somebody had noticed that certain diseases went with certain kinds of
food, and had prohibited those foods accordingly. There have been men
whose precepts we all follow without quite understanding why, and we say
these men were “in advance of their generation” or “born before their
time”; and yet the truth may be the other way--they were of their
generation and their time, but mankind has deteriorated since.
Whenever I look at bees, I feel misgivings about the future of mankind.
Think of the bees that invented the hexagonal cells, and the bees that
go on building these cells and yet go buzzing against glass panes in one
half of a window when the other half is open. The bees that could invent
such cells, would surely have ability enough to find their way round
glass. But bees are socialists; and socialism means that individuals of
great ability will be kept down, and all ability will gradually be
atrophied for want of use. I rather think that this is what has happened
to the bees, and may be happening to mankind.
Collingwood ate rats. He said ships’ rats were very clean feeders, and
he always had a dish of them at dinner when he was at sea; and I have
heard that many officers fought shy of invitations to the Admiral’s
table. No doubt his dish of rats was properly cooked; but rat may be as
dangerous as pig, considered as diet, since rats are also liable to
trichinosis. Amongst human beings the disease is very rare in England as
compared with Germany: they eat a great deal of smoked ham there, and
mere smoking does not kill trichinæ.
In former ages leprosy was common here. There was a hospital for lepers
this side of Newton, founded by John Gilberd, 4 October 1538, “for the
releff of powre lazar people wherof grete nomber with that diseas be now
infectid in that partis to the grete daunger of infection of moche
people to whom they use to resort and be conversant withal for lacke of
convenyent hospitals in the county of Devon for them.” There were much
older hospitals for lepers outside Exeter and Barnstaple and Tavistock
and other towns; but these were more or less monastic, and had suffered
from the dissolution of the monasteries. This hospital was then a
quarter of a mile outside Newton Bushell; but the town has spread beyond
it, and the old buildings have long since been replaced by alms-houses.
Leprosy is quite extinct; but I fear that people hereabouts are careless
in the cooking of cured food.
Leprosy would naturally be commoner before the Reformation, as so much
fish was eaten during fasts; and the fasts themselves made people weaker
and less able to resist disease. I agree with old folks here who say
that fasts should be a time of feasting for the poor. “Rich folk have
money to buy butcher’s meat in Lent as well as other times; and if they
will not eat’n, they should give’n to they as cannot buy.” However,
fasting was enjoined on rich and poor alike, and was deemed of more
importance than almost anything else. Machiavelli was not easily
shocked, but he drew the line at Sforza’s coming to Florence and eating
meat in Lent, _Istorie Fiorentine_, VII, anno 1471, “cosa in quel tempo
nella nostra città ancora non veduta.” I can myself remember how
frightfully Prince Napoleon shocked the pious French by eating
beef-steak on Good Friday.
Nobody thought of fasting here on any day except Good Friday; and
fasting meant no more than eating hot-cross-buns in addition to the
usual food. But whether it came as early as March 20 or as late as April
23, Good Friday was the great day for potato-planting. Whatever the
season was, potatoes planted on Good Friday came up better than potatoes
planted any other day--at least, that was the common belief here. There
must have been a religious or superstitious base for this, and perhaps
also for the custom of kicking a football round when the planting had
been done. (In my early years a football was hardly ever seen here
except on a Good Friday.) I have seen the sailors flogging Judas
Iscariot on Good Fridays in Mediterranean ports, and I hear it may be
seen on foreign ships in English ports. Judas Iscariot is there a dummy
like Guy Fawkes and here, I think, he had become a football. But it is
always hard to judge the meaning of such things. Some fifty years ago an
acquaintance of mine, a midshipman, went up to Jerusalem with a lot of
other midshipmen when the Mediterranean squadron was cruising off that
coast; and they marched into Jerusalem singing a song (which then was
popular) of Kafoosalum, ... the barber of Jerusalem, ... the daughter of
the barber. And good Mahommedans were much impressed, thinking it was a
holy song that these young angels sang so fervently.
There is now a service of Three Hours at Lustleigh on Good Friday. I
inquired what authority there was for this, and was informed
(officially) that it was a service licensed by the Bishop under the
Shortened Services Act. That was quite good as a bit of cynicism or a
joke, but rather past a joke if one remembers how that Act was passed
through Parliament. Its promoters said that it was only to be used for
shortening the old services, not for introducing anything new.
On the coronation of Queen Victoria there was a service in Exeter
Cathedral and ‘rejoicings’ in the town; and my father’s diary finds
fault--“the stupid dun of cannon, which even fired during the anthem,
shaking the edifice and distracting everyone’s attention”--and so on for
a couple of pages, finishing, “it seemed somewhat like a Good Friday: by
no means a favourite day of mine.”
There is no desire here for more Good Fridays or Ash Wednesdays, but
only for Shrove Tuesdays at all seasons of the year; and these Carnivals
are not followed by Lenten fasts. Carnivals are superseding Fêtes and
Galas, here called Feets and Gaylers; but knowing that a Swarry (or a
Soirée) consisted of a leg of mutton, I should say that every Carnival
or Feet or Gayler consists of a brass band ‘with the usual trimmings’
like the leg. It seems perverse of people to speak of fêtes as feets
when they invariably speak of beans as banes, and even more perverse to
want these foreign words at all. This coast is getting known as a
Riviera, which they pronounce Riveerer as if it were a German word.
I have got a bill here for ‘mendin gardin oz’--hose--and I have seen a
bill in Bedfordshire for ‘hoke’ and ‘hellum’ and ‘hash.’ With phonetic
spelling there would be as many written languages as there are dialects
now--water would be ‘warter’ in the Eastern counties, and ‘watter’ or
‘wetter’ here--but fonetic fanatics would take the cockney dialect and
foist it on us all. On looking at an Elementary English Grammar, of
which 350,000 have been sold, I found it said--“Take c out of the
alphabet, and we could write, kat, sity, speshal, instead of cat, city,
special, and in thus writing those words, we should be writing them
according to their pronunciation.” No doubt, the cockney news-boys
screech out ‘Extra Speshal’; but if we are to get pronunciation down
from town, we might get it from the West End rather than the East.
Sometimes people make mistakes here about the origin of
words--Reformatory is not Reform-a-Tory, as ardent Liberals said--and
sometimes they make mistakes about the words themselves. During the War
there was an entertainment for wounded soldiers at a house not far from
here; and they came up in chars-à-banc with bagpipes playing all the
way. I heard a small boy calling out, “Hearken to that music there,” and
another one snubbing him, “Bain’t music, ‘tbe the magpies.” On first
hearing of a Turkish bath, a girl assumed that it must be a turkeys’
bath. I picture an old turkey-cock jerking his head about and gobbling
while he was screwing up his courage for a header into the cold plunge.
A cockney was greeted by a man down here with courteous inquiries about
her health, “And how be you now? Be you all right?” The reply was, “No,
half right, half left, like you”; and he told me that he had to do a bit
of thinking afore he saw the sense of it. An old lady here surprised me
just as much in town. She had not been there before, though well
advanced in years; and I took her up in the Great Wheel at Earl’s Court
to get a good look round. She told me afterwards, “I were a-thinkin’ all
the time how Satan took our Lord up into an exceedin’ high place
a-seein’ all the kingdoms of the world.”
I once heard a cockney expressing her contempt for everybody born
elsewhere. She said with pride, “I was born and bred where I stand,” and
she was standing in a gutter in a slum. Londoners do not often give
themselves away like that: they usually are people of resource. I
complained to an umbrella-maker that a new umbrella kept turning
inside-out, and with a jerk I turned it inside out at once. He took the
umbrella, jerked it the other way and said, “You see, sir, it comes back
again quite easily.” I complained to a stationer that his envelopes did
not stick. He replied with dignity, “No, sir, they do not: we use only
the purest gum.”
On a spring morning I was coming out of Charing Cross station on my way
back from Algeria with a very sun-burnt face, about the colour of a red
geranium; and while my hansom was going slowly through the gates, I
heard a loafer say, “Look, Bill, ee’s come into bloom early this year.”
People are more courteous here. At a harvest supper there was a general
desire to sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” but also a general
feeling that it would not be quite respectful: so they softened the
familiar term and sang without restraint, “For he’s a jolly good
gentleman.” And this version suits the tune so well that anyone would
think the tune was written for it.--I am told that when I go to sleep, I
snore. One afternoon I asked why the letters had not been brought in to
me as soon as they arrived; and the answer was, “I was afraid I might
disturb you, sir, I thought I heard you sleeping.”
There is a House of Mercy at Bovey, a Gothic Revival building designed
by Woodyer about 1865. Its inmates come from every part of England, not
especially from Devon; and they have been described to me as “Maidens as
hath gotten babies without ever goin’ nigh a church,” in other words,
unmarried mothers. But less courteous terms were used when laundry-work
was started there. One old lady gave me her whole mind--not merely a bit
of it--about “they paltry gentry as took their washin’ away from honest
folk to give it to they hussies.” The practical mind thought it a waste
of money to have such institutions: the inmates could be married off, at
much less cost, by giving them dowers. And really there is just as much
marrying for money among the poorer classes as among the rich, though
the amount of money may be smaller and sometimes very small indeed.
Under a farmer’s will his farm went to his only son, but nearly all the
stock was sold for paying the daughters’ legacies, as he had not
reckoned on a fall in prices. The young man only got an unstocked farm
and had no money for stocking it; but an aged relative of his made light
of that. She said to me, “I tell’n he must marry one that hath some
hornéd cattle,” and he chafed at such restriction of his choice. Another
old lady, a relative of hers, was asking after a friend of mine who had
been badly wounded in the War. I told her that he had quite recovered,
and added that he had married his nurse: whereat she threw up her hands,
exclaiming, “Oh, that War, it hath been a terrible thing for some of’n.”
There was an old saying here, “I would rather go to the funeral of a
daughter than to her wedding of a doctor.” My grandfather quotes it in a
letter of 30 November 1865 as if he quite agreed with it, and adds,
“Strange, those doctors are always poor, and a miserable affair of it
generally.” He did not much approve of marrying for love, or anything
else, unless there were sufficient means. I remember that he thought the
answer insufficient when somebody had cried out, “There she is, marrying
him all in the depths of poverty,” and another person answered, “He hath
blood.”
In his letters to my father on the death of relatives or friends, he
enumerates all possible grounds of consolation. Thus, 30 June 1854,
“Therefore on reflection I say we ought to be very thankful he was taken
off as he was without pain or suffering.” He says this of a friend who
had been staying with him a week before in full vigour of body and mind,
and died just after leaving here from unsuspected weakness of the heart.
In most cases he finds so many grounds for consolation that he comes
very near saying it is really a good riddance. Thus, 18 September 1853,
“On the whole, taking everything into consideration, I say there is
nothing to grieve about, but all his friends ought to be thankful he is
taken.” Again on 6 October 1853, “I should say a happy release for his
mother,” and on 10 January 1855, “A happy release, I say, for himself
and all about him,” and on 16 January 1855, “I say we ought all to be
thankful he is taken before his sister, for what he would have done, had
she been taken first, I cannot tell.”
This practical or utilitarian view was not uncommon here. He writes
about a death at Lustleigh, 7 September 1845, “She died last evening.
What will the old man do now. When his wife was very ill, I inquired for
her. He said she was not likely to live, but then (he said) we can do
without her. This is his son’s wife, a clever woman; and what they will
do now, I am at a loss to say, for they have neither wife nor daughter,
and of course must trust to a housekeeper.”
My grandmother generally saw things in another light. She writes to my
father on 19 February 1845, “Report says we are to have Jane for a
neighbour. It appears she has captivated Mr ***** and in due time, I
suppose, will become his wife. It will be an excellent match for Jane.
He is considered very wealthy and I believe a very nice man. He has
called here several times and repeatedly requested your father to visit
him: your father calls on no person, I am sorry to say.” Writing on 23
February, my grandfather just mentions the report and adds, “Depend on
it, Jane will soon turn things upside down there.”
On another marriage he writes, 16 November 1851, “Your mother had a full
and particular account of the wedding the day after.... I have often
heard of throwing an old shoe after a new married couple to wish them
good luck. I never knew it practised in Moreton but once, and then [the
bride’s father] ran out in the street and threw an old shoe after the
carriage. It did not carry luck with it, for that was an unfortunate
marriage, so the story was he ought to have thrown more. To obviate all
that, they threw shoes by the dozen: all the old shoes were looked up
and thrown after and about the carriage like grape shot. Well, I hope
they will be happy.”
As he thought all this worth mentioning, he might as well have gone to
see it for himself, and also gone to see much else; but that was not his
way. He writes on 9 June 1862, “This is Whitmonday, and the bells are
ringing for two weddings that are solemnized today, so Lustleigh will be
gay in addition to the usual holyday for the labourers and the children.
I see nothing of it, but generally hear a squall of children and the
hoarse voice of the men at the skittle playing. I give something to set
the children a-running and something for the fiddler.” A younger man, of
great ability, told my sister what he thought about it all, 11 October
1870, “He thought living in this remote part enough to rust the brains
of any clever man, as you might pass a month without meeting anyone who
could talk on any subject above pigs and cows.”
Flocks and herds, or pigs and cows, are not bad themes for talk, if
anyone can handle themes judiciously and keep them in their
place--flocks and herds are not like golf. But in reality they may be
burdensome. My grandfather notes with pleasure, 13 December 1841, “My
cows are regularly fed, three times a day, unlike farmer’s cows which
catch what they can,” and then rather wearily, 10 August 1869, “My farm
is a trouble and expense.” And the lesson is, never have a hobby that
you cannot cast aside. You want no needless worries at a time when you
have one foot in the grave and then get the gout in the other one.
In my father’s diary of his first visit to London he speaks of pictures
at the Royal Academy and National Gallery and elsewhere, but the only
artist whom he mentions by name is Benjamin West. This was in 1832, and
West had died in 1820; he had been President of the Academy for nearly
thirty years and was still in high repute. There are two wash drawings
here signed, ‘B. West, 1785’ and ‘B. West, Windsor, 1788.’ The latter is
one of his designs for the friezes at the Queen’s Lodge, built by George
the Third and since destroyed. It is four feet long and seven inches
high, with thirty-three figures personifying arts and sciences; the fine
arts in the middle, the peaceful arts and sciences on one side and the
warlike on the other. The earlier drawing is of Segestes giving his
daughter to Germanicus as a hostage for Arminius. This was a favourite
subject then, and West painted several pictures of it, the earliest in
1772.
West’s drawings are generally a great deal better than his paintings,
and Galt gives the reason in his _Life of West_, II. 204.--In drawing
and colouring he was one of the greatest artists of his age, but his
powers of conception were far higher; “and it is this wonderful force of
conception which renders his sketches so much more extraordinary than
his finished pictures.” West is in oblivion now with most of the
Academicians of his time, except the portrait painters. (There is a
picture by one of those Academicians in Teign Grace church, a Madonna by
James Barry, quite unnoticed now.) But repute depends on fashion, not on
merit; and many artists of less merit are extolled.
Rustic critics judge things in a different way. Two large oil paintings
here were praised--“There bain’t no other’n like’n in this parish, no,
nor yet the next: look at their size and finish.” A portrait was praised
also as a speaking likeness--“Why, any blind man could tell ‘twere he.”
(Portraits, I may note, are known as photos here, even portraits of old
ancestors; and ‘photos’ is coming to include all kinds of pictures, as
‘pictures’ now means movies.) I brought a very good Persian carpet down
from London, and the criticism was--“Well, and if you’d got that old bit
by you, I d’esay it were all so well as buyin’ a new’n.”
A friend of my mother’s writes to her from Brighton, 28 October 1841, “I
have been twice to be charmed though not mesmerized by that delightful
pet of yours Jullien and his helps (at the Town Hall) and a very grand
affair they made of it. After beautiful Overtures, Waltzes and a capital
set of Irish Quadrilles by Jullien, they gave us the Storming of St Jean
d’Acre in perfection. The piece commenced with a slow movement of ‘God
save the Queen,’ and after sundry descriptive morceaux the attack began
and Jullien was in all his glory. Bombs, cannon, musquetry, bells
tolling, shouts of victory, etc., and lots of blue lights, Roman Candles
and last (though not least in effect) that beautiful rich crimson light
that you saw last year.” And one of my great-aunts who liked all that,
complained in later years that Wagner was so noisy.
Jullien brought Berlioz to England. My father was at the Opera, 25 June
1853, for the first night of _Benvenuto Cellini_, and was impressed by
it, or rather by the final scene, the casting of the statue. And it
might be more impressive now with better stage machinery for it--the
furnace, the molten metal running down into the mould, and then the
breaking of the mould revealing the great figure of Perseus still aglow
with heat.--The real statue is said to be Cellini’s masterpiece; but I
do not agree. I think myself that he surpassed it in the relief of
Perseus and Andromeda on the pedestal below.
On first hearing Boito’s _Mefistofele_ I recognized the chirruping of
the angels as a familiar sound, but could not recollect where I had
heard it. I had really heard it in expresses between Paris and
Marseilles. Some of the P.L.M. carriages had wheels, or springs, or
something, which gave forth just that sound when they were running fast;
and it may be heard on some of the G.W.R. carriages, but with a
different rhythm and pitch. A railwayman assures me that the English
engines talk and (being foul-mouthed creatures) use unseemly words.
Since learning this from him, I have distinctly heard an engine saying,
“blów and blást it, fétch anóther,” when sent off up these gradients
here with load enough for two; and then, quite cheerfully, “nów I’ve
dóne it, nów I’ve dóne it,” when it has reached the top.
Writing from Teignmouth on 3 August 1854, my grandfather says, “There is
nothing new here, but a ship of this place has just arrived literally
gutted by the Greek pirates. She was laden with raisins. The crew were
obliged to beg for their lives, they had but three biscuits left on
coming to Falmouth. That must be put stop to somehow.” Greece was a
nuisance then: the coast had been blockaded by the English fleet, and
French and English troops were landed at the Piræus in May to stop the
Greeks from siding with the Russians in the Crimean war. He writes on 2
April, “As war is declared, the papers will be interesting. I fancy
people have been too sanguine.”
After the Coup d’état he writes from here, 7 December 1851, “Well, the
President is taking very high ground, and no doubt he will make himself
Emperor, if he can keep the Army on his side,” and further on 26
January, “What a scoundrel that President is.” But he went astray in
saying that the President would not become Emperor “without a desperate
struggle,” and still further astray on 12 October 1851 in generalizing
from some undesirables whom he had seen, “America must now be made up of
outcasts and rogues of all nations.”
In one of his letters--it looks just like the rest--he says on 17
December 1843, “I can scarcely tell if I am not writing plainer and more
legibly than usual, as it is by candle, but I fancy so. I am writing
with a metal pen. When at Moreton last, I bought some and am much
pleased with them, for my sight is so bad that even with the assistance
of glasses I cannot make a pen by candle light and very badly by
daylight.” Twenty years after that, I was taught to make a pen (that is,
to cut a quill into a point) as one of the things that every child must
learn. Metal pens did not come into common use until after 1840, though
introduced some years before, and many people still despised them. A
friend of my father’s writes to him, 13 September 1856, “I hope you will
be able to read my letter, but as I write with a steel pen, I am not
quite certain of it.” Few people now could write so neatly with a quill;
and his writing here is just as neat as ever.
Old letters and diaries can be trusted when they are recording facts;
but they have never been revised, and may contain opinions which the
writers would have modified on second thoughts. My father writes to my
sister from Perugia, 17 September 1876, “This is the most curious and
romantic place I ever saw: Laon is nothing to it.” Curious and romantic
places generally had bad hotels, and Perugia had a good one; and I
suspect this made him view the place benignantly and give it this
excessive praise. He notes in his diary, 24 August 1874, “Elbe scenery
rather fine, tho’ not equal to the Danube, Rhine or Moselle, but better
than the Meuse or Loire.” He wrote this at Dresden, just after coming
down the Elbe from Schandau; and I imagine he was thinking of the
scenery there, forgetting other parts.