Part 3 (2/2)

and whose 'Soul Prosperity,' a volume of sober prose, reached a second edition. His grandson, Mr. J. R. Robinson, now the energetic manager of the _Daily News_, may be said to have achieved a position in the world of London of which his simple-hearted and deeply-devotional grandfather could never have dreamed. As I was the son of a brother minister, Mr.

Dennant's house was open to myself and Thompson, though we did not go there on the particular day of which I write. The leading tradesman of the town was a Liberal, and had at least one pretty daughter, and there we went. Most of the day, however, we mixed with the mob which crowded round, while the voters-you may be sure, not all of them sober-were brought up to vote. The excitement was immense; there was the hourly publication of the state of the poll-more or less unreliable, but, nevertheless, exciting; and what a tumult there was as one or other of the rival candidates drove up to his temporary quarters in a carriage and pair, or carriage and four, made a short speech, which was cheered by his friends and howled at derisively by his foes, while the horses were being changed, and then drove off at a gallop to make the same display and to undergo the same ordeal elsewhere! To be sure, there was a little rough play; now and then a rush was made by n.o.body in particular, and for no particular reason; or, again, an indiscreet voter-rendered additionally so by indulgence in beer-gave occasion for offence; but really, beyond a scrimmage, a hat broken, a coat or two torn or bespattered with mud, a c.o.c.kade rudely s.n.a.t.c.hed from the wearer, little harm was done. The voters knew each other, and had come to vote, and had stayed to see the fun. For the timid, the infirm, the old, the day was a trying one; but there was an excitement and a life about the affair one misses now that the ballot has come into play, and has made the voter less of a man than ever. Of course the shops were shut up. All who could afford to do so kept open house, and at every available window were the bright, beaming faces of the Suffolk fair-oh, they were jolly, those election days of old! Well, in East Anglia, as elsewhere, spite of the parsons, spite of the landlords, spite of the slavery of old custom, spite of old traditions, the freeholders voted Reform, and Reform was won, and everyone believed that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. In ten years, I heard people say, there would be no t.i.thes for the farmer to pay, and welcome was the announcement; for then, as now, the agricultural interest was depressed, and the farmer was a ruined man. Now one takes but a languid interest in the word Reform, but then it stirred the hearts of the people; and how they celebrated their victory, how they hoisted flags and got up processions and made speeches, and feasted and hurrahed, 'twere tedious to tell. All over the land the people rejoiced with exceeding joy. Old things, they believed, had pa.s.sed away-all things had become new.

CHAPTER V.

BUNGAY AND ITS PEOPLE.

Bungay Nonconformity-Hannah More-The Childses-The Queen's Librarian-Prince Albert.

In the beginning of the present century, a disgraceful attack on Methodism-by which the writer means Dissent in all its branches-appeared in what was then the leading critical journal of the age, the _Edinburgh Review_. 'The sources,' said the writer, a clergyman (to his shame be it recorded) of the Church of England-no less distinguished a divine than the far-famed Sydney Smith-'from which we shall derive our extracts are the Evangelical and Methodistical magazines for the year 1807, works which are said to be circulated to the amount of 18,000 or 20,000 every month, and which contain the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England.

We shall use the general term of Methodism to designate these three cla.s.ses of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them as all in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.' To East Anglia came the reputed worthy Canon for an ill.u.s.tration of what he termed their policy to have a great change of ministers. Accordingly, he reprints from the _Evangelical Magazine_ the following notice of an East Anglian Nonconformist ordination, which, by-the-bye, in no degree affects the charge unjustly laid at the door of these 'fanatics,' as engaged 'in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.' 'Same day the Rev. W.

Haward, from Hoxton Academy, was ordained over the Independent Church at Rendham, Suffolk; Mr. Pickles, of Walpole, began with prayer and reading; Mr. Price, of Woodbridge, delivered the introductory discourse, and asked the questions; Mr. Dennant, of Halesworth, offered the ordinary prayer; _Mr. Shufflebottom_ [the italics are the Canon's], of Bungay, gave the charge from Acts xx. 28; Mr. Vincent, of Deal, the general prayer; and Mr. Walford, of Yarmouth, preached to the people from Phil. ii. 16.' As a lad, I saw a good deal of Bungay, though I never knew the Shufflebottom whose name seems to have been such a stumbling-block and cause of offence to the Reverend Canon of St. Paul's. I say Reverend Canon of St. Paul's, because, though the writer had not gained that honour when the review appeared, it was as Canon he returned to the charge when he sanctioned the republication of it in his collected works. It was at Bungay that I had my first painful experience of the utter depravity of the human heart-a truth of which, perhaps, for a boy, I learned too much from the pulpit. The river Waveney runs through Bungay, and one day, fis.h.i.+ng there, I lent a redcoat-with whom, like most boys, I was proud to sc.r.a.pe an acquaintance-my line, he promising to return it when I came back from dinner. When I did so, alas! the red-coat was gone.

Nonconformity in Bungay seems to have originated in the days of the Lord Protector, in the person of Zephaniah Smith, who was the author of: (1) 'The Dome of Heretiques; or, a discovery of subtle Foxes who were tyed tayle to tayle, and crept into the Church to do mischief'; (2) 'The Malignant's Plot; or, the Conspiracie of the Wicked against the Just, laid open in a sermon preached at Eyke, in Suffolk, January 23, 1697.

Preached and published to set forth the grounds why the Wicked lay such crimes to the charge of G.o.d's people as they are cleare off'; (3) 'The Skillful Teacher.' Beloe says of this Smith that 'he was a most singular character, and among the first founders of the sect of the Antinomians.'

One of the first leaders of this sect is said by Wood to have been John Eaton, who was a minister and preacher at Wickham Market, in which situation and capacity Smith succeeded him. This Smith published many other tracts and sermons, chiefly fanatical and with fantastical t.i.tles.

One is described by Wood, and is called 'Directions for Seekers and Expectants, or a Guide for Weak Christians in these discontented times.'

'I shall not give an extract from these sermons,' writes Beloe, who is clearly, like Wood, by no means a sympathetic or appreciative critic, 'though very curious, but they are not characterized by any peculiarity of diction, and are chiefly remarkable for the enthusiasm with which the doctrine of the sect to which the preacher belonged is a.s.serted and vindicated. The hearers also must have been endowed with an extraordinary degree of patience, as they are spun out to a great length.' Mr. Smith's ministry at Bungay led to a contention, which resulted in an appeal to the young Protector, Richard Cromwell. Then we find Mr. Samuel Malbon silenced by the Act of Uniformity, who is described as a man mighty in the Scriptures, who became pastor to the church in Amsterdam. In 1695 we hear of a conventicle in Bungay, with a preacher with a regularly paid stipend of 40 a year. Till 1700 the congregation wors.h.i.+pped in a barn; but in that year the old meeting-house was built, and let to the congregation at 10 per annum. In 1729 it was made over to the Presbyterians or Independents wors.h.i.+pping there, 'for ever.' The founders of that conventicle seem to have suffered for their faith; yet the glorious Revolution of 1688 had been achieved, and William of Orange-who had come from a land which had n.o.bly sheltered the earlier Nonconformists-was seated on the throne.

Bungay, till Sydney Smith made it famous, was not much known to the general public. It was on the borders of the county and out of the way.

The only coach that ran through it, I can remember, was a small one that ran from Norwich through Beccles and Bungay to Yarmouth; and, if I remember aright, on alternate days. There was, at any rate, no direct communication between it and London. Bungay is a well-built market town, skirted on the east and west by the navigable river Waveney, which divides it from Norfolk, and was at one time noted for the manufacture of knitted worsted stockings and Suffolk hempen cloth; but those trades are now obsolete. The great Roger BiG.o.d-one of the men who really did come over with the Conqueror-built its castle, the ruins of which yet remain, on a bold eminence on the river Waveney. 'The castle,' writes Dugdale, 'once the residence and stronghold of the BiG.o.ds, and by one of them conceived to be impregnable, has become the habitation of helpless poverty, many miserable hovels having been reared against its walls for the accommodation of the lowest cla.s.s.' The form of the castle appears to have been octangular. The ruins of two round fortal towers and fortresses of the west and south-west angles are still standing, as also three sides of the great tower or keep, the walls of which are from 7 to 11 feet thick and from 15 to 17 feet high. In the midst of the ruins, on what is called the Terrace, is a mineral spring, now disused, and near it is a vault, or dungeon, of considerable depth. Detached portions of the wall and their foundations are spread in all directions in the castle grounds, a ridge of which, about 40 yards long, forms the southern boundary of a bowling-green which commands delightful prospects. The mounds of earth raised for the defence of the castle still retain much of their original character, though considerably reduced in height. One of them, facing the south, was partly removed in 1840, with the intention of forming a cattle market. As a boy I often heard of the proud boast of Hugh BiG.o.d, second Earl, one of King Stephen's most formidable opponents, as recorded by Camden:

'Were I in my castle of Bungay, Upon the river Waveney, I would not care for the King of c.o.c.keney.'

In ancient times the Waveney was a much broader stream than it is now, and Bungay was called _Le Bon Eye_, or the good island, then being nearly surrounded by water. Hence the name, in the vulgar dialect, of Bungay.

To 'go to Bungay to get a new bottom' was a common saying in Suffolk.

In 1777 we find Hannah More writing to Garrick from Bungay, which she describes as 'a much better town than I expected, very clean and pleasant.' 'You are the favourite bard of Bungay'-at that time the tragedians of the city of Norwich were staying there-'and,' writes Hannah, who at that time had not become serious and renounced the gaieties of the great world, 'the dramatic furore rages terribly among the people, the more so, I presume, from being allowed to vent itself so seldom. Everybody goes to the play every night,-that is, every other night, which is as often as they perform. Visiting, drinking, and even card-playing, is for this happy month suspended; nay, I question if, like Lent, it does not stop the celebration of weddings, for I do not believe there is a damsel in the town who would spare the time to be married during this rarely-occurring scene of festivity. It must be confessed, however, the good folks have no bad taste.' It must be recollected that Hannah More in reality belongs to East Anglia. She was the daughter of Jacob More, who was descended from a respectable family at Harleston. He was a High Churchman, but all his family were Nonconformists. His mother used to tell young people that they would have known how to value Gospel privileges had they lived like her, when at midnight pious wors.h.i.+ppers went with stealthy steps through the snow to hear the words of inspiration delivered by a holy man at her father's house; while her father, with a drawn sword, guarded the entrance from violent or profane intrusion, adding that they boarded the minister and kept his horse for 10 a year. An unfortunate lawsuit deprived the Mores of their property, and thus it was that the celebrated Hannah was born at Gloucesters.h.i.+re, and not in Suffolk or Norfolk. The family mansion was at Wenhaston, not very far from Wrentham.

In my young days Bungay owed all its fame and most of its wealth to the far-famed John Childs, who was one of our first Church Rate martyrs, to whom is due mainly the destruction of the Bible-printing monopoly, and to whom the late Edward Miall was much indebted for establis.h.i.+ng the _Nonconformist_ newspaper. For many years it was the habit of Mr. Childs to celebrate that event by a dinner, at which the wine was good and the talk was better. Old John Childs, of Bungay, had a cellar of port which a dean might have envied; and many was the bottle that I cracked with him as a young man, after a walk from Wrentham to Bungay, a distance of fourteen miles, to talk with him on things in general, and politics in particular. He was emphatically a self-made man-a man who would have made his way anywhere, and a man who had a large acquaintance with the reformers of his day in all parts of the country. On one occasion the great Dan O'Connell came to pay him a visit, much to the delight of the Suffolk Radicals, and to the horror of the Tories. The first great dinner at which I had the honour of being present, and to which I was taken by my father, who was a great friend of Mr. Childs, was on the occasion of the presentation to the latter of a testimonial by a deputation of distinguished Dissenters from Ipswich in connection with his incarceration in the county gaol at Ipswich, for having refused to pay rates for the support of a Church in which he did not believe, and for the performance of a service in which he took no part. At that time 'the dear old Church of England,' while it was compelled to tolerate Dissent, insisted on Dissent being taxed to the uttermost farthing; and that it does not do so now, and that it is more popular in consequence, is due to the firm stand taken by such men as John Childs of Bungay. He was a great phrenologist. In his garden he had a summer-house, which he facetiously termed his scullery, where he had some three hundred plaster casts, many of which he had taken himself of public individuals and friends and acquaintances. My father was honoured in this way, as also my eldest sister. Sir Henry Thompson and I escaped that honour, but I have not forgotten his dark, piercing glance at our heads, when, as boys, we first came into his presence, and how I trusted that the verdict was satisfactory. Of course the Childses went to Meeting, but when I knew Bungay Mr. Shufflebottom had been gathered to his fathers, and the Rev.

John Blaikie, a Scotchman, and therefore always a welcome guest at Wrentham, reigned in his stead. Mr. Childs had a large and promising family, few of whom now remain. His daughter was an exceptionally gifted and glorious creature, as in that early day it seemed to me. She also died early, leaving but one son, Mr. Crisp, a partner in the well-known legal firm of Messrs. Ashurst, Morris, and Crisp. It was in the little box by the window of the London Coffee House-now, alas! no more-where Mr.

Childs, on the occasion of his frequent visits to London, always gathered around him his friends, that I first made the acquaintance of Mr.

Ashurst, the head of the firm-a self-made man, like Mr. Childs, of wonderful acuteness and great public spirit. In religion Mr. Ashurst was far more advanced than the Bungay printer. 'It is not a thing to reason about,' said the latter; and so to the last he remained orthodox, attended the Bungay Meeting-house, invited the divines of that order to his house, put in appearance at ordination services, and openings of chapels, and was to be seen at May Meetings when in town, where occasionally his criticisms were of a freer order than is usually met with at such places.

'The Bungay Press,' wrote a correspondent of the _Bookseller_, on the death of Mr. Charles Childs, who had succeeded his father in the business, 'has been long known for its careful and excellent work.

Established some short time before the commencement of the present century, its founder had, for twenty years, limited its productions to serial publications and books of a popular and useful character, and in the year 1823, soon after Mr. John Childs had taken control of the business, upwards of twenty wooden presses were working, at long hours, to supply the rapidly-increasing demand for such works as folio Bibles, universal histories, domestic medicine books, and other publications then issuing in one and two s.h.i.+lling numbers from the press.' Originally Mr.

Childs had been in a grocer's shop at Norwich. There he was met with by a Mr. Brightley, a printer and publisher, who, originally a schoolmaster at Beccles, had suggested to young Childs that he had better come and help him at Bungay than waste his time behind a counter. Fortunately for them both the young man acceded to the proposal, and travelled all over England driving tandem, and doing everywhere what we should now call a roaring trade. Then he married Mr. Brightley's daughter, and became a partner in the firm, which was known as that of John and R. Childs, and, latterly of Childs and Son. 'Uncle Robert,' as I used to hear him called, was little known out of the Bungay circle. He had a nice house, and lived comfortably, marrying, after a long courts.h.i.+p, the only one of the Stricklands who was not a writer. Agnes was often a visitor at Bungay, and not a little shocked at the atrocious after-dinner talk of the Bungay Radicals. 'Do you not think,' said she, in her somewhat stilted and tragic style of talk, one day, to a literary man who was seated next her, author of a French dictionary which the Childses were printing at the time-'Do you not think it was a cruel and wicked act to murder the sainted and unfortunate Charles I.?' 'Why, ma'am,' stuttered the author, while the dinner-party were silent, 'I'd have p-p-poisoned him.' The gifted auth.o.r.ess talked no more that day. Naturally, as a lad, seeing so much of Bungay, I wished to be a printer, but Mr. Childs said there was no use in being a printer without plenty of capital, and so that idea was renounced.

But to return to Mr. John Childs. About the year 1826, in a.s.sociation with the late Joseph Ogle Robinson, he projected and commenced the publication of a series of books known in the trade as the 'Imperial Edition of Standard Authors,' which for many years maintained an extensive sale, and certainly then met an admitted literary want, furnis.h.i.+ng the student and critical reader, in a cheap and handsome form, with dictionaries, histories, commentaries, biographies, and miscellaneous literature of acknowledged value and importance, such as Burke's works, Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' Howe's works, the writings of Lord Bacon-books which are still in the market, and which, if I may speak from a pretty wide acquaintance with students' libraries fifty years ago, were in great demand at that time. The disadvantage of such a series is that the books are too big to put in the pocket or to hold in the hand.

But I do not know that that is a great disadvantage to a real student who takes up a book to master its contents, and not merely to pa.s.s away his time. To study properly a man must be in his study. In that particular apartment he is bound to have a table, and if you place a book on a table to read, it matters little the size of the page, or the number of columns each page contains. Mr. Childs set the fas.h.i.+on of reprinting standard authors on a good-sized page, with a couple of columns on each page.

That fas.h.i.+on was followed by Mr. W. Smith-a Fleet Street publisher, than whom a better man never lived-and by Messrs. Chambers; but now it seems quite to have pa.s.sed away. On the failure of Mr. Robinson, Mr. Childs'

valuable reprints were placed in the hands of Westley and Davis, and subsequently with Ball, Arnold, and Co.; and latterly, I think, the late Mr. H. G. Bohn reissued them at intervals. As to his part publications, when Mr. Childs had given up pus.h.i.+ng them, he disposed of them all to Mr.

Virtue, of Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row, who then secured almost a monopoly of the part-number trade, and thus made a large fortune. 'I love books that come out in numbers,' says Lord Montford in 'Endymion,' 'as there is a little suspense, and you cannot deprive yourself of all interest by glancing at the last part of the last volume.' And so I suppose in the same way there will always be a part-number trade, though the reapers in the field are many, and the harvest is not what it was.

Active and fiery in body and soul, Mr. John Childs, at a somewhat later period, with the sympathy and advocacy of Mr. Joseph Hume and other members of Parliament, and aided to a large extent by Lord Brougham, succeeded in procuring the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the existing King's Printers' Patent for printing Bibles and Acts of Parliament, the period for the renewal of which was near at hand. The principle upon which the patent was originally granted appeared to be _correctness secured only by protection_-a fallacy which the voluminous evidence of the Committee most completely exposed. The late Alderman Besley, a typefounder, and a great friend of John Childs, as well as Robert Childs, practical printers, gave conclusive evidence on this head, and the result was that, although the patent was renewed for thirty years, instead of sixty as before, the Scriptures were sold to the public at a greatly reduced price, and the trade in Bibles, though nominally protected, has ever since been practically free.

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