Chapter X: Letter IX: )

For example of the impossibility of publishing on a system. It happens to be now fine weather here in Lancashire;—I am able, therefore, to draw out of doors; and am painting a piece of foreground vegetation, which I don’t want to be used by students till after at least fifty other exercises have been gone through. But I must do this one while light and life serve; and not wait till I am sixty, to do work which my eyes are not good enough for at fifty-five.

And if the readers of Fors think my letters too desultory, let them consider what this chief work, specified in page 20 of Letter IX., involves. No one has the least notion of the quantity of manual labour I have to go through, to discharge my duty as a teacher of Art. Look at the frontispiece to Letter XX., which is photographed from one of my architectural sketches; and if you can draw, copy a bit of it;—try merely the bead moulding with its dentils, in the flat arch over the three small ones, lowest on the left. Then examine those three small ones themselves. You think I have drawn them distorted, carelessly, I suppose. No. That distortion is essential to the Gothic of the Pisan school; and I measured every one of the curves of those cusps on the spot, to the tenth of an inch; and I ought to be engraving and publishing those drawings, by rights; but, meantime, your Pisan Republicans dash the chapel down, for a job in rebuilding it;—and the French Emperor dashes every cathedral in France to pieces, to find his masons work,—and gets for result, Reuter’s telegram, (page 21 of Letter VI.); and I, with my eyes full of dust and driven smoke, am obliged to leave my own work, and write Fors, more and more necessarily becoming principal, as I find all my other work rendered vain.

Nevertheless, in the course of Fors itself, I shall try to give, as aforesaid, art instruction enough for all need, if any one cares to obey it. How little any one is likely to care, the closing paragraphs of the letter from Wakefield show so clearly that I think it desirable to print them here consecutively, as part of the text of Fors itself.

“Yet people tell me that those were very benighted Tory days I am regretting. Wakefield was always held to be a Tory place, given up hand and foot to the magnates who owned the great estate round. I know how when a small thing in frilled slops, but with my bosom full of patriotic pride in our town, I used to feel bitterly depressed at hearing a rising Radical Leeds clothier, who came to see us, sometimes denounce Wakefield as a ‘one-eyed hoil,’ his emphatic way of indicating our want of sweep of vision. I remember he generally capped his arguments by demanding, in sonorous tones, if any men worthy of the name of Britons would put up with that ‘obsolete monopoly’ of the soke mills.

“To tell truth, I am afraid that we felt a good deal of mean-spirited admiration for the neighbouring squires and lords on the occasions when they showed themselves and their handsome carriages in our streets: but at least the Wentworths and Pilkingtons and Squire Waterton were gentlemen and scholars; our new magnates have nothing to boast but their money. It seems to me better that people should boast of the old oaks of Walton, and the old pictures of —— Priory, than tell how many thousands an iron lord made by the last rise in iron: and that is what they talk of now. And if the iron kings have supplanted the landlords, they are not any more free. The old farmers might vote blindly out of blind respect for the old landlords; but is it not better than the newly-enfranchised puddlers and strikers selling votes openly for the price of a gallon of whisky? We have lost a good deal, although we are long rid of the soke monopoly, which used to be a standing reproach to us. I think that the town bought off the soke just after the Corn Law agitation, when the great railways began to enclose the wide meadows about the town with their ugly ramparts and arches, where the trains keep up a continual scream.

“But the wool and corn magnates of the place held to their old traditions long after that; and when Titus Salt asked for a footing in the town that he might build there his great alpaca factories, he was rejected. I had gone abroad then, but my heart was in the old place, and I caught up eagerly all concerning it. Sometimes I heard doleful accounts of its decadence—how the big houses were empty altogether, how the inns were closed, the coaches stopped, the river traffic diminished, and the great corn warehouses by the bridge falling to ruin. There was no trace left of the gaieties that once gave the town the name of ‘Merrie Wakefield.’ All the smart young men were leaving it to push their way in Leeds or Manchester, and the girls left behind were growing up into a population of old maids.

“So the doleful story went on for many a year. But insensibly the key changed. Mills were springing up, and shops; and the houses had gone up in rent. The sleepy streets were thronged with workers; in short, the town seemed new-born altogether. And the ——s,—I knew the ——s,—nobody would have thought it, such a simple kind of man as old —— seemed; yet the tale ran that he could buy up all Wakefield, and young Bill was going to live in —— Hall!! Young Bill in —— Hall! one of the most sacred spots my memory cherished.

“I remembered him well,—an audacious boy, with a gift for wry faces, and always up to some street prank. I remembered the well-worn jacket and battered cap that his father’s thrift imposed on him. And he was to be one of new rulers of the bright new time! and lord it in those venerable oaken chambers sacred to Lady ——‘s ghost! It seemed incredible; but twenty years had changed everything. Old ——, the father—a man of the true old English grain, had, in my young days, a foundry at the lower end of the town, and was said even then to be worth a ‘mint of money.’ Worthy folks were he and his; but still people of whom the loftier town’s-folk took no cognizance socially, for was not the wife’s father old Robin the Pedlar? A good old soul he was, who peddled to frugal farm wives the best thread and needles that could be got,—and took no alms from his kinsfolk, and lived and died in blameless humble honesty. And his grandson now rules in the hall where old Robin, perchance, took a humble bit and sup at the back door. He has a Scotch estate besides, and only failed of Parliament last year because he bribed his way a little too openly. My enlightened friends look upon his rise as one of the grandest signs of the grand new time; but I cannot rejoice with them. When I see how he and his like are doing their worst to foul the air and blacken the fields about the town, I cannot help wishing the squires back in —— Hall.

“Men say, too, that he is a stronger Tory than the bluest of the old squires. He has forgotten old Robin of the bobbins, and rules the people from whom he sprang, with an iron hand, as such often do. Naturally, his success has attracted others, and the town will soon be surrounded with forges. On the once green Calder bank, where I used to see garlands of brown pears ripening in the sweet sunshine, there is a desert of dross and ashes, and twenty black throats vomiting fire and fumes into the summer sky; and under the big sheds you see hundreds of the liberated Britons of these improved days, toiling, half-naked, in sweltering heat and din, from morning to evening. This, however, is ‘the activity and spread of the iron trade,’ which our local paper tells us ‘are the most satisfactory pledge of the future progress and prosperity of our town.’

“I wish that I could believe it; but it vexes me beyond comfort to see the first landscape I knew and loved blighted by the smoke of the forges, and to find one sweet association after another swept away.

“Even Sunday brings no respite to the eye. The forges are fired up shortly after noonday, and many of the long chimneys follow suit. And in the town the noise is so constant, you can scarcely hear the church chimes unless you are close to the tower.

“Did you ever hear Wakefield chimes? We were very proud of them in the old time. They had a round of pleasant sleepy tunes, that never failed us through summer suns and winter frost; and came to be bound up indelibly with the early memories of us children. How I loved to hear them as I bounded, full of morning gladness, across the green Vicar’s Croft to school; or at night when lying an unwilling prisoner in bed, before the warm summer evening was ended. To my childish fancy there was a strange wizardry bound up with that dark church steeple, frosted and crumbling with age, which would break out overhead into mysterious music when I was far afield, but expecting it.

“Years after, when poor and lonely in a great foreign city, I came, one bitter winter’s day, upon an obscure cloister church standing by a frozen river. It was a city without bells, and I had often longed for the familiar sound. I was dreadfully homesick that day, and stood upon the bridge, hapless, and listless; looking at the strange spire, the strange houses and frozen-up boats, in a kind of dream. Suddenly the cloister tower struck the hour,—four o’clock of a dark December day, and presently it broke into a chime.

“It was a very simple ditty; but what a passion of longing it wakened for England and the old chimes of that little English town! I felt as if my heart could bear no more. I must go home; I must see the old places again, cost what it might. But morning brought fresh counsels, and many a year passed before I revisited the old place.

“At last I was there again, after many disappointments, and laid my head to rest once more beneath the shadow of the old steeple.

“I woke with an expectant heart. It was a bright May day, such as I remembered twenty years before. The big church bell tolled nine: then came a pause, and my thirsty ears were strained to catch the first sounds of the dear old chimes. ‘Ding’ went a treble bell high in the air, the first note of ‘Tara’s Halls,’ and then!—a hideous sound I cannot describe, a prolonged malignant yell, broke from the sky and seemed to fill the earth. I stopped my ears and ran indoors, but the sound followed to the innermost chambers. It gathered strength and malignancy every moment, and seemed to blast all within its reach. It lasted near two minutes, and ended with a kind of spasm and howl that made every nerve shudder. I do not exaggerate. I cannot adequately describe the hideous sound. When I had recovered my wits, I asked the meaning of this horrible noise. My informant, a rising young townsman of the new stamp, told me that it was the new steam-whistle at the foundry, commonly called the ‘American Devil;’ that it was the most powerful in the West Riding, and could be heard five miles off.

“It was only at half-power then, calling the workmen from breakfast; but at six in the morning I could hear it in double force. I asked if it was possible that people would quietly put up with such a hideous disturbance. He owned that the old inhabitants did not like it; but then, he said, they were a sleepy set, and wanted stirring up.

“Indeed, I actually found that the town was infected by four other similar whistles, profaning dawn and eve with their heaven-defying screech.

“The nuisance has been abolished since, I hear. They say it actually killed one old lady by starting her up just at the only moment when it was possible for her weary nerves to get sleep. She happened to have a relation in the town council: a stir was made about it, and the whistles were suppressed.

“But the peaceful, half town, half rural life of Wakefield is gone for ever, I fear.

“Silk-mills and dye-works are encroaching on the corn-fields and pastures; rows of jerry-built cottages are creeping up Pinder’s Fields, where I used to pull orchises; greasy mill-girls elbow ladies in the Westgate, and laugh and jeer at passing young men in a way that would have horrified the old inhabitants. And everywhere there is an indescribable smokiness and dirtiness more demoralizing than any tongue can tell, or mind conceive.

“Well, it is the ‘march of the times.’ It will go on, I suppose, as in other quiet pleasant English towns, until all the sweet Calder valley is swallowed up in the smoke of Tophet. They will cut the snowdrop wood down, and cover Heath Common with cheap villas, and make the old hall into an ‘institution.’ You know how it will be. A river black with filth and stagnant with foulness, a wilderness of toiling suburbs such as you saw at Bradford; and where the cowslips and the corn grew, the earth will be thick with ‘institutions.’ There will be a Blind Institution, and an Eye and Ear Institution, an Orthopædic Institution, and a Magdalen Institution, and Mechanics’ Institutions; and we shall hear a great deal of the liberality and beneficence of the cotton and iron kings of the place. But will all this compensate one little child for robbing it of its God-given birthright of earth and sky?

“I cannot believe it.

“Poor little martyrs! There will be no ‘swallow twittering from the straw-built shed’ for them,—only the American Devil calling father to his hot, hard day’s labour. What can they make of it all? What kind of outlook will they have in coming years from the bridge of my early recollections? What I saw on the Medlock yesterday—such a hideous sight!—yet my husband remembers catching fish there. The gases would kill a fish like a lightning-stroke, now.

“And the poor children! It makes me so sad, having some of my own, to think of those who will be born there, with hearts as hungry for nature and truth as mine was; who will never see God’s heaven, save through grimy panes and smoke; who will have no sweet cowslip-fields to walk in,—only the defiled pavement; who will grow hard and sour before childhood is over, with the riddle of their joyless lives.

“How I have drifted on.

“Your allusion to Wakefield Bridge in the Fors of February (?) unloosed a flood of long-buried recollections.

“This is what you draw on yourself by opening your heart to others. Pray forgive the trespass on your time.

“Yours gratefully,

“E. L.”

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

The following two paragraphs have been sent me by correspondents, from country papers. I do not answer for the facts stated in them; but however mythic either may be, they form part of the current history of the day, and are worth preserving; the latter especially in illustration of what I meant by the phrase “roseate repose of domestic felicity,” in the Fors of July, this year, p. 184. One of the pamphlets written by John Hopper will become a subject of inquiry in a future Fors.

John Hopper.—On Tuesday, July 6, passed away from our midst the pioneer of Co-operation in Sunderland, John Hopper, shipwright, aged forty-seven on the 22nd April last, after a lingering illness of six weeks’ duration, of paralysis of the right side, and the breaking of a blood-vessel in the brain. This was caused by his constant and unremitting study and writing on all questions relating to the progress of his fellow-workmen. More especially had he devoted his time and money to publishing several pamphlets on Co-operation. He also ably advocated the cause of Working Men’s Unions and Trade Arbitration Councils instead of strikes. He looked forward to Co-operation for the solution of all the great questions in dispute between the employer and employed, and lived to see some portion of his ideas carried out with great success in the organization of a co-operative store in our own town, which now possesses two branch establishments, and does a very large, extensive, and profitable business, and possesses also two libraries. The organization and successful carrying out of this store was largely due to his own exertions. As its first secretary he gave his arduous labours free to it for several years. Though frequently offered superior situations in his own trade as a shipwright, he conscientiously refused all such offers, preferring to cast his lot amongst the working classes, and with them finish his days, toiling on side by side with them, as an example of honesty, toil, and love of his trade, before all other things; for work indeed to him was truly worship. He scorned to earn his bread by any other means than by his own trade. He often lamented over men of superior talent who deserted their class for wealth and gain, and did not stay by their fellow-men, and by so doing try to elevate them by their example. He had been ailing some fifteen months, but kept at his work until quite exhausted, some six weeks before he died. He worked in the yard of Mr. Oswald, of Pallion, for many years, and also at Mr. J. Laing’s, at Deptford. With the latter gentleman he served his apprenticeship as a shipwright. He leaves a widow and seven children unprovided for. The eldest is now serving his apprenticeship to his father’s trade with Mr. Oswald. Simple and retired he lived, despite all their praise—content to live and die a working man. Often after a hard day’s toil he was too ill to walk all the way home, and had to lay himself down to rest by the roadside for awhile. The following is a list of his pamphlets, eight in number:—Causes of Distress; History of the Sunderland Co-operative Store; Organization of Labour: Co-operative Store System; The Commercial Reformer’s Bookkeeper; The Workman’s Path to Independence; The Rights of Working Men; and, Elections, Trades Unions, and the Irish Church.

Marriage of Miss Venables, formerly of Leicester.—From the Yarmouth papers, we learn that on Wednesday week Miss Eveline Mary Venables, the only daughter of the Rev. George Venables, vicar of Great Yarmouth, and formerly vicar of St. Matthew’s, Leicester, was married at the parish church, Great Yarmouth, in the presence of 4,000 spectators, to the Rev. E. Manners Sanderson, M.A., vicar of Weston St. Mary’s, Lincolnshire. The bridegroom was formerly curate of Great Yarmouth. Very extensive preparations, we are told, were made for the wedding festivities, both in the church and at the vicarage. A number of lady friends of the bride undertook to decorate the nave and chancel of the fine old church, and for several days they worked assiduously at this labour of love. Nearly the whole length of the chancel was tastefully decorated with a choice assortment of flowers, plants, mosses, and ferns, the gas standards being also similarly clothed, while along the communion rails were placed leaves of ferns, intermingled with roses and water-lilies. Within the communion rails were displays of cut flowers and plants, which gave a most pleasing effect to that portion of the church. The reredos was beautifully dressed in wreaths and flowers, and above the communion table were the words in white letters on a scarlet ground, “Jesus was called to the marriage.” The effect of all these magnificent decorations was beautiful, and presented such a picture as our grand old church probably never before exhibited. The nave and chancel were converted into an avenue of flowers, and as the richly dressed bridal procession wended its way from the south porch the scene was one of the most imposing and affecting nature. It was understood that the marriage would take place immediately after the usual morning service, and long before that service commenced (eleven o’clock), several hundreds of people had congregated in front of the church gates, and when they were thrown open, they flocked into the church, and soon every available space in the church was filled with thousands of people. A number of seats near and in the chancel were set apart for the bridal party and friends, and these were kept vacant until the arrival of the ladies and gentlemen for whom they were reserved, and who were admitted for the most part by ticket at the east door. The morning service concluded about half-past eleven, and the clergymen who were to take part in the ceremony, and who had been waiting in the vestry, then walked in procession down the chancel, taking up their position under the tower, where they awaited the arrival of the bridal party. Their names were as follows, besides the Vicar: Rev. E. Venables (canon of Lincoln), Rev. Dr. J. J. Raven (master of the Grammar School), Rev. Bowyer Vaux (minister of St. Peter’s church), Rev. A. J. Spencer, Rev. F. G. Wilson (vicar of Rudham), Rev. G. Merriman, Rev. A. B. M. Ley, Rev. R. H. Irvine, Rev. F. C. Villiers, and Rev. R. J. Tacon (Rollesby). The first to arrive was the bridegroom, accompanied by his bestman, the Rev. R. V. Barker, who were shortly afterwards followed by the bridesmaids and other ladies and gentlemen constituting the bridal party, who entered by the south door and awaited the arrival of the bride. The bridesmaids were most elegantly attired in bleu de ciel silk dresses, with long trains, trimmed en tablier, with Mousseline d’Indienne, pink briar roses and white heath, wreaths to match, and long tulle veils. Their names were as follows: Miss Rose Venables, Miss Sanderson, Miss L. Sanderson, Miss M. Sanderson, Miss Wilson, Miss Ruth Venables, and Miss Mander. Each bridesmaid carried a bouquet of white roses, pink geraniums, and forget-me-nots, the gift of the bestman, the Rev. R. V. Barker. The last to arrive was the bride, who wore a dress of superb white satin, with a very long train, garnie en tulle et fleurs d’orange; the corsage corresponding. The veil tulle de Bruxelles, brodé en soie; the trailing wreath clematis, myrtle, and orange blossoms; and a necklet of sprays of silver ivy leaves (the gift of Mr. Percy Sanderson). Her magnificent bouquet was composed of orange flowers, stephanotis, Cape jasmine, white roses, and ferns, and was the gift of the bridegroom. The bride was supported by her brother, Mr. E. Venables, and was received at the south porch of the church by her bridesmaids, who accompanied her up the nave to the chancel, where they were received by the vicar and clergymen. The choir were stationed in the triforium, and Mr. H. Stonex presided at the organ, which was used on this the first occasion since its removal, although the repairs are not yet complete. While the bridal party were entering the church, Mr. Stonex performed “The Wedding March” composed by Sir George Elvey on the occasion of the marriage of Princess Louise (Marchioness of Lorne). The bridal party took their places under the tower, and the marriage service began, the Vicar being assisted in his office by Canon Venables, and the bride being given away by her elder brother, Mr. Gilbert Venables. After singing the hymn, “The voice that breathed o’er Eden,” to the tune St. Alphege, Canon Venables read the first address of the Marriage Service. The Vicar has just printed this service with a few explanatory remarks, and about a thousand copies were distributed on the occasion. After that portion of the Marriage Service ordered to be performed in the body of the church was completed, the clergy, bride and bridegroom, and bridesmaids proceeded up the choir to the chancel, the singers and congregation chanting the 128th Psalm. The clergy having taken their positions, the bride and bridegroom, with the bridesmaids and the Rev. R. V. Barker, knelt at the communion rails; the service was continued, and a short sermon read by the Vicar, from the text, “Heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” The service concluded with the benediction, and as the party left the church, Mr. Stonex performed Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” in a very skilful manner. The bride’s trousseau was entirely supplied from Yarmouth, and the wedding cake, which weighed 100 lb., was manufactured by Mr. Wright, of King Street, Yarmouth. After the marriage, the bridal party assembled at the Vicarage, where the register was signed, and then sat down to a récherché breakfast, the management of which was placed in the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, of the Crown and Anchor Hotel. The following is a list of those who were present at the wedding breakfast: the Vicar and Mrs. Venables, the Honourable and Mrs. Sanderson, T. H. Sanderson, Esq., Lord Hastings, Chas. Venables, Esq. (Taplow, Bucks), and Mrs. C. Venables, Miss Sanderson, Miss Lucy Sanderson, Miss Maud Sanderson, Canon Venables (Lincoln) and Mrs. Venables, Miss Ruth Venables (Lincoln), Miss Rose Venables (London), Gilbert Venables, Esq., B.A. (Lower Norwood), and Mrs. Gilbert Venables, Rev. F. G. Wilson (Vicar of Rudham) and Mrs. and Miss Wilson, Rev. J. J. Raven, D.D. (Yarmouth), and Mrs. Raven, Rev. R. V. Barker, M.A. (Yarmouth), Edward Venables, Esq. (Emmanuel College, Cambridge), and Mrs. Edward Venables, Rev. Bowyer Vaux, M.A., and Mrs. Vaux, Rev. R. H. Irvine and Mrs. Irvine, Mrs. Palgrave (Yarmouth), Mrs. Woollnough, Rev. F. C. Villiers, M.A., and the Misses Villiers, E. Villiers, Esq. (Galway), Rev. A. B. M. Ley, M.A. (Yarmouth), Rev. G. Merriman, M.A., Rev. A. J. Spencer, B.A., Miss Mander (Tettenhall Wood), Mrs. Palmer, Rev. R. J. Tacon, M.A. (rector of Rollesby), Mr. Stonex. The presents to the bride were very numerous, and among the donors we find the names of Mr. and Mrs. T. North, of Leicester, a bread platter and knife; and Mr. and Mrs. Burbidge Hambly, of Mountsorrel, a dessert service. The honeymoon is being spent at Sans Souci, Dorsetshire.

FORS CLAVIGERA.