Читать книгу Snowy - Tim Harris - Страница 9

Frederick Rolfe was born in Pentney, a poor rural parish deep in the heart of the Norfolk countryside, on 28 February 1862. He was the only child of John and Elizabeth Rolfe. Beside the entry in the Pentney Parish Records showing he was baptised on 18 March 1862 are the words, ‘Brought into Church the 6^th April 1862’, so it would seem likely that he had been baptised at home. Perhaps this meant he was a sickly child and thought unlikely to survive. Mortality rates for infants in West Norfolk were 143 in 1,000 at the time, so this was a common occurrence.

Both of Fred’s parents had been married before. His mother had already lost two children in infancy during her first marriage. After her husband’s death she was reduced to living as a pauper with her surviving daughter, Maria aged 7. Being classified a pauper meant that she and Maria depended on the parish for support. The Relieving Officer from the Workhouse decided she could survive in the community with an allowance – an option much favoured by the Board of Guardians for the Poor House because it was cheaper than taking the destitute in as inmates. It was a grim existence. George Ewart Evans (1909–88), who travelled East Anglia recording oral histories, wrote of a conversation with James Seeley about his impoverished childhood in Norfolk. Although Seeley recalls a time later in the nineteenth century, he tells of the tough time had by those reliant on handouts.

James Seeley was the eldest of five and aged about 9 when his father died. His mother would turn her hand to anything to earn money, including taking in washing, to keep her children, he recalled. Every morning before school, the older children had to pump sufficient water for their mother to do the day’s laundry. The children all took bread and jam to school to eat at dinnertime, but to supplement this, they would scramble into the fields to steal a turnip or swede. This, they would nibble on raw as they walked the mile and a half to school. Sheep were sometimes fed locust beans, which the children also stole, thinking them a great treat.

Despite her hard work, Mrs Seeley was still forced to turn to the parish for help. The Board of Guardians allowed her 3/6d a week (an agricultural labourer earned about 12/- a week at that time). The Board said she was fit and able, so she could work to support her family. To make sure she did not keep her three eldest children away from school to work, each Saturday morning they had to present their school attendance record to the Relieving Officer to prove they had been at school all week. James remembered that they were always hungry, but that was normal – everyone who was part of a large family struggled to find enough to eat and sometimes there was nothing to eat at all.

Elizabeth may have been able to raise a little extra cash using the skills picked up from her mother. Later, Fred devoted a whole chapter of I Walked by Night to the witchcraft, cures and hedgerow remedies that he heard his grandmother talking about.

My old Granny was a bit of a quack Doctor, and the People used to come to her with all there ills. She was a mid Wife beside, and one to help with the layen out of Boddies. She told me all the Charms and such like that I know . . .

Then there was a charm for anyone trubbled with bleeding from the nose. They should get a skein of silk, and get nine Maids each to tie a knot in the skein, and then the sufferer must wear it round his neck. That was a shure cure for Nose bleed. The cure for Head acke was to get the skin of the Viper and sew it in to the lining of the hat. . .

Born in Pentney, Elizabeth was baptised on 24 June 1827, the third of the eight children born to Thomas and Ursula Shafto (sometimes recorded on documents as Shaftoe). In 1792, Thomas was born in Castle Acre, Norfolk, while Ursula Barrett was born in Setchey, Norfolk, in 1804. They married in Pentney church on 18 November 1821.

Only one of their children appears to have died young. Baptismal records show that at least four of Elizabeth’s siblings married in Pentney and lived locally. Between them, they had a large number of children, but Fred never mentions his aunts, uncles and cousins in I Walked by Night.

The 26-year-old Elizabeth married her first husband, George Powley of West Bilney, Norfolk, at Pentney church on 20 November 1853. He was 24 and his trade was listed as husbandman. They had three children, two of whom died young. Maria was born before their marriage, on 4 October 1853, and registered as Maria Shaftoe. However, following her baptism in Pentney church, on 1 February 1854, she was named Maria Powley, for by then Elizabeth and George had married. Hannah was baptised at Pentney on 27 June 1855. At 7 weeks old she died, having had ‘debility’ from birth. Robert was born in 1856 and died shortly after his birth. He was buried at Pentney church on 29 August 1856.

After just seven years of marriage, George died of pneumonia in Pentney aged 31. His death certificate records that he suffered for nine days and endured pulmonary apoplexy for an hour before he died. Elizabeth was present at his death on 27 September 1860. He was then listed as an agricultural labourer.

Workhouse records do not reveal whether Elizabeth was ever admitted, or appealed for out relief while George was alive. If he was too ill to support them, she may have done so. Many men struggled on, trying to keep their families long after they were far too ill to do so.

Research into the Powley family proved difficult. Their names appeared in Church records, but no name could be found in secular documents. Common sense led to the belief that they would have remained in the area, but research into the surrounding villages and workhouses shed no light on the whereabouts of Elizabeth and her daughter after George’s death. However, the 1861 census revealed that living next to John Rolfe was a widowed pauper, Elizabeth Stacey, and her 7-year-old daughter Maria, whose details exactly matched those of Elizabeth and Maria Powley.

Further investigation revealed Elizabeth’s first husband was born in 1829 to a Miss Mary Powley and christened George Powley. In 1831, Mary married John Stacey. Thereafter George was known as George Stacey (sometimes Stacy), although the Church did not recognise the change in name. John and Mary Stacey went on to have seven more children and lived at Magpie Cottages, West Bilney.

When George came to marry Elizabeth, he had to marry her in the name he was christened with (Powley), but they called themselves Mr and Mrs Stacey. This was confirmed by the discovery of a birth certificate for their daughter Hannah, who was entered into the baptismal register as Hannah Powley, although her birth certificate is in the name of Stacy. The dates match and the mother is listed as Elizabeth Stacey, formerly Shaftoe. Three years before George and Elizabeth married, they were witnesses at Elizabeth’s brother James’s marriage to Eliza Warren, signing the register George Stacy and Elizabeth Shafto. This leads to the assumption that they were courting for some years and Maria was George’s daughter, although his name does not appear on her birth certificate.

Fred’s Father, John, was born in 1813, almost certainly in Bradenham, a village about eight miles east of Pentney. He was the son of Jonathan and Ann Rolfe. The squire at the time was William Meybolm Rider. A flamboyant barrister and forceful, opinionated man, for many years he sat as a Justice on the Swaffham bench. His eighth child, Henry Rider Haggard, was born in 1856. William was convinced Henry wouldn’t amount to much. Despairing of his academic ability and lack of ambition, he sent him to Africa – a move that proved an enormous inspiration for his upcoming literary career. By the end of the nineteenth century he became a successful writer, penning such popular works as King Solomon’s Mines and She. Henry married Marianna Louisa Margitson (always referred to as Louisa) and lived at Ditchingham House on the Norfolk and Suffolk border. His fourth child was Lilias Rider Haggard.

It would have been impossible for young John Rolfe, an illiterate labourer, to imagine that his son and the squire’s granddaughter would one day collaborate on the much-loved I Walked by Night.

What motivates people can be quite strange. Fred’s grandfather Jonathan was always prepared to give up a day’s work to watch a hanging. Later, with the advent of the railways, special trains were laid on at excursion rates for such events:

The harts of the People were much more callous than to day – my Grandfather walked from my home to Norwich, a distance of thirty miles to see Bloomfield Rush the Murderer hung on Castle Hill, and there were thousands of people there. I think it was the last time any one were hung in Publick at the Castle. They had been tryen him for days and days, and the whole County wanted to se the end of him, and most of them as could do so got there one way and another, even if they had to walk.

The background to this particular case was that 59-year-old Isaac Jermy, a Recorder in the Court at Norwich, his son Isaac Junior and daughter-in-law Sophia, and Isaac’s 13-year-old daughter Isabella had just finished dinner in their Elizabethan home, Stanfield Hall near Wymondham, on 28 November 1848 when Isaac and his son were shot dead by an intruder. Sophia was maimed for life and her maid crippled; only Isabella was spared, following the quick actions of the cook. Despite his disguise of a mask and a woman’s wig, the culprit was recognised by the servants.

James Blomfield Rush was arrested and found to have a motive. In a complex and slightly shady deal, Isaac Jermy had lent him money to purchase a farm and it transpired that Jermy was set to foreclose on the £5,000 mortgage in two days’ time.

On 29 March 1849, Rush defended himself at the trial by trying to lay the blame on others who had brushed with Jermy in financial dealings. The Victorians hung onto every word of the case, which was reported at length, and caused a sensation. Even Charles Dickens visited the scene of the crime. Drama increased when Sophia’s crippled maid was carried into court on a specially devised bed to give evidence. Rush’s mistress Emily Sandford, governess to his nine children, gave evidence for the prosecution, heightening the excitement. It took fourteen hours for Rush to sum up and just ten minutes for the jury to find him guilty.

Passing the death sentence, the judge remarked that he ‘saw the hand of God at work’ in an act of retribution for Rush’s failure to make an honest woman of his mistress: ‘If you had performed to that unfortunate girl the promises you made her, to make her your wife, the policy of the law which seals the lips of a wife in any proceedings against her husband would have permitted you to go unpunished.’

Protesting his innocence to the last, Rush was hanged on 21 April 1849, on the bridge over the moat at Norwich Castle. Thousands flocking there found stalls selling pottery figures of the principle characters, which were bought in large numbers. There were food stalls and drink flowed. A good time was had by all, except Rush. In fact, gala – a festive occasion – comes from the word gallows because everyone went on a jolly to see a hanging!

In Pentney church, Fred’s father John (25) married his first wife Susan Wing (33) on 5 March 1839. Susan was born to James and Mary Wing from Pentney in 1804. The couple had four children: Mary Ann (1839), Rebecca (1841), Maria (1842) and James (1845). It was confusing to read in the 1851 census that John and Susan had four daughters, the youngest being Jane, but by the 1861 census Jane had reverted to James. Presumably the enumerator must have misheard in 1851 and as neither John nor Susan could read or write (both marked their marriage certificate with a cross), they would never have known. In the 1861 census only Mary Ann (21) and James (16) were still at home. Rebecca (20) was a servant at Church Farmhouse, Pentney, while Maria (19) was at the nearby village of Middleton, working as housemaid to Thomas Mathews, a farmer.

Mary Ann was acting housekeeper for John, because on 17 February 1861, Susan had died aged 57. She suffered gastric fever for four weeks and dysenteric diarrhoea for three weeks. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Stacey and her only surviving child, Maria, were living next door.