East Anglia: Personal Recollections and Historical Associations

‘Nature’s sternest painter, but the best;’

and as Camden writes, ‘Hard by, when in the year 1555 all the corn throughout England was choakt in the ear by unseasonable weather, the inhabitants tell you that in the beginning of autumn there grew peas miraculously among the rocks, and that they relieved the dearth in those parts. But the more thinking people affirm that pulse cast upon the shore by shipwreck used to grow there now and then, and so quite exclude the miracle.’ At the present the crag-beds are the most interesting feature to the visitor, especially if he be of a geological turn. These are so rich in fossil shells that you may find some of the latter in almost every house in Ipswich. The Coralline Crag is the oldest bed; but this formation does not occur in an undisturbed state, except in Sudbourne Park and about Orford. A drive thither from Ipswich, through Woodbridge, conveys the traveller through some of the loveliest scenery in Suffolk, and the numerous exposures of Coralline Crag in Sudbourne Park, which is about two miles from Orford, will amply repay the traveller, on account of the number of fossils which he can there obtain, and the ease with which he can extract them. In this neighbourhood live the far-famed Garrett family, one of whom, as Mrs. Dr. Anderson, is well known in London society, as is also her sister, Mrs. Fawcett, the wife of the late popular M.P. for Hackney. Close by is Leiston Abbey, originally one of Black Canons, consisting of several subterranean chapels, various offices and a church, which appears to have been a handsome structure, faced with flint and freestone. The interior was plain and undecorated, yet massive. A large extent of the neighbouring fields was enclosed with walls, which have been demolished, as was to be expected, for the sake of the materials. We hear much of the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee. On her eastern coast England has her dead cities. Dunwich, of which I have already spoken, is one. Orford, now known solely by its lighthouse, is another; Blythburgh, in the church of which is the tomb of Anna, King of the East Angles, who was slain in 654, is a third. Like Tyre and Sidon, these places had their merchant princes, who lived delicately, and whose ships traded far and near. It is said incorrectly of Love, that it

‘At sight of human tiesSpreads its soft wings and in a moment flies.’

The remark is truer of commerce, which is a law to itself, and which defies Acts of Parliament and royal patronage. Hence it is the east coast of Suffolk is so rich in melancholy remains of ancient cities, now given over to decay. In my young days the chief town of this district was Woodbridge. Manufactories were then unknown. The steam-engine had not then been utilized for the everyday use of man, and farmers, peasants, coal and corn merchants, solely inhabited the district, and in Woodbridge especially the latter rose and flourished for a time.

How it was, I know not, but nevertheless such was the fact, that the Ipswich of my youthful days seemed to have little, if any, literary associations connected with it. The celebrated Mr. Fulcher published his ‘Ladies’ Pocket-book’ at Sudbury, which had a great reputation in its day, and for which very distinguished people used to write. It was, in fact, more of an annual than a pocket-book, and was patronized accordingly. Then there was James Bird, living at Yoxford, ‘the garden of Suffolk,’ as it was called. Woodbridge had a still higher reputation. James Bird kept a shop, and was supposed to be a Unitarian; but Bernard Barton was in a bank, and, besides, he was a Quaker, and Quakers all the world over are, or were, famous for their goodness and their wealth. The fame of the Quaker-poet conferred quite a literary reputation on the district, and the more so as no one at that time associated Quakerism with literary faculty in any way. Now and then, it is true, the Stricklands talked of a charming young Quaker, who indeed once or twice called at our house to see Susanna when she was staying there; but Allan Ransome – for it is to him I refer – did not pursue literature or poetry to any great extent, and instead preferred to develop the manufacture of agricultural implements – a manufacture which, carried on under the same name, is now one of the chief industries of the busy and thriving town of Ipswich, and employs quite a thousand men. Woodbridge then bore away the palm from the county capital, as the home of literature and poetry and romance. As a town, it is more prettily situated than are most East Anglian villages and towns. The principal thoroughfare, as you rode through it by one of the Yarmouth coaches, that connected it at that time with the Metropolis, was long and narrow. If you turned off to the right you came to the Market-place, where were the leading shops. On your left you reached the Quay and the river, where a few coasters were employed, chiefly in the coal and corn trade. In our time Woodbridge has done its duty to the State. Dr. Edwin Lankester the well-known coroner for Middlesex, came from Melton, close by, the High Street of which gradually terminates in the Woodbridge thoroughfare; and the lately deceased Lord Hatherley, one of England’s most celebrated lawyers, was educated in that district, and took his wife from the same happy land. The body of the late Lord Hatherley, the great Whig Lord Chancellor, we were told the other day, was interred in the family vault of Great Bearings, Suffolk. His mother was a Woodbridge lady, a Miss Page. Lord Hatherley’s father was the far-famed Liberal Alderman, Sir Matthew Wood, for many years M.P. for the City of London, and Queen Caroline’s trusted friend and counsellor. Lord Hatherley married, in 1830, Charlotte, the only daughter of the late Major Edward Moore, of Great Bealings, Suffolk, but was left a widower in 1878. He devoted much time to religious work, so long as he had the strength to undertake it. He was the author of a work entitled ‘The Continuity of Scripture, as declared by the Testimony of Our Lord and the Evangelists and the Apostles’, which has passed through three or four editions. He was created an Hon. D.C.L. of Oxford in 1851, was an Hon. Student of Christ Church, Oxford, a Governor of the Charterhouse, and a member of the Fishmongers’ Company, of which his father had at one time been Prime Warden. Major Moore himself was a great authority on Suffolk literature and antiquities, and published more than one book – now very scarce – on the interesting theme.

As to Dr. Lankester, all Woodbridge was scandalized when it was announced that he was articled to a medical man. ‘What, make a doctor of him!’ said the local gossips at the time. ‘They had much better make a butcher of him.’ And not a little were the good people astonished when he came to town, and was signally successful as a medical lecturer, and as an advocate of the sanitary principles which in our day have come to be recognised as essential to the welfare of the State. Dr. Lankester was in great request as a writer on medical subjects in a popular manner, and did undoubtedly much good in his day. A good many genteel people lived in the neighbourhood of Woodbridge, and it had a society to which it can lay no claim at the present time. Edward Fitzgerald, the friend of Thackeray and Carlyle, himself an author of no mean repute, lived close by.

That genteel people should have pitched their tents in or around Woodbridge is not much to be wondered at, as the neighbourhood was certainly attractive and convenient at the same time. The scenery around is as interesting as any that could be found, at any rate, in that part of England. The drive from Tuddenham to Woodbridge, says Mr. Taylor, in his ‘Ipswich Handbook,’ is perhaps unequalled in Suffolk. On the road you pass through the villages of Little and Great Bealings, and if you are on the look-out for spots which an artist would love to study, you may make a very short detour to Playford. The churches, both of Little and of Great Bealings, are very ancient, and well deserve a visit; but the Woodbridge Road itself passes through some very pretty scenery. Rushmere Heath, in the early summer time, when the gorse is in bloom, is one mass of yellow, in the cleared spaces of which may usually be seen a gipsy encampment. The gibbet once stood on this heath, and in former times it seems to have been the place where executions usually took place. It was here that in 1783 a woman, named Bedingfield, was burnt for murdering her husband. In the early part of this century, when there were many alarms as to a French invasion, and it was the firm belief of the old ladies that one fine morning Bony would land upon our shores, and carry them all away captive, many were the reviews of soldiers held there by the Duke of Cambridge – whose house has been pointed out to me at Woodbridge – and the Duke of Kent. At that time it was the fashion to exercise the volunteers on a Sunday, a practice which would not be sanctioned in our more religious age. It is a beautiful ride through Kesgrave. Dense plantations abound on both sides, and in May the chorus of nightingales is described as something wonderful. In the word ‘Kesgrave’ we have an allusion to the barrows or tumuli to be seen on Kesgrave Heath. There are several of these erections remaining to this day, and perhaps tradition is warranted in speaking of the spot as the site whereon the Danes and Saxons met in deadly fight. It is certain that the former frequently came up the Deben and the Orwell. At Martlesham you see a creek, richly wooded on both sides, which flows up from the River Deben. It is a striking object at high water, but by no means so striking as the sign of the village public-house – the head of a huge wooden lion painted with the brightest of reds. It was originally the figure-head of a Dutch man-of-war, one of the fleet defeated at the famous battle of Sole Bay. Be that as it may, no sign is better known than that of Martlesham Red Lion. ‘As red as Martlesham Lion’ is still a common figure of speech throughout East Suffolk, and I am glad to see that in the beautiful East Anglian etchings of Mr. Edwards, a Suffolk lawyer, who turned artist, Martlesham Red Lion has justice done to it at last.

Woodbridge, which the guide-book in 1844 described as a thriving town and port – I question whether it is thriving now – is situated on the western bank of the Deben, about nine miles above the mouth of the river, and about eight miles to the north of Ipswich. In Domesday Book the place is called Udebridge, of which its present name is no doubt a corruption. Mr. William White, whom I have already quoted, says: ‘Fifty years ago only one daily coach and a weekly waggon passed through the town to and from London; but more than twelve conveyances (coaches, omnibuses and carriers’ waggons) now pass daily between the hours of six in the morning and twelve at noon, and persons may travel from Woodbridge to London in a few hours for ten shillings, instead of paying three times that amount, and being thirteen hours on the road, as was formerly the case.’ The railway has now rendered it possible for people to travel at a quicker speed and at a cheaper rate. In London we have a Woodbridge Street, in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell Green, which points to a connection between the poorer part of the City and the picturesque Suffolk town on the banks of the Deben, and this gives me occasion to speak of Thomas Seckford, Esq., one of the masters of the Court of Requests, and Surveyor of the Court of Wards and Liveries in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was not less distinguished in the profession of the law than in the other polite accomplishments of the age in which he lived, and to his patronage of his servant, Christopher Saxton, the public were indebted for the first set of county maps, which were engraved by his encouragement and at his request. He represented Ipswich in three Parliaments, and died without issue in 1588, aged seventy-two. In Woodbridge his name is perpetuated by a handsome pile of buildings known as the Seckford Almshouses and Schools, to which the property in Clerkenwell is devoted. At the time of his decease that property produced about £112 a year; in 1768 it was said to be of the yearly value of £563. In 1826 an Act of Parliament was obtained to enable the governors of the almshouses to grant building and other leases, to take down many of the old buildings, to erect new premises, and repair and alter old ones, and to lay out new streets on the charity estate in Clerkenwell, and, in consequence, we find in 1830 the estate producing a rental of more than £3,000 a year. In 1844 the yearly rental had risen to £4,000. Since then it has much increased, and all this is devoted to the benefit of the Woodbridge poor.

In 1806 Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, came to live at Woodbridge. When fourteen years old he was apprenticed to Mr. Samuel Jessup, a shopkeeper in Halstead, Essex. ‘There I stood,’ he writes, ‘for eight years behind the counter of the corner shop at the top of Halstead Hill, kept to this day (November 9, 1828) by my old master and still worthy uncle, S. Jessup.’ In Woodbridge he married a niece of his old master, and went into partnership with her brother as corn and coal merchant. But she died in giving birth to the Lucy Barton whose name still, unless I am mistaken, adorns our literature. Bernard gave up business and retired into the bank of the Messrs. Alexander, where he continued for forty years, working within two days of his death. He had always been fond of books, and was one of the most active members of a Woodbridge Book Club, and had been in the habit of writing and sending to his friends occasional copies of verse. In 1812 he published his first volume, called ‘Metrical Effusions,’ and began a correspondence with Southey. A complimentary copy of verses which he had addressed to the author of the ‘Queen’s Wake,’ just then come into notice, brought him long and vehement letters from the Ettrick – letters full of thanks to Barton and praises of himself, and a tragedy ‘that will astonish the world ten times more than the “Queen’s Wake,”’ to which justice could not be done in Edinburgh, and which Bernard Barton was to try to get represented in London. In 1825 one of Bernard’s volumes of poems had run into a fifth edition, and of another George IV. had accepted the dedication. Thus prompted to exertion, he worked too hard; banking all day and writing poetry all night were too much for him. Lamb, however, cheered up the dyspeptic poet. ‘You are too much apprehensive about your complaint,’ he wrote. ‘I know many that are always writing of it and live on to a good old age. I knew a merry fellow – you partly know him, too – who, when his medical adviser told him he had drunk all that part, congratulated himself, now his liver was gone, that he should be the longest liver of the two.’ Southey wrote in a soberer vein. ‘My friend, go to bed early; and if you eat suppers, read afterwards, but never compose, that you may lie down with a quiet intellect. There is an intellectual as well as a religious peace of mind, and without the former be assured there can be no health for a poet.’

At times Bernard Barton seems to have been troubled about money matters. On one occasion he appears to have made up his mind to have done with banking and devote himself to literature. ‘Keep to your bank,’ wrote Lamb, ‘and the bank will keep you. Trust not to the public: you may hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything that worthy personage cares. I bless every star that Providence, not seeing good to make me independent, has seen it next good to settle me on the stable foundation of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the banking office. What! is there not from six to eleven p.m. six days in the week? and is there not all Sunday?’ Fortunately for B. B., friends came to his rescue. A few members of his Society, including some of the wealthier of his own family, raised among them £1,200 for his benefit. The scheme originated with Joseph John Gurney, of Norwich, and in 1824 when the money was collected, it was felt that £1,200 was a great deal for a poet to receive. Bernard Barton’s daughter married a Suffolk gentleman, well-to-do in the world, but the lady and gentleman had not congenial minds, and parted almost as soon as the honeymoon was over.

B. B. was a great correspondent. As a banker’s clerk, necessarily his journeys were few and far between. Once or twice he visited Charles Lamb. He once also met Southey at Thomas Clarkson’s, at Playford Hall, perhaps the most picturesque old house in East Anglia, where the latter resided, and of which I have a distinct recollection, as, on the terrace before the moat with which it was surrounded, I once saw the venerable philanthropist and his grandchildren. Now and then B. B. also visited the Rev. Mr. Mitford at Benhall, a village between Woodbridge and Saxmundham, who was then engaged in editing the Aldine edition of the English Poets. But B. B.’s correspondents were numerous. Poor, unfortunate L. E. L. sent him girlish letters. Mrs. Hemans was also a correspondent, as were the Howitts and Mrs. Opie and Dr. Drake, of Hadley, whose literary disquisitions are now, alas! forgotten; and poor Charles Lloyd, whose father wrote of his son’s many books ‘that it is easier to write them than to gain numerous readers.’ Dr. Bowring and Josiah Conder were also on writing terms with the Quaker poet. His excursions, his daughter tells us, rarely extended beyond a few miles round Woodbridge, to the vale of Dedham, Constable’s birthplace and painting-room; or to the neighbouring seacoast, including Aldborough, doubly dear to him from its association with the memory and poetry of Crabbe. Once upon a time he dined with Sir Robert Peel, when he had the pleasure of meeting Airy, the late Astronomer Royal, whom he had known as a lad at Playford. The dinner with Sir Robert Peel ended satisfactorily, as it resulted in the bestowal by the Queen on the poet of a pension of £100 a year. He was now beyond the fear of being tempted to commit forgery, and being hung in consequence – a possibility, which was the occasion of one of Lamb’s wittiest letters. The gentle Elia made merry over the chance of a Quaker poet being hung.

Amiable and liberal as was Bernard Barton, he could and did strike hard when occasion required. In East Anglia, when I was a lad, there was a great deal of intolerance – almost as much as exists in society circles at the present day – and that is saying a great deal. Churchmen, in their ignorance, were ready to put down Dissent in every way, and occasionally, by their absurdity, they roused the righteous ire of the Quaker poet. One of them, for instance, had said at a public meeting: ‘This was the opinion he had formed of Dissenters, that they were wolves in sheep’s clothing.’ Whereupon B. B. wrote:

‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing! bitter words and big;But who applies them? first the speaker scan;A suckling Tory! an apostate Whig!Indeed a very silly, weak young man!‘What such an one may either think or say,With sober people matters not one pin;In their opinion his own senseless brayProves him the ass wrapt in a lion’s skin!’

Better is the following address to a certain Dr. E.:

‘A bullying, brawling, champion of the Church,Vain as a parrot screaming on her perch;And like that parrot screaming out by rote,The same stale, flat, unprofitable note;Still interrupting all debateWith one eternal cry of “Church and State!”With all the High Tory’s ignorance increased,By all the arrogance that makes the priest;One who declares upon his solemn wordThe Voluntary system is absurd;He well may say so, for ’twere hard to tellWho would support him did not law compel.’

A prophet, it is said, is not honoured in his own country. Bernard Barton was happily the rare exception that proves the rule. I remember being at the launching of a vessel, bought and owned by a Woodbridge man, called the Bernard Barton; it was the first time I had ever seen a ship launched, and I was interested accordingly. The ultimate fate of the craft is unknown to history. On one occasion she was reported in the shipping list amongst the arrivals at some far-off port as the Barney Burton. Such is fame!

Of his local reputation Bernard was not a little proud. His little town was vain of him. It was something to go into the bank and get a cheque cashed by the poet. The other evening I went to the house of a Woodbridge man who has done well in London, and lives in one of the few grand old houses which yet adorn Stoke Newington Green – just a stone’s throw from where Samuel Rogers dwelt – and there in the drawing-room were Bernard Barton’s own chair and cabinet preserved with as much pious care as if he had been a Shakespeare or a Milton. Bernard Barton made no secret of his vocation, and when the time had come that he had delivered himself of a new poem, it was his habit to call on one or other of his friends and discuss the matter over a bottle of port – port befitting the occasion; no modern liquor of that name —

‘Not such as thatYou set before chance comers,But such whose father grape grew fatOn Lusitanian summers.’

And then there was a good deal of talk, as was to be expected, on things in general, for B. B. loved his joke and was full of anecdote – anecdote, perhaps, not always of the most refined character. But what could you expect at such happy times from a man brimful of human nature, who had to pose all life under the double weight of decorum imposed on him, in the first place as a Quaker, and in the second place as a banker’s clerk?

Bernard Barton, as I recollect him, was somewhat of a dear old man – short in person, red in face, with dark brown hair. He was, as I have said, a clerk in a bank, but his poetry had elevated him, somehow, to the rank of a provincial lion, and at certain houses, where the dinner was good and the wine was ditto, he ever was a welcome guest. I dined with him at the house of a friend in Woodbridge, and it seemed to me that he cared more for good feeding and a glass of wine and a pinch of snuff than the sacred Nine. Of course at that time I had not been educated up to the fitting state of mind with which the philosopher of our day proceeds to the performance of the mysteries of dinner. Dining had at that time not been elevated to the rank of a science, to the study of which the most acute intellects devote their highest energies; nor had flowers then been invoked to lend an additional grace to the dining-table. Besides, dinners such as Mr. Black gives at Brighton, scientific dinners, such as those feasts with which Sir Henry Thompson regales his friends, were unknown. Nevertheless, now and then we managed to dine comfortably off roast beef or lamb, a slice of boiled or roast fowl, a bit of plum-pudding or fruit tart, a crust of bread and cheese, with – tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askalon – sherry and Madeira at dinner, and a few glasses of fine old fruity port after. Some Shakespearian quotations – unknown to me then, for Shakespeare was little quoted in purely evangelical circles, either in Church or Dissent – a reference to Sir Walter Scott’s earlier German translations, formed about the sum and substance of the conversation which took place between the poet and my host; all the rest was principally social gossip and an exchange of pleasantries between the poet and his friend, whom he addressed familiarly as ‘mine ancient.’ It was a great treat to me, of course, to dine with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Once upon a time a Quaker minister had come to Woodbridge on a preaching tour, and all the Quakers, male and female, small and great, rich and poor, were ranged before him. When Bernard Barton was announced, the good old man said, ‘Barton – Barton – that’s a name I don’t recollect.’ The bearer of the name replied it would be strange if he did, seeing that they had never met before. Suddenly looking up, the minister exclaimed, ‘Art thou the versifying man?’ Unlike the venerable stranger, I had no need to ask the question, as in my mother’s album there was more than one letter from the genial B. B.

I can well recall the room in which I dined with the poet. My host had come into a handsome fortune by marrying a wealthy widow – one of the possibilities of a Dissenting minister’s situation – and he had retired from the ministry to cultivate literature and literary men. As I think of that room and that dinner, I am reminded of the wonderful contrast effected within the last age. At that time the dinner-table presented a far less picturesque appearance than it does now. We had always pudding before meat; the latter was solid, and in the shape of a joint. Nor was it handed round by servants, but carved by the host or his lady. Silver forks were unknown, and electro-plate had not then been invented. Vegetables, also, were deficient as regards quantity and quality compared with the supply at a respectable dinner nowadays. In manners the change is equally remarkable. It was said of a nobleman, a personal friend of George III., and a model gentleman of his day, that he had made the tour of Europe without ever touching the back of his travelling carriage. That includes an idea of self-denial utterly unknown to all the young people of to-day. The study now is how to make our houses more comfortable, and to furnish them most luxuriously. Then, perhaps, there was but one sofa in the house, and that was repellent rather than attractive. Easy-chairs were few and far between. Lounging of any kind was out of the question. In the drawing-room, the furniture was of the same uncomfortable description, and there were none of the modern appliances which exist to make ladies and gentlemen happy. Couches, antimacassars, photographs, were unknown. One picture invariably to be seen was a painting of a favourite steed, with the owner looking at it in a state of intense admiration; and a few family portraits might be ostentatiously displayed. As to pianos, there never was but one in the house; and a billiard-table would have been considered as the last refuge of human depravity. In sitting-rooms and bedrooms and passages there was a great deficiency of carpets and of oilcloth. But furniture was furniture then, and could stand a good deal of wear and tear; while as to the spare bed in the best room, with its enormous four posts and its gigantic funereal canopy and its heavy curtains, through which no breath of fresh air could penetrate, all I can say is that people slept in it and survived the operation – so wonderfully does nature adapt itself to circumstances the most adverse.