Lynn, Massachusetts

“ The ship, Captain Holton Johnson of Lynn, with whom I came from America, was, by a revolution common at such periods translated into a legislator in our Massachusetts Assembly, being about two months in London, told me that had not his interests and efforts prevailed, my name would have been inserted in the banishment list, and my estate confiscated, the reason, if any, must be private spite and malice, no public crime was ever alleged, but merely leaving the country in her distress. If success is justification, I confess my guilt. ”

“ She was a potent factor in organizing the evangelical Sunday-schools of Massachusetts into district associations that hold annual conventions and other gatherings, unifying, harmonizing, and intensifying all the vital interests of the Sunday-schools of Massachusetts. She also organized and supervised the work of thirty-five primary teachers' unions, taught weekly the Boston Primary Union, and superintended her own primary Sunday-school in the historic Lynn Common Methodist Episcopal Church. ”

“ While only thirteen miles from Boston and being nearer still to Lynn, the rush of recruits to the rendezvous sadly tried the resources of the commissary, and made many a boy wish he were elsewhere. Says one observer, "No preparation had been made for our reception; finally however, tents were found for a portion of the [12] company and we passed the first night in camp in anything but a peaceful frame of mind or body. Quite a number of the men left camp for home, or found quarters elsewhere. Rations, too, were conspicuously absent and for a time we depended on outside sources for our supply." ”

“ Some distance up the coast, and eleven miles from Boston, is the shoemaking city of Lynn, with seventy thousand people, the flourishing society of the "Knights of St. Crispin" ruling the shoemakers' "teams" and largely running the politics of the town. Most of the work is done by machinery, there being over two hundred factories, making more women's shoes than any other place in the country. The first colonists were brought by their pastor from Lynn-Regis, England, in 1629, and thus the town was named. ”

“ The inhabitants as I learned are generally wealthy and the almost entire business of the place is commercial. Marblehead, Beverly & Danvers, in the immediate vicinity, and in sight, are said to contain as many more inhabitants. Between Boston and Salem, say eight miles from the former, is Lynn, an industrious manufacturing town, fast increasing in wealth and population. ”

“ As Lynn (Lun, Lenne, Bishop’s Lynn) owes its origin to the trade which its early settlers carried by the Ouse and its tributaries its history dates from the period of settled occupation by the Saxons. It belonged to the bishops of Thetford before the Conquest and remained with the see when it was translated to Norwich. Herbert de Losinga (c. 1054–1119) granted its jurisdiction to the cathedral of Norwich but this right was resumed by a later bishop, John de Gray, who in 1204 had obtained from John a charter establishing Lynn as a free borough. ”

“ We will now visit some old towns where we hope to discover some buildings that are ancient and where all is not distressingly new, hideous, and commonplace. First we will travel to the old-world town of Lynn—"Lynn Regis, vulgarly called King's Lynn," as the royal charter of Henry VIII terms it. On the land side the town was defended by a fosse, and there are still considerable remains of the old wall, including the fine Gothic South Gates. In the days of its ancient glory it was known as Bishop's Lynn, the town being in the hands of the Bishop of Norwich. ”

“ Everybody knows that shoes have been the making of Lynn, that they are and have been for years the backbone of its prosperity, the life of its business. To say that Lynn is the greatest shoe-manufacturing city in the country, and, for that matter, in the world, may be an exaggeration, but it is a very common one. In a history of Lynn we might expect this fact to be at least recognized. ”

“ If Lynton is beautiful now, with its new houses and hotels, and that air of snugness that prosperity gives to places and persons, the poetic appeal of its loveliness to Wordsworth and Coleridge can be well imagined when only the low-browed, thatched little cottages clung to the steep cliff-paths and clustered round the small harbour, and from the surrounding heights and hills one looked down upon nothing but green valleys, and from the valleys one looked up to the bare cliffs and crags. ”

“ Stand upon one of the terraces of Lynton on a still summer evening, looking east to Countisbury Foreland, and see the water of the bay still and gleaming in the evening light, the great headlands ruddy and golden above it. The steep sides of the gorge of the East Lyn are warm and sunlit, they glow richly with purple and russet; over the rocks of the valley a faint flicker of grey mist begins to hang above the stream. From the trees around and below comes a great cawing of rooks, drowning the rush of the water below ”

“ I'm needed every instant at the Home!”
“For mercy sake! Hire someone to take your place then. I want you. You'll be quite a sensation I assure you. Don't worry about clothes, if you haven't anything along. You can wear one of my evening dresses. We're almost of a size.”
“No,” said Lynn smiling, “It simply isn't possible. And anyway, don't you remember Sabbath Valley? I don't go out to play Sunday nights you know.”
“Oh, but this is New York! You can't bring Sabbath Valley notions into New York.” ”

“ There is the grand solitude of Heddon's Mouth and the raven-haunted cliffs to Lynton; there is Lynton itself, drowned in the green woods that surge up the steep hillside; there is the West Lyn Gorge, shadeless and sultry even on a spring day, and the East Lyn Valley, where ferns and lilies of the valley grow, and every green thing that loves moisture and shade; and the Watersmeet, where there is a perpetual rushing of waters which drowns the song of the birds; there is Porlock, between the moors and the marshes, and the drowned forest of Porlock Bay ”

“ This was Judge Lynn,—good-natured, frank, easy-going, improvident, in debt to everybody, and still willing to borrow. Unendowed with wisdom—and yet ignorant as a child of the fact—a man whom everybody liked simply because there was no reason why he should be hated.
He knew every resident of Meade—in fact he knew every soul in the county and for miles beyond its borders—he also, in turn, was known. He was a pioneer of Kansas—came out from Indiana when very young, and in his years of residence in the Southwest had told people of his boyhood exploits on the banks of the Wabash. ”

“ Many towns could not furnish men enough for a company, so the men went forward in squads or individually and these recruits either pieced out some company, not quite filled, or were thrown together to constitute a new company, this [11] being the case with Company G of the Thirty-ninth, which had no central source like those of the others. Lynnfield had been designated as the point to which should be sent all Eastern Massachusetts volunteers for new regiments, while to North Cambridge, Camp Cameron, were forwarded the men who had enlisted in old organizations. ”

“ And yet, with it all, there is a holy calm at Lynmouth. Save for the murmur of the Lyn, the breaking of the waves upon the pebbly shore, or the occasional bell of the crier, nothing disturbs the quiet. As there are no advertisement-hoardings, so also there are no town or other bands, minstrels, piano-organs, or public entertainers. Rows of automatic penny-in-the-slot machines are conspicuously not here. There is not a railway station. ”

“ My life in Worcester was pretty regular, though I was not perfectly abstinent, nor did I escape being once or twice overcome. In March, 1842, I went to Lynn, Mass., as editor of the Essex County Washingtonian. Here was the spot where, technically speaking, I had first entered life, and it was teeming with a thousand memories, now most painful and sad. Much as I had known before of mental suffering, I can remember none more intense than I experienced the first few months of my return to Lynn. ”

“ Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of a valley and beyond signs of habitation. The southern slope is beautifully wooded, showing every range and variety of green, from the light vivid green of larches to the dull brownish tone of the oaks. ”

“ Ten o’clock was the hour named; but, before that hour struck, West Lynne was crammed. The country people had come in, thick and threefold; rich and poor; people of note, and people of none; voters and non-voters, all eager to mix themselves up with the day’s proceedings. You see the notorious fact of Sir Francis Levison’s having come forward to oppose Mr. Carlyle, caused greater interest in this election than is usual, even in small country places—and that need not be. Barbara drove in her carriage, the two children with her, and the governess. ”

“ Then, too, she was connected with the nobility; and, what was more important, her aunts on both sides of the family, who lived in Montreal, received and returned visits from the most exclusive Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick-Makers, and were generally accepted as "fixtures" in society. Therefore Lynn had invitations of all kinds, not only from people of gentle breeding, aristocratic birth and good character, but also from that far more important section of "society" who lived in big houses and got their clothes from Paquin. She never "came out," much to her aunt's grief ”

“ Quakers are numerous in Lynn. The place is unboundedly prosperous, through the temperance and industry of the people. The deposits in the Lynn Savings' Bank in 1834, were about 34,000 dollars, the population of the town being then 4,000. Since that time, both the population and the prosperity have much increased. It must be remembered, too, that the mechanics of America [Pg 60] have more uses for their money than are open to the operatives of England. They build houses, buy land, and educate their sons and daughters. ”

“ With the panshen or pope of Tartary may be connoted the probability that the rosy Allan apple of Newlyn was a pippen: the parish of “Lynn or St. Margaret,” not only includes the wards of Paradise and Jews Lane, but we find there also an Albion Place, and the curious name Guanock; modern Kings Lynn draws its water supply from a neighbouring Gay wood. ”

“ Norman or transitional work appears in the base of both towers, of which the southern also shows Early English and Decorated work, while the northern is chiefly Perpendicular. There is a fine Perpendicular east window of circular form. The church possesses two of the finest monumental brasses in existence, dated respectively 1349 and 1364. St Nicholas chapel, at the north end of the town, is also of rich Perpendicular workmanship, with a tower of earlier date. All Saints’ church in South Lynn is a beautiful Decorated cruciform structure. ”

“ MARY LYNCH GILMAN, a Past Department President of the Woman's Relief Corps of Massachusetts and chairman of the Executive Committee of Arrangements for the National Convention in Boston, 1904, was born in Boston at the North End, which was at that time a pleasant residential section of the city. Her father, William Lynch, was a man of liberal ideas, active in public affairs and successful in accumulating property. ”

“ The chronicles of Lynn are nevertheless brought down from Anglo-Saxon times to 1812, and the history proper is supplemented by biographical sketches, and by valuable topographical and statistical information, together with an account of the religious houses formerly in Lynn, and of the progress of dissent in the town. He estimated that the deists ‘would, if formed into a society, constitute perhaps the largest congregation in the place.’ Richards's work, though somewhat diffuse and lacking an index, retains its place as one of the most valuable local histories published in England. ”

“ Half, at least, of those present, were residents of, or from near West Lynne. They had known Richard Hare from infancy—they had admired the boy in his pretty childhood—they had liked him in his unoffending boyhood, but they had been none the less ready to cast their harsh stones at him, and to thunder down their denunciations when the time came. In proportion to their fierceness then, was their contrition now; Richard had been innocent all the while; they had been more guilty than he.
An English mob, gentle or simple, never gets up its excitement by halves. ”

“ THE CHEESEWRING, VALLEY OF ROCKS. as meditated—Lynton and Lynmouth were in all essentials the same as they are now.
To the lover of nature and the simplicity of country life this conversion of scenery into shekels, and Exmoor into Bayswater, represents by no means pure gain, albeit the lover of humanity may decide otherwise—on the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Both sorts, however, may unite in casting curious glances at the old Lynton which courted neither aristocratic nor democratic favour, and actually had a revel. ”

“ Lynmouth stands where two small streams, the East Lyn and West Lyn, flow down deep and well-wooded valleys to the sea. Lynton is on the cliff-edge, 430 ft. above. A lift connects the villages. The industries are fishing and a small coasting trade. Not far off are the Doone Valley, part of the vale of the East Lyn, here called Badgeworthy water, once the stronghold of a notorious band of robbers and famous through R. D. Blackmore’s novel Lorna Doone ”