the buildings for yourself. There are books condemning the corners of
the Valmarana Palace at Vicenza, and these certainly look feeble in
Palladio’s design. The design just shows the building by itself; but
really it is in a street, with lower buildings on each side of it. The
corners carry your eyes down to these, and are exactly right.
In contrast with the Valmarana, the Casa del Diavolo has a most
uncompromising corner, as if Palladio meant the building to look higher
than it really is, and dwarf all its surroundings. Apparently, it was to
have six columns along the front with five narrow windows squeezed in
between them, but it has only three columns and two windows: the rest
was never built. They are gigantic columns on high pedestals; and these
vertical lines do as much for the effect of height here as the
horizontal lines of the Basilica for its effect of breadth. There is
also a house at Exeter (84, Queen Street) which I always call the Casa
del Diavolo, with no aspersions on the occupier or the owner, but just
because it is a little like that building at Vicenza. It has only four
columns, though wide enough for five or six: its windows are too wide,
and the columns have no pedestals; and thus it misses most of the effect
of the real thing.
In ‘this sweete towne,’ as Evelyn describes Vicenza, ‘full of gentlemen
and splendid palaces,’ the Teatro Olimpico was completed from Palladio’s
designs in 1584 and was inaugurated with a play of Sophocles. (I have
often wondered what Shakespeare would have made of it, had he been
present there.) The scenery is solid architecture, built according to
perspective so that you may think that you are looking down long
streets. But when a man goes down the street, you see him growing bigger
and bigger in proportion to the houses on each side of him; and all
illusion is dispelled. I feel the actors should be life-size marionettes
that could be dwarfed down by deflation when they make their exits at
the back. This scenery that does not shift, has never been a real
success; nor has the auditorium. Palladio was copying Vitruvius, and
made it pseudo-Roman; and a modern audience looks as foolish there as in
the Bradfield theatre, which is pseudo-Greek.
In these theatres and in those that really are antique, a great effect
might be attained with audience as well as actors in antique costume. If
the modern audience does not care to dress in Greek or Roman style,
there might at least be labels. I have seen people going to rehearsals
of a Pageant in plain clothes with cards pinned on them--courtier,
soldier, buccaneer, etc.; and the audience might have cards as
well--archon, quæstor, trierarch, etc. Imagination might then do the
rest, though costumes would be better. But such costumes are usually a
compromise of what the ancients really wore and what can now be worn. I
remember a lady going to a ball in fancy dress as Cæsar’s Wife; and a
newspaper described her dress as safety-pins and gauze, but chiefly
safety-pins. However, safety-pins are quite a good defence against
snap-shots. There is ‘halation’ from the metal of the pins, so that the
photograph is blurred and looks as if they were continuous, like pieces
of chain-mail.
Not long ago a Lustleigh boy was going to be a Roman Senator in some
theatricals in town, and he wrote home to his mother to send him the
materials for making up a Toga. Not knowing what a Toga was, she sent
him the materials for making up a Toque--an inadequate costume for Roman
Senators, even at the Lupercalia.
There are childrens’ recitations at Christmas time in Rome in the church
of Ara Coeli. A platform is erected in the nave; and every afternoon
there is a crowd of children, and they go up, one by one, and recite
their pieces with as much assurance as if they were accustomed to
addressing public meetings every day. When listening to them, I have
thought of May Day here and the overpowering shyness of the boys who
have to make the little speech at the crowning of the Queen. I cannot
remember more than one boy here who spoke as well as any of the children
there; and he was so full of his speech that he put the crown on upside
down, enveloping her eyes and nose in flowers that were intended to
stand up above the rest. However, older people may do worse. Archbishop
Temple was an octogenarian, and yet he all but put King Edward’s crown
on with the hinder part in front.
The southern races have a greater gift of oratory than is customary
here, and they seem to pass from childhood into manhood at a very much
earlier age. John XII was only eighteen when he was elected Pope in 956,
and four-and-twenty when he crowned Otho as Emperor; and at
two-and-twenty he confirmed Saint Dunstan in the see of Canterbury and
made him Papal Legate here, with what results we know. No doubt, a young
man might become a Pope by influence or simony, but never an Heresiarch
except on his own merits; and some of the great heretics were very
young. Clement of Alexandria says in his _Stromateis_, III. 428, that
Epiphanes the son of Carpocrates was only seventeen when he died: yet he
had imperilled Christianity by his doctrine of Free Love. This young
scamp of an Heresiarch was a contemporary of Antinoos; and it is one of
the puzzles of ancient history why Christians or Pagans ever took such
people seriously. But we must look at the paintings in the Catacombs
rather than the writings of the Fathers, if we would understand the
blithe life of the early Christians when Erôs was Patriarch of Antioch
and Anterôs was Pope.
Leo X went into residence at Rome in 1492, being then a Cardinal and
aged sixteen; and he had a letter from his father, Lorenzo de’ Medici,
telling him how to behave there and above all things (una regola sopra
l’altre) to get up early in the morning and set to work upon the
business of the day. According to Domenichi, _Facetie_, p. 129, ed.
1581, Ugolino Martelli asked Lorenzo why he did not get up early
himself, whereupon Lorenzo asked him what he did when he got up, and
then told him that it was not worth while getting up to do such trivial
things. That was an answer to Ugolino, but not an answer to the question
that he asked, as Lorenzo certainly had weighty things to do; but it
acknowledges that early rising is merely a means to an end, not an end
in itself, as some fanatics say. In his _Duty and Advantages of Early
Rising_ John Wesley says that (by the grace of God) he rose at four and
had done so for sixty years, but he also says that he could not subsist
with less than six hours and a half of sleep: so he must have gone to
bed by half past nine. He does not show that it is any better to be
awake at four or five in the morning than at ten or eleven at night;
and in winter it certainly is worse, as vitality is at its lowest in the
hours before dawn.
Wesley took the sleep he needed, six hours and a half; but many saintly
men have given themselves so little time for sleep that they can never
have been healthily awake, unless they got some sleep at unappointed
times. Bonaventura says of Francis of Assisi that his prayers were
sometimes mingled with indescribable groans, ‘gemitibus
inenarrabilibus.’ That is in the _Legenda Sancta_, ‘the life of a saint,
written by a saint, to be read in the spirit of a saint’; but the Devil
has sometimes tempted me to think that those indescribable groans were
snores.
My uncle, Cecil King, strayed into a Wesleyan chapel between Charlestown
and Holmbush on 17 April 1843, and this is his account of it. “I found
them singing, and took the opportunity of entering an empty seat. Soon
after, the congregation turned round to pray, and I followed their
example. There were no lights in the chapel, so that one could scarcely
discern anything. They had not commenced the prayer when a woman gave a
deep groan. I turned round, thinking she might be ill, and just then a
man cried out ‘Lord have mercy upon us.’ I could not tell what was the
matter, and began to look about me in astonishment, but I now heard the
prayer beginning, and was preparing to pay attention, when cries of
‘Praised be the Lord,’ ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord,’ arose in wild
confusion. ‘Amens’ and other exclamations assailed my ears each moment,
and presently I could hear one raising his voice above all others to let
them know that he was praying. ’Twas a scene too ridiculous for one
accustomed to the meekness of the Church.” He was sixteen then--he died
when he was twenty--and he was on a walking tour in Cornwall with a
friend of his, Tom Oliver. They both kept careful journals of the tour,
and Oliver’s was printed afterwards. It gives the opening of the hymn
they heard, “We most of us can pray aloud, | we all of us can groan, |
but God can tell,” etc.
They had a letter of introduction from one of my great-uncles to Mr
Joseph Treffry, and found him at home in the old palace at Fowey. He was
then a man of sixty. He showed them round, but rather chilled them. “A
man inhabiting perhaps not more than one room or two in that magnificent
building, the locks of whose doors grated with rust.... A man who seems
to care for nobody, whose only happiness consists in spending money.”
But his money was well spent. He built the breakwater at Par harbour
entirely at his own expense, and likewise the great Treffry viaduct,
which was near completion then. He made mines pay, got railroads built,
and brought prosperity to everything he touched--he was doing as much
for that part of Cornwall as King Smith was doing for the Scillies; and,
like him, he was autocratic. I remember an old man in the islands
quoting the Song of Solomon in speaking to me of their former King, “He
was terrible as an army with banners.”
People say that there was too much luxury in England in the years before
the War, but I doubt if there was much. I could only see people doing
small things in an ostentatious way, whereas real luxury consists in
doing big things as a matter of course. It was real luxury, I think, to
keep the sea out with a breakwater, and bridge a great big valley with a
granite viaduct, and then go on with other schemes, as Treffry did:
also, perhaps, to build an arch of polished jasper thirty feet high,
eleven feet wide and eight feet thick. But he was not a Nero with a
Golden House, and he built his jasper archway into medieval walls at
Fowey.
Nero made much the same mistake, not with the Golden House itself, but
with his landscape-gardening there: it took up too much space right in
the heart of Rome, and the site was quite unsuitable. He might have done
his gardening so much better in the Alban hills, or better still at
Capri, where Tiberius had already done so much. Look round that island
from its highest point, and then look down from the Palatine on to the
slopes below: it makes you feel that Nero was a fool to take to
gardening there.
I have seen a ribald pamphlet accusing Mrs Grundy of the gravest
improprieties. Tiberius was the Mrs Grundy of his generation--she might
have written his message to the Senate in 22 A.D. with its condemnation
of men and women dressing so much alike, ‘promiscas viris et feminis
vestes.’ It is in Tacitus, _Annales_, III. 53; and in Suetonius,
_Tiberius_, 35, there are instances enough of his severity to ladies who
were not respectable. The fast set paid him out by inventing tales about
him. No such tales were current till he tried to pull these people up;
and the tales were only about his life at Capri. He was respectable at
Rome and Rhodes and every other place; and nobody could really know what
happened at Capri, as the public was shut out.
Tiberius must have gone to heaven, as Dante met him there, _Paradiso_,
VI. 86; and if people won’t take Dante’s word for it, I may refer them
to a former Vicar of Widdicombe, the Rev. John Rendle. He was a Wrangler
in 1781 and got a Fellowship, and was Vicar of Widdicombe from 1790 till
his death in 1815; and in 1814 he produced a _History of Tiberius, the
first Defender of the true Faith_. The book shows perfect mastery of the
evidence, and an adroitness in destructive criticism that might have
made his fortune at the Bar. And his contention is that all those tales
about Tiberius were invented out of spite: not, however, because he was
a Mrs Grundy, but because he was at heart a Christian.
If he was a Christian, he must have been a very early Christian; and by
all accounts the early Christians were very much pleasanter people than
some of their successors. But, whether he was a Christian or not, he
certainly was one of the three men who made Christianity possible.
Augustus and he kept the world at peace during the whole period of
Gospel history; and Christ looked to Cæsar--that is, Tiberius--to manage
all the rough work of the world, and let people in Judæa have peace and
quietness and no responsibilities. Herod was the other of those three
great men. People make a fuss about his massacring some Innocents: they
forget that there might not have been any Bethlehem or any Innocents
there to massacre, if he had not governed the country so successfully
during his long reign.
Whitewashing goes on apace. Dean Milman whitewashed Savonarola in 1855,
and in 1905 Baron Corvo whitewashed the entire Borgia family; and in due
season all the villains of history will be arrayed in shining white.
Meanwhile it is hard on those whose turn is yet to come, as they are
suffering by comparison now. Dreyfus has been whitewashed, and Bazaine
has not: yet he was the worse treated of the two--a packed tribunal,
with charges framed in such a way that the accused could not put in his
real defence.
Whitewash is an admirable thing, but people always lay it on too thick;
and Rendle not only makes Tiberius ‘a believer in the divinity of Jesus
Christ’ but makes him ‘the nursing father of the infant Catholic
Church.’ Tacitus calls Christianity an ‘exitiabilis superstitio,’ and
says that it arose in the reign of Tiberius, was kept down for a time,
and then broke out again, _Annales_, XV. 44; and he also says that a
‘gravissimum exitium’ was brought in very artfully by Tiberius himself,
was kept down for a time, and then broke out again, _Annales_, I. 73.
Rendle argues that this ‘exitium’ must have been the ‘exitiabilis
superstitio’ of Christianity, and not Espionage, as the context would
lead one to suppose. Having satisfied himself of this by a careful
examination of Tacitus and other good authorities, he goes on to admit
inferior authorities without any examination at all, if only they concur
in this. And thus he admits Tertullian, _Apologeticus_, 5, which says
that Tiberius sent a Message to the Senate, recommending Christianity;
and although the Senate rejected it, Tiberius did not change his mind,
but used his powers to protect the Christians.
According to Rendle, Tiberius sent this message to the Senate in the
fourteenth year of his reign, whereas the Gospel of Luke says that
Christ was not baptized until the fifteenth. Of course, the fifteenth is
impossible if Christ was born before the death of Herod and was then in
his thirtieth year, for this (as Athanasius saw) is the real meaning of
the phrase ‘about thirty years old, beginning,’ which is translated so
ridiculously in the Authorised version and so evasively in the Revised.
But instead of saying that ‘fifteenth’ is a slip of the pen or something
of the sort, Rendle takes the view that Luke is using ‘fifteenth’ in a
Lucasian or Pickwickian sense for ‘tenth.’ It is a pity we have no more
of this chronology. The book announces “a similar Volume by the same
Author--a Chronological Arrangement of all the Events recorded in the
New Testament.” But he died the year after, and the new book never came
out.
He was contemporary at Widdicombe with Parson Davy here; but Davy was
the older man, and had finished printing his great work before Rendle
brought out his. It is curious that these lonely parishes had parsons
then with so much industry and learning; but a book like Davy’s _System
of Divinity_ was a thing that might have been expected from a country
parsonage, whereas the _History of Tiberius_ was not, especially in such
a place as Widdicombe.
Although it is within a walk of here, I seldom go there for the Fair.
Last time I went, a dozen years ago, I found a poor show of sheep,
nothing else for sale except some gingerbread, and very few people
there. When the _Cloches de Corneville_ came out, my brother thought
that there must be some very fine bells at Corneville, to give rise to
the tale; and he made inquiries, as he was in Normandy soon afterwards.
People were telling him that he would only find some church bells of the
usual kind there, ‘comme dans toutes les paroisses,’ and then a man
struck in, ‘Aha, monsieur, c’est une pièce de théâtre.’ I think of that
when people ask me questions about Widdicombe Fair, and I tell them that
it is a comic song.
The song about Widdicombe Fair is probably an adaptation of a Somerset
song, ‘Midsummer Fair,’ and there are several versions. The theme is
briefly this:--Mr Pearse was not going to the Fair himself, and lent his
old grey mare to some neighbours who were going, namely, Messrs Brewer,
Stewer, Gurney, Davy, Whiddon, Hawk, Cobley and others. (Excepting
Whiddon these are not Devonshire names.) As the mare did not return, he
went up to the top of a hill to look round, and caught sight of her from
there. She was then making her will, and died soon afterwards. Her ghost
may be seen on the moor on stormy nights, looking ghastly white and
rattling her bones. One may assume that she died from being ridden too
hard, but the song does not distinctly say so.
Widdicombe is a very big parish of over ten thousand acres, but small in
comparison with Lydford, which has over fifty thousand and is about the
biggest parish in England. Two places in Lydford parish were transferred
to Widdicombe by Bishop Bronescombe, 20 August 1260, on the ground that
they were much too far away from Lydford church, namely, eight miles
when the weather was good, and fifteen miles when it was bad,
‘tempestatibus exortis.’ In bad weather the people could not get across
the moor, and had to go a long way round. These two places, Babbeneye
and Pushylle, are now Babeny and Pizwell; and they are about eleven
miles and twelve miles from Lydford church in a straight line on the
Ordnance Map. Hurston is two miles and a half from Chagford church in a
straight line, but people always call it two mile there and three mile
back. The difference is in the hill.
The old waywardens used to fetch stone from a stream a long way off, to
mend a piece of road near Hurston. Then an enlightened man appeared, and
asked them why they fetched it from a distance when there was plenty
close at hand; and they could not tell him why--they could only say
that, time out of mind, it always had been fetched from there. So the
enlightened man prevailed: some granite was blasted out close by, and
the road was properly macadamized; and in twelve months’ time the road
had disappeared. There was a peat bog underneath; and the sharp granite
chips cut through the peat, whereas the river stones had rested on it,
being smooth and round. I do not know the date, and cannot fix the place
precisely, but have always understood that it was on a road from
Chagford to Tavistock that is marked on Donn’s and Bowen’s maps and even
on Cary’s as late as 1826, but now stops short near Metheral.
The older maps are much more chatty than the new. In the valley of the
Bovey at the foot of Lustleigh Cleave, Donn’s map remarks, “This River
has a subterraneous Passage.” That is where the stream goes underneath
the rocks at Horsham Steps. In the next valley there is “Becky Fall, a
Cataract” both on Donn’s map and on Cary’s. But the Fall has ceased to
be a Cataract since the best part of the stream was turned away to
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S DESK]
make a leat. The water used to pitch on a great rock and spread out over
the front of that, whereas it now goes down behind this rock, except in
heavy storms or floods, and there is little to be seen.
The new maps mark the hills as Tors, not Torrs. In examining old
documents I have hardly ever seen the word written with a single _r_
unless there was a mark above the [~r] to show that it was double: and I
have never seen it with a single _r_ when there was final _e_--invariably
Torre, not Tore. Everybody now writes ‘Haytor Rocks,’ but it is a
pleonasm, as ‘tor’ means ‘rock.’ The older people said ‘Arter Rocks,’
and I fancy they meant ‘Arthur Rocks.’ There is the legend of King
Arthur’s encounter with the Devil there, and he gave his name to other
high places, such as Arthur’s Seat at Edinburgh.
There is, of course, an etymology for Arthur’s Seat, showing that it has
nothing to do with Arthur. There is also an etymology for Man-o’-War
Rocks, showing that they have nothing to do with men-of-war. That group
of rocks is on the north side of the Scillies--three rocks about 600
feet long and about 150 high--and from some points of view it looks
uncommonly like a big three-masted ship with all sails set. The chances
are against its having a Celtic name that could be corrupted into
anything so suitable as Man-o’-War.
In dealing with the names of places, people are too fond of thinking
that the etymology must be Celtic, if it is not Latin or Anglo-Saxon.
Many of these names may go back to the times before the Celts arrived,
and there was a population here whose language was probably akin to
Basque. Of course, wild etymologists are not to be restrained by such
considerations. One of them has gone to ancient Egyptian to get an
etymology for Haytor, _Reflections on names and places in Devonshire_,
p. 12, ed. 1845, “H’tor in the Phonetic Egyptian meant a house.” But
this sort of thing is not confined to Devon. There is an exclamation ‘O
popoi’ in Greek, answering to ‘Oh my’ in English. According to Lauth,
_Homer und Aegypten_, p. 43, it is an invocation of Pepi, a king who
reigned in Dynasty VI and built a Pyramid at Sakkarah.
Many places owe their present names to blunders. The Hebrides owe theirs
to a misreading in Solinus, ‘hebrides’ for ‘hebudes’: they have no _r_
in Pliny or in Mela or in Ptolemy. There is a bay called Morikambê in
Ptolemy, _geographia_, II. 3. 2, on the western side of Britain; and on
the strength of this the name of Morecambe was given to a place in
Lancashire, although the place is only in the latitude of York, whereas
Ptolemy puts Morikambê a whole degree further north. Until 1842, or
thereabouts, the present Morecambe was called Poulton, or strictly
Poulton-le-Sands to distinguish it from Poulton-le-Fylde, which is the
present Poulton.
Teign Grace takes its second name from the Grace family, its owners six
centuries ago; but people tell me that it really is Teignrace and takes
its name from a race in the river Teign a little way below. There was no
race there till 1863, when this branch line was begun. The railway
blocked a wide curve in the river, and gave it the sharp twist that
makes the race.
Kingswear is King’s Wear, yet I have heard it called King Swear; and I
have also heard Kingskerswell called Kings Curse Well. (It is the part
of Kerswell that was kept by the Crown, and Abbotskerswell is the part
that was given to Torre Abbey.) But, apart from the pronunciation, the
spelling may be misleading in such names as Kerswell, Ogwell,
Loddiswell, etc. A well may often be the nucleus of a settlement in arid
regions, but not in regions that are full of springs and streams; and in
many of these Devonshire names the ‘well’ must stand for ‘vill,’ the
ancient term for ‘village.’ As a matter of fact, the termination is
spelled with an _i_ in twenty-two cases out of twenty-seven in the
Exeter manuscript of Domesday.