East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

As the home of Gainsborough Ipswich has enduring claims on the English nation and on lovers of art and artists everywhere. That must have been a Suffolk man who passed the following criticism on Gainsborough’s celebrated picture of ‘Girl and Pigs,’ of which Sir Joshua Reynolds became the purchaser at one hundred guineas, though the artist asked but sixty: ‘They be deadly like pigs; but who ever saw pigs feeding together, but one on ’em had a foot in the trough?’ Gainsborough had an enthusiastic attachment to music. It was the favourite amusement of his leisure hours, and his love for it induced him to give one or two concerts to his most intimate acquaintances whilst living in Ipswich. He was a member of a musical club, and painted some of the portraits of his brother members in his picture of a choir. Once upon a time, Gainsborough was examined as a witness on a trial respecting the originality of a picture. The barrister on the other side said: ‘I observe you lay great stress on a painter’s eye; what do you mean by that expression?’ ‘A painter’s eye,’ replied Gainsborough, ‘is to him what the lawyer’s eye is to you.’ As a boy at the Grammar School of his native town, it is to be feared he loved to play truant. One day he went out to his usual sketching haunts to enjoy the nature which he loved heartily, previously presenting to his uncle, who was master of the school, the usual slip of paper, ‘Give Tom a holiday,’ in which his father’s handwriting was so exactly imitated that not the slightest suspicion of the forgery ever entered the mind of the master. Alas! however, the crime was detected, and his terrified parent exclaimed in despair, ‘Tom will one day be hanged.’ When, however, he was informed how the truant schoolboy had employed his truant hours, and the boy’s sketches were laid before him, forgetful of the consequences of forgeries in a commercial society, he declared, with all the pride of a father, ‘Tom will be a genius,’ and he was right.

Worthy Mr. Pickwick seems to have known Ipswich about the same time as myself. ‘In the main street of Ipswich,’ wrote the biographer of that distinguished individual, ‘on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rapacious animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane carthorse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood in the same degree as a prize ox, a county paper chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig, for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse of Ipswich.’ This was the great hotel of the Ipswich of my youth. As regards hotels, Ipswich has not improved, but in every other way it has much advanced. One of the old inns has been turned into a fine public hall, admirably adapted for concerts and public meetings. The new Town Hall, Corn Exchange, and Post-office are a credit to the town. The same may be said of the new Museum and the Grammar School and the Working Men’s College and that health resort, the Arboretum; while by means of the new dock ships of fifteen hundred tons burden can load and unload. Nowadays everybody says Ipswich is a rising town, and what everyone says must be right. The Ipswich people, at any rate, have firmly got that idea into their heads. Its fathers and founders built the streets narrow, evidently little anticipating for Ipswich the future it has since achieved. The Ipswich of to-day is laid out on quite a different scale. It has a tram road service evidently much in excess of the present population, and as you wander in the suburbs you come to a sign-post bearing the name of a street in which not even the enterprise of the speculative builder has been able at present to plant a single dwelling. When Ipswich has climbed up its surrounding hills, and taken up all the building sites at present in the market, it will be a goodly and gallant town, almost fitted to invite the temporary residence of holiday-making Londoners who are fond of the water. At all times it is a pretty sail to Harwich and thence to Felixstowe, that quiet watering-place, a seaside residence that has still a pleasant flavour of rusticity about it, with a fine crisp sea-sand floor for a promenade.

When I was a boy Ipswich was resorted to by Londoners in the summer-time. As an illustration, I give the case of Mr. Ewen, one of the deacons of the Weigh House Chapel, when the Rev. John Clayton was the pastor. In his memories of the Clayton family, the Rev. Dr. Aveling writes of Mr. Ewen, that ‘he was so sensitively conscientious in the discharge of his official duties at the Weigh House, that he was never absent from town on the days when the Lord’s Supper was administered, and when he was expected to assist in the administration of the elements. His London residence was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but having a house and property in the town of Ipswich, he passed his summer months there. Yet so intent was he upon duly filling his place in the sanctuary of God, that he regularly travelled by post-chaise once in every month, and returned in the same manner, that he might be present, together with his pastor and the brethren, at the table of the Lord. The length and the expense of the journey (and travelling was not then what it is now) did not deter him from what he at least deemed to be a matter of Christian obligation.’ Dr. Aveling is quite right when he tells us travelling is not what it was. It took almost a day to go from Ipswich to London when I was a boy, and now the journey is done by means of the Great Eastern Railway in about an hour and a half. It seems marvellous to one who, like myself, remembers well the past, to leave Liverpool Street at 5.0 p.m. precisely, and to find one’s self landed safe and well in Ipswich soon after half-past six. The present generation can have no conception of travelling in England in the olden time.

There were some wonderful old Radicals in Ipswich, though it was, and is, the county town of the most landlord-ridden district in England. Some of them got the great Dan O’Connell to pay the town a visit, and some of them nobly stood by old John Childs when he became famous all the world over as the Church-rate martyr. The lawyers and the doctors were mostly Tories, but the tradesmen and the merchants were not a little leavened with the leaven of Dissent. Mr. Hammond was, however, a Liberal surgeon, and as such flourished. His Whig principles, writes Mr. Glyde, brought him many patients, and his skill and sound qualities retained them. Dr. Garrord, the well-known London practitioner, was an apprentice of Mr. Hammond’s; and this reminds me that among the Ipswich men who have risen is Mr. Sprigg, the Premier of Cape Colony when Sir Bartle Frere was at the head of affairs there. The father of Mr. Sprigg was the respected pastor of a Baptist chapel in the town. The only Ipswich minister whom I can remember was the Rev. Mr. Notcutt, who preached in the leading Independent chapel, now pulled down to make way for a much more attractive building. All I can recollect about him is, that once, when a lad, I fainted away when he was preaching. No sermon ever affected me so since; and that effect was due, it must be confessed, not to the preacher, who seemed to me rather aged and asthmatic, but to the heat of the place, in consequence of the crowd attracted to the meeting-house on some special occasion.

But to return to the doctors. Of one of them, who was famed for his love of bleeding his patients, not metaphorically, but in the old-fashioned way, with the lancet, it is recorded that on the occasion of his taking a holiday two of his patients died. Lamenting the fact to a friend, the following epigram was the result:

‘B- kills two patients while from home away —A clever fellow this same B-, I wot;If absent thus his patients he can slay,How he must kill them when he’s on the spot!’

Perhaps one of the noted physicians of my boyhood was Mr. Stebbing. ‘He was once,’ writes Mr. Glyde, ‘called in to see one of the Ipswich Dissenting ministers, who had taken life very easily, and had grown corpulent. After examining the patient and hearing his statement as to bodily state, he replied: “You’ve no particular ailment; mind and keep your eyes longer open, and your mouth longer shut, and you will do very well in a short time.”’ On another occasion a raw and very poor-looking young fellow called upon him for advice. The doctor told him to go home and eat more pudding, adding, ‘That’s all you want; physic is a very good thing for one to live by, but a precious bad thing for you to take.’ One of the Ipswich characters of my boyhood, of whom Mr. Glyde has preserved an anecdote, was old Tuxford, the veterinary surgeon. He used to declare that he never took more than one meal a day – a breakfast; but when asked of what that consisted, he said, ‘A pound of beefsteak, seven eggs, three cups of tea, and a quartern of rum.’ It may also be mentioned that before Mrs. Garrett Anderson was born, Ipswich had a lady physician in the person of Miss Stebbing, daughter of the doctor to whom I have already referred. ‘She was,’ says one who knew her well, ‘a woman of general education, with more than ordinary tact and discernment, combined with the true womanly power of analyzing and observing. She had good physical powers, and, like her worthy father, was somewhat pungent in her remarks and eccentric in her habits. She entered the ranks as a medical practitioner during her father’s life. The benefit of his advice so aided her perceptive powers as to make her quite an expert in various ways, and she continued to practise long after his decease, occasionally attending males as well as females. Her knowledge of midwifery caused a large number of ladies to engage her services.

Of the Radicals of Ipswich, the only one with whom I came into contact was Mr. John King, the proprietor and editor of what was then, at any rate, a far-famed journal – the Suffolk Chronicle. Astronomy was his hobby, and he had ideas on the subject which, unfortunately, I failed to catch. He had built himself an observatory, if I remember aright, at his residence on Rose Hill, where he would sweep the heavens nightly, to see what could be seen. He was a Radical of the old type, a tall, dark, bilious-looking man, a little hard and dry, perhaps, who seemed to think that it was no use to throw pearls before swine, and to serve up for the chaw-bacons a too rich intellectual treat, and his policy was a successful one. Priest-ridden as Suffolk was, the Suffolk Chronicle was the leading paper of the county, and had a large circulation, and, let me add, did good service in its day. Now I find Ipswich rejoices in a well-conducted daily journal, the East Anglian Times, which I hear, and am glad to hear, is a fine property, and I see all the leading towns in Suffolk have a paper to themselves, even if they can’t get up a decent paragraph of local news – and some of them I know, from my experiences of Suffolk life, are quite unequal to that – once a week. The plan is to have some sheets already printed in London, at some great establishment, whence perhaps a hundred little towns are supplied, and then the local news and advertisements are added on, and Little Pedlington has its Observer, and Eatanswill its Gazette. When I was a boy, such a thing was out of the question, as to each paper a fourpenny-halfpenny stamp was attached. As the stamps had to be paid for in advance, and as, besides, there was an eighteen-penny duty on every advertisement, it was not quite such an easy matter to run a paper then as it has since become. I fancy the old-established journals suffered much by the change, which completely revolutionized the newspaper trade; at any rate, so far as the country was concerned. In this connection, let me add that it was to an Ipswich journalist we owe the establishment of penny readings on anything like a large and successful scale. They were originated by Mr. Sully, at that time the proprietor and editor of the Ipswich Express, a paper intended to steer between the ferocious Toryism of the Ipswich Journal, and the equally ferocious Radicalism of the Suffolk Chronicle. As was to be expected, the attempt did not succeed. As in love and in war, so in politics and theology, moderation is a thing hateful to gods and men. The electioneering annals of Ipswich can testify to that fact. I have a dim recollection of an election petition which ended in Sir Fitzroy Kelly’s admitting that he had stated what was not true, but he did it as a lawyer, not as a gentleman, and in sending one of the finest old gentlemen I ever knew to gaol, because he would not tell what he knew of the matter. There was not much half-and-half work in the Ipswich politics of my young days.

When people fight fiercely in politics, it is natural to expect an equal earnestness in religious matters. It was so emphatically with respect to the Ipswich of the past. ‘The Reformed religion, after those fiery days of persecution,’ writes John Quick, ‘was now revived, and flourished again in the country, under the auspicious name of our English Deborah, Queen Elizabeth; and Ipswich, the capital town of Suffolk, was not more famous for its spacious sheds, large and beautiful buildings, rich and great trade, and honourable merchants, both at home and abroad, than it was for its learned and godly ministers and its religious intolerants.’ Of the godly ministers, one of the most famous was Samuel Ward, who was buried in St. Mary-le-Tower Church. In 1666 he preached a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross. But he meddled with politics. For instance, in 1621 he published a caricature picture, entitled ‘Spayne and Rome Defeated.’ It is thus described: The Pope and his Council are represented in the centre of the piece, and beneath, on one side the Armada, and on the other the Gunpowder Treason. Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, complained of it as insulting to his master. Ward was placed in custody. Being Puritanically inclined, he was, in addition, prosecuted in the Consistory Court of Norwich by Bishop Harsnet for Nonconformity. Ten years later, when 600 persons were contemplating a removal from Ipswich to New England – as a place where they could worship God without fear of priest or king – the blame was cast by Laud on Ward. Rushworth informs us that the charges laid against him were that he preached against the common bowing at the name of Jesus and against the King’s ‘Book of Sports,’ and further said that the Church of England was ready to ring changes in England, and that the Gospel stood on tiptoe as ready to be gone; and for this he was removed from his lectureship and sent to gaol. John Ward, his brother, Rector of St. Clement’s, was a member of the Assembly of Divines, and was called to preach two sermons before the House of Commons, for which he received the thanks of the House. At that time we find a reference to Ipswich as a place which ‘the Lord hath long made famous and happy as a valley of Gospel vision.’ Such places, alas! seem to have been commoner formerly than they are now.

One of the Congregational churches of Ipswich, at any rate, has very interesting historical associations. ‘Salem Chapel,’ writes the Rev. John Browne, in his ‘History of Congregationalism in Suffolk and Norfolk,’ ‘stands in St. George’s Lane, opposite the place where St. George’s Chapel formerly stood, where Bilney was apprehended when preaching in favour of the Reformation, and where he so enraged the monks that they twice plucked him out of the pulpit.’ The last time I was at Ipswich I saw bricklayers at work at the old Presbyterian church in St. Nicholas Street, which it would be a pity to see modernized, being such a fine illustration of the old-fashioned Dissenting Meeting-house, before it became the fashion to have a taste and to build Gothic chapels in which it is difficult to see or hear, and the only advantage of which is that they are an exact copy of the steeple-houses against which at one time Nonconformist England waged remorseless war. One of the pastors of this congregation removed to Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds, where he succeeded Dr. Priestley; another was the author of a ‘History and Description of Derbyshire’; while one of the supplies was the Rev. Robert Alderson, afterwards of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, who ultimately became a lawyer and Recorder of Norwich. Perhaps one of the most singular scenes connected with Dissenting chapels in Ipswich was that which took place in the old chapel in Tackard, now Tacket, Street. In 1766 the minister there was the Rev. Mr. Edwards, who, it appears, was sent for to the gaol to see two men who had been found guilty of house-breaking, and who, according to the law as it then stood, were to be hung. Mr. Edwards did so, and stayed with them two hours. As the result of this visit they were brought to a penitent state of mind. They had heard that Mr. Edwards had prepared a sermon for them and desired them to attend. This was a mistake, but notwithstanding they obtained permission to go to the chapel, where Mr. Edwards was conducting a church meeting. A report of the purpose got abroad, and many persons came to the meeting, upon which it was thought most proper that the church business should be laid aside, and that Mr. Edwards should go into the pulpit. This he did, and after singing and prayer the prisoners came in with their shackles and fetters on. Mr. Edwards, in describing the scene, says:

‘Many were moved at the sight. As for myself, I was obliged for some time to stop to give vent to tears. When I recovered I gave out part of a hymn suitable to the occasion, then prayed. The subject of discourse was, “This is a faithful saying,” and the poor prisoners shed abundance of tears while I was explaining the several parts of the text, and especially when I turned and addressed myself immediately to them. The house was thronged, and I suppose not a dry eye in the whole place – nothing but weeping and sorrow; and the floods of tears which gushed from the eyes of the two prisoners were very melting.’

The good man continues: ‘When we had concluded I went and spoke some encouraging words by way of supporting them under their sorrow. They then desired I should see them in the evening, which I did, and called upon Mr. Blindle on the way; the old gentleman went along with me to the prison, and was one who prayed with them with much fervour and enlargement of heart. We spent nearly two hours with them, and a crowd of people were present.’ On another occasion we find an American Indian preaching in the pulpit – a novelty in 1767. He came over with a Dr. Whitaker, of Norwich, in America, to collect money for the education and conversion of Indians, and at Tackard Street the people raised the very respectable sum of £80 for the purpose. In 1561 Queen Elizabeth paid Ipswich a visit. At that time the place was a little too Protestant for her. Strype writes: ‘Here Her Majesty took a great dislike to the impudent behaviour of most of the ministers and readers, there being many weak ones among them, and little or no order observed in the public service, and few or none wearing the surplice, and the Bishop of Norwich was thought remiss, and that he winked at schismatics. But more particularly she was offended with the clergy’s marriage, and that in cathedrals and colleges there were so many wives and children and widows seen, which, she said, was contrary to the intent of the founders, and so much tending to the interruption of the studies of those who were placed there. Therefore she issued an order to all dignitaries, dated August 9, at Ipswich, to forbid all women to the lodgings of cathedrals or colleges, and that upon pain of losing their ecclesiastical promotion.’ From this it is clear that when Elizabeth was Queen there was little chance of the Women’s Rights Question finding a favourable hearing. The Queen was succeeded by monarchs after her own heart. In 1636 Prynne published his ‘Newes from Ipswich,’ ‘discovering certain late detestable practices of some domineering Lordly Prelates to undermine the established doctrine and discipline of our Church, extirpate all orthodox sincere preachers and preaching of God’s Word, usher in popery, idolatry and superstition.’ For this publication Prynne was sentenced to be fined £5,000 to the King, to lose the remainder of his ears, to be branded on both cheeks, and to be perpetually imprisoned in Carnarvon Castle. At that time the Ipswich people were far too Liberal for the powers existing. Ipswich news nowadays is little calculated to displease anyone, and governments and kings are less prone to take offence at the exercise of free thought and free speech.

Ipswich people make their way. Miss Reeve – who wrote the ‘Old English Baron,’ a popular tale years ago – was the daughter of the Rev. William Reeve of St. Nicholas Church. Another Ipswich lady, Mrs. Keeley, who lives on in her grand old age, was certainly one of the most popular performers of her day.

Two hundred years ago, no city man was better known than Thomas Firmin, who was born at Ipswich, described in his biography as ‘a very large and populous town in the county of Suffolk,’ in 1632. He was of Puritan parentage, and bound apprentice in the city of London, and then began business as a linen-draper on the modest capital of £100. In a little while he married and was enabled to dispense a generous hospitality, seeking all opportunities of becoming acquainted with persons of worth, whether foreigners or his fellow-countrymen. Amongst his special friends were Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and Archbishop Tillotson, at that time the afternoon lecturer at St. Lawrence’s. During the time of the plague he managed to secure work for the London poor, and after the fire he erected a warehouse on the banks of the Thames, where coal and corn were sold at cost price. In 1676 he built a great factory in Little Britain, for the employment of the needy and industrious in the linen manufacture; he also relieved poor debtors in prison. The great work of his later years was in connection with the Blue Coat School. He was also one of the Governors of St. Thomas’s Hospital, which he did much to rescue from the wretched condition in which he found it. When the French refugees, in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, were driven over to this country, Firmin exerted himself powerfully on their behalf, and sent some of them to Ipswich to engage in manufacturing there. He also had a good deal to do with Ireland, when, as now, the country was torn by contending factions. At a large expense he also educated many boys and set them up in trade. He was also one of the first of the avowed and ardent friends and advocates of a free thought, of which there were few supporters in England at that day – even among the countrymen of Milton and John Locke. Unitarians were rare in the days when Firmin proclaimed himself one. Altogether he was one of the best men of his age, and well deserved to be buried in Christchurch, Newgate, among the Bluecoat School boys, to whom he had ever been such a friend, and to have the memorial pillar erected in his honour by Lady Clayton in Marden Park, Surrey. It is to be hoped that the memorial remains, though, alas! the noble mansion at one time inhabited by Wilberforce, and where the great philanthropist’s celebrated son, the Bishop of Oxford was born, and where I have spent more than one pleasant day when Sir John Puleston lived there, has been since burnt down.

CHAPTER IX.

AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN

Woodbridge and the country round – Bernard Barton – Dr. Lankester – An old Noncon.

The traveller as he leaves the English coast for Antwerp or Rotterdam or the northern ports of Germany, may remember that the last glimpse of his native land is the light from Orford Ness, which is a guiding star to the mariner as he ploughs his weary way along the deep. Of that part of Suffolk little is known to the community at large. When I was a boy it was looked upon as an ultima Thule, where the people were in a primitive state of civilization; where shops and towns and newspapers and good roads were unknown; where traditions of smuggling yet remained. Few ever went into that region, and those who did, when they returned, did not bring back with them encouraging reports. Barren sandy moors, along which the bitter east wind perpetually blew, fatal alike to vegetation and human life, were the chief characteristics of a district the natives of which were not rich, at any rate as regards this world’s goods. Orford, like Dunwich, was once a place of some importance. ‘A large and populous town with a castle of reddish stone,’ writes Camden, but in his time a victim of the sea’s ingratitude; ‘which withdraws itself little by little, and begins to envy it the advantages of a harbour.’ In the time of Henry I., writes Ralph de Coggeshall, when Bartholomew de Glanville was Governor of its castle, some fishermen there caught a wild man in their nets. ‘All the parts of his body resembled those of a man. He had hair on his head, a long-peaked beard, and about the breast was exceeding hairy and rough. But at length he made his escape into the sea, and was never seen more,’ which was a pity, as undoubtedly he was the ‘missing link.’ Besides, as Camden remarks, the fact was a confirmation of what the common people of his time remarked. ‘Whatever is produced in any part of nature is in the sea,’ and shows ‘that not all is fabulous what Pliny has written about the Triton on the coasts of Portugal, and the sea man in the Straits of Gibraltar.’ Nor is that the only wonder connected with the district. Close by is Aldborough, where the poet Crabbe learned to become, as Byron calls him,