Friends of my father’s came down now and then to fish with him; and amongst them Robert Romer, who was afterwards a Lord Justice. He had been Senior Wrangler; so my father led him on to giving me a little good advice, when I was going up to Cambridge. He began:—“Whatever you do, never work more than five hours a day.” I noted the expression on my father’s face—that was not the sort of advice that he wanted anyone to give me. But the advice was really good. Romer held that nobody could work at high pressure for more than five hours in the day; and it was better to put on high pressure for the five than low pressure for eight or ten or twelve. It gave more time for other things.
In those days George Bidder lived in a large house near Mitcham. He was then a very eminent civil-engineer, but in his early days he was The Calculating Boy. He was born at Moreton in 1806, and was well known to my grandfather. There is a book here, dated 1820, giving calculations that he made, always correctly, and generally in less than a minute. They include such things as finding the cube root of 304, 821, 217—answered instantly—of 67, 667, 921, 875—answered in ¼ minute—and of 897, 339, 273, 974, 002, 153—answered in 2½ minutes. I had the cheek to ask him how he did it. And he told me that he used his mind’s eye, and could see the figures manœuvring in front of him.
I found it was unwise to talk at random in his presence: there were snubs at hand. When I was about ten years old, I was talking about the well at Grenelle, which I had lately seen. The well is 1800 feet deep, and the water rises 150 feet above ground level: temperature 80° Fahrenheit. I said I could not make out what sent it up like that. Between two puffs of his cheroot Bidder grunted:—“Steam.”
Parson Davy was always asking Bidder questions, when he was still The Calculating Boy. But the Parson always got the worst of it, although he had some gifts that way himself, and might have been more eminent as an engineer than as a theologian.
Davy was born in 1743 near Tavistock, but passed his early years near here at Chudleigh and at Knighton, went to the Grammar School at Exeter and thence to Balliol College at Oxford, was then ordained, and held the curacies of Moreton, Drewsteignton and Lustleigh, remaining in the last from 1786 until about six months before his death in 1826. For that space of nearly forty years he was practically the parson of the parish, the rector being a pluralist and rarely visiting the place.
In his sermons at Drewsteignton “he denounced the vices of his congregation in such terms that the people fled from the church and complained to the bishop.” But he set the bishop’s mind at rest by showing him twelve volumes of manuscript, containing the sermons he had preached. I have those twelve volumes in my library here. They have an expensive binding of that period, and the penmanship is good, but antiquated,e.g.vol. xi, p. 333, “&carry yʳ youthful Vices wᵗʰ yᵐ to yᵉ Grave.” The dates are 1777 in the first volume, 1779 in the next five, and 1781 in the remaining six. The first four volumes (of six sermons each) are “on yᵉ Attributes of God,” the fifth and sixth (of seven sermons each) are “on some of yᵉ most-important Articles of yᵉ Xⁿ Religion,” and the last six (of fourteen sermons each) are “on yᵉ several Virtues & Vices of Mankind.” These were the sermons that upset the people at Drewsteignton. But clearly he was making a general survey, and no more charged them with all the vices than he credited them with all the virtues.
In 1786 he got these sermons published by subscription in six volumes, duodecimo. And then he went on writing till he had five hundred sermons of such scope that he felt justified in calling themA System of Divinity. He failed to get this published by subscription; and it would have cost about £2000 to print. So he set to work, and did it all himself with a printing-press of his own make.
He began his printing in 1795, and in five months he turned out forty copies of the first 328 pages of vol. i, with title, preface, etc.; and he sent round twenty-six of these as specimens, to see if he could get support. There was practically no response: so he went on with the fourteen copies that remained, and of the rest
THE WREY AT WREYLAND. POOL COPSE
THE WREY AT WREYLAND. POOL COPSE
THE WREY AT WREYLAND. POOL COPSE
of the work he printed fourteen copies only. The first volume was finished in 1795, three more in 1796, two in 1797 and two in 1798, three in 1799 and three in 1800, two in 1801, but only one in 1802, then two in each of the next four years, 1803 to 1806, and the last volume in 1807, making six-and-twenty volumes altogether. On an average, there must be about 500 pages to the volume, but they are troublesome to count, as the numbering does not always run straight on. When there are not any foot-notes, the page has twenty-six lines of about nine words each; but on some pages the foot-notes rise to forty-one lines of about twelve words each, with only one line of sermon at the top. Additions and corrections are printed on separate slips of paper, and stuck in very neatly at the proper places, like little folding-plates opening up or down the page. Just at first the printing is erratic, but it soon gets better and finally is pretty good. Of course, he had all the credit of the printing; but much of it was done by Mary Hole, a servant in his house. She died in 1808.
His own copy of hisSystem of Divinityis in my library here. The volumes are still in their original boards, and fill a length of 3 ft. 8 in. upon the bookshelves. He pasted his press-notices into vol. i, and added “Strictures on yᵉ preceding Review” and other notes of that sort. And he interleaved the index (in vol. xxvi and part of xxv) and put in references to the additions that he was always making to his work. In 1816 he made a fair copy of the index—which copy is also in my library—“Intended as a Help to a future Edition, with the Additions upon Revisal.” But that future edition never came.
In 1823, when he was eighty years of age, he went to work again, and printed one more volume—Divinity ... being improved extracts from a System of Divinity. Of this also there were fourteen copies only; and one of them is in my library. It is uniform with his previous books, and has about 540 pages altogether. It caused some stir, and led to an enlarged edition in two volumes in 1825, and another in three volumes in 1827. But these editions were printed at Exeter in the ordinary way.
He sometimes used his printing-press for other subjects than Divinity; and, when his son did something that he did not like,he printed a pamphlet on the conduct of his son. But the son’s turn came, when he was called upon to write a memoir of his father after his decease. He paid him back in full.
Davy took the title of his work from Bacon, and planned it while he was at Balliol. And he read widely, making notes and extracts and abstracts and indices, all with a view to writing a systematic treatise on Divinity. But (unconsciously, I think) he departed from his plan, though he retained the title; and in the end his work was not what Bacon meant, nor what anybody wanted. Being in the form of sermons, it was useless as a book of reference; and, being in substance an encyclopædia, it did not make good sermons. One wonders how his country congregations felt, when he preached to them in this wise, vol. i, pages 292-4, “The most ancient Nations, the Egyptians and Phœnicians, did agree with the Grecians that the World did begin etc.... Aristotle himself says etc.... Maximus Tyrius also observes etc.... Josephus and all the Jewish Doctors do abundantly confirm it.” But he also had many shrewd things to say, and often said them very neatly, especially in his foot-notes. And these sayings of his might well be put together in a little volume asThe Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. William Davy.
For many years he lived at Lustleigh Rectory, a venerable house that was transformed to something new and strange at the time of the Gothic Revival. But that was after his time; and he speaks of it as “nearly in ruins” in 1808. He quitted it in 1818, and went to live at Wilmead, which his son had lately bought. And the old man used always to come striding down across the fields, and take the path from Wreyland, when he went from Wilmead to the village or the church.
While living at the Rectory, he built a terraced garden that was celebrated in its day, but vanished when the grounds were laid out more ambitiously. And, when he moved to Wilmead, he built himself a garden there, on the knoll of ground behind the house. One can see that this knoll was covered with rocks, and that he cleared some of them away by blasting, and used thefragments for retaining-walls. In this way he formed five terraces, which still remain.
There are stories of his planting the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments in his garden up at Wilmead. According to the memoir of him by his son, he actually did plant (in box) some texts of Scripture and his own name and the date. “Into whichever walk any one turned, some divine or moral precept met the eye, as the different letters were nearly six inches long, and being kept regularly trimmed were easily to be read.” In 1838 one could read ‘know thyself,’ ‘act wisely,’ ‘deal fairly,’ ‘live peaceably,’ ‘love one another,’ ‘W Davy 1818.’ There must have been much more, as he called it his “Living body of Divinity” in contrast to hisSystem. But, whatever it was that he planted, it has all vanished now.
Box has been put to quite another use in the Pope’s private gardens at the Vatican. They have a gigantic Cardinal’s Hat, with all its cords and tassels, edged with box and filled with brilliant flowers. I have seen it only in the autumn, when the flowers are going off; but in the early summer it must be magnificent.
In this neighbourhood a great deal of box-edging has been destroyed in recent years, the pretext being that it harbours slugs, and they eat up all the flowers in the beds. But slugs seldom eat begonias; and begonias look very gorgeous against the dark green of the box. I have used them most successfully these last fifteen years.
Most of the old houses here have groups of box-edged beds with narrow paths between them, making up some pattern as a whole. And these are known as Pixey Gardens. As pixies are twelve inches high, these little paths are pretty much the same to them as Devonshire lanes to human beings. I was taught that one could always tell a pixey from a fairy, as fairies wear clothes, and pixies go without; but I have never seen either sort myself, in a pixey garden or elsewhere.
A very cautious old lady once remarked to me that she had never seen any pixies herself, but she knew so many people whosaid they had seen pixies, that she would not undertake to say that there were no such things. This puts the pixies in pretty much the same position as the Russian soldiers who passed through England at the beginning of the War.
There was formerly a draw-well in front of the house, and its site is marked by the second of the round beds in the Pixey Garden. I imagine that the garden was not made until the well had been filled in, and that this was not till 1839, when the present well was sunk; but I do not know for certain. The garden was rectangular till 1899; and then I added the semi-circular end, and made a gateway through the orchard hedge, carrying the main path round the semi-circle to the gateway.
In altering the path, a dog’s skeleton was found at the foot of the espalier pear tree. There is a dog in the full-length portrait of my grandfather’s grandfather, and there is the same dog in the picture of the family in 1787; and somebody suggested that this might be the dog, whose grave we had disturbed. The skeleton had crumbled, but the skull was sound; and I showed it to various people, who were fond of dogs, and thought they understood them. Some thought it might be that dog’s skull, while others thought the dog was of another breed. At last, I got an introduction to a high authority at the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and I showed him the skull and photographs of both the pictures. I became aware that he was staring at me in amazement, and at last he gasped:—“But it isn’t a dog at all. It’s a badger.”
However, we were not the only people that ever made such a blunder. They had a wonder-working relic in the church at Skifvarp. It was reputed to be the hand of a saint; and, as such, it healed many people of diseases. I saw it in the Museum at Stockholm some years ago, resting from its labours. It is only a seal’s paw.
Down here a man remarked to me one day, as he was gazing across some fields:—“It be a wonder-workin’ thing, that Consecrated Bone.” I began to think we had a relic here. But he spoke of concentrated bone manure.
A party of Italians was being shown round the gardens on the Isola Bella one day when I was being shown round; and the thing that struck them most, was what we call the common laurel. I cannot remember seeing it at any other place in Italy except the monastery on Monte Cavo, and I suspect that it was brought there by the Cardinal of York. (In Italy the common laurel is what we call sweet-bay.) Few people in England know how beautiful our common laurel is when fully grown, for here they are always clipping it and cutting it down as soon as it begins to grow. On the Isola Bella it is almost a forest tree. In this garden and in Parson Davy’s it grows to 25 or 30 feet, and so also the sweet-bay.
There are two young olive trees growing in sheltered places in this garden. The smaller one (below the Oval Lawn) is from an olive that I picked up at Rapallo, 10 January 1910, when the olives were being shaken down. It is nearly four feet high now—September 1917. The larger one (near Dogtrot Hill) came here from Cornwall in a pot, and was planted out in the summer of 1904. It then was six feet high and very slender, and now is nearly fifteen feet high and nine inches in girth. It has not borne olives yet.
Many of the people here had never seen an olive tree before, and were curious about its fruit: so I gave them olives to try. One comment was:—“Well, Mrs*****’d never have christened her daughter Olive, if her’d a-tasted one of they.”
One afternoon all the strawberries on the strawberry tree were picked and eaten by a boy, who was working in the garden; and they held an Indignation Meeting under the Rotunda. I asked him what the matter was, and he replied:—“Please, zir, my inwards be all of a uproar.”
Besides the strawberry tree (arbutus unedo) I have the toothache tree (xanthoxylum planispinum) growing in the garden. My gardener told me that he had no toothaches for a long while after it was planted, though he often had before: but this immunity wore off. A decoction of the bark is what is needed, and the tree has very little bark as yet. The cork tree also growshere, and this soon developes a thick coat of bark. I expect the bark on mine to yield me cork enough to bung my cider casks; but at present it does not.
During the winter of 1911-12 I planted sixteen acres of new cider-orchards, putting 5½ acres of early trees in Crediford and Blackmore, 5¾ acres of mid-season trees in Middle Parke, and 4¾ acres of late trees in Above Ways. Some such division is usual in new orchards now, as the fruit is handled with less labour, and sheep can go on grazing in the late orchards till the early orchards have been cleared. The early trees were of three sorts in equal numbers—Knotted Kernel, Cherry Pearmain and Cherry Norman: the mid-season trees were of four sorts in the ratio of one Cap of Liberty and one Kingston Black to two each of Eggleton Styre and Strawberry Norman; and the late trees were also of four sorts in the ratio of one Skyrme’s Kernel and one Hagloe Crab to two each of Michelin and Chisel Jersey. These combinations make good blends. But apple trees do not bear uniformly every year: one sort may bear heavily one year, and another sort the next; and that upsets the blend.
In this district the older orchards have mostly been neglected, losses being made good with any kind of apple tree that came to hand. No doubt, the kinds were chosen carefully at first, but not (so far as one can see) in such proportions as to give a definite blend. With all kinds of apples mixed up indiscriminately, no two casks of cider are the same in flavour or in strength.
Cider used always to be made of apples, but I fear that it is very often made of other things now. However, the name does not imply that it is made of apples, but only means that it is strong. And in that sense Wyclif has “wyn and sydir” in Luke, i. 15, where later versions say “strong drink.” Non-alcoholic cider is a contradiction in terms.
Men can easily get drunk on cider; but they do not suffer for it next day, if they have had pure cider of fermented apple-juice and nothing else. Unhappily, this wholesome drink has given way to other drinks that are less wholesome. A shrewd observer said to me:—“When each man had three pints of cider everyday, there was not half this bickering and quarrelling that goes on now.” And that, I think, is true. They were always in the genial stage of drunkenness, and seldom had the means of going beyond that. A few, however, very often went beyond; and they have been described to me as “never proper drunk, nor proper sober neither, but always a-muddled and a-mazed.”
This failing was not confined to Devonshire. My father notes in his diary, 7 August 1847, at Dinan in Brittany:—“The apples thick beyond conception, and the priests already praying to avert the evil consequences they apprehend from the plenty and cheapness of cider.” He writes to my grandmother from Dinan, 15 August 1847:—“The apples are so abundant this year that the country will almost be drowned in cider. How they will consume it all, is a wonder, for they export none. The lower orders are drunk, it seems, a great deal of their time. The priests always pray for a bad apple crop as the only hope of saving the people from perpetual drunkenness.”
A former rector of Lustleigh was remonstrating with a man one afternoon for reeling through the village very drunk. But the man had his reply:—“Ay, ’tbe all very fine for you to talk, but you goes home to dinner late, and us doesn’t see you after.”
On the whole, less harm is done by cider than by tea; but cider gets more blame, as its ill effects are visible at once, whereas tea works its mischief slowly. Nobody says anything against tea-drinking now; but Parson Davy in hisSystem of Divinity, vol. xix, page 235, which he printed at Lustleigh in 1803, spoke with indignation of “the immeasurable use of that too fashionable and pernicious plant, which weakens the stomach, unbraces the nerves, and drains the very vitals of our national wealth; to which nevertheless our children are as early and as carefully enured, from the very breast, as if the daily use of it were an indispensable duty which they owed to God and their country.” And in hisLetter to a Friend concerning Tea, published in 1748, John Wesley spoke of tea-drinking as tea-drinkers speak of drinking alcohol now:—“wasteful, unhealthy self-indulgence”—“no other than a slow poison”—“abhor it as a deadly poison, and renounce it from this very hour.”
My grandfather had a new cider-press in 1842, and I had a new one in 1901. He set up his in what is now the potting-shed, and I set up mine in what is now the donkey’s house, but shifted it in 1904 to its present place in what had hitherto been the stables. The cider-press of 1901 is quite unlike the cider-press of 1842, and is practically the same as the wine-presses that are used in France. With three men at work, it will turn 800 lbs. of apples into 60 gallons of cider in about two hours. The old press was not so quick or clean, but was more picturesque.
Cider-making is not a very pleasant sight; and I have known people say that they would never touch cider again, having once seen how it was made. A crushed apple is not a pretty thing at any time, and is none the prettier for being in company with several thousand others. However, cider-making is not quite as bad as wine-making in Southern Italy and Sicily. There they tread the grapes: if the vat is small, they get the cramp; and I have seen men jump out of the vat, take a sharp run up and down a very un-swept road, and jump straight in again.
TheAstiwine of Northern Italy is curiously like the wine that we make out of rhubarb here; and one might suspect the Asti of being rhubarb wine, only rhubarb costs much more than grapes down there. Our wine is not pure rhubarb: sugar and other things are used as well. And one year it was an utter failure. The sugar had been given to a certain damsel to put in, “and ’stead of tendin’ her duty, her were a-talkin’ to that Jarge, and atween’m they put pretty nigh all the sugar in one of they barryels and scarce any in t’other.”
Another liquor might be made here, as this soil grows the fungus that is used for Vodka. That liquor is in bad repute just now; but I must say that I found it very comforting on a long and dreary journey from Moscow down to Warsaw in the autumn of 1889.
My grandfather writes to my father on 3 December 1857:—“A glass of good mellow full-bodied cider is far superior to your Rhenish wine: there is no body in that.” And if Devonshirecider is to be compared with any class of wines, the Rhine wines certainly come closest to it. He thought the very best cider was wasted on the country-folk, and he writes on 18 September 1868:—“They do not much care what it is, so as its cider.” But they cared very much for that. He writes on 16 March 1845:—“The old workmen here think we shall have cider plenty: they think more about that than the crops in the fields.” And again on 17 July 1856:—“As you know, the men here are passionately fond of cider.”
He writes to him on 18 June 1851:—“People say that Ashburton Fair is past, and the apples are safe.” People still say that, meaning that all frosts have ceased by the first Thursday in June. But many of these sayings are of earlier date than 1752: the calendar was altered then by cutting out eleven days; and the seasons did not alter with the calendar. Father Christmas should arrive in snow, but seldom has it now: the snow comes with Old Christmas Day in January.
Writing on 2 February 1851, my grandfather says:—“Not a flake of snow fell on the Forest of Dartmoor in the month of January: not the oldest man living on the Moor recollects the like before.” On 2 March 1862:—“Well, the old people say there never was a February without snow. There has not been any this year, unless it came Friday night before twelve o’clock. A man that was out about sheep says that it did fall before twelve but after eleven: so they still adhere to the old saying. But the others that did not stay up, say that the snow came with March.”
Like many other people of his time, my grandfather was certain that the climate had improved, and he thought he saw the cause. He writes to my father on 22 December 1850:—“I attribute the mildness of the winters and the warmth of the summers to the better state of cultivation of the land draining off the cold stagnant waters that lay about in all directions in my youthful days.” He writes on 23 November 1851:—“The old plan was to have the wheat up in grass at Christmas, as the farmers used to say ‘high enough to cover a crow,’ but they find now from the altered winters that to till in this month and the next is sufficiently early, and better crops.”
My grandfather tried farming here; and I gather from his accounts that he sank about £20 per acre in the first three years. That meant draining the ground, and getting it into good condition; and after that he made it pay, except in the years of the potato famine. He writes to my father on 8 March 1846:—“I should say a diligent clever man, farming his own estate, can make more money now than he could in war time [that is, before 1815] for the system of farming is quite changed, and the land is made to produce nearly double what it did then.”
His knowledge of farming was derived from books; and he did things that were not customary here, sometimes with failure, but often with success. Thus, he writes to my father, 2 April 1854:—“I tilled some barley yesterday.... It was another such March fifteen years ago, when I tilled this same field to barley. I then hired horses and gave it a good working; and the weather was so tempting that I tilled it in March to the amusement of my neighbours. The storms in April made it look blue, which amused them still further. But they all acknowledged they could not produce its equal to harvest.”
He writes on 25 April 1843:—“Folks are waiting to see what spade husbandry will produce. I tell them its not new to me, for I adopted it elsewhere some twelve or fourteen years ago, and was fully compensated for my trouble. But that will not do: they must see themselves. The field is turned up with the spade, all the spine put under, a foot deep; and I have taken out nearly stones enough to build a wall through the field. The cost in turning is 4d.[per rod] with a quart of cider to a shilling, so with cleaning and bringing it fit for the potato the cost is £4 per acre, about double the old system, which would leave all the stones, and the field not half worked.
“Our farmers are loth to believe that any other method but the old one is beneficial. They fancy all manure is in dung and the like. I tell them the quantity of carbon, etc., etc.... But all will not do: they must see to believe. I have tried 1 cwt. of nitrate of soda on an acre of grass, and it is astonishing the effect it has had.”
On 13 January 1851 he writes:—“I am trying an experiment,that is, I am fetching every day some of the refuse from the kilns at the Pottery. It is principally burnt clay. I have often looked at it on passing, and fancied it might turn to use—old Cobbett speaks well of burnt clay. My neighbours say they will try it also.”
In a letter of 11 February 1850 my grandfather suggests a sliding scale for agricultural rents, based on the average price of corn. He did not wish to fix a rent-charge once for all, as with the commutation of the tithe, but merely to provide for variations during the period of a lease. In practice the landlord makes remissions of rent in bad years; but I have not yet heard of a farmer giving his landlord a War-bonus on these good years.
The old copyhold system was better than the leasehold for agricultural land. Here in Wreyland manor a man took a tenement for the term of his life; and that included “his wife’s widowhood therein.” If he wished to give it up, there was always someone ready to take it on. The new tenant paid him for his life interest and his wife’s, and bought the reversion from the lord; and at the next sitting of the court the old tenant surrendered the tenement, and the new tenant was admitted in his stead. If he wished to keep the tenement in his family, he bought the reversion for his son. The tenants were answerable to the manor court, if they allowed their buildings to fall into decay, or let down the gates and hedges against their neighbour’s tenements. But in this manor the court could not take cognizance of bad cultivation, which so often accompanies security of tenure.
These copyhold tenements have developed into freeholds, and the manor has decayed. This is a district of small estates. In districts where estates are large, it is usually the other way. Manorial rights have grown, until at last the manor has unrestricted freehold, and the former copyholds are let as farms.
Estates here being small, the farms are small also; and they could not well be large in such a hilly country—haulage would be too costly, if a farm went over many ridges and coombes. Usually they are too small, and two or three might be throwninto one, one set of buildings serving for the whole, likewise one set of implements, and fewer horses—six horses have sufficed, where three farmers had each been keeping three. Even in districts where estates are large, and ground is flat, the farms are seldom large enough to give the best results. The ideal is the largest area that can possibly be worked from one homestead; and in some districts that may be very large indeed. No doubt, thelatifundiawere not a success; but that was due to slavery, not to size. Here in England our countryfolk would make a better stock as labourers on big estates than in starvation on small-holdings.
The labourer has certainly fared badly in the past. He grew the dear loaf, and never had a bite at it. But, when economists go writing of “the hungry ’forties,” they should remember that there were such things as trout and salmon, hares and rabbits, partridges and pheasants.
My grandfather writes to my father, 3 December 1844:—“I was told yesterday at Moreton that many travellers now give their horses a portion of wheat flour. Some are too scrupulous to do it: but the labourer would say Why give barley, as that is my food, and the Scotch and Irish may say Why give oats.” He writes a few days later, 15 December 1844:—“I had some conversation with the Lustleigh parson yesterday. He said we had no poor here, and the labourers were better off than where he came from.”—He had just left a living in Norfolk.—“There the wages were less, and they never tasted animal food from one year to another, but here they all managed to salt in a pig.”
He writes on 2 December 1849:—“Bad as times are, I have known them far worse under Protection.... Such was the distress among farmers then that labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired for 6d.to 9d.per day.” And on 7 February 1850:—“There is no grumbling among the labourers, for now they have a cheap loaf, and are able to get a bit of meat to eat with it.... Besides under Free Trade they get salt, sugar, tea, coffee, etc., at a much lower rate than formerly, when their wages were but a half or a third.”
On 13 July 1851 he writes:—“I see a vast improvement in agriculture in this neighbourhood since Free Trade came in.... Protection did but foster indolence.” Fifty years later, when Protection was allied with Tariff Reform, an ardent Liberal said to me:—“No, ’t ain’t no tariffs and ’tection that they farmers need: ’t be nothin’ but lime and doong.” And certainly the land was starved.
My grandfather was converted to Free Trade somewhere about 1817 or 1818, but I do not know exactly when or how. He writes on 3 June 1843:—“I have been a Free Trader for more than five-and-twenty years.” And on 28 January 1844:—“I almost stood alone in Moreton as a Free Trader about five-and-twenty years ago.” As for the other party, he writes on 25 November 1849:—“Protection is substituted for Church & State and King & Constitution, and what they will have next I am at a loss to say.” He was a Liberal then; but the party went beyond his principles, and my brother writes from here, 4 July 1868:—“Grandpapa now calls himself a Conservative, and makes dire prophecies of the political future of England.”
Lord John Russell was the only politician whom he altogether trusted. There was some slight acquaintance; and Lord John gave my father a very nice desk upon his coming of age. My father used it always, and I have it still, not much the worse for wear, but somewhat damaged by burglars on one of their visits to our house in town.
Writing to my father on 25 January 1846, my grandfather says:—“Agricultural labourers are very scarce: most of the young and able bodied are gone on the railways.” Men got better pay as navvies than they had ever got in agriculture. Better pay meant better food; and the navvies developed into finer men than anyone had seen before—at least, old people always told me so. I fancy this displacement of labour had more effect on wages and employment than the change from Protection to Free Trade.
Writing on 8 March 1846, he says:—“I do not think many of the agriculturalists are prepared for the very great changes thatthe railways will make.” But those great changes never came, as the agriculturalists never grasped the situation. So long as transport was difficult, each district had to grow nearly everything that it required. When transport was made easy, each district should have grown what it grew best. Here in the South Hams there was quite the best cream in England, and about the best cider, and also excellent mutton. Had people kept to things like these, and laid down all their arable land to grass, they would have saved far more on agricultural buildings, implements and horses, than they would have spent in getting arable products from a distance. And they would hardly have felt the depression that began in 1878, as that scarcely touched these things.
Being short-sighted, they neglected their orchards, and grew careless of their cider-making, till Devonshire cider was outclassed by Hereford. And now they are ruining the cream by using separators. Of course, it is cream made in Devonshire, but it is not what was known as Devonshire cream. The stuff is not worth eating; but I suppose people will go on eating it as Devonshire cream, just as they go on drinking the wines of well-known growers, whose vineyards were exhausted years ago.
There is also a machine now to prepare wheat straw for thatching; and this bruises the reed, and renders it less durable than when it was prepared by hand. And now they never sow wheat early enough for the straw to gather strength. The result is that the thatch decays, and landlords and farmers both get tired of patching it, and put up slate or iron instead, thereby helping to destroy the market for one of their own products. I have known a field of wheat pay rent and rates and every outlay with the straw for thatching, and the grain was all clear profit.
Nobody who has lived under a thatched roof would willingly live under any other—the comfort is so great. The thatch keeps out the cold in winter, and keeps out the heat in summer. This house has about 4000 square feet of roof, and my other buildings in Wreyland have about 12,000 altogether; and the whole of thisis thatched. Thatching costs about three pence a square foot, and lasts about five-and-twenty years; the period varying a little with the shape of the roof and its aspect, exposure, and so on. And really it is not inflammable. Just as paper will burn and books will not, so also straw will burn and thatch will not: at least, thatch will only burn quite slowly like a book. I have twice seen a fire stopped by cutting away a strip of thatch, and so making a gap that the fire could not cross; and the fire burnt so very slowly that there was ample time for this.
In insurance against fire a higher rate is charged on thatch than on the other kinds of roofing; and I presume the higher rate is needed, though possibly for other reasons than the nature of the roof. Writing to my father about a small estate that was for sale, my grandfather remarks quite placidly, 13 June 1864:—“The premises are all but new, for*****took care to burn down the whole at different times—so all new and well built and slated. No office would continue the insurance for him, but being all slated it did not much require it.” I have heard the same thing said of other small estates.
There were many fires in Moreton about seventy or eighty years ago. In those times the insurance companies had fire-engines of their own, and people trusted to these engines. After a fire there, 11 September 1838, my father writes in his diary:—“The Moreton engine poured on the thatch in front of Mrs Heyward’s house, and kept the fire in the back premises. But, as the fire was extending towards the White Hart, which was insured in the ‘West of England,’ the engine (which belonged to that office) was removed there to endeavour to preserve the inn. As soon as the engine was removed, the fire came into the front of Mrs Heyward’s house, and extended on in Pound Street.... There ought to be two engines in the place; and, as the ‘Sun’ lost so much, perhaps they will send one there.” After another fire there, 12 September 1845, my grandfather writes to him:—“Many houses not insured: their owners dropt it at Ladyday last, when the advance took place on thatched houses.” This fire was a notable event. My father writes in his diary, Coblence, 21 September 1845:—“Read in the Galignani newspaper an account of the recent fire at Moreton, which has destroyed so much of the town.”
Cob walls are as good as a thatched roof for resisting heat and cold; and the houses that have both, are far the best to live in, when the temperature out-doors is either high or low. The cob is made of clay and gravel kneaded together with straw, and is put up in a mass, like concrete. It is very durable, if kept dry, but soon goes to pieces, if the wet gets into it, especially from above. The roof must therefore be kept quite watertight, and the outside of the walls may be protected by a coat of plaster or cement with rough-cast.
Good bricks are made on Bovey Heathfield at the other end of this parish. And nine inches of brickwork, laid in cement, is as strong as eighteen inches of cob, and looks the same, if covered with cement and rough-cast. But the eighteen inches of cob keeps a house much warmer than eighteen of brick.
In rough-casting the wall receives two coats of plaster or cement; and, before the second coat is dry, a mixture of fine gravel and hot lime is thrown hard at it with a trowel, and sticks on to the second coat. It was the custom here to rough-cast the south and west sides of a building, but not the north and east, as these are less exposed to wet.
Down here the building-stone is either granite or elvan; and rough-cast is desirable, as both sorts take damp, especially the granite. Moreover, if the walls are built of unsquared stone, the rain will sometimes find its way between the joints and down into the wall, wherever the bedding of the stones slopes downwards from the outside.
Some of the older buildings have squared stones from three to five feet long and two or three feet high. But generally these do not go beyond the first few courses, and then comes unsquared stone, and very often cob on top. In most of the old buildings here the walls are constructed with an inner and an outer face of unsquared stone and a core of mortar or cement. If the core decays, the stones get loose; and, if a stone falls out, others may
THE PIXEY GARDEN (pp. 35,36)
THE PIXEY GARDEN (pp. 35,36)
THE PIXEY GARDEN (pp. 35,36)
go after it, the edges being unsquared, and then the whole structure may come tumbling down.
At the inn at Manaton I once heard a group of old inhabitants talking over various buildings that had fallen down, and quarrelling as to which of them had made the greatest noise in falling. Here at Wreyland the end wall of the Tallet—some 40 tons—fell out into the orchard in the twilight of a Sunday evening as people were on their way to church. “And Miss Mary*****, her were a-passin’ at the time; and, when her come in afterward, her said in all her born days her never beheld such a noise.”
People talk as though there was no jerry-building in the olden times. I believe the jerry-builder was as busy then as now, but his buildings have all tumbled down and been forgotten long ago. Only the best of the old buildings have lasted until now; and these are constantly in need of structural repair. I have overhauled a good many of these buildings; and by the time I have underpinned the walls, and grouted them, and done all the other necessary things, I always find I could have got a better result by taking them right down, and setting them up again on fresh foundations. And no one would have known the difference. At the lower end of Souther Wreyland there is a chimney-stack that looks as venerable as anything here. I built it new in 1906 from its foundation to its summit: there was nothing there before.
If one had merely to repair a building as an ancient monument, there would be comparatively little trouble. But there is serious trouble, when one wishes to retain the characteristics of a building, and yet meet modern needs with bath-rooms and the like. Bed-rooms used to open into one another, and you had to pass through other rooms to reach your own; but people now object to that. If the roof slopes down towards the outer walls, one cannot always get height enough for a passage without encroaching too much upon the rooms; and one does better then by putting in more staircases, each giving access to a group of rooms. This house has three main staircases, and no passages upstairs,except a short one that I built in 1899. Others have as many staircases, and passages as well; and people say that they are like the countryside—all lanes and hills.
In dealing with the Hall House, I decided not to sacrifice the Seventeenth Century work in order to restore the Fourteenth, though the restoration would have been of interest. There was originally a hall, with a screen across it, and a gallery projecting out beyond the screen on corbels. Subsequently the floor of the gallery was carried on across the hall, and the front of the gallery was carried up to the roof, thus making two rooms upstairs, and two down below, divided by the screen. These four rooms are useful, and the hall would have been very useless, as no courts are held for Wreyland manor now.
My great-great-grandfather Nelson Beveridge Gribble was lord of Wreyland manor, but always lived in this house—Yonder Wreyland—and never at the Hall House. I believe he held Court Baron and Court Leet and View of Frankpledge in the Lower Parlour here; and it must have been unpleasantly crowded, if the Homage and the Tithing came here in full force.
The last sitting of the court was held on 14 February 1871. I have printed the record of the sittings from 1437 to 1441, from 1479 to 1501, and from 1696 to 1727,Wreyland Documents, pp. 1-88, and have said there (pp. i-c) all I have to say about the history of this manor.
In 1898 I became a tenant of a manor in which admission is “by the verge.” The verge is a wooden staff or rod; and the steward of the manor holds one end, and the tenant holds the other, while they say the operative words. I thought the ceremony would be interesting, and might be picturesque; so I went myself, instead of doing it by deputy. The scene was a solicitor’s office of the most prosaic kind with type-writers and telephones. The steward was seated at an American desk; and, when I looked round for the verge, he said, “I haven’t got a stick, but this ’ll do.” And he took up a pencil (made in Austria) and held it out to me.
There was a pleasant old house at Becky Fall, burnt down on 18 April 1875, and rebuilt as one sees it now; and I have a full-length portrait of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Langworthy, sitting in the porch there. He has been described as “reading his bible, and looking as if he didn’t believe a word of it,” but it really is a law-book. The painter was Thomas Rennell. There are many pictures of his in Devonshire, mostly labelled Reynolds by mistake for Rennell. Sir Joshua and he were fellow-pupils in Hudson’s studio in London, but had not much in common afterwards.
Becky was a lonesome place till the new Manaton road was made, but now lies open to excursionists, and has lost something of its charm. While the old house remained, I coveted it more than this. It passed from John Langworthy to his daughter Honor, the wife of Nelson Beveridge Gribble, and then to their eldest son John Gribble, and to his eldest surviving son John Beveridge Gribble, who very soon got rid of it. He claimed Wreyland also as the heir, but found there was a settlement. He died here in this house on 18 August 1891, just ninety years after the death of his elder brother.
His father did not live here after he grew up, and this house was let to Captain Thomas Moore for several years. Moore was on the Genoa at the battle of Navarino, 20 October 1827, and ten days afterwards he died of wounds.
John Beveridge Gribble had an amateur knowledge of architecture, and also a little practical knowledge, picked up from a cousin who was an architect. A barn was being built upon some sloping ground near here; and, on seeing the foundations and the beginning of the walls, he told the builders that the whole thing would slip down, when they had reached a certain height. When they reached that height, it slipped down as he said; and they all marvelled at the prophecy. There were many false prophets here, when the railway was being made. They had never seen a skew-arch before, or even heard of such a thing; and they said these arches would come down as soon as the frames were taken out.
One of the old masons here would never condescend to use a plumb-line on his work. He said that he could tell if a wall was straight by just puttin’ his leg ag’in’n. Another said that he could do it with his eye. They, and others like them, are commemorated in the contour of the walls.
On many of the older houses round about here, one sees a board with the word “dairy” fixed up above a door or window. These boards are relics of the window-tax, as exemption could be claimed for the window of a dairy or a cheese-room, if “dairy” or “cheese-room” was painted up outside. There is a board with “dairy” at the back of this house. It seems to cover two windows now; but these are really the ends of one wide window. I had to block the centre up with walling, to support the bath-room that I built in 1904 above the former dairy.
Many of these houses also have windows that were stopped up, when the window-tax was heavy, and were not brought into use again, when it was abolished. I have opened up quite a dozen of them in my buildings. A window was not freed from the tax, unless it was stopped up with stone or brick or plaster; but usually the frame was left, and only needed glazing, when the stopping was removed.
The window-tax goes back to 1695, but many of these windows are of later date than that. The tax did not become oppressive until after 1784. In that year the tax on a house of ten windows was raised from 11s.4d.to £1. 4s.4d., to £1. 12s.0d.in 1802, and to £2. 16s.0d.in 1808. On a house of twenty windows it was raised from £1. 14s.8d.to £4. 9s.8d.in 1784, to £7. 10s.0d.in 1802, and to £11. 4s.6d.in 1808. And on a house of thirty windows from £3. 3s.0d.to £7. 13s.0d.in 1784, to £13. 0s.0d.in 1802, and to £19. 12s.6d.in 1808. It thus became worth while to block up windows; and this, I believe, was the period when most of these windows were blocked up. Window-tax had been imposed in place of hearth-money, the notion being that the number of the windows would indicate the value of the house. But it played havoc with the health of the community, as people were willing to live and sleep in rooms with neither light nor air, in order to escape the tax.
The same thing happened with ships. Dues were levied on tonnage; and formerly the tonnage of a ship was calculated from her length and breadth, the depth being reckoned as half the breadth, which was about the usual ratio when the rule was made. If the depth was more than half the breadth, the ship carried more cargo without any increase in the tonnage or the dues. And the result was that ships were built deeper and deeper, until the depth came to be about three-quarters of the breadth, and they became unsafe and foundered.
Then came the Act of 1854, which put tonnage on the basis of a ton for every hundred cubic feet of space inside the ship, excepting space required for engines, crew, coal, etc. But space was reckoned in a way that led to unforeseen results. If a screw-steamer of 3000 tons had an engine-space of 380 tons, or 38,000 cubic feet, she was allowed a further 285 tons as coal-space; but, if her engine-space was brought up to 400 tons, the allowance was 560 tons. And in powerful tugs the deductions often came to more than the total from which they were to be deducted. Their nett tonnage being registered as 0, these vessels had no dues to pay.
In going through old books that had been packed away here, I found the first edition of Lloyd’sRegister of British and Foreign Shipping. It is dated in October 1834; and, including the supplement, it gives particulars of about 13,850 ships. On looking through them, I cannot find more than forty ships of above a thousand tons. The largest is of 1515 tons, the next of 1488 and the next of 1469; then come eleven of 1440 to 1403, eighteen of 1380 to 1311, three of 1286 to 1256, one of 1175, and four of 1068 to 1013. All forty are of the Port of London. Below the thousand tons, there is one of 993 and one of 987, then nine of 894 to 802, fifteen of 773 to 701, forty-three of 695 to 602, and a hundred and ten of 600 to 501. Thus (unless I have overlooked some) the ships of above 500 tons number 219 altogether, which is only about a sixty-third part of the total number on the Register.
In the Register for 1841, which I found here also, there are only eighteen ships of above a thousand tons. It gives onlyfifteen of the forty that were given in 1834: eight built of teak in the East Indies in 1798 to 1816, and seven built on the Thames in 1817 to 1827. And there are only three new ships of that tonnage, one of 1070, built at Amsterdam, and one of 1064 and one of 1267, both built in Canada.
In the 1834 edition the abbreviations Sr. and St. stand for schooner and schoot, not for steamer, as one might surmise; and the rules are framed for sailing-ships, with a few additional rules “for ships navigated by steam.” There are inquiries for the diameter of the paddle-wheels, and the length and breadth of the paddles, but no inquiries as to screws.
I can remember the Channel Fleet lying in Torbay with one of the old “seventy-fours” carrying the admiral’s flag. She was the Edgar, a wooden two-decker of 3094 tons, fitted with a funnel and a screw, but otherwise not unlike the ships of Nelson’s time. That was on 2 September 1864. One day in November 1916 I noticed an unusual number of steamers lying in Torbay, and found that they were sheltering from an enemy submarine outside. I felt that times had changed.
In the old letters and diaries here I find many words and phrases that have now gone out of use. The garden was ‘very rude,’ when it was untidy. A man was ‘thoughtful,’ when he was cunning, and ‘high-minded,’ when he was pretentious; and was a ‘patriot,’ when he was a profiteer. People were ‘confined,’ when they were kept indoors by any kind of illness; and some invalid old ladies had three or four ‘confinements’ every year. They all ‘used’ exercise, and did not take it; nor did they ever take tea. “We drank tea with Mrs*****at Moreton, and Jane was on the carpet all the while: she has been to Exeter without a bonnet.” I do not know why people drag in scraps of French like ‘chaperon’ and ‘sur le tapis,’ nor why they follow Anglo-Indians in saying ‘pucka’ for ‘proper.’
Hearing a good deal of laughter in the lane, I inquired what was going on. And the answer was brought back:—“Please, zir, it be little Freddie*****a-tryin’ to say swear-words, and he cannot form’n proper.”
I once said a swear-word here—at least, they thought I did. A bee was pestering me persistently one afternoon, while I was sitting in the garden; and at last in a moment of irritation I called it a coleopterous creature. Someone heard me, and afterwards I heard him telling someone else:—“He were a-swearin’ fine: called ’n bally-wopserous.”
A few years ago there was a child in the village, who was so absurdly like the Flora in thePrimaverathat we always called her the little Botticelli. But this disquieted her mother; and she sent up to say that she would like to know the meaning of that word.
Being of opinion that some fields near here would never yield enough to cover their rent, the farmer’s wife approached the landlord in this way:—“‘But, maister,’ saith I, ‘us cannot pluck feathers from a toad.’ And he saith, ‘so I’ve heard tell afore now, and I believe ’t be true’.” It is just the metaphor they use in France:—“Il est chargé d’argent comme un crapaud de plumes.” And when someone did a work of supererogation here, the comment was strangely like “le Bon Dieu rit énormément.”
Devonshire speech is not capricious, but has a syntax of its own. The classic phrase is ‘her told she.’ A pious person told me that ‘us didn’t love He, ’twas Him loved we.’ They never say ‘we are,’ but ‘us be’ or else ‘we am,’ contracted into ‘we’m.’ They say ‘I be’ as well as ‘I’m,’ but never ‘me’m’ or ‘me be,’ though invariably ‘me and Jarge be,’ or ‘me and Urn,’ or whatever the name is, and never ‘Ernest and I’ or ‘George and I.’ They say ‘to’ for ‘at’—‘her liveth to Moreton’—and formerly said ‘at’ for ‘to’—‘I be goin’ at Bovey’—but now it is the fashion to say ‘as far as’ Bovey.—A complete Grammar might be compiled.
Happily, the school has not taught them English that is truly up to date. They have not learned to say:—“The weather conditions being favourable, the psychological moment was indulged in.” They still say:—“As ’twere fine, us did’n.” And their pronunciation is unchanged: beetles are bittles, beans are banes, and Torquay is Tarkay.
Down here the Education Act of 1870 was not altogether a success. There had been a school in Lustleigh since 1825, maintained by a small endowment and the fees. Only the brightest children went there, and the others did not go to school at all. Had it gone on after 1870 as a higher-grade school, it might have done much service here; but the trustees shut it—by a breach of trust, so far as I can see. The bright children had to go to the board-school with the others who were not so bright; and their progress was retarded by these others, as the staff was never large enough to take them separately. As it is, I think more progress might be made, if the classes were only half the size, and the children were only half the time in school, some going in the morning and others in the afternoon.
In most of the parishes round here there are cottages too far away for young children to attend school in all weathers. As a rule, the able-bodied men have always got young children—families are long, and spread over many years. There is thus a difficulty in getting suitable tenants for these cottages; and many of them have been allowed to go to ruin, after being unoccupied for some long time. Families move down into villages, which now have many of the defects of a town, without its merits; and real country life is dying out—an unforeseen result of Education Acts.
Agriculture has suffered from a cause that seems equally remote—“farm-house lodgings.” People say that farms are let at so much per acre, but all farms have a house, and the house will often pay the rent; and, when the house does that, the farmer is less careful of his land. The profit is not only from the letting of the rooms, but from selling butter, eggs, fowls, etc., without the trouble and expense of going to market, and often (I am told) at more than market prices.
People crowd down here in summer, and will put up with any kind of lodging, as they mean to be out-doors all day. I have heard of rooms with “Wash in the Blood of the Lamb” in illuminated letters, where there should be a wash-stand. But this craze for rustic lodgings is comparatively new. My grandfather writes to my father, 16 January 1862:—“Tremlett they say will leave Lustleigh at Ladyday, and Hurston of Way has taken Harton and will leave Way, even Crideford (who used to let one room) will leave on Ladyday for Torquay: so no lodgers will come to Lustleigh. Perhaps when the railway comes, there may be accommodation.”
Like many other country places, Lustleigh started a flower-show, which soon became a show of vegetables and poultry, with fewer prizes for flowers than for such things as cream and honey, needlework and cookery. There were athletic sports as well, and kiss-in-the-ring and dancing on the grass to the strains of a brass band, the church bells ringing changes while the brass band played—a proper old Pandy Romy Un, as some one called it, meaning Pandemonium, I think. People came to it from a distance, as it was held on the bank-holiday in August, and they could spend their morning on the Cleave and finish off with this.
I missed the Lustleigh flower-show in 1900, having just gone up to town; but a friend wrote me this account of it next day:—“We went in about 2, when it opened, and found some disorder in the main tent, as it had partially blown down early.... Then there was a horrible noise, and a great gust of wind ripped the poultry tent almost in half. The whole thing began to collapse, men were rushing in and being pulled out by screaming females, some were tightening the ropes, which others immediately loosed, and presently a great loose flap of canvas overturned the stand of cages—a horrid mass of ducks and fowls screaming and quacking and flapping all over the crowd, pursued by their owners and upsetting everything. And just at this moment the big flower marquee—which was of course deserted—was caught by a tremendous puff of wind and torn right up and dropped on the tables inside. It wasn’t heavy enough to be dangerous, but I wish I could give you any idea of how funny it was to see ****, who was rather bossing the show, creep from under the canvas with an old lady, an infuriated fowl pecking at his knickerbockered calves. One of the nicest incidents was a little old lady in a velvet mantle and black curls, careering backwards over the ground, knocking people over as she clutched at the tail of ahuge escaping and crowing cock with one hand, and with the other arm embraced a captured but still struggling and squawking goose. In about an hour after it was opened everything on the ground was swept quite flat. But excursion trains kept arriving, whose innocent passengers paid their sixpences—you couldn’t see the ruin from outside—and wondered why the crowd assembled at the gate laughed at them. However it was worth while to see the village boys fighting and scrambling under the fallen tent for the apples and potatoes.”
There is a May-day festival here, for which I am responsible. There used to be dancing round the May-pole at the flower-show and other festivals, but none upon May-day itself; and I put an end to that anomaly. The children at Lustleigh school—boys and girls—elect one of the girls as Queen, and her name is carved upon a rock on the hill behind this house. Then on May-day the Queen walks in procession under a canopy of flowers carried by four of the boys, her crown and sceptre being carried by two others; then come her maids of honour; and then all the other children of the school, most of them carrying flowers in garlands or on staves. The procession winds along through Lustleigh and through Wreyland, halting at certain places to sing the customary songs, and at last ascends the hill behind here. The Queen is enthroned upon a rock looking down upon the May-pole: the crown of flowers is placed upon her head, and the arum-lily sceptre in her hand: the maids of honour do their homage, laying their bouquets at her feet; and the four-and-twenty dancers perform their dance before her. Then comes the serious business of the day—the children’s tea. This year, 1917, there was a shortage of cereals; but I saved the situation with two hundred hard-boiled eggs.
There are two Friendly Societies here, Rationals and Rechabites; and for many years the Rationals had a church-parade upon Whit-sunday and a fête upon Whit-monday. In 1908 they decided not to have their fête that year: so the Rechabites announced a fête upon Whit-monday, and then the Rationals announced their fête as usual, fearing that their rivals would annex Whit-monday permanently. So there were two fêtesgoing on together in fields not far apart, and each had a big brass band.
This little dispute gave rise to an incredible display of hatred and malice between the two societies; and the Rector told the Rationals that he could not have a church-parade for them till they were reconciled. As that was out of the question, they had a church-parade without the Rector or the Church. They went round as usual in procession with their banner and regalia, collecting for the hospital, and halted in the town-place just outside the Church at time of evensong. And they sang psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with such support from their brass band, that the congregation could not hear a word the Rector said.
Before their fête the Rationals had a dinner, and I went. A man opposite me was saying that he had given more benefit to the Society than the Society had given to him, for he was now past fifty and had never drawn sick-pay yet. I was able to say that I was past fifty also, and had never yet been ill enough to stay in bed all day. But a man lower down the table must have thought that we were getting proud, for he remarked very audibly just then:—“There be a sort that do go sudden, when they do go.” A few years afterwards I was ill enough to stay in bed for many weeks, but I managed to get out of doors for May-day. I noticed a group of people talking together and glancing at me now and then, and presently one of them came over and explained:—“What us be sayin’, zir, be this: whatever shall us do for our May-day, when you be dead.”
They were ringing a knell at North Bovey one afternoon when I was out beyond there; and it sounded very weird, when the gusts of wind carried the wail of the bells across the hills. I met one of the Lustleigh ringers as I was coming back, and I asked him why they never did it there. He answered:—“But us do. Sometime. Not for all folk like, though. But us’ll ring’n for thee.”
When I was overhauling one of the old houses here, I made good some panelling that had been covered up with lath andplaster. After it was done, a man came over to tell me of some seasoned oak of extraordinary width, which I might buy. I saw that it would make fine panels, but my panelling was done. And then he said:—“Well, and if you didn’t use it for panellin’, it might serve some other purpose. Why, th’old Mr*****and his wife both had their coffins made from that same tree.”
One of the old Wreyland houses looked out upon an orchard at the back; but the orchard was not let with the house, and at that time there was no back-door. Riding down the lane one day, the owner saw a piece of wood, as long as a fishing-rod, coming slowly out from one of the windows at the back, and going on until it reached an apple on a tree: it caught the apple in a sort of pocket at the end, and then went slowly back into the house again, taking the apple with it. To make quite sure, he waited till he saw this done a second time; and then he went round to the front, and told the father of the family what he thought about the sons, for obviously it was the boys who did it. The father said he would no longer be the tenant of a man who spoke to him like that: so he bought a piece of ground in Lustleigh, and built himself a house.
Another father of a family came to live in the old house; and a son of his took something of more value than an apple, and went off to America. After many years the son came back, and he was wanted by the police. They thought that he was hiding in his father’s house, and they got a warrant to search it. There is only one policeman here, and another one was sent for to assist, lest the man should slip out at the back, while our policeman came in at the front. Like all other things in little country places, the whole scheme was known to everybody here—even the train by which the other policeman would arrive; and a little crowd came round to see the sport, as if it were a bit of rabbitting. Strange to say, the man was not at home.
It was said that he was hiding in the cave in Loxter copse, and that food was carried up to him at night; but I do not know the truth of that. The copse is on the hill behind this house, and the cave is a hollow in a cleave of elvan rocks, lowand narrow at the entrance, but more commodious inside, and branching into passages with practicable exits. It suits foxes very well, but would hardly suit a man who was not being hunted; though possibly I might get a tenant for it, if I gave the letting to a firm that let an urban house near here as ‘a romantic semi-detached villa,’ and another as ‘The Retreat,’ though it looked out on a garage and a stable, front and back.
Some eighty years ago a man put an explosive in a log in his woodhouse, and the log exploded on a neighbour’s hearth. The woodhouse was inviolate after that, but the neighbour’s injuries were serious; and my grandfather doubted if it was fair game. Taking things for personal use is not the same as taking things for pawn or sale; and I have known it done by men who otherwise were straight—except in horse-dealing and flower-shows and other such matters as have ethics of their own.
A man told me with righteous indignation that his neighbour had removed his landmarks in the night, and annexed a strip of his allotment, nearly three feet wide. I saw the neighbour afterwards, rubbing his hands with glee. He told me, “I’ve a-watched’n a-eggin’ they postes on, inch by inch and night by night, and now I’ve set’n back right where they was afore.” And a measurement proved that they were now in their right places.
Another man came to me about potato-ground or something of the sort; and on going away he said he would have come in earlier, only he had been sitting longer than he meant with a neighbour who was ill. It was a case of scarlet fever; and I said something about infection. But he said he did not hold with that. “What I want to know, be this:—The very first person as ever had the scarlet fever, who did he catch it from?”
In talking to a man who had been taken seriously ill, I asked him how the attack came on; and he told me how. “The pain took me that sudden round the middle, that I thought I’d parted right asunder. But it didn’t so happen to be.” There was nothing of the wasp about him to suggest the likelihood of such a severance.
An old man, who lived some way from here, was refusing his consent to a thing that could have been done equally well without his consent, though at much greater cost; and I went over to talk to him about it. He did not know me, and resented my intrusion; but presently he asked:—“Be you a son of Mr Torr as were a friend of Mr*****?” I said I was; and in a moment he was genial, slapped me on the back, and said:—“Why, one day they two pretty near drownded I.” He was going along a clam—a bridge formed of a single tree-trunk thrown across a stream—and they gave the trunk a twist, when he was half way over. The recollection of it put him into such good humour that he promised his consent.
I once told this to a friend, while I was going along a clam myself; and the notion struck him that he might perhaps give his children a claim upon my gratitude, if he just rolled me off.
There is little danger of drowning in these streams, as they generally are shallow. But accidents have happened. On the night of 27 December 1863 a man was going to Rudge from Wreyland by the clam across the Wrey; and he fell in, struck his head against a rock, and lay there stunned till he was drowned. His body was found next morning.
Just between Wreyland and Lustleigh the Wrey is very narrow; and I was able to rebuild the bridge there in the primæval way. The timber was decaying, and there were doubts about the liability for repair: so I assumed the office of Pontifex. I got blocks of granite nearly twelve feet long, and weighing nearly two tons each, and just placed them across the stream.
As the whole rainfall of the valley has to pass through the little gap between Wreyland and Lustleigh, there naturally are floods here after very heavy rains or thaws; and then it is not easy to go from one place to the other. Writing to my father on 26 December 1847 about a flood at that time, my grandfather recalls an incident in a much worse flood eight years before:—“Sally*****could not come over the meadows, and went round Bishop’s Stone, and there found it equally bad: so her son-in-law Dick*****took her to his back. But she being so heavy—double Dick’s weight—Dick was obliged to put her down in the middle of it.”
One afternoon a Church Lads’ Brigade came over from a seaside place to see the Cleave and other sights, and they had their tea in these meadows by the Wrey. The weather being warm, they all went for the stream, and bathed with a publicity that was hitherto unknown here, though not uncommon at the seaside. One of our oldest inhabitants was aghast at it, and said to me:—“Well, Mr Torr, if this be Wreyland, us might live in savage parts.”
Another day a Classic Dancer came over here to dance for me. She danced the Spring Song on the turf, with the tall cypress hedges as a background; and it really was a very pretty sight. But some of the spectators thought less about her dancing than her dress. And their verdict was:—“Her garments had not got no substance in them.”
Not long ago one of the old inhabitants was talking to me about the War; and this was how it struck him:—“It be a terrible thing, this war: proper terrible it be. I never knowed bacon such a price.” Another one looked at it from another point of view:—“What be the sense of their contendin’? Why, us in Lustleigh don’t wage war on they in Bovey, and wherefore should the nations fight?”
In talking to a very old inhabitant, I spoke of something out on Dartmoor, and he replied:—“Well, Dartymoor be a place I never were at.” I remarked that it was within a walk, and he replied:—“I never had no occasion to go there.”
Life is never very strenuous here. People always fancy there is time to spare—“the days be long.” That answers to the Spanishmañana—to-morrow—or the Arabicba‘d bukra—the day after to-morrow—and is almost worthy of Theodore and Luke. In theSayings of the FathersPalladius relates that they were discontented with their dwelling, and in the winter they said they would move in the summer, and in the summer they said they would move in the winter; and they went on saying that for the space of fifty years; and they both died in that place.