the best he had to give you (it is the Alpha of the laws of true human
life)--that no city is prosperous in the sight of Heaven unless the
peasant sells in its market; that no city is ever righteous in the
sight of Heaven unless the noble walks in its street.”
Prout’s work is divided into two clearly defined periods. In the first
he drew only English scenes. In 1819 he made his first tour on the
Continent, and thenceforth devoted himself almost entirely to foreign
subjects. In this devotion Ruskin lamented the “loss of his first
love.” His grand wrecks of Indiamen were instinct with that subtle
sense of vastness that the Art Teacher felt.
AUTHORITIES
The authorities for the life of Samuel Prout are:--
“Samuel Prout, Artist,” by J. Hine, in the _Transactions_ of the
Plymouth Institution, 1879-80.
_Art in Devonshire_, by Geo. Pycroft, Exeter, 1883, pp. 106-17.
Royet, _History of the Old Water-Colour Society_, London, 1891.
Ruskin’s “Notes on Samuel Prout and William Hunt,” new edition in
_Ruskin on Pictures_, London, 1902.
/Note./--The publisher of this work will esteem it a favour
if the possessors of pictures or drawings by Prout will place
themselves in communication with him. He is particularly anxious
to obtain copies of letters by, or documents about, the artist--in
short, any material which may be of use in the preparation of the
exhaustive Life which is in progress. All communications should be
addressed to Mr. John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London, W.
FONTELAUTUS
It may seem--in fact, it must seem--strange to have included in a
volume of notices of remarkable Devonshire characters a biography of
an infant who did not attain to the age of two years; but I leave the
reader to judge from the sequel whether I should have been justified in
omitting a notice of Fontelautus.
For an account of the life and adventures of this precocious infant we
are obliged to refer to the following work, published 1826: _Subversion
of Materialism by Credible Attestation of Supernatural Occurrences_....
Pt. I. _Memoirs of Fontelautus, infant son of Prebendary Dennis,
comprising his demoniacal obsession, and diversified apparition,
with his father’s ante-nuptial vision and revelations._ Pt. II.
_Supernatural Anecdotes of various Families’ Farewell Apparitions,
Supernatural Fire tokens...._ By Jonas Dennis, /B.C.L./,
Prebendary of the Royal Collegiate Church of Exeter Castle.”
Prebendary Dennis hurls his son Fontelautus as a bomb into the camp
of atheists, materialists, and rationalists. If Fontelautus does not
shatter their unbelief, they are past arguing with, past praying for.
Prebendary Dennis begins with the ancestry of Fontelautus, who was
derived in direct lineal descent from Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe
Burnell, the rapacious and insatiable devourer of ecclesiastical
estates, made fat on the plunder of Church property by Henry VIII.
Mr. Jonas Dennis is led to observe that there was an hereditary
tendency in the Dennis family to acquisitiveness, to avarice; but
this proclivity, like gout, jumped a generation, and he informs us
that he himself was so entirely free from the family taint that he
declined a benefice from scruples respecting the administration of
the sacraments; that he further rejected the advances of a lady
with a fortune of £50,000, on the discovery of incompatibility of
inclination; and that he subsequently married “a lady with ten pounds
for her fortune, calculating probability of conjugal felicity from the
endowment of amiable qualities, placid disposition, compliable temper,
serious principles, polite accomplishments, and last, though not least,
domestic habits.” But if acquisitiveness jumped a generation, it
manifested itself in Fontelautus, who from the earliest age clawed and
endeavoured to ram into his mouth whatever he could lay his hands on.
The Dennis family had been one of warriors: their arms were
battle-axes; and the Rev. Jonas admits that combativeness remained as
a pronounced feature in his own character, the hereditary principle
in himself prompting him to engage in controversy. Some of his
achievements he records. It seems that the priest vicars of the
cathedral of Exeter had petitioned the Dean and Chapter to suppress
the week-day matins. The Chapter was more than half inclined to agree,
when the stalwart Jonas threw himself into the midst, and stormed,
threatened, pointed to the Constitutions, dared the Chapter to give
way, and so saved the choral matins in the minster.
The cathedral, he informs us, was kept open, and was used for
assignations and for various objectionable gatherings. At his
instigation the doors were locked between the hours of Divine service.
It is possible that what he here refers to may be the performance
of the _Gloria in Excelsis_ by the choir in the Minstrel Gallery at
midnight on Christmas Eve. This was stopped about the same time on
account of the disorderly scenes that took place in the nave; but he
does not specially refer to this.
Every now and then information reached his ear of intended jobs by
the Bishop (Carey) to accommodate noblemen, and rich squires of the
diocese, by putting very undesirable scions of these families into some
of his best livings. Dennis wrote to the Bishop, told him that if he
proceeded in these appointments he would publish what he knew about the
character of those whom he presented and of the negotiations undertaken
to obtain these benefices.
He also strove to get Convocation to transact business. “It was a point
gained to make a torpid tribe stretch and flap their wings, although
speedily drooping into a seven years’ rest.”
The mother of Prebendary Dennis was a daughter of John Cobley, of
Crediton--in fact, the Fontelautus who was to be would be a kinsman
through his grandmother of the immortal Uncle Tom Cobley.
The Prebendary having no church near him at Exmouth, where he resided,
that was open for daily prayer, was wont to recite his office when
walking or riding. One day when he was on horseback and engaged in
prayer, he saw a sudden illumination of the sky in the east, that grew
brighter and ever more brilliant till it exceeded that of the sun, and
the light appeared to pulsate in waves. Dazzled and overcome he reined
in his horse, when from the depths of the light he heard a voice, “The
discipline of the Church shall be restored through you!” Then a pause,
and the light swelled and enveloped him, and he heard, “Miss Shore
will marry you!” After a pause a third voice fell from heaven, “You
shall recover your health by observing the fasts of the Church.” Then
the light gradually faded away.
“Of the three predictions,” writes Prebendary Dennis, “attended with
a vision, two have already been fulfilled, i.e. his engagement and
marriage to Miss Shore (Juliana Susannah) daughter of the Rev. Thomas
Shore, vicar of Otterton, and brother of Lord Teignmouth; next his
recovery of sound health. Toward the fulfilment of the other the author
has from that day laboured with might and main. To it he has devoted
prayer, thought, money, speech, travel, exerting every effort within
compass of attainment.” According to him, Papal supremacy had been
abolished in the Church of England, Royal supremacy existed but as a
shadow, that supremacy under which the Church was crushed, but did not
groan and seem inconvenienced, or to dislike, was the supremacy of
Mammon. And he traced this supremacy to the coming over of William of
Orange, and the filling of the bishoprics, and all preferments with men
who were mere timeservers and political partisans. He was an advocate
for the restoration of clinical unction; he preached it, and records
several instances of healing through it. He also regarded madness as in
many cases due to demoniacal possession, and urged the use of exorcism.
The following is an extract from the Register of Baptisms of Exmouth
for the year 1824:--
“Fontelautus, first-born son and fifth child of Jonas and Juliana
Susanna ... Dennis, Prebendary of Kerswell, in the R. Collegiate Church
of the Castle of Exeter. Baptised by me, Jonas Dennis, /B.C.L./,
the aforesaid Prebendary. Sponsors: Sir W. T. Pole, Bart., by his
proxy, the Rev. R. Prat, vicar; the Rev. Jno. Dennis, /A.B./,
and Elizabeth his wife. Supposed to be the first instance of trine
immersion since its suppression by the Presbyterian Directory of the
Long Parliament.”
Fontelautus means, of course, “washed in the (sacred) fount.” What
could a wretched infant do with such a name? Could it possibly live?
“Peaceful was his countenance, engaging was his manner, penetrating his
looks. In family worship his attention and serious aspect was striking
to the spectators.”
But, alas! there was something of the hereditary taint in
Fontelautus--the love of admiration. “Every little cunning trick was
resorted to for its gratification. Every description of expedient was
equally adopted by him as by a vain adult. Approaching home in his
attendant’s arms, on her return from executing any commission, he
studiously assumed appearance of having been bearer of the purchased
article by grasping it in his extended fingers, merely to excite
admiration. Rather than not excite attention, he courted notice by
laying his head on the floor in preference to other support.”
Here follows an exquisite specimen of the style of the Rev. Jonas: “The
few moments spent in his father’s arms were marked by ecstacy; and the
privilege of attendance on tonsorial operations”--he means watching the
barber cut his father’s hair and shave him--“was highly estimated by
the animated boy. But the son of a scholar commands an inferior portion
of paternal time and caresses, than he ensures in maternal embraces or
sartorial attention! His mother, of course, was the paramount object of
regard. He could not obliterate the associated delight of a suckling.”
Fontelautus seemed to be progressing lustily with his pap and his
bottle, and dribbling effusively as indication of teething, when about
a fortnight before the end of May, as the cook-maid sat at night in the
kitchen, she saw the headless form of a child enter the door from the
court, walk or glide through the kitchen into the pantry, and suddenly
vanish.
On 1 June, seven weeks before Fontelautus had completed his second
year, rising to meet his father who had been absent from home for
some months, the boy got his foot entangled in a bedside carpet, and
falling on his right arm bent the bone, or, as Jonas words it, “the
pressure of the superincumbent weight gave it an unprecedented degree
of incurvation.” Before he had recovered from this he had a fall on
his head, and soon water on the brain began to gather, and he had
convulsions during ten days, and from the appearance of his eyes it was
clear that the child could no longer see. The father was convinced that
this was a case of _ob_session by an evil spirit, not of _pos_session,
as he is careful to explain, and he had recourse to exorcism, which
temporarily relieved the distressed infant. The contortions, the
expression of the face, the foaming of the mouth, all satisfied the
father that the child was beset by evil spirits, and his exorcisms were
always conducive to relief of the patient; an expression of repose and
relief stole over the distressed countenance of the child; and when
he died it was during such a pause of relief; as the Prebendary says,
“His soul was not extracted from the body by the coercive agency of an
infernal envoy.”
So far we do not see how that Fontelautus should be such a crushing
argument against materialism. Yet the _Memoirs_ were addressed to “Mr.
William Lawrence, surgeon, as chief British apostle of the system of
Natural Philosophy completely reducing man to a biped featherless
brute; therefore eradicating apprehensions of future responsibility,
consequently destructive of every moral feeling in the heart.”
But wait, Mr. Apostle Lawrence, the evidence against materialism is
coming!
It must be premised that the family lived at the time at Belmont House,
in Bicton Street, Exmouth, and this was the scene of what followed:--
“On the night succeeding the decease of Fontelautus, for preclusion
of the body from renewed maternal inspection, it was removed to an
attic apartment, having an unglazed window open to the staircase. With
the same view, the lid of the coffin was screwed until the following
day, when it was unscrewed on suggestion of hazard to bearers from
condensation of putrescent exhalation.”
At the Prebendary’s desire, the head of his child had been cut off
and the skull opened to examine the condition of the brain, and to
ascertain the amount of water that was in it. And it is remarkable that
this operation took place in the room immediately above the kitchen
in which a few weeks before the cook had seen the apparition of the
headless child.
“Pending the intervening night, the inmates of the nursery being
removed to another sleeping room, the nursemaid, during half an hour,
while lying in bed, heard his accustomed tones of voice as distinctly
as when occasionally lying with her during lifetime. Sitting up, she
heard the voice continued precisely in the usual mode constantly
resorted to by the affectionate child, to engage his nurse’s nocturnal
attention, if through fatigue reluctant to be disturbed. His vocal
tones were peculiarly winning, coaxing, and caressing. They retained
their pristine character during the period of apparition. Forgetful,
for the time, of all impossibility of reanimation, through dissection
of the cerebellum, she concluded, through protraction of the
phenomenon, that life was restored. On walking out on the staircase,
and remaining ten minutes, the voice continued to attend her, until
hastening to the coffin and without success endeavouring to force open
the lid. His favourite sister, Maria, lying in a crib in the same room,
heard her brother’s voice with equal distinctness, both that night and
the two following days. She, indeed, heard the sound of his voice so
frequently transmitted from the attic room, as repeatedly to be induced
to hasten thither in expectation of finding him alive. Her mother,
sitting in the drawing-room, likewise heard the same articulate sound.
At one time, the girl at the foot of the stairs, and the servant at the
nursery door, both heard the infant’s tones repeated at the same time
from the attic room. At another time, Maria, during five minutes, saw
the apparition of her brother’s hand stretching out of the room window
where his body lay; and she knocked at her mother’s door, calling her
out to see Lautus, as he was alive. Before her mother arrived, she saw
the hand turned round and drawn in at the window. She continued to hear
his voice coming in the same direction the succeeding day.
“At night, her mother, entreated by her father to deny herself the
pleasure of saluting her deceased darling’s icy lips, reluctantly
yielded to the injunction. She was subsequently awakened from sound
sleep by sensible perception of a wing fluttering on her lips, with
such rapidity as nearly to suspend breathing. Sitting up in the bed,
she then heard the more distant sound of which fluttering, equally
distinct to the ear as previously perceptible by contact. It continued
for some time in the upper part of the room. On searching the
following morning, no material object elucidating the phenomena was by
any means discoverable, both window and door having through the night
been closely shut and locked.”
That this was none other than a moth that escaped notice by day by
clinging to a curtain with folded wings is obvious enough.
The reader is by this time doubtless so tired of the inflated style of
the Prebendary, that he will be grateful to have the rest of the story
told in plain English.
The Rev. Jonas had made up his mind to have Fontelautus buried in the
garden of his home, and arrangements were made that his five sisters
were to be the bearers. But this was at once met by the positive
refusal of Maria, who declared that she would be no party to the burial
of her brother, who, she was assured, was still alive. After the
funeral she remained in an agony of distress, and this idea continued
to possess her, and so firmly impressed her mind, that at length, to
appease her and satisfy her that Fontelautus was really dead, he was
dug up again.
Such is the story that the Prebendary thought would be annihilation to
materialism.
He was the author of a good many books. I give the titles of a few.
_Church Reform, by a Church Radical, and Other Tracts._ Exeter, 1834-5.
_Alliance of Church and State, Neither Sinful nor Unscriptural._
London, 1834.
_Key to the Regalia, with Anecdotes of the Late King._ London, 1820.
_Architectura Sacra._ Exeter, 1819.
_Cat o’ Nine Tails._ Exeter, 1823.
_The Landscape Gardener._ Chelsea, 1835.
The Rev. Jonas Dennis himself died at Polsloe Park on 6 December,
1846, aged seventy-one. His only ecclesiastical preferment in life
was the prebend of Carswell, one of the four prebends attached to the
church of St. Mary, in the Castle of Exeter, which he held from 1799 to
the day of his death, receiving the yearly emolument of £2 13s. 4d.
He was buried at Otterton, and his grave and tombstone, as well as
those of his wife, are in the churchyard.
If Providence had chosen him, as the voice from heaven intimated, to
reform the Church, it made a most unhappy selection, as his inflated
and absurd style of writing and speaking made him an object of ridicule
not of respect, and deprived his efforts of success.
I will add some of the stories from the second part of his _Hammer of
Materialists_.
Prebendary Salter, /M.A./, tutor to the son of the former Bishop
Fisher, of Exeter, translated to Salisbury in 1807, declared that one
night he saw his father’s apparition standing by the bedside. At the
same time his little child began to whimper, and this roused his wife,
who also saw the spectre, and both particularly noticed the peculiar
plaiting of the shirt. In a short time a special messenger arrived
bringing information that the old gentleman was dead.
Sarah, wife of James Smith, of Peckham, Russia merchant, and herself
a descendant of General Monk and mother-in-law of John Dennis, the
brother of Prebendary Jonas, saw a female friend’s apparition at the
foot of her bed. Next day a letter arrived announcing the dying anxiety
of the party for an interview with Mrs. Smith, to entreat her kind
attention to her surviving orphans. The moment of dissolution coincided
with that of the apparition. Mrs. Burrow, aunt of Baron Giffard,
informed the author that going up Fore Street, Exeter, one night, she
saw, walking at a little distance before her, an intimate acquaintance
named Jones, a retired silversmith. Perceiving him to halt at the door
of the house where he had been formerly established in business, she
hurried her pace to catch him up, when he vanished as she reached the
spot. Next morning a messenger arrived to announce his death, which had
occurred at the very time of her seeing the spectre.
Mrs. Woodall, of Dartmouth, a widow, blind, was informed by letter from
her daughter-in-law in November, 1797, of the death of her cousin, her
sister-in-law; Miss Sarah Woodall replied through an amanuensis that
she had previously known of the death, by feeling the clay-cold hand of
her cousin clasp her own as she lay in bed.
The late Lady Rolle was reported to have been seen after her decease by
the gardener at Bicton, at the gate of the Dutch garden.
The gardener of Franklyn, in St. Thomas by Exeter, then in the
possession of a family named Jones, said that he saw his father’s ghost
whilst he was at work in one of the gardens of the mansion.
Mr. Pearce, of Exeter, a retired wine merchant, informed the author
that his little child had been wont in the mornings to leave his crib
in the nursery and run to his father’s room and cuddle into his bed.
Once when the child was very ill Mr. Pearce saw him come in as usual in
his nightshirt, whereat he shouted angrily to the nurse in another room
to rebuke her for allowing the child to leave its crib whilst so ill.
The child had not left it--at that moment it had died.
A male servant of the late Colonel Templer, of Teignmouth, in November,
1810, during an incessant fall of rain, swelling the rivers and
carrying away bridges, had three successive dreams the same night, in
which he thought that some one, in danger of death on the Dawlish road,
was calling to him to come to his aid. So persuaded was the man that he
was truly summoned, that he hastily dressed, saddled and mounted one
of his master’s horses, and proceeded along the road in the darkness,
till his horse suddenly drew up and refused to proceed. Dismounting,
he found a woman apparently dying in a channel of water furrowed deep
across the highway. By this means her life was preserved.
The late Mr. Smith, of Exeter, proprietor of a muslin warehouse,
in three successive dreams in the same night, which he separately
repeated to his wife, was summoned to go at once to Bodmin. He obeyed,
and on arriving there, heard that the assizes were being held. Out
of curiosity he went into the court and heard the judge ask whether
any one had seen the prisoner on the day and at the hour at which he
was charged with having committed a murder in the west of Cornwall.
Looking at the accused, Mr. Smith exclaimed, “Why! he was in my shop in
Exeter on that very day.” Through such conclusive evidence an alibi was
established, and the prisoner was acquitted and discharged.
The Rev. Mr. Reynolds was master of the Grammar School, Exeter. He
lost his wife, and after that, possibly because his spirits failed him
and he lacked energy, the school declined seriously and he thought of
giving it up. While he was debating this in his mind, one night he saw
the figure of a woman stand by his bedside. She told him that she was
his mother who had died in childbed at his birth, and that she had been
suffered to come to him to encourage him, and bid him go on with the
school, for that a notable improvement in his circumstances would take
place if he remained at his post. He communicated this to Dr. Rennel,
rector of Drewsteignton.
The last story I shall quote is of a different character. Mr.
Tuckfield, of Little Fulford by Crediton, was presumedly dead, and was
laid in his shell, and men were set to watch through the night. They
were plentifully supplied with candles and spirits. In the dead of the
night one pulled out a pack of cards and the two began to play, and as
they played they drank, till they became intoxicated.
Then said one to the other: “I say, Bill, old Squire Tuckfield he did
like a drop o’ spirits in his day. I reckon it won’t do him a crumb
o’ harm to give him a drop now.” And taking his glass of almost neat
spirits, he poured it down the throat of the deceased. Thereat, to
their dismay, the supposed corpse gasped, opened its eyes, sat up, and
said: “Give me another drop and I’ll take a hand of cards with you.”
WILLIAM LANG, OF BRADWORTHY
“Foortie Articles exhibited against _William Lang_ who was Vicar of
the Parish of Broadworthy, &c., humbly presented in the High Court of
Parliament. London, 1641.”
“To the Rt. Honourable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses assembled in
the Commons House this present Parliament.
“Humbly showing to the Honourable Assembly that one William Lang, Vicar
of the Parish of Bradworthie aforesaid, having for about eighteen yeers
last past grievously vexed his parishioners with infinite Vexations
and causeless Suits to their exceeding great oppression, and to the
ruine and undoings of many of them, and lived with great dishonour to
God, and scandall to the Ministrie; He, the said Lang, being guiltie
of Symonie, Common Barretrie, Forgerie, Practising to poyson some, and
Endeavouring to pistoll others of his Parishioners, with many other
foule and gross misdemeanors, particularlie set forth, and expressed in
the paper herewith annexed, the consideration whereof is hereby humbly
presented to the Honorable Assemblie.