Two Suffolk Friends

Two Suffolk Friends, by Francis
Hindes Groome

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Groome
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Title: Two Suffolk Friends
Author: Francis Hindes Groome

Release Date: February 13, 2007 [eBook #20576]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO
SUFFOLK FRIENDS***

Transcribed from the 1895 William Blackwood and Sons edition by
David Price, email [email protected]

TWO SUFFOLK FRIENDS
BY FRANCIS HINDES GROOME
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND
LONDON MDCCCXCV
All Rights reserved
TO MOWBRAY DONNE THE FRIEND OF THESE TWO FRIENDS
{Robert Hindes Groome: p0.jpg}

PREFACE.
Published originally in 'Blackwood's Magazine' four and six years ago,
and now a good deal extended, these two papers, I think, will be
welcome to many in East Anglia who knew my father, and to more, the
world over, who know FitzGerald's letters and translations. I may say
this with the better grace and greater confidence, as in both there is so
much that is not mine, and both have already brought me so many
kindly letters--from Freshwater, Putney Hill, Liverpool, Cambridge,
Aldeburgh, Italy, the United States, India, and "other nations too
tedious to mention." All the illustrations have been made in Bohemia
from photographs taken by my elder sister, except Nos. 6, 8, and 9, the
first of which is from the well-known photograph of FitzGerald by
Cade of Ipswich, whilst the other two I owe to my friend, Mr Edward
Clodd.
F. H. G.

A SUFFOLK PARSON.
The chief aim of this essay is to present to a larger public than the

readers of a country newspaper my father's Suffolk stories; but those
stories may well be prefaced by a sketch of my father's life. Such a
sketch I wrote shortly after his death, for the great 'Dictionary of
National Biography.' It runs thus:--
"Robert Hindes Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk, was born at
Framlingham in 1810. Of Aldeburgh ancestry, he was the second son
of the Rev. John Hindes Groome, ex-fellow of Pembroke College,
Cambridge, and rector for twenty-six years of Earl Soham and Monk
Soham in Suffolk. From Norwich school he passed to Caius College,
Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1832, M.A. in 1836. In 1833
he was ordained to the Suffolk curacy of Tannington-with-Brandish; in
1835 travelled through Germany as tutor to Rafael Mendizabal, the son
of the Spanish ambassador; in 1839 became curate of Corfe Castle,
Dorsetshire; and in 1845 succeeded his father as rector of Monk Soham.
Here in the course of forty-four years he built the rectory-house and
school, restored the fine old church, erected an organ, and re-hung the
bells. He was Archdeacon of Suffolk from 1869 till 1887, when failing
eyesight forced him to resign, and when the clergy of the diocese
presented him with his portrait. He died at Monk Soham, 19th March
1889. Archdeacon Groome was a man of wide culture--a man, too, of
many friends. Chief among these were Edward FitzGerald, William
Bodham Donne, Dr Thompson of Trinity, and Henry Bradshaw, the
Cambridge librarian, who said of him, 'I never see Groome but what I
learn something new.' He read much, but published little--a couple of
charges, a sermon and lecture or two, some hymns and hymn-tunes,
and a good many articles in the 'Christian Advocate and Review,' of
which he was editor from 1861 to 1866. His best productions are his
Suffolk stories: for humour and tenderness these come near to 'Rab and
his Friends.'"
An uneventful life, like that of most country clergymen. But as
Gainsborough and Constable took their subjects from level East Anglia,
as Gilbert White's Selborne has little to distinguish it above other
parishes in Hampshire, {5} so I believe that the story of that quiet life
might, if rightly told, possess no common charm. I have listened to my
father's talks with Edward FitzGerald, with William Bodham Donne,

and with two or three others of his oldest friends; such talks were like
chapters out of George Eliot's novels. His memory was marvellous. It
seems but the other day I told him I had been writing about Clarendon;
and "Clarendon," he said, "was born, I know, in 1608, but I forget the
name of the Wiltshire parish his birthplace. Look it up." I looked it up,
and the date was 1608; the parish (Dinton) was, sure enough, in
Wiltshire. Myself I have had again to consult an encyclopaedia for both
date and place-name, but he remembered the one distinctly and the
other vaguely after possibly thirty years. In the same