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BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE
Edward Wells Southworth
Fund
 SSr2Z.

FRIVOLA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Uniform Edition.
Crown ivo, limp cloth, silk sewn, 3s. 6d. per volume.
THE COMING OF THE FRIARS, AND OTHER
MEDI.ffiVAL SKETCHES.
ARCADY : FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.
RANDOM ROAMING, AND OTHER PAPERS.
STUDIES BY A RECLUSE.
TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON.
BEFORE THE GREAT PILLAGE, WITH
OTHER MISCELLANIES.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.

cA^fjo^A^

FRIVOLA
SIMON RYAN
AND OTHER PAPERS

BY
AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.
>• •
RECTOR OF SCARNING
HON. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
HON. FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
HON. CANON IN THE CATHEDRAL OF NORWICH

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
ADELPHI TERRACE
MCMVII

Frivola first published . , i8g6
Simon Ryan first published i8g6

1

[All rights reserved.]

And she talked on — we talked truly I upon
all things — substance — shadow —
Of the sheep thai browsed ihe grasses — of the
reapers in the corn —
Of the little children from the schools, seen
winding through the meadow —
Of ihe poor rich world beyond them, still kept
pooler by its scorn !
Mrs. Browning.

CONTENTS
MATTERS OF FACT
PAGE
SIMON RYAN . . . . .3
UPS AND DOWNS OF A NORFOLK NUNNERY . 94
QUEEN MARY'S FOOL . . . -149
IN WONDERLAND
THE DYING OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS . 1 63
AN antiquary's GHOST STORY . -174
THE PHANTOM COACH . . -183
DREAMS ..... 208
A NIGHT OF WAKING. . . .217

viii FRIVOLA
MISCELLANEA
PAGE
CLOCKS AND WATCHES . . . 229
THE PHENOMENA OF DOUBLES . . 238
A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON . . 247
NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF BRECCLES HALL,
NORFOLK . . -275

MATTERS OF FACT

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE
It is more than forty years ago since I first
heard of Simon Ryan. I was a Freshman.
I mean that I was in my first year at St.
Boniface, and there were still stage coaches
on the road in those primitive times ; at
any rate, there was one which plied between
Camford and Thrapston in Northampton
shire, and I found myself outside that coach
one day, and occupying the box seat, with
" old Topham " on the box. I quite forget
where I was going, and I only remember
two incidents on the journey. One was the
sight of a tame fox in an inn yard where
we changed horses, and the other was old
Topham's conversation as we drove past a
3

4 FRIVOLA
rather large coppice skirting the roadside
for some distance. I think it was some
where near Huntingdon. Mr. Topham had
a grudge against that coppice ; he had reason
to complain of it. Tramps and thieves, he
assured me, were wont to lurk there, and
when the' nights were ^ark and he ;had a light
load of passengers, the rogues more than once
had sneaked out of the^ wood aind hung on
behind the coach. Then they had contrived
to get dear off with: a hamper or other
package for which some one was answer
able, and when he got to the end of his
journey, lo I there was something missing
from the way-bill. Mr. Topham expressed
a strong wish that that Coppice was his
property ; then he'd cut it down, every stick
of it. "But that there Si Ryan he — he's
wrong in his head. He'd never cut down a
tree to save himself from the workhouse,
and he ain't likely to come to that neither.
If I was to ask him to cut down that copse
he'd laugh at me ! No ! He wouldn't do

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 5
that neither. He never does laugh. He's
a Peterite ! " I mused, and after a little
while I asked timidly, " What is a Peterite,
Topham ?"
The old jarvie took his time to answer.
" Bless you, sir, I don't know. They all say
he's a Peterite, and he don't deny it. He
ain't ashamed of it, anyhow. Maybe he
ain't no cause to be ashamed of that."
It was dark by this time, and I have a
distinct recollection of getting sleepy and
of half dropping off^ then of mechanically
repeating to myself : ". Si-Si-Si- Simon, Peter
Ry-Ryan, Rite, Peterite!" After that
Merhory has no triore that she can recall.
¦ Seven or eight years • later I found myself
in temporary charge of the parish of Carlton.
I had come back to the University and was
in residence for a time, but I officiated in
the little church on Sunday and went over
oiice during the week to visit the people.
It was a very bitter winter and the snow was
deep, and lasted for some weeks, I think ;

6 FRIVOLA
but I was young and enthusiastic, and the
people took to me. I think they were
rather complimented by being visited in the
" coarse " weather, and as I went in and out
among them cheerily they showed their
friendliness in many little ways which were
pleasant and encouraging.
One day I said to the clerk, " Who lives in
that house with the trees so thick round it ?
I've never been there yet. I must go." The
clerk grinned from ear to ear. " That ?
Why, don't you know, sir ? You must ha'
heerd talk of Mas'r Ryan. He's a Peterite ! "
I had quite forgotten all about my journey
on the coach, or, rather, I had never thought
any more of it ; but, as I heard the name,
the old scene came back upon me with a
curious vividness, and I found myself again
repeating the old words, "Si-Si-Si-Simon,
Peter Ry-Ryan, Rite, Peterite," in a dreamy
whisper. " Aye 1 That's right 1 " said the
clerk. "You've heerd tell of old Simon
Ryan, I'll be bound." And he grinned again.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 7
broadly. I cannot explain why I felt
irritated by the man's manner, but I was.
I could not bring myself to ask any more
questions. I passed out of the churchyard,
trudged bravely through the deep snow, and
made straight for "Mas'r Ryan's" without
turning my head. The sun was setting.
The clouds looked heavy and sullen ; it was
dusk when I knocked at the door. There
was a light burning in the hall. For several
minutes I waited and heard no sound. I
knocked again ; for there was a brass
knocker and no bell. Then there were foot
steps. The door opened, and I found myself
confronted by a tall man whose face I could
not see, for his back was towards the lamp
on the hall table, which of course shone full
on my face. He held the door wide open,
in a frank, fearless way, paused a moment,
and then, in a deep voice that betrayed no
surprise nor any other emotion, he said
inquiringly, " Your pleasure, sir ? "
" I am in charge of this parish, sir, for

8 FRIVOLA
some months," I answered, " and I think it
right to pay my respects to all the par
ishioners, that I may, if I can, teach some
thing to those who desire to learn, and, if
I can, learn something of those who have
anything to teach. May I come in, Mr.
Ryan ? "
Instinctively he drew back, and I crossed
his threshold. I had advanced but a single
Step when he seemed to hesitate. By this
time the lamp was throwing the light full
upon his face, and I saw a man of perhaps
seventy. His hair was thick and long, per
fectly white, the forehead high and broad,
the eyebrows, with scarte a . suspicion of
grey in theni, met and made a dark band
across his face ; there was a dreamy, restless
look about his eyes, his lips and fingers were
working nervously. He seemed perplexed',
as if doubting what to say or do. " I am
not wont to see visitors here, young sir ; but
as you have come in so far, come farther.
Hath he not said, ' Use hospitality one to

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE g
another without grudging ?' Do you drink
tea ? "
I passed through the hall into a long room
which, by the imperfect light, seemed to me
even larger and loftier than it actually was.
It was crowded with antique furniture as a
dealer's store might be. But the massive,
black, old chairs, the fantastic escritoires and
cabinets, the tiny little tables of all shapes
and designs, the heavy settees, and, con
spicuous above all, an indescribable bureau
rising high above everything else, were all
arranged, two and three deep, along one side
of the apartment. The other side was
occupied by bookshelves from floor to
ceiling, and between these and the furniture
was a broad passage, perhaps ten feet wide —
which I used to call the aisle when I got
upon familiar terms with Mr. Ryan — and up
and down this aisle he was wont to walk for
hours when the restless fit was upon him,
thinking and talking to himself, as his
manner was, in a slow, aimless kind of way.

IO FRIVOLA
For years, I was told, this was his only
exercise. At one end of the room was the door by
which I had entered ; then a huge fireplace in
which some great logs were burning brightly;
then, where the aisle stopped, the wall was
heavily draped with some antique hangings
of stamped velvet. At the other end was a
large oriel window, with seats in it, and a
plain, heavy, deal table, which I guessed that
Mr. Ryan had made with his own hands
in one of his wayward moods. Where the
old velvet curtains hung when I first entered
the room, there had formerly been placed
upon the floor a plain oak coffin with brass
fittings ; and in that coffin Mr. Ryan, for
several years, had regularly laid himself
down every evening, and there it was sur
mised he used to say his prayers. After a
while he grew too large for the coffin, and
when he could no longer get into it, or
began to find that getting out of it was a
perilous gymnastic feat, he had set it upright,

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE ii
fixing the lid on hinges and converting it
into a door, of which he kept the key.
The only piece of furniture in the aisle
that I have spoken of was a long escritoire,
and before it stood a high-backed chair,
stately and ponderous ; the arms were a
pair of writhing griffins, that faced you
grimly as you entered, and fitted their
grotesque heads above the level of the
escritoire that they seemed to guard.
Beyond this chair stood a lady, her head
only just above the high back, for she was
very low of stature. In the window seat
was a boy who, at the first glance, I took to
be about twelve ; he was reading, and appa
rently was absorbed in the volume.
Mr. Ryan set down the lamp upon his
writing-table. The light fell upon the face
that rose above the chair-back. I was struck
by the exquisite beauty of the head. It was
bent forward, the hair was wonderfully
smooth, glossy, and fine, and, parted down
the middle with a perfect distinctness, such

12 FRIVOLA
as one rarely sees now, it was allowed to fall
a little over the brow, then gathered up into
a roll, and massed in coils low down upon
the neck.
Her eyes were bent upon the table ; she
made no movement as we entered '; she
stood there mute as a statue. " Your name,
young sir ? " I told him. He paused,
peered curiously at me, and a shudder
passed over him.
" I have been waiting for you, young sir ;
waiting for many years. Not because you
are a f lively stone,' though a rumour came
to me that you are, but it was your sire
who threw his gentleman-commoner's gown
over my drowned brother's face as they
carried him through the streets of Oxford.
You are his son, ' elect, precious.' "
He came up to me and kissed me on
the cheek, and I did not resent it nor
draw back.
" The lady Electa 1 '' He waved his hand

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 13
to the figure behind the chair : she lifted
her eyes. I smiled and bowed. The dark
eyes looked down again ; she was as motion
less as before. The boy rose. from his seat,
his book in his hand, aind without a word
took hisiplaee at his father's side. " Marcus,
my son ! " I held out my hand ; Marcus
looked as if for permission to Mr. Ryan,
then placed his hand in mine and left it
there, as if he did not know what was
expected of him.
As he stood before me, his hand in mine,
I found him older than I had first thought
him ; his voice was just beginning to break,
there was a soft down upon his upper lip,
he was slight and evidently far from robust.
He was dressed in a kind of dark-coloured
pinafore, his throat bare, and the collar
of his shirt turned carelessly over on this
side and on that. As I looked at him it
seemed to me that young Keats had walked
out of his picture, and had come to hold
converse with me. I thought, " Is it all

14 FRIVOLA
a vision, and am I only dreaming ? " For
a moment the room and its occupants,
with their strange surroundings, swam round
before me, and a sense of disappointment
depressed me, for I knew I should awake
to realities all too soon. How long we
all stood thus silent, Mr. Ryan watching
me the while, I know not ; I was roused
by his voice.
" Electa, Stephen's son has come ! "
" My father's name was not Stephen, sir ;
it was John i "
" Young sir ! Your father's name was
Stephen I You have yet to learn the
significance of names."
It was said without any emphasis or
the least sign of displeasure ; but as he
spoke, his back turned to his wife, the
lady glanced up quickly and raised a finger
to her lips. Then she blushed deeply and
again looked down.
" Electa, Stephen's son has come ! Let
there be tea here — tea in twenty-three

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 15
minutes. Marcus, my son, shall stay with
us. Let there be toast and much butter
upon it 1 "
He took his seat upon the high-backed
chair and motioned to Marcus, who took
his place by his father's side, standing with
his open liquid eyes following my every
motion, and his hand resting on the head
of one of the griffins.
" May I look at the books, Mr. Ryan ? "
" You may look, young sir."
The room must have been forty feet long.
One special shelf on a level with my chin
was filled with the most remarkable collec
tion of volumes on the criticism of the
New Testament that I had ever seen. In
fact, of only a small proportion of them
had I ever heard the names. I was still
in the twenties then, and I was just be
ginning to feel how ignorant I was. But
this shelf fairly staggered me. In the
middle of the shelf stood the works of
Archbishop Leighton, in four octavo

i6 FRIVOLA
volumes. They' had evidently been read
and re-read, they were battered, and worn^
" Ah ! Here is Archbishop Leighton, I
see!" " Young sir, he was an apostate ! "
I turned in wonder. What did he mean ?
"That any human creature should have
read Simon Peter's Epistle so often, known
it so well and understood it so little, proves
that this man was begotten of corruptible
seed ! " - ^
Remembering the lady Electa's warning,
I made no answer, but continued my
examination. " Oh ! Mr. Ryan, this is a rare book !
Thomas Adams on the Second Epistle of
Peter ! You are fortunate ! "
" Fortunate ! fortunate 1 fortunate ! " he
kept on repeating, the tone growing more
and more mocking and scornful.
" That is the eleventh copy of that book
I have owned, young sir ! It is a task I
have imposed upon Marcus, my son, to

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 17
tear out a leaf from that volume every
day before our midday meal, and con
sume it in the fire upon the hearth. The
Second Epistle, young sir I Tell him the
truth ! Tell it him, Marcus, my son ! "
The boy raised his hand from the griffin
and pointed to the book with his forefinger.
" There never was a Second Epistle. Father
knows that forged banknotes are bad to
handle. Forged epistles, father knows, are
wicked and worse ! "
I began to feel crushed and uncomfort
able. This man knew more than I did,
and I could not tell what was coming
next By chance I took up Valpy's Greek
Testament. There were no Alfords in
those days, but Valpy was still a stock
book for weak-kneed candidates for Holy
Orders. The volume opened at St. Peter's
Epistle. It was minutely annotated in a
small crabbed hand.
" A sheep going astray, young sir 1 " said
Ryan, "stumbling at the word as he goe§
3

i8 FRIVOLA
along ; a soul-less pedant, prating for ever
of Bos and his Greek ellipses. Let him
go!" He took the book from me and
laid it down upon the table.
I iwas relieved by the opening of the
door. The lady Electa came in with a
tray, and a hand holding a plate piled
high with buttered toast appeared at the
door. Marcus, at a sign fr-om his father,
took the plate and laid it upon the table ;
the door closed noiselessly.
A seat was set for me opposite the high-
backed chair. "Where will Mrs. Ryan
sit ?" I asked.
"The lady Electa is in subjection to her
own husband ; she has no seat, yoiing sir 1 "
She poured out the. tea, Marcus standing
at his father's side. Then she took her
place again, silent and with downcast eyes
as ' before. " Hush ! " he said solemnly.
He rose upon his feet and made the sigh
of the cross upon his breast, his right hand
moving slowly upwards and pausing as if

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 19
to show me how it was to be done. I
did as he did. Then he drew another
line with his left hand from shoulder to
shoulder. The tea was good and I was
tired with my day's work and very glad
of the meal. He talked continuously in
a deep monotonous voice. When we had
finished there was still abundance of toast
upon the platter. Simon rose, "Let us
walk, young sir ! " He laid his hand upon
my shoulder and walked me up and down
that aisle between the bookshelves and
the rows of furniture, backwards and
forwards, backwards and forwards, till
from very weariness I said I must go.
Meanwhile the mother and son had been
finishing the tea ; both standing all the
time at the board. I had a fear of his
kissing me again, so I held out my hand
at arm's length. He took it. I bowed
silently to the lady Electa, took Marcus
playfully by his shoulders and said good
bye cordially, Ryan furtively watching me

20 FRIVOLA
all the time. "You will come again, young
sir, next week. Is Stephen yet alive ? "
"My father died last year," I answered,
" but if I may I should like to come again.
I am quite sure, sir, you can teach me a
great deal. Next week I will come again."
This was my first interview with Simon
Ryan. « • » * «

II

Who was this man ? Tradition said that
his father was a merchant in London, where
he had amassed a considerable fortune,
which he had invested partly in house
property in the Borough, partly in small
landed estates in the country. The old man
was reported to have been eccentric and
solitary in his habits, but a shrewd man of
business up to the last. He had two sons,
the elder of whom he named Paul, the
younger Simon ; there were three years
between the two boys. No one could tell
anything about their mother ; she died a
few days after her younger son was born.
Paul was sent to Eton, and Simon to some

22 FRIVOLA
of his father's correspondents on the Con
tinent, where he acquired two or three
foreign languages. When he was about
fourteen his brother Paul joined him at
Hamburg, and the two lived together for
the next two or three years, the younger
brother conceiving an idolatrous affection
for the elder, which, as it appeared ridicu
lous to the ybung nien with whom Paul
mixed, led at last to a separation^Paul
going up to Oxford, and Simon staying
behind at Hamburg, where he was sup
posed to be qualifying for mefcatttile life.
In his second term Paul was mysteriously
drowned in the Cherwell. The news of
this disaster killed old Ryan, ahd the shock
produced upon young Siihon so great an
effect that his brain became affected. His
father had left the yoiith: as a ward to a
Worthy solicitor, into whose house he was
taken, and here he transferred to a son of
the house, of about his own age, the same
romantic and admiring lowS which he had

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 23
bestowed upon his brother. Young Clarke
was, however, a very matter-of-fact young
fellow, and, though he just tolerated the
other's devotion, had very soon too much
upon his hands to allow of his being
Simon's constant companion. Simon
found himself more and more lonely. He
hated business ; he was painfully shy and
reserved; he had no profession, his means
were far in excess of his wants, though
he was not without tastes j he was an
omnivorous reader and an enthusiastic
musician. After he came into his property, he took
to wandering about, no one knew where ;
he had chambers in Gray's Inn, from which
he would disappear for a year at a time,
and then suddenly he would go to his
tailor to be fitted out afresh. He asked no
questions and answered none. He had no
friends. One day, while he was in London, young
Clarke, who managed everything for him.

24 FRIVOLA
came and announced that he was going
down to Carlton to look at the old Manor
House, which was reported to be in a
ruinous condition.
" Let's go together. Si. It's a shame you
should not go and see your own tenants ;
there are only half a dozen of them, but
they've never set eyes on their landlord,
and it may come to pulling down the old
house, and I don't hke doing that without
your seeing it."
Simon was delighted at the prospect of
a week with his friend. They went accord
ingly. The old Manor House was hope
lessly dilapidated, but it was full of antique
furniture, which had gone with the estate
when Simon's father had foreclosed the
mortgage, and it was a question of some
difficulty what was to be done with the
impedimenta; The matter ended by Simon
resolving to build himself a house after his
own plans, and live in it when it was built.
" What ! here in this hole. Si ? Here, and

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 25
alone? Who's the lady, man?" The
Manor House had been an Elizabethan
building, one of those smaller country resi
dences which are now getting so rare. The
estate had never been a large one, and had
become less and less, till now it hardly
exceeded 500 acres ; twenty of these acres
had been planted by Simon's father close
to the house, and the trees were now
growing up to some height, and had been
judiciously thinned out from year to year
by the Clarkes, father and son. The new
house was built ; the plan was unique.
The single hall or library faced east and
west, forty feet long by twenty broad, and
over it a bedroom of the same size. Along
the north of this building ran a lean-to of
two stories, and a similar lean-to on the
east. Here were the offices, and bedrooms
over them. At the south-eastern and north
western corners were two staircases, and a
passage communicated from one to the
other into which all the bedrooms opened ;

26 FRIVOLA
they all looked to the north or east, and
were very small.
At first the only servants in the house
were a man and his wife, "without en-'
cumbrances." The man had been a farm
bailiff, the wife a gentleman's housekeeper.
She was a good cook — a cleanly, methodi
cal person — who was mortally afraid of her
master, with a kind of superstitious awe
which he was wont to inspire in all who
came, in contact with him. Her fear of
her husband was the fear of a timid creature
who had suffered at his hands for years,
and who never knew what he might do to
her any hour of the day or night. For,
though he had been a sober man at first,
yet the intolerable dulness of the life
gradually preyed upon him, and every
night when Mr. Ryan went up to bed as
the clock struck ten, Wraggles slipped out
by the back door and betook himself to the
" Compasses," where a choice company
was wont to assemble, and drink, and sing,

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 27
and smoke till midnight. Then Wraggles
staggered home, invariably "the worse for
liquor," and, about once a week, a dan
gerous ruffian to the poor frightened wife
who let him in, and had hard work to keep
him from howling and roaring. When he
beat her she whimpered imploringly tb
him, beseeching him to "hold his noise,"
for Mr. Ryan would be sure to hear him.
Years went by. The lonely life preyed
upon all the three inmates of the strange
house, and Ryan himself became more
and more strange. Since his brother's death
he had never been actually insane again.
But he was never sane. He began to
be absorbed more and more by a religious
delusion. He wrote long letters to Harry
Clarke) as he always called him, which the
other never read through, but answered
Very curtly when some business matter had
to be dealt with. The letters became more
and more elaborate and didactic. At last
Simon declared that he was conscious of

28 FRIVOLA
a mission. His brother's death had been
the penalty exacted for the sin against the
Holy Ghost which his parents had com
mitted at his baptism. His father had
christened him Paul, and had gloried in
the son that bore the accursed name ; and
he himself — he, Simon — had had to pay
for all the infatuate love he had lavished
on that best of brothers. For, if that dear
one had lived, he, Simon, would have been
a Paulite to the end. Then came moan-
ings of a grief that had never left him at
rest ; outpourings of a heart that was for
ever throbbing with unsatisfied yearnings ;
hints that his time for delivering his testi
mony against the heresies of Paul of Tarsus,
the great corrupter, who had perverted the
Gospel and led the generations horribly
astray — yes ! his time was coming.
"Poor old Si, he's off his head again,"
murmured Harry Clarke. "But he's as
clear as I am in business matters though,
and that banking account of his goes

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 29
rolling up at an awful pace. I think I'll
go and see him ! '* One pressing engage
ment after another prevented this ; and the
letters came more and more frequently.
Sometimes they would be written with
long passages in Latin or German or
Italian, presumably conveying esoteric
communications, which Harry could not
understand a sentence of, and which
worried and irritated him.
" Confound the man ! he takes me for
a Polyglot. What's the good of writing to
me in that wriggling German gibberish!
I'll keep away 1 "
One day came a huge parcel containing
fifty copies of a thick pamphlet. It was
entitled :
"Simon, The Testifier of the Chief
Shepherd, to the Elders of the Roaring
Lion. Being a Protest against the Per
versions of the Truth wrought by the
Tent Maker of Tarsus."
I am told that it was an "awfully

30 FRIVOLA
learned" polemic, which endeavoured to
establish that St. Paul had been the great
enemy to the spread of true Christianity,
and that the only hope for the success of
the Gospel's acceptance by all mankind
was in the excision of all the Pauline
writings from the Canon of Holy Scripture,
and with them the Gospel of St. Luke.
The Book of the Acts of the Apostles was
to be classed with '* other heretical stories."
Harry Clarke was solemnly adjured to
forward a copy of this rhapsody to every
Bishop on the bench, to the Professors
of Divinity in the two Universities, and to
certain prominent divines whom the writer
named. He was further ordered, under
all sorts of pains and penalties, to read
the pamphlet himself and to prepare him
self for what would follow.
Harry — I must needs call him by the
familiar name, though he was by this time
a married man with sons and daughters.-r-
Harry, I say, obeyed his injunctions in

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 31
his usual business way ; all except reading
the pamphlet. He tried it two or three
times, but he fell asleep over it again and
again while smoking his cigar in the
evening, and ended by flinging it into the
fire and watching it burn. Not a human
being appears ever to haVe got to the end
of the crazy treatise, and, to Mr. Ryan's
wonder, disappointment, even horror, not
a single acknowledgment reached him,
not a single notice, public or private, came
to his hand.
He became more and more self-involved
and solitary in his habits ; refused to let
even Mrs. Wraggles come into the library ;
insisted that she should put his meals upon
a table outside the door, and roll it into
the room just far enough to allow of her
shutting the door behind it. Then he
began to walk out in the grounds for
exactly an hour every night from nine to
ten, on a broad carriage drive that he had
made under the high park paling which

32 FRIVOLA
he had set up round his little domain ;
gave his orders every morning to Wraggles
who had become by this time a confirmed
sot ; and read and wrote all day long,
except when he sat down to a small organ,
which he had built himself and played
upon it by the hour, now and then diversi
fying this solemn recreation by practising
upon the violin, fitfully, incoherently. He
was approaching fifty, when it came to
pass that one night Mrs. Wraggles, who
scrupulously and most carefully dusted
and cleaned the big library every night
after her master had gone to his bedroom,
found that the violin was missing. Frag
ments of it lay smouldering among the
logs in the great chimney. He had burnt
it. It was supposed that he had discovered
he had become deaf to some high notes.
Then he took the pipes out of the organ,
smashed them, and flung them out of the
window. In a day or two the case was
burnt as the violin had been. As for the

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 33
pipes, Wraggles took them away, and some
how they came into the possession of a
worthless old farmer who was one of
Ryan's tenants. The fellow, Hammond
by name, had been ejected from the Society
of Friends for some flagrant dishonesty ;
but he still wore the Quaker dress and
still persisted in going to the Quaker
meeting-house, seven miles off, every
Sunday morning.
Hammond was a shifty fellow, always be
hindhand with his rent, and for two years he
had paid nothing at all. Harry Clarke tried
to put in an execution. But Ryan would
have nothing to do with the law. He
grew more and more cool and reticent
with Harry, while the latter's visits became
fewer and fewer. What had become of
the Borough property he never could
discover. All he knew was that Ryan
had forbidden him having more to do
with it. It had simply disappeared.
One day Hammond appeared at the
4

34 FRIVOLA .
lodge gate,, where lived one of the faftli
labourers whose strict charge it was to
let no living soul go through ' except the
tradesmen furnished with a pass. He was
bareheaded, and he carried in his hand
a watchman's rattle, which he swung round
vigorously, making a hideous clatter. " Gi'
over that noise, Mas'r Hammond, will'ee ?
don't, I'll throw the slops over you ! "
" I come in the name of the Lord ! Open
the gate or a curse will fall on thee and
thy name ! "
There was a feeble and timid resistance.
Then Hammond marched on straight into
the library, flinging the door wide open,
and stood before his landlord swinging
his rattle with a strong arm.
The suddenness and oddity of the attack
threw Ryan wholly off his guard. He
stared blankly.
" Simon Ryan, I come to give thee glory.
Thy light has shone in upon my heart.
Behold me ! I have renounced the per-

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 35
versions of the tent maker. I am of Peter ;
not of Paul, neither of Apollos ! "
^f: * * an *
A few months after this Mr. Ryan's
privacy was again invaded ; Harry Clarke
appeared with another gentleman, a repre
sentative of the bankers with whom his
account was kept. Some heavy cheques
had been drawn on the account, beginning
at ;^20, and followed by several for larger
sums in rapid succession. At last a cheque
for ;^i,ooo was presented by a tall man
dressed as a Quaker. Payment was refused
and the cheque detained.
Harry Clarke, on being referred to,
unhesitatingly pronounced the signature
a forgery. Ryan's wrath fell upon Harry
Clarke. Prosecute ? Not for all the world.
Prosecute his one convert. Never 1
" It is we who prosecute ! " said the
banker. " You will be compelled to appear
as a witness, Mr. Ryan ! "
But Hammond was never more seen

36 FRIVOLA
or heard of, and of course was never put
upon his trial.
*****
It must have been, I think, in 1832 that
the cholera broke out in Carlton. It fell
with awful violence upon Mr. Ryan's
tenants. There were eight or nine cottages,
crowded dreadfully, and the hovels were
in a shameful state. Fifty yards or so from
this rookery stood a small house tenanted
by the Baptist minister, whose chapel was
a mile off. He was a fair specimen of his
class and he had a wife who had been
a governess in a gentleman's family and
a daughter about sixteen years old.
Rumours came to Ryan that the plague
was raging. When Wraggles came in for
orders he was unmistakably drunk. Ryan
could not be blind to it ; he clutched the
fellow's collar and shook him violently.
"Thou limb of Paul!" he cried. "Is it
a time to walk in excess of wine, revellings
and banquetings, when the Gospel has

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 37
never been preached to them that are
dead and thou art one of the dying ? "
For once in his life Wraggles — pot-
valiant — dared to make answer. "That's
all very fine, master. You're a jolly
Peterite, you are ! If there ain't no
Gospel, you go and give it 'em ! That's
all I say. You'd want a drop too if you
saw 'em in among them cottages o' yourn ! "
It was a call to Simon Ryan. He did go
among the dying and the dead. He seemed
to bear a charmed life. The scenes he saw
were indescribably horrible. Mr. Merrison,
the Baptist minister, was smitten ; he died
in frightful agonies. The miserable and
penniless widow followed her husband to
the grave after laying him in his coffin with
her own hands. She recovered from the
cholera herself, only to die a week later
from sheer exhaustion. " Dolly, my
darling I " she kept saying during those
last hours. "Dolly, do everything that
God and Mr. Ryan bid you. Between the

38 FRIVOLA
two you'll never come to harm. Dolly ! do
as they two bid you, and especially do what
Mr. Ryan tells you is right !"
Then she fell asleep and never woke.
The girl was stunned.
After the funeral, Dolly found herself an
inmate 'of Mr. Ryan's house, she did not
know how. She had one of the little
bedrooms. It was hot summer, and she
wanted no better apartment. Wraggles
had fallen a victim to the cholera. The
drink had helped that on ; and Dolly and
Mrs. Wraggles were drawn together in a
kind of sad friendship. They were both
bereaved ones and forlorn. Somehow the
old strict and terrible discipline of the
household had relaxed. Mrs. Wraggles
had demanded help in the house ; Simon
had granted her two under-servants on
condition that neither of them ever entered
the library, and that neither ever appeared
in his presence, nor were their voices ever
to be heard. He himself would never be

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 39
their master, or be referred to. Mrs.
Wraggles must engage them and dismiss
them as she pleaSed. Ryan's walks in the
"grounds" became less regular. He missed
Wraggles, and the new bailiff jarred against
his feelings. He began to walk out at all
times of the day. The harvest had set in.
Ryan actually went and looked on at the
reapers^ — ^there were real reapers in those
days. He mused shyly, speaking to none,
only silently bowing in response to the
greetings. " Largess, Mas'r. Largess ! "
broke out from some voices. The cry
grew to a general shout, and the men,
sickles in hand, came crowding aboijt him.
He put his hand in his pocket, and drew
out a golden guinea.
" The end of all things is at hand ! " he
said. " Be ye thisrefore sober ! "
The lord of the harvest — for in those
days that functionary still had a recognised
position in many parishes — pulled off his
hat, and, scarcely believing his eyes, took

40 FRIVOLA
the shining coin, spun it high up in the
air, and shouted with triumphant joy :
" There's largess, mates ! " There were
shrieks of wondering rejoicing, and Mr.
Ryan left them, to finish his perambulation.
As he approached the house, there was
Dolly ! She came to meet him swiftly in
great agitation. " Mr. Ryan ! Oh, Mr.
Ryan ! I've never found a word. I've
never seen you — my heart is so very, very
full ! Oh, Mr. Ryan ! mayn't I — mayn't
I kiss your hand ? "
She dropped on her knees, and before
he could prevent her she had caught his
hand and kissed it again and again. He
was utterly perplexed and walked slowly
on — she, sobbing as if her heart would
break, trying to speak and finding no arti
culate utterance — he, silent and frightened
by his own emotion. He passed into the
library and shut her out. She went and
hid her face in Mrs. Wraggles' lap, the
good woman mingling her tears with the

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 41
girl's, and softly stroking the glossy hair
on the beautiful head while she poured
forth many a gentle commonplace which
yet it was a comfort to speak and a comfort
to listen to.
All that day Simon was restless. He
walked up and down the aisle for hours.
As the time for dinner drew near he went
to the door and left it wide open. Mrs.
Wraggles was ordered to bring in the tray.
An hour later she came back ; Simon was
still walking, and the dinner was untouched.
She ventured to ask him if she should
warm it up. He looked at her dreamily.
"Tell Miss Merrison that this room is open
to her."
That room 1 That sacred, mysterious
room, with the coffin standing grimly there
— did he mean it ?
"When, Mr. Ryan?"
" Now."
The young girl, who had heard all about
the coffin, and was prepared for it, came

42 ERIVOLA
in without hesitation, all beaming with
the joy of an immense gratitude, and met
him in his walk. He turned from her
and sat down upon the high-backed chair.
" Why did they christen you. Dolly ? " ¦
"They didn't christen me at all: I have
never been baptized."
He started up with a look of horror on
his face.
"Not baptized ? Not a Christian ? Every
where the trail of the serpent ! The great
perverter still at work. The tent maker that
boasted he had baptized none of . them.
Wretched girl I"
"Whatever you bid me I will do, Mr.
Ryan. What less could I do ? "
Three weeks later the rector of the parish
received a wondrous missive from Simon.
He invited him to a conference. The
rector was a well-meaning and earnest
man, and, more than that, a man of robust
good sense and tact. Somehow his pleasant
voice and fearless outspokenness told with

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 43
Simon. There were concessions made on
both sides, and "Dolly" was baptized in
the church, one week-day morning, and
received the name of Electa.
" I very nearly christened our young
friend Electra," said the parson as he took
•off his surplice. " She has a new name in
more senses than one."
Simon looked at him severely. " New ?
Such are ye all — Paulicians every one.
What know ye of the Word — ye that look
as through a glass darkly ? Ye who know
nothing about those things of which the
chief of the Apostles wrote save what ye
find in your mean and beggarly mother-
tongue. New is it ? New — that at Simon
Peter's side at Babylon there sat the Lady
Electa Whom ye, after your fashion, call
'the Church,' forsooth. Ye who know not
that John the Son of Thunder wrote his
loving letter to that same Lady Electa in
the years of her widowhood when Simon
Peter had been nailed to his cross."

44 FRIVOLA
The rector smiled and made no reply.
Why should he argue with a madman ?
Every morning during the previous
month Electa had been summoned into
the library to be taught the mysteries of
the true faith. Simon went on by the
hour, walking, talking, swinging his arms.
What a joy to have found a disciple at last,
one so docile and patient too, and growing
day by day more reverent, submissive, and
over-awed ! It was a new_ life to the girl.
Her father had been a hard, narrow man ;
a man of Scripture phrases, poured out
by the yard, a man of unctuous manner
with Dr. Watts's hymns for ever on his
lips ; a man of no knowledge, of vulgar
manners, which offended and at times
disgusted his more refined wife ; a man
too coarse in the grain to have any tender
ness. He swallowed his victuals, spoke
through his nose, made long prayers in
a loud, monotonous voice, but left "the
womankind," as he called them, to go their

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 45
own way, and hurled Bible texts at them
when, on his return from his long perambu
lations, he found them reading together
out of the dozen or so volumes of poetry,
Milton, Cowper, Campbell's " Pleasures of
Hope," Gray, and a few others, which his
wife had provided herself with in her
younger days.
To Electa the new life was full of reve
lations. The comparative luxury of the
house as compared with the poverty she
had been accustomed to ; the contact with
a man of original ideas, pouring out every
moment some startling fact or suggestion
such as she had never dreamed of before ;
the flashes of actual eloquence, lighting up
the unintelligible jargon of philosophical
and theosophic speculation, drawled out
by the hour in a low, mysterious, sing-song
till she knew not whether the speaker was
human or divine, and her heart beat quick
and her breathing well-nigh ceased as the
sense of awe and mystery wrapt her round.

46 FRIVOLA
But with this intellectual ascendancy
that Simon had acquired over his disciple
there can be no doubt that, quite uncon
sciously, he was exercising a most potent
mesmeric mastery over the girl. She had
become his constant companion now in the
mornings. At two o'clock Mrs. Wraggles
would bring in dinner for the pair. NoW
the cloth was laid on the long writing-table
and they sat opposite one anothen He
with his eyes continually turned upon her.
She every now and then giving him a
bright, glad look of gratitude. After the
meal she invariably withdrew without a
word and joined Mrs. Wraggles. To the
old woman Electa talked only of Simon,
tried to repeat his lessons, to explain his
views, to show how Paul of -Tarsus was a
bad man, "the cuckoo's egg that the roaring
lion had laid in the nest of the eagle John
and ousted Simon Peter, the real bird of
Paradise, the hope of the race." Mrs.
Wraggles would go to sleep over the revela-

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 47
tions. The truth is, she didn't care a dump
for all this " Peterite " theology. Not she I
She yawned, she bustled about. She was
glad when ten o'clock came, and blessed
the Lord she had no drunken husband
now to disturb her rest, the rest which
was so sweet. Then Electa would go to
her little bedroom, and sleep such sleep as
she had not known a little while ago.

Ill

The morning after the christening Mrs.
Wraggles was surprised by meeting her
punctual and precise master at the door
of the library at an earlier hour than usual.
He stood for a few seconds irresolute ;
opened the door as if about to enter, then
stepped back and passed out of the house.
Neither she nor any one would have dared
to shut that door when Simon had left it
open, nor open it when it was shut.
The hours went by. Electa, sitting at her
open window, hstened to the ringdove
cooing to his mate yonder in the tree,
heard the ploughmen in the distance talk
ing to their horses, watched the sunbeams
48

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 49
dancing in the foliage, or was it the leaves
that were dancing for joy in the morning
light ? What a glorious world it was !
Yes ! Simon was right, it .was glorious.
Paul of Tarsus could not change that.
Alas for the nightingale that had grown
songless now ! When would he sing again ?
She would ask Simon by and by.
But where was Simon ? She grew rest
less ; went in and out of the library, began
to level the books on the shelves, examined
the queer old furniture, wondered how Mrs.
Wraggles could keep it so free from dust ;
went back to Mrs. Wraggles In the kitchen,
found that the good woman was getting
seriously uneasy. The bailiff had come
for his day's orders, and gone away after
waiting an hour or more.
"Can anything have happened, Mrs.
Wraggles?" "I don't know, deary. But I know
what's agoing to happen. There's only
one end to it." S

50 FRIVOLA
She looked slyly at the poor girl, who
had not the faintest suspicion of her mean
ing ¦; she only thought of her dead "fsither
and dead mother. Would he die too ?
She snatched up h6r sun-bonnet.
" I'll go and find him. I must find him."
She darted out on her search.
Mrs. Wraggles chuckled merrily to her
self. " You'd no need to find him, my deary.
He's all right. You've found him sure
enough, for all his jerrj^antrums ! "
But Electa was gone. She found him
walking much more slowly than usual.
He was thinking, dreaming — was he
aWake ? He took no notice of her. She
took him by the sleeve and led him to the
house. Not a word passed; She brought
him back into the library, seated him in
the high-backed chair, left him, and passed
out, closing the door behind her.
The dinner hour passed. It was out of
the question to let him go on without

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 51
food. Mrs, Wraggles appeared with the
tray. " Bid the lady Electa come to me 1 "
She came.
" Electa, what was that you meant to ask
me?" "Ask you, Mr. Ryan? There are a
hundred things I'd like to ask you ! "
" No, there was only one to-day. Only
one." I I
She was startled, almost frightened.
Could he really read her lightest thoughts ?
She had never seriously meant/ to ask him
the question. Somehow a shiver of revolt
came upon her. Why Should she ask ?
He rose from his chair. One step nearer
to her and the words seemed to come
through her, not from her.
"When will the nightingale sing again,
Mr. Ryan?"
His eyes were on her, coldly watching
her. "Was that all ? The nightingale sings

52

FRIVOLA

to his mate in the nest. Electa. The poets
say it is all for love. When will he sing
again ?' When he finds his bride in her
home ! "
He came to her side. He put his hand
upon her head, she felt it trembling
violently ; he had never touched her so
before. What did he mean ?
" Mr. Ryan ! "
" I bid you no longer call me by any
other name but Simon."
Her dying mother's charge came back
upon her with a tumult of conflicting
emotions. The room was swimming round ;
she had no will of her own; she knew
it. Was consciousness going ? With a
desperate effort she drew away from him.
Her eyeballs throbbed so painfully that
she was compelled to close her eyelids ;
she could not speak, she leant against the
table. Her very personality was going
from her. A cry broke from her lips— ^
" Simon ! "

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 53
" Electa ! I bid yoti be my wife. I
am about to take you as my wife. Your
dying mother saw it all, and knew it
would come."
She answered never a word. She rushed
to her room and flung herself upon the
bed. There Mrs. Wraggles found her some
hours later. It was a hot September even
ing, but she was deadly cold. When good
Mrs. Wraggles folded her in her arms she
wept like some stricken child. By and
by she recovered. She began to speak.
"He bids me. He bids me. What am
I to do ? He bids me — but, he only
bids me ! Oh what can I do, Mrs.
Wraggles ? "
Next morning, punctual to the moment,
Simon was in the library at the usual hour.
At Simon's call she came, looking very
wan; she almost shrank from him as he
drew near. He took her face between his
two strong hands and held it up to himself.
The crimson blush mantled over her cheek

54 FRIVOLA
and brow, but she did not look at him.
He held her so for a few moments,, her
arms hung loosely by her side,,
"Mrs. Wraggles tells me you have eaten
nothing since yesterday morning. Electa !
I have not tasted food since we dined
together last, When was that ? " He took
his hands from her face and pressed thensM
hard to his own forehead. He seemed to
be in physical pain.
"Mr.  Simon!"
He started. There was a sudden flash;
of joy that gleamed in his eyes, and' a
smile upon his lips which she had never
seen before. ^
" We will break our fast together. : Shall
we?" He had never gone so near consulting
her wishes before. They both needed food
—neither spoke. At last he broke- the
silence. "Well! Electa— well?"
"Wha,t my mother j bade me do with

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 55
her dying breath — ^that I will do — obey
you, Mr. Ryan."
He walked fiercely up and down the
room, his hands clutching each other with
convulsive grips. He was . fighting with
himself. It was she who was unmoved
now. Since last night she had grown
from a child . into a woman. She was
rigid as marble and as cold. With him
it was doubtful whether he would not
break out into frantic violence. At last
he stopped before her.
"'Mr. Ryan' — remember! Mr. Ryan
will never bid you do aught, again while
his life lasts. No ! not if your mother
rose from the dead and came to him as
an angel of light. Never ! never ! If it
is to be no more than ' Mr. Ryan.' "
" Oh, Simon, Simon ! Forgive me. I
did not mean it. God forbid I should mean
it, when you haVe been my only friend. I
will marry you as you bid me. You Simon
. . . dear ! "

56 FRIVOLA
He came to her again, and again took
her face between his hands. Now she
looked bravely into his eyes. He reeled,
dropped his hands, he dared not trust himself
to look again.
" Will you marry me on Thursday week ? "
It was Tuesday then.
" So soon ? Oh, Simon ! Must it be
so?" A whole world of difficulties came
crowding into her thought. She put
them all by.
" Simon ! Did you never love — love —
any one in all your life ? I thought when
people married . . . they . . . Well ! . , .
I thought there was love then. . . . Simon,
did you never love any one ? "
" Never, as the nightingales do ! Electa !
It will come. Be not afraid ! There was
a love passing the love of women that was
buried in my dead brother's grave ! " His
lips quivered, his whole face worked; he
turned away, took down a book from the

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 57
shelves — made as if he would read it.
She slipped quietly out of the room.
*****
There was much commotion and excite
ment in the house. With the delicate
feeling of a born gentleman and an honour
able man, Simon provided that Electa
should at once be received into the Rector's
family. He insisted on the good clergyman
accepting a liberal allowance, and sent him
twenty pounds in advance "for the first
month." Mr. Benson was a widower, with
two unmarried daughters of a certain age
— which usually means a very uncertain
age. They took the little maiden in and
fondled her. She was beginning to open
her heart to them, and even ventured to
caress the younger of the two, meekly,
timidly. On the day before the appointed Thursday
— of which Electa had never spoken, even
to Mrs. Wraggles — came a missive from
Simon requiring the attendance of Mr.

58 FRIVOLA
Benson next day, and requesting that he
would bring Electa and his daughters with
him. To the surprise of all, as they entered,
there sat Harry Clarke, now a portly gentle
man with a red .face, very grave; but for
all that very jovial-looking. A man of
business, every inch of him ; but a joyous
and; frolicsome man of business too.
He was dressed in the full dress -of the
time. A blue "tail coat" with gilt buttoiis,
a white waistcoat, and a lace frill to his
shirt. How well I remember those blue
coats and bi'ass buttons in my boyhood.
The Rector and his daughters were qtfit^
unprepared for the scene. Electa was
preternaturally calm.
" I have called you in, sir, to marry me
to the lady Electa ! "
" No waste of words at any rate, Mr.
Ryan," said the Rector, testily. "Marry
you ? Much more easily said than done.
You seem to think you can be married in
this room under the  ! " He stopped.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 59
for the coffin was gone. Confusion fell
upon him. Harry Clarke's face wrinkled
up into deep seams of gathering laughter;
which resolved itself irito nose-blowing and
an irrepressible cough. There were volu
minous and serviceable Bandanas in those
dayS' — the friends in need.
" You will marry me where I please and
when I ¦ please ! " said Simon, curtly, ' his
voice rising in sharp, angry menace. "I
thihk you have not brought your surplice,
and you men of Paul can do nothing
without the tent maker's sail-cloth. Go
and fetch it, sir ! "
Electa walked straight to him and put
her hand upon his arm.
" Simon ! Hush t Be pitiful ! Be cour
teous ! " The calm, simple dignity of the
girl was irresistible. " God save the Queen ! "
shouted Harry, as he slapped Simon on
the shoulder. " For, by George, Si ! you've
won a queen ! Now, hold your tongue
and let me speak I "

6o FRIVOLA
After something like apologies offered and
frankly accepted, the Rector did go and
fetch his surplice. For it turned out that
Harry was the bearer of a Special Licence
from the Archbishop of Canterbury, for
the which a terrific fee had been paid.
The seal alone sent a shudder through the
minds of the Rector's daughters. While
their father was gone, some of the furniture
was moved by the ladies, and a small table
was placed before the great window. "It
really does look more churchy now, doesn't
it. Electa ! "
Harry produced a tray of wedding rings
which he had brought down with him.
Electa tried one after another. At last she
chose the right one. " There, Si ! Don't
you drop it, man. Fits like a glove!"
Electa had taken off her hat and laid her
gloves in it : poor grey thread gloves.
When she took her place at the extem
porised altar her hands were bare and her
soft hair somewhat ruffled. One of the

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 6i
young ladies offered to smooth it. " No !
He takes me as I am. Let it be ! "
Thus they were married. Harry Clarke
managed to get rid of the parson and his
daughters. To the Rector he was charged
to deliver a splendid honorarium. The
poor man wanted it badly, and had never
dreamt of such an extravagant fee.
" Now, Si 1 I've only got another hour I
Look alive ! Pleasure first but business
afterwards. Mrs. Ryan must know all about
it!" ,
"The lady Electa, if you please, from
henceforth ! "
" As you will ! You lucky old dog. Thus
stands the matter. Thirty-seven thousand
and odd pounds to your credit at Childs'
bank. You give half to the lady Electa,
and she is to have that half paid into
the Bank of England and only she is to
draw upon it. Here's a cheque for eighteen
thousand five hundred, which I am to pay
to the lady's credit as directed. First

62 FRIVOLA
iand foremost, sign that. Next, here's my
authority to take the lady's signature.
Three times, if you please. Thank you!
Now that's done. Lastly, I mean to have
a bottle of champagne, old Si! If you
haVen't got such a thing, I've brought the
article in my portmanteau ! " He bounced
out of the room, followed by her whom
he called old Straggles, and returned bear
ing a tray with some choice Venetian
glasses, which they had hunted up from
one of the stores of miscellaneous articles
of which the house was full. '
"Pop you go!" he filled the: glasses,
forcing one into Simon's hand and another
into Electa's.
" Here's to friendship renewed and wed
lock cemented. The God of Simon Peter
bless you, old man ! I think she'll bring
you straight — I know she will-— if '¦¦ only
you'll let her ! "
His post-chaise was at the door in
another moment, his hand was in Sinaon's.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 63
" May I, Si ? " he cried with a roguish look.
" May I ? You old fox ! "
Simon flung his arms around her neck
and kissed her lips.
" Yes, Harry, you may — now ! "
He had one minute's "talk and tip,"
as he called it, with Straggles.
"that's over, Mas'r Harry!"
" Good job too. Straggles ! "
"He's older 'n me!"
" Pooh 1 He's only fifty-five ! "
" And she's just seventeen ! "
"I wouldn't she her, if I were ' you.
Straggles; Mrs. Ryan's old enough. That's
all right!"
" What's three times one, Mas'r Harry ?
You can't alter that anyhow."
He lit a big cigar, jumped into the
post-chaise, and was gone.
And this was the wedding festival of
Simon Ryan and the Lady Electa.

IV

There was change in the household.
Simon exacted from his wife the closest
personal attendance. He could not bear
her to be out of his sight.
She became his daily pupil and scribe.
All the morning was spent among the
books. She acquired something more than
a respectable acquaintance with Greek, a
certain faculty in translating Latin ; her
mother had taught her a smattering of
French which she pronounced ridiculously.
Simon would now and then laugh with an
odd chuckle at her blunders ; but he was
always patient with her, and he had never
been so happy in his life. The Petrine
monomania seemed to be leaving him
64

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 65
slowly. Now and then, however, he would
recur to the old dogmatic tone and frighten
Electa with, what she dreaded, solemn
ravings about the " tent maker " ; getting
excited and restless, walking up and down
the aisle and talking to himself, forgetting
she was near him. The Benson ladies tried
to get admittance to the house. Sometimes
they were grudgingly allowed to walk with
Electa in the grounds, but never for long.
He would come upon them and scowl
forbiddingly. One day she expostulated
good-humouredly with him. " Simon ! I do
believe you are jealous of Mary Benson.
How silly you must be ! "
" Yea, Electa ! with a godly jealousy !
It is not meet that these Paulite women
should have their way. They plait their
hair and are not afraid with any amaze
ment." He wandered on incoherently. It
was hours before he was himself again.
Shortly after the marriage he forbade
Electa any longer making her own dresses.
6

66 FRIVOLA
She should have a maid. There was a fine,
handsome girl in the parish who had been
apprenticed to a dressmaker, had become
engaged to a young tradesman in Cam-
ford, ahd been heartlessly jilted by him.
The girl came back to Carlton humbled
and soured. She was glad to be taken as
the Lady Electa's attendant, and with her
work as sempstress she united the duties
of parlourmaid. Mrs. Wraggles whimpered
and chafed, but in the library she was quite
superseded ; Simon had once heard her in
loving talk with Electa call her " my deaiy!"
It was an unpardonable offence. PrudenCe,
when she came to present herself before
Electa, called her "my lady/' Simon
signified that she was engaged*: Prudence
justified her name and never forgot to
speak of her mistress as " her ladyshipi"
"They had been married just two years.
It was "chill October," there were fitful
gusts from the north-west showering down
the leaves ; the day was closing in ; Simon

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 67
had been mumbling to himself at intervals
during the afternoon. It was a bad sign,
and' Electa was disturbed' and anxious!
" Electa, let us walk ! "
"No, Simon. I can't walk to-day — not
now ! "
She rose from her seat, wearily went to
him, played with one of the buttons of his
waistcoat, her head bowed. " I shall not
be able to walk much now, Simon 1 " He
looked hurt and sullen.
" Don't you know ? Can't you guess,
Simon ? "
The glory of a great joy lit up her whole
face — " Simon ! "
He threw up his arms above his head,
clasped his hands with a wild cry :
" Eternal Father ! Hast Thou heard and
granted ? "
The child was born — it was a boy. Mr.
Benson brought a little silver font to the
library and baptized the child — Marcus.
The funniest tales were told of the doings

68 FRIVOLA
and sayings of the father of that child. I
must needs pass them by.
Up to this time there had not been a
fireplace in any bedroom of' the house
except in Simon's own. The "young
usurper " necessitated many changes. Harry
Clarke, now quite restored to favour, came
much more frequently to Carlton than
formerly. A nursery had to be built— and
a regular nurse was of course added to the
establishment. Simon was for ever in and
out of the nursery — "interfering," as the
nurse tartly complained. The child never
cried. He looked out of his big eyes and
seemed to be inquiring ; but he evinced a
reluctance to be handled by his father, and
would stretch out his little arms to Electa
or the nurse when Simon took him. awk
wardly out of his cradle.
" You mustn't take him up by his clothes
that way, sir! You'll do him a mischief.
Won't he, my pet ?" Nurse took him out
of the parental arms and fondled him with

SIMON RYAN THE' PETERITE 69
a show of decided ownership. Simon went
down to Electa in the library. " I won't
have that woman about here any more.
Electa ; she's a thief 1 "
" Oh, Simon ! "
" I tell you she's stealing Marcus my
son ! "
Electa had become quite light-hearted
and playful in her new happiness. All
fear of Simon was passing away. It was
months since he had had one of his
mumbling fits upon him. He seemed to
be gradually losing the Peterite craze.
Now she called him a silly old Simon,
coaxed him, remonstrated with him, told
him she couldn't do without the nurse.
It was nonsense ! He began to walk up
and down with his hands behind him
muttering to himself :" Wives, be in sub
jection I . , . a meek and quiet spirit —
meek, Sara obeyed Abraham ! " She be
came very uneasy — ran up and fetched the
child, who seemed to understand her ; held

7°

FRIVOLA

him up to his father, and put his little arms
round Simon's neck. "Steal him, my blos
som ? Who can steal him, my blossom ? "
The door opened and there stood Harry
Clarke. He saw the situation at a glance.
" Well done. Si— to perfection ! " Theh, in
a stentorian voice, he sang : '
"Send her victorious,.
Happy and glorious,-
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen."
'' ; ... I
There was no ; resisting his cheery
greetings !
Simon recovered himself. He gave back
the child to his mother, who hurried away
to the nursery ; but she did not feel safe.
She had a foreboding that something was
wrong; It became clear that he was jealous of
the nurse — violently jealous. He would
not go into the nursery; he moped; and
he called for " Marcus my son," but would
not take him at any hands but his mother's.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 71
Then he would go and hide himself for
hours in one of the little rooms of which
he kept the key. Prudence vowed she'd
find out what he was up to. Audacious
Prudence ! Peeping through the keyhole
one day she spied the coffin of polished
oak of which she had never heard, the lid
thrown back on its hinges, and Simon
sitting in it, staring wildly. She did not
lose her presence of mind, but ran down
to Mrs. Wraggles and told her. Mrs.
Wraggles, who was of a loving and for-
giying nature, bore no grudge against the
girl. She bade her keep her own counsel
if she wanted to stay where she was. " I
ain't a bit surprised," she said. " I've been
a-thinking Master's been getting thin o'
purpose to get into that gaudy old coffin
again." *****
" Simon ! Marcus knows all his letters
now — every one. He's beginning to spell.
This morning he spelt B-A-D and B-O-Y."

72 FRIVOLA
His education had begun ! The child,
now three or four years old, was under
his mother's tuition. Every morning he
was brought into the library, and there
sat his parents — she teaching, he looking
on from the high-backed chair ; the child
standing between them, or making pothooks
and writing copies at a little desk which was
his own. He got on amazingly. He had no
difficulties ; it all seemed to come by nature.
Once again Harry Clarke burst in upon
them in his irrepressible way while they
were at lessons. That irrepressible Harry !
That irresistible Harry ! The child jumped
from his seat, ran up to him, caught him
by his trousers, and made as if he would
climb up to him. Harry picked him up
with a shout, tossed him up into the air,
caught him, tossed him up again, then
buried his little face in his long bushy
beard, and looked at him merrily.
" That is Marcus my son ! " said Simon,
gloomily knitting his brows.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 73
" There's no doubt about that, old boy !
There's the prophet, and there's the queen,
and here's the Markey, and I'm Granny, ain'
I, Markey ? "
" Marcus, if you please, Marcus my son 1 "
" All right. Si," and in his jovial way he
shook hands with Electa. Simon's hand
made no return to his pressure. Marcus
drew nearer to him. He picked him up
and sat him on his knee. Marcus em
ployed himself in examining his watch-
chain, whereby hung a great assemblage
of trumpery, from a compass down to a
steel pen, which he vowed was the first
steel pen made in Britain.
Harry had come down on some business
that required prompt attention. An extra
vagant offer had been made for one of
Simon's small estates in Surrey. Harry
strongly recommended the sale. Simon,
from the day of his marriage, had left
himself entirely in Harry's hands. He
could not do enough to show that he

74

FRIVOLA

had taken back into favour the friend of
his youth and early manhood. This morn
ing he hesitated. What need to sell ? Why
part with the inheritance of his fathers?
Harry saw there were clouds in the horizon,
but his unfailing tact forsook him not. He
dropped the subject, rattled on, put down
the child, who by a happy chance ran
straight to his father to show him a tiger's
claw which Harry had slyly torn off his
chain and put into the little hand, closing
the fingers over it. Simon bent over little
Marcus and took his face between his
hands, as he had done to anothei: face
some seven years before. Electa watched
him, wondering. The shadow passed from
his face ; his voice changed ; the evil
spirit had gone. " So you won't sell, eh ?
Then there's an end of that. I guess
there'll be a kick-up in Tokenhouse Yard ;
and what'll my client say ? Whew ! I'm
going to smoke in the grounds, as you
call 'em."

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 75
" I will sell, Harry ! You know best. I
will sell. The proceeds-J-corruptible things,
silver and gold — shall be dealt with as
before — an equal division."
" Simon ! " said Electa, hurriedly. " I
hate your doing this. What use are all
these thousands to me ? I've never drawn
a cheque in my life, and I should not know
how to do it. Don't give me any more
Simon dear ! "
" Never drawn a cheque yet, my lady ? "
and he opened his mouth and big eyes, and
held up his hands and looked so comical
that little Marcus laughed a little repressed
laiigh, and would have laughed more but
that he was . afraid.
" Come, my lady ! I've got something to
sell, and you must buy it. Bid her, Simon ;
let the queen obey the prophet. I've bought
a rocking-horse for Marcus, as big as a
donkey ; but he sha'n't have it unless the
lady Electa buys it, and draws a cheque
for it, too ! You buy it ? Not you. Si !

76 FRIVOLA
Not for all the wealth of the Indies. Only
the lady Electa — only her first cheque shall
buy that horse ! Prudence, come and lend
a hand." He flung himself out of the room,
and returned with an enormous package,
which he and Prudence between them
carried into the aisle. Sacking, and string,
and tow, and paper were stripped off, while
Simon sat silent, quite mastered by the
rollicking vehemence of his friend^Marcus
in great excitement, but in more fear than
hope. At last the wrappings were all removed,
and lo ! a piebald steed of unusual size
on gilded rockers was galloping upon the
sacred aisle, Harry swinging it till it
seemed likely to topple over.
"There's my horse for sale. It goes to
one bidder. I mean to make a haul by that
horse. Cheap ? No, you are not going to
get a bargain out of me. Price, a ten-pound
draft on the Bank of England, and that
draft signed by her ladyship ! "

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 77
She went to Simon ; he taught her her
first lesson in drawing cheques. Harry took
the draft, and put it into his breast pocket.
"Now you may laugh as you like, I'll
join you. Fifty per cent, on cost price
isn't a bad morning's work. Hold him
on, Si, we'll give him a ride."
*****
Harry Clarke's visit was soon over. Simon
was restless again next morning. Marcus
came as usual for his lessons. Simon began
to walk up and down and to mutter,
"... Unto them which believe. . . . What
of them that believe not ? . . , He is a man
of Mammon. ... He is of Apollos. Fifty
per cent. . . . Mammon ! Mammon ! "
She went up to him, led him back to
the old chair. "Now, Marcus, read that
again to father."
After the lessons were over he broke the
silence. " Electa ! Has he a grandchild ? "
"Who? Mr. Clarke? No! Not yet,
not yet ! "

78 FRIVOLA
"We must guard him — keep him from
being led away. Electa, he is a chosen
generation ! " ' ' = '
f Who, Simon?"
" Marcus my son ! "
*****
It soon became evident that Simon was
becoming the victim of a new delusion.
He was jealous of everybody — of every
thing. The rocking-horse was taken into
the hall. Marcus was fascinated by it,
was for ever talking to it, "grooming"
it,' riding on it. Simon began to hate it
as a rival. One day it was packed up and
sent back to Harry with a request that
Electa's draft might be returned. Harry
was seriously vexed and hurt ; but he
knew his man and he made all due
allowances. As to the draft, it never was
presented for payment, that was the 'last
thing the worthy Harry had ever thought
Of — but return it — not for all the world !
The nurse was summarily dismissed on

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 79
Marcus's fifth birthday. Simon after that
would not allow mother or son to be out
of his sight night or day. He undertook
all the tuition himself. Marcus became
dreadfully interested in the lessons, for he
learnt with extraordinary rapidity.
In a year or two he had left Electa far
behind, but he began to walk in his sleep
and to dream continually. Electa saw the
danger, but she had no choice but to
submit ; Simon's strength of will mastered
her; she lived in a state of continual
dread of what might come. One night,
as she lay miserably thinking — thinking —
thinking — and all to no purpose, the
fountain of her tears quite dry, Simon
breathing deeply in profound slumber by
her side, Marcus crept from his bed at
the other end of the great bedroom,
so noiselessly that she did not hear his
step. " Mother," whispered the boy,
"you're not sleeping; I don't sleep now,
so I know f " She threw her arms round

8o FRIVOLA
his neck and kissed him fondly. "Go
back, darling ; you'll wake him up and
make him so angry." He left her without
a word. Simon turned in his sleep.
"Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"
he murmured. " Yea, Lord ! yea, Lord !
and Marcus my son " ; he was sleeping
again. When the lesson began again next
morning Marcus was for the first time
listless — leant his head upon his hand ;
then he fell forward; Electa caught him
in her arms. She called loudly for Pru
dence. " Send for Dr. Rawdon ! Quick !
at once." By good luck the doctor was
just passing the lodge ; in five minutes
he was examining the boy, who was lying
unconscious, his mother supporting his
head and bathing his face with water.
Dr. Rawdon was an able and sagacious
man. He was noted for never talking of
his patients to others ; their secrets, he
used to say, were their secrets ; it was
infamy for a medical man to divulge what

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 8i
only he could know. This had won him
the confidence of Simon, who was just a
little afraid of him.
" How old is the boy now ? He must
be past twelve, isn't he ? "
Yes, he was nearly thirteen. The doctor
gently lifted his eyelids, put his hand upon
his head, looked very grave. He soon
came to himself. Simon stood a little
way off, looking stupid and bewildered.
"Take him to his room, ma'am, and
lay him on his bed,"
" He sleeps in our room, Doctor. He
has done so for years."
" He must never do that again. Mr.
Ryan ! if you don't take care you'll lose
this boy ; you're working him to death."
From that day the teaching came to an
end ; Marcus was left to his own devices
as far as books were concerned. He had
a bad fortnight of it. He slept himself
into a recovery ; but he was frail and
languid. Electa took possession of him;
7

§2 FRIVOLA
Simon's occupation seemed gone. She
sent for an upholsterer to fit up what had
been the nursery. It was done regardless
of expense, but the man was told there
must be no silk or satin and no gay
colours. It assumed a dull, dreary, massive
appearance. Heavy rep curtains and ugly
armchairs and sofas, solid, costly, and new.
The boy ripped open one of the over
stuffed sofas, and made Prudence make
him a comfortable cushion or two. From
this room Simon was excluded by the
doctor's orders, Marcus was proud of
the tremendous four-poster, with its stiff
drapery; and revelled in the great fluffy
feather bed, and was soon gay and bright
in the pride of possessing a room of his
own. Simon began to live apart now. His
Peterite fancies returned in fuller force
than ever. He took his meals in state,
demanding that Electa should stand
behind his chair and Marcus at his side.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 83
It was the homage due to him from the
wife and son whom he had almost re
nounced. He was engaged upon a new
and important volume — an expansion of
the pamphlet which had so signally failed.
Marcus was allowed to go out and roam
among the plantations, now grown into
thick woods that had been neglected for
years, but outside the park palings he was
sternly forbidden to roam. Sometimes he
would even climb the trees and look out
on the illimitable world beyond. How far
did it stretch ? And where was that Rome
where Simon Peter died with his head
downwards ? And Babylon, with that
vast temple ? Was Peter's wife like his
mother, who bore her name ? How
could he get to Babylon ? Did she stay
and die there when the great Apostle
went away to martyrdom ? He became
a dreamer. When the birds sang he
answered them. Would he ever get to
know their language ?

V

It was during this period that I, by what
seemed a mere chance, had gained ad
mittance to the curious household. At
my second visit Simon was waiting for
me with a plot . against me. He made a
dead set at the young parson who had
been rash enough to declare that he. was
prepared to learn from those who were
qualified to teach him. I had hardly
taken my seat before I was bidden to
listen to the voice of truth. To my dis
may I was told that he was going to read
me the first chapter of his " Message to
the Perverted." For more than an hour
did I submit, and I was rewarded for my
84

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 85
patience and humility. My reward was
an opportunity of talking to Marcus. I
was very careful in my approaches.
I talked lightly, gaily. • Simon listened
and was evidently glad I should go on.
There was not a sign of jealousy, and
when I began to walk up and down the
aisle .the old man's face assumed an ex
pression of half-amusement. I think he
took , it as a compliment that I should
iniitate him ! Elpcta kept her place
behind his chair, always with downcast
eyes, but I felt she was watching me.
Marcus would every now and then walk
beside me, trying to keep pace with
my long strides. One day I began to ask
him some conundrums. He never guessed
them, but when the answer came he would
clap his hands with childish glee and run
to Simon.. "Did you hear that, father?"
and sometimes break into a laugh. It was
all so new to them all, and so evidently
new that to me it was almost painfully

86 FRIVOLA
pathetic. During all this time — for my
visits extended over several weeks — I had
hardly exchanged a word with the lady
Electa. One day I called much earlier than
usual at the Manor House. I had only
another fortnight to remain at Carlton.
The spring had set in with muCh less than
its usual severity. The tassels were red
upon the larches ; the primroses were
smiling graciously on the banks ; the
blackthorn was almost going off ; the
leaves were unfolding in the sunshine.
Simon looked up wearily, his face in his
hands. Electa was standing behind his
chair, her chin leaning on her folded
hands, " Mr. Ryan, may Marcus take me through
the woods and show me the way ? "
"Young sir, Marcus my son may take
you where you will. And you may take
him wherever he fain would go ! "

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 87
The boy jumped up from his usual
seat in the window. He seized me by the
hand and hurried me along, as if afraid
lest the permission should be retracted.
For the first time I noticed what ought
to have been plain to me before — ^that
there was that dangerous yellow hue on
his cheek which always tells a sad tale —
the patch of carmine grew deeper, then
faded away ; the pupils of the eyes were
distended, and as we reached the air he
coughed a short, hard cough once and
again. "You take me first and then I'll take
you ! "
It was uttered in a kind of hurried gasp,
and in great excitement.
" Where shall I take you ? "
"Take me to the church. I want to
see the inside of a church ! "
To the church we marched.
Some one had lately presented an organ
to the parish, and one of the neighbouring

88 FRIVOLA
clergy happened to have come to try the
instrument, and some stranger was blow
ing the bellows. We passed through the
lodge gates defiantly, and when some fifty
yards from the church Marcus stopped
with parted lips and put his hand upon
my arm. "What's that?" He had ac
tually never heard a musical instrument
before in his life. He hurried in at a
run. Just as we got inside the porch
that overwhelming outburst in Beet
hoven's Hallelujah to the Father broke
forth as if with a greeting of rapturous
praise, Marcus made one step forward,
and clung for support to the back of the
nearest seat, staring at vacancy, trembling
and haggard. The Rector pointed sternly
to the lad to take off his hat. Marcus
heeded not — stood there as in a trance, a
deadly pallor upon his face. Suddenly
the music stopped, for the wind was out.
Marcus uttered a piercing cry and covered
his face with his hands. Sobs came from

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 89
him with such violence of emotion that I
threw my arms round him to support him.
It was several minutes before he became
calm. I took him back to the house.
We had not walked two miles, yet he
was almost prostrated before we reached
the library, and he looked very ill.
" Mr, Ryan, I'm afraid Marcus your son
is very, very far from well ! I am going to
send Dr, Rawdon to look at him, I pass
his house on my way, and it is time for
me to get back," Electa darted an eloquent
look of gratitude at me. Marcus was lying
listlessly on one of the old sofas.
"There's a voice that bids me not say
nay to you to-day, young sir ! "
Next week I could not get over to
Carlton. The week after I went to say
farewell. Simon had grown slow and
feeble, I think he must have had a slight
seizure. He was quite alone. Where was
the Lady Electa? "She hath forsaken
me 1 " was all he answered. The truth

90 FRIVOLA
was, she was with her son. There had
been a sad revolt from his authority.
Marcus was desperately ill. Dr. Rawdon
with almost brutal frankness told her the
boy was dying. The mother found her
courage and resolve in the face of the
dreary prospect. It came at last to this.
" Simon, if I must choose, I take my post
beside my son ! You may curse me, you
may kill me ; I will never leave my boy
again." From that time she never left the
poor lad's bed. For the disease, as often
happens, had developed with frightful
rapidity, and he had not a month of life
remaining. I raised my voice intentionally. Prudence
came in without knocking ; all the old
ceremony had gone. The very servants
looked angrily and reproachfully at the
old man.
" My lady wants you, sir ! "
With some remaining dignity he rose,
though feebly.

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 91
"Young sir, last time, you know, you
took from me Marcus my son ; now I
will take you back to him ! "
I stayed not long in that sick-room ; it
was too painful for us all, I rose to go,
I tried to say farewell, but I was choking,
Simon was the first to recover himself.
He was the prophet with a call once
more. " Bear witness, young sir ! I have towards
you used hospitality without grudging, and
I have spoken to you as the Oracle of
God. I count it not strange, concerning
the fiery trial that is coming on my house,
as if some strange thing were happening.
As for you, you see but a little way, but
you will not feed your flock for filthy
lucre. No ! The man of Tarsus will not
lead you astray ! The lady Electa, with
me, saluteth you, and so doth Marcus my
son. Greet ye one another with a kiss of
Charity ! "
He came slowly to me, and kissed me

92 FRIVOLA
on the cheek. He felt my tears upon his
lips and kissed me on the other; cheek,
shuddered, and sat down, pointing . to
Electa. I kissed her forehead. Marcus
tried to raise himself and sank back —
" Kiss him, mother ! and then " — looking
at me tearfully — " Kiss me ! " She raised
my hand and kissed it. Then she put
her son's arms round my neck .as I
bowed over him. I suppose I left that
sad room on my own feet, but I only
remember finding myself r in the hall.
"God bless you, sir, and reward you,"
said Prudence, handing me my hat,
" You've brought them three together once
again at last 1 "
*****
Marcus died, . Nothing would induce
Simon to attend the funeral. When Electa
declared she would see her boy in his
grave, Simon moaned a protest, then
assented ; then insisted that all the house
should go and leave him alone. He was

SIMON RYAN THE PETERITE 93
obeyed. Harry Clarke came down and
managed everything. When they came
back to the house Simon was gone. He
had been sadly shaken of late, and his
speech affected, but he still took his slow
and tottering walks in the grounds. There
they searched for him, waited, became
more and more alarmed.
Suddenly Prudence glared in at the
library door.
" Mr. Clarke ! "
He started up and went out to her,
scared by her look of horror,
" Mr. Clarke ! he's upstairs ! "
They found him lying in the old coffin
— dead.

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD
NUNNERY
" My lady Prioresse, by your leve, '
So that. I wist I shuld you-, not agreve,
I wolde demen, that ye iellen shold
A tale next, if so were thai ye wold.
Now wol ye vouchesauf, my lady dere f "
" Gladly" quoth she, " and saide as ye shut here."
Canterbury Tales.
I.
No wise man will ever begin to read any
history worth reading without having a
map before him. I give notice that I am
going to try my hand at a short history
more or less veracious ; therefore it will be
necessary for my readers to open the map
of Norfolk, and to follow me with the eye
as I take a brief survey of the ground.
94

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 95
From Hunstanton, at the north-west cor
ner of the county, to Downham Market,
lying almost due south, there runs, for a
distance of twenty-five miles as the crow
flies, a line of low sand-hills, as we may
call them, which marks the ancient coast
line of Norfolk on this side, on which a
number of villages grew up slowly many
ages ago, when the river Ouse flowed
much nearer to the aforesaid villages than
it does now.
About half-way between Hunstanton and
Downham lies the once flourishing towa of
Lynn, and if you look you will see that the
river Ouse is all in all to Lynn, or, at any
rate, that it was so in the old days. The
Ouse was the western boundary beyond
which it was not worth while for the Nor
folk men in the early times to fix their
habitations ; for all to the westward of the
river stretched an enormous morass, say
fifteen miles from north to south, and eight
or ten from east to west. Its boundary

96 FRIVOLA
on the east was the Ouse, on the west the
Nen. It is even now a dreary region, a
land of marshes and big drains and swamps.
The water is naught, for all its horrible
abundance, but the land is very rich in
pasture such as cattle thrive on. There is
one portion of this fenland which rises a.
few feet above the general level of the
surrounding marshes, and which in Roman
times — to go no farther back— must have
presented the appearance of an island,
pretty much as the Isle of Dogs did in
times not so very far removed from our
own ; and gradually there grew up here,
too, some villages which are now remark
able for their very magnificent churches,
each with some interesting feature of its
own. The Roman occupiers of the land
may be said to have made this district what
it isj by raising a stupendous rampart to
keep out the sea, which had a trick of
inundating the country hereabouts, and this
immense sea-wall remains to this day.

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 97
Nevertheless the Great Ouse was periodi
cally overflowing large breadths of the
marshland on this side and on that, and
the struggle between the stubborn industry
and energy of man, and the sullen river
crawling along and floundering and sprawl
ing over the meadows and drowning the
herds, never ceased. There were always
wide tracts of muddy waste and loneliness
which had their tales to tell of broken
hearts and disappointment and sorrow, if
only there were anybody who cared to
listen to the dull and dreary stories. And
all this went on for hundreds of years.
Then there came a time when England
was cursed with the curse of long wars, and
when the law of the stronger prevailed, and
when might carried it over right — when,
indeed, there was no right and the weak
had to go to the wall, and poor men and
women despaired of any redress for their
sufferings and any security for their lives, and
of any hope anywhere of peace or happi-

98 FRIVOLA
ness in this world. And they said to them-t
selyes and to one another, " Let's .give it
up, this; , vain and cruel contest with the
pitiless, ones. Let's go and hide ourselves
ip, the d^sertS; ; 3.nd in the swampsy. where
no one will come and hunt for us,' amd
where we will eat our own bread if we
can grow any, and catch our own fish, and
milk our own kine. If we enter into the
city we shall die there, and if we sit still
we die also. Now, thereforej come let us
hifie ourselves among the tall reeds shaken
by the winds, where the wild-fowl make
their nests„and leave their eggs. Peradven-
ture the fierce and strong will not miss nor
find us. If they kill us we shall but die,"
So they slunk away and hid their, heads
by twos and threes, and they gathered
strength for the future from the hope that
where wicked men were not, there only
God was to be found; and they kept one
another's hearts up by resolving to lift up
those hearts to the unseen Father, and

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 99
to seek Him day and night in prayer and
praise, if haply they might bring Him
nearer to themselves who was their only
help in those very troublous days
Thus it came to pass that once upon a
time — and that means in the times before
the Norman conqueror came to make him
self master of England — a certain damsel,
whose heart had been strangely stirred,
looked about for some lonely place where
she might " serve God," as the phrase was,
without disturbance from any earthly ene
mies; and she found for herself a spot which
in the after time was called Crabhouse, and
then was all wild and desolate, and where
for a great distance round there were no
dwelHngs of men. Under her guidance
there gathered sundry other damsels, and
they built for themselves a little chapel to
the honour of God and the Virgin Mary
and St. John the Evangelist, in the which
for many a day they kept up the worship
of the Heavenly Father.

100 FRIVOLA
So runs the story. It is all Written in
old French, which my Parisian friends
would find a little hard to read, but it
must be all true, for it is so very old.
Were the damsels all lovely and graceful
and lady-like and well-to-do ? I should
say decidedly not. I suspect they were
poor spinsters of a very uncertain age ; they
probably could only just read or write;
they had no friends, and they must have
been very ill-clad, very cold, very rheu
matic, and every other day they must have
had the ague.
The place where these poor women
settled and tried to hide themselves was
just at the edge of that sloppy island that
I have mentioned before. It was on the
left bank of the Ouse, and it got to be
called Wiggenhall St. Mary in the after
time. Was their chapel a very gorgeous edifice,
with star-y-pointing pinnacles, and stained-
glass windows, and all sorts of beautiful

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY loi
things to delight the eyes and bring joy
to the damsels ? Very decidedly not,
again. It was at best a wretched little
shanty, built of drift-wood that had been
carried down the Ouse, and it was covered
with a mean roof thatched with the reeds
that the poor damsels had to cut with
their own hands from the river bank, and
furnished with a log or two to sit on, and
a mud floor, and, perhaps, some ugly little
image of the Virgin and her Babe ; and
the wind and rain came in through the
tiny apertures that served for windows, in
which there was never a pane of glass, but
only provided with rough shutters which
were set up against the storms ; and then
the walls were made of logs, and between
the logs there was more mud whi^h the
damsels had puddled with their own
poor hands.
But the damsels held on to their little
habitations, and a priest came from time
to time, ministered in their chapel, and

I02 FRIVOLA
gave them words of comfort and counsel ;
and they worked hard and prayed hard,
and little by little the look of their settle
ment began to improve, and there went up
a good report of them and people came
to look at them, and came not empty-
handed, and what had been a mere wilder
ness of sedge and ooze became almost a
pleasant place to visit, and the damsels
had made it into the semblance of a quiet
home. So the years went on. But in a.d. 1086
the great Conqueror sent forth his orders
by which the whole realm of England was
divided among certain commissioners, who
were bidden to make a great survey of
every cultivated acre, and to put it all
down in their return to the great king.
And there came, as I think, an evil day
for the poor damsels. For the king's
officers found them out,- and they asked
them, sternly, " Who are ye ? And whose
land is this that ye are keeping your cows

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 1O3
on, and .growing hemp and oats and osiers
on, and building your houses on, not to
speak of that chapel of yoiirs ? Who does
it all belong to ? " And the damsels shrank
before the great bearded men, and they
answered, tremblingly, "This land is ours.
It was but a poor swamp a while ago, and
-We have made it what it is. Who should
it belong to but to us?"
But the bearded men laughed scornfully
at the damsels, and they said, "Ye are
squatters, and nothing else ! The land can
not be yours. Ye stole it from somebody.
Speak up ; who did ye steal it from ?"
So the damsels were very frightened, and
they pitched upon somebody who was a
reco^ised landowner hereabouts, but who
he was nobody can now tell. He may
have been anybody, but he gave theffl! a
certificate or charter, testifying that they
held the land of him, and that charter
was their title-deed. The story goes that
they kept that charter, and handed it down

104 FRIVOLA
in safe custody to those that came
after. ' '
How long the damsels kept up their
method of life in the swamp, which
gradually began to assume less and less
the appearance of desolation and loneli
ness till the little settlement had become
a patch of reclaimed land; there is no evi
dence to show. I daresay other damsels,
the rejected, the undowered, and, now and
then, a lonely and childless widow with
some few goods and chattels of her own,
joined them. The poor women, doubtless,
went about doing some little good in their
own simple and unambitioils way ; some
times took care of other women's babies
when their mothers had to go out fishing
for eels and picking up oysters and ihussels
for a livelihood; sometimes they adoptfed
some wretched little orphan ; sometimes
tried their hands at nursing the Sick, or
at teaching young girls who wanted 'teach
ing sorely ; and sometimes they laid out

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 105
the dead and helped to bury the corpse
in the muddy grave ; doing it all in a
quiet, business-like way, making no fuss
and getting no honour and glory from it
all — except only that sort of recognition
which takes the shape of a wring of the
hand from a great horny fist, and now
and then a sob which needed no words
to make it eloquent, and now and then a
whisper from quivering, bloodless lips, say
ing, " Kiss me, sister. Kiss me, poor sinnCr
— only once — before I die ! " And one by
one the poor damsels passed away, too ;
emaciated by years of ague and racked in
every joint by the chronic rheumatism,
and glad to end it all because yonder there
was the great hope of better things. But
there were others who took their places,
and went on doing as they did, and living
just as humbly.
But one day there came tidings that the
waters of the great deep were rolling in.
Did the huge waves come tumbling over

io6 FRIVOLA
the Roman bank ?-+— or the clouds of heaven
pour down their burden of fain so heavily
that the lazy Ouse could' not carry off the
rainfall ? — or had some portentous tides
risen up and driven the river back, say
ing,! angrily, 'as it were, "We want no more
of you"? — I know not. Only this is told
US) that one day there was a greats flood,
and in a few hours it had swept away all
the labours of years, and they that were
left of the poor damsels found themselves
houseless and homeless — ^the place knew
them no more. There is some reason to
fear that almost all of the good sisters
were simply drowned, for we only hear of
a single survivor, and her name was Sister
Joanna ; and because she had no place to
hide her head in now, she made herself a
little cabin in the churchyard of Wiggen
hall Magdalene, which was about a couple
of miles from the old Crabhouse settle
ment, and there I supjpose she ended her
days: — they called her an anchorite, be-

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 107
cause she lived all alone with none to
minister to her wants, and she was
venerated by the people thereabout as a
holy woman and one better than them
selves — and there, I suppose, she died, and
there lie her bones, unless some crazy
body-snatcher has dug them up since then,
as the body-snatchers are prone to do.
But though the flood may have drowned
almost all the damsels, and certainly did
overwhelm their dwellings and their chapel,
and all the work of their hands, yet even
great floods subside at last. And so it
came to pass that after a while the re
claimed land — of course very much the
worse for the deluge — ^rose again as the
river subsided ; and once more the ques
tion came up, Who did the land belong
to, now that the good women were all
dead ? This time the question was easily
settled, for it escheated — that is, reverted to
the Lord of the Manor of Wiggenhall St.
Mary — en engleys Moder Cristes, as the dear

io8 FRIVOLA
old chronicle explains it — and the name
of this good man was Allan Fitz Richard
of Wiggenhall.
At this point there comes in another
side-light. I daresay some may have al
ready said to themselves before they have
read thus far, "Who performed the ser
vices for the damsels in their chapel, and
gave them the sacrament, and prayed with
them when they were dying, and buried
them when they were dead ? " Well, it so
happens that we know something about
this good man. His name was Aylmer
Cook, and when the flood came he es
caped it, and he survived it apparently for
some years, and he was known in the
neighbourhood as Aylmer Kok, le cha-
peleyn de Crahhus. In those days the
clergy might marry if they pleased, and
in Norfolk almost all the clergy were
married men, and the good chaplain was
married too, and he was not only a hus
band but a father, for he had a son named

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 109
Allan, and his wife's name was Agnes.
Now, mistress Agnes was a lady by birth,
for she was none other than the sister of
Allan Fitz Richard whom I mentioned
before. And it looks very much as if
brother and sister had a strong love either
for each, for Agnes called her son after
her brother's name, and her brother gave
her a not inconsiderable dower. For when
the little estate which had been flooded
when the damsels had been drowned re
verted to Allan Fitz Richard, he would
have none of it, but he gave it over to his
sister and her husband, and it became
their possession to deal with as they would.
The worthy chaplain and his wife now did
their best with the lands that had come
to them, and having scruples (such as
were very strong indeed in those days)
about appropriating to their own use what
had once been set apart for the service of
God in any special way, they made the
land over, after the fashion of those days.

no FRIVOLA
for, the support of certain religious houses
to fprm part of their endowments ; but in
some way or other, which it is difficult to
explain, ithey reserved a portion of the.
estate for the continual maintenance of the
original establishment at Crabhouse^ if it
should ever be revived.
It seems, too, that the little society was
kept up. It seems that there still remained
some vestiges of the old buildings, such as
they were, and I guess that now and then
some attempts were made to revive the old
common life, and the old devotion, and
the old habits of usefulness and self-denial
which had been the glory and the beauty
of the little society at its first starting.
But evidently there was no leading spirit
now, and no head — no rapt devotee with
her spasms of awful penitence and throbs
of an absorbing love, and yet with a clear
brain that looked difficulties in the face
and saw how they were to be overcome;
one, too, who had the gift of governing

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY in
those most difficult of creatures to govern
firmly, to wit — ^good women with a call.
Failing such a head the body languished,
although the old establishment of- the
damsels got to be called a Nunnery —
which was a grand naihe, though it meant
much less then than it got to mean a
century or two later. For the orgahi-^
sation of these houses for devout women,
who wished to live in the society of
their own sex, and to help one another
in attempting to lead a higher life than
they had strength of will and patience to
live while in commerce with the world —
that organisation had become much more
elaborate and much more precise in Eng
land than it had been in the days when
the damsels first went away into the wilder
ness ; and such little communities began
to assert themselves and to get just a little
airified, much in the same way that many
a trumpery school for little boys in a back
street calls itself a college. So now we

112 FRIVOLA
begin to hear these little humble estab
lishments (whose beginnings are lost to us
in the mists of the distant past) spoken of
in language which the poor old damsels in
the swamps had hardly thought of using.
For, gradually, the life of i the cloister had
got to be a great deal more attractive than
it had been, and a nunnery was no bad
place for the widow or the rejected to
make her home in ; and a nun had be
come a personage, too, with the possi
bilities of a career before her, and many
an old and ruined cloister rose up, as it
were, from the dead — a phoenix that sprang
from its own smouldering ashes, much more
splendid than it had ever been before.
However, it was a long, long time before
this little Crabhouse Nunnery rose to any
importance or notoriety. Its original estate
was a very insignificant littie piece of pro
perty.; the establishment just kept going,
and that was all, and there is reason to
believe that for some hundreds — ^actually

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 113
hundreds — of years it was little better than
a refuge for poor women in their old age,
who lived a life in community, and had
some littie difficulty in getting bed and
board and such clothing as was needful
for them, and doing very littie but pray in
the little chapel for themselves and their
friends and benefactors.
Not much excitement in this kind of
thing, my masters ! No ! Not at all for
you and me ; but there are many employ
ments which you and I should find horribly
dull, and yet which have their charm for
those who have, in a manner, been brought
up to it. I should not, myself, like to be
a waiter in an eating-house, or a needle
woman, even though I were full of orders
perpetually ; yet I have no doubt there
are members of those professions who feel
a pride and pleasure — ^the one in putting
an extra polish on the cruets, the other in
clicking at the sewing-machine and fixing
on the buttons with faultless precision.
9

IL

1 SAID it was a long time before the
Nunnery of Crabhouse rose to any import
ance. I might have said it was a long time
before it emerged from obscurity. It never
became a great and showy one. It never
could have been an attractive place. Kings
were never its nursing fathers nor queens
its nursing mothers. It grew slowly from
generation to generation because the good
women who lived there were really good
women, and bore a good name and kept
it, and lived to do good to other people,
and the neighbours were grateful to the
sisters and their prioresses. So, as time
went on, little patches of land — here an
acre, there a rood or two, sometimes a
114

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY ns
breadth of turbary, whence they might dig
turf for fuel, and sometimes a little meadow
in which their cows were pastured — and
now and then a little house and its garden —
came into the hands of the nuns, and very
slowly they began to thrive. We have
actually a very minute register of their
possessions, and in almost all cases we know
the names of those from whom their lands
and tenements were acquired.
It will surprise some of my readers to
learn that, for a couple of centuries after
the Conquest, there was hardly an acre
came into their possession that they did not
pay something for. It must be remembered
that when the house once began to be well
accounted of in the distiict round, there
would be sure to be many gentlewomen
who, for one reason or another, would be
very glad to be admitted into the sisterhood
and make their home among them. If
some sad widow, or some single lady with
no desire to marry and a great desire to live

n6 FRIVOLA
a useful life, asked for admission, it is not
to be supposed that she would be received
without inquiry, and one of the first ques
tions would have to be, "Can you con
tribute anything to the cost of your bed
and board ? " As a rule, it went without
saying that a candidate for a vacancy would
be required to give some equivalent for the
conveniences which she was desirous to
secure for herself. At first she would be
admitted on probation, but in any case the
house must be secured from loss.
Hence, when a certain Henry de Wiggen
hall found himself with a daughter on his
hands who desired to live the life of religion
among the nuns, he came to the prioress
and made an offer. He made over four
acres of land and the third part of " la terre
turbarie sur Cuttedole," and the land was
conveyed to the convent "et le covent
recurent Juhanne la fille avant dit Robert
et la feseyent dame de la Meson et trouverait
ce qui k lui appendit ; " which, being inter-

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 117
preted, means, they found her in bed and
board and such things as a sister of the
house was entitled to. Again, a little later,
a gentleman hard by, named Roger Brunger,
got admission for his daughter, and made
over a house and two and a half acres of
land in Tilney, "et la couvente recurent
Johanne la fille avant dit Roger et la fesey
ent dame de la Mesun." And in the same
way, Philippa, the daughter of Master
William de Dunton, who had never had a
husband and never wanted to wed, bought
a littie estate which lay very conveniently
near the lands of the nunnery, and with it
some other appurtenances, and "devint
soeur de la Mesun," and in the after time
this little estate went by the name of
Phelyppescroft ; and I take it, it was rather
a considerable addition to the endowment
of the house where Philippa found a home
for her lifetime. This was in the year 1267
or 8, that is, in the fifty-second year of King
Henry III.

ii8 FRIVOLA
But about twenty years later, "a great
stroke of luck," as some folks call it, fell to
the prioress and the sisters. There was a
very great man, who lived not many miles
off, at Rainham, and his name was Sir John
de Ingoldesthorpe. He belonged to one
of the most wealthy and influential families
in Norfolk, and his brother [or cousin ?]
was Bishop of Rochester ; and he had a
daughter whose name was Beatrice. She,
too, believed herself to have a vocation, or,
perhaps, she had been educated at Crab
house, and had conceived a strong desire
to live as the good nuns lived and to be as
they were. And Sir John and the Lady
Ela, his wife, would not thwart the girl,
but let her have her way. Such a young
lady could not be allowed to come among
her friends empty-handed, and accordingly
Sir John made over to the convent quite
a considerable little estate — lands and tene^i
ments and quit-rents, which are all set
down in the register ; and on the day of

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 119
Sister Beatrice's admission there was a feast
in the nunnery, and Beatrice had a brand-
new nun's habit given her, not by the con
vent but by her father; "et Sire Johan
avant dite donna pour son habite et pur
sa feste cent souz." Sous means solidos, i.e.,
shillings, and it is not far from the truth
to say that in the thirteenth century five
pounds sterling would go as far as a hundred
pounds will go now, when money is so
abundant that the rich don't know what
to do with it. So you see that Sir John did
his part in the transaction in a free and
open-handed way, and from the day that
Beatrice became a nun at Crabhouse the
affairs of the little community began to
prosper, and the house began to get a high
reputation. For human nature is always
human nature, and when lonely widows
and forlorn spinsters and young ladies of
artistic and poetic temperament are looking
about for a home, they prefer mixing with
good society, and do not like to associate

120 FRIVOLA
with vulgar people who are " not nice ! "
And thus it came to pass that with the
opening of the fourteenth century Crab
house evidently became quite a select and
high-class and fashionable place of retire
ment, and ladies of some fortune were
ambitious of being elected to the high and
important position of prioress of the house,
and they all brought something with them,
and they all had the desire to advance the
honour and glory of their own foundation,
and to keep up its discipline, and economise
its resources, with a view to making it a
splendid place some day, if only it could
be managed.
During the fourteenth century the nuns
were steadily adding to their property.
They must have been living very frugally
and very strictly, for they were always buy
ing up little bits of land that were lying
round them, and every now and then
making a shocking bad bargain. Thus
when Agnes de Methwold was prioress

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 121
(A.D. 1315-1344) there was a certain Aleyn
Brid who had a few patches of land lying
conveniently near the nunnery, and he
made an offer of it to the convent. But
Aleyn was a shrewd man, and I guess
he came to the prioress and pretended he
was getting too old to cultivate that land,
and he would be glad to be rid of it, and if
only the prioress and her nuns would allow
him and his wife maintenance for their joint
and separate lives from the house, and firing,
and a sum of money down, the nuns might
have his lands and welcome. The bargain
was struck and the lands made over; but
alack ! alack ! it seems as if Aleyn Brid
and his wife had not the least intention of
dying for many a long day, and, like many
annuitants before and since, they went on
obstinately living and getting their mainten
ance ; and the land turned out to be barren
and useless, insomuch that the chronicler
of the house, writing years afterwards, could
not restrain her righteous indignation, but

122 FRIVOLA
breaks out into the remark, "When you
come to look at it, gentles, land so dear
and worth so little never was bought ! " — si
cher terre de cy petit value unkes ne fut achate.
The managing of the convent's property,
dotted about as it was in half a dozen neigh
bouring parishes, required some vigilance
and business capacity. But the Crabhouse
sisters seem to have always had a rather
peculiar way of getting their work done.
Instead of employing some needy factor
who had an eye to his own interest first,
and then — after an interval — some" regard
for the interest of his employers, they appear
to have always employed one of their
chaplains to be their agent, and it is sur
prising to see what enthusiastic and long
headed men some of these chaplains were.
I have already spoken of Aylmer, the
chaplain, who evidently was a man of some
property hereabouts, and though he gave
back a great part of the lands which had
belonged to the drowned nunnery in the

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 123
days of its distress, yet it seems that he kept
back a great deal, which he handed on to
his wife and children. In process of time
this property, which comprehended a dwell
ing-house and other appurtenances, came
into the hands of Henry Fitz Roger; a
thriving Wiggenhall man, and he went on
adding field to field tiU towards the end of
the reign of King Edward I. he had got
together more than a hundred acres lying
round about the nunnery, and taking time
by the forelock and not waiting till death
should come upon him unawares and baffle
all his plans, he made over all this estate,
and gave it to the nuns as a separate estate,
the income of which was to go for the
support of a chaplain, who should perform
the services in the convent church for ever,
and not forget to offer up his prayers for the
soul of the founder.
Now I daresay you may think that this
endowment made the chaplain independent
of the prioress, and that it was likely to

124 FRIVOLA
make him "put on parts," as we say in
Norfolk. Nothing of the kind ! I cannot
stop to explain how it was exactly the con
trary. But a chaplain was a stipendiary
who might be much more easily dismissed
than a beneficed clergyman can or ever
could be, while on the other hand when the
post fell vacant the prioress had rather a
valuable piece of preferment in her hands,
and not only was it obviously for the good
of the house to get the best man she could
find, but she was in a position to make such
conditions as would lay some rather onerous
duties upon the newly appointed functiour,
ary. The result was that, from time to
time, a succession of head chaplains (for in
such an establishment there were always
necessarily two or three at least of these
clergy employed in conducting the services
in the church, which went on night and
day) are to be met with at Crabhouse who
were evidently men of considerable business
ability, and who, moreover, were as evidently

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 125
animated by a strong esprit de corps. More
than one of them added considerably to
the possessions of the house, and bought
land with his savings, and gave that land to
enrich the nunnery.
Nothing succeeds like success, and by
the time that Prioress Maud — who, I
would have you note, was a Talbot, and
so a lady of birth — resigned her office
on St. Simon and St. Jude's day, 28th
October, 1420, the nunnery had very
many friends, far and near, who were
all ready and wilhng and anxious to
make a great effort, so that Crabhouse
might begin to be reckoned as one of the
grand places of the county, and raise up its
head among the more splendid foundations
of East Anglia. The nuns made choice of
Joan de Wiggenhall as their new prioress,
and she was installed accordingly, with all
due pomp and ceremony, on St. Catherine's
day following, that is on the 25th November.
I take it that Prioress Joan was an heiress.

126 FRIVOLA
and, in fact, the last representative of the
elder line of her family, and the nuns knew
perfectly well what they were about when
they chose a lady of birth and wealth, and
highly connected to boot, to rule over them.
They certainly were: not disappointed in
any expectations they may have formed.
The new prioress set to work in earnest to
make the nunnery into quite a new and
imposing place, and her friends and kinsfolk
rallied round her nobly.
The first thing Dame Joan did was to
pull down a great barn "which was at the
gate," and I suppose much dilapidated ; and
she built it up anew, and in the doing of
this she got substantial aid from Sir John
Ingoldesthorpe, whose ancestor had allowed
his daughter to take the veil at Crabhouse a
century or so before. Then she set to work
to carry out some much-needed repairs and
improvements in the conventual buildings.
Then she got a kinsman of hers presented
to the vicarage of the adjoining parish of

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 127
Wiggenhall St. Peter's, and this she did in
order that she might work a reform in that
poor neglected place.
For in King John's time the patron of
that benefice had, with the connivance of
the bishop of the diocese, alienated all the
tithes of the place and made them over
to a newly founded Gilbertine Priory at
Shouldham (ten miles off as the crow flies),
and left the wretched vicar to depend upon
the voluntary offerings of his people for a
maintenance. As usual the Gilbertines had
taken all they could get and had done
nothing in return ; and now, after a couple
of centuries of neglect, the chancel of the
church was a roofless ruin and a scandal
to all beholders. Dame Joan made a strong
appeal to the Prior of Shouldham, and being
what she was, a great lady with a great
following, she did not plead in vain. The
chancel of Shouldham was rebuilt. Dame
Joan paying one-third of the cost ; and to
make things safe for the future she bound

128 FRIVOLA
the parish by indenture never to sell the
lead from the roof and never to remove it
except for repairs as long as time should
last. Then she began in earnest upon her
own church — the church of Crabhouse
Nunnery. In the year 1423, " in the fourth
year of the same Joan, prioress, for mischief
that was on the church which might not be
repaired, but if it were new made, with the
counsel of her friends, did it take down,
trusting to the help of our Lord and to the
great charity of good Christian men . . .
and she wrought thereupon three year and
more continually, and made it."
A very grand church it was, too, inside
and out, and many thousand pounds as we
reckon it now, did she spend, and there was
quite a craze in the neighbourhood among
the rich folk who gathered round her.
There was William Harold, "that lieth in
the chapel of our lady," who " paid for the
leading of the church " ; and there was
Richard Steynon, citizen of Norwich, who

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 129
gave freely of his substance in hard' cash
and left a great deal more, " which was
withholden from us by untrue men his seka-
tours " ; and there was John Lawson and
Stephen Yorke and many another whose
donations were large and liberal, though I
do not put down the amounts, because, if
I did, my readers would be inclined [from
pure ignorance, Sir or Madam,: pure ignor
ance !] to undervalue them and count them
nothing so great after all.
But all this time by far the greatest con
tributor was a cousin of Dame Joan, whose
name was Edmund Perys. He was rector
of WatUngton,. a village just a mile from
Crabhouse, but oq the other side of the
Ouse. He too was a rich man and a good
one, and he caught the enthusiasm of Dame
Joan, and he threw himself heart and soul
into the work she had begun. He was so
modest and retiring a man, and was so
entirely of those who —
" Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame,"
10

130 FRIVOLA
that the simple chronicler shrinks from
naming him more than once, and after that
alludes to him in the most delicate way as if
he had expressly desired to avoid publicity.
She— the chronicler — speaks of him as " the
person beforesaid," and sometimes she is
even more obscure in her mention of him
and his good deeds. But that his contribu
tions were upon a very large scale is plain.
He found the stalls for the choir and the
reredos, which cost him a huge sum ; and
he presented two Service Books for the
church, called Antiphonaries, which were so
splendidly illuminated and so gorgeously
bound that they cost a sum at least equal
to ;£200 of our money ; and above all, he
found the stained-glass windows, but on
them he would not allow his name to be
inscribed. " In the end of the work in the beginning
of the seventh year of the occupation of
the same Joan Prioress, the foresaid person
passed to God on the Wednesday next

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 131
after the Conception of Our Lady," with
many a prayer from the good nuns " that
our Lord mote comfort his soul withouten
End." In his will he ordered that he
should be buried within the precincts of the
nunnery, and I daresay one of these days the
body-snatchers aforesaid will dig hereabouts
and discover his tomb and desecrate it as is
their wont. In the meantime better let the
gentie cattie browse upon his grave.
It was in the year 1427 when " this good
man beforesaid " died and was buried. He
was hardly gone when "our Lord, that is
full gracious to all his servants that have
need and that trust in him, sent them
another good friend them to help and
comfort." He was a very considerable
personage in his day, "and cosyn to the
same Prioress," and his name was " Master
John Wiggenhall, Doctor of Canon [Law]."
He held several pieces of valuable prefer
ment, and he was Vicar-General of the
Bishop of Norwich, and many other things

132 FRIVOLA
beside;s. By his help Dame Joan may be
said to have completed her work of making
the Nunnery of Crabhouse- into perhaps the
most splendid of the smaller monasteries in
East Anglia. She rebuilt the cloisters, the
dorter, the tower of the church,, and a great
deal else that is duly and fuUy specified ;
and all this time she was doing deeds of
liberal charity of which the chro.iMcler takes
little or no note. But what follows has
an eloquence of its own. For, " in the xix
year of the same Prioress, feli a great dearth
of corn ; wherefore she must needs have left
work without relieving and help of some
good creatures. So by' the stirring of our
Lord, Master John Wiggenhall, beforesaid,
sent us of his charity an loo coombs malt
and an loo coombs barley, and- besides this
procured us 20 marks."
I have not told nearly all that might be
told of Master John Wigg,enhall,, for my
business is not with him but with the
nunnery that he befriended so handsomely.

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 133
As for his kinswoman. Dame Joan, she died
in 1451, and was succeeded by another lady
of gentle lineage. Dame Margaret Daubeny ;
and she again by Dame Audrey Wulmer.
And under these prioresses things appear to
have prospered well, and the nunnery had
always generous friends. But at last, just
as the sixteenth century began, the nuns
chose as their prioress one Elizabeth
Bredon, and under her the discipline and
all the old prestige passed away. What
happened then and how it came about I do
not care to tell, for it is not pleasant to
speak of sad things which do not satisfy,
for they are vain.

in.
My readers might think I had treated
them unfairly if I did not take them to the
end of my story ; and, moreover, one of the
Philistines might take up the thread of my
narrative and tie ugly knots in it, and end it
off with cruel frays and tags and a crumpled
kind of selvage, such as people are wont to
leave who cobble at other folks' unfinished
work. So I suppose I must go on with my
story even to the bitter end — alas ! it is a
bitter end.
Crabhouse Nunnery was in its glory in
the days of the Prioress Joan. But I am
really inclined to think that the beautiful
house had become only too attractive by the
time that her successor, Margaret Daubeney,
134

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 135
died, about the year 1470. Up to that time
the Prioresses had been ladies of the best
blood in East Anglia for more than a
century and a half, and, as such, they would
be sure to attract other members of the
county families to take the veil under them,
whose entrance fees would add to the
resources of the establishment, and whose
kith and kin would befriend it. Crabhouse
Nunnery had a character to lose and a
tradition to keep up and a name which all
the countryside respected. But, as the
fifteenth century was drawing to a close,
young people began to think less of retiring
from the world and hiding themselves in a
cloister, than of yore.
In Norfolk there was a great deal of the
leaven of Lollardism at work among the
people, a great deal of inquiry and religious
discussion, and a great many more questions
and speculations stirring them than there
had been hitherto. The country, more
especially throughout East Anglia, was in a

136 FRIVOLA
very unsettled state. There was much
violence and disorder and insecurity among
some classes. The Universities were exer
cising a very profound influence upon
others. Columbus had crossed the Atlantic
and discovered a new world. In 1476
Caxton had set up his first printing-press at
Westminster, and that, too, was the begin
ning of quite new things. Old things were
passing away and the old order decaying.
Just at this time there was a break in the
traditions of the nunnery, and for some
reason which has been left unexplained, the
nims elected as their prioress, about the year
1490, a lady who, as they say in Norfolk,
had " come out of the shires," and her name
was Elizabeth Breden. We know nothing
of her except her name, and that name may
stand for anything from Bruton to Breydoa,
for the wise men of the East please them
selves about spelling the names of outsiders,
and never spell them quite correctly if they
can help it.

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 137
The new Prioress was evidently not
"strong enough for the place." Norfolk
jieople are horribly clannish and exclusive,
and any head of a Norfolk religious house,
in the fifteenth century, who was not Nor
folk born would be sure to have a very bad
time of it. Prioress Elizabeth certainly had
a bad time of it. It is fair enough to con
jecture that the poor lady had some good
qualities, some attractiveness, and, probably,
some wealthy kinsfolk ; for all these things
would be taken into consideration, and, other
things being equal, it was right enough and
natural enough that they should weigh with
the nuns in making their choice of a new
Prioress. But a large establishment, with
conflicting interests among the members,
with a crowd of old servants and depen
dents indulging in gossip and tittle-tattle,
with a dozen ladies of all ages — querulous,
self-willed, and yet requiring to be made
submissive and tractable — with the routine
of business claims employing fully the time

138 FRIVOLA
of the ruler — all these things call for
administrative ability, wisdom, decision,
and self-control, which are not to be found
every day in combination in the same
person. The lady Elizabeth Breden was not the
woman to keep things straight. She fretted,
she fussed, she whimpered, she scolded, she
shut herself up in her chamber, she went to
church and prayed hard, but it would not
do — not even that. It ended by the disci
pline of the house falling to pieces, and with
the decay of disciplinei all sorts of serious
laxity and soreness and wrangling and, at
last, shame, came upon the once happy and
prosperous convent.
You must understand that all the abbeys
and priories, and all the monks and nuns in
them, were subject to be visited by the
bishop of the diocese in which they were
situated at least once in every six years.
This visitation was a very serious business —
so serious and so much to be feared that the

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 139
larger and more important monasteries were
continually attempting to become exempt
from the episcopal visitation and to be free
from all control and dictation of the
bishops ; for the episcopal visitation was a
scrutiny of the most searching kind. The
bishop could not often carry it out in
person, for a mediaeval bishop was a very
busy man, and the usual plan was for the
bishop to be represented by his official, who
came with a staff of chaplains and clerks
and servants, and settled himself down in
the monastery sometimes for a week at a
time. AU the accounts of the house were
laid" before him and duly audited. The
church and monastic buildings were care
fully examined by his surveyor. A minute
inventory of the furniture, ornaments, plate,
vestments, service-books, sacred vessels, and
the like, was submitted to his inspection and
compared with an earlier list which had
been passed at the previous visitation. A
report was placed before him of the con-

HO FRIVOLA
dition of the farm buildings, and the live
and dead stock of the house, and aU these
documents were signed by the head of the
house and the office-holders, or obedien
tiaries, as they were called, and the vouchers
were taken away and deposited in the
episcopal archives.
Then came the personal examination of
the members of the community. AU were
assembled in the chapter-house, and each
was interrogated separately (beginning with
the head of the house) as to any complaints
that he or she had to ma-ke, any breaches of
discipline, any irregularity in the conduct of
the religious services, any injustice done or
insubordination shown ; above all, as to any
grave offence against morals, or suspicious
rumours that might be afloat affecting the
character of any member of the body, and
which could not be concealed without
incurring the guilt of conniving at a crime
against the whole society. The answers and
informations given at these visitations were

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 141
all taken down by the sworn notary, and the
formal report was kept in the bishop's
registry. Hundreds of these comperta, as
they were technicaUy called, still exist in
out-of-the-way nooks and corners, though
very few have as yet been printed. When
they are published they wiU give us incom
parably the most minute and trustworthy
picture of the inner life of the monasteries
which can be found, and will show us that
life at its worst,, though, of course, not at its
best. A collection of these comperta for a large
number of religious houses in the diocese of
Norwich, was published by the Camden
Society in 1888. Five visitations are there
given, the earliest for the year 1492, the
latest for 1532. That is, they cover the last
forty years of the period during which the
monasteries were subject to episcopal super
vision and control. Beyond all doubt the
religious houses in England during those
years were in a condition of decay, moraUy,

142 FRIVOLA
religiously, intellectually, and financially, as
compared with their condition one or two
centuries before. How was it at Crabhouse ?
*****
On Monday, the loth day of June, 1514,
the Rev. Thomas Hare, Doctor of Laws and
Commissary of the Bishop of Norwich,
entered upon his visitation of Crabhouse
Nunnery and begun his examination. The
Lady Elizabeth Breden, as Prioress, was
first questioned. She evidently began by
trying to shield her nuns and telling no tales.
" The services were conducted as they ought
to be ; the rules of the religious life were
observed ; the accounts were well kept ; the
buildings were in sufficient repair ; the debts
were few and small. But, if the truth were
to be told, there was one nun, Mary Stut-
field by name, of a good Suffolk family, with
whom nothing was to be done — she was
incorrigibly disobedient to her Prioress ! "
Others were examined. Bit by bit the sad
truth came out. The nuns began to recrimi-

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 143
nate on one another. The Prioress was
obviously wanting in tact, good sense, and
firmness. There were quarrels and bicker
ings ; the juniors were habitually saucy to
the seniors. The religious services were,
indeed, regularly conducted by the chap
lains, but the nuns were not looked after
and wete allowed to do as they pleased.
One of them, Agnes Smith — must I tell the
dreadful tale ? — had brought scandal and
disgrace upon the house ; she had gone
astray. Even the Prioress, two of the nuns
declared, had been lying when she said that
the accounts were duly kept ; the truth was
she had kept none, so they declared.
The visitation came to an end. Certain
temporary injunctions were laid upon the
Prioress. The Visitor went his way to pre
sent his report to the bishop. What fol
lowed we are not told, and I suppose we
shall never know. I feel pretty sure that
Dame Elizabeth Breden was compelled to
resign her post, for at the next visitation, in

144 FRIVOLA
1520, her name does not appear, and
Margery [not Mary, who was probably her
sister] Stutfield, who had been subrprioress
on the previous occasion, had succeeded her
as prioress. Then all things were going on
well. Dame Margery Stutfield was the last
Prioress that ruled over Crabhouse. She
must have held office for more than twenty
years. From anything that appears to the
contrary, she managed her hoiuse discreetly
and. honestly. But there was " a blot on the
scutcheon," and the character of the nun
nery had been lost.
The stigma in any case would have proved
ruinous. There are some sins which society
cannot afford to forgive and which no
school or house for virtuous and devout
women can safely endure. They bring their
own punishment with them. Thus when
the spoliation came and the plunderers were
let loose upon the spoil, Crabhouse Nun
nery was found to be a poor deserted place.

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 145
Mothers could no longer send their
daughters there — devout and earnest ladies
who were seeking a home to retire to in
their age avoided the place. When the
Commissioners drew up the report, which
they handed in to Henry VIII., in 1536,
they found only four nuns in the house —
though they add that the buildings were " in
requisite reparaciones," and of the poor
ladies themselves they declare that "their
name ys goode." Twenty years had passed
since the unhappy scand'al, but from that
day the nunnery had gone down. Under
any circumstances it could hardly have
recovered from its shame.
A year or so before this report of the
Commissioners was drawn up the Prioress
of Crabhouse and her three or four sisters
had seen that the days of their house must
needs be few, and that it would not be long
before they would be turned out of their
pleasant home. Long before the blow fell
upon the monasteries wise men and shrewd

146 FRIVOLA
women must have foreseen, and did foresee
very clearly, that they were going to be
turned adrift and robbed of their aU ; and
they that could do so prepared for the worst,
and set themselves to save something from
the wreck that was coming. The earliest
invasion by the brutal ruffians who were
sent out to pillage the smaller monasteries
began in October, 1535. Already Dame
Margery Stutfield and her nuns had managed
to get rid of much of the convent's property.
They had sold lands and movables before
the Commissioners arrived, and, though
these gentlemen stopped some sales, they did
not get the plunder they expected to find at
Crabhouse, and were very angry at their dis
appointment. Whereupon they revenged
themselves a few months later by inventing
hideous slanders against the poor ladies —
slanders which the Commissioners, whose
report has been already quoted, quietly but
decisively contradicted when the truth was
inquired into. But it seems that the Prioress

UPS AND DOWNS OF AN OLD NUNNERY 147
of Crabhouse and her nuns managed very
cleverly for themselves ; they stript their
house of all the valuables — sold the cattle
and farming stock, and then simply ran away
and deserted the place without waiting to be
driven out as others were.
When the bailiffs came to seize and
seU aU the movables there were no
buyers ! It must have been a grim joke
to the poor people in the neighbourhood,
who for generations had been living upon
the nunnery and were now friendless and
beggared, to see the king's officers marching
into the forsaken and desolate cloister, and
finding little but the bare walls. However,
they had come to hold a sale by auction,
and a sale there was accordingly. Some
church plate was delivered over to the
receiver for the King — which was valued at
;^5 15s. — and a yeoman in the neighbour
hood named Henry Webbe made a bid for
all the live and dead stock and furniture that
could be found. It was all knocked down

148 FRIVOLA
to hini' in a single lot, and he paid for " aU
the goods," the magnificent sum of nine
pounds sterUng. It was one of the few
instances of the spoilers being outwitted by
their victims in those bad times.
And this was the end of Crabhouse Nun
nery. Not one stone remains upon another
now of the beautiful church and Costly
buildings that rose up to heaven there some
four hundred years ago. It has all passed
away like the fabric of a vision. People who
have lived on the site of the old conventual
buildings all their lives can hardly point to
the spot where the old nunnery stood, and
know not that they are walking over the
graves of the buried dead.

QUEEN MARY'S FOOL
I had rather have a fool to make me merry than
experience io make me sad, — As You Like It.
It is a fact to be deplored in the march of
progress that we are waxing less gay and
more grim from generation to generation.
There are many causes which contribute to
bring this about, such as the general desire
on the part of everybody to behave himself
like everybody else — ^the reipressive force
exercised by the police, whose business it is
to stop merry people from making a noise
and laughing too loud and to punish
severely anything in the shape of a practi
cal joke; the dreary uniformity in male
dress ; the dismal tyranny of sombre colours
in our attire ; the ghastly prevalence of ex-
149

150 FRIVOLA
aminations which have an incalculable effect
in depressing the spirits of young and old,
and the deplorable delusion that it is the
duty of everybody to work and the duty of
nobody to play. These and other influences
which might be dwelt on all work in the direc
tion of making us in these later ages of the
world's history more respectable but a great
deal less hilarious than our grandsires were.
But perhaps the printing press has as much
to answer for as anything else. Of course I
do not forget Punch, but I am inclined to
lay a great deal of blame at the door of that
incomparable serial. The truth is, we all
now take in Punch, and we all have our
laugh on Wednesday and relapse into
seriousness till the next Wednesday ; the
mischief being that everybody has the
benefit of the same joke, and everybody has
his share in the drolleries of the same jester.
Time was when the favoured few had real,
live, paid Fools to make them laugh when
they were sad, and to keep their spirits up

QUEEN MARY'S FOOL 151
when they were low. There was no need
to read jokes, or to read about them, when
they were four-and-twenty hours old ; there
were no literary Fools, but the Fool was, we
may say, a member of a profession, and his
training made him up to any emergency
that might arise. Men called him a fool
because he made himself ridiculous ; but as
often as not (as you may see in Shakespeare)
he proved the wisest man in a company,
speaking out what none but he dared utter,
and yet keeping his head cool and not likely to
lose it on the block. There are hundreds of
good stories of Fools and their sayings — aye,
and of their doings too — which shall not be
repeated here ; but it is not known to all
that instances of female Fools are by no
means rare. Female gladiators Juvenal tells
us of ; for when civilisation grows rank the
women always must needs vie with men
in their follies and vices — sometimes, too,
in their virtues and accomplishments ; but
the earliest mention of a female Fool — I do

152 FRIVOLA
not mean a foolish f ema,le-rfas far as I know,
occurs in ,one of Seneca's lettersi, who |tells
us that she played to his wife ; ,that her name
was Harpaste ; th,at she bad long been what
he calls "an hereditary nuisance in the
house " ; and yet that he himself was very
partial to this kind of monster. You may
read what little .more Seneca says about the
poor woman in the tenth Epistle of the fifth
book, and you will see how the moralist, as
his fashion was, went on to improve the
occasion like some Puritan divine or some
Scotch meenister.
I know not if many instances could be
found of a female Fool being kept in any
English household, but I do know that
Queen Mary kept such an one even to
her dying day. In that curious book, pub
lished more than fifty years ago by Sir
Francis Madden, entitled " The Privy Purse
Expenses qf the Princess Mary," there ^re
so many notices of payments made on
account of " Jane the Fool " that we can

QUEEN MARY'S FOOL 153
hardly open the volume and turn oyer half
a dozen pages without coming upon thei;n.
There are charges entered for her dress, "for
a coffer for her," for "the keeper of her
horse," and very frequent payments " to the
Barbor for shaving Jany's hed " (the fee for
which was apparently 4d. in 1543, and raised
after this to 8d.). These Privy Purse ex
penses begin in December, 1537, and extend
to December, 1544; that is, they have to do
with the time when " the Lady Ma,ry," after
her submission to her father and reconcilia
tion with him, was allowed to set up a
separate establishment, and they continue
almost down to the time when she was
named in the Third Act of Succession as
"the Kinges Highnes daughter." During
all these eight years Jane the Fool was
her constant attendant, and was a great
favourite with the Princess. In July,
1544, the poor woman had a serious
iUness; and ag^in, two years after Mary
had become queen, we find a note of a

154 FRIVOLA
payment "to a woman dwelling at Burye,
for healing Jane the Foole her eye." Even
Henry the Eighth himself had a lurking
regard for her : I suspect she was too
shrewd to try any jokes upon the grim king.
Sir Francis Madden tells us that, "in aU
probability, this very person is intended to
be represented in the interesting painting by
Holbein of Henry the Eighth and his family,
which formerly ornamented the meeting-
room of the Society of Antiquaries at
Somerset House, and which is now at
Windsor " ; and he gives us a reference to
an order of the king in 1540, whereby Sir
Anthony Denny is required to deliver certain
quantities of silks and stuffs, among other
people, to "Jane the Fool."
Unhappily the original of Queen Mary's
wiU has disappeared, and in that copy of it
which still exists in Harl. MS. 6949, and
which Sir F. Madden prints as he finds it,
there is a tantalising omission which will
now probably never be supplied, though we

QUEEN MARY'S FOOL 155
are told, " Then follow in the will several
particular legacies to her women and other
servants about her, which in aU amount to
£3,400." Whether any particular legacy
was left to " Jane the Fool " it is idle now to
conjecture. Even the woman's name was
lost, and few could have expected that it
would ever be discovered. During the
course of some researches into Norfolk
history, however, I happen to have stumbled
upon some scraps of information about
"Jane the Fool" which may be of interest
to some of my readers.
Among the closest and the dearest of the
Princess Mary's friends and attendants were
Henry Jerningham and his wife, who was
her lady in waiting, and who attended upon
her at her coronation. The queen took an
early opportunity of knighting Mr. Jerning
ham, appointed him Vice-Chamberlain in
1556, and Master of the Horse in 1557,
and, further, made him some very exten
sive grants of land, a portion of which.

iS6 FRIVOLA
especiaUy the Manor of Cossey in Norfol]?,
is stiU in Ijhe possession of Sir Henry Jer-
^ingham's lineal descendant, Lqrd Sta:fford.
At Queen Elizabeth's accession all hope
of further preferment was gong for Sir
Jlenry Jerningham, being, as he was, a
ifirm and conscientious Catholic, and
strongly opposed to the tenets of the
Reforpiation. Accordingly he retired fron;i
Court, and came down to Norfolk, where he
employed himself in building Cossey HaU,
which still stands, and has never ceased to
be occupied from that day to t^iis by the
Jern,ii;ighams, who ha.ve had the good taste
to leave the old house intact, though a
glorious mansion has been added on to the
original a.nd less ambitious pile.
Sir Henry Jerningham died in 1573,
having made his will on the 15th of August
of the previous year. In it occurs the
following bequest,: — "Item, I give and
bequeath to old J one: Cooper my old gowp ;
And also I wiU that my wife for term of her

QUEEN MARY'S FOOL 157
life, and after her decease my heirs, shall
pay yearly to the said Jone Cooper, aS my
bequest and legacyj the sum of xxvis. viijrf.,
by even portions at the Feast of St. Michael
the Archangel and on our Lady Day in
Lent, evei-y year, for term of the life of the
said Jone Cooper, with meat arid drink and
Lodgirig within my house : And if it shall
fortune that my wife during her life, or any
heir after her decease, shall by any occasion
remove or put out the said Jone Cooper from
my house. Then I will and bequeath to her
out of my Manor of Cossey, to be paid
yearly by even portions, . . . the sum of
Four Pounds by year, ... for her main
tenance and finding for term of her
life." Frances Lady Jerningham survived her
husband mote than ten years. Cossey
was settied upon her ladyship for life, and
her eldest son resided at Wingfield Castle,
on the borders of Suffolk, which three cen
turies ago must have been a far more

158 FRIVOLA
magnificent abode than Cossey. But Lady
Jerningham (her son was not knighted) kept
her state at Cossey, and lived there as a
representative personage, not without sus
picion of harbouring priests and having
mass said in her house, spite of the penal
laws. Her will, too, is before me, and by
one of its clauses she directs as follows : —
"Also I do give unto Joane Fool four
pounds in money, or twenty shillings a
year as long as she liveth, which shaU be
thought best for her at the discretion of my
executor, over and besydes the Four pounds
yearly which was given her by my late hus
band ; and I give unto her one feather-bed
bolster and covering, and all these premises
{sic) not otherwise except my son shaU
refuse to keep and maintain Her during her
life in his house, the which I do rather wish
for him to keep her, for that she hath been a
long servant {sic), than to put her away out
of his house."
So that "Jane the Foole" is Sir Henry's

QUEEN MARY'S FOOL 159
"Jone Cooper," and Lady Jerningham's
"Joane Foole."
In August, 1578, Queen Elizabeth paid a
visit to Norwich ; and on Tuesday, the 19th,
Her Majesty set out from the Bishop's Palace
to "hunt" at Cossey Park — hunt in the dog-
days ! — At St. Bennet's Gates she was stopped
by a " Pageant," which is duly described
in Nichols' "Progresses" (vol. ii. p. 151).
What the " hunting " could have been it is
difficult to imagine. I have my own sus
picion in the matter, but I forbear from
stating it now. It has been said, and is
generally believed, that Sir Henry Jerning
ham entertained Her Majesty. This is
certainly false, nor do I believe that his
son was present on the occasion. No
mention of any entertainment is to be
found ; and there was no time for the
"hunting" after the "pleasant show" and
the Latin speech of the minister of the
Dutch Church. But it is quite conceivable,
and to me it seems probable, that one

i6o FRIVOLA,
object of the Queen in visiting Cossey at
all was to see old " Jone Foole," whom she
riiust well have remembered thirty or forty
years before ait her father's court, with her
shorn head and her rtiotley' dress, and her
jokes and dtoUery. Whether she did' see
her, talk over old scenes, and leave some
remembrance behind her, I suppose we
shall never know. All that, and a great
deal more, has gorie down into silence. It
is pleasant to be able to prove that " Joane
Foole " was not turned out of Cossey in her
old age ; pleasant to find that the poor
woman continued to be kept to the end as a
retainer in the household in which she had
lived so long ; for iri the parish register of
Cossey I find under the year 1585 the
following entry : " Sepulta fuit Johana Cow
per, 14° die Aprilis."

IN WONDERLAND

THE DYING OUT OF THE MAR
VELLOUS.
But there's a tree, of many one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone ;
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat;
Whither is fled the visionary gleam t
Where is it now, the glory and the dream f
Wordsworth.
Mr. Cadaverous has left me a legacy. The
good man is dead, but he has left me his
note-books. This morning I opened one of
them, and found it full of ghost stories.
There was a note, written in Greek and
Latin, on the last page, which, being inter
preted, says : " Of all that comes before this
page I believe not one single word." I was
angered as I read, for why should any man
collect a mass of narratives which he looks
163

i64 FRIVOLA
upon not as mere fiction but as mere lies ?
This arid scepticism makes me hate my
generation. What would Sir Thomas
Brown have said to it if he had been so
unlucky as to live in our time ? I turned
for relief to a veracious chronicler of the
fourteenth century, who has painfully got
together all he could find about the reign of
King Richard II., and who has, in point of
fact, left us about the best r/sum^ of the
years between 1393 and 1404 which any
contemporary writer has handed down to
us, and straightway I found myself breath
ing a purer air.* A fig for men and women
who brag of what they do not beUeVe ! As
Bishop Blougram says, " What can I gain
on the denying side ? " If a man can't see,
we pity hind because he's blind. If he can't
hear, we commiserate with him because
he's deaf. If he can't tell tea from coffee —
not to speak of port from sherry — we take
' "Aiinales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti,
Regum Angliae in Joh. de Trokelow's Chronica," &c.
Edited by S. H. Riley. Rolls Series, 1866.

THE DYING OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS 165
good care to waste no good liquor upon
him. But if he can't believe because he
cannot imagine anything that he cannot
handle, what shall we say of him but that
he is an intellectual cripple ? I had a boy
in my house once who was born with only
one arm. He used to say he should not
like to be "one of those fellows with a
second arm lolloping about at his side." He
could not understand what a man could do
with two arms. If a man has only one arm,
by all means let him make the best of it.
But bragging of it — well ! he'd better let
that alone. Give me the man who can
believe anything. There's some hope that
he will end with a balance of ascertained
.certainty to his credit when he is beginning
to crave less for proof than conviction and
assurance. Accordingly I love my old chronicler.
He lived in days when people were not
perpetually asking, " But is it true ? " " Of
course it's true. Do you suppose I should

i66 FRIVOLA
tell it you if it weren't ? It would not be
worth my while. Invent ? We chroniclers
never invent ; we tell our tale and leave it.
The age of invention will come some day.
What a stupid, dull, matter-of-fact age it will
be ! " My chronicler embellishes nothings
he tells a simple, unvarnished tale. Rather
he has a host of marvellous tales, none the
less matters of fact.
In those eleven years which my chronicler
deals with he gives us no less than fifteen
marvellous stories of strange experiences
which claimed to be set down in his
veracious history. Would you like some
specimens ? Then take them as they come !
In the year 1397, says he, about the season
of Lent, in a village near the town of Bed
ford, every evening as t^e sun went down, a
ghostly female took to wandering about.
She frequented the house of a certain
widow, and she announced herself to be
the widow's daughter. She declared that
the widow was sure to be damned. She

THE DYING OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS 167
had buried her baby offspring in the garden
behind the house, and it was all the mother's
fault that the babe was born dead. So said
the ghost. An animated dialogue took place
between the mother and the phantom. Said
the mother : " I shall not be damned, for I
confessed my sin to a priest, and he gave me
absolution." Said the ghost : " Mother,
thou liest ! and damned thou shalt be for
thy sin I " Undismayed the mother made
answer : " Nay ! thou art a lying spirit, that
wouldst fain drive me to despair. Avaunt ! "
The chronicler assures us that this wrang
ling went on between the living and the
dead very often — " fit saepius contentio inter
eos" — and inasmuch as the mother stood
firm, the ghost changed its tactics. The
widow had a son, and he was a priest ; but
he was a worldly priest, and extravagantly
fond of hunting. The phantom made an
attack upon this priest, whose name (says
my chronicler) was John Hervy. The
spirit gave the parson no rest — day and

i68 FRIVOLA
night coming to him ; told him he read his
matins vilely, and as for his saying of the
Mass, it was just shocking bad {pessime).
John Hervy didn't care a straw, and, in fact,
the ghost and the whole famUy got, at last, to
be on such astonishingly intimate terms that
the very servants used to put the ghost to
proof, and made her say after them the
Lord's Prayer and the Ave Maria, and even
the very Creed artd the first verse of the
Gospel of St. John. All which the afore
said ghost repeated without hesitation or
stumbling. But there was one prayer
which began with the words "O Jesus
of Nazareth." It was an English prayer,
by good luck, and then it looked as if
the ghost could not manage that. It
stammered and bungled and could not
pronounce English ; that was plain. But
in proces.^ of time the spirit got over even
that difficulty, and managed, it seems, to
repeat anything that was put to it. For the
thing went on, says my chronicler, for three

THE DYING OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS 169
years ; and then the ghost grew malicious
and mischievous : it took to rattling the
pots and pans and doing other naughty
things. Finally the ghost began to upset
the great jugs of beer when they were full,
and there was no knowing what might come
next. . . . So. . . . Alack ! there is no end
to the story. My author does not pursue
the subject, but in the most tantalising way
leaves us to imagine the rest.
Two years after this there came a horrible
portent, which disturbed men's minds ex
ceedingly. It came to pass that in this year
1399, of a sudden all over England the
laurels shrivelled up, and then, to the
wonder of mankind, after they had aU lost
their leaves they grew green and fresh again
— not everywhere, we are told — that was not
to be expected — but in many places they
recovered ; that, at any rate, was cheering.
People were awestruck, of course. What
could it mean ? Verily it meant this. Had
not the king of late brought many of the

170 FRIVOLA
nobility to shame — thrown them into prison,
banished them — what not ? They would be
restored by and by — never fear ! Never
fear 1 The laurels would come back and be
green again !
I suspect that the withering of the laurels
was in the winter time, for my chronicler says
that in the spring — even during the season of
Lent — a certain holy hermit, William Norham
by name, presented himself before the Arch
bishop of Canterbury, solemnly declaring that
he had a message "from Him it was not safe
to disobey," which he had to deliver to the
king and his great ones. Strange to say,
the archbishop brought him to the king.
" If," said King Richard, " you are on such
intimate terms with God Almighty, go and
walk barefoot on yonder water, and then we
shall know whether you're a true mes
senger ! " The hermit was equal to the
occasion. " I profess to do no miracles. I
leave that to my betters. Nevertheless, I
warn thee, O King, that thou scorn not my

THE DYING OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS 171
message, or woe to thee and thine ! " So
spake the hermit ; but the king threw him
into gaol, and there he lay for four long
years, during which time all the evils that
he had prophesied came to pass. But when
they let him out, and Henry IV. was on the
throne, the wretched man tried the same
littie game a second time. This time he did
not fare so well, for King Henry laid his
hands upon him at York and hanged him
for a rogue ; though, says my authority, he
was beyond doubt a holy man, for his hair
shirt had actually eaten into his flesh, and
he had never worn shoes upon his feet for
many years, except when he said his Mass ;
and he had made a pilgrimage to Rome too,
and flesh meat had never entered his mouth
for years and years, and yet they hanged
him for a traitor. Oh ! the pity of it !
You must not expect that I should tell
you all my chronicler's stories. No ! I
must leave out the story of the devil of
Danbury ; and I cannot stop to explain

¦V]2 FRIVOLA
how that awful prophecy came true which
frightened the king so much — as well il
might— " Scarce two years on
Will last the pomp of John ! "
Nor may I tell about the hobgoblins that
kept up an infernal battle in the neighbour
hood of Biggleswade. Indeed, I can only
give you a taste of the many good things
that are ready to hand, but I positively must
add a word about the dragon of Sudbury.
There can be no sort of doubt about that
dragon. He appeared in the year 1405, and
he took possession of a portion of Sir
Richard de Waldegrave's property, and that
same property (Bures) belongs to his de
scendants to this day, so it must be true.
The people turned out in force against that
dragon — yea, all the servants of Sir Richard.
But the darts that were hurled against him
rebounded, says my chronicler, as if they
had been hurled at a hard rock, and the
arrows that hit the spine of his back {spinam

THE DYING OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS 173
dorsi) went flying away from it in awful
fashion, and they gave it up for a while.
At last the whole country turned out to slay
that dragon ; but when the dragon saw that
he was going to be attacked in earnest,
being a wary dragon, he betook himself to a
swamp or lake thereabout — I daresay it's
there now — and he went and hid himself in
the reeds, and he never more was seen.
What a dreary, monotonous, uneventful age
we live in ! We have sneered the ghosts
and dragons away. We feed our children
upon grammar and the multiplication table.
Yet there are wonders still if we had but
eyes to see them.

AN ANTIQUARY'S GHOST STORY
Do I sleep f do I dream f
Do I wander and doubt ?
Are things what ihey seem f
Or is wisions about f
Little more than two months [grown now,
as I print for the second time, into sixteen
years] have passed since my own personal
experience of mental phenomena was
strikingly enlarged by the occurrence with
which the following narrative deals. Yet
already I find that round the original story
there has gathered a surprising accumulation
of the mythical element, and that I myself
am in danger of becoming a hero of romance
in more senses than one. As I object to be
looked upon as a kind of medium to whom
74

AN ANTIQUARTS GHOST STORY 175
supernatural visitations are vouchsafed, and,
on the other hand, do not wish to be set
down as a crazy dreamer whose disorgan
ised nervous system renders him abnormally
liable to fantastic delusions, I have yielded to
the earnest request of some who have begged
me to make public the following paper. I
am told that there are those who busy them
selves in collecting similar stories, and if it
be so, it is better they should hear the facts
from me than after they have passed through
other channels. The narrative was written, at
the request of a friend, not many days after
the event, when all the circumstances were
fresh in my recollection.
On the loth of October, 1879, I drove
over from Norwich to Mannington Hall to
spend the night at Lord Orford's. Though
I was in perfect health and high spirits, it is
fair to state that, for some weeks previously,
I had had a great deal to think about, some
little anxiety, and some considerable mental

176 FRIVOLA
strain of one kind or another. I was not,
however, conscious of anything approaching
weariness, irritability, or " fag." I arrived at
4 p.m., and was engaged in pleasant and
animated conversation till it was time to
dress for dinner. We dined at seven ; our
party numbered six persons. Of these, four
at least had been great travellers, I myself
was rather a listener ; the talk was general
and discursive, and amused and interested
me greatly. Not for a single moment did it
turn upon the supernatural ; it was chiefly
concerned with questions of art and the ex
periences of men who had seen a great deal
of the world, and could describe intelligently
what they had seen and comment upon it
suggestively. I have very rarely been at a
more pleasant party. After dinner we played
a rubber. We " left off as we began," and
as two of the guests had some distance to
drive we broke up at half-past ten.
The main object of my going over to Man
nington was to examine and take notes upon

AN ANTIQUARY'S GHOST STORY 177
some very rare books in Lord Orford's library,
which I had been anxiously wishing to get
a sight of for some years, but had never
been fortunate enough to meet with up to
this time. I asked leave to sit up for some
hours and make transcripts. His lordship
at first wished me to let his valet remain in
attendance to see all lights put out, but as
this would have embarrassed me and com
pelled me to go to bed earlier than I wished,
and as it seemed likely that I should be
occupied till two or three in the morning, it
was agreed that I should be left to my own
devices and the servants should be allowed
to retire. By eleven o'clock I was the only
person downstairs, and I was very soon
busily at work and absorbed in my occu
pation. The room in which I was writing is a
large one, with a huge fireplace and a grand
old chimney ; and it is needless to say that
it is furnished with every comfort and luxury.
The library opens into this room, and I had
13

178 FRIVOLA
to pass out from where I was sitting into
this library and get upon a chair to reach
the volumes I wanted to examine. There
were six small volumes in all. I took them
down and placed them at my right hand in
a little pile, and set to work — sometimes
reading, sometimes writing. As I finished
with a book I placed it in front of me.
There were four silver candlesticks upon the
table, the candles all burning, and, as I am
a chilly person, I sat myself at one corner of
the table with the fire at my left, and at
intervals, as I had finished with a book, I
rose, knocked the fire togeither, and stood up
to warm my feet. I continued in this way
at my task till nearly one o'clock. I had got
on better than I expected, and I had only
one more book to occupy me. I rose,
wound up my watch, and opened a bottle of
seltzer water, and I remember thinking to
myself that I should get to bed by two after
all. I set to work on the last little book. I
had been engaged upon it about half an

AN ANTIQUARYS GHOST STORY 179
hour, and was just beginning to think that
my work was drawing to a close, when, as I
was actually writing, I saw a large white
hand within a foot of my elbow. Turning
my head, there sat a figure of a somewhat
large man, with his back to the fire, bending
slightly over the table, and apparently ex
amining the pile of books that I had been at
work upon. The man's face was turned away
from me, but I saw his closely cut reddish-
brown hair, his ear and shaved cheek, the
eyebrow, the corner of the right eye, the
side of the forehead, and the large high
cheek-bone. He was dressed in what I
can only describe as a kind of ecclesias
tical habit of thick corded silk or some
such material, close up to the throat, and
a narrow rim or edging, of about an inch
broad, of satin or velvet serving as a
stand-up collar, and fitting close to the
chin. The right hand, which had first at
tracted my attention, was clasping, without
any great pressure, the left hand ; both hands

i8o FRIVOLA
were in perfect repose, and the large blue
veins of the right hand were conspicuous. I
remember thinking that the hand was like
the hand of Velasquez's magnificent " Dead
Knight " in the National Gallery. I looked
at my visitor for some seconds, and was per-
fectiy sure that he was not a reality. A
thousand thoughts came crowding upon me,
but not the least feeling of alarm, or even
uneasiness ; curiosity and a strong interest
were uppermost. For an instant I felt eager
to make a sketch of my friend, and I looked
at a tray on my right for a pencil ; then I
thought, '* Upstairs I have a sketch-book —
shall I fetch it ? " There he sat, and I was
fascinated ; afraid, not of his staying, but lest
he should go. Stopping in my writing, I
lifted my left hand from the paper, stretched
it out to the pile of books, and moved the
top one. I cannot explain why I did this —
my arm passed in front of the figure, and it
vanished. I was simply disappointed and
nothing more. I went on with my writing

AN ANTIQUARYS GHOST STORY i8i
as if nothing had happened, perhaps for
another five minutes, and I had actually got
to the last few words of what I had deter
mined to extract when the figure appeared
again, exactly in the same place and attitude
as before. I saw the hands close to my own ;
I turned my head again, to examine him
more closely, and I was framing a sentence
to address to him, when I discovered that I
did not dare to speak. / was afraid of the
sound of my own voice. There he sat, and
there sat I. I turned my head again to my
work, and finished writing the two or three
words I still had to write. The paper and
my notes are at this moment before me, and
exhibit not the slightest tremor or nervous
ness. I could point out the words I was
writing when the phantom came and when
he disappeared. Having finished my task, I
shut the book and threw it on the table ; it
made a slight noise as it fell — ^the figure
vanished. Throwing myself back in my chair, I sat

t82 FRIVOLA
for some seconds looking at the fire with a
curious mixture of feeling, and I remember
wondering whether my ff lend would come
again, arid if he did whether he would hide
the fire frOm me. Theh first there stole
upon me a dread and a suspicion that I was
beginning to lose ttly nerve. I remenlbter
yawning ; then I rose, lit my bedroOtn
candle, took my books into the inner library,
mounted the chair as before, and replaced
five of the volumes ; the Sixth I brOught
back and laid upon the table where I had
beeri writing when the phantom did me the
honour to appear to me. By this time I
had lost all sense of uneasiness. I blew out
the four candles and marched off to bed,
where I slept the sleep of the just or the
guilty — I know not which — but I slept very
soundly. This is a simple and unvarnished narrative
of facts. Explanation, theory, or inference
I leave to others.

THE PHANTOM COACH
I.
Come on, then ; horse and chariot let us have,
And io our spori, Titus Andronicus.
If you have never heard of the Phantom
Coach that travels about the old roads and
old trackways of the county of Norfolk, it is
your own fault ; it is not mine. For I have
written of that coach in a book that will do
you good to read and do me good if you buy
it. I wrote about that coach mockingly once ;
I tremble to write of it as if it were a delusion
now. Have I not spoken with those on whom
it called, at whose doors it stopped, who saw
the flash of its lamps, who heard the roll of
its wheels, who have shuddered with a sicken-
183

i84 FRIVOLA
ing horror lest it had come for them, and
only breathed again when it had vanished
and passed on ?
Who knows not "King Solomon's Mines"
and " She " ? I had almost written " Her " !
The gifted writer of those fascinating books
had a father, and he was my neighbour and
friend. A more robust and genial man I
never knew. Let his gifted son forgive me
if I take leave to repeat what he told me
more than once. I think it was Christmas
time, or about the turning of the year. There
was a joyous company in the house ; they
were waiting for one of those vigorous and
manly sons of the large-hearted squire, who
that night was expected home. Suddenly
first one and then another cried : " There he
is ! " Sure enough, the sound of wheels was
heard coming up the drive ; the carrilage
stopped as usual at the inner gate ; then it
came slowly up to the door, and some of the
party ran to greet the new arrival. There
was nothing to be seen. Though all the

THE PHANTOM COACH 185
household had heard the sound of the
wheels, and all were ready with words of
welcome on their lips, yet there was nothing !
It was a windless night, and it was absolutely
impossible for any real vehicle to have come
and gone; yet as absolutely certain to the
minds of those who were present on that
occasion that a carriage had come up to that
front door and had vanished — whether into
the bowels of the earth or into the infinite
ether, none of them would have dared to
say. But nothing happened — nothing.
Longham Hall is a very different place
from Bradenham Hall. Bradenham is the
house of " a fine old English gentleman, one
of the olden time." Longham is a better sort
of farmhouse, with as little romance or senti
ment about it as about any house in Bedford
Row. It was newly built about forty years
or so ago. The road had been newly made,
and the fresh gravel had been laid down not
many weeks, when H., the tenant of the farm,
went to bed as usual, and all the family were

i86 FRIVOLA
sound asleep. He was awakened by; the
very unusual sound of carriage wheels upon
the gravel ; the carriage came on and on,
exactly as in the other case, and stopped at
the front door. He sprang out of bed, threw
up the window, and saw the flare of carriage-
lamps under his very eyes. He called oiit,
asking who was there. There was nothing
to answer ; nothing to be seen ! The prac
tised ear of the old yeoman could not be
mistaken when he said, " No fewer than two
horses at least could have drawn those four
wheels over the new gravel." He evidently
believed that it must have been a coach and
four. Yet when the morning came, it was
clear that the outer gate had not been opened ;
not a wheel had passed over the gravel.
Friend H. told me aU this, and was prepared
with a theory to explain it all, but inasmuch
as his theory was by far the most incredible
and incomprehensible part of the whole story,
I found no difficulty in forgetting it, and if I
remembered it I would not repeat it. There

THE PHANTOM COACH 187
are some things "that don't bear repeating" !
I have heard a great many ghost stories in
my time, but I never heard one of them so
silly as the very best attempt to show how it
was that so-and-so was seen and heard. The
credulity of incredulity beats the credulity of
superstition hollow ! Nothing happened-^-
nothing. !
Now comes old Biddy's story. BreccleS
Hall is one of the most beautiful and interest
ing Elizabethan houses in the county of
Norfolk. It was dismantied and turned into
a farmhouse about sixty years ago, and the
heraldic shields in stained glass that were at
that time in the windows were removed to
the mansion of the purchaser of the estate,
together with other memorials of former
owners and occupants. Breceles Hall has
a history. It was a place of resort and hiding
for the Seminary priests who were hunted
and proscribed and barbarously slaughtered
in Queen Elizabeth's days. It was a place at
which Mass was said every now and then.

i88 FRIVOLA
when the doors were shut and a few trembling
but devout worshippers ventured to gather
together at the secret invitation of Mistress
Eleanor Woodhouse, who lived at Breceles,
and whose husband had to pay heavily for
his wife's stubborn clinging to the old ritual.
Then it was a place where Lady Baldock
lived and where she died, and when she
died she would have herself buried in an
erect position in the church hard by. It was
a house which for three hundred years no
owner seems to have been able to hand down
to a grandson of his own name. It is a
house in which tradition says that once upon
a time there came some cowled monks and
settled there ; and certainly, among the
pictures that once hung upon its walls, there
was a picture of two nuns that stood out of
the canvas, and would have walked out of it
but that one held the other by the hand, and
so they were a check either upon each.
Lastiy, it was a house in which two of its
owners are said to have committed suicide.

THE PHANTOM COACH 189
One certainly did ; I have my doubts about
the second.
Put all these things together, and if Breceles
Hall is not a haunted house, and has not
been a haunted house for three hundred
years, all I can say is that it ought to have
been. I have my own suspicions — and they
are strong ones — that it was dismantled at
last, because it was held to be haunted.
Think of the accumulation of facilities for
ghostliness here. A lady buried upright ; her
head not six inches from the pavement of
the chancel. Wandering Mass priests, scut-
tiing behind the arras and hiding in the roof.
White monks and black nuns. Mangled
suicides, and childless old gentlemen mum
bling in their desolate orbity ; and the owls
hooting, and the woods moaning, and the
rats making night horrible with their madden
ing squeakings at wholly unaccountable
times. What ! That house not haunted ?
Impossible !
Be it as it may. The Phantom Coach

190 FRIVOLA
called there some ninety years ago — called
and fetched away Jarge Mace. And who
was Jarge, and how much of him was
fetched?

II.

" I've been to Breceles, Biddy ! I suppose
you never heard of Breceles."
" Not heerd o' Breceles ? Dash it ! The
first sixpence I ever had o' my own I got at
Breceles ! " said the old woman. Then she
proceeded to tell me how it was. Biddy
was a " little 'un," and she had an aunt who
was dairymaid at Breceles Hall — and Squire
Taylor " give my aunt leave to have me stop
wi' her, and I slept with aunt, that was when
Mrs. Taylor was alive [she died in 1807],
and Miss Penelope was there, too ; she was
Squire Taylor's sister, and Mr. Philip, him
as shot hisself, and Miss Maria, she took and
gave me a kiss, she did. But it was Miss
191

192 FRIVOLA
Penelope as gave me the sixpence. She
was what folks called a mighty stately old
lady. But she gave me sixpence. That's
where the coach stopped and fetched Jarge
Mace ! "
" What coach, Biddy ? "
" Why, the coach as goes about at night
time!" I gathered that about this time Squire
Taylor was out at elbows. Perhaps the son
had taken to evil habits. Perhaps the good
man was over-housed, perhaps the times
were bad — indeed, they were bad times for
the landlords at the beginning of the
century. Be it as it may. Squire Taylor had
been cutting down the timber. " Miles and
miles o' woods," said Biddy, which you
must accept cum grano. Bad times have a
tendency to bring out all the badness in
half-starved men. There was a wide stretch
of open country, heather — commons not yet
all enclosed — and waste lands to the west of
Breceles, where there were large flocks of

THE PHANTOM COACH 193
sheep and rabbits ; and to the east there
were still some squires' houses, and
pheasants and hares in the spinneys ; and
it was whispered that there was a regular
band of smugglers, who were organised
to carry Hollands across the open from
somewhere to somewhere, and who, some
how, had confederates who did something
while the peasantry kept their eyes open
or shut according as it suited their pur
pose. One night — ^it was at the beginning of the
century, and a little before Christmas-time —
a band of fellows from Shropham and Rock
land agreed to meet in a plantation " some-
wheres behind Breceles Hall," and one of
the men was a certain George Mace, who
was a very black sheep at the little town of
Watton, or near it. The probability is that
Mace was the leader, and that the fellows
were bent on " drawing the covers " round
Merton, where the second Lord Walsingham
kept up some state when he was in residence.
14

194 FRIVOLA
" Mace ! Mace ! Why, there was a great
prize-fighter named Mace, Biddy. Any
relation of his ? "
" Begging your pardon, sir ! Boxer Mace
was Jem Mace, and he came from Bilney or
thereby. I've often had a chat with Jem
Mace before he took to boxing. But there's
a lot of Maces round about Bilney. Jarge
Mace he came from Watton, and he was
christened Jarge because he was born the
day the king was crowned, and I never
heard tell as he had nothing to do with
Boxer Mace ! "
Then came many speculations about the
illustrious house of Mace and the most
illustrious Jem — ^who, I was informed, took
^ public-house in Norwich, where he ended
his days in the odour of beer and tobacco —
till we came back at last to Jarge, and how
he was a mysterious sort of a man, who was
never without money in his pocket, though
nobody knew where it came from ; how he
never did a stroke of work ; how he was sus-

THE PHANTOM COACH 195
pected of having been implicated in two or
three serious robberies, and had never been
even apprehended ; how folks said he kind
o' set on other rogues, and gave information,
and was a sort of a spy who had methods of
his own which he followed in a sly Satanic
way ; how he was a woman-hater, and a
man who could drink all night in the ale
house and never open his mouth ; how his
only ostensible means of hvelihood was
skitties, which he played for miles round ;
and how he had played a keeper for his
velveteen jacket and won it and wore it for
years, "and never wore no other, so I've
heerd my aunt say. But aunt never saw
him, 'cause the coach came and fetched
Jarge years before my aunt was dairymaid at
Breceles. But she was that afraid of Jarge
and of the coach coming to the HaU that
she couldn't sleep o' nights watching for it.
And it was all as ever Miss Penelope could
do to make her stay two years, though Miss
Maria kept laughing at her aU the time.

196 FRIVOLA
And at last she couldn't bear it, and she
went and got married."
Whether the fact that Squire Taylor's son,
daughter, and sister were all unwedded,
though they were at least mature when
Biddy's aunt was dairymaid, had awakened
a dread in that virtuous female's mind lest
she, too, as an inmate of the Hall, would be
infaUibly doomed to celibacy if she remained
there ; or whether she was haunted with the
dread that where the coach stopped, there
could be no marrying or giving in marriage,
I cannot take upon me to determine ; but
Biddy's aunt " went and got married," and
for the rest of her life she would frequently
recur to the coming of the coach, and every
particular and detail of her narrative she
protested with solemn oaths and assevera
tions was true as Gospel, and Biddy beHeved
her as in duty bound.
This little band of poachers or thieves —
it is hard to say which — met at the trysting-
place in the plantation. They received their

THE PHANTOM COACH 197
instructions from Mace, who, it was agreed,
was to watch the house for a certain time,
then join them " somewhere by Thompson
way, I've heerd my aunt say." There again
Mace was to be the look-out man ; finally
they were to get back to Breceles Hall and
settle up before the moon went down. After
that, each was to get home at his own risk
as best he could. Everything went smoothly,
everj^ing had been skilfully arranged. As
to the plunder, whatever it was, aunt
couldn't say anything about it. The moon
was getting low. The rogues crept back to
a shed behind the Hall and waited. Mace
was not there. They listened, and heard
nothing. One peeped out, and then another ;
and time wore on and the moon got lower.
Hark ! Rumbling along over the villainous
roads that scarcely deserved the name, a
carriage was evidentiy making its way to the
front door. The four fellows saw the coach-
lamps flashing through the stained-glass
windows of the old mansion — the very coats

198 FRIVOLA
of arms were painted on the hoar-frost at their
feet. At the front door the coach stopped ;
they heard the carriage door open, the steps
let down — ^the door was shut again with a
slam. The next moment there was utter
darkness, the moon had set, and the stillness
was as the stillness of the grave. In the
house it was evident that no one had heard
anything — no one was awake, no one stirred.
The coach had vanished.
Then those four men went their ways;
they would stay no longer. Next morning
Jarge Mace was found lying dead at the
front door of Breceles Hall. Not a mark
upon his body ; not a stain upon his gar
ments; his eyes staring glassily, stiff and
cold. And yet ^rogant sceptics have the hardi
hood to disbelieve in the Phantom Coach,
and will maintain that it never did set down
anybody, or pick up and fetch anybody,
not even Jarge Mace.

III.

When I wrote on the subject of the Phantom
Coach in November last, I never thought
that I should have occasion to recur to it
again. But it so happens that among the
letters which came to me as a natural conse
quence of my rashness in dealing with so
mysterious a phenomenon there are at least
two which it seems to me that my readers
ought to be made acquainted with, be they
sceptics of the most pronounced type who
are prepared to disbelieve anything and
everything, or be they the so-called spiritual
ists whose credulity has no limit. For
myself, I am one of those unhappy eclectics
199

200 FRIVOLA
whom the Philistines abhor because I do
believe something, and the visionaries
denounce as a mocker because I stand by
the laws of nature, and cannot conceive that
twice two can ever be equal to five. We are
an unfortunate band, we eclectics. During
the last year or two I have found myself
stigmatised as a dangerous Radical, a bigoted
Tory, and a crypto Papist, only, as far as I
can see, because I am not a dangerous,
bigoted, or crypto anything. If I were only
a poet I could understand why I should have
this hard measure, for it was of a poet that
it was said —
He's a traitor, blasphemer, and what rayther worse is.
He puts all his Atheism into dre'ful bad verses !
But being a mere man of prose, why should
mine enemies box the compass, as it were,
and paste me all over with tickets like an
old portmanteau that has been upon its
travels ?
You, my superior people, do not believe
in the Phantom Coach. Good 1 I am not

THE PHANTOM COACH 201
going to argue with you. You spiritualistic
people — ^you look askance at me because I
do not believe as much as I ought about the
said coach ? Good again 1 I'm not going
to argue with you either. I never knew a
man of fifty who was argued into anything ;
and most of you, I am informed, are over
fifty — and so am I.
Nevertheless, here are two letters which
are lying before me as I write. You are
welcome to the extracts from those letters,
which I am permitted to make public. It is
no fault of mine that I am compelled to
withhold the names of persons and places,
which have been communicated to me in
confidence. The first letter is dated November 7, 1893.
It was written by a lady of good birth,
education, and position, and this is what she
says : —
" We live in an old-fashioned mansion in
 , and on September 9, seventeen years

ago, my sisters and I were sitting quietly in

202 FRIVOLA
the dining-room after supper, and three
small dogs were lying before the fire. The
night was very stfll, but suddenly the stillness
was broken by the sound of wheels on the
drive, coming towards the house. The dogs
began barking, and my sisters exclaimed,
' There is a carriage coming up the avenue ! '
I may mention that for some days we had
been expecting a brother from the north of
England. Someone looked at the timepiece,
and said, ' It will be Henry ;- he must have
come with the last train 1 ' My sisters went
to the door to welcome him, and I went and
looked out at the window. Shading my
eyes from the light in the room, and peering
through the Venetian blinds, I distinctiy
saw a horse (harnessed) standing halfway
past the porch at the door. It was a brown
horse, and the ears were lying a little back.
I said aloud, ' It is Henry ! There's a trap
at the door,' and then I followed my sisters.
Imagine my feelings, on going to the door,
to see nothing, and my sisters gazing around

THE PHANTOM COACH 203
in blank amazement. We returned to the
dining-room feeling rather queer and eerie.
After a bit a thought occurred to me to ask
the servants if they had heard anything. On
going to the kitchen, I said, ' Did you hear
anything ? ' ' Yes,' they said ; ' we heard a
carriage come up the avenue.' Further
inquiry elicited the fact that they had heard
it coming some distance away and then stop
at the house, and they had remarked among
themselves that it was a long time in going
away. " As many members of our family were from
home, I made a note of the date and hour ;
but nothing happened, and ever since all our
friends know the story as the 'Phantom
Carriage.' ... I ought to mention that
looking out of the dining-room window, as I
did, although a carriage is at the door, it is
only the horse that can be seen."
I have very little comment to make upon
this simple narrative ; it speaks for itself.
But I wonder why those three little dogs did

204

FRIVOLA

not run to the door and go for that horse.
But then dogs do so dearly love a Turkey rug
spread before the fire, and it may be that they
had heard enough to make them reluctant to
carry the matter any further. That was really
a very profound remark of the philosopher
who confessed that he had never yet got inside
a do^s head.
Seventeen years ago is an unco' long time.
It's several thousands of days ago, and tens
of thousands of hours ago, and of course —
of course — what happened all that time ago
can't be quite as true as what happened the
day before yesterday. " Julius Caesar ? Who's
Julius Caesar ? " said a grumpy old parishioner
of mine to a persistent proselytiser. " For
all I know, or you know, he may have been
aboard of the Ark. I ain't agoing to be took
all that way back ! " Just so ; I am painfully
aware that the historic imagination requires
to be cultivated laboriously before it can go
" all that way back." After seventeen years
we may begin to doubt any evidence. To

THE PHANTOM COACH 205
begin with, none of those dogs can be alive
now, and if they were they'd be so deaf that
it would be useless to cross-examine them !
It is therefore advisable that we should have
better evidence than that of seventeen years
ago. Wherefore let my readers ponder the
following letter, dated November 30, 1893,
and dated from a house in the county of
Norfolk, the peculiar land of the Phantom
Coach, as I till recently had believed. Also,
let it be remembered that the article on the
said coach was published on the 4th of that
month. The writer of the letter is a bene
ficed clergyman and well known in the land
of the East, whence in old times the wise
men came, but where now they stay because
they are so wise. Thus writes this wise
man : —
" On Nov. 13 I was dining with the Volun
teers, and on my left . . . was a doctor who
lives just at the top of my lane. He said to
me, ' Were you dining at X on Saturday ? '
I replied, ' No ! but why do you ask ? '

206 FRIVOLA
' Oh ! ' he replied, ' because I was on the X
road on Saturday, and I saw going before
me into Y a carriage with lamps lit, and I
thought it must be yours, because it turned
down your lane and in at your gate ; and
when I went in my wife said to me, " I sup
pose the W.'s were dining out ? I have just
heard their carriage drive in." ' ' Well,' I
replied, ' we certainly were not dining out on
Saturday, and at the hour at which you saw
the carriage I was in bed and asleep, and I
certainly heard nothing.' That, Sir, is the
story, and I do not attempt to explain it. No
one living in that lane has a carriage-and-
pair except ourselves. . . . There is no train
at so late an hour."
As far as I am at present informed, this is
the last appearance of the Phantom Coach
in its native county. On this story I have
even less to say by way of comment than on
the previous one. A suggestion has been
offered which will be fully approved of by
the Philistines and- make them very happy.

THE PHANTOM COACH 207
but will correspondingly distress their more
psychical fellow-creatures, always provided
that it suffices for its purpose of accounting
for the facts. And whenever you are com
pelled to admit facts that are hateful to you,
you may always get rid of them by account
ing for them. The suggestion is this : A band
of Philistines — " india-rubber idiots on the
spree" — are supposed to have hired a
carriage-and-pair from somewhere, and to
have driven down from nowhere in particu
lar till they came to X. Then they drove to
that particular lane in the dead of night, and
secretly drew back to where they came from.
Also it is supposed that they were induced to
take this nocturnal drive, with lamps lit and
a coachman on the box, in consequence of
the profound effect produced upon them by
a certain article in The Illustrated London
News, on November 4, 1893. Very odd, isn't
it?

DREAMS
Night is the time for dreams,
The gay romance of life.
When truth that is and truth thai seems
Blend in fantastic strife.
Ah ! visions less beguiling fat
Than waking dreams by daylight are.
They tell me that in the libraries at Nineveh
and elsewhere among the ruined cities of
Mesopotamia there is an enormous literature
of dream-books. Everybody was a dreamer
among those Babylonians and Assyrians.
Men laid themselves down to sleep with the
full intention of making a night of it. They
gave themselves up to the luxury of seeing
sights and hearing sounds which in their
waking hours they could not apprehend :
the body reposed, the soul went on its
208

DREAMS 209
travels to the spiritual world. The Chaldean
sage was an interpreter of dreams ; he was
that or nothing. Gentie and simple dreamt
profusely, and gentie and simple went to
the interpreter to be told what their dreams
meant and what they portended. Interpre
tation of the nightly visions began with
empiricism — as every science does. It deve
loped into one of the recognised sciences.
It had its axioms, its postulates, its laws, its
method, and doubtless it had a calculus of
its own. So rich, I am told, is the literature
of this science that one of these days we
may expect that it will be revived. Beware
how you trust to the Gospel of Education to
rid you of credulity ! Athens swarmed with
dreamers, who brought their dreams to the
professors of the art of explaining them. The
Oneirocritica of Artemidorus has come down
to us, and has been learnedly edited more
than once ; the author was a physician, and
his work, in five books, gives us the result of
many years of study and research in an age
IS

210 FRIVOLA
which was by no means barren of culture.
Moreover, Artemidorus, was not only a
learned man and a great traveller, but he
was a religious man too, according to his
lights, and he solemnly declares that he
had a divine mission to write his book on
the interpretation of dreams. But he was
of yesterday as compared with those Chal
dean masters who stabbed their cuneiform
lore into the Mesopotamian clay and then
sent it to the baker to make into those
imperishable tablets. Mr. Cadaverous, who
was rather audacious in his views of history,
though always reverent, as a man of his
temperament could not help being, used to
give it as his opinion that when Abraham
went forth from Ur of the Chaldees he
carried with him some of the mystic lore
which he could not but have learnt iri the
home of his father, Terah ; and he was wont
to say that the patriarchs were all dreamers,
their " unconscious cerebration " having
been stimulated by long cultivation of tbe

DREAMS 2n
hjrpnotic faculty through many generations.
He used to instance the case of Joseph as
proviijg that the art of dream-interpretation
had not been lost in the patriarchal age,
though, he added, it was not until the return
to Babylon that we read of any great atten
tion having been bestowed upon the anti
quated science. Of course I am not respon
sible for any opinions expressed by Mr.
Cadaverous. Fifty years ago my father had a groom
who was much exercised in his mind on
the subject of dreams. He was not a very
estimable fellow, and I am afraid he did nqt
teach me much good. He had a small
collection of dream-bopks. Where he got
them from I know not, but many a time and
oft have I sneaked into the harness-room to
pore over those books, and with the omnivo-
rosity (what a beautiful word !) of youth I
eagerly devoured them. Alas ! I remember
little more than the look of them now, but
my flesh used very much to creep at one

212 FRIVOLA
dream which was set down with a horrible
vividness. It was the dream of an unhappy
visionary who, as he slept, beheld two enor
mous cats with fiery eyes glaring at a wreath
of curling smoke that kept rising from the
earth and was for ever changing its form.
Suddenly the cloud-like appearance assumed
a human shape, and then one cat sprang
upon the other cat, and mangling and
slaughter supervened, and lo ! the smoke
was red smoke like unto flame. The book
went on to say that this dream was dreamt
by Jack somebody or other for three con
secutive nights before he murdered Tom
somebody else, whom he found with his
sweetheart Polly. It was in vain that the
slaughtered pair were buried in the same
hole, for Jack had dreamt that the cloud of
smoke had issued from the bowels of the
earth, and that meant that murder will out ;
and so it tame to pass, and Jack was hanged.
"Smoke rising from the ground means in
fallible detection," said the dream-book, "as

DREAMS 213
is evident from the instances given above."
Therefore I inferred that when you dream
of curling smoke you should avoid foUowing
in the steps of Cain !
I am given to understand that dreaming
is going out among townsfolk. I suppose
that this is to be accounted for from the fact
that the townsman's daily life is too fuU of
incident of a certain sort — ^too crowded, too
argumentative, too noisy, to allow of much
dreaming. There is no room for any play
of the fancy in the conditions of town life.
I believe that among our country folk
dreaming is coming in again. I have heard
a great deal about people's dreams during
the last few years. Country people are not
living at the same tension as the dwellers in
the streets are. They have a great deal of
time on their hands ; they are not unused to
loneliness ; they sleep for much longer hours,
they hardly know the taste of gin ; they are
giving up drinking beer ; they quench their
thirst with tea, sometimes hot, sometimes

214 FRIVOLA
cold, and they have leisure for dreaming.
The most common dreams of the rustics in
East Anglia are what I must call rehgious
dreams. More than once I have beeri
solemnly assured that the dreamer " has
seen the Lord." It would be easy to raise
a laugh by detailing the grotesqueneSs of the
visiOn. It is usually a woman who df-eaffls
this dream, and I am bound to say that the
result of such dreams is not edifying. I
cannot say that I ever knew any man,
woman, or child the better for dreaming
anything. I have known several who were
distinctly the worse for it. A year Or two
ago we had a menagerie established riear
us for a couple of days. The week after it
went away half a dozen people in the next
parish dreamt of raging wild beasts. The
hyenas were the worst. One young fellow
is reported to have said he was glad he had
been to the show, for "he gnaw'd the look
of the devil now as he'd never gnaw'd him
afore." On inquiry it turned out that he

DREAMS 215
had been dreaming of the devil, who ap
peared in the form of a raging hyena, only
that he had horns. The wretched youth
had a hideous night of it. " That war more
nor a dream, that war ! " he protested,
solemnly. " He came that near to me that
I couldn't stir ; and he says — says he, in a
sort of a whisper like — ' I'm arter you ! '
says he ; and I shrook out then ; and I woke
up, and I'd had enough of him that turn,
and I don't want to dream that no more ! "
Unluckily for this dreamer, however, it is
by no means certain that this vision of his
wiU not come back to him. Recurring
dreams are far from uncommon. I knew a
man who had a dream which haunted him
for years. He was always able to fly in his
dreams, and the pleasure he derived from
his nocturnal soarings into the empyrean
was exquisite. About once a month he
dreamt that dream, but he never dreamt it
in harvest time. Then the men are always
working in company, and the work is really

2x6 FRIVOLA
hard work and exhausting. They sleep too
soundly then to find any time for dreaming.
This man went on at his flying dream for
many years, tiU he was past seventy. He
had a long and painful illness, but he slept
without dreaming. One night, however, the
dream returned, and in the morning he said
to his old wife, " Betsy ! I had a flight last
night. To-night I shall have that dream
again — but I sha'n't come down no more
this time ! " Next morning the poor woman
woke up, only to find that her husband was
lying by her side — quite cold.

A NIGHT OF WAKING
At all times will you have my power alike ?
Sleeping or waking must I still prevail.
I King Henry VI.
Sleep, gentie sleep. Nature's soft nurse, has
been very gracious to me aU through my
life. A sleepless night I have not known
for nearly thirty years ; yet somehow it
came to pass t)ne night that I laid awake for
hours. It was so novel an experience to
me that I became quite interested in my
symptoms, and the longer they lasted the
more I found myself wishing that I could
record what went on during those four or
five hours.
I had had an exhausting day. Some
clergymen go through their Sunday duties
with little or no effort. I am so unhappily
217

2i8 FRIVOLA
constituted that I never can " take it easy,"
as the phrase is. I speak and read with
more emphasis than wisdom ; I preach
more loudly than I need ; I have of late
years given up delivering written sermons,
and such as I do deliver cost me much
thought and pains. The result is that on
Sunday evening, after some three hours of
continuous reading, singing, declaiming, and
some eight hours of mental tension not
unmixed with anxiety, disappointment, and
sometimes heaviness of heart, I am almost
always half prostrate by fatigue — a useless
log, in fact, and fit for nothing. But
" Nature's soft nurse " comes and tends me,
and twelve hours of slumber is not rare with
me between, Sunday afternoon and Monday
morning. But that night I laid my head upon my
pillow disgracefully early, and I was " off "
before one could utter a dissyllable. In an
hour or so I awoke with a start. Mendels
sohn's outburst of angelic assurance came to

A NIGHT OF WAKING

219

me, as it were from aU the clouds of heaven,
and the rapture of the great chorus " Be not
afraid ! Be not afraid ! " startled me like a
revelation in the darkness. I sat up in bed
and listened, but the silence was awful. It
seemed to me that the ticking of the clock
had ceased. I waited, and the old clock
began again. Now you must please to
understand that three or four days before
this I had heard that same chorus rendered
with wonderful precision and effect, and it
had stirred me with a profound sense of
wonder and joy all the more intense because
it was so familiar. But what made the
clock stop and then go on again ? Oh, you
wise ones ! Of course you will account for
it. I know aU about your theories, and if
you ask me how long it stopped I can only
say it was for a space of time somewhat
between five minutes and eight hours. But
nothing shaU persuade me it was for less
than five minutes. I tell you I sat up and
listened for it, and the thing wouldn't go on !

220 FRIVOLA
Then I laid me down again and closed my
eyes, for they were very weary, and they
ached and throbbed. But sleep had gone
from me. I was horribly wakeful. I became
conscious that I had no will. I was like
the man in Horace, who was possessed
with a delusion that he was sitting in a
theatre, and scene after scene was shifted,
and the dancers danced, and the players
played, and the drama went on in its regular
course, and that poor man redoubled his
applause. So it was with me ; but I took
aU the parts, and the dialogue came from
me, it did not come to me. It was a
glorious and elaborate tragedy. There was
a poor desolate maiden, who was most
crueUy wronged ; and I hated myself when
a tall burly Jew flouted her, stabbed her, and
hid the dagger in her lover's scabbard, and
then went on to play the part of virtue's
champion, and was triumphant after aU. I
hated myself for conniving at the crime, but
I lay there passive, wide awake and passive.

A NIGHT OF WAKING 221
I felt my arm was getting very cold, but I
had not the power to move it under the
bedclothes. When I did shift my posture
imagination seemed to have passed from me,
and memory was roused to preternatural
activity. It began by my seeing my grand
father springing out of his yellow chariot ;
and I wondered why he wore that queer
littie pigtaU, and who tied it up for him.
People long dead came by the score, mixing
with living men and women, talking, laugh
ing, quarrelling. People I had never thought
about for years, nor cared for at any time.
Gradually they resolved themselves into a
sort of debating club, everybody having his
views, and everybody expressing himself with
a precision and fluency which vexed me
with a painful envy. They talked and
argued for hours and hours, and the clock
went on ticking, and I was nowhere. At
last, out of the chaotic hubbub some order
and method arose, and my dead friend
V  , with his low voice, declared quietly

?22 FRIVOLA
that the days were poming when men would
no longer condemn suicide as a moral
offence, but sometimes condone it, some
times applaud it. The Lady Theodora,
with her glorious eyes, flashed at the speaker
imperiously. I had no suspicion tiU then
tha); she was wondrously learned. She
knew Plato's "Crito" by heart it seemed,
and she quoted Socrates word for word — a
whole page of it. I could not have done it
to save my soul. She glanced at Dr.
Donne's paradoxical work, the " Biatha-
natos," reasoned closely, criticised as she
went on ; wondered how Donne could be
so silly as to say that bees sometimes kill
themselves. Argument, quotation, illustra
tion, foUowed on, always sweetly, persua
sively, sometimes impetuously ; and they
crowded round her, and I lost their distinc
tive individuality— they were a mere crowd.
Meniory was becoming blurred, the
dialectic faculty was taking up the ganie.
We came to no conclusion. There was a

A NIGHT OF WAKING 223
tangle of discussion. For an hour or so we
talked of fascination, possession, and that
which we caU mesmerism. Another dead
friend broke in gaily. I did not see his
face ; but he was present, and he called to
me laughingly, " I possessed you once — you
know I did ! I wondered myself at my
ascendancy — ^was it physical, or intellectual,
or the other thing, eh ? Clearly it was not
moral." I am sure the Lady Theodora
smiled. I turned wearily, stared into the
blackness. The clock went on as before.
Sleep would not come. But was this
wakefulness ?
" Can't you sleep ? " said the living voice
of one by my side. I fenced with
the anxious question, then I got up and
looked at the stars. There was a mist
covering the face of the earth, but not a
sound, not the stir of a leaf. The moon
had set. I was very, very weary. I laid me
down again. I began to worry myself with
regrets, with plans, with new schemes. An

224 FRIVOLA
unaccountably fantastic wish presented itself,
" As soon as I finish the half-dozen tasks I
have in hand," I said, " I'U translate the
' Misopogon of Julian the Apostate !' " That
set me thinking of one of old Biddy's odd
sayings : " Working men ha' got no caU to
have beards ! They'd be a deal better with
out 'em. Esau was the first as we read on
that wore a beard, and much good it did
him ! " I was back again among my own
people now, and memory, with some simple
homely reminders, came to me with mes
sages of refreshment. Hark ! there was the
sound of some travelling van that came on
and on and passed along the road and went
off into the distance till there was stillness
again. "Suppose it was the phantom
coach I " I thought to myself, and then
there came back to me stories of that phan
tom coach, and I recalled them one by one
till a flash of self-reproach startled me as I
reflected that I had kept all these to myself
from year to year, and that one or two of

A NIGHT OF WAKING 225
these stories would die with me if I did not
write them down. I had almost utterly for
gotten Biddy's weird story of Jarge Mace
(they pronounce George Jarge in Arcady) of
Attieborough, and how the coach came to
fetch him, "down there by Breceles Hall
somewheres." It all came back upon me
last night with extraordinary vividness.
How had it come to pass that I had never
told it to the world ?
Then I thought I would write about it the
very next day, and I began to plan it out and
to give myself to the future — to the morrow
— not to the hour, nor to yesterday and the
times gone by. And so as I lay thinking
consciously at last, strange to say, the clock
stopped again, and there came another
sound : a human hand — it was the hand of
the Marchioness — was knocking at the door.
I had been asleep for some hours after my
spell of wakefulness, and it was time to rise
and be about my work ; for we aU have our
work — ^even we poor useless country parsons.
16

MISCELLANEA

CLOCKS AND WATCHES
. . . like a German clock,
Still a-tepairing ; ever out of frame ;
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right.
Love's Labour Lost.
An excellent worthy, some years ago, pre
sented to the parish of which I have the
honour to be rector a secondhand clock,
which has been ticking intermittently ever
since in the church tower. It was a
generous gift, and the people are proud of
the ancient timepiece. We are not of
those who look a gift-horse in the mouth,
and it is not every parish that has a clock
which strikes the hours and has some pre
tension to keep the time when it is duly
watched and wound up and treated with
229

230 FRIVOLA
loyal deference. We do not expect too
much of our clock. It is a thing to boast
of, even though it be not exactly a thing of
beauty ; it has its own way of going and its
own way of stopping too, and is entirely to
be depended on for one thing — and that is
for not being too rigidly uniform in its
habits. In fact, our clock is a. wayward
clock ; it prides itself on not being as other
clocks are. Fifty times a day do fond eyes
gaze at it, and the passers-by on the road to
the nearest market town may often be heard
exclaiming with a glad surprise, " Why !
that clock's a-going to-day," and then they
pull out their watches and compare notes.
When our benefactor gave us that clock
another excellent worthy presented us with
a sundial, and fixed it up with carefully
calculated precision upon the south porch.
It is an admirable dial, exact, unpretentious,
silent as the grave, faultiess, and absolutely
to be trusted ; yet — ^such is the perversity of
human nature — I never saw a human being

CLOCKS AND WATCHES 231
turn his eyes to that sundial except he was
one that I had taken the pains to show it to
and bid him look at it. Nobody, cares for it,
nobody respects it, nobody consults it,
nobody believes it to be of the slightest use
or admires it as an ornament. Why is this ?
There is something in the nature of aU of
us which makes perfection appear insipid.
It is irritating to find in anything no margin
of error. In proportion as we eliminate the
" personal equation," in that proportion we
are face to face with mere mechanism.
Never to make mistakes is the characteristic
of the low man. You may find a million
knaves who in the course of their lives were
never known to be wrong in adding up
miles of figures. They are worth so many
pounds a year to any haberdasher in the
New Cut,
That is all they are fit for. "Seven
pieces of tape at five farthings a piece ; three
ha'p'orth of pins from a twopenny box ; half
a card of hooks and eyes at threepence a

232 FRIVOLA
card, with five hooks and seven eyes short ;
a pair of braces a trifle soUed at tenpence for
three pairs, and two-and-a-half per cent, dis
count off the total for ready money. How
much ? " The man will teU you in a twink
ling, he's as true as my sundial ! Do you
love him ? , Not you ! You'd as soon lose
your heart to a pair of pincers. But you do
get very fond of your watch, especially if it
varies. You take it out much more often to
find how wrong it isi than to find out the
tiit;ie.pf,day. When it stops without rhyme
or reason you shake it, and it probably
thinks better of it and languidly consents to
go for a little while longer ; next day it
starts off at a full gallop, and you find it
has gained five minutes in twelve hours.
That's a watch of some character, that is !
But suppose all watches went like chrono
meters, who would carry one ? The mono
tony of all men's watches j saying exactly
the same thing at every moment of the day
or night would be sickening. I knew a

CLOCKS AND WATCHES 233
man once who had a large collection of
watches. They dated from fabulous ages,
they came from distant lands, they included
that famous " repeater " which the boatswain
in " Peter Simple " was so proud of. One
had been dented by a bullet at Waterloo ;
another had been cut out of a shark which
had swaUowed it in a sailor's breeches-
pocket ; and a lot of seven had been bought
as a bargain of a mysterious villain who was
suspected of having abstracted them from a
pawnbroker's window. I asked my friend
one day how many he had. " Sixty-two in
aU ! " was the reply. " I wound them all up
yesterday, and so I happen to know ! "
" Wound them up ? — do you mean to say
they all go ? " His contemptuous astonish
ment was chilling. " Why, my good man,
what do you suppose they were made for ? "
To say the truth, I had never looked at the
matter in that light. It appeared, however,
in pursuing my inquiries, that some of these
articles did not go, for the sufficient reason

234 FRIVOLA
that their mainsprings were broken ; but the
rest did actually begin to tick when the k^
was removed, and continued ticking audibly
for very various periods. He took careful
notes and showed them to me. The
" shark " kept on for nearly an hour, some
persisted only for five or six minutes, some
for half a day ; but the prize of patient con
tinuance was won by a plump little veteran,
with a tortoiseshell case and a pretty little
portrait of Charles I. inside it, certainly more
than two hundred years old. This old relic
actuaUy went on for twenty-two hours.
Surprised into unwonted activity aftet a
sleep of centuries, it could not have enough
of the joy of being awake again. For
myself, I never in my life had a watch I
could depend upon, but I only half re^et
the fact. I seldom miss a train, for I can
always calculate what o'clock it is by making
due allowances. Of course my watch plays
tricks ; so do my dogs, but ft does not hurt
me and it amuses them. I bear no malice

CLOCKS AND WATCHES 235
to the one or the other — they are, each in
his own sphere, interesting organisms. That
I do not occasionally, in my weak and
foolish moments, covet a better article to
compare with my neighbour's sumptuous
productions, is more than I can say, for
pride will tempt us all at times, and no man
likes to be jeered at for his "turnip." But
there are clocks and watches that I would
rather have as my own than the best that
Dent ever dreamt of, though they should be
jewelled in a hundred holes^such as that
clock that the late Principal of Brasenose
CoUege showed me lovingly some twenty
years ago. It was made to go on for a
hundred years without winding. When I
saw it, it was solemnly swinging its long
pendulum and keeping admirable time, as it
had done, if I mistake not, for some ten or
twelve years already. I hope it is still going
on — bearing witness to the shortness of
human life and the length of clock life.
Was it this clock, or was it another, that

236 FRIVOLA
kept note of aU the changes of the calendar,
and, when a leap year occurred, duly
chronicled February 29 ? But of aU the
watches that ever were, the most precious
to me, if it could be recovered from the
ruthless hands of the destroyers, would be
Doctor Donne's watch, which he left by wiU
to his "very worthy friend and kind
brother-in-law. Sir Thomas Grymes," de
scribing it as "that striking clock which I
ordinarily wear." To think of holding that
in one's hand ! It rested once near the great
dean's heart — it answered to the pulses that
were beating there. When he died it grew
cold. What a life that watch must have
led ! What a joy to the littie children when
he drew it forth and made it strike the
hours. Perhaps Shakespeare saw it, heard it,
handled it ; for was not Donne a " great lover
of plays," as Ben Jonson testified of him ?
But who cares for Donne now ? Alas !
hero-worship is sorely on the decfine. We
adore the moderns and their new devices.

CLOCKS AND WATCHES 237
and we bargain that our engine-turned play
things shaU be up to the last fashion ; and
now our maidens must wear their watches
on their wrists, and defy the tennis balls.
And the moral of it aU — what is the moral ?
" Madam," said Coleridge to the serious lady
who inquired for the moral in " The Ancient
Mariner " — " Madam, I never knew it had a
moral." NOTE.
"... The Turkish day of a fixed number of hours
begins, all the year round, at sunset, and therefore the
length of the hours changes every day, and fixed time
tables denoted by figures of the watch become im
possible, or, if they are to have meaning, the watches
must be set every day at least. . . . There is one clock in
the world, constructed at enormous cost, to keep Turkish
time; but unfortunately it will not go!" — Athenceum,
May 8, 1897. — Notice on The Sultan and his Subjects, by
Richard Davey, p. 613.

THF PHENOMENA OF DOUBLES
History is rich in examples of the same
discovery having been made simultaneously
by two or more great thinkers working in
ignorance of each other's researches.
Whether the modern theory of Natural
Selection was first struck out by Mr. Wallace
or Mr. Darwin is still, I am told, a matter of
doubt among the learned ; but there can be
no doubt that Le Verrier in France and
Professor Adams at Cambridge were both
engaged in calculating the orbit of the
planet Neptune for years before the world
had any suspicion of its existence, neither
of them knowing that any one else was
238

THE PHENOMENA OF DOUBLES 239
engaged upon the same problem. I wonder
why nobody has ever written a book —
perhaps somebody has — on the romance of
scientific discovery, and given us a chapter
upon this most curious — I am almost tempted
to say this mysterious — subject.
I have often thought that among the
curiosities of literature there is something
akin to this simultaneity in scientific dis
covery observable in the simultaneous ap
pearance of two great men bearing the same
name^ who made their mark in their gene
ration while engaged in the same sphere of
labour, I confess to a certain degree of
irritation, while reading Professor Stokes's
book on " Ireland and the Celtic Church "
some weeks ago, to find that most learned
and acute scholar making out a painfully
distinct story of the life of St, Patrick, I
was perfectiy happy as long as I could
solace myself with the belief that there were
two Patricks in Ireland during the fifth
century — ^two, and only two. And as for

240 FRIVOLA
Dr. Petrie's theory of there having been
seven, it was easy to reject that as a mon
strous hypothesis ; but to be put off with one
is to be robbed of an illustrious pair of
saints whose co-existence — as long as it
could be accepted^-would lend material
support to a beautiful theory. It seems,
however, that I need not surrender my
belief, for the Professor thinks it necessary
to admit that there may have been easily
three St. Patricks at work in Ireland during
the fifth and sixth centuries. If there may
have been three, I hold that there must have
been two.
It is quite certain that there were two
Saints Columba or Columban alive at the
same time in the sixth century. They were
not akin to one another, though both were
Irishmen. Both were " Seekers after God,"
both were ardent missionaries, both were
the originators of a new form of the religious
life — ^the one may be said to have been the
founder of Scottish monaChism, which had a

THE PHENOMENA OF DOUBLES i^i
character of its own ; the other was the
founder of the new Burgundian monachism,
which continued to flourish for the best part
of a century among the fastnesses of the
Vosges till the more popular and less strin
gent rule of St. Benedict superseded the
Columban regime. It is hardly probable
that the two saints should not have met and
conferred with one another, but each had a
line of his own and each followed his own
course independently.
I have not kept pace with the new re
searches that have been made into the life
and labours of John Wycliffe during the last
few years ; but, again, it is certain that there
were two John Wycliffes at Oxford at the
same time ; and as it appears that we have
to account for a fellowship at Merton and
another at BaUiol, a rectory at Fylingham in
Lincolnshire and another at Lutterworth,
and the headship of BaUiol and Canterbury
Colleges, all which were held by one John
Wycliffe or more in the course of a dozen
17

242 FRIVOLA
or fifteen years, some of us would find it
hard to believe that there were less than
two contemporary bearers of the name at
Oxford, men of mark in the University, and
working either in association or in rivalry.
Pass over another century or two, and we
come upon two great scholars at Cambridge,
both bearing the name John Boys. They
were both distinguished academics, both
feUows of coUeges at the same time; the
elder was one of the translators of the Bible,
whUe the other was distinguishing himself
as a prominent divine and a preacher at
Paul's Cross and elsewhere ; and within five
years one was made Prebendary of Ely, and
the other Dean of Canterbury. As a matter
of course, the two have been confused by
incautious historians, and are not unlikely
to be confounded with one another again.
But the most curious instance that occurs
to me of the simultaneous activity of two
men bearing the same name in the world
of literature is that afforded by what some-

THE PHENOMENA OF DOUBLES 243
body has caUed the "Battie of the Keys,"
in the sixteenth century. When Queen
EUzabeth paid her famous visit to Cam
bridge in 1564, the Public Orator of the
time regaled her Majesty with the usual
oration, in which he maintained that Cam
bridge was a seat of learning which could
boast of a greater antiquity than any other
University in the land. The Oxford men
were offended and indignant. When the
arrogant claims of the Cantabs was reported
to one Thomas Caius — Master of University
CoUege, Oxford — he then and there sat
down and wrote a dissertation maintaining
the contrary position — to wit, that the Uni
versity of Oxford was a far more ancient
institution than her sister on the Granta.
But Cambridge, too, could boast of a cham
pion bearing the name of Caius — though his
name was John and the other's name was
Thomas. John Caius set himself to confute
Thomas Caius, and to it they went, hammer
and tongs. Each had his supporters and

244 FRIVOLA
partisans, and there was a great deal of
strong language and a great deal of strong
feeling, and the followers of one Caius caUed
the followers of the other Caius all the hafd
names they could find, and there was, you
may be sure, no love lost between them.
But the curious point Of the story is that
there should be tWo men in the world who
bore the name of Key at aU, and who,
bearing it, as they both did, should simul
taneously take it into their heads to adopt
the same Latinised form, which has nothing
to do With the meaning of the English word.
They were strictly contemporaries ; they were
probably born and certainly died within a
year of one another. They were not allied
by blood : one was a Yorkshire, the Other a
Norfolk man. They were both suspected of
being ill-affected towards the doctrines of
the Reformation ; they were both masters
of colleges in their respective Universities ;
the one Was buried at Oxford in May, 1572,
the other at Cambridge in July, 1573. There

THE PHENOMENA OF DOUBLES 245
is no reason to believe that these two men
ever met or ever held intercourse with one
another for an hour.
Now, if we had been dealing with mem
bers of the only too prolific stock of the
Browns or the Smiths or the Robinsons,
it might have been easy to adduce number
less instances of famous or notorious couples
alive at the same time in the history of each
of those families. The other day I counted
in Gore's Directory more than six hundred
bearers of the name of John Jones who were
actual householders at Liverpool in 1885.
We have only to bear in mind that Jones
and Evans are but the two different forms
of the same name, and corruptions of what
we now caU John and the Greeks caUed
Johannes, to find ourselves with a practically
inexhaustible fund of material, from which
we may construct any theories we please to
adopt with regard to the illustrious house of
Jones. Have we not Johns and Jones, and
Iwans and Evans, and innumerable other

246 FRIVOLA
variants at our ' command ? A practised
sophist might do what he pleased with such
a bank to draw from. But Boys and Wick-
liffe and Caius are at least unusual names,
and yet here are these double stars, as we
may caU them, suddenly appearing in the
firmament, revolving round each Other with
grotesque pirouetting, each casting upon the
other a measure of illumination or obscura
tion according as we change our points of
view. Is not this a subject that deserves serious
examination, my brothers ? Let us look
into it. Let us found a society for coUect
ing and recording illustrative facts. The
study of the occult sciences is reviving.
Here we have a chapter, it may be, of a
solemn and pregnant opus magnum which
only waits to be written. In the revelations
of the future the phenomena of doubles
cannot but find a place of prominence.

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city
square ;
Ah, such a life, such a life as one leads at the window
there.
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry I
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who
hurries by ;
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the
sun gets high ;
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted
properly. Browning.
I.
Everybody knows the look of the innocent
rustic mooning about the streets and ex
hibitions of London in the month of May ;
his weak and weary eyes, his generally limp
and dazed appearance, his slow and per
plexed movements, his frequent appeals to
247

248 FRIVOLA
the policeman, his benevolent expression of
countenance, his oddly cut coat, his queer
way of putting his feet to the ground, his
exhaustion when he has reached four o'clock
in the afternoon, his disappearance from the
scene when the Row begins to empty, and
the presumption that he retires to rest at
nine to sleep off the fatigue of his long day,
his reappearance early next morning at the
Royal Academy, or the Water Colours, and
all the rest of it. He is a pitiable object
generally to the Londoner, who, however,
treats him tenderly as an amusing, innocent
creature, never likely to be noxious, and
likely to repay civility by purring in a gurg
ling, gratified way of his own. It amuses
us to receive this sort of patronage, which
all classes in London bestow, and we never
think of resenting it. We so entirely ac
quiesce in our position as belonging to the
lower orders — qud country bumpkins — that
we are actually grateful for any recognition
vouchsafed to us. As a rule, I come up to

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 249
London for about a week at a time, in May
or June, and by the time the week is over I
find I have had enough. This year I have
been tempted to stay three whole weeks ;
and my prolonged absence from the wilder
ness has made me meditative. I find my
self looking at the world of London and
Londoners with the eyes of a philosopher,
and I am beginning to question myself as to
what I have seen and what impressions
have been made upon my mind — that
foolish thing I call my mind, which I sup
pose we all have, or think we have.
The first observation that strikes me with
a kind of awe when I am in London is that
in the great city everything is changing at
a pace which absolutely bewilders us rustics.
The streets change ; the old landmarks
change ; the people change ; the very
cUmate is changing ; and nobody is at aU
put out by it, and nobody seems to care.
I remember the shock that I felt — it seems
only the other day — when I first discovered

250 FRIVOLA
that there was no longer any Temple Bar.
But the removal of that fabric was a trifle to
aU that has gone on since. With us in the
wilderness nothing changes. I trudge along
many a road in this parish which I firmly
believe — ^and I have reason for the belief —
was a weU-known trackway two thousand
years ago at the least. There in the
hedgerows stand the old pollards that
must have known what " lopping and
topping " was centuries before people burnt
coal here in the east. There are the old
landmarks, and the old "drifts" leading
to the old queer-shaped fields, and the
old slums at the edge of the common,
where the squatters settied in the days of
King Stephen or King John. There, too,
are the old churches — ^restored or unrestored
— standing where they have stood for many
a long century, substantially the same, so
patient— if I may say so— so dumb, and yet
so eloquent. But in London I am always
losing my way; looking out for the old

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 251
landmarks and finding them gone. The
very stones on the pavement seem to be
alive, restless, anxious to move on, looking
out for something new. As for the old
churches and the old schools, such as St.
Paul's and Christ's Hospital, they are always
on the march, and I am told it is the march
of progress. I dare say it is. How should
I know whether it is or is not ?
There is another fact which strikes me as
I prowl about London, and that is that
nobody I meet seems to be without money.
We in the wilderness have no money, that's
the naked fact ! Discount it as you may,
you cannot whittle down that startling state
ment to anjrthing less than this : that we in
the country have no money to carry out
improvements, great or small. We go on
in the old way because we are all living
horribly near the wind, and we can't help
ourselves. The idea of paying half a crown
for a cab in the country to take us home a
mile or two when our knees are trembling

252 FRIVOLA
under us, never occurs to any but a most
lavishly extravagant spendthrift. We are
always practising small economies: we
carry on our correspondence by the help of
postcards ; we never forget that a shilling
represents twelve pence; we have a best
coat and a second-best coat, and we
cautiously look out at the front door before
we start on our expeditions, deliberating
whether it will be prudent to wear that
new hat that is stiU shiny. It was almost
frightful to see the reckless way in which a
lad of sixteen or seventeen, who was sitting
next me in a Knightsbridge omnibus the
other day, put his hand in his pocket for the
penny which was demanded, and brought
out a whole handful of cash, and only a
single copper coin in the whole hoard.
Where did he get it from ? Had he come
by it honestiy ? After that, I watched
other people, and again and again I wit
nessed the same phenomenon. Littie girls
carry purses, and they have aU got some-

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 253
thing in them ; and they ask for change in
the most nonchalant way, as if they had all
been born, not only with a silver spoon
in their mouths, but spangled over with
diamonds and rubies, when they came into
the world.
The natural consequences of all this
amazing diffusion of wealth is that the
quality of everything one sees or buys in
London is immeasurably superior to that
which we ever meet with in the country.
Ever since I can remember anything, I
have had a passion for horses. It makes
me feel quite bad to watch the car
riages in the streets and the parks. Take
the first pair that meets you almost at any
hour of the day, and you may safely say that
those horses are a better pair than you will
see in the wilderness once in three years.
You simply can't buy such horses here in
the wilds. You would actually have to
send to London for them, if you even really
determined to pay the price. And the same

254 FRIVOLA
is true of everything. It may happen that
you take a pride in your tiny conservatory,
and have a local reputation — very cheaply
earned, it must be allowed — for "making
things grow." You go out to dinner, say in
Kensington or Bloomsbury, and, lo ! there
upon the table- you are greeted with a dis
play of flowers, incompara,bly more beautiful
and more perfectly grown than you can
ever hope to raise, while the mere mass of
them is greater than your gardener could
produce in a twelvemonth. You have had
a new coat made expressly for that London
trip, and your wife has had two gowns — I
mean dresses : nobody wears gowns now
except aldermen — and the trouble those
garments have occasioned you in securing a
fit has made you sensibly older. Before
you have been many days en Evidence, you
are conscious that your rusticity has been
only too apparent, and the "cut" and the
" style " and the something or other about
you have betraye4 thp- country tailor or the

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 255
village modiste. We can't get quality. We
can't get first-rate work in anything. We
can't get our houses painted in London
style. We can't get our very boots blacked
with the London polish, nor (when we have
any hair left) can we even get our hair cut
scientifically or, indeed, decently, by rustic
fingers and rustic scissors. But this is not
all — not nearly all. I am more impressed
by the improvement in the manners and
appearance of the middle classes in London
than by their mere prosperity. I notice it
among men, women, and chUdren. There
has been a wonderful lift upward along the
whole line. May I explain what I mean ?

\

/

n.

Though I did not say so in express terms,
I think the readers of these papers will
understand that I am writing as one of the
middle class. We use that expression
"middle class" very frequently, and yet
few of us, if pushed for a definition of our
meaning, would be prepared with an answer.
I hold that the middle class is composed of
all those who are not on visiting terms with
the Houses of Parliament, and whose in
come counts by hundreds, not thousands, a
year. The nobility and the Parliamentary
families have many poor relations and con
nections, who, after a fashion, " hang on to
i-heir order by their eyelids," but they are
on ithe border-land, having the entrie to
256

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 257
some of the great houses, but littie more ;
and, on the other hand, when professional
men and traders count their income by
thousands they are by way of being admitted
sooner or later to take their place among
the upper ten. We of the middle class,
however, are merely the respectable people,
who do not pretend to live on terms of
equahty with the great folk. We do not
grudge them the position they hold ; we
have no envious feeling towards them.
When admitted to their society, we have the
good taste to like the region in which they
move, and we do not find ourselves out of
our element ; yet their ways are not our
ways, and their world is not ours. On the
other hand, we of the middle class have only
kindly and generous feelings for the labourer
and the artisan. If they can rise step by
step in the social scale, we are not they who
would hinder them. As long as they are
the friends of order and are amassing that
which gives stability to the commonwealth,
18

258 FRIVOLA
SO long are they our friends : we and they
have common interests, and that which is
for their advantage is for ours also. Below
them lie the proletariat and the residuum,
and at the movements of this lower stratum
some look with no little uneasiness and ap
prehension. Of this stratum I may at once
confess that I know little or nothing. I
have never laboured among the masses of
the great towns ; therefore I do not presume
to speak of them. I leave them to the
specialists, who of late have taken them
under their very equivocal protection, and
who are laying down the law about them in
a very dogmatic way.
The courtesy of the bourgeoisie in London
strikes a countryman just fresh from the
provinces as something which is apt almost
to arouse his suspicion. I have more than
once heard country folk remark upon it, as
if they could not understand why a man
who sold them a pair of gloves, or could
not find some trumpery article in stock.

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 259
should take so much trouble and be "so
kind about it. The gentleman didn't know
me, and he was as polite as if I had come in
a carriage ! " Now, I do not mean to say
that our country shopkeepers are anything
except very obliging, and ready at aU times
to show the utmost attention to their
customers. So far from this, they are
altogether unsparing of themselves, even to
the humblest of their clients. But in the
small circle of our country buyers and
sellers we all know one another ; and just
because we do know one another's concerns
there is a certain free and easy familiarity of
tone in our dealings which the Londoner
has quite banished. In the large shops —
establishments I ought to say — of the
Metropolis the assistants are all ladies and
gentiemen. With us in the wilds they are
all young persons. In a large shop in a
certain town in Cornwall, the other day, I
was much amused by the entrance of a very
pleasantly dressed good lady, with whom

26o FRIVOLA
two of the assistants shook hands cordially
before the inevitable question was put —
"And what can I serve you with, Mrs.
Trevince ? " Then commenced a cheery
conversation, a merry consultation, a joke
or two, a laugh, and all the rest of it. I,
meanwhile, was engaged in trying on a cap
which I was not at all anxious to carry off
too hastily. I, too, engaged in conversation
on things in general. Before I had left that
shop, I had ingratiated myself with the
keeper thereof and his family as a distin
guished foreigner whose biography might
be worth discovering. Next time they'd try
again ! In London there is none of this
undress familiarity. Those stately queens
and princesses who try on your wife's
mantle for her, they awe us rustics by their
dignity and bearing; they are so gracious,
so beautiful — yes ! they really are astonish
ingly beautiful ! — so perfectiy self-possessed,
and they never lose their tempers. It is
amazing to notice the self-control of these

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 261
young women under provocations and
irritations which would drive ordinary young
women raving mad. The whole order of
assistants in the London shops is a dis
tinctly higher order than their representa
tives in the country. They have learnt the
precious art of being habitually courteous.
They have risen above mere familiarity of
tone and manner, not to speak of rudeness,
snappishness, and impertinence.
The same is observable, too, in the
manners of every omnibus conductor, or
cabman, or chance man in the streets of
whom you ask your way. It is not that
you meet with civility— meaning by that a
tacit recognition on the part of the other
that you are a gentieman— it is much more
true that the other surprises you by showing
that he himself has unconsciously become a
gentleman. It is more than twenty years
since I have had any dispute with a cabman
in London, though I ride in cabs as often as
most men when I am in the great city, and

262 FRIVOLA
you may be sure I don't foolishly overpay
my fare if I know what it ought to be. But
I remember the day when " cabby " was a
very different creature from the well-spoken
man he is now; and the "jarvey" of my
childhood was not overdrawn in the early
pages of " Pickwick." As to the London
police officers, one has to remember the
manners — or want of manners — of the same
class in Germany and France to realise how
great an advance we have made in England
in graciousness over our Continental neigh
bours. In the country we have none of
this courtesy ; indeed, we have lost not only
that servility — which was a bad sign, and
which it was well should go — but in its
place we have little or nothing that stands
for that politeness which indicates true in
dependence. The contrast between town
and country is very marked, and it may be
summed up briefly by saying that the towns
man has been rising to self-respect ; the
countryman has only got as far as self-

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 263
assertion, and he shows no sign of getting
any farther.
It is significant, however, to notice, what
must have struck many others besides my
self, that this advance in courtesy is much
more marked among the young men than
among the young women. The girls in
some employments are inclined to be saucy,
free and easy, and airified. Domestic
servants in London, I observe, are begin
ning to drop the " Sir " or " Ma'am " which
used to be general among us. Girls in the
post offices and the telegraph offices are
much less pleasant people to deal with than
the lads ; and I am told that young women
who have only lately risen to the conscious
ness of having won their "rights" are ex
hibiting somewhat too much of the self-
assertion and too little of the self-respect.
I have seen signs of this more than once ;
but I should be glad to find, on further
inquiry, that my impression was a wrong
one. Meanwhile, my admiration for the

264 FRIVOLA
London boy is unbounded. I am old
enough to remember when Mr. MacGregor
first started the Shoeblack Brigade, and the
ridicule that came from certain quarters
upon that brave experiment. Then it was
said by not a few that only failure was to be
expected from a Quixotic attempt to make
the young ragamuffins in London give an
account of their daily earnings. Now we
are almost aU convinced that you may do
anything with and make anything out of the
London boy.

III.

The most repulsive subject that English
people discuss is the subject of education.
There is nothing to compare with it for the
amount of nonsense which they talk about
it; none that seems to bring out such in
consequential theories ; none that tempts
men to dogmatise so idioticaUy. The very
smaUest part of a human being's education
is that which is carried on at school, and
yet, from " my lords " downwards, we Eng
lish folk seem to have no other notion than
that the moment a lad passes out from the
school for the last time his education is
complete. It is much nearer the truth to
say that not till then does the real education
of life begin. The opportunities, the facili
ties, the means and appliances for building
265

266 FRIVOLA
up the average London boy into a manly,
rational creature are truly wonderful. There
was a time, not so long ago, when the street-
boy was a standing nuisance because he had
nothing to do. Look at him now I Stand
ing at the door of a certain hotel not a
thousand miles from the Strand, I have seen
a string of four or five telegraph boys file
past me more than once or twice — coming
from I know not whence and going I know
not whither — scrupulously neat and clean in
their dress, upright as darts, steady as old
horses, lithe and quick as antelopes, and,
withal, joyous as kittens at play. I have
seen them hurrying by, talking as fast as
their tongues could move, never a sign or
sound that was boisterous or unmannerly.
Watch the little shoeblacks with their
brushes and their blacking. See the con
centration of thought, the fixity of purpose
which they display, the determination to get
the highest possible polish on that damp
boot, the critical look at your trousers as

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 267
they turn them up, the satisfaction they feel
in the completeness of their last effort, and
then the briskness of their movements as
they spring upon the next customer 1 You
may come upon a littie gathering of them
sometimes in the dull time of the day,
sprawling, and discussing the last murder.
Next moment they are all alert and wide
awake, aU offering themselves ; never dis
puting if you select one of them, whichever
it may be. I am sorry to notice that they
have given up whistling, to a great extent.
Life has begun for them, and whistiing
seems to be considered inconsistent with
serious employment. Happily, however,
they have not given up singing, and the
style of music and song is a huge improve
ment upon the melodies and the subject-
matter of the lyrics we used to hear when
I was a lad. One evening in the merry
month of May I found myself at a sta
tion of the Underground Railway when
my train was not due for twenty minutes.

268 FRIVOLA
There were two boys at the bookstaU ;
they were in the best possible spirits ; one
began to sing a song, the other at once
broke in with singing as true and distinct
a second as any choir-master could desire to
listen to ; and the next moment, from the
other side of the line, a third boy, whose
voice was not yet broken, growled out an
attempt at a bass. He broke down hope
lessly, and the laughter of all the three boys
at the failure was so fresh and gay and
hearty that I wished I could be a boy again,
or that I had had such a chance as these
youngsters had in their day. I do not think
it is possible to over-estimate the prodigious
improvement that has been effected upon
Young London by the now general employ
ment of young boys in the various occupa
tions which, a generation back, it was as
sumed could only be safely entrusted to
adults. When the present librarian of the
Bodleian entered upon his office, one of the
earliest of his reforms was largely to increase

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 269
the staff of assistants by introducing boys
into the library. I believe the experiment
has proved a complete success, and I doubt
not it will be followed elsewhere by and by.
You may talk as you please about night-
schools and lectures and classes. What are
these mechanical contrivances for turning
boys into bookworms and prigs, in com
parison with the discipline of the streets,
carried on every hour of the day, under a
sense of responsibility and with the con
sciousness of belonging to the great living
machinery of society — ^yes ! and the convic
tion that you are helping to keep it going ?
One of the most memorable evenings that
I ever spent was at a boys' club at Toynbee
Hall. We had turned out from the gym
nasium, where the lads were performing all
sorts of dreadful and alarming gjnrations,
and we were by special favour admitted to
this meeting. If I am not mistaken, the
chairman was a lad of twenty, just on the
verge of becoming superannuated. I have

270 FRIVOLA
never seen any man in my life conduct the
business with more dignity, courtesy, or
good sense. One boy, who was in his shirt
sleeves, was inclined to rebel against autho
rity. The quiet way in which that young
chairman put him down, and the cordial
support which the chair received, was mar
vellous. As for us, who were but lookers-
on, and admitted only on sufferance, we
were as completely ignored as if we had
been men in the moon. Think of the silent
but profound and far-reaching influence
which a discipline and training like this
must needs be exercising upon those to
whom it extends directly and indirectiy 1
Think, too, of the magnificent work that
was set going at the Polytechnic by such
an heroic and enlightened philanthropist
as Mr. Quintin Hogg! Think of aU the
boys' clubs and young men's institutions
which they tell me are to be found in all
parts of London, affording rational amuse
ment and recreation for mere lads — the

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 271
cricket, the juvenile bands, the choirs — and
you will not doubt that these things must be
working a change in the whole bearing of
young Londoners which you, who have
been living in it all along, are hardly, if at
aU, conscious of, but which proves to us, the
occasional visitors, that a great social revo
lution has been carried out without our
knowing how — a revolution whereby the
rising generation of Londoners has been
lifted up to a moral and intellectual level
which their grandfathers, half a century ago,
conceived to be impossible of attainment by
their progeny in their own lifetime.
If my old friend X were now ahve, he
would be some years past seventy. He was
a man who had made his own way in the
world, after a fashion, and he was rather
fond of talking to me of his early struggles.
He was one of, I think, seven sons of a law
stationer in the purlieus of the Inns of
Court, and at fifteen he was thrown upon
his own resources. A warehouseman in

272 FRIVOLA
the City took him as a supernumerary in his
business — more as an act of charity than
with any hope of finding him of much use.
He had a salaiy of ;^30 a year, and he lived
upon it, without a shilling from his parents.
His mother engaged a garret for him in
Clifford's Inn, for which he paid £^ a year ;
and she started him with bed and bedding
and the barest necessaries in the way of
furniture. An old woman came in once a
day to " tidy up." He told me that for the
first year he never had a fire in his room.
He got to know where the biggest cup of
coffee and the biggest roU could be got for
a penny, and where the cheapest beef d la
mode was to be found for his make-shift
dinner. He left the warehouse at seven or
eight o'clock in the evening ; then he walked
the streets, and sometimes took refuge in a
small coffee-house as near the fire as he
could get, and regaled himself with a supper
of more coffee, and now and then with the
luxury of a muffin. He never could have

A COUNTRY COUSIN IN LONDON 273
been a strong boy, and I believe his consti
tution was permanently weakened by his
early privations. At the end of his first
year his salary was raised to ;^4o, and he
bought his first greatcoat. " I can tell you
that was a day when I put that greatcoat
on ! " he said, as he looked back upon that
great event in his history. But during three
or four years of this lonely and desolate life
he assured me that he had absolutely no
amusement of any kind, except such as he
sought and found at the theatres. Poor as
he was, and frugal and self-denying, he
discovered that recreation of some sort he
must have, and accordingly he went to the
vast expense of providing himself with three
season tickets of admission to the gallSry of
the Adelphi and two other playhouses — I
forget which. He paid a guinea for each
ticket. AU this was going on not much
more than fifty years ago. Contrast the life
of a poor lad like this with that which boys
of the same age lead in London now ! It is
19

274 FRIVOLA .
a contrast between a daily, round of half-
starved misery — anxious, rjgionotonous, and
desolate— vand a life jOf gaipty, excitement,
congenial society, and elevating influences
on the right hand and on the left, which
cannot but be fruitful in grand results for
the boys, of torday who \yUl be the men of
to-morrow.

BRf:CCLES HALL '
THE STORY OF AN OLD HOUSE
On the 20th day of October, 1546, i.e.,
about three months before the death of
Henry VIII., John Woodhouse, of Breceles,
in the county of Norfolk, Esq., made his
last will and testament — " My body," he
says, " being disquieted and vexed with
sickness." He ordered the aforesaid body
to be buried in the chancel of Breceles,
and gave to the high altar there 3s. 4d.
sterling. Kte was an important personage,
" This paper was read at a meeting of the Norfolk
and Norwich Archseological Society, in the dilapidated
mansion whidi is now [1907] being beautifully
restored. 275

276 FRIVOLA
the second son of Sir Thomas Woodhouse,
of Kimberley, says Blomefield, and I have
littie doubt that the fact was so.
His estates were considerable. On the
other side of Norwich he had lands in
Staninghall, Crostwick, Frettenham, and
Horstead. In this^ -neighbourhood his
possessions were larger still. He was
seized of the manors of Breceles, Bulles,
Letheriches, and Dowes in Breceles ; lai^d
in Stowe, Hockham, and Shropham; the
manor of Hoo, or Howe, near Dereham ;
with other lands in Stowe, Swanton
Morley, East Tuddenham, Westodenham
{sic), and , East Dereham ; moneys out
at interest, and much personal property
besides. He left behind him two sons
and two daughters, and. he died nearly
three years after making his will, viz., on
the 31st of August, 1549. John Wood-
house left as his heir a son, Francis,
who at his father's death was seventeen
years old, and who succeeded in process

BRECCLES HALL 277
of time to the Breceles estate. The
Staninghall property was left to the
younger son, Roger Woodhouse, who
came into it in due course.
John Woodhouse, Esq., had married
Anne, daughter of William Spelman, Esq.,
and widow of , William Sajrve, of Mund-
ford. He left her well provided for, and
amongst other bequests gave her a
life interest in all the personalty. His will
is unusually interesting, for a clause which,
as it suggests more than one question, I
venture to quote.
" Item. I will that Anne my wife have
IIIj horse meares and colts XXVI I j, pryce
fourteen pounds. IIIj oxen, pryce eight
pounds. Twenty mylche kyen, pryce twenty
marks, Tenne bullocks of two years old,
pryce five pounds. Leaven calves, pryce
fourty shillings. Two hundred combes
of grain, pryce four-and-twentie pounds,
A cheyne of fyne gould, pryce twenty
pounds."

278 FRiilOLA
"fhere is a little extract for geritfemeh
interested in the history of prices! Also it
is a nice little extract for other geiitleih^n ^
interested in philological pursuits. Who
doubtless will tell us what the meanirig
of that expression " horse ¦ mCal^es and colts
XXVI I j " means, and Wiiat the other word
" leaveiri " Signifies, Does it ihean that as
thirteen gO to a baker's dozen, so in this
case eleven went to half a scOre ?
Well ! John Woodhouse died, and I
hope he lies buried comfortably where he
wished to be buried, Wherfii he lived I
cannot tdll, I krtoW he did not live in
this house where we are now assembled ;
but he lived at Breceles of course. His
widow was a great catch, so were his
daUghtefSi Their father left them each a
marriage portion of 300 marks, which iri
my judgment was quite equivalent to a
fortune of £5,000 nowadays. Elizabeth, '
the elder, married John Woodhouse (I
suppose a cousin) at Breceles, on the

BRECCLES HALL 279
loth of July, 1551. Thoniasine, the
younger, had licence to marry Henry
Gascon, of London, October 24, 1550.
The widow herself married her third
husband, Thomas Dysney, gentleman, at
Breceles, July 2i, 1554. She survived him
also, and here she is said to have died
some time in the autumn of 1559.
Francis Woodhouse, son and heir of
John Woodhouse, Esq., Was past seventeen
on the 3rd of November, 1551, i.e., he
came of age some time in 1555. I have
no doubt he married early^^people in
those days always did. Who his first
wife was I cannot tell. He was twenty-
five when he came into full possession of
his property by his mother's death. But
if he married before then, his first wife
died some few years after.
In December, 1567, he married again
one Margaret Repps, of St. Stephen's,
Norwich. In the year 1583 he completed
the building of this house, and there.

28o . FRIVOLA
over the mantelpiece of what was prob
ably his own bedroom, you may see
carved upon the panel " F. W. 1583."
The gentry in this neighbourhood during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth were con
spicuous for their stubborn adherence to
the old faith and the old ritual, i.e., they
were Romanists almost to a man. The
Hobards of Holme Hale, the Downes
of Bodney, the De Greys of Merton, the
Bedingfields of Quidenham, the Lovells
of Harling, the Flints of EUingham, and
I know not who besides. All these that
I have named were not only sympathisers
with the old religion, but they were pro
testers against the new. They refused
two things at the bidding of the Pope.
First, they refused to take the oath of
allegiance, objecting on conscientious
grounds to the wording of it ; and
second, they refused to attend their parish
church, objecting to the doctrine of the
Common Prayer Book. For this their

\

BRECCLES HALL 281
refusal they were denominated "Recusants,"
and were commonly called " Popish Re
cusants." As long as they refused to attend church,
so long they were subject to enormous
fines and severe penalties; and, to their
honour be it spoken, in hundreds of cases
families of wealth and position were re
duced to poverty by the pressure of the
penal laws.
But outside this inner circle of repre
sentative Catholics there were very many
more of the gentry who were Conformists,
though they hated the Church and its
ritual with a deep and deadly hatred, and
none the less so because they were looked
upon by the Anglican with suspicion and
despised by the Recusants as Trimmers.
Francis Woodhouse was himself not a
Recusant, he was called a "Schismatic."
You may be quite sure he did not go to
church at all oftener than he could help.
When he presented Mr. Thomas Atkinson

282 FRIVOLA
to the vicaraige of. Breceles on the 17th of
June, iS73y there isi some probability that
the said Atkinson was not a very pro
nounced Evangelical clergynban.
But though Mr. Woodhouse was no
Rectisant himself, his wife was ; not his
first wife,^ for I knowi nothing about her ;
nor his second wife, for she seems to have
died early too ; but his third wife, Eleanor;
Who she was I cannot tell, and I shall be
grateful to any, one who can inform me.
The Jesuits invaded England first in 1580 ;
their leaders were Campion and Parsons^
two very remarkable men. , Campion was
hung, drawn, and quartered in 1581.
Parsons escaped. These men and their
associates produced a wonderful effect by
their, active preaching and missionary
audacity, and. the Catholics began to take
heart. The Government was alarmed, and
the penal laws were put in force with
the most pitiless: severity. Goverriment
. spies were employed without stint, and a

BRECCLES HALL 283
small army of these wretches were let
loose upon such of the luckless gentry
as showed ariy sympathy with the Roman
creed or had rendered themselves suspicious
by their unguarded language. How many
of these worthies were skulking about
Norfolk and Suffolk we shall never know;
but the confessions of two of them have
come down to us, and very instructive
is the information they afford.
Anthony Tyrfell Was one. His account of
himself has been published by Mr. Morris*
Richard Lacey, of Brodishe, was another,
and his report now lies in the Record
Office, and has never yet been printed
at all. Both documents refer to the year
1584. Let us have TyrreU's first. Bear in mind
that the man was a Cathohc priest, and
harboured and rewarded and protected, and
treated with every sort of kindness ; nay,
that the fact of so receiving him involved
all who did so in peril of their lives.

284 FRIVOLA
"... These were privy to my leaving
England, Mr. Henry Drury of Losell,
Rookwood of Coldham Hall, old Martyn
of Melford . . . Yaxley of Yaxley, Beding-
field of Bedingfield, Michael Hare of
Brustyard Everett, Nicholas Timperl^y of
Boyton Hall. ... In Norfolk there were
privy to my departure the Lady Lovell (of
Harling), Mrs. Woodhouse , of Breceles,"
&c., &c.
; Next hear Richard Lacey. But let me
inform you that this man Lacey, in this
very confession, betrayed his own brother,
Brian Lacey, a priest, who a year or two
afterwards was hung, drawn,, and quartered,
in great measure in consequence of the
information his brother had furnished,
Richard Lacey says that his brother
Brian told him "... that Sir Mile^
Yare, parson of Sturston . . . saith mass
commonly in his parlor chamber in his
own house, and that in the said chamber
are all things necessary pertaining there-

BRECCLES HALL 285
to . . . ." He goes on to say, ". . . He
knows one Mr. Vaughan, a priest, and
one Mr. DaUison, sometime a school
master at Wetherden Hall, but now by
report, as he thinketh, a priest ; and they
resort to Mr. Ed. Suliard's place, to Mr.
Lionell Morse's place at Westroppe, in
Suffolk, to Mr. Hardwicke's place at Bough-
ton, and to many other places. There
they say mass whenever they come there."
" Mr. Vaughan is a proper well-made
man, of a reasonable stature, and hath a
red thin beard, and goeth in apparell like
a gentieman, and is about the age of forty
years. Mr. DaUison is a very little man,
and hath a little black beard ; he is bowen
shouldeired, hath a soft speech, and goeth
in a Hviery like a serving man, about fifty
years of age."
Put these two extracts together, and
what a curious picture they afford us of
the state of things at this time ; the
gentry playing hide-and-setek with the

286 FRIVOLA
Wijetpbed priests,; who were going, about
from house to house holding (their lives
in their hands : a beneficed clergyman
going titirqui^ , his service in the parish
chijrcb in ; tjhe morning — we may be sure
in no yjeryr;attra^.tiv;e way — finishing by
saying mass in his own parlour, where; a
littliB jjnot of shuddering malcontents were
gathered, tre.m,bling at , the rjijstlg ,of, a
leaf. Jest some infGrma,nt sho4iJd be upon
ti^e^ or some spy in their jpidst ! Lacey
does pQt name Mr. Woodhouse, ,but I
haye little .do jibt that the little black man
with the soft speech, or the proper well-
made man with ]the red thin: beard, found
his way it^t/o this house, ^jjd very prpbr
ably one or both may have said mass,
when the doors were shut and the
windows guarded, in this very roona
¦jyhere we now are,
Be tfiat as it may, this inforniation of
I^apey and Tyrrell brought Francis Woo,d-
hojuse injto sogie siispicpn. Qa SjCpteipb^

BRECCLES HALL 287
30th of this very year, 1585, he was pre
sented at the sessions at Dereham as a
Recusant ; at the next sessions at Norwich
he was fined, but he seems to have got
himself out of the difficulty. He was
ready to conform ; his wife was not ;
henceforth for twenty years her name
appears constantiy on the Recusant rolls.
Year after year it is still the same —
Eleanor, Wife oi Francis Woodhouse, Esxj.,
of Breceles, will not go to church !
Mrs. Woodhouse does not seem to
have been a very prudent pergonage, or,
if she were, the spies were too many for
her. The following is another glimpse
at her and her proclivities : —
'' 23rd March, 1597-8. — At a meeting of
the Commissioners for the trial of causey
ecclesiastical, before William, Bishop of
Norwich, and others, in the hall of the
Bishop's Palace at Norwich, Nicholas
Wilkinson, gent., is brought before the
Commissioners, and on being examined

288 FRIVOLA
. . i saith that he hath been heretofore
a Recusant Papist, for the which he was
convented before my Lord's Grace of
Canterbury and Justice Young. . . , And
being further examined what conventicles
in matters of religion he had frequeritedy
he saith that he did not frequent any such
unlawful assemblies, neither that he had
been at any ' Popish Recusant's house,
saving only at Breceles at the house of
Francis Woodhouse, Esqre. (whose wife
is a Recusant), since his coming from
London^ and hath made his abode there
in that house by the space of three weeks
last past before this his examination."
At this time there seems to have been
living in the Hall not only Francis Wood-
house and his wife and son, but a
nephew, Thomas Woodhouse, with his
wife Susan and a daughter, Frances, who
was baptized at Breceles, October 24,
1593. The nephew and his family were
Conformists ; but in a few years, influenced

BRECCLES HALL 289
no doubt by Eleanor Woodhouse and
her Catholic friends, they too are brought
round ; and when Francis Woodhouse
made his will in 1605, leaving all that
remained of his property to his wife and
son, he bequeathed the reversion, in case
that son should die under age, to his
nephew Thomas, who actually inherited
the Stowe estate and some other lands
about 1607. Breceles Hall passed out of
its first owner's hands in 1599. Doubtless
it was a bitter day when Francis Woodhouse
had to leave this house which he had
himself raised, and was compelled to take
refuge in a more humble dwelling. Con
science was a costly article in the sixteenth
century, and a wife with religious views
of a very decided character brought many
a man to poverty.
The next possessor of Breceles Hall
was a personage of some note in his
time, viz.. Sir Robert Gardiner, Knight,
Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Ireland,

290 FRIVOLA
from 1586 to 1624, and Viceroy there for
some time in 1597. Sir Robert married
three times.
(His second [?] wife; was Thomasine,
daughter of John Barker, Esq., of Ipswich>
father of Sir Robert Barker of. Grimston
Hall, K.C.B., and M.P. for Ipswich, whose
son John was created a Bart, by James I.,
March 17, 1621.)
By his first wife, Ann Cordail, he had
a son William, who died unmarried in his
father's lifetime. I suspect that this son
must have died shortly after Sir Robert
came to settle at Breceles ; for on Sep
tember 2nd, 6 Jae. I. (1609), he made a
settlement of his Norfolk and Suffolk
property, giving his reason for so doing
that he had "no issue of his body."
Accordingly, Breceles and its appurtenances
were to descend, after the death of Sir
Robert and his wife, to his nephew
William Webbe, and then to his eldest
son John Webbe. There was another

BRECCLES HALL 291
settlement March 31st, 16 Jae. I. (1619),
on the occasion of the marriage of John
Webbe with Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas
Richardson, successively Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas and King's Bench,
when Breceles was settled on John and
Mary for life, with remainder, failing issue
of the said John and Mary, to the four
brothers of John. Sir Robert Gardiner
died at Breceles Hall, February 12, 1620,
and John, his great-nephew, succeeded
him there. I know little of John Webbe,
but I find he was living at Breceles when
the Commissioners came round to ad
minister the Solemn League and Covenant
in March, 1644-5. Mr. Samuel Warren,
the Vicar, signed without demur ; not so
Mr. Webbe. A stout old Royalist was
Mr. Webbe, but he would bow in the
house of Rimmon in his own fashion.
This is what he says : " I subscribe to
so mueh of this Covenant as I already
know, or shall hereafter know, to be

292 FRIVOLA
agreeable to the Word of God, laws of
the kingdom, and my oaths formerly taken.
— John Webbe."
Mr. Webbe had a daughter Ursula, who
married (i) Sir William Hewitt, and by him
had a son, Gardiner Hewitt, who succeeded
as owner of Breceles Hall in 1678 ; and (ii)
Sir Robert Baldock of Tacolneston, Knight.
Lady Baldoek's will orders that she shall
be buried in the chancel of Breceles
church, and there I hope she lies. Further
more, that will recites that Sir Robert
Gardiner and her own father, John Webbe,
the gentleman who signed the Covenant,
had left benefactions to the poor of
Breceles. I hope they received them.
This lady's son, Gardiner Hewitt, Esq.,
seems to have become embarrassed ; at
any rate he sold Breceles Hall and the
estate to Wormly Hethersett, Esq., who
was Mayor of Thetford in 1698, and who
seems to have left the estate to his daughter
Mary, wife of Joseph Randol, alias Baylis,

BRECCLES HALL 293
through whom it passed to the Taylors, the
last of whom, Penelope Taylor, died at
Breceles Hall, August 20, 1832, in her
ninety-second year.
When the late Mathias Kerrison, Esq.,
came into possession of the Hall, there
were some memorials of all its previous
occupants still existing. There were
heraldic shields in stained glass in the
windows, viz., Woodhouse impaling Tyrrell,
Woodhouse with a crescent impaling Spel
man, and three or four others. There
-was also some armour, probably of the
Woodhouses. Several pictures are recorded as having
been in the Hall : a picture of the Judg
ment of Solomon ; family pictures of the
Ryleys and Taylors, and some others.
Notable among these pictures were the
portraits of two nuns, who were said to have
been related to the Webbes, and to have
borne the name of Wolfe. Add to this a
tradition that some Benedictine monks once

294 FRIVOLA
lived in the hoiiSe— a story which we must
take for What Ut is worth — and we are
tempted tb\suspefct that Francis Woodhouse
and his wife were not the last occupants.
of the Hall who had sympathies with the
Catholic creed and the Catholic cause.
Breceles HaU has a tragedy -connected
with it. Philip. Ryley Taylor, Esq., on
Ofctober 17, 180B, at the age of forty-six,.
blew out his brains here with a gun, in
the very room which Francis Woodhouse
— and, after him. Sir Edward Kerrison — -
occupied as his bedroom. iSfOTE.
I have recently discovered among my
papers the following very curious and
interesting extract from my historical
eolleelions made more than twenty-five
years ago. It speaks for itself. I am,.
J[iowever, bound to confess, with shame
and self-reproach, that I do not know
where I made the copy of the document
here transcribed. It may have been — and
I have a suspicion that it was — copied

BRECCLES HALL 295
from some stray papers concerning the
Norfolk Recusants which I stumbled upon
in the office of the Registrar of Norwich
Cathedral as far back as the year 1876.
Or it may have been taken from the vast
stores of miscellaneous State Papers in
the Record Office. How I came to make
this transcript without making any note
.as to the source whence it was derived
I cannot explain. To have done so was
contrary to all my habits as an explorer
in the domain of Historical Research.
" Certain advertisements concerning Mrs^
Eleanor Woodhouse, wife of Mr. Francis
Woodhouse, of Breceles, in the countie of
Norfolke,. of long time a popish seduc-
inge recusant.
" Richard Browne ) retayners attending
Evans Floyde jon Mr. Woodhouse.
"There is also one called Say well, suspected
to be a Seminarie Prieste who resorteth
muehe to the said Mrs. Woodhouse at
Breceles and to Taswiek[?] in the county
of Lincoln . . . where one Thirabebye and
his wife, famous Recusants, do dwell. . . .
"Great company often resort th ether verrie
late in the night, and great provision there
made for them 2 or 3 dayes together,
and depart away in the night.
"In Breceles house where Mr. Woodhouse
dwelleth there is a chamber over the
Boultings House, whereunto there is a

296 FRIVOLA
way by a dore which is in the floor of
a privie house, which dore is covered with
mats, and is so close that it cannot easily
be found out, and the dore being opened
there standeth a ladder to goe downe
into a close chambere, and no other waye
unto it, neither can be discerned on the
outside. . . .
" There are also many secret places about
the gallerie of the house at Breceles
where they used and doe use (as i§.
thought) the masse.
" The said Saywell and Walker (suspected
to be seminaries), the said Mrs. Wood-
house, John Whitehead and Katherine
his wife, and other of the said persons, do
often resort from Brekles to . . . and
other places. . . .
"It is thought that the said Mrs. Wood-
house hath withdrawn from the religion
now established to be obstinate popish
recusants of men, women married and
mayds, to the number of xx persons or
thereabouts, in Rial [Ryhall] in Rutland
shire, and verrie probable it is that more
by her means will be seduced if it be
not speedily prevented by authorite. . . ."
The document is not dated, but is clearly
later than 1595.

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMTTED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.

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