Bygone Berkshire

"Ours are a sort of inoffensive people, who neither have sense nor pretend to any, but enjoy a jovial kind of dulness. They are commonly known in the world by the name of honest, civil gentlemen. They live much as they ride, at random – a kind of hunting life, pursuing with earnestness and hazard something not worth the catching; never in the way nor out of it. I cannot but prefer solitude to the company of all these." …

And in another letter he wrote to his friend Cromwell in the same strain: —

"I assure you I am looked upon in the neighbourhood for a very sober and well-disposed person, no great hunter indeed, but a great esteemer of that noble sport, and only unhappy in my want of constitution for that and drinking. They all say 'tis pity I am so sickly, and I think 'tis a pity they are so healthy; but I say nothing that may destroy their good opinion of me."

Besides this, an additional link in the chain which united the two friends was the similarity of their tastes in literature. Sir William Trumbull, who, in his early days, had been Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, had kept up his scholarship, and retained to the last day of his life his early fondness for Greek and Latin authors.

The results of this friendship were of immense advantage to Pope. His earliest published poems, The Pastorals, modelled on Virgil's Eclogues, were first submitted to and discussed with Trumbull, as they rode together about the Forest, and the first Pastoral with much propriety was dedicated to his venerable friend. It was Trumbull who first suggested to Pope that he should undertake the translation of the Iliad, and thereby laid the foundation of his affluence. But far more than this, when the poet first went to London, and seemed, under the guidance of the old reprobate Wycherly, to be falling into evil ways, it was Trumbull who implored him to retrace his steps. "I now come," he wrote, "to what is of vast moment, I mean the preservation of your health, and beg of you earnestly to get out of all tavern company, and fly away from it tanquam ex incendio." As long as Pope remained at Binfield, their friendship was warm and unabated. In striking contrast with every other intimacy between Pope and his friends no coldness or quarrel ever arose between them. In April, 1716, the Popes left Binfield and removed to Chiswick, and in the following December Sir William Trumbull died.

To return; in the meanwhile the elder Pope devoted himself to gardening, in the art of which, as we have seen, he was no mean proficient. A rival in the same pursuit was his friend, Mr. John Dancastle. And we find amongst the poet's correspondence a letter from Sir William Trumbull thanking Pope's father for sending him a present of "hartichokes" of superior size and excellence; and in another letter Mr. John Dancastle excuses himself, after the Popes had left, for not being able to procure them "some white Strabery plants" such as apparently the elder Pope had reared in the old garden at Binfield.

While the father was thus occupied in gardening, the son was gradually creeping into notice as a poet. His early poems and shorter pieces appeared at first in Tonson's or Lintot's "Miscellanies," or the "Spectator," and similar publications. But as he became more widely known, Pope ventured on independent publication by the then usual mode of introducing new works, namely by subscription. In this way his fine poems the Essay on Criticism, Windsor Forest, and the Rape of the Lock, all written and composed at Binfield, appeared successively in 1711, 1713, and 1714.

The first of these poems should be mentioned for two reasons. It led to Pope's first introduction to London life, when he made the acquaintance of the famous wits of the period, Steele, Addison, Gay, and Swift. And it also was the cause of the first of those literary quarrels in which Pope's talent for satire henceforth involved him more or less as long as he lived. Resenting some adverse criticism of his Pastorals, he inserted in the Essay on Criticism the following lines: —

"'Twere well might critics still their freedom take,
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares tremendous with a threatening eye
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry."

John Dennis, the writer thus lampooned as "Appius," retorted in a prose pamphlet, in which he described his assailant as a "hunch-backed toad," and went on to say: "If you have a mind to inquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham for a young, short, squab gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals and the very bow of the god of love, you will be soon directed to him. And pray, as soon as you have taken a survey of him, tell me whether he is a proper author to make personal reflections."

In his poem Windsor Forest it was natural that Pope should commemorate his friendship and intercourse with Sir William Trumbull, by describing in graceful verse the peaceful occupations of his aged friend's declining years.

"Happy [the man], who to these shades retires,
Whom Nature charms, and whom the Muse inspires:
Whom humbler joys of home-felt quiet please,
Successive study, exercise, and ease.
He gathers health from herbs the forest yields,
And of their fragrant physic spoils the fields;

Now marks the course of rolling orbs on high;
O'er figured worlds now travels with his eye;
Of ancient writ unlocks the learned store,
Consults the dead, and lives past ages o'er.

Or looks on heaven with more than mortal eyes,
Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies,
Amid her kindred stars familiar roam,
Survey the region, and confess her home!
Such was the life great Scipio once admired,
Thus Atticus, and Trumbal thus retired."

Of the Rape of the Lock it will suffice to say that even now some critics reckon it as Pope's masterpiece. As a specimen of the Mock Heroic Epic Poem it has no rival in the English language. Here it chiefly concerns us as a true and lifelike picture of fashionable manners prevailing in country houses in the reign of Queen Anne.

The publication of these poems made frequent journeys to London necessary, in order to settle terms with the publishers and other literary business. The Rape of the Lock was immediately successful, three thousand copies being sold in four days, and it was at once reprinted. Pope's fame was therefore now established firmly, but hitherto the sums which he had received for his poems would seem to have been very inconsiderable. He appears to have received thirty pounds for Windsor Forest, and only half that sum each for the Essay on Criticism and the Rape of the Lock.

He now bethought him, therefore, of Sir William Trumbull's former suggestion that he should translate Homer, and in October, 1713, he issued his Proposals to the Public. His friends in London interested themselves in the subscription. Dean Swift, in particular, said he should not rest until he had secured for him a thousand pounds. And so flattering was the response, that in 1715 the family was enabled to live more at ease. It was now evident that their present abode was too far from London, for one who had constant negotiations with the book-sellers and the Popes determined to leave Binfield, and accordingly their house there was sold towards the end of 1715. It was bought by a Mr. Tanner, whose gravestone is one of those described in the beginning of this chapter as lying in front of the altar. He was probably a Papist, certainly a Non-Juror, for Hearne, who records the fact, terms him "an honest man," which is Hearne's well-known periphrasis for denoting those who were Jacobites in politics.

The last two years of his life at Binfield, Pope spent in translating the Iliad, or rather, for he was too poor a Greek scholar to read it in the original, in versifying other people's translations of it. Good old Sir William Trumbull no doubt helped him whenever a passage of extra difficulty perplexed the poet. And Mr. Thomas Dancastle, the Squire of Binfield, was so delighted with his young friend's enterprise that at infinite pains and labour he made a fair copy of the whole translation for the press. It also appears from Pope's MSS. that he occasionally indulged his affectionate and amiable mother in allowing her to transcribe a portion. But alas! poor Mrs. Pope had had but a slender education. In the single letter of hers, which has been published, the spelling is surprisingly phonetic. Alluding to a portion of the Iliad she writes to her son: "He will not faile to cole here on Friday morning, and take ceare to cearrie itt to Mr. Thomas Doncaster. He shall dine wone day with Mrs. Dune, in Ducke (i. e., Duke) Street; but the day will be unsirton, soe I thincke you had better send itt to me. He will not faile to cole here, that is Mr. Mannock." And the numerous corrections made in his own hand, sufficiently show that her mode of spelling gave Pope more trouble than all the subsequent inaccuracies of the printers.

Our period draws to its close. In June, 1715, the first volume of Pope's Homer, containing the first four books of the Iliad came out. It has been calculated that for the six volumes in which the translation was comprised Pope received from Lintot more than £5,000. And as the greater portion of this sum was paid in advance his circumstances at once became not only easy but affluent. The end of the year was spent in preparing to migrate to Chiswick. It must be remembered that the new year then began in March, and on March 20, 1715/16, Pope wrote to his friend Caryll as follows: —

"I write this from Windsor Forest, which I am come to take my last look and leave of. We have bid our Papist neighbours adieu, much as those who go to be hanged do their fellow-prisoners who are condemned to follow them a few weeks after. I was at Whiteknights, where I found the young ladies I just now mentioned [Theresa and Martha Blount] spoken of a little more coldly than I could at this time especially[7 - Mrs. Blount and her two daughters were on the point of quitting Mapledurham in consequence of the marriage of her son, Michael Blount, in 1715.] have wished. I parted from honest Mr. Dancastle with tenderness, and from Sir William Trumbull as from a venerable prophet, foretelling with lifted hands the miseries to come upon posterity which he was just going to be removed from."

Sir William died in the December following in his 78th year, leaving an only son, also William Trumbull, barely eight years old. The subsequent history of Binfield and Easthampstead does not fall within the limits of this chapter. It must suffice to say that Pope occasionally visited the Dancastles, and possibly stayed with Lady Judith Trumbull. At all events he recommended his friend, Elijah Fenton, the poet, to be her son's tutor, and frequently corresponded with him at Easthampstead. Fenton continued to reside there even after young Trumbull grew to man's estate, and when Fenton died in 1730, Pope wrote the epitaph which is still to be seen inscribed upon the tablet erected by William Trumbull to his memory, on the north wall of Easthampstead Church.

Berkshire Words and Phrases

By Rev. M.J. Bacon

It is not easy to determine in a subject of this kind what are the strict lines of demarcation which separate words and phrases used within a specific area from those used elsewhere, or again, in many instances, to decide what is dialect, and what mere local pronunciation. Where the area is confined to the limit of a county, the difficulties are increased, as the dwellers near the borders would naturally be influenced by the characteristics of the neighbouring county. Thus Berkshire folk on the Wiltshire side of the county would differ in many respects from those on the Hampshire side; and while the verb to kite, for instance, would be unknown to the one, the adjective deedy would be equally strange to the other.

Probably, next to verbs and adjectives, the names given to birds and animals, implements, or any common object, would determine a man's county. Phrases are less numerous, but adjectives rank first among local peculiarities.

Many of these convey the same idea, but are applied to different objects, and in different ways. Thus in Berkshire chuff, pruff, fess, peart, and sprack, all imply something sharp, smart, or perky; but pruff is applied solely to vegetable life, such as young and healthy shoots, buds, or growing plants; while a sharp, quick mannered man may be either chuff or fess. "Speak up, chuff, now," is the adjuration of the parent to the bashful child who has just been addressed by the quality. Fess will be recognised at once as the fierce of the Eastern counties, implying a certain amount of vigour, indeed, but conveying no idea of savagery or temper. Peart and sprack speak for themselves.

Next come bristle and briffut, used both as nouns and verbs, though the former is more often the substantive, expressing a sharp, active fellow, or perhaps a terrier, who would briffut about in search of rats. The adjective deedy, on the other hand, is careful, wary, cautious, almost the Yankee 'cute, and is usually intensified by main, very. "What sort of a girl is your daughter?" asked the late Baron Huddleston of the mother of a young girl who had just given evidence in an important case in the Reading Assize Court. "She be a main deedy little girl, my Lord," was the reply. "Greedy, did you say?" "No, my Lord, deedy – main deedy." But Reading is not central enough in the county for anyone in court to have replied to his Lordship's puzzled look of enquiry.

Besides main, feart, or feartish, is used to emphasise an expression. "He be a main sight, or a feartish deal better," or perhaps "only tar'blish" a contraction of tolerablish. In like manner, the patient would change for the better, but alter for the worse, while a bit altery would apply to the weather tokening for rain. Smart is used to qualify another word, as a smart few, meaning a good many, or it would rain smartish. Other words, sometimes corruptions, are common, as unked, awkward, in the sense of obstinate, troublesome; stomachy, proud, self-willed; quisiting, inquisitive; querky, querulous; wangery, languid; shackelty, shaky; hechatty, onomatopœan, applied to a cough; peaked, pronounced pikkid, pointed, as the end of a stick; worriting for worrying, though terrifying is more often used, to terrify and to worrit being synomymous. Casualty is risky, hollies being considered casualty things to plant, while it is often casualty weather in hay-making time. To be in a ferrick is to be in a fidget, and all of a caddle in a muddle. Heft is weight, and hefty, weighty. To poise anything in the hand to test its weight would be to heft it. Overright is opposite, a word unknown to the aborigines; but what a "Leicestershire mon" would call over yon, is expressed by his Berkshire compeer as athurt thur, evidently a corruption of athwart there. Overright would, of course, be originally rightover, and this tendency to put the cart before the horse is common. Droo wet is always used for wet through. The same peculiarity appears elsewhere, as in breakstuff for breakfast, and even in monosyllables, as hapse for hasp, clapse for clasp, and aks for ask. This last, however, is by no means confined to Berkshire.

Some of the verbs are original, while others bear signs of being simply mispronunciations. To quilt is to swallow; to plim to swell, like rice in the boiling; to huck to dig up, or empty. A man hucks out a gutter or ditch, or simply hucks his potatoes. To tuck is probably originally to pluck, and is applied to dressing the sides of a newly made rick with the hand to make it trim and neat. To kite, or kite up, is to look up sharp or peeringly; while bees are indifferently said to bite or tang. "They do tang I," would seem to preclude any derivation from sting, as it undoubtedly is. To argue is used in its proper sense, and is very common; but it is always turned into the monosyllable arg.

It is not surprising to find peculiarities in the common objects and customs of everyday life. Thus the eleven o'clock snack under the hedge, known elsewhere as elevenses, is nuncheon; and so it comes to pass that a horse deficient in barrel is spoken of disparagingly as having "no nuncheon bag." A bradawl is a nalpasser, no doubt "nail-passer"; but a gimlet retains its name, and is not called a twinnet, as in some places. A duckut is a small bill hook for cutting faggots; while a fag-hook, or fagging-hook, is a crooked stick used instead of the left hand in clearing a bank of nettles, etc., with an iron "hook." The new mown hay is termed eddish, while tedding out hay is spreading it out in the sun after it has been mown. The hay-loft over the stable, often the sleeping place of the fogger (forager), the man who tends the cattle, is called the tallut; the smallest pig in the litter, elsewhere either the "cad" or "darling," is invariably the runt; a dog's fangs are tushes, and a bird's claws nippens. In the poultry-yard and pigeon-cote the cock-bird is the tom; and some of the wild birds have their peculiar names assigned them. Thus the wryneck, or cuckoo's mate, is the pe-pe bird, from its note; a wish wagtail is a dasher; a woodpecker a yaffingal; and the golden plover a whistling dovyer. The little white moth that flits about in the twilight at sundown in the summer months is a margiowlet, and the steady, plodding mole, is either a want or a mouldiwarp.

Berkshire stands confessedly at the head of all pig-breeding counties, but that is no reason why the usual call of "choog, choog, choogy," at feeding time, should be changed to "teg, teg, teggy." The cattle call of coop, coop, is of course a corruption of "come, come"; and coobid, coobiddy, the poultry call of "come hither." The carter, walking on the near side of his horses, calls them towards him by coomither, or coomither-awo-oy, or more frequently holt, or holt tóward, with the accent on the first syllable of "toward," and sends them to the off side with the monosyllable wug. It is not often that the Berkshire man stoops to abuse, for he is naturally easy-going, stolid, and impassive; but a driven cow taking a wrong turn would inevitably be denounced as an old faggot, and a troublesome boy be branded as a young radical, though without any political signification attached. A simile would not be looked for amongst essentially an unimaginative folk, but as 'pright as a dish is common, and singularly inappropriate.

Of superstition there is comparatively little, and ghosts and witches meet with but little respect, the men believing that a good "vowld-stake" (i.e. fold-stake) is a sufficient weapon in all cases of emergency, and the women being fully as undaunted as the men. There is, however, a curious old Berkshire saying, that "a spayed bitch will catch a witch," and that there is some faith in the truth of the saying is shown by the fact that sheep dogs, if of the feminine gender, used frequently to be so treated.

Every race has its physical peculiarity, and where the negro is tenderest, the Berkshire man is toughest, – in his shins. As a backstop he prefers to stop the fastest balls with his shins, rather than with his hands, and will keep on all day without apparent inconvenience. At "backswording" Berkshire men were always renowned; but it was necessarily the privilege of the few, the ordinary farm labourer having no opportunity for practising it. Some other test of endurance must therefore be accepted; and forty years ago it was the regular custom, when two carters stopped at a way-side public-house, for the men to shake hands first, in token of friendship, and then to indulge in the pastime of either cutlegs or kickshins, the former consisting of the men standing apart, and lashing each others legs with their long cart whips till one cried "Hold," while in kickshins each man took firm grip of his opponent by twisting both hands in the overlapping collar of his smock frock, and then kicking with his hob-nailed boots at the other's shins, the vanquished one of course paying for both pots of ale before they started once more on their respective journeys. There was living in the Lambourn valley, less than forty years ago, a man who was considered the champion of the county side, and his shins were knotted and bent and twisted in the most remarkable manner, as the result of his numerous encounters.

Heavy of gait, stolid of mien, and of indomitable courage, the true Berkshire man is a staunch friend, and a very poor enemy, for he harbours no resentment. Imperturbable to the last degree, he is rarely surprised into an exclamation of surprise, excitement, or satisfaction. When he is, Dal-lee, with a strong accent on the last syllable, is his sole resource. "Dal-lee! that's got 'un," says the carpenter with a grunt of satisfaction, as he gives the finishing blow that drives home a big nail at which he has been pounding. Its derivation may not be hard to find, but it makes the Berkshire man no worse than his neighbours after all.

But all these things are relics of a past age now. Shins are tenderer, mouths less wide, or at least the dialect is less broad; and the certificated schoolmaster and the railways have done their deadly work.

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis

Bull-Baiting in Berkshire

By Rev. Canon Sturges

The character of a people is reflected in their amusements. The gradual decline of the popularity of rough and cruel sports is a sure indication that there has been corresponding improvement in the people themselves. The History of Sports will show how slowly and yet how continuously this improvement has gone on under the influence of Christian civilization.

It was not until christian teaching had been leavening society for 400 years that public opinion was educated up to the point of abolishing the gladiatorial contests, and the wholesale massacres of the Roman amphitheatre. For nearly a thousand years more the lists, within which men-at-arms met in mortal combat to shew their skill or settle their quarrels, were the very chiefest places of amusement in our own land. There king and nobles would sit on seats raised above the crowd, and fairest ladies gave the signal to begin, and presented the reward to the victor when the games were over. The common people crowded round the enclosure, while all watched the armed men tilting at one another on horseback, or dealing mighty blows with sword and buckler, and when a spear's head penetrated a knight's corslet, and he fell from his horse, and his life's blood oozed out on the ground, or when a downward sweep of a great two-handed sword fell on a footman's helmet, cleaving it and the head beneath it in two, as sometimes happened, the men in the crowd did not turn sick, nor the women scream and faint, as would be the case now if such sights were seen, but the men clapped their hands and cheered, and the women waved their handkerchiefs, and put on their sweetest smiles for him who dealt the fatal blow. In time that class of exhibitions passed out of use, and another took its place, and survived to within the memory of living persons. No longer was the stake played for human life, but for the humbler one of the life of a brute. Sometimes, indeed, the highest in the land would mingle with the lowest, for the pleasure of seeing a couple of strong men battering one another's faces into shapeless mass with fists, until one of the two could no longer stand. But the commoner and more generally approved sport was that which transferred the duty of being done to death for the amusement of mankind, from man himself to the dumb helpless creatures that have been committed to man's care, and set apart for his lawful use. Bull-baiting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, rat-killing, dog-fighting, and such like, were for several centuries his favourite amusements.[8 - Erasmus, the reformer, speaks of 'many herds' of bears which he saw being trained for baiting when he was in England in the reign of Henry VIII.] Queen Elizabeth was an enthusiastic patroness of baiting. The master of the bears, bulls, and dogs, was one of the officers of the Royal household during her reign, and in several subsequent reigns. She was wont to entertain ambassadors to her court, with bull and bear-baiting after a state dinner. In 1591 an order of the Privy council was issued forbidding plays to be acted on Thursdays, because "bear-baiting and such like pastimes had usually been practised on that day." Thus Shakespeare was silenced every Thursday, lest the bull-ring should be neglected.

It was not until the beginning of the present century that the conscience of the nation began to revolt against the continuance of this barbarous sport. In 1802 an attempt was made in the House of Commons to pass a bill to suppress it. The question was argued with much warmth, and the bill was lost. In 1835 public opinion had so far advanced that a bill was passed without much difficulty, by which it became illegal henceforth to bait or worry any bear, bull, dog, or other animal. And thus after seven centuries of popularity, bull-baiting ceased to be a public amusement.

We should like now to take our readers, as far as we can by a descriptive narrative, to one of the bull-baitings of Berkshire as they were conducted sixty years ago. There are plenty of places we might select for our visit. Every town in the county and every considerable village had its common or ground where the greensward was reddened at least once a year with the blood of bulls and dogs. Strangely enough the favourite day for the great bait of the year was Good Friday.