, dressed in woodsman's garb, 
 and driving wedges into the log, which the 
 machinery did not, as far as I could see, succeed 
 in splitting. As I said, it appeared to me very 
 childish; but for this I was prepared the political 
 processions, of which I had seen a good number 
 in New York and elsewhere, being very absurd 
 affairs. Perhaps the way in which politics had 
 been manipulated in the U.S.A. prevented their 
 treatment in a serious or business-like way. These 
 processions were always controlled by a man or 
 two on horseback, embellished by scarves and 
 
 other paraphernalia, whose efforts were apparently 
 144 
 
United States of America in 1857 
 
 confined to keeping their seats on the quadrupeds 
 they were no doubt for the first time bestriding. 
 Curiously enough these political outriders were 
 almost the only men I saw on horseback during 
 my stay in the States. No one ever crossed a 
 horse on the prairie. I would often be on horse- 
 back for a whole day, looking for strays, but I 
 never met anyone on horseback, with the occasional 
 exception of riders bringing a drove of cattle up 
 from Texas. Of course the Illinois prairie was 
 then unsettled, except for a Dutchman here and 
 there. No doubt people ride in the States now 
 as well as, or perhaps better than, in England. 
 
 One of the chief causes of Lincoln's popularity 
 is supposed to have been the fact that he had been 
 a small farmer, and had himself split, or was 
 reported to have split, the rails for the snake 
 fence that surrounded his holding. I am probably 
 correct in thinking that he had not at that date 
 given promise of the great qualities for which he 
 was afterwards noted, and which I should be the 
 last to deny him. I have always thought that if 
 the generality did not look on him during his 
 candidature as a heaven-born, or even a very 
 promising ruler, he was himself weighed down 
 by the forecast of the heavy burden he was fated 
 to bear. I recall his appearance as if it were 
 yesterday : tall, dark-haired, of almost swarthy 
 complexion. I think he was the saddest-looking 
 man I ever saw. Lincoln was not without a 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 strain of true American humour, but he was chary 
 of his good things, and would not utter a notable 
 and truly humorous saying unless he considered 
 that the occasion deserved it ; and then with only 
 a passing gleam from his dark eyes. This last is 
 a gift that a humorist should daily pray for, but 
 which is too often denied him. I took the greatest 
 possible interest in him from his being a native 
 of the State I was then inhabiting. I considered 
 Senator Douglas his superior as speaker and 
 politician. But the light of these shrinks into 
 insignificance before the glow of true patriotism, 
 and Lincoln was a patriot or nothing. 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 POLITICAL CHANGES 
 
 THERE is little to be said in favour of the 
 way in which political affairs were managed 
 in the country during^ the Victorian Era, 
 though there was no doubt an improvement on 
 previous reigns. While some of the ' rotten ' or 
 ' proprietory ' boroughs were done away with, 
 there still remained quite a number of small, 
 unimportant towns returning one, or even two, 
 Members to Parliament, the voters in which 
 looked on a General Election as a sort of * bonus ' 
 year, when their pecuniary wants would, as a 
 matter of course, be attended to, without troubling 
 themselves as to the political views of the candi- 
 dates, which, it must be allowed, were unlikely 
 to have any good effect on their future. In these 
 places, which were more or less dominated by 
 so-called freemen, no candidate, however desirable, 
 was allowed to acquire the desired addition of 
 M.P. to his patronymic without the disbursement 
 of a considerable amount of money a contest, 
 however hopeless, being always arranged for. 
 
 147 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 Once, I remember the leader of a forlorn hope in 
 one of these small boroughs was a little commission 
 agent, who might be seen every market-day with 
 his samples of linseed cake under his arm, by the 
 entrance to the principal inn, and who polled one 
 vote 1 his own. 
 
 It was said, in defence of these boroughs, that 
 they occasionally returned men who afterwards 
 became famous, but whose cause would not have 
 been taken up by the larger and more important 
 constituencies on the look-out for candidates who 
 had already made their mark, and no doubt this 
 had occurred in a few instances. But one 
 swallow does not make a summer. There were 
 in those days instances, which some will be 
 able to recall, of families who from a more 
 or less sentimental wish to retain what they 
 considered a family borough, had been ruined, 
 after being mulcted in 50,000 or 60,000 at 
 one election contest. The custom of profiting 
 by electoral contests obtained not only at parlia- 
 mentary, but was extended to municipal affairs 
 the payment to the latter being on a fixed, 
 and necessarily a humbler scale; but, no doubt, 
 half a loaf, or even a slice, was better than no 
 bread. It was said, I believe correctly, of one of 
 the leading men in the Parliamentary Borough of 
 
 K , that he once spent the best part of a day 
 
 standing in an archway leading to a dark passage, 
 
 with a sack under his arm, from which he doled 
 148 
 
Political Changes 
 
 out, to all municipal voters who applied for it, 
 five shillings in half-crowns. 
 
 The wonderful thing was that their willingness 
 to accept bribes must have co-existed with a certain 
 amount of honesty, since those who took these 
 gratuities at municipal elections seldom disap- 
 pointed their purchasers. Their failure to * stand 
 word ' in a parliamentary election would have been 
 almost immediately discovered, on the circulation 
 of a little book with their names and that of the 
 candidate for whom they had voted ; besides which 
 it was the recognised custom for the candidate's 
 agent, or someone interested in his success, to go 
 through the polling-booth with the voter whose 
 promise had been given, and hear him name the 
 candidate whom he had decided to honour with his 
 vote and interest, as the phrase went. Many were 
 the sour looks on the faces of the poor fellows who 
 had been more or less coerced into promising, 
 and would have given the other candidate's name 
 if they had dared. 
 
 County contests were fought out between 
 Whigs and Tories the former already beginning 
 to be in bad odour, and approaching the day when 
 they would save their existence only by dubbing 
 themselves Radicals who hated each other vene- 
 mously, though the difference between their political 
 opinions was only on occasion fundamental, the 
 chief divergence certainly of no slight import- 
 ance being that one party was possessed of the 
 
 149 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 loaves and fishes which the other was striving 
 to acquire. 
 
 In counties the issue was frequently decided 
 rather by the age of the family tree than by the 
 novelty or consistency of a candidate's opinions. 
 This was, at all events, the case in Kent, where 
 to-day none of the old names Knatchbull, Bering, 
 Deedes, and another or two are found in the list 
 of M.P.'s for 1919. At these contests the lowest 
 class of non-electors were accustomed to figure as 
 disturbers of the peace, more, I feel sure, from their 
 innate rowdyism, and a love of what they considered 
 sport, than from any objection to the candidate's 
 political views. 
 
 My first vote for a parliamentary candidate 
 was given in the 'fifties at an election at Ramsgate, 
 to elect an M.P. for the Cinque Ports Division, 
 and it was then that I was witness to a curious 
 custom in favour with the populace none of 
 whom were then voters which would have been 
 more honoured in the breach than in the observance. 
 The Division had been held by a scion of the 
 Knatchbull family, one of the oldest in Kent, and 
 it was reported that at some far-away time one of 
 the females of the family on hearing that the lower 
 classes were complaining that the high price of 
 meat made it impossible to obtain any, had asked 
 why they did not eat bullock's liver. In conse- 
 quence it had become the custom to bring large 
 consignments of bullock's liver into the town 
 150 
 
Political Changes 
 
 before the day of election ; but not, as might be 
 supposed, for consumption as a new and hitherto 
 unappreciated edible. The populace armed them- 
 selves with willow wands, tapering towards the 
 end. From the point of these would be flicked, 
 in the direction of a prominent Conservative, easily 
 distinguished by his orange-and-blue rosette, .a 
 small piece of bullock's liver. The missiles were 
 so skilfully propelled, that it is probable that some 
 practice had preceded the election day ; and, no 
 doubt, with annual or triannual Parliaments, the 
 aim would have been still deadlier. When these 
 missiles had been picked out of the gutter several 
 times, contact with them became increasingly 
 undesirable. 
 
 Old customs die hard. It is only a few years 
 ago that at an election to return a Member for 
 Thanet, in place of the greatly respected Jimmy 
 Lowther, I found the correspondent of the Standard 
 noticing the use of * hard missiles, apparently of 
 dry mud.' These would, no doubt, have been 
 found, on closer inspection, to have been no other 
 than the time-honoured bullock's liver. 
 
 Absence from England for some years pre- 
 vented me from voting again at an election till 
 in the 'sixties, in South Shropshire, I found rabbit- 
 skins taking the place of the Kent missiles. Sir 
 Baldwin Leighton, who had been for some years 
 a useful Member of Parl ament for the Division, 
 had prosecuted his keeper for selling game, and 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 this was converted into a refusal to let the man 
 have a rabbit for the family dinner, though his 
 wife was in a state of health requiring this special 
 nourishment. As a fact, the majority of keepers' 
 families in those days would have starved before 
 partaking of the familiar and not inodorous coney. 
 However, when Sir Baldwin went to meet his 
 constituents he was attended by a yelling mob 
 who pelted him with rabbit-skins. The cry was 
 taken up by the farmers, who were then subject 
 to be eaten up by game and rabbits, and were no 
 doubt delighted at the slaughter which was neces- 
 sary to keep up the supply of missiles. In the 
 expectation that Sir Baldwin, after having lost the 
 election, would nevertheless attend the declaration 
 of the poll at Church Stretton, a crinoline covered 
 with rabbit-skins was prepared which was to have 
 been dropped over his head when he came forward 
 to speak on the hustings, in illustration of his 
 having been extinguished by rabbits. But he had 
 the good sense to keep away. This was perhaps 
 the most successful election cry that I remember, 
 and certainly the most unfair. 
 
 Its usefulness having been recognised, the 
 trick soon became common of circulating a false 
 and damaging statement on the eve of an election, 
 when there would be no time or opportunity of 
 contradicting it. I fear it is true that Radical 
 candidates .were the first and practically the only 
 ones to avail themselves of it. Even in 1918 
 152 
 
Political Changes 
 
 there have been found some to continue a 
 dishonourable practice. But the voters are, for- 
 tunately, less credulous than of old. 
 
 The passing of the Ballot Act dealt a much- 
 needed blow to bribery in the smaller boroughs, 
 It put a stop also at once to coercion in the county 
 constituencies, which had always (except in a few 
 exceptional areas) been too large for systematic 
 bribery to be possible. It was perhaps expected 
 that it would entail secrecy as to the vote given. 
 As a matter of fact there has been very little. 
 Even during the continuance of the South African 
 War few people dreamt of concealing their opinions, 
 though those who opposed the war had to undergo 
 a very unpleasant and even dangerous experience. 
 There are, of course, numbers of people whom 
 nobody would believe, in ordinary matters, on their 
 oaths. But, somehow, when a man lies which I 
 think is very seldom about his political opinions 
 or intentions, there is always in his manner some- 
 thing to give him away. Even should he take 
 you in at first he is sure, from sheer pride, to blurt 
 out the truth in a confidential moment. 
 
 The ballot, at any rate, made it impossible to 
 * put on the screw/ It put an end to the days 
 when the landlord, when letting a farm, reserved 
 to himself the tenant's vote as if it were another 
 and less elusive description of game. 
 
 When the late Mr. J. Chamberlain's opinions 
 were supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be verging 
 
 153 
 
Victorian R collections 
 
 on Republicanism, with a leader of the new 
 Republic-to-be not impossible to guess at, a new 
 landlord, whose politics were unknown, came to 
 the chief inn of a locality in the neighbourhood 
 of Birmingham, with the politics of which I was 
 intimately concerned. It was necessary to discover 
 whether the new-comer was friend or enemy, since 
 his was the house chiefly favoured for Conservative 
 meetings and banquets. On several occasions the 
 man was interviewed, but appeared disinclined to 
 go into the question of politics. At last a pro- 
 minent Conservative ventured to ask him point 
 blank, ' What are your politics, anyhow ? ' After 
 a little humming and hawing, the new-comer looked 
 his interviewer in the face, and broke out with 
 ' I'm a Republican, I am ! ' thus finally settling not 
 only the question of his politics, but of his income. 
 We know little what dreams of self-exalting or 
 glory the apparently innocuous or even useful poli- 
 tician may be veiling from us with a smiling or a 
 careless brow, and even the more harmful would 
 probably move us rather to derision than anger. 
 
 In the 'sixties the opinion became general that 
 the choice of candidates for the Division should 
 no longer be left to two or three so-called county 
 magnates who were sometimes not even poli- 
 ticians but to the voters themselves. The change 
 was not effected without the arousing of a little 
 ill-feeling, which, however, soon passed over. 
 Votes were now granted rather late in the day to 
 154 
 
Political Changes 
 
 the agricultural labourers. It was found that the 
 withholding of the franchise (proving, as it did, 
 distrust of a class than which none was more 
 honest or deserving) had created a soreness which 
 it took a long time to remove. 
 
 For many years the toast of ' Church and 
 State ' had taken precedence at local Conservative 
 gatherings, even of * Success to Agriculture.' Its 
 removal in favour of * Ministers of all Denomina- 
 tions ' was due to the increasing importance of the 
 dissenting element, and may have veiled a hope 
 that some of the ministers would return the com- 
 pliment by assisting the Conservative cause. Later 
 the toast was dropped altogether, and the alliance 
 supposing it to have existed between ' Church 
 and State * may be said to have ended. There 
 had been an opinion that parsons were, equally 
 with the brewers, useful allies to the Conservative 
 cause, and a good many parsons used, in old 
 days, to advertise their Conservative views no 
 doubt from the expectation of a reward. I always 
 found parsons a nuisance at elections ; and I 
 remember being once told, when I was canvassing 
 some farmers, that if the parsons did not keep 
 quiet they the farmers would not vote at all. 
 I had long felt that * Church and State ' had the 
 effect of steeling the Radicalism of the Dissenters, 
 who but for this alliance might have been able 
 to see that a Conservative Government might be 
 good for them as for others. No one will profit 
 
 155 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 more by the demise of * Church and State ' than 
 the parsons themselves. It may make men of 
 some of the cringing toadies whose cry is * Give, 
 give ! ' or, rather, it may perhaps send them to 
 use their arts of adulation elsewhere. The old- 
 fashioned honest parson might be seen once more 
 among us, to the disgust of the men who look 
 on preferment to a country living not as a stepping- 
 stone to usefulness, but to greater emolument, and 
 whose success (for who can resist the untiring 
 sycophant ?) means the neglect and defeat of 
 honest men. 
 
 Well, ' Church and State ' has gone the way 
 of other things perhaps more fitted to survive, or, 
 at least, it only lingers in a few country parishes 
 whose fortunate inhabitants sua si bona norint 
 hear little of the dissensions, soon to become more 
 pronounced, in the Church, or of the infidelity 
 which would make the alliance in its old form a 
 shame and an absurdity. Bishops and deans may 
 feel confident, rectors and vicars may fondly 
 imagine, that the alliance still endures ; but to 
 others signs of the divorce have long been apparent. 
 And if it had its good points, if it was better that 
 * Church and State ' should be allied than that 
 the nation should have no religion at all, yet it 
 had its weak points too ; and the chief of these 
 may have been that it caused the parson to look on 
 himself as a capable politician, to the neglect of the 
 higher duties to which he had been appointed. 
 156 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A LAPSED OFFICIAL 
 
 PUTTING the recent War Election out of 
 consideration, I am unaware that there is 
 now any special method of introducing a 
 candidate to a constituency to which he is unknown. 
 If he has had the means and foresight to subscribe 
 liberally to the party funds, he may be chosen for 
 a division in a pleasant neighbourhood, where he 
 may have a fine chance of success. Otherwise he 
 will have to win his spurs by leading a forlorn 
 hope in the Black Country, or trying his 'prentice 
 hand on some dull agricultural constituency. 
 Imagine the feelings of a retired London merchant 
 or financier whose knowledge of the country began 
 and ended with the fact that it is green turned 
 up with brown, on his first glimpse of the new 
 territory-to-be ! He has very likely no eye for the 
 picturesque, and as he gazes out of the windows 
 of the railway carriage the place does not appeal 
 to him at all. To his London-bred eyes it looks 
 anything but up to date. There are no motor- 
 buses at the station, and the sight of a mouldy- 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 looking ' fly ' or two comes as an unpleasant 
 surprise. There are but few people on the plat- 
 form, and it would require more imagination than 
 he possesses to put them down for a deputation. 
 He wonders what he had better do, and ends by 
 strolling off disconsolately through the mud to- 
 wards the offices of the local firm of lawyers who 
 he has been told are accustomed to act for his 
 party at elections. 
 
 Forty years ago he would almost certainly have 
 been accosted on alighting from the train by a 
 quiet-looking, middle-aged man with an air of 
 breeding differentiating him from a prosperous 
 farmer, who, introducing himself as Mr. So-and-so, 
 would have carried him off to the proper hotel, 
 and given him, after lunch, full particulars as to 
 the state of affairs. The candidate might have 
 considered his host's get-up and manners too 
 countrified, but if he was wise he would not have 
 allowed this to appear. He would soon have 
 discovered that his new friend was a fair judge 
 of men, especially with regard to their value for 
 political purposes ; and the outcome of the scrutiny 
 to which the debutant was about to be subjected 
 would have a good deal to do with the latter's 
 success or failure. 
 
 Whether for good or ill the type is no longer 
 to be met with. It has become the fashion to 
 send down spouters from headquarters, very often 
 quite ignorant of the wants, and, worse still, of 
 158 
 
A Lapsed Official 
 
 the prejudices which do so much towards influenc- 
 ing country voters. The country politician made 
 local politics his hobby, and he was permitted, 
 since others were absorbed in more remunerative 
 occupations, to take upon himself the trouble of 
 introducing a new candidate to the constituency, 
 and looking after him sometimes from the day of 
 his arrival to the declaration of the poll. Like 
 the majority of country folk, he was always a good 
 sportsman, but such trifles as hunting and shoot- 
 ing were made contributory to, instead of being 
 allowed to interfere with, his ruling passion. He 
 had been known to give up his chance of a good 
 start from the most promising covert in the country 
 that he might potter about in the ruck, and so 
 satisfy his anxiety as to the politics of a new arrival 
 in the neighbourhood, and to miss or omit to put 
 up his gun at a woodcock that the man on his 
 left hand, whose vote was uncertain, might have 
 an easy shot. He was an example of the men, 
 still occasionally to be met with, whose every 
 moment seemed occupied, yet who are always 
 asking for more work. This characteristic was 
 seldom allowed to lie dormant, and in addition to 
 his self-imposed task he found himself saddled 
 with a varied assortment of duties on quite a 
 number of boards. These he accepted willingly, 
 if without enthusiasm, since they brought him 
 into contact with people who might one day be 
 useful to him in his political role. In the course 
 
 159 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of time it came to pass that there was scarcely 
 anyone in the Division with whom he was not 
 owing to his inability, as it seemed, to take offence 
 on good terms. Not that his hobby was all 
 work and no play ; and, no doubt, he got sufficient 
 amusement out of his clients to prevent Jack 
 from becoming a dull boy. If he seldom met 
 with a candidate whom he considered satisfactory 
 and it must be allowed that his ideal was rather 
 high he never allowed himself to show his dis- 
 appointment. The foolish equally with the capable 
 was welcome to the best advice he had at command, 
 and the former, if he gave the more trouble, was 
 not infrequently the more interesting. If the 
 candidate sometimes wondered that a stranger 
 should take so much interest in his career he 
 put it down, naturally enough, to his own taking 
 personality. It was rather a shock to discover, 
 after some weeks of what appeared to be a 
 friendship, that his mentor did not care a straw 
 for him except as a possible vote for his pet 
 statesman the man who stood to him above all 
 others, and without whose inspiration his labours 
 would have been dreary indeed. 
 
 By nature too honest for the job, the country 
 politician acquired, in the course of time, no little 
 of the wisdom of the serpent, and knew well what 
 topics were fitting for discussion at a meeting of 
 farmers, and of what to suggest the omission or 
 slurring over in the towns. He may have been 
 
A Lapsed Official 
 
 originally a bit of an epicure, but he learnt to 
 swallow, without making a wry face over it, a good 
 deal that he did not enjoy. He never made any 
 pretention to oratory, and the pretence is as near 
 to this accomplishment as the great majority of 
 speakers ever arrive. Occasionally, when no titled 
 members of the party were present, he found 
 himself forced to make something in the neigh- 
 bourhood of a speech ; even then he managed to 
 confine what he called his * remarks * to a few 
 pithy sentences which frequently contained more 
 practical wisdom than the laboured orations of 
 the young men with the gift of the gab who were 
 taking up politics as a profession. These were 
 then beginning to make their appearance ; there 
 are now shoals of them everywhere. Few men of 
 any capacity can constantly brood over a difficult 
 problem without arriving at a better judgment of 
 it than is permitted to outsiders who have scarcely 
 given it a thought, and he got in his rough way 
 to be very wise. The result of his careful study 
 was sometimes put down for intuition and, indeed, 
 intuition is seldom much more. He seemed aware 
 of coming disaster, while others saw no hint of 
 danger in the cloud no bigger than a man's hand. 
 What pangs he underwent of grief and dis- 
 appointment ! Of anger, too, when the victory 
 on which he had counted was snatched away by 
 the folly of some blatant outsider over whom he 
 
 had no control. Yet he had his triumphs, and 
 
 M 161 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 some of them so unexpected that he learnt never 
 to despair. And who will deny that the secret 
 of success is to work on as if sure of victory ? 
 Measures concerned him very little ; his business 
 was to assist in keeping together a party capable 
 of putting them through. It was useless, he 
 thought, to bring forward a policy that would 
 temporarily destroy the only party interested in 
 carrying it. Get your party first, he would say, 
 and then bring in your measure. Moreover, to 
 insist too loudly on the merits of any particular 
 policy while in opposition, was to ensure it being 
 taken up (when its advantages have been made 
 patent) by your opponents, who would live for 
 years on the loaves and fishes which, given a little 
 patience, would have ensured you a square meal. 
 What he hated more than anything was the game, 
 even then coming into vogue, of political cribbage. 
 The party that, without any regard for principles, 
 pegged a few holes in front of the adversary in 
 order that it might secure a brief tenure of office, 
 had to pay in the end far more than it received. 
 
 Politics were everything to him, in that they 
 frequently left him little else. He may have had 
 some turn towards Art, or droll as it sounds 
 towards Poetry, but he had no time to spare for 
 either. It is doubtful whether what is called 
 Society had any charms for him ; what he enjoyed 
 was to talk politics with two or three friends, in 
 his study, over a pipe. Outside politics, he kept 
 162 
 
A Lapsed Official 
 
 a good deal to himself. He may have been aware 
 that a growing inability to talk or think of anything 
 but politics made him a bore at purely social 
 functions ; as it was, skin-deep politicians thought 
 him one, even at political meetings ; and it must 
 be confessed that he may sometimes have taken 
 himself too seriously. He had a certain position, 
 no doubt, and came temporarily into touch with 
 the big local men, who while grateful to him for 
 saving them trouble yet treated him a little dc 
 haul en bas. After his lifelong labours, which were 
 only unprofitable because he neither asked for nor 
 would have accepted any reward, he would see his 
 friends and neighbours getting rich or, at any rate, 
 making some provision for the future while he got 
 poorer ; it was as possible then as now to spend 
 money on politics without being a candidate. But 
 if he occasionally doubted whether the game was 
 worth the candle, he was generally one of the 
 happiest of men. When he was getting old, and 
 perhaps a little cynical, he may have seen, or 
 thought he saw, that the securing by enthusiasts 
 of salaries or office for a few men whose ambitions 
 have taken a political turn was often a waste of 
 time and energy, since some, at any rate, of the 
 beneficiaries would have been more suitably 
 employed in selling wines, or in the manufacture 
 of motor-cars ; that without these which, it is to 
 be feared, are more likely to be increased in the 
 future than diminished or done away with all 
 
 163 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 matters concerning the well-being of the Empire 
 might be settled with more dignity than at present, 
 and with less sound and fury. What he would 
 have said, or thought, on hearing Conservatives 
 advocating the payment of M.P.'s (and sub- 
 sequently, no doubt, the subsidising of all local 
 officials from chairman of Quarter Sessions to 
 members of already peculative Boards of Guardians), 
 can only be imagined. 
 
 One trouble he had, and the more his influence 
 grew the greater it became. He was pestered by 
 streets of people who wanted to get something 
 from him : generally his certificate for appoint- 
 ment to the County Bench, already inconveniently 
 crowded. From these eager suppliants he would 
 take refuge behind the Lord Lieutenant, who, if 
 he chanced to be a sensible man, would manage 
 to delay matters by promising to * consider ' the 
 recommendation which he knew had been grudg- 
 ingly given. ' Luck's a lord/ and anticipated 
 troubles occasionally fail to eventuate. Sometimes 
 death put the unwelcome aspirant hors de combat, 
 or a favourable answer became, for some reason or 
 other, impossible. To pressure the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant could always reply, * Well, I'm considering 
 it, ain't I ? ' 
 
 The country politician has had his day, and 
 perhaps he was not fitted to survive. His minis- 
 trations, now discontinued, were almost entirely 
 
 confined to the Tory party, since there were few 
 164 
 
A Lapsed Official 
 
 politicians on the other side to whom the unsalaried 
 office would have offered any attraction. Political 
 enthusiasm of the old sort is dead, or dying. The 
 old Whigs were, wisely perhaps, Gallios, and the 
 small remainder of them have developed a capacity 
 for facing both ways. There are few statesmen for 
 whom it seems worth while to be zealous, and the 
 ways in which political contests are too frequently 
 carried on would have moved him rather to disgust 
 than enthusiasm. 
 
 165 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SEVEN YEARS ON THE SALOP CLAY 
 
 RETURNED from America, I found the 
 family scattered all over the country. My 
 dear sailor brother was dead. I had 
 gained little experience in the States to assist me 
 in farming in England, but had before picked up 
 a good deal from my frequent visits to my father's 
 agent, a noted farmer who held some of the best 
 land in the Isle of Thanet. I realised, however, 
 that my amount of acquired knowledge would not 
 go very far, so, with a view to improvement, took 
 up with a farmer in Norfolk a member of a 
 great farming family who, altogether, had about 
 7000 acres in close proximity to one another. 
 In those days, taking farming pupils was quite a 
 fashionable business in Norfolk and in the Lothians 
 supposed to be the best farming districts in Great 
 Britain. These men did excellent service in teach- 
 ing the rudiments of their art to young fellows of 
 good family against the day when they would 
 succeed their fathers in the management of the 
 family estates. There are few now to undertake 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 this duty, fewer still perhaps who desire any 
 knowledge of the sort. There was certainly 
 never a time when it was more needed. 
 
 A brother-in-law of my friend farmed 2000 
 acres, mostly light land, and had generally about 
 eight pupils, who paid 200 a year, and for each 
 of whom a horse was kept. Champagne was 
 frequently on the board at dinner-time, and I 
 confess I did not see that a large portion of the 
 200 would remain in the pupil-teacher's pocket. 
 After breakfast the pupils mounted their hacks, 
 and went out to learn farming. There was a 
 good deal of larking over fences, sometimes a 
 race round a hundred-acre field that was in pre- 
 paration for swedes, and made excellent going ; 
 and those who shirked their farming lessons had, 
 at any rate, opportunity for learning to ride. 
 
 I stayed with my farmer for some time my age 
 being, I imagine, a record for a farming pupil 
 and had the advantage of visiting the farms held 
 by his brothers and father. The Norfolk farmers 
 were then a fine hospitable race. It was farmers, 
 farmers everywhere, and they seemed the only 
 people in the streets of Norwich, with the exception 
 of a few parsons, on market days. It was the 
 custom when one of them wished to entertain on 
 a big scale, to take the village inn for the day. 
 These inns were quite above the common, and 
 always possessed a good bowling-green. To this 
 an adjournment would be made after dinner, and 
 
 167 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 I got to be quite a fair performer. Trying my 
 hand, the other day, I found I had forgotten the 
 A B C of the game. 
 
 I have not visited Norfolk for many years, and 
 have heard nothing as to how that great farming 
 family came out on the arrival of bad times. They 
 were of a sort that might be expected to weather 
 the storm, and worthy of surviving. The father, 
 I heard, was given notice to leave his farm of 
 1000 acres because he employed less labour in 
 winter than his landlord thought advisable a 
 procedure not likely to be adopted in 1918. 
 
 By the time that I had absorbed a good portion 
 of the information my tutor had at his disposal, 
 I was getting anxious to farm on my own. It was 
 a disappointment to find that it would be hard, if 
 not impossible, to get a really good farm. None 
 of those who were settled on good farms were 
 likely to resign in my favour, and on their demise 
 they would be succeeded by men whom the owner 
 had known since his boyhood, and who looked on 
 having the refusal as a right, even if there had 
 been no actual promise. There were plenty of 
 farms to be had, but all, or almost all, stiff land, of 
 which the best farmers and those with most capital 
 were already beginning to fight shy. 
 
 I nearly took a big farm in Essex, then a great 
 wheat-growing county, its clay not so stiff but 
 that it can be ploughed with two horses, G.O., 
 
 to a depth of nine inches. What is Essex now ? 
 168 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 A county of poor, wet pasture, where the late 
 growers of wheat have erected at the corner of 
 the unstocked fields a small house as a sample, 
 with an advertisement in front, * This land to be 
 let for building.' The same notice meets the eye 
 again after passing a few more fields. The jerry- 
 builder is a great man, no doubt, but to build 
 over a whole county at a moment's notice, even at 
 so short a distance from London, is a task beyond 
 his powers. 
 
 After visiting quite a number of farms, I got 
 more and more anxious to settle down, and one 
 day leased a farm of 400 or 500 acres in Salop, 
 between Bridgnorth and Ludlow a district still 
 called * the Wheatland,' though it has ceased for 
 over forty years to deserve the name. This action 
 did not then argue such a vast amount of folly 
 as it would to-day. The Salop clay takes more 
 kindly to grass than some other varieties, which 
 only do so under protest. Wheatland farmers 
 were enabled to eke things out by breeding Shrop- 
 shire sheep, which were then greater favourites 
 than at present, and Hereford cattle, which if 
 they could not be finished at home would be 
 eagerly purchased by their neighbours who farmed 
 the swede and barley lands on the other side of 
 the Severn. The late tenant's failure was explained 
 to me as due to his refusal to fallow for wheat, 
 and this may have been so far true that setting 
 
 one's self against local customs which have been 
 
 169 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 built up by experience (of Virgil, for instance, and 
 Job the greatest gentleman farmer of antiquity 
 and a few others), seldom leads to success. The 
 advice given to me by acquaintances, of whom I 
 speedily had a good number, was to fallow. * Never 
 you go trying that brush-wheat like .... did. 
 'Twas that as broke him.' 
 
 The farm, of course, was out of condition, my 
 predecessor having held it a year or two longer 
 than he should have done, and he consented to act 
 as my bailiff for a time. He did no harm. Many 
 a man who fails in his own affairs can succeed in 
 managing other people's. But, after a few weeks, 
 he drifted away to work at a brewery, where, if he 
 did not get richer, he at any rate got fatter. 
 
 During the seven years of my stay here I saw 
 the gradual passing away of the old farming 
 methods that had been so familiar to my boyhood. 
 The introduction from America of mowing, reap- 
 ing, and steam threshing-machines quickly did 
 away with the use of the scythe and the flail, 
 both of which implements almost all agricultural 
 labourers could use with more or less skill. I 
 had myself at first to lend a hand at raking the 
 sheaves off the reaping-machine, as none of my 
 men cared to undertake the job, till my shepherd 
 came forward and showed symptoms of a latent 
 mechanical genius. I had, of course, seen these 
 machines in the States, where every farmer of 
 1 60 acres had his own reaper and mower. But 
 170 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 I remember being rather surprised, on revisiting 
 America in 1868, at finding my tenant tramping 
 out his wheat with horses in the barn in biblical 
 style. It was naturally in America, where labour 
 in the prairie states was so scarce as to be 
 practically unobtainable, that these labour-saving 
 machines had their origin, gradually lessening the 
 demand for agricultural labourers in England, and 
 so assisting the exodus from the country to the 
 towns. While there were farmers who for a few 
 years declined to use the reaping-machine, holding 
 that they wasted more of the crop than hand 
 labour, I was myself, two or three years after 
 going to Salop, grateful to the flail for getting me 
 out of a serious difficulty. 
 
 One very hot harvest-time everything ripened 
 at once, and before I could get to the beans they 
 were * sheeding,' as it was locally called. The 
 Welshmen, who were cutting the wheat with the 
 * broad hook,' were turned into the beans at dawn, 
 and continued there till the sun got hot, when the 
 beans dropped out wholesale, and the men returned 
 to the wheat. In this way I gradually got the 
 beans cut, and the next thing was to carry them. 
 Luckily it came on to rain, and we set to work 
 to carry them to the three sets of farm buildings 
 which were used for feeding young cattle in the 
 winter. Then the men brought out their flails, 
 for some time unused, and set to work, two in 
 
 each barn, and the beans came out dry as shot. 
 
 171 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 It was not long before the reaping-machines 
 put a stop to the visits of the Welsh and Irish 
 reapers, who annually left their homes to assist at 
 the English harvest. The Welshmen, with their 
 broad hooks, were splendid fellows, and could cut 
 about three-quarters of an acre a day. The Irish, 
 of whom there was a colony in almost every agri- 
 cultural town, used the * saw-sickle/ with which, 
 by working almost night and day, they could 
 manage about half an acre per day. They would 
 move leisurely about till they had secured a handful 
 of corn, which they would deposit on the spot 
 selected for the sheaf, and then start on another 
 journey. They left the stubble high, which was 
 the chief reason for their employment. On farms 
 where but few roots were grown this stubble 
 would often be the only cover for birds. On the 
 introduction of reapers the birds, instead of lying 
 like stones, began to run up the field as soon as 
 the sportsmen appeared at the gate. The Irish- 
 men's sheaves would be only a few inches high, 
 and when these were at the top of the rick and 
 the machine clogged, it was possible to imagine 
 that you had a record crop, till you were undeceived 
 on arriving at the Welshmen's work lower down. 
 It is remarkable that the attempts by English 
 makers of agricultural implements to improve on 
 the machines brought across the Atlantic were 
 generally failures. There was one, I remember, 
 
 a reaping-machine, which the horses pushed from 
 172 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 behind instead of pulling, which it was very 
 amusing to watch at work, as you passed through 
 the country by train, till it was rather suddenly 
 withdrawn. 
 
 It cannot truthfully be stated nowadays that 
 there is nothing new under the sun. At any rate, 
 there is nothing new about * small holdings/ 
 Something was known of this matter fifty years 
 ago. I laughed when politicians brought it out 
 more recently as a new idea. There were quite 
 a number of * small holdings * in Shropshire in the 
 'sixties ; but as the tenants on these were carefully 
 selected men on holdings specially located, the 
 clamorous advocates of * small holdings ' every- 
 where for everybody had certainly some claim to 
 originality. There were three ' small holdings ' on 
 my farm ; and my landlord, who had farmed the 
 property himself for many years, told me to do 
 as I liked as to giving them notice. It never 
 entered my head to do so. Two of the three were 
 brothers, valuable men, who did all the fencing 
 and most of the tack work on the farm. There 
 never were better workmen anywhere. One of the 
 brothers held seven acres of grass, with a good 
 house and garden, for which he paid 15 per 
 annum. He kept pigs, and always reared a calf 
 or two. His wife was a strong, hard-working 
 woman. They had no children, and always seemed 
 well-to-do. The brother had thirteen acres, partly 
 plough, a delicate wife, and a number of small 
 
 173 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 children. His rent was 33. He had to pay 
 for horse hire, and was always behindhand, though 
 sober and industrious. He did better when he 
 gave up the land, as he could always get high 
 wages. His place was taken by an ex-farm 
 bailiff who had saved a little money. The other 
 * small holder ' had a very good house and a few 
 acres of grass. He was a shoemaker, and quite 
 well off. It is absurd to advocate * small holdings ' 
 for capable and incapable, sober or the reverse, and 
 on any sort of land. Many people imagine that 
 all soils are alike, and require similar treatment. 
 A good and industrious workman, in the same 
 circumstances as the first of the three I have 
 mentioned, would get on as well now as fifty years 
 ago. The difficulties to-day would be to find the 
 good workman, and then the good neighbourhood 
 for him to work in. 
 
 My first year on the farm was anything but a 
 prosperous one. The weather during harvest- 
 time was the worst I have ever known, and it was 
 impossible to carry anything in even tolerable 
 condition. A neighbour who farmed about four 
 hundred acres, chiefly arable, did not harvest a 
 sheaf of corn. The wheat grew together till the 
 shocks were a solid mass. The oats, untied, were 
 reduced to little black heaps which, stirred by the 
 foot, bore the appearance of soot. The landlord 
 must have come forward with assistance, for the 
 tenant went on as if no serious calamity had 
 174 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 occurred. I had only thirty acres of wheat ; I 
 carried it in bad condition, and was glad to have 
 done so when it set in to rain heavily. I should 
 never have had another chance. There was then 
 two years of ups and downs, both bad for corn, 
 but fairly good for sheep and cattle. In one of 
 these years I paid a short visit to the States, intend- 
 ing to dispose of some farming land in Illinois, 
 but I came back without selling it. Land in the 
 States was quickly rising in value ; the U.S.A. 
 were daily requiring more corn for their own use, 
 and the day when they would want it all was 
 rapidly approaching. Yet this was the time for 
 us to choose for giving up wheat-growing in 
 England. 
 
 In 1860, when the rinderpest devastated 
 Cheshire and other counties, we were lucky in 
 getting off with a scare. On the neighbouring 
 estate of Aldenham, Sir John, afterwards Lord 
 Acton, had just engaged a new agent from Norfolk, 
 who had had no experience of saffron autumn 
 crocus which came up luxuriantly in springtime. 
 Thankful for what he considered an early bite, he 
 had a lot of young cattle turned into it. These 
 were taken ill, and the Government Inspector, 
 thinking he scented rinderpest, ordered the whole 
 lot, of fifty or sixty, to be incontinently poleaxed. 
 
 After my third year things began to look up. 
 In 1867 wheat rose to us. 4^. the bushel of 
 70 Ib. The following year it was at 8j. ; while 
 
 175 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 wool, though not as high as it had been, fetched 
 is. 7^. per pound. 
 
 From a financial point of view, the annual 
 wool fair held at Bridgnorth in June, was one of 
 the chief excitements of the district. Buyers used 
 to attend from Bradford and the wool-consuming 
 towns, while some of the leading firms were locally 
 represented. There was a good deal of jealousy 
 among the buyers which local shrewdness was not 
 unable to utilise. The man who had bought your 
 previous clip was apt to put in a claim to the new 
 one. He had, however, to defend his position 
 against numerous rivals, and the appeal * You won't 
 leave me for a halfpenny ? ' was not always con- 
 vincing. His last year's client would stray across 
 the street from buyer to buyer, returning at 
 intervals to his old friend to inform him how much 
 he would have to rise. The market had to be 
 carefully watched, or suddenly, as it seemed, all 
 the interest was gone, and you and your wool 
 were left out in the cold. You would then have 
 to look after a customer, instead of a customer 
 coming down specially to look after you. I have 
 known large sums lost by a determination not to 
 sell under a certain price : notably, a Kent hop- 
 grower who might have had close on 20 a pocket, 
 and afterwards sold for 50^. We had a big farmer 
 and cattle-dealer who in 1864 could not get quite 
 half a crown per pound for his wool, and decided to 
 hold it. Next year wool fell in price, and in the 
 176 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 following year to a little over is. Then it was, 
 ' You don't suppose I am going to sell now, when 
 I might have had half a crown 1 ' Years after, the 
 wool was still lying in a warehouse at Wolver- 
 hampton, 10,000 fleeces or so, rotten and damp, 
 torn to pieces by rats, and practically unsaleable. 
 Yet this was a man whose judgment in farming 
 matters was considered infallible 1 
 
 Two nuisances had to be guarded against by 
 the Wheatland farmers, or the whole district would 
 have speedily been devoured : these were rats 
 and rabbits. One year I stacked my wool in the 
 granary as usual. It had only been there a few 
 days when the agent came to weigh it. We found 
 the wool already colonised by rats, which must 
 have come in from all parts of the country on 
 hearing of the comfortable arrangements I had 
 made for them. The agent, I thought, looked a 
 bit shocked, so I took him into the house for a 
 bottle of claret, while the men stopped all the holes 
 by which the rats could escape. Then we got my 
 terrier, a little brindled bitch the best ratter I ever 
 had and began to move the wool. We killed 
 thirty or forty, and the agent enjoyed himself 
 immensely, and said not a word about damages. 
 A week or two afterwards the horses were kept 
 in by wet weather, and going out as usual before 
 breakfast, I found the wagoner engaged in 
 carrying pails of water into the cart stable. It 
 appeared that after the tragedy in the granary the 
 
 N 177 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 survivors had sought another domicile. This time 
 they had burrowed underneath the corn-bin, 
 through the bottom of which they had effected an 
 entrance. The bin was moved, and the men were 
 emptying buckets of water into this hole> and 
 several others recently made. I was just in time 
 to see the denouement. The rats were coming out 
 of the holes, blinded and half-drowned, and were 
 easily accounted for. My wagoner was delighted, 
 thinking he saw his way to prevent depredations in 
 future. The rats were left in peace for some 
 weeks to restore confidence, and I went out one 
 morning to see them drowned again. This time 
 the water was wasted, not a solitary rat making 
 his appearance. Having before neglected to 
 provide an exit, they had now profited by the 
 experience, and we had to revert to the ancient 
 methods of destruction, to which they only occa- 
 sionally succumbed. 
 
 Rabbits were even a greater nuisance than rats, 
 though they did a good deal towards paying the 
 labour bill in winter. Without careful treatment 
 they would have eaten everything on the farm. 
 Rabbit-shooting on another man's land is an 
 agreeable pastime ; but while you soon get to 
 loathe the little beasts as food, to be eaten up by 
 them is even worse. This was the fate of many 
 a good fellow in my day, where on certain estates 
 it was not a question of how long you would last, 
 
 but how soon you would be ended. In my first 
 178 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 year the rabbits must have recognised that I was 
 a novice, and they unwisely cleared off four acres 
 of oats in the spring, before I was aware of them. 
 This put me on my mettle, and they never did me 
 much damage afterwards. Some of my land was 
 well suited to beans, which the little varmints 
 wouldn't touch. When they began work on the 
 wheat, I would put down a hundred traps or so 
 along the cover side, which sent them off, more 
 frightened than hurt, to the beans. There they 
 would stop, keeping down the weeds, till hunger 
 overcame their fears, when the traps came into 
 use again. 
 
 I found the life a strenuous one. No one 
 had yet dreamt of motors, and the drive to Shrews- 
 bury Cattle Market and back, close on fifty miles, 
 was a tiring one when the cob, pro tem.^ chanced 
 to be a bit slow. Then there was Ludlow, thirty- 
 five, and Wolverhampton forty miles. In the 
 season there was plenty of shooting, with hunting 
 two, and sometimes three days a week /when the 
 Albrighton met within reach, cricket in the summer 
 with several Christ Church men in the team, one 
 of whom had played in the Oxford and Cambridge 
 he never got any runs with us, and I suppose 
 the bowling was not good enough for him and 
 always above and before everything the farm. 
 Very little time left, one would think, for intel- 
 lectual pursuits, but I managed to do some reading 
 and also some writing. Characters swarmed in 
 
 179 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 the village and in the neighbouring country. 
 There was a good supply of native humour, and 
 that got one through a wet season. 
 
 After the rise in wheat, which many good 
 judges thought likely to last, Wheatland farmers 
 were in high spirits. My farm was greatly 
 improved ; some poor plough land that I had 
 seeded down had got into good pasture, and some 
 of the wet fields had been drained I wonder if 
 the outlets have ever been seen to since, but think 
 it likely that no one is aware of them. The shoot- 
 ing, too, had improved, and I had quite a lot of 
 pheasants about. My lease was running out, and 
 I looked forward to renewing it. But my landlord 
 was in a bad state of health, and, wishing to get 
 rid of the property, gave me, as he was entitled 
 to do, a year's notice. He sold the farm to a 
 Scotchman, who at once parted with the best 
 portion, and started farming on the remainder. 
 I heard that he had a disastrous time. He was a 
 little too * cannie,' and refused to pay anything for 
 the land I had laid down, so I ploughed it up, 
 about seventy acres in all, and got two crops of 
 wheat off before leaving it for him to seed down 
 again. 
 
 The amounts of corn and cattle sold during 
 my tenancy varied considerably from year to year. 
 No doubt, if I had been as capable as some of the 
 Wheatland farmers, I should have done better. 
 
 In 1865 a bad year for wheat the sales of 
 180 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 sheep, lambs, and wool reached 1000 ; in 1866 
 (the rinderpest year), 1200 worth of fat cattle 
 were sold ; in 1867, sales of wheat alone came to 
 800 ; and in 1868 to over 1000. If things in 
 the clay district were no worse than this now, in 
 1918, the amount of shipping required to bring 
 us our wheat would be considerably reduced, and 
 it seems possible that the submarine campaign 
 would never have been undertaken. 
 
 Later, when wheat-growing was suddenly relin- 
 quished on the stiff clay, it looked as if I had had 
 a narrow escape, but I have often wondered if 
 I could not have held on. I might even have 
 escaped the sheep-rot a few years later, when so 
 many farmers lost the whole of their flocks. My 
 neighbour in Worcestershire nearly broke his 
 heart, going out in the morning and finding fifteen 
 or a score of ewes lying dead. He said to me one 
 day, * You may think me a fool, but when I see 
 them lying about dead I cry like a child/ I did 
 not think him a fool ; I could understand his 
 feelings only too well. 
 
 Two years ago I went down into Shropshire 
 to look at the old place, and see how it had got 
 on in all these years. I knew it was impossible 
 that it could have prospered, but I hoped to find 
 things better than in Sussex, where wheat growing 
 had been given up for forty years, and a great 
 deal of land was practically derelict. 
 
 Turning out of the high road from Bridgnorth 
 
 181 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 to Ludlow into the lane leading to the farm-house, 
 I came to the rickyard, which had, for some 
 incomprehensible reason, been enlarged since my 
 day. Beneath the shelter of a Dutch barn reposed 
 a few hundredweights of hay, and a tiny tump of 
 straw, both looking rather sodden. I was aware 
 that the farm had been reduced in size, but the 
 portion sold off was mainly pasture, and when I 
 remembered that on leaving I sold about ^1000 
 of wheat out of this rickyard alone, it seemed 
 rather a come-down. The farm, I could see, made 
 to-day no contribution at all towards feeding the 
 country, and the tenant did not even grow corn 
 enough to feed his chickens, of which a few were 
 picking about rather disconsolately. 
 
 Farther up the lane I came to a field which I 
 remember as the scene of what might have been 
 a tragedy. There were a hundred ewes on it, and 
 the lambing season was approaching, when my 
 shepherd ran breathless into the house to say that 
 a strange dog was worrying the ewes. I picked 
 up my muzzle-loader from the corner of the study, 
 where it always stood ready, and ran out and up 
 the hill as fast as I could. I was blown when I 
 arrived on the scene, and the shepherd was more 
 so. A big dog was driving the ewes about the 
 field at a furious pace. It seemed a long time 
 before I could get near him, and then I was not 
 very near. I gave him both barrels, and he went 
 
 off howling dismally. I thought he was surely 
 182 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 done for, but a few days afterwards a farmer, who 
 lived a mile or so away, called on some parish 
 business, and as he was leaving: * Someone/ says 
 he, * has been and shot my shepherd Jog/ As it 
 seemed the dog was recovering I thought it unneces- 
 sary to explain my part in the affair. Privately 
 I wished him joy of his * shepherd dog ' 1 
 
 At the end of the lane is the public-house, in 
 friendly proximity to the church, and I find that 
 the rectory has come up from the bottom of the 
 hill, or rather that a new one has been built adjoin- 
 ing the inn and churchyard, and the old rectory 
 degraded into a country house, assisted by paying 
 guests. If the change was made with the intention 
 of reviving the alliance between Bible and beer, it 
 was foredoomed to failure. It was not the custom 
 here, as in other localities, for the parishioners, 
 after patronising the rector's entertainment, to 
 visit what would elsewhere have been considered 
 the allied establishment. This abstention had 
 nothing to do with politics, or sobriety, or even 
 the quality of the beer. The fact was that as all 
 the farmers made and drank their own cider, of 
 which the labourers could have as much as they 
 liked sometimes more than was good for them 
 no one drank or wished to drink beer. 
 
 I remember the rector in my day, an Oxford 
 Don, and an excellent mathematician, but ignorant 
 of agricultural affairs. He seldom spoke to any- 
 one, and had only once been known to smile. 
 
 183 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 Returning from church one Sunday, a stray cow 
 in front of him, whose assault he anticipated with 
 some anxiety, a farmer from a few yards in the 
 rear called out * Hey, yer Reverend, be yer a 
 drovier, hey?' A wintry smile passed over the 
 rector's ascetic face. It was long before the chief 
 actor in the little comedy forgot the incident. 
 
 4 Old 's cow her be allus a-straying were 
 
 going down the lane, same as if her'd been to 
 church, and parson arter her ; when I says, says 
 I, " Hey, yer Reverend, be yer a drovier, hey ? " 
 
 I decide to pay my first visit to the church, 
 which looks somehow improved in appearance, as 
 if the proximity of the new rectory and rector 
 had cheered it. I obtained the key from a decent- 
 looking woman occupying a cottage near the 
 church, who put me in charge of her daughter. 
 
 Here, many years ago, I used to watch the 
 population, or a good part, * put up its legs ' when 
 the sermon commenced, * and think of nothing ' 
 the quotation is not from George Elliot, as is 
 generally supposed, but from * The Doctor,' a 
 publication which deserves to be better known 
 than is the case. My little friend begins at once 
 to tell me about the superior people with tablets 
 on the walls. I am already acquainted with these 
 anecdotes, and feel inclined to ask her whether 
 the jackdaw, which used to hop about on the 
 communion table and peck the loaves piled ready 
 
 for distribution * immediately ' after service, has 
 
 184 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 left any lineal descendants. She has a * rustic, 
 woodland air/ and regards me with shy looks of 
 interest. She probably enjoys her ecclesiastical 
 duties the more that she is seldom called upon to 
 perform them. It strikes me that another Words- 
 worth ought to be interviewing her. 
 
 * Sisters and brothers, little maid,' I ask her, 
 ' how many may you be ? ' 
 
 She looks startled, as if she had heard an 
 echo. If she had answered * Seven in all ' I should 
 not have been surprised. Instead she says, * I 
 never had any brothers or sisters. I live in the 
 churchyard cottage with my mother.' 
 
 Now for the inn, which I don't think I should 
 ever have visited in the old days, so dull and 
 uninteresting a personality was the landlord, had 
 I not been requested, when a General Election was 
 imminent, to solicit the innkeeper's vote and 
 interest, as it was then the fashion to put it. 
 
 Innkeepers were then looked upon as an 
 appanage of the Tory Party, since the great 
 majority of the Petty Sessional Bench took that 
 political view, and would have the power of 
 refusing a licence to a Radical. 
 
 ' I can't promise,' said the innkeeper, when I 
 had informed him of my business. * In fact, I 
 want to get away from here, and am looking out 
 for another house. If I promise there will be 
 nothing with which to oblige a new landlord/ 
 
 I thought this reasonable, and so I told the 
 
 185 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 doddering old squire, who was a local banker and 
 J.P. To my surprise, he said : * It will be a 
 very serious thing for Jones, as we ' meaning 
 the magistrates ' could refuse a licence unless 
 he voted right/ 
 
 * Surely,' I said, ' you wouldn't do such a 
 thing as that ! ' He made no reply, and I hoped 
 he wouldn't, but thought he would. I went back 
 to the publican. 
 
 ' I'll give you my word,' he said. * It'll be all 
 right, if only old P.' the doddering squire 'will 
 leave me alone. But I won't be put down as 
 "promised."' And so I left it. 
 
 I found an improvement in the inn, and the 
 innkeeper, though apparently there was nothing 
 doing in the way of business. Two worn-out old 
 men, derelict labourers I suppose, were seated 
 disconsolately in the kitchen, without any mugs 
 before them. The new innkeeper not very new 
 except to me, for he had been there for twenty 
 years was a fine, stalwart, soldierly-looking Salo- 
 pian, aged about fifty, with a young-looking wife, 
 who nevertheless had two married daughters, in 
 addition to a younger one who lived at the inn. 
 I wondered what could have brought such a man 
 to this place, but before I left he had shown me 
 his stud of sporting dogs, and explained that in 
 the shooting season he was away with them a 
 great deal, accompanying shooting parties to Scot- 
 land and other localities. The inn cost very little 
 186 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 to rent ; indeed, he might have bought it for a 
 song if he had cared to. He was much interested 
 in my account of the former prosperity of the 
 village, and told me that several descendants of 
 the old farmers I had known were still living 
 from hand to mouth on the old farms, novV more 
 or less derelict. Just the sort of man I should 
 have loved to have had there in the old days. 
 
 Near the inn was my boundary. Here is the 
 post and rails, very rotten now, where the old mare 
 and I nearly parted company, because I thought 
 it was unnecessary to stick as close to hounds as 
 was her invariable practice. She whipped round, 
 and popped over the fence in a jiffy. If she had 
 lost me she would have gone on contentedly by 
 herself, thinking it served me right. Then there 
 is another farm-house or two, after which the lane 
 gradually dwindles, till as they used to say in 
 America c it turns into a squirrel track and runs 
 up a tree.' A bridle road, now disused, ran along 
 the top of the farm, going out on the Ludlow road, 
 on the far side of which were a hundred acres, once 
 belonging to the farm, and good wheat land, but 
 now all poor pasture. 
 
 There used to be a lot of wheat and barley 
 grown on the far side of the bridle road. Barley 
 has, like wheat, gone out of favour. Our barley 
 used to be rather dark coloured, but the local 
 maltsters liked it. There are no local maltsters 
 
 now. In many villages you may still see the ruins 
 
 187 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 of the old malthouses. The local brewers have 
 gone too, or nearly so ; while the big brewers' 
 agents don't attend local markets. You can travel 
 a hundred miles now without seeing an acre of 
 barley. This is a pity, as there is no more useful 
 crop for farmers. 
 
 From where I am standing I can see on the 
 adjoining hill the buildings and the long stretch 
 of hillside belonging to a big farm held in my 
 day by an old friend and ally, and as well farmed 
 as any holding in the Wheatland. The tenant 
 was a hard-working man in the prime of life, and 
 with more scientific knowledge of his profession 
 than was then, or I fear is now, possessed by the 
 great majority of farmers. The farm was reached 
 from Bridgnorth by climbing an almost inacces- 
 sible hill, and poor both as to pasture and arable 
 land. He kept a big flock of Shropshire sheep, 
 his chief dependence, and of which he was very 
 proud. They were closer woolled than the ordinary 
 Shropshires, and so better suited to withstand the 
 wild weather they often had to encounter on their 
 hill. His second string was wheat, to grow which 
 the hungry soil required a good deal of assistance, 
 and this he managed to supply. He had the 
 advantage that in a wet or catchy season his stooks 
 would dry a day or two before the heavier crops 
 on the lower land. I used to look up enviously, 
 and see him carrying wheat, while my sheaves 
 were still soaked through. 
 188 
 
Seven Years on the Salop Clay 
 
 With all his work, he found time for sport. 
 He was a good rider and fine shot ; this it may 
 have been that kept him going. For some years 
 after leaving Shropshire I used to go down to see 
 him, and found him still prosperous and contented. 
 Some dispute with his landlord, a parson unac- 
 quainted with farming, caused him to leave. This 
 action on the landlord's part a capable Minister 
 of Agriculture would have made impossible. As 
 had been prophesied, when he left everything 
 went to pieces. It was like the breaking of the 
 mainspring of a watch. The farm was let to people 
 who made little or no pretence of farming, and 
 allowed the arable land to look after itself. Cattle 
 and sheep were taken in, when they could be got, 
 to graze the poor pasture. These roamed all over 
 the farm the fences were broken down. Quickly 
 the place went wild. There was no one to continue 
 the work. In the vernacular, * It wasn't everyone's 
 job,' and with this I agreed. 
 
 Someone has taken the place now, and horses 
 and sheep no longer stray as over a common. In 
 fact there are none to be seen, and as the pasture 
 is now too poor to provide cattle with anything 
 but walking exercise sufficient to give them an 
 appetite for food which they will never obtain, the 
 amount of meat marketed must be small indeed, 
 For all the good it does to anyone the place might 
 as well run wild. It would then produce a few 
 
 more blackberries than at present. Multiply the 
 
 189 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 loss of corn, sheep, and cattle once produced there 
 by thousands, and the shortage of home-grown 
 food is accounted for. The spiteful and senseless 
 campaign, which the authors may now regret but 
 the effects of which they can never undo, against 
 everyone interested in the land, destroyed con- 
 fidence, and without it who is going to spend the 
 best years of his life struggling to wring some 
 good by labour and foresight out of a place which, 
 without these qualities, is but a barren hill. 
 
 190 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A SURVIVAL 
 
 THE spasmodic interest recently shown by 
 the Government in agricultural affairs, 
 which had been persistently neglected for 
 forty years, has caused agricultural labourers to 
 look forward to sharing in what is supposed to 
 be the coming prosperity of all the classes who 
 live by labour. They have hitherto made no move 
 towards combination except for a short time many 
 years ago under the leadership of Mr. Arch, whose 
 death was announced quite a short time ago. The 
 claim of agricultural labourers to a living wage is 
 second to none, but caution should be used in the 
 enforcing, since if the demands are higher than the 
 farmers can accede to, it is the latter who will 
 strike, or rather give up their farms. There is 
 no trade which has a better record than that of 
 the tiller of the soil for honesty, endurance, and 
 good feeling towards their employers. It is too 
 much to expect them to rest content while the 
 wages of all other trades, not omitting barbers, 
 
 are being doubled or trebled. But it is to be 
 
 191 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 hoped that for their own sakes, and that of the 
 country, they will not make their demands too 
 high, or agriculture, after having regained a part 
 of what had been lost, will quickly recede into the 
 hopeless position it has occupied for two genera- 
 tions. Before agricultural labourers can be paid 
 at the rate now suggested by their advisers, 
 it is necessary that the farmers should be fully 
 guaranteed by the Government against loss and 
 ruin. 
 
 I have known farm labourers in Berkshire 
 living (?) on from 95. to I2s. a week ; in Salop 
 on 1 6s. or ijs. ; Worcestershire about the same. 
 With the last amount labourers appeared generally 
 contented, but it was a time when the shilling 
 went twice as far as it does to-day. The highest 
 of these weekly wages have been doubled during 
 the War, and it is now suggested that they should 
 be doubled again. 
 
 Like all affairs that have been long neglected, 
 a sudden attempt to bring derelict land imme- 
 diately into cultivation again is unlikely, for many 
 reasons, to be permanently successful. For one 
 reason the way to go to work is not generally 
 known, certainly not to the class from whom 
 agricultural dictators are likely to be selected. It 
 could be learnt from an old farmer or an old 
 labourer, but these consultations do not seem to 
 have taken place. Moreover, during the long 
 
 period of neglect, politicians have as much as 
 192 
 
A Survival 
 
 possible avoided the advertising of any knowledge 
 of a degraded science supposing them to have 
 acquired it which would be unlikely to lead to 
 promotion or an increased salary. Someone must 
 take over the job, and the best he can do is to 
 simulate, at a moment's notice, a complete know- 
 ledge of an art which many have taken a lifetime 
 to acquire. That some success has attended the 
 Government's efforts during the last two years 
 I should be the last to deny, but whether it will 
 continue is another matter, and it looks as if the 
 demands for excessive wages will send the newly- 
 ploughed lands back to the state they were in 
 before the War, and the worse instead of the better 
 for the disturbance. It may be possible to get a 
 crop of wheat from poor pasture that has not seen 
 a load of manure or been properly grazed for 
 forty years, but it will almost certainly refuse to 
 repeat the unaccustomed effort. Perhaps the new 
 official has heard tell of the Western Prairies, 
 which will bear cropping for from twenty to thirty 
 years without manure. But a little knowledge is 
 a dangerous thing. 
 
 Ours is a purely agricultural village, if that 
 term can be properly applied to a place where the 
 fields that used to bear good crops of wheat have 
 seeded themselves down to poor pasture. At any 
 rate, we still possess an agricultural labourer, which 
 is more than some of our neighbours can boast 
 of. He is, of course, getting old, but by turning 
 
 o 103 
 
Victorian Recol lections 
 
 his hands to various forms of usefulness, which 
 there is now no one else to undertake, he still 
 manages to make a living in what was once a 
 prosperous community. 
 
 Looking round last Sunday, just before the 
 commencement of Service, I saw my old friend 
 come in quietly and take his seat in a draughty 
 place at the back of the church, and as far as 
 possible from the * gentry.* He was wearing the 
 old coat, once black but now turning green the 
 gift of the last vicar, which has been his best for 
 thirty years or so, and in his hands was a Lincoln 
 and Bennett, presented by a more recent admirer. 
 Old Tom is the last survivor hereabouts of the 
 old-style agricultural labourer. The last vicar, who 
 died twenty years ago, thought a great deal of him. 
 Both of them had seen the days of the village's 
 prosperity, now lapsed into tradition, and had 
 together witnessed its downfall. The present 
 incumbent does not know what to make of Old 
 Tom; yet it was from this class of parishioner that 
 the successes of his predecessors were chiefly 
 enlisted. 
 
 There are still a few people in the parish who 
 look sturdy and honest, but Old Tom is as sturdy 
 and as honest as he looks. There was probably 
 more honesty, in proportion to the population, in 
 an agricultural district than in a city, or even in 
 a country town. It is true that honesty has not 
 
 yet fallen so low but that a reputation for it is 
 194 
 
A Survival 
 
 still quite a useful commercial asset, and this fact 
 many are shrewd enough to exploit. I should 
 pick out Old Tom for one of the few in the village 
 who would give his fearless, out-spoken opinion 
 on a question of right and wrong, * though it were 
 to his own hindrance/ There are others who 
 would do so in a hoarse whisper with a hand to 
 the mouth c You mustn't tell as I said so.' In 
 such a poor village, and with such small chances 
 of a re-engagement should one's position, however 
 humble and ill-paid, be forfeited, it requires more 
 courage perhaps than everyone possesses more 
 perhaps than everyone ought to possess, when it 
 is a question of wife and family and their bread 
 and cheese to attribute wrong-doing, or mean- 
 ness, however obvious, to those above you. Even 
 in classes socially superior few are found brave or 
 self-denying enough to speak out concerning anyone 
 who has no amusements or money to dispense, even 
 though he may be a niggard of both, and the 
 sycophants only slightly desirous of either. 
 
 Old Tom enjoys splendid health, and though 
 he is halfway through the seventies he complains 
 of no ailment but an occasional spell of rheumatism 
 which causes him to limp, and sometimes to assist 
 his steps on the homeward journey with a stick 
 of such abnormal length and thickness as to suggest 
 that it may afterwards come in useful for fuel. 
 Rheumatism or not, it is seldom that he does not 
 leave his little cottage soon after sunrise, to return 
 
 02 195 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 when that luminary is retiring behind the hill. 
 His services are in requisition, and he need never 
 spend an idle day. He prefers, when he can get 
 the chance, to work by himself on * tack work.' 
 If he confined himself to purely agricultural 
 labours he would often be ' kicking his heels/ as 
 he puts it. But he can turn his hand to almost 
 anything, and you may come upon him, miles 
 from anywhere, seated on a bank, his feet in a 
 dry ditch, hastily munching a crust of bread and 
 cheese or more likely margarine before returning 
 to the job which no one else could be found to 
 see to. He is in request when the owner of one 
 of the semi-derelict estates is clearing away brush- 
 wood, and the worthless overcrowded trees. Almost 
 everyone has his limitations, and though more 
 often employed at hedging than anything else, he 
 has never acquired, nor, I should imagine, tried 
 to acquire, the art of * pleaching.* This, unless 
 you are a native, you will consider strange. Yet 
 he is thought quite a good hedger in these parts, 
 which means that he can chop off the top of a 
 hedge, and stuff up the gaps with brush and rubbish 
 a little quicker than the majority. I have tried 
 my hand at teaching him, but it was too late for 
 him to learn. * You want me to do it so-and-so ? ' 
 * No, I don't.' Then I would try to show him 
 what I meant, but soon had to leave him to his 
 own way. 
 
 Legends of the great Napoleon have somehow 
 196 
 
A Survival 
 
 reached him ; and, perhaps, for that reason, he did 
 not greatly wonder when the big war broke 
 out, and he heard of the Germans' intention to 
 loot London. London, which he had never visited, 
 is a long way off, and he would not consider that 
 his parish had any very tempting spoil to attract 
 raiders. He takes a weekly paper, and he has a 
 son at the front, whose brief scrawls he painfully 
 deciphers; but it is unlikely that he realises the 
 scale on which battles are fought in these days, 
 or how far-reaching are their effects. He had 
 been more interested and more angry when told, 
 just before the War, of the attacks that were being 
 made on landowners and everyone connected with 
 the land ; and having no knowledge of politicians 
 and their needs he could not imagine who they 
 were intended to benefit. He is not afraid of 
 being without employment as long as there is any 
 to be got on the land, but he is aware that the 
 best labour he can give is not likely to be of much 
 profit to his employers, and that the farmer as 
 he still calls himself would be but little worse off 
 if he were to do without it. 
 
 He can scarcely read well enough to follow the 
 Service, parts of which would, no doubt, be quite 
 beyond his comprehension. Not that he would 
 object to * dogma,' or rather that he would object 
 to it if he knew the meaning of the word. He 
 may even consider the Athanasian Creed a fine- 
 sounding piece of work, and he would approve of 
 
 197 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 candles or any other ornaments on the communion 
 table, were it not that our poverty denies us these 
 luxuries. He probably thinks that the parson is 
 there to put things right for him, and save him 
 all worry about ' religion/ His attendance at 
 church may be put down to his desire to live 
 cleanly, and to express his agreement with the 
 virtues which, after all, are what religion stands 
 for. This may not be the sort of faith which 
 goes very far towards proving the truth of a creed; 
 but he has led a blameless life think of it, in 
 these days, a blameless life and will die without 
 fear and without regret, for he is anxious for the 
 rest which is assured him, and of which this life 
 has not given him much. 
 
 When the sermon is reached, I notice that he 
 always goes off duty, so to speak. He would not 
 dream of attempting to follow its intricacies; and 
 as the parson crawls up the pulpit stairs, a rather 
 puzzled look of concentration comes over his 
 rugged features, as he settles himself more com- 
 fortably in his seat and begins as, I am confident, 
 though he never told me so to think over his 
 * reminiscences/ True, Sunday is a day of rest 
 with him, but he will probably not be left quite 
 to himself and his thoughts again during the 
 week. 
 
 He may begin by recalling his ' schooldays ' 
 they were unworthy of this sonorous title when 
 
 he took his seat along with half a dozen others on 
 198 
 
A Survival 
 
 a rude bench in the one living-room of a thatched 
 cottage in the little village and was instructed in 
 the alphabet by a little old woman who eked out 
 her fees by offering her pupils, and the public at 
 large, penny editions of * Jack the Giant Killer,' 
 and other exciting tales. Almost before this 
 educational outpost had been captured, he was 
 engaged as * crow-boy ' on a neighbouring farm, 
 and this, in spite of the occasional appearances and 
 objurgations of the farmer, he found a delightful 
 time. There are no * crow-boys ' now, and the 
 rooks have to find a harvest elsewhere. As he 
 grew up, he gradually learnt all the business of the 
 farm, till one day he rose to under-wagoner on a 
 big farm where his father was bailiff. His wages 
 now were seventeen shillings a week a sum whose 
 purchasing power was more than equal to the two 
 pounds now paid for the same work. Old Tom's 
 father had gained his position without the small 
 amount of instruction vouchsafed to his son. He 
 could neither read nor write, but his education was 
 nevertheless well suited to his circumstances. He 
 had a wonderful memory, with which the c three 
 R's ' had never tampered. Old Tom's memory 
 is fairly good, only a little injured by his acquaint- 
 ance with the little old woman in the thatched 
 cottage. There are no memories now ; everything 
 must be written down in a book or en a scrap of 
 paper. Sometimes the scrap of paper is lost we 
 
 have lately heard that it may even be torn up: 
 
 199 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 in which case there is no reliable evidence of the 
 occurrence. 
 
 On his father's sudden death, to the great grief 
 of his employer, the big farm was given up and 
 Old Tom, who was then five- or six-and-twenty, 
 had to look for a new job. He found one with- 
 out difficulty; but a change was coming over 
 agriculture on the clay. The cultivation of wheat 
 was being discontinued, though there was no other 
 crop equally suitable to the stiff soil. Instead of 
 the various and interesting labours of an arable 
 farm, he had to come down gradually to gather- 
 ing a little hay on poor pasture, which yearly 
 got poorer, and looking after sheep with which 
 previously he had had little or nothing to do. 
 
 Up to this period he has not found these 
 memories disagreeable. He has a right to feel 
 some honest pride in the knowledge that he did 
 his best as a fighter in the only troop in which he 
 was enrolled, and he may feel, as greater men have 
 felt before him, that ' 'Tis better to have fought 
 and lost than never to have fought at all.' He 
 has heard of the Government's sudden interest in 
 agriculture, but it is no wonder that he does not 
 feel very sanguine as to the result. On his way 
 to work he passes a small estate adjoining the road, 
 on which good wheat crops used to be grown, 
 but which has for many years been poor pasture, 
 yielding in favourable seasons a few hundredweights 
 
 of inferior hay, which he has occasionally assisted 
 200 
 
A Survival 
 
 to carry. Last year, to his astonishment, part of a 
 big field was ploughed up and sown with oats at 
 the end of May. These did not come up except 
 in patches here and there. The tenant started to 
 plough again, but his steam-plough broke down, 
 and stood idle in the field for months. The 
 field now presents a lamentable appearance, and 
 from its position affords amusement to all stran- 
 gers passing by, while it is a source of shame to 
 ourselves. 
 
 This, and other rumours, deprive him of the 
 pleasure of looking forward with any confidence 
 to a day when the lost cause will come to the 
 front again, with better generals if not a sturdier 
 rank and file. But it is only when his thoughts 
 go back to some things the country has lost that 
 he feels a turn towards melancholy. 
 
 Foremost among these is the ploughboy's 
 whistle, never to be heard again ; the swish of the 
 broad hook, and the happy well-paid reaper who 
 wielded it ; the wheat-carrying at high pressure 
 on fields where not a sheaf has been harvested for 
 a generation ; the now obsolete tap-tapping of the 
 flail on the barn floor, continued long after the 
 arrival of the useful but rather wasteful steam 
 thrasher, when on a wet day the men had a snug 
 job in the barn at thrashing a few bags of wheat 
 to be afterwards ground at the mill ; the shepherd's 
 crook, seldom seen now save when a high-church 
 
 parson, in a many-buttoned cassock, carries a 
 
 201 
 
Victorian Recollections 
 
 brand new one when visiting his flock ; the * step- 
 ping stones/ of which there were many miles, 
 edging the wheat-fields, but now overgrown with 
 rubbish, or removed to make paths in the gardens 
 of the new ' manor houses.* By these stones he 
 had wandered on Good Friday, and on many a 
 summer evening, with the blue-eyed girl who is 
 now the ' old 'oman.' * God bless her 1 ' he says 
 to himself ; * if it 'adn't a been for her it 'ud been 
 a hard life/ 
 
 If the sermon should happen to be a long one, 
 he may have a little time left for wondering why 
 this industry of agriculture, so necessary not only 
 to the village, but, as he has learnt, also to the 
 Empire, should have been permitted to fall so low 
 that it is considered a sign of folly or incompetence 
 to engage in it. Why is it, he may inquire, that 
 more and more people are waxing rich in London 
 and in the big towns, while no one can earn a 
 living in the country. The village in which he 
 lives is on a road greatly favoured by motorists, 
 and it surprised him, before the War put a period, 
 temporarily, to their pursuit of pleasure, to see 
 more and more people with plenty of money to 
 spend on amusing themselves, while the country 
 was going to ruin. There must be something 
 wrong somewhere. He did not grudge these 
 folk their enjoyment, or what they considered 
 such, though the dust, when there was a slight 
 
 breeze in summer, would settle down on the 
 202 
 
A Survival 
 
 village like a dusky pall, ruin his garden, and 
 greatly aggravate the asthma from which his old 
 wife was a constant sufferer. In his early days 
 people used to stop at home, and look after their 
 business ; later, they wanted to get away as quickly 
 and as often as possible, and Old Tom, who is 
 nothing if not charitable, allows that there would 
 have been very little for them to do if they had 
 stayed there. 
 
 But the parson has finished, and Old Tom goes 
 home to dinner, or, if it is an evening Service, to 
 bed, and defers the continuation of his reminis- 
 cences, or whatever he may call them, for seven 
 days. 
 
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