On the Banks of the Ouse; or, Life in Olney a hundred years ago

Front matter

UP. Life in Olney a Hundred Tears Ago. A STORY BY Emma Marshall — u Author of lIn Colston's Dap,' ' UitSer the Met/dips ' tfc, fcfr. LONDON SEELEY & CO., 46, 47, &° 4«, ESSEX STREET, STRAND 1888 All Rights Reserved TO SIR JOHN HENRY KENNAWAY, Bart., M.P., WHO HOLDS IN REVERENCE THE NAMES OF THOSE GREAT MEN, WHO AT THE CLOSE OF THE LAST CENTURV SOUNDED THE TRUMPET-CALL, WHICH AWOKE THE CHURCH FROM HER LONG SLEEP, TO GIRD ON HER ARMOUR FOR MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE ABROAD, AND EARNEST LABOUR AT HOME ; AND FOLLOWING IN THEIR STEPS, IS THE CHAMPION OF ALL THAT IS PURE, LOVELY, AND OK GOOD REPORT, WHOSE HAND IS STRETCHED OUT FOR THE HELP OF THE HELPLESS, IN THINGS TEMPORAL, AS IN THINGS SPIRITUAL, I DEDICATE THIS STORY AS A TOKEN OF GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE REGARD.

Preface

. The incidents in this story of life at Olney at the end of the last century are, it is needless to say, imaginary. But in the slight sketches of the poet Cowper and his friend John Newton, the scenes in which they take by no means a prominent part, are in harmony with the general tenor of their lives in the old-world town on the banks of the Ouse, and may therefore be said to be possible, if not probable. Perhaps no work ever more fully repaid the research necessary for its completion. "The lapse of time and its restless stream " has too relentlessly swept away from the notice of this generation the life and work of a man, whose pathetic story has thrown an additional charm over the fruits of his genius — a genius which, in a wonderful manner, clothed the common things of everyday life with the mantle of poetic inspiration, so well expressed by Mrs. PREFA CE.

Barrett-Browning in her own beautiful words, when she says : " With quiet sadness, and no gloom, I learn to think upon him, With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him ; Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him, But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him ; And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences. The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number, And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber.^ Anyone who reads Cowper's letters will, I think, be struck afresh, as I have been, with the wit and humour which sparkle in the pages, no less than by the graceful flow of a style which may well stand as a model worthy of imitation in these days of scrappy correspondence, and hastily-written chronicles of trivial family gossip, and not always harmless scandal.

Cowper's wit is separated by a wide gulf from the satirical shafts of a so-called fine humour, shot from a vantage-ground of superior intelligence at those who serve for a target — shafts which sometimes inflict deep wounds, slow to heal, and leaving a life long scar behind ! John Newton was a man who must command admiration and respect. If his exterior was rough, there was a fund of kindliness and tenderness

PREFACE.

. IX within. And this is seen in his love for, and deep interest in, the poet Cowper. Their friendship is one of the most beautiful which is on record, and outlived separation and diversity of temperament, for it was built on a secure foundation. The commonly received notion that John Newton, by forcing his peculiar religious opinions on Cow per, drove him mad, is refuted by following the happy intercourse and exchange of many plea santries between them, which is as strongly marked as the outspoken zeal and earnestness with which, when occasion required, John Newton could point the sad-hearted poet to the source of all comfort ; no less than by the patience with which he tended him in his hours of miserable delusion — a delusion which sometimes took the extraordinary form of doubting John Newton's identity !

And, to quote the same gifted poetess once more, John Newton held fast to the belief that : '• Though in blindness he remained unconscious of the guiding, And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing, He testified this solemn truth, while frenzy-desolated, Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created." I must here acknowledge that I am indebted to Mr. Thomas Wright's very interesting book, "The Town of Cowper," for many of my descriptions of Olney and Weston — descriptions which are so truth ful, that when I spent a few hours in the town and

PREFACE.

. X neighbourhood last summer, I felt that Cowper's house in the market-place, the Lodge at Weston Underwood, and the pencilled lines on the shutter of that room the poet left, with such melancholy forebodings of an eternal farewell, were all familiar to me, by means of Mr. Wright's graphic pen. I should wish also to express my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Langley, who received me very kindly at the Vicarage, and allowed me to ascend to John Newton's study, and look from the windows upon the garden where it was easy to imagine the poefs figure crossing the turf to receive a cheery welcome from the .Vicar, with whom he had daily intercourse for so many years. Yes ; the quiet of the old-world country town of past days came back with strange vividness, having also a sadness in it which seemed to tell how soon the vanishing would vanish ; how soon the life of man on earth passes like a shadow on the hill side.

Our homeward way lay along lanes where the wild roses bloomed in lavish profusion, and we passed through the village of Turvey, where Legh Richmond lived and loved and laboured, and lies buried in that fine old church, where he ministered so faithfully for twenty years. As the twilight deepened, the glow worms shone out in the hedges as the stars shone in the deep blue sky of the summer's night, and these words seemed to sound in my ear :

PREFACE.

. XI " With each new spring New-born it wakes, when every forest thing Unfurling is, and buds are blossoming. In tones we know It speaks, that voice of immemorial woe Alas ! that leaves should come again. That we should go.'' Yes ; we all must go. But there is no life that does not leave its mark behind. Every place in the world has a history to tell ; has, wrapt perhaps in impenetrable silence, stories of love and sorrow, of self-sacrifice, of earnestness of purpose, of zeal for good, which will never be unfolded before us here. But in some rarer instances the story of a life is written in characters which can never be effaced, and such lives were those of William Cowper and his friend John Newton, the Vicar of Olney. Woodside, Leighwoods, Clifton. October, 1887. CONTENTS.

Part I. Summer Tide

CHAPTER PACE I. COLTSWOOD MANOR I II. "THE PLEASAUNCE"- - - 24 III. THE LACE-MAKER - - - - 47 IV. THE CLOUDS GATHER - - - 71 V. CONVERSATION - - - - 98 VI. A WEDDING-DAY - - - - - 121 VII. DECISION ---... I44 VIII. DIFFICULTIES - - 166 IX. TWO EVENINGS IN THE COTTAGE - - 1 87

Part II. After Long Years

X. SPRING-TIME - - - - - - 221 XI. LIFE AND DEATH - - - - 257 XII. "THE RUDDY GLOW" - - - 286 XIII. THE RESCUE - - - - - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE OLNEY CHURCH AND BRIDGE - - - - IO INTERIOR OF OLNEY CHURCH - - - 14 LAVENDON MILL - - - 48 OLNEY IN COWPER'S TIME - - 64 OLNEY VICARAGE - - - - - TOO THF. RIVER OUSE, NEAR OLNEY - - - - 222 THE ALCOVE, WESTON UNDERWOOD - - - 240 COWPER'S HOUSE AT WESTON UNDERWOOD - 24 S

PART I. SUMMER TIDE.

" The lapse of Time and rivers is the same ; Both speed their journey with a restless stream ; The silent pace with which they steal away No wealth can bribe — no prayers persuade to stay : Alike irrevocable both when past, And a wide ocean swallows both at last." CowrER. I On the Banks of the Ouse.

Chapter I. Coltswood Manor

" Cruel is all he does ; 'Tis quenchless thirst of ruinous ebriety That prompts his every action, and embrutes the man.' Cowper. A loud discordant voice broke the delicious calm of the summer evening as the Master of Coltswood Manor reined in his hard-ridden horse under the old stone gateway of the stable-yard, and shouted to the groom, who came toddling over the paved quadrangle as fast as his short, bandy legs would carry him. " Why weren't you on the watch, you lazy old fool ? Keeping me here, waiting your pleasure !" And the reins were flung to the groom, while with a volley of oaths Mr. Rollestone let himself down from his big-boned horse, and turned towards the front of the house. It did not escape Giles's notice that his master staggered as he passed out of sight. He seldom returned sober from a ride, and Giles was well used to this condition of things.

" He's been riding thee pretty hard, my girl," Giles said, as he led the mare to the stable. " He's been a-riding hard — and drinking hard. Aye — well, it's the way of the world, Minx, my girl, and we ought to know it by this time." Then Giles disappeared within the stable-door, where he took the saddle off Minx's back and rubbed her down carefully before he consigned her to her stall — next to Black Jim — a high-bred hunter, who put his nose over the partition and gave a short neigh of welcome. Then there was silence again. An old fountain still sent up a crystal shower from the rugged stone basin, which fell over a broken figure of some water nymph, of which but little form or shape was left. Spot, the faithful hound, who had had a hard run that day, raised himself on his large paws on the rugged stone edge of the basin, and refreshed him self with a prolonged draught of water.

A flock of pigeons were cooing on the dove-cot, and pluming their feathers in the bright, western sunshine which illuminated the old buildings of the quadrangle. Everything was wrapt in the golden calm of the still, summer evening, and the arrival of the master and his angry tones had, by breaking the charm for a time, made the quiet, when it reigned again, greater by force of contrast. Coltswood Manor was an irregular and picturesque house. The centre was of red brick of the date of Queen Anne. The gables were pointed and clothed with ivy, where innumerable sparrows chattered and held consultations with the swallows which frequented the overhanging eaves in the early summer. The house was entered by a quaint porch, on which several devices were carved, and it led into a hall of no mean dimensions, where, summer and winter, logs were always burning on the open hearth.

The walls were ornamented with stags' heads and foxes' brushes and other sporting trophies. Two large oak-chairs were placed at either end of a solid oak-table, where this evening a cloth, not remark able for snowy purity, was spread, and a large loaf of home-made bread on a wooden trencher showed that meals were taken here. As the master entered the hall by the porch he sank down on one of the large chairs, and thundered with a horn-handled knife upon the table. The noise brought a young man from a door by the side of the fireplace, and he said : "Are you ready for supper, father?" " Ready ; yes ! I should think I was. Look sharp and tell those lazy hounds to serve up. And — hallo, Cuthbert ! — fetch up two bottles of the old port, and let us have a good bout, for I've something a bit pleasant to tell you." 1—2 The young man thus addressed was a fair type of the country gentleman of the last century.

He was strongly built, and although not tall, carried himself so well that he looked taller than he actually was. He bore no resemblance to his father, whose coarse features were inflamed by continual intemperance, and whose face was often distorted by passion and an uncontrolled temper. Cuthbert had a certain refinement inherited from his mother, whose portrait hung over the open fireplace, and seemed always, so Cuthbert thought, to be looking down on much that passed in the hall with sad and melancholy eyes. Cuthbert could dimly remember his mother — her soft voice, her gentle hand, her tender kisses, falling like showers upon his forehead, in his half-waking moments, when she had laid him in his bed in the large room, still called by Grizel, the only woman servant about the place, " the nursery."

As Cuthbert went to do his father's bidding, he met Grizel in the stone passage leading to the servants' quarters. " Let supper be served, Grizel," he said ; " he is in a bad mood. I am going to get up two bottles of port, and I dare say I shall be sent for a third before we have done." "Don't do it, Master Cuthbert; don't do it! he has been drinking hard this forenoon. Giles says the mare came back all of a lather, and the master could scarce stand when he got off her back. Don't you go and let him have two bottles now." "Well, I'll see about it," Cuthbert said, as he turned a key he took from his deep pocket in a heavy iron door at the end of the passage and groped his way into the cellar. Cuthbert had views of his own for that evening, and was only anxious to soothe his father, and to shorten the supper-hour as much as possible.

He must be careful, he knew, not to provoke any dis cussion, and he must let him have as much wine as he wanted. When his father had drunk deep, he was never so difficult to manage as when he had had just enough to upset his equilibrium, and make him furious if anyone contradicted him. Many a time had Cuthbert resorted to an extra bottle to keep his father quiet. Many a time had he felt a twinge of self-reproach for doing so ; but lately these twinges had become more persistent, and Cuth bert was haunted at such moments with a sense of wrong-doing which he had not courage to resist. The bottles, well crusted with age, were placed on their sides on the floor, beneath a large oak side board, beautifully carved, but as dusty as the bottles below it. Birds and flowers, and many strange devices, were all surrounded with a rim of dust — the dust of years ; and across the back of the shield which surmounted the wide shelf, spiders had woven a tapestry which remained undisturbed.

Grizel sent up the supper by a stout young man who performed all kinds of duties in the household. He was stolid and good-natured ; he had learned, like everyone about the place, to look upon the stormy passions of his master as a condition of things as inevitable as the neglected state of the house, and no idea of resenting the one, or reforming the other, entered his head. Sam, who was bearing a tray with a huge meat pie, and two large silver tankards full of ale, was followed by Spot, who came in with a leisurely tread, and stretched himself before the smouldering embers on the hearth, giving a low whine as he did so, per haps to show that he wanted some supper, after his long scamper that afternoon. The meal proceeded in silence ; there was never any conversation between father and son, in the strict meaning of the word, though the Squire generally found occasion to jerk out complaints at his son, or Sam, about the viands, or the weather, or the cups.

This evening, however, not a word was spoken till Sam had drawn the cloth, put glasses and a caraffe of water on the oak board, which was dull and un polished, and left the room. Then Cuthbert brought up the bottles of port from the floor, and laid one before his father, who seized a corkscrew, drew the cork carefully, and poured out a glass with extreme satisfaction. " Here, push your glass over this way, Cuthbert, and take a sip of the finest wine in the county. Ah !" he said, holding a mouthful before swallowing it with that keen relish which betokens the connois seur in wine, " ah ! they don't beat that at the Pleasaunce. They are finer in their ways than we are, my boy, but they won't beat this port." Then, after a pause and another glass of wine, Mr. Rollestone said : " I rode over to the Pleasaunce this forenoon, and Eve done a stroke of business there for you, my boy!"

" For me, father ?" " Aye, for you — you mean to marry, I suppose, don't ye ?" " Some day— all in good time ; there is no hurry." " No hurry ! Why, you are well over twenty-five. I was married to your mother years before then. Poor soul ! I didn't have her long. Well, I've seen the very wife for you to-day, as smart and pretty a lass as you ever set eyes on. Squire Whinfield's only daughter. Says I, ' Look you, Master Whinfield, I wish I had such a lass for my daughter-in-law.' ' And,' says he, ' you are welcome to her. She is a thorough-bred, and no mistake ; and I'd give her to your son with a pretty portion, as soon as you like.' " " And the young lady is not to be consulted then ? You strike a bargain, you and her father between you, and expect her to agree ?" " Of course we do. Hang it, girls are always ready to catch at a bait.

And look you, Cuthbert, you are as pretty a fellow as can be seen any summer's day. Though I say it that shouldn't say it, my boy, I am right down proud of you." The first bottle of port had been finished, and the second begun; out of which Cuthbert had only taken a single glass. The Squire was getting into that stage known as " maudlin," and continued to ramble on about his son's perfections in a low whine. " You sit a horse as scarce any man of your age can sit. To see you take a fence is a treat — hang it, that it is. Then what a shot you are ! And, lor ! a scholar as well. Why, boy, a girl might think her self lucky to get hold of you." " But, father, I don't want to be forced on any girl." " Forced ? I tell you she'll jump at you, and " — lowering his voice — " she will have three thousand pounds — her mother's fortune — on her marriage-day.

Come now — what do say to that, eh ?" Cuthbert was fondling Spot's head, which came on a level with the arm of his chair ; but he did not speak. " Come, now ; don't be a fool. Ride over with me to-morrow — to the Pleasaunce — and — see for yourself." " Give me a week to think about it," Cuthbert said, pushing back his chair, and rising to leave the room. "A week! She'll be snapped up by somebody else. She's just home from a boarding-school. And no man has so much as looked at her yet." COLTS WOOD MANOR. 9 " I'll give you an answer this day week," was the reply. " I am going down into the town now." A coarse epithet was now thundered out, and his father shouted : " Leave the cellar-key ! I say "Two bottles is sure enough at one sitting," Cuthbert said coolly, as he whistled to Spot and left the hall.

He had lately possessed himself of the cellar key, thinking that was one step towards lessening the long account due to a Bedford wine-merchant for wine and spirits. So far, Cuthbert Rollestone had escaped the excess which, at the end of the last century, was almost the rule in the households of the country gentry. Perhaps a certain natural refinement in Cuthbert, inherited from the mother he resembled, had recoiled from the disgusting scenes he had often to witness, when his father and his boon companions met for their revels in the old hall he had just quitted. Perhaps, too, the remembrance of his feelings of shame and self-abasement on one or two occasions, when he had been carried up to bed by Sam, and had seen the grin on his face, acted as a safeguard. However that may have been, Cuthbert had not for some years felt anything but recoil from excess of any kind, and as a consequence had led a some what solitary life in a neighbourhood where the small Squires, like his father, looked upon hard drinking as a sign of superior breeding and manners !

As Cuthbert Rollestone took the path through the park which lay before the Manor House, the sound of church bells was borne up the valley on the breath of the summer wind — a sound which on a weekday was unusual in most parts of England, and told the story of a vicar who was certainly not after the type of the country parsons of those times. The air was sweet with the scent of new-mown hay, which was lying in the meadows sloping down to the gently flowing Ouse; the hedges were wreathed with wild roses and honeysuckle, and Cuthbert lingered rather than hastened, as he pursued his way through them. His father's words had set his thoughts in a new direction. His young manhood resented the notion of being forced to propose marriage to a girl he had never seenj and who would probably dislike the idea as much as he did.

And yet for some time past the isolation of his position, shut out from the society he might have enjoyed, had pressed upon him ; for I need not say there were exceptions to the rule, and many house holds of the gentry, like that of the Throckmortons, at W'eston, were refined in their habits and sur rounded by a very different atmosphere from that of Coltswood Manor. But Mr. Rollestone was too well-known as a reck less, dissipated man to be recognised by those who had different tastes, and his son shrank from notice ; and when he rode to cover, no one made or accepted any overtures of friendship. Yet there was a latent OLNEY CHURCH AND BRIDGE. sense of an incomplete life continually haunting Cuthbert, and the natural longing which lies deep in all our hearts for sympathy began to assert itself.

It was only the third time during the past six months that Cuthbert had crossed the threshold of the parish church. As he went along the churchyard path, the single bell was tolling, and two figures pre ceded him into the porch. One was that of a lady in a black-silk cloak and hood, one hand resting on the arm of a gentleman, who stooped a little as he walked, and whose tread was hesitating and slow. Cuthbert knew them well by sight, as Mr. Cowper, and his friend, Mrs. Unwin. This weekday evening service in the summer months was quite a new thing, and the congregation was small, and composed mostly of people who occupied the wooden benches in the aisle. High pews, covered with green baize, fastened with brass nails, stood in formidable array on either side of these benches allotted to the poor, and not one of them would have aspired to sit in the high pews, or in the gallery, which had been erected some years before for the exclusive accommodation of the " upper classes."

But Cuthbert preferred a seat on a bench in the aisle, and he found himself just opposite the open door of the large pew where Mr. Cowper and Mrs. Unwin sometimes sat at the week-day services, although on Sundays they occupied a seat in the gallery. Cuthbert had never spoken to the poet, who lived a retired life in the town of Olney ; but he had, since he had frequented the church, felt an in terest in him. There was something indescribably attractive in the delicately refined face, over which a shadow of melancholy lay like the mist which darkens the radiance of a landscape. Through that mist there may be gleams of sunlight at times, revealing the beauty which lies concealed, and so at intervals there were flashes of humour and friendly satire upon the countenance of the poet, which were signs of the bright intellect often so sadly overcast.

Cuthbert Rollestone's eyes were soon fixed upon the clergyman, who opened the service by a hymn, prefaced by the old invitation : " Let us sing to the praise and glory of God, the one-hundred and eighteenth -hymn, in the new hymn-book." The preacher read each verse, and but a feeble repetition followed from the small congregation, feeble in quality, but earnest and heartfelt. Most of those assembled were certainly singing with the understanding, and almost everyone but Cuthbert had one of the new hymn-books. The Olney Hymns had only been lately published, and Air. Newton, in his preface, explained their origin. His dark, keen eyes were fixed upon Cuthbert, who stood with his hands in his pockets, not without interest in his face, but still as one who could hardly be said to join in the act of worship.

His attitude was seen by Mrs. Unwin, who, gently touching the arm of her companion, signed to him to hand the stranger his hymn-book, and then, putting her own upon the wide desk of the pew, she looked up at Mr. Cowper to attract his attention to it. He started as from a dream ; but his rare, sweet smile, one of those flashes of which I have spoken, passed over his face as he leaned toward the young man and handed the book to him. Cuthbert received it with a grave bow, just as the second verse was being read by Mr. Newton : " I delivered thee when bound, And when bleeding healed thy wound ; Sought thee wandering, set thee right, Turned thy darkness into light." The poet, whose words they were, needed no book ; his eyes were raised as if looking at something others saw not. And then, before the last verse was read and sung, he had covered his face with his hands and sunk upon his knees.

The letter ' C proclaimed to Cuthbert that that hymn was his ; and the deep interest he felt for the poet deepened as he recalled the stories circulated in the neighbourhood of his madness and delusions. The sermon, delivered after the prayers and another hymn, was just such as was likely to rouse and arrest the attention of a young man. It was rough and unstudied, and on this week-day evening more like an address than a sermon. But it was full of living power, and from first to last Cuthbert Rollestone listened eagerly, and every word of the preacher seemed to be meant for him. " From darkness to light " was the theme — from misery to happiness, from doubt to holy certainty, from conflict to peace. The story of the Cross of Christ, so familiar in our ears, was new to Cuthbert, and his whole soul rose in response to the entreaty to come to the cross and find light, happiness, and peace.

In these days, we who go regularly to our churches, where due order is preserved, and all things around us are fair and beautiful to the eye, and music tends to raise the soul to God, and sermons are preached which are for the most part earnest and stirring, can form no idea of the dearth and utter barrenness of the Church a hundred years ago. No; nor can we enter into the surprise which men like John Newton excited as he reasoned of temper ance, righteousness, and judgment to come ; spoke of his personal experience, of his own wild life, of his conversion to God from ways of wickedness and sin to ways of pardon and peace. When the service was over, Cuthbert was walking slowly away, when a quick, firm step behind him made him pause and look round. " I have seen you at church two or three times of late, sir," Mr. Newton said.

" Will you come to my house and join our evening meal, and allow me to have a little talk with you ?" " I am obliged to you, sir," Cuthbert said some what haughtily, " but I had a plentiful meal before I left home." " Well, at least let me persuade you to return INTERIOR OF OLNEY CHURCH. with me for an hour. My dear sir, I am a plain spoken man, and I feel constrained to say you interest me deeply. You are ill at ease. Can I be of use to you ?" But Cuthbert's pride held him back. He answered stiffly : " I cannot linger this evening, sir, as I have duties which demand my return ; but I am deeply obliged to you, and I may avail myself of your offer at some future time." "'At a more convenient season I will send for thee.' Sir, that more convenient season may never come ; let me ask you to change your mind."