{126}
Abolition of Slavery.—Warm Times for Temperance Advocates.—Drinking Habits.—Inoculation and Vaccination.—How St. John’s Church was Built.—A Bit of an Authoress.—Appointment of the Roman Catholic Bishops.–A Jesuit Spy.—Lord John.—Never get in a Passion!—A Surprise. 100 Miles a Day.—An Amusing Incident.—“Obstinate as a Brown”!—A Skating Remembrance.—A Ministerial Incident.
Meetings for the abolition of slavery were held in the various towns of this county, the deputation making my father’s house their headquarters. Mr. John Scoble was the secretary, and on one occasion Mr. Geo. Thompson came as a deputation. The only time I saw Mr. Matthew Tebbutt (Mr. Chas. Tebbutt’s father) was when my father sent me to Bluntisham to take a note to him about an anti-slavery meeting to be held in the neighbourhood. The St. Ives people were great supporters of the movement, and it was said that any lecturer speaking an any subject at a meeting could always elicit cheers from his audience if he referred to the abolition of slavery.
{127} On one occasion Mr. Scoble was accompanied by a Mr. and Mrs. Stanton from America, they being in England to spend their honeymoon, and he acting as a deputation from the Society. When the party had all gone to a meeting at St. Ives one night, Mrs. Stanton and I were left at home. On the servant coming into the room with the tea things, and giving Mrs. Stanton the teapot and tea caddy, she said, “You must make tea; I do not know how to do it.” (She was one of the Woman’s Rights women!) Mr. Scoble did not like her, and I remember at family worship one night he prayed for her (or at her). They had been having a sharp controversial discussion just before prayer; the ladies present, Mrs. Joseph Goodman being one, thought Mr. Scoble was taking an unfair advantage over her to thus resume the discussion in his prayer. Mr. Scoble thought her religiously unorthodox.
Slavery was ultimately abolished, this country paying the planters 20 million pounds compensation.
The first lecturer on the Temperance Question who came into this neighbourhood was Jabez Inwards. He spoke in the Huntingdon Theatre, where St. John’s Church now stands, and so unpopular was the subject then that the audience peppered him with peas, shot from pea-shooters, and in various other ways interrupted him. After Mr. Inwards came Mr. Mason, who held good meetings in the neighbourhood, and it was in connection with his meetings that Mr. {128} Longland Ekins and his family became abstainers.
Mr. Harcourt used to get up meetings at Houghton feast. Sometimes more than one thousand people would sit down to tea, my wife taking a very active part in providing the tea with Mr. Harcourt. In fact the two managed the whole affair. The lecturers would be Thos. Whittaker, Paxton Hoad, and later, John B. Gough, from America.
A test as to a man being able to do heavy work without stimulants may now be recorded. A workman in Houghton who had been in the habit of drinking to excess became an abstainer, and as the hay and mowing time was just coming on, my father said to him, “The three other men with whom you will mow will say either that you are not doing your share of the work—(He replied “They shall not have cause to say that”)—or at the end of the season that the work without beer is killing you. I will give you a beefsteak every day, and be sure and be weighed both before you begin the mowing and when you leave off at the end of the season, both the hay and corn harvest.” The weighing machine showed that he had lost nothing in weight. His pals, however, not being able to say he had shirked the work, did say how bad he looked and that he was wasting away. He then stated, “I have not lost an ounce, but you know you have lost many pounds.” The foregoing was the result of “Beer v. Beef.” Not only was {129} this a good test, but the whole experiment was characteristic of my father. He afterwards would give his men, when they had an extra hard day’s work to do, beef-steak pies, going to them and saying, “You look very bad; you want one of my teetotal pills,” as he called the pies.
The temperance question, in addition to the above-mentioned educated speakers, produced working-men advocates who had been victims of the drink. There were two especially from Wisbech, great brawny navvies, who said as drinkers they had been guilty of every conceivable crime but murder, and nearly that. These men speaking to their fellows, and with considerable power, had a great effect, especially on the question of being able to do their work without beer, because it must be remembered that in the early days of teetotalism it was quite an open question as to whether men could do hard work without beer.
The anti-abstainers put out a cartoon showing what had befallen a teetotaler. On being dissected after death, his stomach was found to contain a large number of snow balls, which were said to have been the cause of his death.
Lecturing on temperance in the early days was sometimes very hazardous. Mr. Thos. Whittaker, on one occasion speaking at Bishop Stortford (the seat of the manufacture of malt), was followed by an infuriated rabble to his host’s house, into which he just managed to escape, they demanding that he {130} should be given up and declaring they would break into the house. If they had got at him, his life would have been sacrificed. This now (in 1896) seems almost incredible.
The drinking habits of the upper and middle classes were very bad. It was no uncommon thing at a dinner party for the guests to drink until they fell under the table, and it is recorded on one occasion (it being summer) a servant carried the party out and laid them on the lawn to get sober. A party at the market table at the Unicorn Inn, St. Ives, after dinner moved the table to one end of the room, chalked a ring on the floor, and had a game at marbles. On another occasion one athletic farmer jumped over the dinner table. These were respectable farmers of middle age. This was about the year 1840.
Once when I was there, say about 1845, there was a well-known farmer there named Jack Martin, who used to have strange sayings. Referring to someone who looked serious, he said he had “a face as long as his grandmother’s tombstone.” This Jack Martin, who had a pair of very large, black whiskers, was one Saturday at Huntingdon Market, and, having had too much wine, his companions persuaded him to sell them one of his whiskers for 2s. 6d. So they took him to the barber’s to have it shaved off. Of course the next day, when he was sober, and looked at himself in the glass and saw what an object he was, he had to shave its companion off.
{131} Such was the state of things at that time in the early Forties. Everyone must see there is a great improvement now compared with then.
Once at the dinner table at the Unicorn, a commercial gentleman, a stranger to the company present, addressing himself to my father, said, “I shall be happy to drink a glass of wine with you.” My father replied, “I do not take wine.” Then he tried me, receiving the same answer, then Mr. Tebbutt, and then some one else. At last the Chairman relieved him of the difficulty by saying, “I shall be happy to drink with you.” The commercial thought he had fallen in strange company.
Before vaccination became general, inoculation was much practised as a mitigation of the severity of small-pox. I was taken when about eight years of age by the late Dr. Ward, of Huntingdon, to a cottage in Houghton, where a brother and sister of about my own age were lying in bed with the small-pox, and was inoculated from them in the arm. In due course my arm rose; in fact I had a very mild attack of the disease, without being very ill, although as a precaution I was kept to my bedroom. I should say, before this inoculation my father made sure that the previous vaccination had been effectually done. Much objection is now taken by many persons to vaccination, because it may give a patient some other cutaneous disease. My feeling on the matter is that with proper care the risk is very {132} small. In my own case I have been re-vaccinated many times without coming to any harm. People of the present day do not realise what a terrible plague small-pox was prior to vaccination. I remember being at St. Ives one Sunday when a boy, the housekeeper at the Unicorn telling us that there were about ten persons going to be buried that night, and this, remember, in a town of only about four thousand inhabitants. In the streets of London, I suppose, about one person in every four you met would be pitted.
While we were being taught at home, my brother G. W. Brown fell ill; the doctor said it was intermittent fever. He lay on the sofa a day or two in the living room in constant contact with all of us. One day the housemaid said to my mother, “Master George has the small-pox.” My mother replied, “What makes you think so? He is not pitted.” “I smelt the odour of the disease, and, therefore, examined him carefully and found one small-pox mark on his body.” The doctor had to admit it was small-pox. None of us boys were told what it was; we went constantly into his bedroom, and, after a time, C. P. Tebbutt went home because he was a little unwell, and the doctor who attended him treated him for a mild attack of scarlatina. No one else in the house at my father’s took the disease, and, as stated above, G. W. Brown and C. P. Tebbutt had it so mildly that the nature of the complaint was scarcely to be recog-{133}nised. Of course, all in the house at the time, domestics and boys, had been vaccinated in their childhood.
It is recorded further back that Lady Olivia Sparrow ejected my father from the farm he occupied under her. At about the same time, she not liking the preaching of the Rector at All Saints’ Church, Huntingdon, purchased the theatre and built what is now called St. John’s Church. She put a Dissenting Minister as the pastor, because no clergyman would occupy it, as she refused to have it consecrated, so the Bishop could not, or would not, perform the ceremony unless she made it over to the Church, and she refusing to part with the ownership, it remained, I think, for her life, practically a Nonconforming place of worship. The reason she was afraid to give up the ownership was she was afraid that a High Church minister might get appointed.
During the time it was in her possession as described, she would not allow a Church to be formed or the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to be administered. The consequence was the flock with the minister retired, and held services in the public Institution, my father either paying part or the whole of the rent of the room. The congregation ultimately dispersed, and became absorbed as members of the Union Chapel.
This minister of Lady Sparrow’s had been formerly a member of the Society of Friends, and, unlike the generality of his co-religionists, he was a very innocent sort of man. {134} Having got into some small pecuniary sort of difficulty, her ladyship asked my father to settle the matter with the creditor. So he called upon the minister to learn particulars, and he told my father he had been served with a writ. My father naturally asked to see it, when he said he had burnt it. He thought that was the easiest way of getting rid of it, and appeared surprised when told that would not conclude the matter.
The father of Lord Herschel was Home Missionary to Lady Olivia Sparrow, and lived at the ornate cottage in Brampton, afterwards occupied by an auctioneer. I have, with my father, taken tea at Mr. Herschel’s and frequently saw him. The last time was when, being in Paris with my father, Mr. Herschel was passing through on his way to Jerusalem, as he said, to visit his poor brethren there. In personal appearance he was very dark with a regular Jewish countenance, and his wife was a tall, light-complexioned lady. I do not know if she was of Jewish extraction or not; she was very lady-like in appearance, and I should judge of a very amiable disposition. She was a bit of an authoress; living at the commencement of the Queen’s reign, she composed an ode. The first few lines I remember only ran as under:
“Victoria, Victoria, we hail thy gentle rule,
The friend and the patroness of every British school.”
Mr. Herschel, like my father, fell into disgrace with Lady Sparrow, and had to {135} leave. He became a Congregational minister, and built, or caused to be built, a Congregational Church at Paddington, where, I think, he continued to minister until his death.
For this to be a faithful record, I must mention a very peculiar, and, at the same time, very un-Christian, trait in Lady Sparrow’s character. If she parted with a dependent or agent on unfriendly terms, and they became worsted in consequence, she never showed signs of having forgiven them. If, on the contrary, they rose into a higher worldly position afterwards, she became friendly with them. Mr. Herschell and my father were illustrations of this defect in her character. The Rev. Burke, a blind gentleman, was chaplain to Lady Sparrow. He is still living, and is now (1896) Chaplain of the Huntingdon Union Workhouse.
Lady Sparrow was an illustration of the evils of lavish and indiscriminate giving. She by this means both pauperised and made hypocrites of the inhabitants of Brampton. It is stated that when some cottager saw her pass the window, she would get a Bible out and would be reading it when Lady Sparrow came to the door. I remember also that a former Rector of Hemingford Abbots, the Rev. Mr. Obins, committed the same error (he was the Rev. Selwyn’s immediate predecessor). By indiscriminate alms-giving, he made Hemingford one of the worst villages in the neighbourhood. My father knew him well, as also did I. He had a curate a very {136} popular preacher, whom, when my father first left the Society of Friends, he often used to go and hear. His name was Keyle, and he published a volume of sermons which I now have.
To return to Mr. Obins. He resigned his living in disgust, and some years afterwards was returning from Huntingdon to London, after a visit to Lady Sparrow, when my father, on getting into the railway carriage, and finding a gentleman he knew, began to talk to him. The subject of indiscriminate alms-giving came up, my father quoting Mr. Obins as an example. The gentleman: This is Mr. Obins sitting by the side of you. Not having seen him for many years, my father had quite forgotten him, and began to apologise. Mr. Obins replied, “No apology is necessary; no one is more conscious of the harm I did than myself.”
I may state, in conclusion of this subject, that the villages of Brampton and Hemingford Abbots were looked upon as the two worst villages in the neighbourhood, though they both had the advantage of evangelical clergymen in the parish.
I forget the exact year, but County meetings were held all over the county to protest against the appointment of Roman Catholic Bishops, and one was held at Huntingdon, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Sandwich, in the chair. Mr. Thornhill, one of the M.P.’s for the County, Earl Fitzwilliam, and many of the county gentlemen {137} with their wives and families, were there. Incidents connected with the meeting as under:
After the Chairman’s speech, Earl Fitzwilliam spoke in favour of the resolution, but took occasion to remind the audience that there was such a principle as civil and religious liberty. In fact, he considerably moderated the strong Tory speeches of the speakers who preceded him. When Mr. Thornhill, M.P., began to speak, though he had his short speech written out in the crown of his hat, he stumbled and stammered, and, at last, though it evidently was not appropriate to the intended matter of his speech, but quite antagonistic to it, he made a great effort and blurted out, “Civil and Religious Liberty,” and then sat down. The amusing thing connected with the phrase coming from Mr. Thornhill was, he would not have a Dissenter on his estate!
Then the Rev. MacGee, Rector of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, made a flaming Orange-Protestant speech, mentioning amongst other things the “iniquitous nature” of the Roman Catholic canon law. Some of us Dissenters shouted out, “How about the canon law of the Church of England,” upon which Mr. MacGee, looking up into the gallery of the Court-house, where the meeting was being held, said, “I shall say what I like (pointing with his finger to one person there) in spite of the presence of that Jesuit spy.” Some of us Dissenters shouted out, “Shame, Shame,” for the individual named was no more Jesuit spy than he was. It is true he {138} was by birth an Italian, carrying on a jewellery business in the town of Huntingdon, and was the father of Mrs. Ingram, who is the mother of the present Mr. Wood-Ingram (1896).
Now comes the comic part of the meeting, for it had a comic side.
The High Church people at that period were universally styled “Puseyites,” that is, the members of the Church belonging to the Oxford Movement. Mr. Wallingford, a lawyer, of St. Ives, belonging to the Low Church School, accompanied by a Mr. Bagge, his step-father, had come to the meeting prepared to move a rider to the resolution censuring the Puseyites for their Roman Catholic teaching. I have no recollection of Mr. Wallingford’s speech, because it was so overshadowed by Mr. Bagge’s. Mr. Bagge rose, and, taking a manuscript out of his pocket, said, “I get excited on this subject, and therefore, with the permission of the meeting, will read my speech, for fear, if I spoke extempore, I should say something I should be sorry for afterwards.” First of all, speaking as a Dissenter, he said that if the Church of England had beaten us with cords the Church of Rome would beat us with scorpions. Then, alluding to the Puseyites in the Church, he read out quite gravely, “I would sooner send my children to be educated by a Polar bear or a hyena than by a Puseyite parson.” To those of us who knew Mr. Bagge, the statement was more amusing because we were aware of the fact that he had {139} no children. Then he gave the Roman Catholics their turn, saying (or, rather, reading), amongst other things, “they were liars in being born; indeed, he might say they were liars before they were born; they were liars through life, and liars through the article of death!”
I have no distinct recollection of the ending of the meeting; in fact, I left to go to my market-room at the George Hotel, it being Saturday, but I have no doubt the original resolution was carried without the rider.
I felt strongly at the time that the Roman Catholics had as much right to appoint Bishops of their own as the Wesleyans had to appoint Superintendents of Districts in connection with the Wesleyan Church, and an Archbishop in the person of the President of the Conference.
Though it is true that Lord John Russell carried an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, public opinion did not endorse it, and it became a dead letter, and though, I think, the measure was never repealed, the Bishops have been in evidence ever since.
While the public mind was excited over the appointment of the Bishops, Lord John wrote a letter speaking of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church contemptuously, describing them as the mummeries of Popery. Speaking in metaphor, he was afterwards said to have scribbled “No Popery” on the wall, and then run away, because the law {140} against the Bishops was never put into operation. Mr. Wallingford many years afterwards told me the clergy never thoroughly forgave him the part he took at the above meeting, but gave him the cold shoulder. I presume this remark of his would not apply to the Evangelical School in the Church.
My father was once when quite a young man bathing with Mr. John Mayfield, who was considerably older than he, and who was a very provoking man. They quarrelled when in the water, and both getting into a passion, Mr. Mayfield got quickly out of the water, ran to a heap of clothes, and threw a garment in. My father ran to the other heap, and threw a garment in. So they continued, until at last my father throwing a pair of trousers in, a knife flew out of the pocket, which he recognised as his own. They then realised they had each been throwing their own clothes in the river. My father was so ashamed of his anger that he did not tell the tale till many years afterwards, when we were big boys, and then he told us the tale as a caution to us never to get into a passion.
Mr. John Mayfield had married one of my father’s sisters. He was a very curious and a very contradictory man. If you said white was white, he would say it was black. He was also very fond of practical jokes, and would wait an hour at a bedroom window to throw a basin of water over someone he was expecting to pass. On one occasion, at Sunderland, he and I went to the sea to bathe. {141} We undressed and deposited our clothes on the sands. Of course, it was natural for me to say, “I think the tide is coming in.” As might be expected by those who know him, he immediately said it was going out. I repeated I still thought it was coming in, and he then said he was sure it was going out. So we went in the sea and commenced our bathing. After a while I noticed the sea was much nearer our clothes than when we first went in the water, and so went out quietly, intending to let his clothes be washed away. But, unfortunately for my “little game,” he found out in time to save his garments, much to my chagrin, as I thought losing his clothes would have been a useful lesson to him.
My father, with all his natural ability, was slow, especially at acquiring book learning. Therefore, as a young man, some people thought him deficient in all mental or business acquirements. Mr. Mayfield would say he was only fit to be a rat catcher because he was fond of that pursuit, but the fact was my father had a good knowledge of natural history, acquired from observation.
One day (Mr. Mayfield, in addition to being my grandfather’s son-in-law, was also his business agent) my father heard them discuss which of the two that particular week should take the journey to Leicester to sell flour. Mr. Mayfield said to my grandfather, “Send Potto; trade is dull; there will be no business done, and he will do as well as anyone else.” My father took this to mean that {142} he was only good to be a “stop gap”; so true to the ability and determination which was so characteristic of him in after life, he said to himself, “If it is possible to be done, I will not leave Leicester without selling some flour.” It so chanced that the flour market was not nominally any better, yet there was one of those quiet indications amongst the buyers that it was going to be, and my father sold about one thousand sacks of flour. When he got home, and met his father and Mayfield together they said, “Well, Potto, how have you got on?” He replied, “All things considered, tolerably well.” “How much flour have you sold?” He said, “A thousand sacks?” The statement nearly took their breath away, because they did not know how the necessary wheat to make such a quantity of flour was to be bought and paid for. A thousand sacks would be equal, perhaps, to myself and partners afterwards selling thirty thousand.
In the coaching times, as mentioned previously, my father used to drive to Cambridge to take the coach for London. Although he and his man were positive they started in time, on one occasion they arrived in Cambridge one hour after the coach had started. The only way they could account for being late was that they had both gone to sleep, and that the horses had stood still for an hour!
On another occasion my father was staying with his relative, Joseph Storey, in the Borough, and the next morning was going home by the coach, which started from the {143} “Blue Boar,” Holborn. My father, on waking, found he had overslept himself, and that the coach ought to be just leaving the “Flower Pot,” Bishopsgate Street, where it stopped to take up passengers. So my father said to himself, “There is no telling what may have happened, I will take the coach and go to the “Flower Pot” as quickly as possible.” Upon arriving there, instead of saying to the people, “Of course the coach has gone,” he said, “Why has the coach not arrived from the ‘Blue Boar?’ ” They said, “We don’t know.” Presently it came up, and had been delayed by casting a tyre from the wheel while coming down Holborn Hill. Singularly enough, on another occasion a similar thing happened. My father was again late through oversleeping himself, and the coach was delayed coming down the hill by breaking the pole. Holborn Hill has been abolished by the making of Holborn Viaduct. Sometime in the end of the sixties, it was a very bad hill. On one occasion I was going up in an omnibus when, in the middle of the hill, a lady signalled to the ’bus to stop, which it did. But it got the mastery of the horses, ran back, and frightened the lady almost out of her senses. I sat next to the door, and the conductor said to me, “She will in future know better than to stop the omnibus in the middle of Holborn Hill.” I thought, with his superior knowledge of the danger compared with hers, he ought not to have responded to her signal to stop.
I think I have not recorded the following {144} circumstances in connection with my father’s journeys from Houghton to Leicester on horseback. On two journeys he found trade so bad that instead of stopping and calling on his customers, he rode home again the same day he arrived at Leicester, a distance of 100 miles in one day.
He was once breakfasting at an hotel in Leicester, and he ate the whole of a fowl, leaving the bone on his plate. The next journey he ate a whole fowl again, and being ashamed of his performance, he pocketed the bones. The waiter, on coming to clear the table, muttered to himself, but loud enough for my father to hear, “I thought you had a good appetite; the last time you were here you ate the whole fowl, but you have a better appetite this time, as you have eaten the bones as well.”
My father had a great amount of strength. He would sometimes, when he had sold the flour in London, come home by the coach, getting home by 10 p.m., and then would be on his horse at 5 the next morning, and arrive in Lynn (a ride of 50 miles) before the merchants had received their morning London letters, and so would have an opportunity of purchasing wheat from the merchants on better terms than if he had arrived later.
Here is a bathing incident: Mr. Mayfield and my father, getting Freeman Brown, my father’s youngest brother, took him to the river, and when they were all three undressed, threw him in deep water, repeating the operation, {145} and taking turns to swim in and fetch him out. My uncle Freeman told me on one occasion, after the two had thrown him in, my father and Mr. Mayfield disputed as to whose turn it was to fetch him out, he beginning to drown while the dispute was in progress. On another occasion, when he knew they were looking him up to go to the river, he hid himself between two haystacks that were built close together, but they discovered his hiding place, lugged him out, and served him as described above.
My father had notions of his own as regarded his health: He would not, on principle, put himself in competition in feats of strength with anyone, as he considered by so doing one might permanently sprain some important organ. The only exception was once, at the request of his father, under the following circumstances: Someone bathing in the river at Houghton Mill boasted to my grandfather how he could dive, and, jumping headfirst into the river, dived, as he thought, to perfection. But his body was to be seen under the water all the way he swam. My father coming on to the scene just at the time, his father said to him, “Strip, and show this man how to dive.” So he jumped in and swam under the water across the river so deep in the water that his body was not visible, much to the astonishment of the other gentleman. My father, on principle, never repeated the experiment. My father was also a bold rider, {146} but he never rode across country. Once an unmanageable horse had thrown some one in the Home Close, and my father attempted to ride it. But almost before he had placed himself in the saddle, the horse bolted, and made straight for the great poplar tree at the corner, close to Ware Lane. The horse fell, and no harm happened. But I have heard my father say he thinks if the animal had not fallen his brains might have been dashed against the poplar. The horse was sent to the fair to be sold. A few days afterwards he bolted, and ran right through a shop window.
One Christmas Day, my father having been to Woodhurst, the cob he was riding was very headstrong coming home, and when they got to the lane leading to King’s Ripton—it was then clay, being ungravelled—he ran away. My father said, “You started for your own pleasure; now you shall go for mine.” So instead of trying to stop him he urged him on, and was thrown. He laid insensible for he never knew how long. When he came to himself, he reflected that he might have lost something out of his pocket, which he would not be able to find in the darkness. So he cut a bough off a tree and stuck it in the ground at the spot, to indicate the place where he fell, intending to return the next morning to seek for anything he might have lost The cob was found at a farmer’s yard at King’s Ripton in the morning, and was taken to the “George” Hotel, Huntingdon, to be owned. The ostler at once said, “I know it; it is {147} Mr. Potto Brown’s.” The saddle was covered with clay; and, upon the accident being explained to some hunting gentlemen, they said no doubt the animal’s feet sticking in the clay, it could not pull them out, and the speed it was going caused him to turn a somersault, and thus the accident.
My father had gone to Stanstead, in Essex, to see some relatives, and they, to accommodate my father’s horse, turned their horse for the night into the grass close, and put his in the stable. It so chanced that some horse-stealers had hit upon that very night to steal his friend’s horse, and the consequence was, my father’s horse was stolen instead of his host’s.
I forget whether or not I have recorded the following. My father did not realise that he was stronger than the average of men, and therefore he thought anyone was lazy who would not do the same amount of work in a day that he did.
He also, without allowing for the size of a person’s frame, would say that everyone of a given height and under 21 years of age was lazy if he weighed over 10 stones. These two things caused it to be rather hard lines for those who were under his management.
I remember one Sunday, when I was about ten years of age, and, from slight indisposition, was in the doctor’s hands, some bees had swarmed, which necessitated the moving of a heavy stand. My father took hold of one end of it, and told me to take hold of the {148} other to lift it, and scolded me finely because I said, “I couldn’t.” During the altercation the doctor came, and he appealed to him, saying, “My son could lift that if he would, could he not?” The doctor said, “No; not if you were to offer him £10 to do it.” This proves how little my father understood what weakness was.
My father was once going to London by coach, when the horses ran away down a steep hill near Ware, called “Wade’s Mill,” The coach swayed so that he, sitting on the outside, could read the proprietor’s name on the coach-door, and the gentlemen on the corresponding side could also read the name, but the horses were pulled up without the coach being overturned.
Mr. Neville Goodman learnt the milling business at Houghton, living with my father, and the following incident illustrates the freedom that he allowed young people in their intercourse with him. Mr. Neville Goodman one day coming into the room late for tea, my father said, “As dilatory as a Goodman.” The retort came quick and sharp: “That is better than being as obstinate as a Brown!” I should say it was well understood that obstinacy was a characteristic of the Brown family. I remember in the early days of phrenology a person examined our heads as boys at my father’s one evening. After concluding with me, he said, “You have firmness developed almost to obstinacy.” I said, “Don’t qualify it; if you had said obstinacy, you would not have been out.”
{149} I once heard the late Mr. Goodman say (he was a Fenman), if about to cross a deep drain in skating on a meadow, where the ice was weak, the best way was to send all the lighter of the party over, and then the heaviest would lay down full length, and the light ones, being on the other side of the drain, would pull him (the heavy one) over. This was supposed to be a gain, because the weight of the body was spread over such a much larger surface than if one stood upright. I have a lively recollection of being served in that way over a deep drain at Mepal.
The drain was very deep, but both the ice and the water were clear, and being able distinctly to realise the depth made me very nervous. I never repeated the experiment! My opinion is that so dividing the weight over a large surface was not all gain, as the friction of the body on the ice was much greater than on taking a quick run over with skates. I think Mr. Goodman’s was more a correct way in theory than in practice.
Miss Phœbe Brown was my father’s eldest sister, and was a strict “Friend.” On one occasion, at the Cambridge Station, she got into the omnibus to go into the town. There was no one on the box, or at the horses’ heads. From some unexplained cause the horses bolted at full gallop into the town, but at last were stopped. My aunt alighted, and at once went down on her knees in the street and returned thanks to God for protecting her from what might have been a severe accident.
{150} My grandfather, having given up the milling business, I think at 50 years of age, walked the hospitals and qualified as a medical man. While so qualifying, he had such a bad attack of typhus fever that the doctors told him he must die. He replied, “I shall not.” They repeated, “You will,” and he then replied with considerable determination, “But I won’t,” and he did not. I suppose his strong will helped to save him. I have been told that his tongue was like a piece of leather.
At Chatteris, as soon as Mr. Gathercole came into the parish as Vicar, he began arguing with everyone. Amongst other things, he published in the form of a pamphlet a certain number of reasons why he couldn’t be a Dissenter: “Because they are liars; professed profaners, etc., etc.” Mr. Palmer, recognising it was not policy to refute them, simply printed a pamphlet giving the same reasons why he could not be a Churchman, and printed on the corner, and also headed it: “Answer a fool according to his folly.”
Mr. Gathercole had a parishioner, a farmer, whose wife was a Dissenter, and she went to chapel, taking her children with her. The farmer had a large square pew in the church, and would have no-one in it but himself. This annoyed the Vicar, so he told the farmer he ought to compel his wife to come to Church with the children. He taking no notice of this, the Vicar had the pew filled up with not the cleanest members of the congregation. This having no effect {151} he one week had the square pew divided into two. This brought things to a climax. The farmer, during the following week, meeting the Vicar in a place where no one could overhear them, said, “If the pew is not put back to its original state, before next Sunday, and you on the following Friday go to Chatteris Market-place, and I have my whip, I will make you look such a fool as you have never looked in your life before.” The Vicar, knowing his opponent as a man sure to fulfil his threat, had the pew at once restored to its former state.
Mr. Gathercole was brought up a Dissenter, and it was also said that he had been a shoemaker at one time. On one occasion, it being contract day at the Union Workhouse, Mr. Gathercole being present, specimen shoes were being examined. A Guardian looked at a shoe, and threw it across the table to Mr. Gathercole, saying, “You are a better judge of that article than I am.” This, of course, was very rude, but Mr. Gathercole’s own conduct brought this on himself.
The late Mr. Edward Miall, having once at Chatteris unintentionally said something libellous in his speech, Mr. Gathercole brought an action, and Mr. Miall was cast in heavy damages. Mr. Gathercole would make a habit when a meeting was held of being in the porch to see if he could lay hold of anything said about himself that was libellous.
On one occasion I was asked to preside at some controversial meeting at Chatteris. {152} Just before commencing to speak, someone on the platform said to me, “Mr. Gathercole has just come in the porch and can hear what you have to say about him.” I said, “All right, I shall never mention his name or allude to him.”
On another occasion Mr. Gathercole was in the train between Chatteris and St. Ives, apparently en route to London. Some lady, who got out of the same train, in the St. Ives omnibus said to the passenger, “I am told Mr. Gathercole was in the train, and I should like to have seen him. I have heard he is the plainest man in existence,” when a gentleman in the corner said, “I am Mr. Gathercole”!
I was once dining in the Commercial Room at the Lamb Inn, Ely. A commercial gentleman was also dining there, and he asked me what wine we should drink. I said, “I don’t take any.” When the soup and meat were done with, and the cheese was being put on the table, I said, “Where is the pudding?” The waiter replied, “There is none to-day,” upon which the commercial made the rude remark to the waiter, “I suppose you have to cut your coat according to your cloth,” implying, as I did not order wine, no pudding could be afforded.
On another occasion I was dining at the same hotel, when a commercial asked me “What wine do you drink?” I said, “None, but order for two and I shall pay half, the same as if I had drunk my share.” When the cloth was cleared, the gentleman said to the {153} waiter, “Bring coffee for this gentleman,” for which, when the bill came, he paid.
My father, at his London hotel, wishing to have proper attention, though not drinking wine, would always have a pint of sherry put on the table, and as he did not partake of it, he was treated as equal to the average customer in the eyes of the landlord. Such were some of the expedients that were resorted to by abstainers at hotels.
[Finis.]