‘Old Essex’ by An Old Fogey. 1906

A booklet sold ‘Price Sixpence’ published ‘Chelmsford. Printed by the ‘Essex County Chronicle’ Office. 1906’.

The last seventy years have been very eventful, and fruitful of change. Essex has perhaps changed as little as most places; but many things, even in Essex, are very different from what they were seventy years ago; and perhaps these few reminiscences of an Essex man, whose memory carries him well back to the middle thirties of the last century [c.1835], may not be altogether without interest to the Essex men and women of today.

The Essex Landscape

In its physical aspect – or perhaps I should say its natural features – the Essex country looked very much the same then as it does now. There were then, as now, vast stretches of arable land, intermixed with a few meadows, especially along the course of the streams, and there was a good proportion of wood.

The face of the county has not been changed, as it has in some other counties, by bringing into cultivation heaths, commons and marshes. Strips of waste may have been taken in, here and there, from the wayside, and a good deal of timber may have disappeared, particularly from the hedgerows, but still, in the main, the general look of the country, now, would be perfectly familiar to the dwellers in it seventy years ago.

The old roads lead where they did, and a few new ones have been made; and the old towns, where people shopped and marketed, in whatever way they may have been enlarged and improved, still retain enough of the old familiar features to be easily recognisable. Of course I am here speaking of the real Essex, and not of the London overflow in the South-western corner of the county.

Coaching and Travel

Seventy years ago there were no railroads, and private travelling had to be done in carriages or coaches.

I remember the coaches very well. Several of them passed through the village in which I lived, on their way to, and from, London. There were, I think, two Norwich coaches, one Bury, and one Sudbury coach.

There was also a Braintree coach started at 7 o’clock in the morning and got to London about 12; started again from London at 3, and got back to Braintree about 8; so that if people had urgent business to transact in London which could be transacted in a couple of hours, they could thus manage the whole thing in one day; but the ten hours’ journey must have been, one would think, a very wearisome affair.

On a fine day, and for a journey that was not too long, the outside of a well-appointed coach was pleasant enough; but the inside especially when occupied (as it often was) by old ladies and children, was a stuffy and dreary prison-house, compared with which the least “well-appointed” railway carriage of the present day is palatial.

There were no compartments, and the fat people bulged over, and encroached upon the thin. The floor of the coach was furnished with straw, and the windows were small, and (in those days when fresh air was not in such demand as it is now) very constantly and needlessly drawn up. Whatever might have been the “glories” of the old coaching days, I can say, from my own experience, that travelling children had little share in them.

Along the high roads were also to be seen high, tilting waggons, drawn by four horses, trotting gaily along, and these, as well as the coaches, were regarded with some apprehension by riders and drivers when apt to be restive.

But perhaps the special objects of aversion to horses were the low gipsy tents often seen on some waste patch of green by the roadside. It may, however, be doubted whether our traction engines and motor cars do not supply, at the present time, quite a sufficiency of excitement to all who have the fortune to encounter them, whether in the saddle or on wheels.

In the days of which I am speaking the system of turnpike-gates was in full swing – by a system by no means all bad, seeing that it was based upon the principle of making those who used the roads pay for them. But the turnpikes remained long after the coaches had departed, and it is only in comparatively late years that they have entirely disappeared from the high-roads of Essex.

Shopping and Colchester

Essex ladies went shopping then, as they do now; but as London was, practically, so much further off, they did much of their business with the local shops.

Colchester was a great place for shopping, for ladies in my part of the county, when anything extra choice was required, and it would be within an easy drive. A day at Colchester was a great treat for children, with an early dinner at “The Cups,” and a stroll through the streets, and into the old Castle, and the Botanic Gardens, which were located somewhere near it.

When the carriage began to rattle over the cobbles in the High Street (cobbles being unknown in our small town), we felt that we were, now, really coming to an important city.

Holidays at the Essex Seaside

In the late summer, many Essex people who lived inland were in the habit of repairing to the sea-side; but it was to the Essex sea-side that (for our part of Essex at least) most of them went.

Harwich and Walton were quite good enough for us. We had no ambition in the direction of Brighton or Hastings, or other more fashionable places further off. Of the two, Walton and Harwich, Walton was, I think, looked upon as more select, but there was far more fun at Harwich.

Besides the grand facilities for boating, with the harbour, and the two rivers, and the open sea, there was a town, a little museum, and a market-hall, where fruit and other good things were sold, and a glorious Mayor, who used to walk in procession to church every Sunday, with his mace and mace-bearer, and attendants.

There was also a Redoubt, full of soldiers, and they, too, were a fine sight as they marched to church on Sunday morning; and there was, sometimes, drilling on the Esplanade green. If I remember right, the soldiers the wore swallow-tailed red coats and white trowsers.

When I and my nursemaid ventured to speak to one in his sentry-box, he was always affable and pleasant – a fact which might, perhaps, have been due more to the nursemaid than myself.

Felixtowe, on the opposite side of the harbour, was nice in some respects, but you could not always be certain of getting enough to eat. The beach there, by the Landguard Fort, was a good one for cornelians, and, on rare occasions, a small piece of yellow amber would appear among the shingle and sea-weed.

I wonder if anybody who reads this will remember the “Three Cups,” at Harwich, as it used to be, when the landlady was the obliging and portly Mrs. Bull, and when the London porter there obtainable was famed throughout the land!

Clothing and Fashion

Men dressed not so very differently in those days from what they do now. There were more breeches and gaiters to be seen, especially among old men in country places, and the high stiff collars and voluminous neckcloths of the Regency and subsequent reign had not yet died out.

I have seen two gentlemen, standing side by side, in conversation, who, when they wanted to look at each other, were unable to turn their heads only, but had to turn their shoulders as well.

Top boots were worn, very generally, by country gentlemen and farmers; but old gentlemen often appeared in long gaiters, coming up over the knee. For men who lived in towns the Wellington boot was a very usual wear. This was a boot worn inside the trowsers, and reaching high up over the calf.

Trowsers were kept down, especially when riding, by straps under the sole of the boot, and fastened to buttons at the bottoms of the trowser-legs. Hats were of beaver – with a long nap, ruffled by every breeze that blew, and therefore constantly needing the brush.

White hats were a good deal in vogue, and I believe elderly gentlemen, with a taste for colour, were in the habit of having them “turned up” with green, but I do not think I ever saw one so treated.²

Smock frocks were very generally worn by labourers engaged in agriculture – not white, like the Sussex shepherds’, but of a dark greenish colour, and curiously worked and patterned at the front. I have not seen one for many years.

Beards and moustaches were almost unknown among Englishmen. A smooth lip and chin, and a side whisker (often of the “mutton-chop” variety) were the usual and proper thing.

The dress of the ladies varied, as it does now, from time to time, and season to season. I will not attempt to describe the fashions of a bygone age, but I may just say that my recollection of women’s dress 60 or 70 years ago is, although it was, in a way, simpler, and much less expensive, it was not nearly so becoming as it is now.

Exception must, however, be made in the case of peasant women, who were clad more appropriately as well as more picturesquely than at the present time, and whose warm red cloaks were often a cheerful feature in a country landscape.

In the matter of footgear, I must say I think our grandmothers had the advantage, inasmuch as their shoes and boots were made and worn with more regard to comfort and less to appearance.

Among the poorer classes, including domestic servants, the use of pattens was very general. The patten consisted of a wooden sole, mounted upon an iron support about an inch or couple of inches high, and furnished on each side with a bit of cloth or velvet, to which a string was attached for tying around the instep.

These iron supports often ended in a ring or circle, so that when a woman walked about in pattens, in the snow or mud, she made (as Dickens funnily described it) “rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid wherever she trod.”³

Clogs, with a hinge in the sole, were worn by both men and women, and to them succeeded the ugly and unwholesome india-rubber golosh; but these have almost entirely disappeared, and a shoe, or boot, of good, stout leather is looked upon as the best protection for the foot, even on the wettest and muddiest roads.

One curious and unwholesome custom in bygone days was that of muffling up the throat. I remember well the heavy, flat, fur bos, with a buckle to keep the ends together, that men wore out-of-doors in cold weather.

Domestic Life

Domestic life was certainly much quieter – many people would say duller – than it is now. Women and girls stayed more at home, and found their interests and occupations in home-life.

In the middle class there were few wives or daughters either, who did not know something about cooking, and were not able to shew, practically, how things ought to be done; and the consequence of this was, that the food, simple and unpretentious though it might be, was better cooked and better served.

Schools of cookery have increased in number, but they have not in my opinion, by any means improved the quality, of our dishes. In the days of old, greater pains were taken, as it seems to me, to make things palatable.

No isinglass creams or gelatine jellies would have been tolerated; and if cook wanted some flavouring for her custards, she went into the garden for two or three bay-leaves instead of taking down a bottle of “essence” from the shelf.

Owing, perhaps, to our propinquity to Suffolk dumplings of various sorts, and suet and batter puddings, eaten with dripping, were standard dishes. Is there such a thing as dripping now-a-days?

This stay-at-home life encouraged a good deal of gossip of a personal description. We talked about our neighbours because there were few other subjects of interest open to us. But I do not know that gossip was more ill-natured than at present.

There was not, I think, quite so much Attic (?) salt in the conversation of our mothers and grandmothers as there is in that of their descendants, and many of the words and expressions now in use – some of them more emphatic than elegant, or perhaps we might say, more smart than pretty – would not have been found in the feminine vocabulary.⁴

Markets and Fairs

We had some variations, however, from even the tenor of our ways. For instance, there was Market-day.

Market-day was looked forward to, then as now, as a day of business, but there was more of a festive character about it. It was a sort of a holiday; for not only did farmers come to market with their corn or stock, but their wives and daughters often accompanied them, to do some shopping or meet their friends.

And, with wheat at a comfortable price, money could be spent freely, and shopkeepers did a profitable business. It is not only by farmers that bad times in agriculture are felt.

Then there were Fairs, which were great events in the year, for children as well as grown-up people. It was a great treat to be taken to the Fair and walk through the alleys of stalls, gay with all manner of toys, and tempting with every description of sweets and gingerbread.

Braintree Fair was the most important one in our district, and people used to date it important events, such as the birth of a foal, or a puppy. The first day was for business, the second for pleasure; but neither for business nor pleasure does the Fair now offer the attractions of former times.

Sport

Essex people were always fond of sport, and fox-hunting was then, and now, the chief sport for the well-to-do.

There were few men or boys who could afford a horse or a pony, and the needful time, who did not manage to get to some of the meets, but there were not many hunting ladies. The number of keen and straight-riding Dianas who grace our meets now, would I fancy, have considerably astonished the M.F.H. [Master of the Fox Hounds] of seventy years ago.

Ladies, when in the saddle, wore long riding-habits, and “top” hats with veils. Men’s hunting costume was much the same as at present, excepting that the scarlet coats were tail-coats and not frocks.

The field generally included a large proportion of farmers, and no men are fonder of sport than they. I have understood that the language used by the M.F.H., when vexed or irritated, was of a stronger and racier description than now would meet the ear.

Squires, and farmers too, looked forward to the partridge shooting in September, and the sport, in those days of long stubbles and dogs, is thought by some to have been more enjoyable than it is under the present system of driving, although it might not result in so large a bag of game.

And so with regard to pheasant shooting. I am by no means sure that a sportsman of the old school would care very much for the mechanical arrangements of a modern battue. He would like to do something in the way of finding the game as well as killing it.

There was not much cricket going in Essex. There were a few small local clubs, but the absence of the beautiful commons and village-greens so plentiful in some counties made cricket a difficult thing for the poorer classes, for suitable ground was either not to be had at all, or only at a price beyond their means.

Football, hockey, golf, croquet, and lawn tennis were unknown, and, so far as remembrance goes, bowls, quoits, and skittles, in addition to very moderate cricket as aforesaid, were about the only out-of-door games played in my part of the country.

Drink and Smoking

There was more drunkenness seventy years ago, or at all events, it was more in evidence. The sight of a man lying dead drunk by the side of the road was by no means a very uncommon one.

Labouring men were not discouraged from drinking by either the precepts or examples of their betters, and very little disgrace was attached to the man who got drunk. It was looked upon as a weakness, it is true, but as a natural and amiable weakness.

It was a very usual thing to say to a man who had done you some little service – held your horse, or opened a gate – “here’s sixpence to get yourself a glass of beer,” as if that were the evidently legitimate and proper way of spending the money.

I think more beer was drunk in those days than now, among all classes, and it was not restricted to a glass at luncheon or dinner, but a glass at breakfast, or even at tea, was no uncommon thing.

Every house of any pretention in the country had some out-building or other which served as a brewhouse, and the beer thus brewed at home was often good and strong, as well as pure.

Port and sherry were the usual wines, at least among people of my acquaintance, and perhaps a bottle of claret if any foreign guest happened to be present. Champagne was rarely seen, and, when it came, it was drunk in slender funnel-shaped glasses, which left you with one part wine, and three parts froth – very different from the generous goblets of our present time!

It is curious, by the way, to contrast the extreme jealousy with which children are now guarded against any inducement to taste “intoxicating drinks” with the custom that prevailed when I was a child, or having children down from the nursery at the conclusion of dinner,⁵ and giving them a little wine in father’s or mother’s glass, or sometimes in little special glasses or their own.

With regards to spirits, some people – elderly people especially – used to take a considerable quantity, and to take it regularly. Generally, it was either brandy or gin. I knew an old gentleman whose regular allowance was a bottle of gin a day.

There were the days of earlier dinners, and subsequent suppers, and, after supper the spirit decanters came in, and people mixed for themselves, and generally with hot water. Whiskies and sodas taken at odd times had not come into fashion.

Smokers were given the alternative of pipes or cigars; the cigarette had not yet appeared, at least in England.

“Churchwarden” pipes, used in all their comfortable length by those who sat in chimney corners, and in short pieces by labourers and others who had to walk about, were, I think, the only description of pipes to be met with. Meerschaums and briars came later.

Cigars were, I fancy, cheaper than at present; I believe a very decent cigar was to be got for 2d., and for 3d., better still. Snuff-taking had ceased to be a fashionable practice, although a few elderly people still retained the habit, women as well as men.

Medicine and the Home

I don’t know whether it was because we habitually ate and drank too much, but we were, certainly, dosed much more constantly and persistently than we are now, and the physic we took was both strong and nasty.

Rhubarb, castor oil, black draught, were remorselessly “exhibited”⁶ on the slightest provocation, and, if my recollection serves me, we were often dosed as a precautionary measure.

We might not want the medicine then, but we were sure to want it soon, so might as well have some at once. There were the times when people were bled at regular intervals; the days when antiseptics were unknown, and when no merciful anaesthetics soothed the agonies of the operating-table.

Domestic life was lived under great difficulties, or perhaps I show say a greater number of small difficulties, than it is now.

For instance, when the servants got up, in the dark mornings the first thing to be done was to find the tinder-box and strike a light. The tinder-box was a small metal receptable for tinder (burnt rag), and with it were the flint and steel.

You took the flint in one hand and the steel in the other, and struck them together over the box; the sparks fell on the tinder below, which kept them going, as it were; you then applied to them the end of a thin splinter of wood dipped with sulphur – and there you had your light.

Rather different from these days of lucifer matches and electric light!

And if you objected to being left in the dark at night, there were no convenient little wax night-lights to dump down beside your soap-dish; you would have to be supplied with a rush-light, which was a long strip of pith coated with tallow, and with a tall japanned tin shade.

You would then have proceeded to do as did the middle-aged lady in “Pickwick” with hers. She placed (we are told) the shade, with the rush-light inside, on the floor, “where it glimmered away, like a gigantic light-house in a particularly small piece of water.”

I am afraid the number of men and women who can remember the days of tinder-boxes and rushlights is dwindling very fast.

Then the old-fashioned open kitchen fire-places were more trouble than the modern cooking-stoves, although they did the work they had to do (chiefly simple roasting) quite as well, if not better.

I remember that in one of the houses I used to visit, when a child, there was a “smoke-jack,” which was an apparatus fixed to the kitchen chimney, for turning the spit on which the meat was roasting before the fire, by means of the smoke; but one would have, I fancy, to search for a good while before finding a smoke-jack at the present time.

Pedlars and Travellers

I don’t think we were much annoyed by tramps or beggars. The farmers had occasional trouble with gipsies encamping on the road-side near their farms, and this trouble has not, I believe, entirely disappeared now.

Pedlars used to come round occasionally with various small articles for sale, and there were the “Buy-a-broom” girls, in short petticoats, singing their little song, one verse of which I remember ran thus:

“To sweep away insects that sometimes annoy you
You’ll find it convenient to use night and day;
And what better exercise, pray, can employ you
Than to sweep all such tiresome intruders away?
Buy a broom, buy a broom,
O buy of the wandering Bavarian a broom.”

The nationality of the singers was, perhaps, doubtful. The brooms were made of small, curled wood shavings.

Church and Dissent

Church and dissent wage their battles as they do now, and questions sometimes came to the front which brought their antagonism to a point, just as the Education Bill does at the present time.

Both sides were, I think, more vigorous and outspoken in their denunciations of each other, and called each other names with great gusto. The Vicar of a parish I knew very well was credited with the remark that Essex stunk of Dissenters, and the Dissenters were not at all behind-hand in paying reciprocal compliments.

There can be no question of the vast improvement that has taken place in the Church Services, or the greater activity, and greater sense of responsibility of the clergy generally.

In the times of which I am speaking there were very few open Churches, at least in the country. There were two services on Sunday, a service on an occasional Saints’ day, and the Church was locked up during the rest of the week.

The parson wore bands, and read the prayers in a surplice, always changing into a black gown for the sermon. My impression is that the services were longer and duller than they are now; and the music, in country churches especially, was often peculiar.

A band of performers, with their various instruments, in a gallery fronting the pulpit, was a not unusual spectacle, and the music they made might be called quaint rather than beautiful.

The Church Clerk was an important personage. He led the responses in a sonorous voice, and gave out the hymns always with the preface, “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God.”

I ought not to omit the beadle from my notice of Church institutions. He was an awe-inspiring object, but the church beadle was not, if I remember right, gorgeous like other beadles, but black and melancholy.

He carried a long slender stick with which he used to operate upon the heads of little boys and girls when they were fidgety.

The description of pulpit irreverently called a “three-decker” – clerk’s desk, reading desk, and pulpit, one on the top of the other – was often to be met with. There is a good representation of the three-decker pulpit in one of the plates of Hogarth’s “Industry and Idleness.”

The pews were paradises as compared to the present seats. They were high, a fault which could easily have been remedied, and roomy, a good fault if a fault at all, but you could sit in them with comfort, and this cannot be said of the narrow benches of varnished deal, with straight backs, which are now seen in so many Churches that have undergone the process of re-seating.

Why a man should be made uncomfortable when he goes to say his prayers, it is not very easy to understand!

Church decoration, now such a favourite occupation with lady residents of the parish, had not in those early days developed into an art. Sprigs of red-berried holly stuck about the pews and pulpit is about the only “decoration” I can remember.

The custom of dressing up churches with all manner of evergreens and flowers,⁷ fruit and vegetables, is a comparatively recent one.

Sundays

When I was a child Sunday was rather a wearisome day for children. It was much more strictly “kept” than it is now. No newspapers, no “light” reading, no “secular” music.

Church, or chapel, going twice, perhaps even thrice, and a generally pervading atmosphere of melancholy dullness.

Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” was looked upon as a Godsend by children, because of its being recognised as a Sunday book. The religion in it (of rather a warm complexion) satisfied the parents, and the story, and especially the pictures, delighted the children.

The pictures, in the early editions, of Apollyon’s fight with Christian, and of the fiends, of various horrible and fantastic shapes, in the “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” were especially thrilling.

Politics and Elections

In my early days we were very political, and most of us True Blue to the backbone, although the minority hoisted their Orange flag whenever opportunity offered.

Election time was a stirring time, with its bands, with its banners, and processions. As the procession passed through the streets of the town, escorting the triumphant victors, it stopped to cheer before the houses of their supporters, and to hoot before those of their opponents; and, in the pre-ballot days, it was pretty well known who were the one or the other.

In the evening, and, indeed throughout the day, there was a very free (the word may be used in a double sense) consumption of beer and other strong drink, and plenty of boisterous, but, I think, not ill-natured, horseplay.

Election squibs abounded, more remarkable, perhaps, for heavy personalities than for point or humour.

And, in talking of elections, one cannot help noticing the decadence of the Liberal, or shall I say the Whig, element among our “County” people. The Orange flag might fail in leading its followers to victory, but, in the old days, it was vigorously waved, and Westerns, Honywoods, Rebows, and others, whose names are now little more than an echo, marched in the van.

I have heard a cynic remark that if you put aside the accidents of birth, and party associations, and got down to the fundamentals, you would not have found, half a century ago, a great deal of difference between territorial Whigs and Tories, but that the former were pretty well as aristocratic and exclusive, and as great sticklers for class privileges, as the latter.

However this may be, few, I think, would deny that the Liberalism of today runs upon the lines which old County Whigs would have regarded with suspicion and dislike.

Agricultural Labour and Domestic Service

The agricultural labourers, seventy years ago, worked harder, I think, than they do now, and they were more generally skilled, because the work they had to do was of a varied description.

Ploughing, hay-making, reaping, thrashing, were all done by men, and not by machines. But the wages were wretchedly low, bread and other necessities very dear, and one wonders how the men managed to exist.

No doubt, in the many parishes especially where there was a squire, private charity did much to help, and it was therefore important that the labourer should keep on good terms with the squire, or the parson, upon whose bounty he would have to depend when sickness or any unexpected trouble came upon him.

The feeling of dependence was, I daresay, sometimes productive of a spirit of subserviency, and a fear of offending lest the much-needed assistance should be withheld; and it is quite possible that a good deal of hat-touching and curtsey-bobbing, which was so general a habit among the poorer villagers, and was looked upon as only a due mark of respect to “their betters,” had no deeper origin than a desire to flatter and propitiate.

But where those “betters” were at all kind and considerate, I am sure there was often a sincere attachment between the rich and the poor.

There were, then, no cheap newspapers, with advertisements of vacant situations, and no railways, affording easy means of travelling, and it was a much more serious business for employers and servants to part company than it is now.

Instances of servants who had lived twenty, thirty, or forty years in the same place were not uncommon, and these long years of association naturally brought with them mutual feelings of kindly personal interest.

There was not, I think, so much distance between masters and mistresses and their servants as we find today. They knew more about each other, and entered more readily and sympathetically into each other’s cares, joys, and sorrows.

Education

There was very little education about, even in the three R’s [reading, writing, and arithmetic]. Great numbers of the working class were unable to read or write.

There were schools, but they were few in number in proportion to the population, and by no means models of efficiency. As a matter of fact, education was looked upon askance by many employers of labour.

“We don’t want the men to know more than their masters” was a not uncommon sentiment, and I quite well remember an elderly friend of mine being not only astonished but indignant because the servant was able from the address on a letter, to tell the postman that he was delivering it at the wrong house.

Industry

Although agriculture was the main industry in Essex, and by far the greater number of its working population were employed on the land, yet there were some manufactures, notably at Colchester, Coggeshall, Halstead and Braintree.

The “bay and say” business (wool) had died out, but the silk business had succeeded;⁸ and in the towns I have named there were mills and factories employing a considerable number of people in spinning and weaving silk, besides a great many hand loom weavers, who wove the various fabrics in their homes.

Many of these were descendants of expelled French Huguenots, and this French origin could often be traced in their names.

The large engineering and implement-making establishments which are now so prominent a feature of our Essex industries, had either not appeared at all, or were in the very early stage of development.

I should mention that the plaiting of straw gave occupation to a good many women in the villages, and they could frequently be seen standing at their doors, twisting the straw with their nimble fingers.

I believe this industry was introduced into this part of the country some century or more ago, by the Marchioness of Buckingham who was then a resident at Gosfield Hall.

It is a great many years since any straw plaiting was done in the Essex villages. One would think it was an almost ideal occupation for women, giving them profitable employment in their own homes, but I have heard that it was not so, and that it encouraged gadding about, and much idle gossiping from house to house.

The Essex Dialect

I am glad to think that the good old Essex dialect and twang still survive – not of course in the Londonised part of the county, but in the real country districts.

It is not easy to understand an Essex labourer when he speaks to you. I am sometimes at a loss myself, although I have lived within hearing of him all my life.

I well remember the look of amused astonishment on the faces of some of our County Councillors from London way when, at our first meeting, an Agricultural Councillor from the uplands proceeded to deliver his opinion in the peculiar high-pitched tones.

For it is not only the labourers who “talk Essex.” Nearly all Essex people do so more or less, and the natives of the beloved county can very generally recognise each other by their speech.⁹

The Beloved County

I have used the expression “beloved county,” and I don’t know that it is an exaggeration. Essex folk do love their native county. I heard it remarked, the other day, that they no sooner get out of it, than they are anxious to get back.

And yet we have no grand or romantic features – no mountains or rocks, no lakes or rushing rivers, no wild moors of dense forests, nothing to impress the imagination, and remain fixed in the memory as a glorious contrast to the tamer and duller regions to which the fates may have banished us.

Perhaps it is the very gentleness of the Essex landscape, the home-like character of its fields and woods and scattered villages, that so fixes the affections of an Essex man, and makes him feel strange in lands of far more imposing natural features.

And perhaps, too, the wholesale and undeserved condemnation of the county by ignorant and prejudiced persons makes some of us love it even more.

“Don’t go and live in Essex” is, or used to be, the counsel of London doctors. “Essex, that land of marsh and swamps!” is a description I have heard given to it.

If people who talk in this way knew it a little better, they would, I think, judge a little differently. There are parts of Essex, no doubt, which are flat and unlovely, and therefore not the most desirable places to live in; and marshes and swamps are, I daresay, to be found by those who look for them in the right place.

But it does not do so to generalise widely from particular instances. Certainly it has been my experience that, almost without exception, visitors and newly come residents, who have got to know something of the real Essex, have expressed themselves surprised and delighted at the quiet beauty of its scenery.

Old Times and New

On comparing the past with the present, it may very naturally be asked, - which are the better, the old times or the new? Have we improved, or gone back? Are we better off, or worse?

So far as material advantages go, I am afraid very many of us are decidedly worse off than we were then.

A cloud of agricultural depression has been brooding over the county for many years; and, as a result, landowners have had to sell or let their estates, farmers have been hard put to it to make a living, and many of them have quite gone under, parsons have reason to complain of reduced tithes, and shopkeepers of diminished profits and increased competition.

On the other hand, the condition of the poorer classes, the wage-earners, has immensely improved. They are better paid, better fed, better housed, (though, here, there is still much to be done), and better taught.

Holidays are more frequent and means of cheap and rapid travelling by rail or bicycle give them opportunities of seeing something of places and people outside their own borders.

Sport, too, is popularised by the establishment of cricket and football clubs in most of our Essex towns.

Cheap newspapers give many more subjects of interest to read and think about, although it is to be regretted that some of the lower-priced journals give to sensationalised reports and quack advertisements much space that might be utilised with greater profit to the readers.

This is an age of unrest, in Essex, as elsewhere, and an old man who loves quiet – as old men generally do – may be excused if he looks back with some regret to the quieter times when he was young.

There is, now, no part for him in the strenuous business of life, or in its exciting pleasures. Puffs and prospectuses of golden opportunities for speculation and enterprise drop into his waste-paper basket unheeded.

There is no time left him for speculation, and his enterprises are all finished. He is unable to take part in any active exercises, and much football (in his local newspaper) is a weariness of the flesh.

He has no ambition to rush about the country at racing speed, and, placid and kindly though he be, the old Adam rises up when a silent bicycle brushes his skirts, or a hooting motor bustles him to the hedge.

He is old, and must get out of the way, for the world is for the young and active and pushing. He must just stand on one side, where he can watch (not without interest) the tide of busy life as it flows by, until policeman Time summons him, too, to “pass on.”