A View of Stanford Rivers 1866 (A visit to Isaac Taylor)

A few years ago, I set out on a winter afternoon to pay my first visit to Stanford Rivers. At that time, the most convenient way of reaching it from the metropolis was by way of the train from Shoreditch, and a covered van that ran (if it could be said to run) between Romford station and the village of Ongar. The latter conveyance was somewhat primitive almost antediluvian. It took the world easily, the coachman, among other leisurely acts, pulling up at a roadside inn, and letting down the passengers to warm their feet at a comfortable fire, and have a glass of beer if they chose, or smoke a pipe. The eight or nine miles between Romford and Stanford Rivers were traversed in this way in about a couple of hours. Nothing could have been more striking than the contrast between the commencement of the journey from London and it close; between the roar and commotion at the Shoreditch station, and the sober jogging of the covered van. One could hardly have supposed that within twenty miles of London one should find such a quiet scene; but it was just what seemed appropriate for the residence of Isaac Taylor – near enough to the busy word for him to know and appreciate the forces by which it was agitated, yet so beyond the whirlpool as to favour that course of calm meditation on its currents and eddies, seen and unseen, to which his life was given.

The name “Stanford Rivers” is a puzzle to people at a distance, leading them instinctively to think of a land of streams, while nothing of the kind meets the stranger’s eye. Stanford according to Morant, in his History and Antiquities of Essex, “is the name given to this parish because of a ford through the River Rodon here was naturally stony, or was paved with stone after the manner of the Romans;” and the addition of Rivers, “is from the family De Ripariis, or Rivers, its ancient owners, distinguishing it from Stanford Le Hope.”

Of this Stanford Rivers the reader must conceive as a thoroughly rural parish with a few houses scattered over its rich fields and wooded slopes, wearing a charming aspect of seclusion and simplicity. Though thickening somewhat near the parish church of Stanford Rivers, the houses are still too much apart to form a village, or even the appearance of one. No one probably would at first sight be particularly struck by a modest house near the roadside, with the square windows and low ceilings of the old English style, having in front a small plot of grass and a few ornamental trees and behind a garden off average size, embellished with no ribbon-borders or other devices of modern gardening, but with the old fashioned shrubs and flowers of half a century ago. As the coachman pulled up at the gate, I knew this to be the Stanford Rivers from which so many remarkable books had been dated. The scene of so much intellectual activity, the home of so much warm affection and Christian grace and purity, did not indicate one on whose fortunes the world had smiled. But the evidences of mental culture and refined taste, and of the victory of mind over unfavourable conditions of life, have showed with how much more lavish a hand the higher gifts had been bestowed than the lower. On entering the house, one felt that one was welcome, and at home. Not that Mr Taylor’s manner was particularly easy or genial; on the contrary, it was abrupt and angular; but there was an honesty and genuineness about it that at once impressed you: you felt that he meant what he said, and more than he said. A slight figure, below the middle height, suggested no idea of commanding power. But besides what one gathered from the compact firmness of the face, and the finely-chiselled brow, crowned by an ample supply of crisp gray hair, the quick bright eye told the tale of intellectual prowess – what a piercing glance he could cast into the field of intellectual vision, and how much he could see where all was mist and confusion to ordinary men. The very first look indicated one incapable of yielding his convictions in deference to any one; but you saw at the same time how much genuine Christian kindness mingled with this tone of decision, and how little his intellectual throne had interfered with the simplicity and kind-heartedness of the man.