Part 12 (2/2)
Even Post Office surveyors are sometimes the subject of little jokes on the part of their subordinates. An a.s.sistant surveyor, when testing a rural postman's walk, said that if he had arranged the round originally, he should have taken a shortcut across the fields to a certain little hamlet so as to serve it before instead of after a more distant place, when the postman drily said that he should not have done anything of the kind, as there was a rhine about 18 ft. wide and very deep, which could not well be got over or through, and, turning to the surveyor, he remarked: ”Evidently you never were a postman.” The humour of this incident lies in the fact that the surveyors have always been drawn from the elite of the Service. A certain imperious surveyor visited a sub-office for the purpose of reprimanding the sub-postmaster for some delinquency, and after soundly rating the individual he addressed, and refusing to hear a single word in explanation, he, when his harangue was over, was coolly informed that he had made a slight mistake, as the circ.u.mstance referred to another sub-office altogether.
On a certain occasion recently, on entering a Post Office the writer heard proceeding from a back room a voice, recognisable as that of the sub-postmaster, shouting out a greeting in his (the writer's) Christian name: ”Come in, Robert.” Well, the sub-postmaster thought he saw through the partly-curtained gla.s.s in the door a friend of that name, and meant no disrespect to his surveyor-postmaster.
On calling at another little Post Office on a Sat.u.r.day, the aged sub-postmistress was was.h.i.+ng her stone floor--down on her knees in business-like att.i.tude. Without looking up, her greeting to the writer was: ”Halloa! I thought you had been to Jericho. You have not been to see me for such a long time!” That salutation was rather embarra.s.sing; but on getting to the perpendicular the old lady was the confused party, as she had thought her visitor was a local resident who occasionally looked in to have a cheery word with her.
It would seem that postal improvements in the Bristol district have been carried almost as far as is needful; indeed, in one district, not seven miles from the city, contemplated improvements whereby letters would be delivered an hour earlier in the morning and might be posted two hours later at night, and a day mail in and out be afforded, were declined by the parish authorities in council and by memorial from the villagers generally. In this rural hollow the people are very clannish, and rather than let their postwoman suffer a loss of two s.h.i.+llings a week, which the change involved, they were content to forego improved postal facilities, and were not greatly stirred by the ”lasinesse of posts” as, according to history, was King James of old.
While Bristol is ever expanding and while splendid buildings are being erected, there are not wanting places within a short distance of the ancient city where there are signs of decadence, as indicated by houses unoccupied and cottages in ruins, and by shrinkage in the number of letters. At Stanton Drew, where some thirty large stones alone remain to mark a site where there probably stood a splendid Druidical Temple, the postal arrangements a few years since were not in a satisfactory condition. Not unlike the story which has recently been going the round of the newspapers, that a sub-postmaster of an Oxfords.h.i.+re village fixed this notice up: ”Have gone fis.h.i.+ng. Will be back in time to sell stamps,” the sub-postmistress of this Somersets.h.i.+re hamlet went away for days without putting up any notice whatever, and left her son to supply the inhabitants with postage stamps when he got home in the evening from his work as an agricultural labourer. Still, people did not complain, so that they may be regarded as accessories to the sub-postmistress's delinquencies. There was, however, a postal super-session in that village!
There is still in the rural service a postman who labours under the disabilities of having only one arm and of being unable to read or write. He has not a very extensive delivery, and so his pockets are made to do duty in the place of the faculty of reading. The left breast pocket indicates that letters placed in it are for Cliff Farm, those in the right breast pocket for Rush Hill Farm, several other pockets serving in like manner.
From very old official books sent into store on the change of holders of sub-offices, it is noticeable that the writing of fifty years ago was much superior to that of the present day, indicating that sub-postmasters of olden time either took more interest in caligraphy than their successors, or possibly had more leisure in which to make the necessary entries than is afforded in the present period of high pressure.
'Tis strange that it was so, as at the time the steel pen had not ousted the quill. Even so short a time as forty years since a new intrant to the Post Office, hailing from the Emerald Isle, had, like all other new-comers, to enter his name and address in the Order Book on his first introduction to St. Martin's-le-Grand. A steel pen was handed to him, with which he dallied for a time, and when asked why he did not proceed, said: ”Sure, I was waiting for a feather.”
The inst.i.tution for the care of consumption started in this country, and known as Nordrach-upon-Mendip, is in the Bristol postal district at one of its most distant points on the range of the Mendip Hills, at an alt.i.tude of 850 feet above sea level. It has already played an important part as regards the Bristol Post Office, inasmuch as a consumptive telegraph clerk has benefited considerably from the new treatment, and has indeed left the inst.i.tution as cured. It is not generally known that until recently there existed a small Convalescent Home on the Mendips, but ”Cosy Corner,” founded and maintained by Sir Edward Hill, K.C.B., stood there as such, and it served a good part as regards a postal servant. A postman employed at the Bristol railway station as mail porter, who had suffered from a serious attack of typhoid fever, and who had been verily at death's door, pa.s.sed several weeks at this rural retreat, and derived such benefit from the kind treatment he received and from the bracing air of the district that he quite recovered from his ailment and is now in robust health. ”Cosy Corner” has now been affiliated to Nordrach-upon-Mendip.
The rule of the Service is that coins, postage stamps, and other articles of value picked up in a sorting office are regarded as treasure trove and have to be handed over to the authorities for disposal; but a letter carrier's round can hardly be regarded in the light of a Post Office, and so a postman of the Thornbury district who at Aust Cliff, picked up a well-preserved bronze coin with the image and superscription of Claudius Caesar (A.D. 41-54) did not consider himself called upon to give it up to the sub-postmaster, but disposed of it for the sum of 15s.
6d. The purchaser presented it to the Leicester Museum.
Tradition hath it that Miss Hannah More, the celebrated auth.o.r.ess and philanthropist, when residing (1770) at Wrington, near Bristol, in the churchyard of which place her remains now repose, made an arrangement with the postman of the period whereby on pa.s.sing along the road near her residence he was to signal to her when any event of importance had occurred. Her sitting and bedroom windows commanded a view of the walk near which the postman had to pa.s.s, so that she could see him coming, and she always hurried down to the wicket-gate in readiness to meet him when he put up his flag. A son of the postman, now alive, remembers well that his father told him that he had given the signal on the death of Queen, Caroline. It was outside the postman's function, to wave the red flag with which Mistress Hannah, had provided him, but Post Office matters were not carried on so strictly in those days as under the present regime. The Wrington postman obtained the news about important pa.s.sing events from the mail-man who rode through the village on his way from Bristol to Axbridge. George Vowles, who died twenty-six years ago, at the ripe age of 88 years, was the mail-man who conveyed to the villages on his way the news of the battle of Waterloo, brought down from London by the mail coach, which had been decorated with laurels and flowers in honour of the great event.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GENERAL FREE DELIVERY OF LETTERS.
No stone has been left unturned in the endeavour to afford a free delivery of letters at the door of every house in the district; and at last all houses and cottages, even in the remotest localities, have been reached, and the woodman, the gamekeeper, and the lone cottager now receive a daily visit from the postman. In visiting out of the way places of the kind with a view to arranging a delivery, the surveyor has to look out for dogs. A certain warren house in this district affords a typical case. It is far from the ordinary haunts of man, and was without an official delivery on account of its extreme inaccessibility. The approach is through a deep gorge, known as Goblin Combe, and the path to the house is precipitous. The gamekeeper residing there had to send to a farmhouse a mile and a quarter distant for his letters, which the obliging farmer had consented to take in for him. The attempts of the staff to arrange a method of delivery by postmen had long been baffled.
At the time when the writer went to view the place there was a rumour in the neighbourhood that, owing to serious depredations by poachers, fierce dogs roamed the enclosed warren; and on pa.s.sing out on to the warren from the wood corner, there was observed standing on a wall near the house what in the distance and misty morn, appeared to be a large bloodhound, and so the advance had to be made warily. The attendant rural postman was armed with a riding whip, on which his grip tightened, for he had already been four times bitten by dogs, as the scars on his hand testified, and he desired to guard himself against another attack.
At last, as the place was neared, the object of distrust was found to be--a large goat! Another out-of-the-way place in the same neighbourhood, also unserved by the postman, was a woodman's house in a dense wood, which, with its bowling-green, is said once to have been used by ”Bristol bloods” of old time as a safe retreat where they could indulge in a little business connected with the prize ring and c.o.c.k fighting. That the Duke of Norfolk's liberal policy in Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee year has proved a boon and a blessing to many residents in isolated spots is indicated, for instance, by what a poor woman living in a wild district stated. She had recently to trudge the whole way from her house to Bristol, a distance of eight miles out and eight miles back, while a letter which would have obviated her journey had been lying undelivered for days at a Post Office only two miles off.
Blaize Castle, which is within four miles of the Head Post Office, was singularly enough almost the last habitation in the Bristol district which was granted a free delivery of letters daily, for until 1898 the postman in his official capacity had never penetrated to that rock-elevated and remote part of the Blaize Woods where the castle stands. That reproach to the Bristol district has now been removed, and the custodians of the castle have obtained their rights as citizens of the great kingdom in having their letters delivered at the door daily by the Postmaster-General's representative. It was a difficult matter to find out all the houses at which the postman did not call, and this particular castle, which is now only occupied by caretakers, was not notified by the rural postman, as the occupiers had signified to him that they did not care for a delivery and were quite satisfied if the letters were left in the village till called for. The circ.u.mstance may be of interest to Bristolians, from the fact that Blaize Castle is spoken of by many but is seen by very few. Its flagstaff is visible from some little distance, but the castle itself can scarcely be discerned through its wooded surroundings, even from the far-famed Arbutus Walk, which is separated from it by a deep gorge. The castle is situated on a lofty plateau in the midst of the large woods. Close to it is a sheer perpendicular rock, three hundred feet high, known as ”The Giant's leap.” The castle is said to have derived its name from St. Blaisius, the Spanish patron of wool-combers, to whom a chapel was dedicated on a hill in the grounds where the castle now stands, and where there was once a Roman encampment. The interest attaching to this castle is enhanced from a postal point of view by the circ.u.mstance that the son of the lady who owns the property married a daughter of the late Postmaster-General, the Right Hon. H. C. Raikes.
Mr. Raikes was one of the hardest working of Postmasters-General. So diligent indeed was he, that almost nightly, when the House of Commons was sitting, the right hon. gentleman, after all other Members had gone home, retired to his official room and went through the papers which had been sent up from the Post Office for his consideration. So absorbed would he become in the doc.u.ments, which he read carefully through from end to end, so that he might judge from his own standpoint and not from that of his official advisers, that he would sit well into the small hours of the morning, whilst that patient and most obliging of officials, the postmaster of the House, Mr. Pike, kept weary vigil, waiting to take the despatch-bag to the Post Office in the City before he went home to his well-earned rest. Mr. Raikes's invariably clear and even writing betokened that, long past the hour for bed as the time might be, he never had any idea of doing his work in a hurry. He was probably known to many of the citizens of Bristol, through his frequent visits to a mansion on the Westbury side of the Downs.
CHAPTER XIX.
LOCAL RETURNED LETTER OFFICE.
The Bristol Post Office has its returned letter branch, with which almost all the towns in the West of England, and South Wales are affiliated for ”dead letter” work. Through its agency over a million letters and postal packets are returned to senders annually. Book packets and circulars form 50 per cent. of the total number, and of these only 75 per cent. can be restored to the persons who posted them.
Over 10,000 letters containing property are recorded in the ledgers, and they represent a total value in cash, bank-notes, bills, cheques, postage stamps, etc., of about 36,000 per annum, nearly the whole of which reaches the hands of the senders. About 400 letters containing money orders, and 1,700 letters containing value, compulsorily registered, are returned in the course of the year. Amongst the curiosities of returned letter office experience may be mentioned the following. A letter was received thus peculiarly addressed:--”Miss ----, 4, Pleasant View, in that beautiful city which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramanto and Palladio, and which the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen has made cla.s.sic ground.” The pundits in the returned letter office who deal with derelict letters properly divined that the place so glowingly described was Bath, and issuing the letter accordingly, it was duly delivered in the fair city.
A packet was received simply addressed ”Post Office, Bristol, to be called for.” The contents were an army reserve man's discharge papers and pension application forms. The application bore evidence that it referred to Lichfield, and the packet was accordingly sent to that military depot. Two or three days afterwards an old soldier called at the Bristol office for his letter, and could not possibly understand why it had been opened in the returned letter branch, and the contents sent to Lichfield. His fury was unbounded, and he consigned all and sundry to Hades. His papers were soon obtained for him from Lichfield, and his grat.i.tude at getting them, was as effusively manifested as his disappointment had been in not finding the papers awaiting him on first application. His thanks were conveyed in the following terse communication:--
”Dear Boss,--A thousand pardons, everything comes right to those who wait. Patience is a virtue.
”Obt servt, W. H. ----.”
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