Two Suffolk Friends | Page 5

diarist, "a
dozen honest gentlemen dined merrily." There were the heavy
dinner-parties at my grandfather's, the regulation allowance of port a
bottle per man, but more ad libitum. And there was the yearly "Soham
Fair," on July 12, when my grandfather kept open house for the parsons
or other gentry and their womankind, who flocked in from miles
around. On one such occasion my father had to squire a new-comer
about the fair. The wife of a retired City alderman, she was enormously
stout, and had chosen to appear in a low dress. ("Hillo, bor! what are
yeou a-dewin' with the Fat Woman?"--one can imagine the delicate
raillery.)
A well-known Earl-Sohamite was old Mr P---, who stuttered and was
certainly eccentric. In summer-time he loved to catch small "freshers"
(young frogs), and let them hop down his throat, when he would stroke
his stomach, observing, "B-b-b-b-eautifully cool." He was a staunch
believer in the claims of the "Princess Olive." She used to stay with
him, and he always addressed her as "Your Royal Highness." Then,
there was Dr Belman. He was playing whist one evening with a maiden
lady for partner. She trumped his best card, and, at the end of the hand,
he asked her the reason why. "Oh, Dr Belman" (smilingly), "I judged it
judicious." "Judicious! JUDICIOUS!! JUDICIOUS!!! You old fool!"
She never again touched a card. Was it the same maiden lady who was
the strong believer in homoeopathy, and who one day took five
globules of aconite in mistake for three? Frightened, she sent off for her
homoeopathic adviser--he was from home. So, for want of a better, she
called in old Dr Belman. He came, looked grave, shook his head, said if
people would meddle with dangerous drugs they must take the
consequences. "But, madam," he added, "I will die with you;" and,
lifting the bottle of the fatal globules, swallowed its whole contents.

{17}
To the days of my father's first curacy belongs the story of the old
woman at Tannington, who fell ill one winter when the snow was on
the ground. She got worse and worse, and sent for Dr Mayhew, who
questioned her as to the cause of her illness. Something she said made
him think that the fault must lie with either her kettle or her tea-pot, as
she seemed, by her account, to get worse every time she drank any tea.
So he examined the kettle, turned it upside down, and then, in old
Betty's own words, "Out drop a big toad. He tarned the kittle up, and
out ta fell flop." Some days before she had "deeved" her kettle into the
snow instead of filling it at the pump, and had then got the toad in it,
which had thus been slowly simmering into toad-broth. At Tannington
also they came to my father to ask him to let them have the church
Bible and the church key. The key was to be spun round on the Bible,
and if it had pointed at a certain old woman who was suspected of
being a witch, they would have certainly ducked her.
A score of old faded letters, close-written and crossed, are lying before
me: my father wrote them in 1835 to his father, mother, and brother
from Brussels, Mainz, Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Munich, &c. At
Frankfurt he dined with the Rothschilds, and sat next the baroness,
"who in face and figure was very like Mrs Cook, and who spoke little
English, but that little much to the purpose. For one dish I must eat
because 'dis is Germany,' and another because 'dis is England,' placing
at the word a large slice of roast-beef on my plate. The dinner began at
half-past two, and lasted three mortal hours, during the first of which I
ate because I was hungry, during the second out of politeness, and
during the third out of sheer desperation." Then there is a descent into a
silver- mine with the present Lord Wemyss (better known as Lord
Elcho), a gruesome execution of three murderers, and a good deal
besides of some interest,--but the interest is not of Suffolk.
During his six years' Dorset curacy my father was elected mayor of the
little borough of Corfe Castle; and it was in Dorset, on 1st February
1843, that he married my mother, Mary Jackson (1815-93), the
youngest daughter of the Rev. James Leonard Jackson, rector of

Swanage, and of Louisa Decima Hyde Wollaston. Her father, my
grandfather, was a great taker of snuff; and one blustery day he was
walking upon the cliffs when his hat blew off. He chased it and chased
it over two or three fields until at last he got it in the angle of two stone
walls. "Aha! my friend, I think I have you