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SMALL TALK
AT WREYLAND
THIRD SERIES
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E. C. 4
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY }
CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
MADRAS }
TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. OF
CANADA, LTD.
TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
[Illustration: LAYING NEW THATCH
YONDER WREYLAND]
SMALL TALK
AT WREYLAND
BY
CECIL TORR
THIRD SERIES
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1923
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY
W. LEWIS
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
PREFACE
In case this volume should be read by anyone who has not read its
predecessors, I am quoting these three paragraphs of the original volume
by way of explanation.
And first, about the place itself,
_Wreyland is land by the Wrey, a little stream in Devonshire. The Wrey
flows into the Bovey, and the Bovey into the Teign, and the Teign flows
out into the sea at Teignmouth. The land is on the east side of the
Wrey, just opposite the village of Lustleigh. It forms a manor, and
gives its name to a hamlet of six houses, of which this as one._
Secondly, about my writing all these things,
_Down here, when any of the older natives die, I hear people lamenting
that so much local knowledge has died with them, and saying that they
should have written things down. Fearing that this might soon be said of
me, I got a book last Christmas--1916--and began to write things down. I
meant to keep to local matters, but have gone much further than I
meant._
Thirdly, about my publishing what I had written,
_I wrote this little book for private circulation; and it was actually
in type, and ready for printing, before its publication was suggested. I
feel some diffidence in inviting strangers to read what I intended only
for my personal friends. But it all seems to hang together, and I have
not omitted anything._
After that was published I went on writing things down in the same way
as before. A second volume was published in 1921. This third (and final)
volume has been written in 1922 and 1923.
CECIL TORR.
YONDER WREYLAND,
LUSTLEIGH,
DEVON.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LAYING NEW THATCH (YONDER WREYLAND) _Frontispiece_
THE HALL HOUSE _To face p._ 32
THE AUTHOR’S DESK ” 64
VIEW ACROSS WREY VALLEY ” 96
SMALL TALK AT WREYLAND
III
This slumberous place has had another rude awakening. Five years ago an
aeroplane passed over us--the only one that has been seen from here. And
now, recently, a cow-boy on a buck-jumper came galloping down the lane
here, firing off his pistols in the air. It was for a film; and the
rider (as I learned afterwards) was The Thrill-a-Minute Stunt King
himself.
The theme was of a cow-boy, born in England, revisiting his early home.
Considering the Atlantic, I am not sure he would have come home on a
buck-jumper with all his toggery on; but a producer knows exactly what
audiences want. A film (I learned) requires ‘love interest’: so a pair
of Stars made love outside the Hall House door. And an old inhabitant
who came along, was so shamed at their brazenness that he could only
gasp out, “Well, Now, There.”
There is a Wreyland theme that would have made as good a film. It is a
story of John Dynham, who was lord of the manor here from 1381 to 1428;
and, though it cannot be entirely true, it embodies some undoubted
facts. Briefly, the Bishop of Exeter admonished him, for the avoidance
of scandal, to cease from visiting the lady Isotta, even in the daytime;
and as this had no effect, he excommunicated him. Dynham appealed to the
Archbishop, which took up a year, and then he appealed to the Pope,
which took up two years more: by which time he had voluntarily ceased
from visiting the lady Isotta and was visiting the lady Muriel.
Films are dreary things when seen upon a screen; but the making of a
film is as good as a play. You hear the heroine told to put more passion
into it and look really moved, and then you see her putting in passion
and looking really moved. And the villain who kidnaps her, is told to
spring out like a tiger and put a sack over her head; and he springs out
as like a tiger as he can, and there is no need for telling her to
struggle and scream: she does that automatically when the sack drags
down her hair. Theatrical rehearsals may be just as funny; but I do not
see rehearsals on the stage.
I may just mention here that I was not the author of a Gaiety burlesque
called _Cinder-Ellen up too late_. (Ellen was Nellie Farren, and the
whole thing was a skit on _Cinderella up to date_.) Fred Leslie wrote it
and also acted in it, and he took the pseudonym of ‘Actor’ but had it
printed ‘A. C. Torr.’ He also wrote _Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué_, and
(I think) some other Gaiety burlesques, with this same pseudonym of A.
C. Torr; and people who knew me very slightly, assumed that I had
written it all, although the style was not a bit like mine.
This was some thirty years ago, when I was writing solemnly on the
chronology of the Egyptian kings--including Tut-anch-Amen, who was not
so well known then as he is now. (Most of them deserved the title of the
Duchess d’ Agio Uncertanti in _Ruy Blas_.) When my book on them came
out, a friend of mine described it to me as a book to be given away with
a pound of tea--he said readers would require at least a pound to keep
them awake all through; and he could not possibly have said that of
these plays. Style, however, is no sure guide to authorship. Think of
“The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.”
Unless the authorship were known, few people would ascribe it to the man
whose travels inspired Tennyson, “Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls ...
I read and felt that I was there.” Lear’s travels are forgotten, but his
nonsense books are in the memory of everyone who read them when a
child.
Looking back to early years, I find the things I have remembered best,
have seldom been the things best worth remembering; and other people
tell me that they suffer from the same defect. I remember a pump at the
Great Exhibition of 1862: many other things besides, but nothing else as
clearly as that pump. It was rather like a four-post bedstead with four
impervious sheets of water coming down between the posts; and it just
took my fancy. I wrote two letters about it to my grandfather, telling
him that I would take him round to see it, if he came up to town. Being
four years old, and getting on for five, I felt quite capable of taking
him about. And he wrote back to my father, 22 July 1862, “I certainly
shall avail myself of his very kind promise to take me to the Exhibition
and show me that very wonderful pump, for I did study hydraulics one
day.”
In a letter of his, 23 February 1862, mentioning his aunt’s first
husband, he tells my father, “I remember him coming here to see my aunt
before marriage, and he brought down the finest pine-apple I ever saw.”
That was close on seventy years before, when my grandfather was a very
small boy; and I suspect he had a clearer recollection of the pine-apple
than of the man who brought it.
The pump and pine-apple were real things; but the youthful mind will
often grip a blunder as firmly as a fact. The first scene in the first
piece I ever saw, was described as A Tin Mine in Cornwall. (I fancy it
was in the pantomime at Drury Lane at Christmas 1860.) The scene was not
like any tin-mine I have ever seen; but when tin-mines are mentioned,
this is the one that I first picture in my mind. In another pantomime
there was a scene of The Great Pyramid, and King Cheops appeared. My
grown-ups laughed about it afterwards, saying Cheops did very well, but
it was not his pyramid--the scene painter had got the pyramid of Cestius
at Rome; and they looked out an old engraving of that attenuated thing.
And in after years when I have seen the thing at Rome, my thoughts have
always turned to Cheops rather than to Cestius or to Shelley or to
Keats.
There was a Judge of whom I should have said with confidence that I had
never seen him except upon the Bench. But in looking through a diary I
found that 9 July 1865 ended with a note that he called in the evening;
and then I saw it all. It was in London, in our drawing-room, and cups
of tea were being handed round at 9.0, as was the custom then; and he
came in, took hock-and-seltzer in preference to tea, and then talked
away. I cannot remember what he talked about, but I can see him and the
room and all its furniture and the other people on the chairs on which
they sat, just as I saw it from the chair where I was sitting. That
picture had been dormant in my mind for more than fifty years, and then
came out quite bright and clear; and I do not know how many thousands of
these pictures are lying dormant there.
Though such a picture may be bright and clear, it only shows things from
the point of view from which I happened to see them, and at the moment
when I happened to be there. I am not like the Reluctant Dragon: he
could manage to “think of things going on, and how they kept going on
just the same, you know”; and I cannot manage that. I went to
Constantinople in 1880--I had not seen an Oriental town before--and I
was very much impressed by the great streams of people going along the
bridge of boats across the Golden Horn; perhaps, in my small way, as
much impressed as Dante was in 1300, when he saw the people streaming
across the bridge at Rome, _Inferno_, XVIII. 28-33. But the crowds he
saw were only for the Jubilee, whereas the crowds I saw went streaming
on year after year; and I can never realize that what I saw was always
to be seen there, or that other sights “keep going on just the same” as
at the time I saw them.
Before the War I had a notion of repeating all my early travels year by
year, beginning in 1917, as that would be the jubilee of my first going
abroad. I wanted to go over the same ground again and see what changes
fifty years had made; but my last journey was in 1913, and I came home
through Châlons, Reims, Laon, Amiens, and other places too well known
next year.
I went up to Haytor rocks on 25 April 1922, having noticed in my
father’s diary that we were there on 25 April 1862, and that I “climbed
up both the rocks with great agility.” I climbed up both the rocks
again, but cannot say I did it with agility--the sixty years had told. A
fortnight later I was out near there again, beating the parish bounds: a
solemnity performed each year on the Monday after Roodmas. It was a long
procession at the start, but quite short at the finish five hours later
on; and as we went along, I heard men saying things in French and others
replying with a word or two of Japanese.
My thoughts again went back to sixty years ago. Saying things in French
would have been quite as heinous then as saying things in German now.
After being our ally in the Crimean war, the new Napoleon was
threatening us with invasion, just as his uncle had threatened our
progenitors sixty years before: volunteers were being raised again, as
in the old Napoleon’s time, to fight against the French invaders; and
the old hereditary hatred was blazing out afresh. It was the Saxon
hatred of the Norman, kept alive by endless wars with France. In 1690
the French burned Teignmouth and anchored in Torbay, and all the West
was roused by beacon fires from Haytor to the other heights; and the
French seemed bent upon another trial. _Buonaparte in Britain_ is the
sort of book that people used to read, “a catalogue of French cruelties,
and a short appeal to mothers, widows, wives, sisters and daughters upon
the brutality of the French armies.” It is full of the same charges that
were made against the Germans in the war of 1914. And in 1814 there was
the same wild joy when victory came at last.
They had a festival at Moreton, 26 July 1814, with a dinner and a
procession like a Lord Mayor’s Show. The programme has been preserved.
‘Smiths at work in a cart, beating weapons of war into implements of
husbandry.’ ‘The four corporals late of the Moreton volunteers.’ Blaze
led the woolcombers and Crispin led the cordwainers, but the true patron
saint was ‘Bacchus on a tun, dressed in character, with a bottle, glass,
&c., drawn on a car.’ And at the dinner there was a cask of cider at the
foot of every table.
My grandfather got Camden’s _History of Napoleon Bonaparte_ when it
first came out, and I have the volumes here. The first volume came out
in 1814 with a title-page and preface saying that the history would be
continued to the restoration of the Bourbon Dynasty in the present year.
But the second volume has a different title-page, recognizing the fresh
start the author had to make at what would otherwise have been the end.
“We had fondly imagined that a total end was put to the war.... But,
alas! Napoleon no sooner perceived a fit opportunity,” etc. etc.
My grandfather always seemed much satisfied at having seen Napoleon on
the Bellerophon, safely under guard. He had no scruples about Saint
Helena, but my father had--he was not born till 1818, and Napoleon was
no bogey-man to him, but a colossus in the history of the world. He
thought Napoleon had been harshly used at Saint Helena, and took
O’Meara’s view, in spite of all he heard from an old soldier who had
been in garrison there. “He wasn’t badly treated, I assure you, sir, he
fared a great deal better than I did.” This old soldier--I can just
remember him--said he often saw Napoleon walking up and down the garden,
thinking of something and looking at nothing, until he came to some turn
where he caught sight of the sentry’s bayonet, and then he would stop
angrily and go indoors.
In looking through some notes my father made in 1835, I happened upon
this--“France, altho’ vanquished, has materially lost less than England.
The finances of France are again the most prosperous in Europe. England
bends under the weight of its debt; and the European continent supplies
itself with most of the products that England once supplied.” Napoleon
had stopped the English exports to the Continent by his Berlin Decree,
1806, and trade is not easily regained when once it has been lost; and
this was felt acutely here, as there had hitherto been large exports of
woollens from this part of Devon.
In the latter years of that long war there were more than fifty thousand
French prisoners-of-war in England, and half of them were sailors. Some
three thousand of them were on parole and the remainder in confinement,
and six or seven thousand were confined in Dartmoor prison. All
prisoners-of-war were under the Commissioners for conducting His
Majesty’s Transport Service, and the Commissioners selected various
little towns for prisoners on parole, and appointed an Agent in each
town to censor the prisoners’ letters and see they did not misbehave.
One of the towns was Moreton, and Ashburton was another; and the Agent
at Ashburton was an uncle of my grandfather’s. And this, I presume, was
how my grandfather got acquainted with so many of these
prisoners-of-war.
Another great-great-uncle of mine (on my mother’s side) was a
prisoner-of-war in France, and he married a French lady. I remember his
son, a country parson down in Wales, and I must have heard the story
many times, but cannot now recall much more than the main facts. His
ship was captured in the war of 1795, and he was sent to Verdun as a
prisoner-of-war. Instead of coming back to England at the Peace of
Amiens in 1802, he stayed loitering about, and was still in France when
hostilities broke out again and all English were interned. He was
interned near Dijon, and thus met his future wife; and he found life so
pleasant there that he did not come back to England until 1817, not long
before his death.--These mixed marriages were fairly frequent then. One
of my great-uncles finished up the Waterloo campaign by marrying a
Belgian lady he had met in Brussels.
I can just remember the widow of a French naval officer who had been a
prisoner-of-war in England and had made her acquaintance then. It was
not quite a happy match, as she was very English; but the family doctor
wrote to my father, 15 December 1851, after paying them a visit at their
place in France, “Looking at all she endures from himself and his
family, one of the most tormenting things (to her) is want of
punctuality at meal times.” He died before I was born, but I heard
stories of him: for instance, when asked about his health, he always
said, “I am much better, but I am not good.” He had received the Légion
d’Honneur from the Emperor and the Saint Louis from the King; and when
he came to England, visiting, unmannerly young men would sing _The Vicar
of Bray_. And he would fret and fume and finally bounce up from his
chair, vociferating that he served no Emperor and no King: he only
served La France.
When on parole at Ashburton and Moreton and other little towns, the
prisoners-of-war were obliged to live in houses which the Agent had
approved: they were not allowed out before six in the morning or after
six or seven or eight at night according to the season of the year: they
might not go further than a mile from the end of the town; and they had
to keep to the main roads--if they went further or into cross-roads,
fields or woods, it was the Agent’s duty to send them into prison again.
However, Agents and others sometimes had blind eyes; and now and then
there were escapes. In fact, there were escapes from Dartmoor prison
itself--a good-looking sailor-boy once got a country-lass to let him
take her clothes, and thus escaped.
According to the Entry-book of French prisoners-of-war on parole at
Moreton (now in London at the Public Record Office) twenty-eight arrived
in 1807: four of them (a Navy captain and three midshipmen) broke their
parole on 27, 28 September--the Entry-book says ‘run’: another
midshipman ‘ran’ in 1809, another one remained till 1810, and a general
(Rochambeau) and his servant remained till March 1811; but all the rest,
and nine new-comers, left in May 1808, and no more came till March 1810.
In that month ninety-three arrived, and fifty others before October. One
of them died there, and thirty-three ‘ran,’ including eight captains,
eight commanders, and fourteen other Navy officers. They mostly ‘ran’ in
batches: six on 28 October and seven on 21 December 1810, five on 18
January and four on 26 January, and six on 11 October 1811. Fifteen of
the others left in 1810, forty-four in 1811, and the remaining fifty in
February 1812.
Up to October 1810 the prisoners-of-war at Moreton were chiefly Navy
men; but in that month a hundred and twenty-eight arrived, and these
were chiefly Army men. In the Entry-book seventy-one of them are marked
‘General Dupont’s Army, Spain.’ (This army had capitulated at Baylen, 20
July 1808.) Only one of these men ‘ran’--he was a surgeon--and the other
seventy left in March 1811 together with thirty-three other Army men who
arrived in October 1810 but are not entered as Dupont’s. Of the other
twenty-four who arrived then, two died, two ‘ran,’ two left in 1811 and
eighteen in February 1812. There were only twenty-eight arrivals from
November 1810 to March 1812: four of them ‘ran,’ ten left during 1811
and seven in February 1812, after which date a general (Reynaud) and six
others were the only prisoners remaining, and they all left in November
1812. There were no more prisoners there until May 1814: then
forty-three arrived, and these very soon left.
This gives a total of 379 French prisoners-of-war on parole at Moreton
at one time or another; and the greatest number at any one time was 250
at the beginning of 1811. Rochambeau was the best known of them--he came
out in full uniform on hearing of any French successes. He had been
commander-in-chief at San Domingo, capitulated there in 1803 and was not
exchanged till 1811, and in 1813 he was killed at Leipzig.
The three who died at Moreton were buried in the churchyard, and the
tombstone of lieutenant Arnaud Aubry is still there, but I cannot now
find the tombstones of the other two, lieutenant Louis Quaintain and
midshipman Jean François Rohan. The tombstones were there not long ago,
and must have been destroyed or carried off--nothing is safe now from a
curiosity hunter in a motor car. Out at Dartmoor prison the graves were
all obliterated in the following thirty years while the place was
uninhabited and derelict; and the present monument, for all the French
who died there, was not erected until 1865.
It has no names; and till these last few years there was no notion of
commemorating people individually because they fell in a great war. We
see monuments to Wellington and Nelson and other great commanders, and
neat marble tablets in old parish churches to officers who happened to
be squires, but never any record of the rank and file. We do not know
who went from here to serve with Wellington or Nelson or Marlborough or
Drake; and this is all the more annoying as we have lists of all the men
here who ‘protested’ in 1641: see page 68. There will be lists enough of
those who fell in this last war, thanks to all the busybodies who
disguised their own pet schemes as War Memorials.
They pulled down the old Market House at Moreton to make way for their
War Memorial there. The structure was an upstair room supported on
granite columns and sheltering the open space between them; and it was a
four-sided room with the corners rounded off, eight of the columns
standing at the eight points where the sides began to curve. It was not
a masterpiece of architecture; but it looked quite comfortable in its
surroundings there until a new public-library was built on one side of
it and a new public-house on the other, and then it looked like one of
the New Poor between two Profiteers. If they were bent on pulling down
the room, they might at least have left the granite columns and the
architrave, put on a roof, and placed their War Memorial in the space
below; or if the space seemed disproportionately large, they could have
moved the columns closer in.
This is a granite country; and if men are to be commemorated here, their
names should be inscribed on granite. But cutting names on granite slabs
costs more than casting them on metal plates: so an inscription was
cast, an ungainly piece of granite was put up, and the metal plate fixed
on. That is the War Memorial for which the Market House was swept away.
It is like a notice-board. The metal thing at Bovey is like a
kitchen-fender. There is an old town-cross there, and this unsightly
piece of metal has been fixed on round its base; and the medieval
mouldings were chiselled away in order to fit this on. No doubt, the
cross was not intact before: it had been restored, removed from its old
site, and set up on a new substructure. But that was all done by a
gifted architect who saw exactly how to gain a great effect; and this
addition just spoils it.
They cut down an old oak tree at Newton to make way for a War Memorial
there; and it was a well-known tree, one of the landmarks of the place.
The memorial is a classic column with a figure of Victory on the top. If
people want that sort of thing, they would get far better results by
copying some ancient masterpiece, instead of carrying out an ancient
notion in a modern way. In this case they might have tried a restoration
of the figure of Victory by Pæonios, together with its pedestal. It is
a triangular pedestal, about twenty feet high, and exactly suited to the
site, which is a triangle between three roads.
There is an excellent precedent in Vitruvius, II. 8. 15, for dealing
with a War Memorial. Artemisia captured the city of Rhodes about 350
B.C. and put up a War Memorial there, comprising two bronze figures:
one, a portrait of herself, in the act of scourging the other, a
personification of the city. After the Rhodians had driven her out, they
wanted to remove this War Memorial; but they had scruples, as it had
been consecrated. So they decided that the site was holy ground on which
no foot might tread, and therefore built a wall round it; and they made
the wall so high that nobody could see the War Memorial.
In such figures as Rhodes, personified, the ancients had a great
advantage over us, as they were all accustomed to these
personifications. We have only John Bull for England, and Britannia for
the British Isles. There is nothing Britannic about Britannia: she is
merely Athenê holding Poseidon’s trident instead of her own spear. John
Bull is out of date: one cannot imagine that worthy person using any
weapon but his fists; and there would be very little dignity in a
pugilistic group of John Bull knocking out the German Michael. Some
sculptor should create a type that really would personify England.
Though personification appears to be a lost art now, it may (I think)
come into vogue again. Sooner or later, landscapes will be photographed
in colours with such perfection that no artist could do more. Then the
artist will either turn photographer and go out with a camera and wait
for days or weeks till he can catch the right effect, just as
photographers wait now for untamed birds and beasts in pictures of wild
life; or else the artist will go back to the old Greek plan,
personifying clouds and hills and streams and all the other features of
the landscape--not (I hope) just copying the ancient type of river-gods
and nymphs and fauns, but creating new types of his own. I should much
like to see the river Wrey personified: a lithe figure dancing merrily
but with great reserve of strength.
Wreyland would be quite unlike the river Wrey, if they were both
personified in human shape: it would be more like Autumn, as portrayed
by Keats, “sitting careless on a granary floor, ... or on a half-reaped
furrow sound asleep, ... or by a cider-press.” The ‘half-reaped furrow’
would be a fitting symbol of the projects that are undertaken here with
so much zeal and then abandoned incomplete. And the figure would embody
all the lethargy and drowsiness that come of this relaxing air.
Time seemed to be of very little value when I first knew the place.
After the railway had been made (1866) my grandfather took his time from
the station clock--he could see the hands with his big telescope,
looking over from a stile near here. Till then he took it from the
sun-dial: he writes to my father, 16 January 1853, “My watch has taken
to lose lately: unfortunately the sun does not give me an opportunity to
see about the time.... I shall depend on my own time as soon as the sun
will give it me.” Though the sun gave him his time, he allowed for the
equation; but many of the people here ignored the difference between
mean time and solar time. The equation varies from fourteen minutes one
way to sixteen minutes the other; and a variation of only half an hour
was hardly worth considering in a sleepy place like this. He writes on
14 January 1851, “My watch kept stopping and brought me late to meals,
and I had the frowns of the folks: so returned to the old one, which is
sure to bring me home in time, as it gains a half-hour in a day.”
After the railway came, the trains proclaimed the hours, as most people
knew the time-tables approximately, calling the 8.19 the 8, the 11.37
the 12, etc.--odd minutes did not count. As the trains upon this branch
were ‘mixed,’ partly passenger and partly goods, there generally was
some shunting to be done; but this caused no delay, as the time-tables
allowed for it. If there was no shunting, the train just waited at the
station till the specified time was up. The driver of the evening train
would often give displays of hooting with the engine whistle while he
was stopping here, and would stay on over time if the owls were
answering back.
The engines on this branch were quite unequal to their work, and there
were no effective brakes then. Coming down the incline here, trains
often passed the station; and passengers had to walk from where their
train had stopped. My grandfather writes to my father, 12 March 1867,
“On Saturday we had a runaway on the rails. The train passed here at 4
o’clock with two carriages two trucks and a van, and could not get on
further than Sandick road, so unhooked the trucks, and was not careful
to secure them, and they went off and passed the station full 40 miles
an hour. I was at the stile when they passed. Luckily did no harm and
stopped at Teigngrace, and the engine came back and fetched them.” I
once saw a goods train stopping at the station here, most of it upon the
level, but the tail end not clear of the incline; and as soon as
couplings were undone for shunting, the tail end started off with all
the other trucks that were behind the couplings. It is a single line,
and up and down trains pass at Bovey; and the runaway ran past there.
Luckily, no train was coming up.
I fancied that this line was worked in rather an easy-going way, but I
found the Eskdale line quite beat it. I took that line from Ravenglass
to Beckfoot, 19 August 1906, and there was a carriage-full of bee-hives
on the train. Besides stopping at the stations, the driver stopped at
places where the bees would make good heather-honey; and the guard got
out and fixed the hives there, two or three at one place, one or two at
another, and so on.--It is a little line of 3-foot gauge, built in 1875
for bringing iron ore from Boot, and quite transformed since 1906: it is
now worked as a toy for trippers, with model engines representing
engines for expresses on main lines.
When it was a novelty here, our line had great attractions for young men
and boys, and many of them left their work upon the land. I lost sight
of one family for thirty years or more, and on inquiry I found their
history was this--“Well, one of’n went on the line, and he become a
station-master; and ‘nother, he went on the line, and he become a
ganger; and t’other, he were a-runned over by a train; and so, as us may
say, they was all connected with the railway.”
Bovey has a fire-engine, but no horses for it: so the engine is not sent
to fires. This does not matter much to people living near the
water-mains, as there is pressure enough for working with a stand-pipe
and a hose, and the fire-brigade can come by car. People living further
off have been instructed what to do, 6 August 1920, “The Parish Council
feel it is their duty to notify all or any persons requiring the Fire
Brigade with Engine that they must take the responsibility of sending a
Pair of Horses for the purpose of conveying the Engine to and from the
Scene of the Fire.” Motors are superseding horses, even here; and the
horses that remain cannot take the fire-engine at more than a funereal
pace. If a motor car or lorry towed it, there would probably be an upset
in coming down steep lanes; and a motor fire-engine is a costly thing to
buy.
After motoring over to Moreton from Okehampton, a distance of twelve
miles, a man told me that he had met no horses all the way--a camel and
an elephant were the only beasts he met. The explanation was, a
wild-beast show was going round the towns just then, and these beasts
had to walk. There was a salamander in one of these wild-beast shows,
and an old lady here described it to me as ‘a noxious critter as they
calls a Sammy Maunder.’ Sammy Maunder was a Lustleigh boy--died in the
War--and had played tricks on her; and she thought his fame had spread.
She used to call him ‘an anointed one.’ Shakespeare says, ‘Aroint thee,
Witch’; and I suspect she meant ‘arointed.’
I once had a letter from Jamrach’s informing me that they were now in a
position to execute my esteemed order for antelopes. I had not ordered
any antelopes or any other creatures, and found the letter was intended
for a man whose name came next to mine in an alphabetical court-guide. I
often have letters from foreign booksellers addressed to me as Monsieur
Torresq--I suppose ‘Torr Esq’ has been misprinted in some list they
use--and I have had one from a dealer in antîkas addressed to me as Torr
Bey: also a local letter addressed to Thistletor Squire, as if I were a
Dartmoor hill as well as being Torbay.
There is a Seven Lords’ Land four miles from here; and if you go up
there from Bovey, you pass Five Witches on the way. There is a Four
Lords’ Land near Combe Martin, and the four were joint lords of a manor
there; and Wreyland might likewise have become Four Ladies’ Land, had
the last lord Dynham’s sisters all outlived him. I suppose the seven
were joint lords of a manor, but I have no record of the fact. Prosaic
people say the witches were wych elms.
There were Seven Men of Chudleigh; and the wonder is they never called
themselves the Septemvirs, seeing that the schoolmaster called himself
Gymnasiarch. There were Four Men of Chagford, Eight Men of Moreton, and
other Men of other parish towns. In 1670, when small change was scarce,
tokens were issued by the Moreton Men, inscribed, “Ye 8 Men and Feeffees
of Morton.” As feoffees they held the parish lands in trust; and in 1756
the sole surviving Man enfeoffed thirteen new Men, and they agreed that
if ‘by their mortality’ they should ever be reduced to one, this one
should enfeoff not less than seven more; but the agreement was not kept,
and the parish lands passed to the last survivor’s heir-at-law as sole
trustee. These parish lands were the church-house, the school-house, the
almshouse, two public-houses called the White Swan and the Sun, and a
rent-charge of 6_s._ 8_d._ Like many other public-houses, the White Swan
became the Union in 1801 in honour of the United Kingdom and the new
Union Jack. A public-house at Bovey has suffered a more drastic change.
It was called the King of Prussia in 1760 in honour of Frederick the
Great, but in 1914 the obnoxious word was painted out at once: for some
while it was ‘The King Of,’ and now it has a brand-new name.
Two fields in Bovey are called the Portreve’s parkes: a Tracey gave them
to this Bovey (Bovey Tracey) as endowment for a banquet at the beating
of the bounds. But the Charity Commissioners have flouted the pious
donor’s wishes, and the rents are now applied to praiseworthy prosaic
purposes. Till these Commissioners came, the bounders all rode horses
decked with ribbons and flowers; and it was called the Mayor’s Riding.
And now we all trudge round on foot, and are reduced to ginger-beer and
buns.
There was a story of a landowner near here going to an Exeter lawyer in
great alarm, “That scoundrel ***** has forged a Mortgage on my land,”
and the lawyer soothing him, “Well, we can forge a Reconveyance.” Such
documents could not be forged successfully except by lawyers or their
clerks, but anyone can forge a Will. Forgery, however, is not what
disappointed relatives suggest, at any rate in Devon: they always say
the Will has been destroyed by someone who would profit by a former Will
or an Intestacy. The thing is done, though rarely; but such suggestions
are quite lightly made, as if it were a thing that anyone would do if he
just had the chance. About twenty years ago a farmer told me that a
certain person had destroyed the Reconveyance of a Mortgage on his farm.
As he said he had the Mortgage, I asked to see it, and found the
Reconveyance was endorsed on it. He thought the Reconveyance was a
separate document, and seemed annoyed at finding that the other man was
not as great a villain as he thought.
Two masons who did not like each other, were working at a granite wall
that I was building here in 1906. Hearing angry voices, I went down and
found one of them accusing the other of having stolen his spirit-level.
I asked him where he used it last, and told him to take a few stones off
the wall just there--I knew the way he worked--and there was the
spirit-level in the mortar underneath a stone. He had put it there and
overlooked it, and now was vexed to find he had no charge to make
against the other man.
Thefts are very rare here. If there are goods or parcels for anyone who
does not live near a main road, they are put down on the wayside where
his road turns off, and he comes over to fetch them. There was a sad
case some while ago--near Ipplepen, if I remember right. A man came over
on a Monday to fetch some things that had been left for him on the
Saturday; and they had gone. And people shook their heads and wondered
what the world was coming to, if you couldn’t leave things by the
wayside from a Saturday to a Monday without their being carried off.
In going to the Scilly islands in 1907 part of my luggage went astray at
Penzance between the railway-station and the pier. I reported this at
the police-station, thinking that the things might have been stolen; but
the inspector seemed quite hurt at the suggestion, and answered, “No,
sir, we have no thieves here.” (The things were found at an hotel, but
not until the boat had left.) There was no policeman in the Scillies: no
thieves there, and when sea-faring men got drunk, the coastguard quelled
them down. So also at Sark I found no policeman on the island, and no
need for one, as the Seigneur sent unsatisfactory people into exile.
Afghanistan was likewise kept in order in this autocratic way, but by
more drastic means: an old Anglo-Indian explained to me that if a man
was even suspected of committing a crime there, the Ameer would have him
beheaded at once.
Of course, apples are not quite safe here. One of my neighbours had an
orchard from which he got no fruit at all; and nobody would buy the
crop, as it was always picked by someone else. At last the local
policeman bought it; and this caused such a scare among the boys that
they left the fruit alone. One does not so much grudge the fruit they
take as the damage that they do in taking it--small boys will break a
branch off a young tree to get a little fruit. At one time cider apples
were secure; but in these democratic days boys think one apple as good
as another, and eat sorts that their forefathers would never touch.
Cider apples are not good to eat, and if you eat them, you will have
less cider; and this was possibly a reason why the wise old folk avoided
them.
Cider is perhaps less safe here than the apples, especially if there are
converted drunkards or teetotalers about. In a fit of temporary insanity
a man will take the pledge and let everybody know that he has taken it.
After that he cannot decently buy cider or accept it, if it is offered
to him; but he cannot do without it, and therefore has to steal. A man
of that sort took to preaching in the open air here; and when people
interrupted with, “Who stealed that zider?” his language was
un-pulpity.
In the War years, when things had to drift, some of my cider turned so
sour that I sold it to a firm of vinegar-makers. It really was vinegar
already, and needed no more making; but there was a duty of 4_d._ a
gallon on the sale of cider, and no duty on the sale of vinegar: so I
had to prove to the Excise that I was selling vinegar, not cider. One of
the Excise officials came here, to prove that it was cider; and I wish I
had a snap-shot of the face he made at tasting it. The duty has been
taken off now (1923) and cider is free again, as it was from 1916 back
to 1830, when the old duties were taken off. The old duties did much
harm in Devon, many of the orchards being rooted up soon after 1763, as
the profit had become a loss. But there will never be a duty or a tax
that does no harm at all.
My grandfather writes to my father, 12 April 1842, “The farmers are
grumbling about Sir Robert Peel’s measures. The shoemakers and the
tanners are all by the ears as well, fearing the French will undersell
them. I told them it was high time, for they had amongst them pocketed
all the duty that was once on leather, and the public had received no
benefit: which their friend Sir Robert saw.” The obnoxious measures were
the Act reducing import duties and the Act imposing income tax, and the
small traders were doubly aggrieved: they were called upon to pay a new
tax to make up for loss of revenue from Customs, and the reduction in
the Customs subjected them to foreign competition.
The tax was 7_d._ in the £, which does not seem much now, though it
seemed heavy when the tax was new; but it was the assessment, rather
than the payment, that caused the irritation. A friend of my father’s
writes to him from Moreton, 5 January 1843, “They have been most unjust
and tyrannical here: those that appealed were scarcely permitted to say
a word.... The poor people having a small house each have been assessed,
and have been obliged either to dance attendance at appeals at
Crockernwell or pay Harvey half-a-crown for letting them off.” I presume
it was well known that these poor people’s incomes were under £150 and
thus exempt from tax.
Income tax, then known as property tax, was brought in as a temporary
measure for the next three years, but was renewed time after time and
finally made permanent. My grandfather writes in the third year, 23
February 1845, “The property tax is an inquisitorial and annoying thing:
a real-property tax would not be so much amiss, even if it were to be
made a permanency: in my opinion they could not levy a better tax.” His
opinion was disinterested, as he had real-property enough for such a tax
to hit him rather hard.
The tax would not yield much, if levied on net receipts: at any rate,
not nearly as much as might have been expected then. He writes on 27
November 1853, “I never heard of land being valued at more than thirty
years in Moreton,” that is, yielding less than 3⅓ per cent.; but on 13
March 1868 he writes, “I can say safely that no property that has been
sold in this neighbourhood for above twenty years past is paying over 2½
p. ct. and some not over 2 p. ct. nor will it.” Ten years later (after
he was dead) there was a greater fall.
Our present income tax supposes that the net receipts from land will be
just double the rent. The owner pays the tax upon the rent, and the
occupier pays the tax upon the other half, that is, his supposed profits
after paying the rent. He pays no more if his real profits are more than
the supposed amount, and pays less if they are less. As the occupier
usually rents the land to make a living out of it, he tries to make as
large a profit as he can; and large profits may mean reckless farming
that impoverishes the land. But when the owner occupies the land
himself, he may try to make as small a profit as he can, if he will
thereby benefit the land. Suppose his net receipts are 20_s._ above the
rental value, he pays 4_s._ 6_d._ in income tax and possibly as much or
more in super tax; but he escapes these payments if he farms more
prudently and thus reduces these net receipts to 0. He benefits the land
to the extent of 20_s._ at a net cost of only 15_s._ 6_d._, or possibly
no more than 10_s._ Taxes seem to be imposed without foreknowledge of
their full effect.
In principle a tax on incomes is quite wrong: it ought to be a tax upon
expenditure--not a penalty on amassing wealth, but a penalty on
frittering wealth away--and import duties are a tax upon expenditure, as
they are finally paid out of prices. Yet smuggling seems to be regarded
as a game of skill, a sort of hide-and-seek in passengers’ luggage: the
hider need not betray the lair, if the seeker cannot find it. I have
seen this smuggling done by people of great probity, not because the
payment would have hurt them, but just (I think) because the searching
was a challenge to their skill. And once I met some foreigners on the
Mont Cenis line smuggling things out of Italy into France, and not only
priding themselves upon their skill but also on their merit in the sight
of Heaven, as the things were destined for a convent or a church. They
seemed to think that Heaven had helped them in dodging the douaniers;
and I rather wondered if their confessors would take that view or would
enjoin them to send conscience-money to the State.
While travelling in Switzerland in 1840, my father found a firm of
watch-makers who would deliver gold Geneva watches in London at prices
that did not allow for duty. When he wanted to make a handsome present,
he would send over for a watch, and friends sometimes asked him to send
for watches for them. He never enquired how the watches came, nor did
his friends enquire; but one man (a diplomatist) took some pains to find
out, and the explanation was, “We usually smuggle them in some
diplomatist’s baggage, as that is not examined; and in this instance we
smuggled them in your Excellency’s own.”
My father got my grandfather an English watch in London in 1850, and my
grandfather did not consider it as good as one that he had chosen for
himself in 1807. That always was the trouble about getting things for
people here. A century ago Newton was a smaller place than Ashburton,
and Torquay was smaller still; and though there were good shops at
Exeter, they were not like the London shops. If people did not want to
go up there themselves, they had to get some friend up there to choose
things for them; and this was an invidious task, as they did not always
like his choice, and then said unkind things about his judgement or his
taste.
When my father was in London, his country friends were never shy of
telling him of things they wanted done; and sometimes these were rather
troublesome things to do. One friend (a lady) writes to him from
Leicestershire, 15 February 1848, “We have a Ball here on next Thursday
evening. Shall I be asking too great a liberty from you to procure some
flowers for that occasion from Covent Garden?” Another writes from
Exeter in the autumn of 1842, “I am obliged to give the Mayor a dinner
next week.... Will you enquire the price of a haunch of venison at
Burch’s and also turtle soup, a quart, and whilst you are about it, will
you ask at Myer’s, I think--the great fish man in Vulture Court--the
price of a turbot for about twelve, as I believe good fish is cheaper in
London than here, and a certainty of getting it, which is not so here.”
The most naïve of all requests is from an Admiral who had just gone on
the Retired List and found time heavy on his hands. He writes to my
father, 15 April 1872, “You will perhaps be able to tell me if I am
eligible to sit on the special jury they will most likely have in the
coming Tichborne trial: several Naval men were on the last.... What
steps, if any, should I take to get on the list?” I expect the reply was
an extinguisher.
There is a very complete extinguisher here, addressed to a relative of
mine, the husband of my mother’s eldest sister. “Stratfield saye Nov. 27
1838 The Duke of Wellington presents his Compliments to Mr. Drummond and
has received his Letter. The Duke begs leave to inform Mr. Drummond that
he is not the Commander in Chief of the Army or in political office; he
has no Patronage Power or Influence, & he has no means whatever at his
disposal of forwarding Mr. Drummond’s views in any manner.” It is the
old Duke’s writing, not dictated.
I have always envied the Drummonds their pedigree, a thoroughgoing
Scottish pedigree, showing their descent from Attila, King of the Huns.
But I am still more envious of my Urquhart cousins. They have a pedigree
showing their descent from Alcibiades, whose son (being incensed at the
Athenians’ unjust treatment of his father) migrated out of Athens into
Ireland.