Part 2 (1/2)

'As in the eye of Nature he has lived, So in the eye of Nature let him die.'

Lowestoft was a frequent attraction for a youthful ramble-perhaps almost too far, unless one could manage to get a lift in a little yellow-painted black-bodied vehicle called a whisky, which was grandfather's property, and into the shafts of which could be put any spare quadruped, whether donkey, or mule, or pony, it mattered little, and which afforded a considerable relief when a trip as far as Lowestoft was determined on.

At that time there was no harbour, and the town consisted simply of one High Street, gradually rising towards the north, with a fine s.p.a.ce for boys to play in between the cliff and the sea, called the denes. I can well remember being taken to view the works of the harbour before the water was let in, and not a little astonished at what then was to me a new world of engineering science and skill. In the High Street there was a little old-fas.h.i.+oned and by no means flouris.h.i.+ng Independent Chapel, where at one time the preacher was the Rev. Mr. Maurice, the father of the Mr. Maurice to whom many owe a great awakening of spiritual life, and whose memory they still regard as that of a beloved and honoured teacher.

Mr. Maurice was a Unitarian, I believe, and, when he retired, handed over the chapel to my father with the remark that it was no use his preaching there any longer. The preacher in my time was the Rev. George Steffe Crisp, a kindly, timid, tearful man, always in difficulties with his people, and who often resorted to Wrentham for advice. Latterly he retired from the ministry, and kept a shop and school. In this capacity one day my old friend John Childs, of Bungay, the far-famed printer-of whom I shall have much to say anon-called on him, when the following dialogue took place: 'Good-morning, Mr. Crisp.' 'Good-morning, Mr.

Childs.' 'Well, how are you getting on?' 'Oh, very well; but there is one thing that troubles me much.' 'What is that?' 'That I am getting deaf, and can't hear my minister.' 'Oh,' was the cynical reply, 'you ought to be thankful for your privileges.'

Lowestoft is reported to have been a fis.h.i.+ng station as early as the time of the Romans; but the ancient town is supposed to have been long engulfed by the resistless sea, for there was to be seen till the 25th of Henry VIII. the remains of an old house upon an inundated spot-left dry at low water about four furlongs east of the present beach. The town has been the birthplace of many distinguished men-of Sir Thomas Allen, for instance, who was steadily attached to the Royal cause, and who after the Restoration rose high in command, and won many a victory over the Dutch and the Algerines; of Sir Andrew Leake, who fell in the attack on Gibraltar; of Rear-Admiral Richard Utbar, also a renowned fighter when England and Holland were at war. To the same town also belong Admiral Sir John Ashby, who died in 1693, and his nephew Vice-Admiral James Migh.e.l.ls. Nor must we fail to do justice to Thomas Nash, a facetious writer of considerable reputation in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The most witty of his productions is a satirical pamphlet in praise of red herrings, intended as a joke upon the great staple of Yarmouth, and the pretensions of that place to superiority over Lowestoft. It must be confessed that Nash is chiefly famous as a caustic pamphleteer and an unscrupulous satirist. For ill.u.s.tration we may point to his battle with Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Edmund Spenser, who desired that he might be epitaphed the inventor of the not yet naturalized English hexameter; and his other battle with Martin Mar Prelate, or the writer or writers who pa.s.sed under that name, and who have acquired a reputation to which poor Nash can lay no claim. His one conspicuous dramatic effort is 'Summer's Last Will and Testament.' Nash wrote for bare existence-to use his own words, 'contending with the cold, and conversing with scarcity.' Nash lived in an unpropitious age. A recent French writer has placed him in the foremost rank of English writers. Dr. Jusserand, the author referred to, in his accounts of the English novel in the time of Shakespeare, tells us Nash was the most successful exponent in England of the picturesque novel. The picturesque novel is the forerunner of the realistic novel of modern times. It portrays the life and fortunes of the picaro-the adventurer who tries all roads to fortune. Spanish in its origin, it developed into a school in which Defoe and Thackeray distinguished themselves. 'Nash,' writes the French author, 'mingled serious scenes with his comedy, in order that his romances might more nearly resemble real life.' In fact (he writes), 'Nash does not only possess the merit of learning how to observe the ridiculous side of human nature, and of portraying in a full light picturesque figures-now worthy of Teniers and now of Callot-some fat and greasy, others lean and lank; he possesses a thing very rare with the picturesque school, the faculty of being moved. He seems to have foreseen the immense field of study which was to be opened later to the novelist. A distant ancestor of Fielding, as Lilly and Sidney appear to us to be distant ancestors of Richardson, he understands that a picture of active life, reproducing only in the Spanish fas.h.i.+on scenes of comedy, is incomplete and departs from reality. The greatest jesters, the most arrogant, the most venturesome, have their days of anguish. No hero has ever yet remained imprisoned from the cradle to the grave, and no one has been able to live an irresponsible spectator, and not feel his heart sometimes beat the quicker, nor bow his head unmoved. Nash caught a glimpse of this.' As an ill.u.s.tration, Dr. Jusserand points to his 'Jack Wilton'-'The best specimen of the picturesque tale in English literature anterior to Defoe.' In Lowestoft they ought to keep his memory green.

The writer well remembers the day when Mr., afterwards Sir, Morton Peto, a.s.sembled the inhabitants of Lowestoft in the then dilapidated Town Hall, and promised that if they would sell their ruined harbour works, and back him in making a railway, their mackerel and herrings should be delivered almost alive in Manchester, Liverpool, and London. The inhabitants believed in the power of the enchanter, and Lowestoft is metamorphosed.

The old town remains upon its beautiful eminence, and memory clings to the cliffs and to the denes, tenanted only, the one by wild rabbits, the other by the merry children and the nets of the fishermen. But a new town has grown up around the harbour-a grand hotel, excellent lodging-houses, a new church; a great population have upset the romance, and borne witness to the spirit of enterprise which characterizes this generation. The new town has spread to Kirkley, has Londonized even quiet Pakefield, and awakened a sleeping neighbourhood to what men call life.

At Lowestoft commence what are known to sailors as the Yarmouth Roads-a grand stretch of sea protected by the sands, where an armada might anchor secure; and it was a sight not to be seen now, when gigantic steamers do all the business of the sea, to watch the hundreds of s.h.i.+ps that would come inside the Roads at certain seasons of the year. There, in the winter-time-that is, from Lowestoft to Covehithe-I have seen the beach strewed with wrecks, chiefly of rotten colliers, or s.h.i.+ps in the corn trade; but inside 'Lowestoft Roads,' to which they were guided by a lighthouse on the cliff, they were supposed to be secure. Lowestoft at that time, with its charming sands, was little known to the gay world, and depended far more on the fis.h.i.+ng than the bathing season. The former was a busy time, and kept all the country round in a state of excitement.

Many were the men, for instance, who, even as far off as Wrentham, went herring or mackerel fis.h.i.+ng in the big craft, which, drawn up on the beach when the season was over, seemed to me s.h.i.+ps such as never had been seen by the mariners of Tyre and Sidon; but the chief interest to me were the vans in which the fish were carried from Lowestoft to London-light spring-carts with four wheels and two horses, that, after changing horses at our Spread Eagle, raced like lightning along the turnpike-road, at all hours, and even on Sundays-a sad grievance to the G.o.dly-beating the Yarmouth mail.

Now and then, even at that remote period, when railways were not, and when Lowestoft was no port, nothing but a fis.h.i.+ng-station, distinguished people came to Lowestoft, attracted by its bracing air and exceptional bathing attractions. I can in this way recollect Sir Edward Parry and M.

Guizot. But there were other personages equally distinguished. One of these was Mrs. Siddons, with whom an old Dissenting minister-the Rev. S.

Sloper, of Beccles, whom I can well remember-contracted quite an intimacy. She had already pa.s.sed the zenith of her celebrity.

'Providence,' writes my friend, Mr. Wilton Rix, of Beccles, in his 'East Anglian Nonconformity,' published as far back as 1851, 'had repeatedly and recently called her to tread in domestic life the path of sorrow, and her religious advantages, however few, had taught her that

'”That path alone Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

'”Sweet, sometimes,” said she, ”are the uses of adversity. It not only strengthens family affection, but it teaches us all to walk humbly with G.o.d.” It is not surprising that she was disposed to cultivate the society of those who could blend piety with cheerfulness, and with whom she might be on friendly terms without ceremony. Such acquaintances she found in Mr. Sloper's family. Mrs. Siddons, with una.s.suming kindness, contributed to their amus.e.m.e.nt by specimens of her powerful reading. She joined willingly in the wors.h.i.+p of the family, and maintained the same invaluable practice at her own lodgings.' Mr. Rix continues: 'Just at that time Mr. Sloper was requested to preach to his own people on an affecting and mournful occasion, the death of a suicide. Though he keenly felt the delicacy and difficulty of the task, a sense of duty and a possibility of usefulness overcame his scruples. He selected for his text the impressive sentiment of the Apostle, ”The sorrow of the world worketh death.” Mrs. Siddons was one of his auditors. She, who had been the honoured guest of Royalty, who had been enthroned as the Tragic Muse, and whose voice had charmed applauding mult.i.tudes, was seen in the humble Dissenting meeting-house at Beccles shedding abundant and unaffected tears at the plain and faithful exhibition of religious truth. Mr.

Sloper's preaching was as powerfully recommended to her by the delightful ill.u.s.tration of Christian principles exhibited in his private character, as by the intrinsic importance of those principles, and the simple gravity and penetrating earnestness with which they were announced from his lips. He afterwards procured for her, at her request, a copy of Scott's admirable ”Commentary on the Bible,” which he accompanied with a letter, warmly urging upon her attention the great realities her profession had so manifest a tendency to exclude from her contemplations.

Mrs. Siddons,' again I quote Mr. Rix, 'more than once expressed her grat.i.tude for the interest Mr. Sloper had evinced in her eternal welfare; she thanked him in writing for the advice he had given her, adding an emphatic wish that G.o.d might enable her to follow it-a wish which her pious and amiable correspondent echoed with all the fervour of his heart.

She returned into the glare of popularity, but a hope may easily be indulged that the pressure of subsequent relative afflictions and of old age were not permitted to come upon her unaccompanied by the impressions and consolations of true religion. Her elegant biographer, Mr. Campbell, draws a veil over the state of her mind during her last hours, which it would be deeply interesting to penetrate. Would she not then, if reason were undimmed, reflect upon the faithful counsel she received with Scott's Bible as being of infinitely greater value than the applause of myriads or the fame of ages?'

Beccles, where this good Mr. Sloper lived, and where the writer of this extract was a respectable solicitor-I believe the firm of Rix and Son still exists-was a small market town about eight miles from Wrentham, inland. At that time it ranked as the third town in Suffolk. Towards the west it is skirted by a cliff, once washed by the estuary which separated the eastern portions of Norfolk and Suffolk. There is every reason to believe that ages back the mouth of the Yare was an estuary or arm of the sea, and extended with considerable magnitude for many miles up the country. The herring fishery was thus a princ.i.p.al source of emolument to the inhabitants, and in the time of the Conqueror the fee farm rent of the manor of Beccles to the King was 60,000 herrings, and in the time of the Confessor 20,000. About 956 the manor and advowson of Beccles were granted by King Edwy to the monks of Bury, and remained in their possession until the dissolution of the religious houses under Henry VIII.

As I have said, and as I repeat, in these languid days-when the old creeds have lost their power and the old bottles are bursting with new wine-the glory of East Anglia was that it was the first to stand up in the face of priest or king for the truth-or what it held to be such.

Amongst the early martyrs under Mary were three burnt at Beccles-Thomas Spicer, of Winston, labourer, John Deny, and Edmond Poole. This was in the year 1556. Their crime in the indictment, drawn up by Dr. Hopton, Bishop of Norwich, and his Chancellor, Dunning, according to Fox, was:

'1. First was articulate against them that they belieued not the Pope of Rome to bee supreame head immediately in Christ on earth of the Universall Catholike Church.

'2. That they belieued not holie bread and holie water, ashes, palmes, and all other like ceremonies used in the Church to bee good and laudable for stirring up the people to devotion.

'3. Item that they belieued not afterwards of consecration spoken by the priest, the very naturall body of Christ, and no other substance of bread and wine to bee in the Sacrament of the altar.

'4. Item that they belieued it to bee idolatry to wors.h.i.+p Christ in the Sacrament of the altar.

'5. Item that they tooke bread and wine in remembrance of Christ's Pa.s.sion.

'6. Item that they would not followe the crosse in procession nor bee confessed to a priest.

'7. Item that they affirmed no mortal man to have in himself free will to do good or evill.'

It appears that the writ had not come down, nevertheless these brave men were burnt at the stake. 'When they came,' continues Fox, 'to the reciting of the creed, Sir John Silliard spake to them, ”That is well said, sirs. I am glad to heare you saie you do belieue the Catholike Church; that is the best word I heard of you yet.”

'To which his sayings Edmond Poole answered, ”Though they belieue the Catholike Church, yet do they not belieue in their Popish Church, which is no part of Christ's Catholike Church, and, therefore, no part of their beliefe.”