March  18,  1897. 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
225 
Thence  for  two  to  three  years’  more  spell  at  a  school  ia  the  neighbouring 
parish  of  Rougham,  experiencing  many  canings.  “  Old  Dicky  Harrison”  had 
a  garden,  with  a  pond  surrounded  by  banks  of  Strawberry  beds,  which  we 
used  to  water  with  cow’s  horns  attached  to  the  ends  of  long  stout 
bandies.  His  Filberts  and  Cob  Nuts  !  and  then  the  Apple  gathering 
time,  or  any  other  chance  when  the  fruit  was  there,  in  the  fine  old 
orchard  I  “Jim  Hazlewood,  my  worthy  fellow  sufferer,  are  you  alive 
to  remember  ?  ”  Are  there  many  of  us  alive  now  to  remember  the  hold¬ 
ing  up  with  his  outstretched  arm  that  capacious  silver  “  ticker  ”  to  the 
very  moment  when  it  was  time  for  “  all  in  ?  ”  a  good,  kind-hearted  man — 
peace  to  his  manes. 
I  had  not  long  overshot  the  age  of  ten,  with  but  rudimentary  know¬ 
ledge  of  the  R.  R.  R.’s,  when  I  was  taken  away  from  Mr.  Harrison’s — it 
was  no  joke  for  fathers  to  pay  for  “schooling”  in  those  days — and 
placed  as  a  page  to  the  young  ladies  at  the  Hall  and  their  governess.  A 
full  share  of  my  occupation  was  to  attend  upon  them  in  their  flower 
and  kitchen  (save  the  mark)  gardens.  This  employment  suited  me 
very  well,  but  how  I  disliked  the  governess  1  I  have  been  told,  too, 
that  as  soon  as  I  entered  my  “  teens  ”  I  became  unmanageable — objected 
to  take  up  the  flowers  or  what  not  under  a  reasonable  time  to  “see  if 
their  roots  were  growing.”  An  idea,  too,  began  to  strike  root  in  my 
some  old,  worn-out  cider  Apple  trees  in  the  orchard,  to  be  replaced  with 
young  ones  of  superior  kinds.  It  was  thought  to  be  something  akin  to 
sacrilege  in  those  parts  then  to  destroy  an  old  cider  Apple  tree.  Jones 
was  the  factotum  of  the  vicarage — sexton  and  parish  clerk — endowed 
with  a  voice  magnificent,  coming  as  if,  as  he  always  read  it,  from  the 
“  depths  of  the  sea.”  And  to  hear  him  sing  1  Well,  I  could  give  a  com¬ 
parison,  but  you  might  not  like  me  to  do  so.  Ah  !  Jones,  Jones  I  you 
were  a  man  of  ample  rotundity  and  of^infinite  humour.  When  shall^I 
look  upon  your  like  again  1 
A  coincidence  to  become  indelibly  printed  on  my  memory  happened  as 
I  was  finishing  the  planting  of  some  young  Sycamores  behind  the  church, 
to  eventually  screen  i t  from  a  dirty  farmyard  and  buildings.  W illiams — he 
lived  in  a  pretty  cottage  at  the  “  Hope  ” — was  foreman  to  Lord  Craven’s 
workmen  for  his  woods  and  plantations,  passed  by,  and  made  the  remark 
contemptuous,  “  I  wonder  who  we  shall  have  for  woodmen  next.”  I 
replied,  I  wondered  so  too  ;  that  I  should  like  to  be  one  vastly,  for  by 
what  I  could  judge  or  had  learned  from  him  it  was  a  very  easy  lucrative 
employment.  I  retain  Williams  in  my  mind’s  eye — a  stalwart  man, 
enveloped  in  a  long  white  smock  ;  so  having  pourtrayed  him  I»  will 
enclose  for  your  ocular  inspection  two  pictures  as  being  intimately 
connected  with  my  subject. 
Fig.  50. — Stanton  Lacey  Vicarage  in  1837. 
mind  comparatively,  I  likened  myself  as  being  the  oldest  son  of  a  poor 
man,  analogous  to  the  youngest  sons  of  a  rich  man  ;  both  had  to  turn 
out  first  to  seek  their  living  ;  besides,  I  wanted  to  be  off,  and  the 
“governess  ”  expedited  me. 
An  opportunity  offering  I  was  placed  at  a  watchmaking  and  working 
jewellery  business  in  Knightsbridge.  I  could  not  become  reconciled  to 
the  confinements  of  solderings,  repairings,  and  cleaning  of  watches  and 
clocks,  so  in  less  than  two  years  I  ran  away,  became  perdu  in  the 
neighbourhoods  of  the  London  docks  trying  to  get  a  berth  as  “  cabin 
boy  ”  to  go  to  sea  in  any  ship  that  wou^d  offer  to  take  me.  I  could  not  ; 
so  after  being  sworn  at  by  some  authority  or  other  on  board,  or  laughed 
at  as  the  case  might  be  by  the  sailors  ;  and  then  having  spent  or  become 
cheated  out  of  my  limited  stock  of  money,  I  was  compelled  to  make  my 
whereabouts  known  to  the  folks  at  home.  How  I  escaped  without 
blemish  by  associating  with  the  lowest  of  the  low  some  three  weeks  in 
the  purlieus  of  the  docks  is  a  mystery  to  me  to  this  very  day. 
After  a  time  an  opportunity  offered,  temporarily  it  was  thought,  for 
me  to  become  located  with  the  Rev.  G.  W.  St.  John  at  Stanton  Lacey, 
near  Ludlow,  in  Shropshire,  a  young  man  whose  uncle,  the  then  Earl 
of  Craven,  had  not  long  before  presented  him  to  the  living.  Mr.  So. 
John  was  just  about  completing  the  building  of  his  new  vicarage  house. 
He  was  fond  of  poultry  and  pigeons,  and  I  was  to  attend  chiefly  to 
their  wants.  But  above  all  things  I  soon  found  that  my  propensity  for 
planting  could  be  fully  gratified,  so  I  felt  myself  at  home,  and  gained  a 
bad  name  quickly  through  winning  JoneB  over  to  assist  me  in  uprooting 
The  church  depicted,  about  the  time  for  which  I  am^writing,  had 
been  made  to  undergo  repairs,  with  readjusted  seatings.  A  new  south 
window,  more  in  Gothic  unison  with  the  others,  was  substituted  for  the 
horizontal  manufactory-looking  affair,  which  had  admitted  light  for 
possibly  more  than  a  century,  right  across  the  south  limb  of  the  structure, 
as  I  have  etched  it.*  The  large  trees  shown  were,  and  may  be  growing 
there  now,  old  Sycamores.  The  foreground  flanked  the  public  road, 
which  bad  the  newly  planted  shrubberies  of  the  vicarage  for  the  other 
side.  Young  Elms  in  line  were  placed  bordering  the  eastern  part  of 
the  churchyard,  not  shown. 
The  water  colour  drawing  of  the  house  and  grounds  was  taken  by 
Mrs.  Stackhouse-Acton,  daughter  of  Thos.  Andrew  Knight,  Esq.,  the 
then  President  of  the  Royal  Horticultural  Society,  in  commemoration, 
the  newly  planted  Apple  trees  in  the  foreground  being  the  chief  instiga¬ 
tion  for  it.  A  sunk  fence,  or  haw-haw,  separated  the  lawn  from  the 
orchard,  scarcely  to  be  seen  in  the  drawing.  The  large  tree  in  the 
foreground  by  the  bank  of  the  river  was  a  grand  old  Barland 
(Cheat  the  Boys)  Pear.  In  a  good  season  I  had  made  as  much  as 
3  hogsheads  of  perry  with  its  fruit.  The  orchard  extended  some  1J  acre 
to  the  right  (not  shown),  and  200  yards  on  the  left.  The  distant  out¬ 
lines  forming  a  background  represent  the  Clee  Hills.  Behind  the 
large  old  Yew  depicted  upon  the  right  hand  from  the  house  was  the 
*  An  excellent  sketch,  such  as  any  gardener  might  be  proud  of,  but  we 
have  only  space  for  one  illustration,  and  choose  the  more  gardenesque. 
