REMINISCENCES

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD

1823-1834

Reading - Social Life - My Father and Family-Our House Old Customs.

THE old town of Reading, with its still quaint-looking streets, its ruined abbey and friary, its memories of medieval Congresses and Roundhead sieges, sleeps, as my memory paints it, in the summer sun. It is a very quiet place. The mail-coaches travelling on the Bath road at the marvellous rate of twelve miles an hour change horses at The Crown and the Bear. So do the travelling carriages and post-chaises of the wealthier wayfarer The watchman calls the hour of the night. From the tower of old St. Lawrence's Church the curfew is tolled. My nurse lights the fire with the tinder-box. Over at Caversham 1 a man is sitting in the stocks. In the streets are figures of a generation now bygone. Mrs. Atkins Wright, the great lady of the neighbourhood, comes in with her carriage-and-four, postillions

1

[1 A parish in Oxfordshire, a mile from Reading.]

in gorgeous liveries, and an out-rider Mr. Fyshe Palmer,1 the Radical Member for the borough, is known by his Whig costume of blue coat and buff waistcoat, with a curious little hat stuck on his powdered head. The Quaker dress abounds. It is worn by Huntley and Palmer, who keep a little biscuit-shop in London Street, where a little boy buys cakes, and from which has since sprung the biscuit factory of the universe. The shop of the principal draper is the ladies' Club.

Into old St. Lawrence's Church, not yet restored, the Mayor and Aldermen march, robed, with the mace borne before them. In the pulpit, orthodoxy drones undisturbed by Ritualism or the Higher Criticism. The clerk below gives out the Christmas Hymn, saying at the end of each line "Hal!" in which he does not recognize an abbreviation of "Hallelujah." On a high seat in a high-backed pew sits a little boy, wishing the sermon would end, staring at the effigy of St. Lawrence on the capital of a pillar overhead, and wondering what the man could have been doing on the gridiron. Now and then his ear catches the sound of the Beadle's cane waking up a slumbering charity-boy to the orthodox excellence of the sermon. Compulsory Chapel at Eton and Oxford confirmed the impression compulsory Church at Reading had made.

The clergyman, the doctor, the solicitor, the banker,

[1 Charles Fyshe Palmer, seven times elected Member for Reading, was born in 1769 and died in 1843. - See "The Town of Reading." By W M. Childs. Reading: University College. 1910. Page 62.]

the brewer, the retired general and admiral who has served under Wellington or Nelson, the retired merchant, the widower or spinster with a good income, form a social circle the members of which meet in each other's houses, play whist, the old game of long whist as played by Sarah Battle, and end with the temperate tray of sandwiches and negus. For the young people there are county balls, archery meetings, and other suitable diversions. There is no globe-trotting, hardly any departure from home, unless it be for health. Life, if it is not very lively, is calm, free from its present restlessness, if it lacks its present interest. The young are now, perhaps, by pastimes and summer gatherings, brought more together than they were in those days and provided with more pleasure. It may be doubted whether the life of the elders is so social. A friend with whom many years afterwards I was staying at Sydenham pointed out to me from a hill the suburban villas, from the number of which it would be supposed there must be a good deal of society in the place.

Yet," said he, "there is none. You cannot bring those people together for any purpose whatever. The man goes up to town by the morning train, spends the day in business, comes back to dinner, reads the paper, and falls asleep. For two months each year the pair go into lodgings by themselves at the seaside." The society of such a place as Reading, in my early days stationary, so that people passed their lives together, is now shifting. Those who have made their fortune

in business are nowadays always changing their abode in quest of an Eden, and some of them chase the vision till they die.

In the pulpit of the adjoining parish of St. Mary's the Higher Criticism had just dawned. Milman,1 who was the Vicar, read German theology and gave his congregation a slight taste of it, which was not much relished. He also, being a poet, introduced new hymns, to the disparagement of Brady and Tate.2 Orthodoxy confronted him in the person of a retired East Indian, whose objections were sometimes audible in the Church. One Sunday afternoon the adversary marched out of Church. It was supposed, as a theological protest. But it afterwards transpired that he had found the key of the curry-powder in his pocket.

From this state of things I have lived into an age of express-trains, ocean greyhounds, electricity, bicycles, globe-trotting, Evolution, the Higher Criticism, and general excitement and restlessness. Reading has shared the progress. The Reading of my boyhood has disappeared almost over the horizon of memory Whither is the train rushing, and where will the terminus be?

In that quiet town one of the quietest streets was

[1 Henry Hart Milman, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's; author of "History of Christianity under the Empire"; "Latin Christianity"; etc.

1791-1868.]

[2 Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate wrote a metrical version of the Psalms.]

Friar Street, in which my father lived. He was a physician in very good practice, personally much respected, and very kind to the poor He was the son of the Rector of Long Marston in Yorkshire, and grandson of the Rector of Wellington. The family, I believe, came from Wyburnbury in Cheshire, in the church of which parish there is a tomb with armorial bearings the same as ours. The little mansion-house of the family at Wyburnbury has disappeared, but its outline is preserved by the shape of the modern house built upon its site. I never attempted to trace the pedigree. A genealogy composed by my brother-inlaw, Mr Homer Dixon,' is, I fear, totally unauthentic. Our coat of arms denotes connection with the Pritchards, a Welsh family

My mother's maiden name was Breton, a mark of Huguenot descent. She was one of a numerous family of brothers and sisters. She was the niece and almost the adopted daughter of Mr Goldwin of Vicar's Hill near Leamington, a West India merchant, whose name I bear

One day I was suddenly called home from school.

[1 His wife's brother, Benjamin Homer Dixon, Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, Consul-General of the Netherlands in Canada. See "The Border or Riding Clans; Followed by a History of the Clan Dickson, and a Brief Account of the Family of the Author, B. Homer Dixon, K.L.N." Albany: Joel Munsell's Sons. 1889. Page 213. Also "Brief Account of the Family of Homer or de Homere of Ettingshall, Co. Stafford, Eng., and Boston, Mass." (Same publishers and date.) Page 23. Also "The Scotch Border Clan Dickson, the Family of B. Homer Dixon, and the Family of De Homere or Homer." Toronto. 1884. Page 35.]