Rowland Hill

“ On the right again stands a dutiful boy, reading to his anxious mamma an account of her husband’s hapless shipwreck, who, with hands clasped, is blessing Rowland Hill for the cheap rate at which she gets the disastrous intelligence. At the bottom of all there is the word ‘Postage,’ done in small upon a large pattern of filagree work. With very great propriety the name of the artist is conspicuously placed in one corner, so that the public and posterity may know who is the worthy Oliver of the genius of a Rowland on this triumphant occasion. ”

“ It has always been a tradition in our family that the courtship between Rowland Hill and Caroline [Pg 23] Pearson began when their united ages amounted to eleven years only, the boy being by twelve months the elder. The families on both sides lived at the time at Wolverhampton, and the first kiss is said to have been exchanged inside a large culvert which crossed beneath the Tettenhall Road in the neighbourhood of the Hills' house, and served to conduct a tiny rivulet, apt in wet weather to become a swollen stream, into its chosen channel on the other side the way. ”

“ Through this lady Rowland Hill was related to the Rev. Joshua Symonds, the friend and correspondent of Howard and Wilberforce. [9] Such were the worthies he could undoubtedly boast of on his father’s side. There is no man among them whom the world would reckon as famous; and yet I remember how proud I felt as a mere child when my father first told me of the “honest juror,” and of the forefather who had lost a fortune by his vote. To such feelings as these Rowland must have been susceptible in a singular degree. ”

“ In his son's integrity, ability, and affection, Rowland Hill had absolute trust. Were the younger man but working with him at the Post [Pg 243] Office, the elder knew he could rely on unswerving support, on unwavering fidelity. The choice of callings was laid before my brother: life as a civil engineer—a profession in which his abilities could not fail to command success—or the less ambitious career of a clerk at St Martin's-le-Grand. ”

“ It was not till they were grown up that they began at all to mix in the world. When Rowland Hill was twenty, he mentions in his Journal two young men as “almost the only persons excepting our own family with whom I am in habits of intimacy. Indeed, I enjoy so much the society we have at home,” he says, “that I do not feel the want of a very extensive circle of friends.” “They had a little ideal world of their own,” said one who knew them well in those days. Such a world, however noble it may be, has its own dangers. ”

“ But after all justice has been done to others, Sir Rowland Hill is beyond doubt the person to whom it was given to surmount every kind of obstacle, and to bring what had been theretofore matter of speculation into the world of practice, without whom the country would not have enjoyed the boon, or would only have enjoyed it at a later date, and to whom, accordingly, its enjoyment may justly be deemed due. ”

“ He died in the year 1810, at the age of ninety-one, and so was well known by Rowland Hill and his brothers. It is a striking fact that there should still be living men who can well remember one who volunteered against the Young Pretender.
James Hill’s wife was the grand-daughter of a medical practitioner at Shrewsbury of the name of Symonds, who had married Miss Millington, the only sister of a wealthy lawyer of that town. An election for the borough came on. The doctor refused to place his vote at the disposal of his rich brother-in-law, the attorney. ”

“ Rowland Hill virtually commenced life in Birmingham, and here not only taught mathematics in his father's school, but learnt to apply them to a system which has brought more comfort and happiness than arithmetic can measure, not only to all the millions of the British empire, but to all the divided families of the civilized world. It is not in arithmetic, nor rhetoric, nor poetry, nor prose to give a complete idea of the benefits The Penny Post of England has conferred upon all classes of the people. ”

“ The first person to post a letter under the new system is said to have been Mr Samuel Lines of Birmingham, Rowland Hill's former drawing-master, whose portrait hangs in the Art Gallery of that city. He was warmly attached to his ex-pupil, who, in turn, held the old man in high esteem, and maintained an occasional correspondence with him till the artist's death. Determined that in Birmingham no one should get the start of him, Mr Lines wrote to my father a letter of congratulation, and waited outside the Post Office till at midnight of the 9th a clock rang out the last stroke of twelve. ”

“ Ten years later, the same kindly critic, in the course of a speech delivered at Saltney in October 1889, said: “In the days of my youth a labouring man, the father of a family, was practically prohibited from corresponding with the members of his household who might be away. By the skill and courage and genius of Sir Rowland Hill, correspondence is now within reach of all, and the circulation of intelligence is greatly facilitated.” ”

“ The family group at Hazelwood, of which Rowland Hill had for many years formed the central figure, began with his settlement at Bruce Castle to break up. It had from time to time been lessened by the marriage of a child; nevertheless, four sons and a daughter had been left, who lived year after year under their parents’ roof in harmony and with great singleness of heart. “In our course through life,” he said in a passage which I once more quote, “from the beginning to the present hour, each one of us has been always ready to help the others to the best of his power ”

“ As the urgency for a change grew to a head, the man came to effect it,—a man "of open heart, who could enter into family impulses; a man of philosophical ingenuity, who could devise a remedial scheme; a man of business, who could fortify such a scheme with impregnable accuracy"—that man was Rowland Hill.
When quite a young man, on a pedestrian excursion through the lake district, Rowland Hill, passing a cottage door, observed the postman deliver a letter to a woman, and overheard her, after looking anxiously at the envelope, and then returning it, say she had no money to pay the postage. ”

“ Not liking the man's manner, the youthful artist went on painting unconcernedly. Presently a file of soldiers, headed by a corporal, appeared, and he was peremptorily ordered to withdraw. Then the reason for the interference was revealed: he was taken for a spy. My father at once laid aside his brush; he had no wish to be shot.
In 1835 Rowland Hill resigned to a younger brother, Arthur, [8] the head-mastership of Bruce Castle [Pg 19] School, and accepted the post of secretary to the Colonisation Commissioners for South Australia, whose chairman was Colonel Torrens. ”

“ Once, if not oftener, during his useful career, he came to the Post Office on official business, and “interviewed” Rowland Hill, who found him an interesting and original-minded man, his fluent English, naturally, being redolent of the Hibernian brogue. Bianconi's daughter, who married a son of the great O'Connell, wrote her father's “Life” ”

“ Down below, the treacherous Serb had turned and was stealing away. In front of the cabin, Sir James and Paula were standing side by side, apparently looking up toward the ledge. Connors was not in sight. The company of men coming up the trail had stopped under the brow of the hill, and appeared to be waiting.
Lying face downward, Dallas cuddled the stock of his rifle under his chin. Thalia, her hands still clasped over her mouth, was watching Dimitri, who presently paused again and looked back. ”

“ The current caught the light punt and whirled it down between flower-covered banks.
"How jolly!" cried Virginia; "it is like running the rapids!"
"You should see it in the spring," said Giles; "it's ripping then. We'll have to shoot into the bank below this bend; there's a nasty spot down stream a bit, an old weir that is just awash when the water's up like this."
"How exciting!" cried Virginia. She leaned back and watched him from beneath her curved lashes, darker than her hair, as he skillfully wielded the long pole, noting in delight the ease with which he handled it. ”

“ It was hot in that valley—a stewpan, withering, stifling with the equatorial reek which wilts one to the bone; the nights stunk of fever. It was the southeast slope of the mountain which presented to us; and as we gazed up toward it from the little nest of trees where we had made our camp, the late sun blazed against its worn flank, and suddenly the broad, barren belt between the forest and the formation of quartz above the timber belt seemed to burst into flame and shone and sparkled and glittered as if flecked with scales of gold.
“‘An omen!’ cried Vinckers. ”

“ You see, they get close under the bank on the west side, because there is such a rush of water coming down that it makes an eddy where they get shelter."
"How can we get back?" asked Virginia. "Surely you can't pole against such a strong current."
"I could," replied Giles, "but it would take too long. We will leave the punt down there and walk back across the meadows. It's not much over a mile, because, you see, the river winds." ”

“ She laughed outright and turned to glance at the house. "And you know that Giles's rooms are on this side, because you know how fond he is of pets, and the pigeons are all fluttering around that corner window."
Sir Henry stared. "My word! My dear child——"
"Thank you, Miss Moultrie," said Leyden, "you more than bear me out." His keen eyes rested on her. "If you will permit me to say so, your quickness of perception is extraordinary for a house dweller; you apply these things, the things you see; you apply them to the convenience of your daily life."
"Does not every one?" asked Virginia. ”

“ It welded to itself the dim, broken outline of the mountain-tops and gave to the sable contour of the land the sinister aspect of looming almost to the zenith—and all the while from somewhere just beneath the surface came the hollow, rhythmic beat of the bamboula.
“Enough to drive one loi,” muttered Leyden.
I heard a rustling from the shore-boat lying at the staging. The crew were softly picking up their oars.
“They are getting restless, those fellows below. They cannot stand it long, this night and that noise. Ho! they are shoving off without their fares.” ”

“ It was intensely hot—just before the afternoon shower. We were sitting on the raised veranda of Meyers’ house, and down below us the river oozed along, viscid and brown and sticky-looking, like molasses flowing out of a stove-in vat. The clouds were banking up black and forbidding on the other side of the stream, and occasionally a rumble of thunder reached us.
“‘You do not know—do not understand,’ said Meyers, finally. He raised one skinny, mottled hand to his red, untidy beard, which was getting gray around his muzzle, like an old collie, which, in fact, he somewhat resembled. ”

“ The bluff bows of our little ship smashed the short seas into a flat track of phosphoresence, and against the pale background I saw a tremor of some sort shake Leyden's square shoulders, and it seemed to me that his voice was slightly breathless.
"'The Mountain of Fears,' so our Papuans called it, and threw down their burdens at the edge of the stream and refused point-blank to stir another step; more than that, they implored us to go no farther ourselves, and a girl given to MacFarlane by a chief threw her arms around the knees of the rough old Gael and wailed like a stricken soul. ”

“ Giles was in the stream at almost the same instant. Virginia could swim a few strokes, enough to keep her afloat until Giles reached her; the danger lay in the obstruction to which the current was rapidly bearing her, the old, dilapidated, deep-water weir; a sort of fence built out into the stream and constructed of a framework of stakes joined by rough planks, the whole woven together by a thatch of brush. ”

“ In the valley we found the first signs of plenty; there were fruit and game and a sort of wild yam in abundance; and here we decided to rest for several days on the edge of the stream, for MacFarlane had a suppurating heel where he had trod upon a thorn, and Vinckers was suffering from a great nettle-rash upon his body. All three of us were hungry and our blood ran too thin to encounter the cold nights higher up the slope. ”

“ Fearing to be pushed into the ditch he ran out into the field.”
There were three people in the tonneau, two women and a man. They cried out in wonder and excitement.
“He has had a close call,” said the chauffeur. “See, he scraped off his mudguards on a tree.” And with that they all began to talk at once, and from the trend of the conversation I saw that the popular sympathy was not with me.
Then Chu-Chu did what must have impressed them as an incomprehensible thing. He had made a detour in the wheat and was approaching the road below us, where there was an entrance in the field. ”

“ At the foot of one lay a heap of debris; mudguards and marchepied, shorn off against a tree-trunk. Then I looked across at the car. It was still in motion, crawling on first speed through the grain and heading back for the road.
At the same instant I heard the shriek of a siren ahead. Down an opposite slope came a cloud of dust. It reached the bottom of the descent and hit the slight up-grade. Up it came, and at a distance of several hundred metres the people aboard it sighted Chu-Chu, out there in the wheat. ”

“ He is going to give us what he calls a fête aquatique on the river."
"He has the Haddington cottage, Maurits," said Sir Henry. "Directly on the river. He told me that he had taken it for the summer, as he wanted a quiet place in which to read. It is rather odd that he should have chosen England as his educational field; most Haytians go to France, do they not?"
"Ten out of ten go to Paris," replied Leyden. "I have heard of their going to Germany, to England, but it is rare. None by any chance ever goes to the United States."
"Dessalines once spoke of that," said Giles. ”