REV. J. E. LINNELL

OAK

BY THE LATE

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Edited with a e7vIemoir

of the eAuthor byhis Sons

and illustrated

with four photographsand a map.

LONDON

CONSTABLE & CO LTD

1932

OLDThe Story of a Forest Village

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MEMOIR

My father, the writer of these memoirs,was the vicar of Pavenham in Bedfordshirefor thirty-seven years. When he died inMarch, 1919, at the age of seventy-six, Ifound among his papers two incompletescripts describing life in his native villageof Silverstone in the south of Notthampton­shire during the latter half of the eighteenthand the first half of the nineteenth centuries.These he had intended to use as the basis ofan anonymous book, but the coming of theGreat War distracted his interest from allelse, and its end found him broken withyears. It has been left for me, therefore,to do my best to make a more or less co­herent-1larrativ.e_hy_piecing_together_thetwo accounts. I have done this with aslittle alteration of the text as possible.Whenever these could be ascertained, theactual names of the characters have beensubstituted for the fictitious ones he used;

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and a few stories he loved to tell, and hadfor some reason or other omitted, with hisaccompanying comments, have been intro­duced in his own remembered words.

In his pages much of the author himselfis revealed, but perhaps a little more may befitly said about one who was at least asoriginal a character as any he depicts. Shortand sturdy of build-almost as broad, infact, as he was tall-my father inherited to amarked degree many of the characteristicsthat he describes in such of his forbears asappear in his story. Immensely strongphysically, a mighty walker, a fearer of Godand of nothing else, without any sense ofcaste, a lover of all things appe~taining tothe country, fiercely independent and im­patient of authority, a tramp by nature witha love for all other wanderers, ready to havethe gloves on with all and sundry up to hisseventietli year, tne raciestof-raconteurs,and a blazing patriot, he belonged to thetrue Borrow breed.

He was always very proud of his pureEnglish descent on both sides of his family.

If, as is almost certain, he was a descendantof the Lunells ofFarthingstone and Kisling­bury, which lie only a few miles fromSilverstone-the village of the memoirs-­he belonged to one of the oldest families inNorthamptonshire, for the name, spelt invarious ways, has been common in thecounty for eight hundred years. His grand­mother, Miss Elliott, of Luffield Abbey, avery considerable heiress, eloped with hisgrandfather, William Linnell of Silverstone;and his father,)ohnLinnell, born in 1795, wasone of her seventeen children. His grand­mother's fortune, divided among many sonsand daughters, only brought a few thousandsto his father, and these the latter neveradded to; in fact they diminished steadilyin his keeping, for, easy and generous, hewas for ever lending money, with theunhappy fate of all lenders. Moreover, suchwas rug-love of all sports tliat h-enacI-littleinterest in anything connected with business.All the same, he was a fine old type ofEnglishman, essentially religious at heart,who never changed his habits-or his manner

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of attire, for that matter; for he woreyellow nankeen breeches, white stockings,and low shoes till his death in the' seventies.My father was his only surviving son, andwas born in 1842. Precociously intelligent,he had read all eight volumes of Alison'sHistory of Europe before he was twelve­and I verily believe that none of it did heever forget to his life's end; so retentivewas his memory. A ready writer and afacile versifier even at an early age, every­thing came easy to him-maybe too easy­and his father sent him in the first year ofthe Crimean War to Gawcott, a boarding­school in the neighbouring county ofBuckingham, which had a passing vogue.There he remained for four years, imbibinga certain amount of Greek and Latin,devouring every book he could lay handson,writing-the-essays-of- his- companionsaccording to their individual styles, andhating every moment of his enforcedcaptivity.

On leaving school he joined the firm ofhis cousin, William Whitlock, then one or

the biggest English timber-merchants, andwas soon being sent by them to differentparts of the country in connection withtheir ventures. Before he left home, acontemporary of his, still alive, says of himthat" theer warn't a bit 0' devilry in thecownty as Jack Linnell warn't at the bottomof"; and it would seem that his verses andlampoons on the pompous and solemn of ,the district soon earned him considerable 'notoriety, not to say admiration, in certainquarters.

At some time during the next part of hislife he seems to have become an absoluteagnostic and, in his wanderings for the* Whitlocks, to have studied at first-hand thehabits of gypsies, tinkers, tramps, and allsorts and conditions of men not usuallyrecognised by the conventional. Gradually

I a_change_came_over_him=due,_he_always _used to aver, to the prayers of his mother,who died when he was twelve-and afterlong soul-struggles, which he would com­pare with Bunyan's, he is found as anassistant master at the old Grammar School

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LI06 --1 { Old Oakthought, a chance of cornering him andhumiliating him before the companypresent.

" Who," he asked indignantly, "is moreoften found among the sick and dying thanSo-and-so? " (naming a well-known localchapeller).

" I don't know anybody," replied Tom."Well, I'm glad you acknowledge so

much," said his opponent, somewhatsoothed by the answer.

"But ... " mused my irrepressible cousin,nursing his knee and smiling sweetly.

" But, what? " snapped the champion ofDissent.

" Only this," his opponent drawled. " Youmustn't forget he's an undertaker! "

The cloud that settled on William's brow

was a thing not soon to be forgotten. Itremained, however, only for the space of afew minutes. No one could be angry withTom for long. He began to-laugh, andwent on laughing, and, had the object ofthe gibe been present, _ ~e ~w2uld_h~~elaugKea no-Iess- heartily, for there was no

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Old Village Custom and Character 107

one in the world he loved more than theirreverent jester.

Once at a political luncheon at Towcesterhe was called on to say grace. "For whatwe are about to receive," he began in theconventional way, as all stood in their placeswith bowed heads, "the Lord "-he paused-" the Lord give us good appetites ! " heended, amid a roar of delight. When thevillage schoolmaster was taken ill and hevolunteered to take his place for a fewweeks, the boys thought they were going tohave the fun of their lives. The youngurchins rightly guessed that many years hadpassed since he had opened a school-book,and conspired among themselves to exposehis ignorance.

"Please, sir," asked one, "would youtell us where Labrador is ? "

" Do you know your way to Blakesley? "was the counter-question that came like aflash.

" No, sir, I don't," replied the youngster,a little abashed. _

"Then just yo~ look here, my boy,"

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