Part 5

The church was erected by one of the Mowbrays, and the tower, which is a handsome one, and from the top of which, on a clear day, you get a view as far as Aldeburgh, contains a clock presented by Sir Henry Thompson, our great surgeon, in memory of his father, a highly-respected inhabitant of Framlingham, who did much for the Congregational cause in that town. “Sir Henry Thompson was my Sunday School teacher,” said an intelligent tradesman to me, “and I have the book in which he signed his name as having taken the Temperance Pledge.” Framlingham—let me state by way of parenthesis—early gave in her adhesion to the Temperance movement. In the cemetery there is a monument to a worthy inhabitant of the name of Larner. He was the great Apostle of Temperance in the Eastern Counties. “He was for years,” Mr. Thomas Whittaker writes, in his _Life’s Battles in Temperance Armour_, “the man of Suffolk, the moving power, the undaunted spirit, the unwearied defender; and when it is remembered how special were the difficulties and how numerous the foes, the way in which he brought the whole district under his influence, and even to treat him with loving respect, it is the more remarkable. When he died the heart pulsation seemed to stop.” Out of the world as Framlingham is, and old-fashioned as is the town even to this day, there is a good deal of life in it, and especially so in religious matters. Including the college chapel, there are nine places of worship in it, for a population not much over two thousand. As far as I can make out, the Salvation Army here, as elsewhere, has helped to thin the attendance at most of the existing places of worship. If they can show a more excellent way it is rather a reflection upon the existing pulpits of the place. In spite of the Salvation Army, I met a man in the street who complained to me that Framlingham was dull. “You see, sir,” said he, “we are in an agriculturists’ district, and the farmers ha’n’t got any money.” It seems to me that they ought to have—at any rate, the public has to pay quite enough for its beef and mutton, and such farming produce as butter, and milk, and eggs. One odd thing in Framlingham is a tomb in a garden, which you pass on your way from the station, which preserves the memory of one Thomas Mills, a native, who seems to have made money, which he bequeathed to charitable purposes. Normans and Saxons seem to have had between them a good deal to do with Framlingham Castle and Church. At one time or other one of the parsons connected with the place was Catholic and Protestant, and thus went with the times. At a later period one had a more sensitive conscience, and was one of the ejected. Framlingham, like most English towns, seems to have been inhabited by all sorts and conditions of men. But its castle ought to be a rare place for excursionists to visit, and the country round is rich in rural charms. In the world, Framlingham, now that its castle is a ruin, and the power of the feudal lords gone, does not seem to have done much. It has had its day, and that day with its lords and ladies, and fighting men, must have been a grand one. Perhaps it’s as well that they

Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking, Morn of toil, nor night of waiting.

IX. SUDBURY.

IN the year 1727 there was born in Sudbury, and baptized in the Independent Meeting there, Thomas Gainsborough, one of the earliest and the greatest of English painters. The family were Dissenters, and in the meeting-house, now under the care of the Rev. Ira Bosely, who seems very happy and successful in his new sphere of labour, are the memorials of two of them who were buried in the graveyard attached. There are two bequests of the Gainsborough family for the support of the minister for the time being, of which the present incumbent made favourable mention when I saw him the other day, in the comfortable manse attached to the meeting-house. One of the items in the ancient account-book seemed to be curious. It was as follows: “Four shillings for tobacco.” I have only to assume in the good old times our pious ancestors had an idea of Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Services, and for that purpose possibly the tobacco had been acquired. Be that as it may, we may be sure the Gainsborough family were as remarkable as any that then attended on the means of grace. In person, Mr. Gainsborough’s father is represented as a fine old man, who wore his hair carefully parted, and was remarkable for the whiteness and regularity of his teeth. According to the custom of the last century he always wore a sword and was an adroit fencer, possessing the fatal facility of using the weapon in either hand. He introduced into Sudbury the straw trade from Coventry, and he managed to keep it in his own hands. He had a large family of five sons and four daughters. One of the latter married a Dissenting Minister at Bath. One son, John, was a great mechanical genius, and invented wings, by means of which he essayed to fly, but, to the amusement of the spectators, found himself, instead of soaring into the air, dropped in a ditch by the way. Humphrey Gainsborough, the painter’s second brother, settled as a Dissenting Minister at Henley-on-Thames. Of him, the celebrated Edgeworth, the father of the equally celebrated daughter, says he had never known a man of a more inventive mind. Thomas, the artist, must have inherited something of his artistic skill from his mother, for she herself loved to paint fruit and flowers, but with the boy, painting became the one great object of his life, and he was always at it, even when he should have been studying at the ancient grammar school where he was a pupil; and thus it is Sudbury has two great men to boast of—Thomas Gainsborough, the artist, and Simon de Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was beheaded by the populace in Wat Tyler’s rebellion, and whose skull is still shown you in St. Gregory’s Church. I have known many thick skulls in East Anglia, but surely that of the martyred Archbishop must have been one of the thickest to have lasted all this time.

Sudbury was the painter’s studio. It is now a clean, well-built, and slightly uninteresting provincial town, with a population of about eight thousand. But, said a commercial traveller to me, as I was deploring the barrenness of the land, “It is a good place for business.” It lies in the flat country of the valley of the Stour, a river which expands into a lake when the waters are out. When Gainsborough was a boy it was ancient and picturesque—and dirty. At any rate it is thus described in a poem written by Daniel Herbert, one of the old Noncons., a bunting manufacturer, and occasional preacher in the old meeting-house, who tells us

I live at Sudbury, that dirty place, Where are a few poor sinners saved by grace.

—Well, the dirt is gone; but when as late as the disfranchisement of the burgh, for bribery and corruption, which took place early in the reign of Queen Victoria, when the free and independent returned to Parliament a gentleman of colour, renowned for his vanity and wealth, it was evident that a good many poor sinners remained who had not been saved by grace.

Allan Cunningham treats the marriage of Gainsborough as all conventional writers do. The lady—her name was Margaret Burr, and she had £200 a year of her own—made Gainsborough “a prudent, a kind, and a submissive wife.” As the lady was but sixteen, and her husband was eighteen, at the time of their wedding, one cannot be surprised to find at a later period Gainsborough looking upon his wife as a somewhat unsuitable companion. Cunningham writes, “The courtship was short. The young pair left Sudbury, leased a small house at a rent of £24 a year in Ipswich, and, making themselves happy in mutual love, conceived they were settled for life.”

Sudbury was the birth-place of Enfield, whose _Speaker_ was a well-known text book in the past generation. Then our William Durbyn, author of the well-known _Commentary on the Epistle of Jude_, was also born there. He died a martyr for the truth’s sake in Newgate in 1685. The Grammar School of Sudbury dates as far back as 1591. Protestant as the town was, the Sudbury burghers marched to Framlingham to defend Mary’s rights against the attempted usurpation of Northumberland and his faction, she assuring them of her protection in the observance of their religion—a promise she shamefully failed to keep. It seems that Wilson, the Sudbury lecturer and preacher, was so harassed by the Bishop and Archbishop, that with Winthrop, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, he went over with a large band of the later Pilgrim Fathers to New England. Sudbury itself at one time seems to have rejoiced in a Christian toleration as refreshing as it was rare. In 1670, or thereabouts, it was the practice of the Nonconformists to preach in All Saints Church, while one of the early pastors of the Congregational Church lived with his family in All Saints Vicarage for eleven years. It appears from the town records that this church was without a regular incumbent for a long time, and that after the Dutch war, the church was used as a prison for the Dutch prisoners, there being at one time 500 of them quartered in the town.

The country round the old town—the town of Gainsborough’s boyhood—must have been singularly picturesque. The boy painter saw in it a beauty which he never forget; he told Thicknesse, his first patron, that “there was not a picturesque clump of trees, nor even a single tree of any beauty; no, nor hedge-row, stem or root,” in or around his native town, which was not from his earliest years treasured in his memory. It is interesting to note the painter’s progress. As you walk from the railway you come to Friar Street, where the painter married and took a house for a short while. A few steps further on bring you to Sepulchre Street, and you see the site of the house where he was born, opposite which is now the Christopher Inn. There was a large garden behind the house; and it was there the young artist sketched the face of the culprit whom he watched steal his father’s pears. That was his first attempt at portrait-painting, and a very successful one, as it led to the conviction of the culprit. The Pear Tree is still shown. Apparently Sudbury is famous for its pears. I saw many of them in the gardens belonging to some of the better houses. It was a pleasure for me to attempt to follow in the artist’s steps. For instance, I made my way to Brandon Wood, where the poet loved to go sketching. If the town is improved so as to be almost unrecognisable, the features of the country remain the same; nature builds more enduringly than man. There are trees in Brandon Wood that might have been there in Gainsborough’s time. Over the Essex border, a couple of miles off, is a landscape which still remains as it is drawn in our National Gallery. His paintings of a view near Sudbury and a neighbouring church are more or less still true to life.

Modern Sudbury seems to know but little of her most distinguished son. It is true that he left it at the age of eighteen to take up his residence at Ipswich, then at Bath, and afterwards in London, where he was somewhat of a rival to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and where he achieved fame and fortune as one of the founders of the Royal Academy. It is true that he sleeps not on the banks of the Stour, but on those of the Royal Thames at Kew, the village dear to his patron, George III. But Sudbury is singularly careless of the artist’s memory. As I passed the Liberal Club I accosted a respectable individual—I assume he was such, as he was evidently a member of the club—and in answer to my enquiries (he was an elderly man) he said, “I have lived in Sudbury all my life, and have no idea where Gainsborough was born,” but he did point me out the residence of Mr. Duport, a relative of the artist’s, and where some of his family portraits were preserved; but I am unable to state whether they are there now, as the house was shut up. There ought to be a good many of Gainsborough’s early attempts to be found in Sudbury, as he was very liberal in giving them to his friends. It is not too late for Sudbury to wipe off the reproach of her neglect. It is not too late to mark the sites illustrated by his genius; or to do honour to the memory of her greatest glory; or to show to the lads of the Grammar School there what one of its alumni did, and how he did it, and what he became. In these days culture and education are supposed to work wonders. In the career of Gainsborough, we note the success of one who had little of either, but who did wonders, nevertheless, by his industry and genius alone. We may note that after Gainsborough left his native town he rarely seems to have visited the place, only occasionally to give his vote on the Tory side.

There may yet be letters of Gainsborough to appear, to interest the reading public. The latest published is that which Mr. Redgrave has reprinted. It bears the date of 1776. It was written to his sister in what Mr. Redgrave describes as a clear, graceful hand. It throws a little light on his character.

“What will become of me, time must show; I can only say that my present position with regard to encouragement is all that heart can wish; but as all worldly success is precarious, I don’t build happiness or the expectation of it upon present appearances. I have built upon sandy foundations all my life long. All I know is that I live at a full thousand a year’s expense, and will work hard and do my best to get through withal; and if that will not do let them take their lot of blame and suffering that fall short of their duty both towards me and themselves. Had I been blessed with your penetration and blind eyes towards foolish pleasures, I had steered my course better; but we are born with different passions and gifts, and I have only to hope that the great Giver of all will make better allowances for us than we make for one another.”

So far it is clear Gainsborough feels the helpless and unsatisfactory character of his past life. We then have an insight—not very pleasant—into his family relationships. He speaks of his wife as “weak and good, and never much forward to humour his happiness.” His eldest daughter, Peggy, “is a sensible good girl, but insolent and proud in her behaviour to me at times.” Then his second daughter, Molly, he detects apparently writing letters to a Mr. Fischer, against whom the painter had long been on his guard. “I have never suffered that worthy gentleman ever to be in their company since I came to London, and behold, while I had my eye upon Peggy, the other slyboots has, I suppose, been the object all along.” And Molly wins the day and marries Mr. Fischer after all. Of domestic felicity the great artist seems to have had but a small share. Perhaps that was his own fault.

Sudbury ought to be more patronised than it is. Its river affords ample opportunities for boating; and it has a Temperance Hotel—perhaps the best in all Suffolk—where the tourist may rest and be thankful.

X. INTERNATIONAL HAVERHILL.

As tenants of uncertain stay, So may we live our little day That only grateful hearts shall fill The homes we leave in Haverhill.

THUS writes the poet Whittier, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the City of Haverhill in America. Most of us know there is a Haverhill in England, where resided Mr. D. Gurteen, who died recently in his eighty-fourth year, one of the grand old men—occasionally met with—who have spent all their lives in promoting the best interests, moral and pecuniary, of the community amongst whom they live. He was born when Haverhill was in a state of decay, its chief manufacture, that of silk, having dwindled all to nothing. He has almost rebuilt the place, and made it one of the most prosperous of our East Anglian towns. Haverhill, in a remote corner of East Anglia, is intimately connected with the American Haverhill. That was founded by the grandson of a well-known Haverhill clergyman—Rev. John Ward—one of the early Puritans who suffered for conscience sake, and against whom Romanising archbishops like Laud—in whose seat the present Archbishop of London tells us he is proud to be placed—made constant war. John Ward, whose monument is still to be seen in Haverhill Church, had a descendant named Nathaniel, who was educated at Cambridge, and went out into the wilderness of New England rather than remain the victim of persecution in the old country. He was a ripe scholar, and a man of great practical ability, a Puritan of the Puritans, who helped to mould the character and make the laws of the people of whom he became the minister. The hardy settlers, who had hitherto toiled in hope, overjoyed at Ward’s coming, insisted on naming their plantation—hitherto called Pentucket, after the Indian tribe who had lived there till bought out by the whites—Haverhill, from the birthplace of their honoured minister. In the recent celebration Haverhill in England was not forgotten. Mr. Alderman Gurteen and the rector were invited. The rector could not go. Mr. Alderman Gurteen could, and he crossed the Atlantic, bearing with him an address, handsomely got up, to the New England Haverhill. He was received with open arms, and on his return was honoured with a dinner in the Town Hall, presided over by his respected father, Mr. D. Gurteen, J.P., and there he delivered himself of his American experiences, and was listened to eagerly by a sympathetic audience, among whom I had the good luck to be one.

New Haverhill stands on the banks of the Merrimack, at a distance of some sixteen miles from the sea. The Merrimack deserves a line as the most noted water-power stream in the world. Haverhill lies on the north edge of Essex county, itself the north-eastern corner of Massachusetts. In the Haverhill of to-day there are over 250 firms engaged in the manufacture of shoes, and giving employment to 18,000 operatives, and distributing annually over 2,225,000 dollars in wages, and shipping 300,000 cases of completed boots and shoes. It is a big city, thirty-three miles off Boston by rail. The situation is picturesque, with an undulating surface, watered by lovely lakes and the glorious river. Haverhill rejoices in a Town Hall, one of the handsomest of its kind in New England, and twenty-four church organisations divided among eleven different denominations. No city in the commonwealth has grown so fast within the last ten years. I learn from a local paper that its population is “energetic, prosperous, and cultivated.” One of the things which seem to have struck Mr. Alderman Gurteen, as indeed it would some of us, was a handsome and commodious building known as the Old Ladies’ Home, intended to provide for such women as need it, a home in their declining years. Again, there is a Children’s Aid Society, formed and managed by women, to furnish a real home for destitute children. Haverhill has also a noble hospital, where almost every religious society in the city supports free beds. Such is the Haverhill of to-day. It has suffered from fire; from Indians, who rushed through it with their murderous tomahawks: (one of the things Mr. Alderman Gurteen was taken to see at the exhibition in connection with the anniversary, was the basket of grass in which Hannah Duston, one of Haverhill’s ancient heroines, carried the scalps of the Indians in the course of an unnatural conflict with the English). It was, too, a little Haverhill girl, saved in a cellar from massacre of the Indians by a negro girl, that was the ancestress of John Lothrop Motley. The whole world owes Haverhill much.

Of course, Mr. Alderman Gurteen was taken to see Whittier, the poet, who lived in a house with his three cousins and a little niece at Haverhill, where they yet show you the photograph of the cottage in which he was born, and the barn-like school in which he was educated. The poet, he has passed away since this was written, at the ripe age of eighty-two, enjoyed life; took an interest in all that passes, and, tall and thin, certainly did not look his age. He had written for the celebration a poem from which I have quoted above. Haverhill is proud of her shoes—but of her poet more. His way of life is familiar to them all—his early hours, his simple habits, his pet squirrels, who come to be fed, his plain living, and high thinking. He is a Quaker in speech, and talks to Englishmen of Henry Vincent, whom he knew, and George Thompson, with whom he fought for the anti-slavery cause. He is a charming old man, says Mr. Gurteen, and upright as a dart. He was much interested in the address from the English Haverhill. In fact, all whom Mr. Gurteen met with in his international trip acted as friends. They were, he says, a downright good lot of men and women, and what pleased him most was their devotion to the old country. He was delighted with everything he saw, “They are a right noble people, and our sort to a T.” It was the same everywhere. For instance, at Albany Mr. Gurteen and his daughter (who I should have said, accompanied him, and was as much charmed with America as he was) put their heads into a chapel, which happened to be open, and were accosted by a gentleman, with the remark that there was “no service to-night.” He told him in return that he was a stranger, and had only looked in from curiosity. “Where from”? he asked, and when the reply was “England,” the gentleman put out both hands, and said, “Welcome, welcome; I am glad to shake hands with any one from the old country,” and lit up the whole place in the twinkling of an eye.

Am I not right in calling such a visit an international one? Such visits are the true peacemakers, and strengthen the bonds of unity between nations better than can be done in any other way. Mr. Alderman Gurteen is a fair representative of what is best in a social and commercial and political and religious life. Old Haverhill could not have sent the new Haverhill a better specimen of the English citizen of to-day. The more we send such men to America on international visits, and the more America sends such men to us—whatever politicians on both sides the Atlantic may say or do to create bad feeling—the stronger and more lasting will be the tie that makes England and America—mother and daughter—one in heart and aim. Haverhill is deeply associated with Puritan History and the Pilgrim Fathers. Its greatest preacher was the Rev. John Ward, who is still commemorated by a tomb in Haverhill Church. One of his sons, Samuel, was a town preacher to the Corporation of Ipswich for thirty years. Another celebrated preacher was the saintly Samuel Fairclough, who was born at Haverhill in 1594, and passed from Cambridge University to become successively Lecturer at Lynn and Clare, which latter post he vacated to become Rector of Kedington, until he was ejected thence in 1692 by the iniquitous Act of Uniformity.

Our Essex Haverhill may be quoted as a remarkable illustration of what a man can do for his native town. The late Mr. Gurteen was often called the King of Haverhill, this title being based upon the fact that he was practically the maker of that flourishing town. The firm of which he was the head employ three thousand hands in the manufacture of drabbets and other fabrics, both linen and cotton, and in the making-up of clothes for the home and export trade. Mr. Gurteen’s liberality was commensurate with his business success. He presented the inhabitants with a Town Hall, costing £5,000, as a thank-offering on the jubilee of his wedding-day; built a Congregational Church at something like the same expenditure, and was the originator and principal supporter of many other improvements for the benefit of his native town.

XI. THE OLDEST ESSEX BOROUGH.