CHAPTER II.
COUNTRY CARRIER’S CART.—INDEPENDENT BREAKFAST.—BEAUTY.—OLD INN.—JACK UP THE CHIMNEY.—BACON AND BREAD.—BEER AND RUM.—LUDLOW.—AN APOSTOLIC CHURCH.—THE POOR-HOUSE.—Case OF A BROKEN HEART.—REFRESHMENT.
We rose the next morning at daybreak, and walked some miles before we saw any body else awake. At the first inn that we found open, we stopped to breakfast. In front of it was a carrier’s cart—a large, heavy, hooped-canvas-topped cart, drawn by one horse. As any body who reads Dickens knows, this kind of rural package-express is a common thing on the English roads, the carrier taking orders of country people for what they need from the towns, and bringing them any parcels they send for; taking live freight also when he is not otherwise filled up: David Copperfield, for instance. The representative of “Mr. Barkis” and “honest John Peerybingle” was in the kitchen of the public house, and very glad to see us, pressing us politely to drink from his glass, and recommending the ale as the best on the road.
The house, however, was of a very humble character; the “good woman” was gone to market, and the landlord, though very amiable and desirous to please, was very stupid and ill provided. He could not even find us an egg, every thing having been swept off to market. There was some good bread, however, which the carrier had just brought, and milk. We found a saucepan, cleaned it, and scalded the milk, and, stirring in the bread with pepper and salt, soon made a comfortable hot breakfast, greatly to the admiration of our host and the carrier.
Fine English weather to-day: gleams of warm red sunshine alternating with the slightest possible showers of rain. The country beautiful; the road running through a rich, well-watered vale, with the same high, steep hills as yesterday, but now regularly planted with wood to the summits. Before us, they fall back, one over another, till they become blue under the thick mists that curl about the tops of the most distant, and then, again, blush red before the sun, as the wind sometimes lifts this veil.
Seeing a singular ruin a little distance from the road, we went to visit it. It had been a castle, with a church or large Gothic chapel attached. Different parts of it, having received more modern, yet ruinously decayed, timber and noggin’ additions, were occupied as sheep-stables, barn, granary, and workshop. A moat remained about it, enclosing also a courtyard; and on the opposite side of this from the main structure, was a high, four-gabled timber-house, with a gateway through it, entered across the moat by a bridge, formerly a draw-bridge, and with some remains of a portcullis. The woodwork of the gables, and much of the timber, the heavy brackets and the doorways, were covered with quaint carvings.
At noon we stopped at a superannuated old stage-coaching house, going at once to the kitchen, which was a very large room with heavy beams in the ceiling, from which depended flitches of bacon; a stone floor, a number of oak benches and tables, rows of pewter-mugs hanging about the walls, and a great wide fireplace and chimney. A stout, driving landlady received our orders; a piece of meat was set to roasting before the fire on the old turnspit, and we were left alone to dry ourselves. Soon we noticed that one end of the spit with the meat was being raised, and we attempted in vain to readjust it. It continued to rise, and I tried to disconnect the chain by which it was turned, and which was now drawing it up the chimney; I could not, and still it rose. I clung to it and tried to stop it, and hallooed for assistance. In rushed the landlady, three maids, and a man-servant, and I yielded the spit to them; but the power was too strong for them—their united weight could not long detain it; up it rose—rose—rose, till the prettiest maid stood first on tiptoe, and then began to scream; then the landlady, disengaging the meat from it, and dropping it hastily on a plate, fell back exhausted on one of the oak benches and laughed—oh! ha, ha! oh! ha, ha! ha, ha! ho, ho! ha, ha, ha!—how the woman did laugh! As soon as she recovered, she sent the man and maids up to the machinery, being too much out of breath to go herself; and in a few minutes the chain, which had fouled on the rusty crank at the chimney top, was unwound and the spit lowered to its place, the joint put on and set to turning again, all right.
While we were eating our dinner, five young men—labourers—came in for theirs; most of them ate nothing but bread and cheese, but some had thin slices of bacon cut from the flitch nearest the fire, which they themselves toasted with a fork and ate with the bread they had brought in their pockets, as soon as it was warmed through. All drank two pints of beer, and, after dining, smoked, except one, who took hot rum-and-water.
It appeared that while three of them preferred to spend their money for beer rather than bacon, none of them chose bacon at the expense of beer. The man who took rum drank two glasses of it, and the others two or more pints of beer; but no one who took beer took any rum at all, nor did he who took rum take any beer. A similar observation I have frequently made. The habit of beer-drinking seems to weaken the taste for more alcoholic stimulants.
We remained about the inn, looking at some pretty model cottages erected by Lord Clive, until C., who had made a quick walk of nearly thirty miles to overtake us, arrived, and then walked in to Ludlow.
Ludlow is a neat, pleasant town, beautifully planted in a bight of a broad, shallow, musical stream, amongst high, bluffy hills. It has a ruined castle, celebrated in Royal history, parts of which, half hidden by tall old trees among which it stands, and adorned with ivy, are very picturesque. There are fine avenues and public walks about it, and just over the river, which is crossed by two bridges, is a very large common, extending to the top of high and steep hills, which is used as a public pleasure-ground. In the middle of the town is a venerable old church, with richly-painted windows and many curious monuments and effigies of Crusaders and learned doctors sleeping with their wives. In it I also first saw a beadle in the flesh, and a very funny thing it was, in cocked hat, red nose, and laced coat. There are many curious old houses, particularly one of the inns, (“The Feathers;”) and over the Ludford bridge there is a pretty little rural church and a number of pretty cottages, both ancient and modern, the modern being built in the fashion of the timber houses that I described in Cheshire.
Our chess-playing friend on the ship had given us a note to a relative residing here, and having left it with our card at his house, he very soon called upon us. He proved to be a gentleman of education and refinement, and was extremely kind in his attentions and offers of service to us. C. had asked with regard to the religious services which would be holden in the town the coming day; after replying to his inquiries, he remarked that he belonged to a congregation of Christian Brethren, whose worship he would be gratified if it would be agreeable for us to attend. They had no distinct organization, but simply met as a company of believers in Christ, to worship as they were prompted in the spirit. They liked to have any one join with them, who loved Jesus Christ, whatever his theoretical opinions might be.
In this way commenced our intercourse with a body of men, who, even if I thought their opinions most damnable, I could not help remembering but with a respect approaching to reverence. During the week that followed we saw many of them in various circumstances, and of very different education and habits: some were ignorant, unrefined, coarse of speech, and plainly narrow-minded, fanatical, and bigoted; others of them were learned men, large-minded, truly humble, charitable, generous, and catholic—and gentlemen, with as much ease of manner, accomplishment, and polish as I ever met; but in our acquaintance with them there was not one that did not seem to be constantly guided by a spirit of the warmest love for all his fellow-beings, by the liveliest and ever-working desire to see them happy and growing better.
The next morning I breakfasted with this gentleman, and afterwards attended the meeting of the brotherhood with him and his family. It was held in a plain “upper room,” apparently designed for a school-room, which was well filled with people, representing every class, except the aristocratic, in the community, females being slightly preponderant. The services were extremely simple,—much like those of a Presbyterian prayer-meeting, with the addition of a rather lengthy exhortation from one who, I was told, was, like myself, a stranger to the most of those present, and concluded with the administration of the communion.
Nothing could be greater than the contrast of the place and its furniture, and the style of the exercises, with what I had seen and heard at the cathedral the previous Sunday; yet J could not but notice the marked resemblance between the simple solemnity of manner and sincere unendeavouring tone of the gentleman who conducted the ceremony of the communion, and that of his robed and titled brother who performed the same duty within those aweing walls.
In the afternoon I went with one of the Brethren to the union poor-house, which is a little out of the town. The inmates, so far as I saw them, were nearly all aged persons, cripples, or apparently half-witted, and it all appeared very much like a hospital. The chilling neatness, bareness, order, and precision, reminded me of the berth-deck of a man-of-war. Among the sick was a young woman who had now for four days refused to take food or to speak; when broth was set before her in our presence, she merely moaned and shook her head, closed her eyes, and sank back upon her bed. Her disease was a broken heart. A week ago her cottage was destroyed by fire, and her child (illegitimate) burned to death in it.
At sunset we found much such a company strolling on the common opposite the town as that we saw promenading the walls at Chester last Sunday night. The shaded walks about the castle were also thick with happy-looking, grateful-looking, orderly men and women, boys and girls, superabundantly attended by healthy, sturdily-tottering babies.
In the evening C. called on the Independent clergyman. He spoke highly of the spiritual character of the Brethren, but he evidently regarded them as rather wild and untractable abstractionists. They had drawn away several of the leading members of his flock, and, in his observations upon them, he possibly showed a little soreness on this account. He continued on terms of friendly intercourse, however, with them.