Bath Bun, the little cones being the lollipops. It covers more than four
hundred square miles--twice the whole extent of Dartmoor--and it is only
two miles high. It looks best at long distances, where the lower part is
hidden and the cone stands out: the best view I ever had of it, was from
a steamer going from Brindisi to Malta. With little more than a third of
the height, Vesuvius made more show. But it is sad to see Vesuvius now,
after the eruption of 1906: the cone fell in, and that has deprived the
mountain of its former grace. Volcanoes have these ups and downs. I
always wish I could have seen the rise of Monte Nuovo on the other side
of the bay. It is 450 feet in height, and rose up from level ground in
the course of a few hours.
We have an extinct volcano here, only half a mile from this house. One
sees geologists going round there now and then with their little bags
and hammers and going off with specimens. An eminent geologist came
lecturing here in 1906, and he spoke of volcanoes breaking out again
after long periods of calm, such outbreaks being usually most violent.
One of the listeners was much disturbed at hearing this, and thought it
hardly worth his while to go on putting in potatoes near such a
dangerous place. So he inquired when that hillock were a-likely to be
bustin’ forth. With the spaciousness of a true geologist, the lecturer
replied, “In the science of geology a period of thirty thousand years is
relatively....” The man went on with his potatoes.
Though living on the edge of a volcano, I do not worry about eruptions,
but only about earthquakes. I can remember two earthquakes in England--I
felt the shock in 1884 but slept through it in 1868--and I have seen
what earthquakes do abroad (especially at Chios in 1881) and I do not
want a heavy earthquake here. In these valleys it would be overwhelming.
The hillsides are strewn with granite rocks that have weathered away
till they have nearly lost their hold upon the ground--some actually are
Logans and go seesaw--and a smart shock would send them racing down into
the valleys below. Sometimes I see a rabbit start a stone off down a
hill; and, when the stone comes bouncing by, I picture what would happen
if the stone weighed ten or fifteen tons, and hundreds of such stones
were coming like an avalanche.
A year or two ago the End of the World became a common topic of
conversation, as a newspaper was exploiting some prediction of it. And a
man here cleared the matter up with the remark--“In church it be World
With_out_ End.” About fifty years ago my brother and I used to go to the
Scotch Church in Crown Court towards the end of December, to hear Dr
Cumming announce the End of the World for the ensuing year. But after a
few years he grew more wary, and he hedged--“And if the World does not
indeed come to an End, something else very remarkable will certainly
occur.” (I quote from memory, and may have got the words wrong, but they
were to that effect.) About the same date I heard a preacher in a
country church declaring that the World, “having now lasted for close
upon six thousand years, cannot reasonably be expected to last much
longer.”
Coming into Jerusalem by the Damascus gate, 14 March 1882, I noticed two
unfamiliar objects standing out above the city walls against the evening
sky. Upon inquiry I found that they were ventilating pipes. A family
(American, I think) had taken a house there, as they thought the Day of
Judgement was at hand, yet wished to have a sanitated home meanwhile.
And other families had likewise taken houses at Jerusalem, the notion
being that the Last Judgement was going to be held there and residents
would get priority.
On a Good Friday morning I found a small girl standing on my door-step
here, eating a hot-cross-bun. I asked what she was doing there, and she
curtsied and said, “Please, zir, I be fasting.” And generally the
seasons of the Christian year were marked by buns, lamb, goose,
plum-pudding, pancakes and salt-fish far more than by observances at
church. There were no week-day services at Lustleigh except on Christmas
Day, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; and the only recognition of a
saint’s-day was the transfer of its collect to the following Sunday.
There was Communion four times in the year, each time with a fresh
bottle of wine at ten shillings per bottle. It was heralded by the
reading of the exhortation on the previous Sunday, and perhaps was held
in more esteem for being so uncommon.
A new Rector came to Lustleigh at the end of 1844, and remained there
till his death at the end of 1887; and at first the parish did not like
his innovations. My grandfather writes to my father on 15 December
1844--“I am informed that the parishioners will not submit to any
alteration in the service, and that the churchwardens have gone over the
parish to ascertain their opinions, and it is supposed the parson will
not attempt anything further to annoy them,” and again on 29 December
1844--“I saw Mr ***** on Thursday: he told me he had left the church for
seven weeks until last Sunday, when he determined to go and shew his
resentment by leaving the church on the parson going to the communion.
He did so, and again on Christmas day, but no one followed him. They are
opposed to the surplice and offertory, but have not spirit to resent it.
His brother (who is churchwarden) says unless the parson goes back to
the accustomed duties of the church, he will leave altogether. His
father talks more than he does, but it appears he has stood the whole,
offertory and all.”
He writes again, 20 January 1845, about people leaving the church--“What
will they do then? I suppose they will dissent and erect more chapels,
so we shall by and by have a plenty of ’Isms. I fancy we have quite
enough already.” People left the church and went to chapel for very
varied reasons. I remember an excellent old lady doing this because a
child of hers had caught its death of cold by the parson a-baptizin’ of
it without a-puttin’ of a kettleful o’ bilin’ water into that stoney
font.
The new Rector was merely following the directions in the Book of Common
Prayer. After the Sermon he is to “return to the Lord’s Table and begin
the Offertory,” and then, “if there be no Communion,” he is to say a
Prayer and Collect, concluding with the Blessing. And he kept his
surplice on for finishing the service, instead of putting on a black
gown to preach in, as was the custom when the Offertory and Prayer and
Collect were omitted and the Blessing was given from the pulpit. He was
right enough in what he did; but it was hardly worth doing, if it scared
parishioners away.
The bishop was trying to stop all innovations. My grandfather writes to
my father, 20 January 1845--“What do you think of the old bishop’s
letter? I fancy it is very evasive: he gives them no direct
instructions. They are to do as they are now doing: he does not tell
them to withdraw any innovations.” It was only in more important matters
that the bishop gave direct instructions to his clergy. My grandfather
writes to my father, 27 October 1856--“The bishop has caused ***** to
shave off his beard: he was like a Crimean soldier.”
Innovations might have been accepted here at any other time; but this
was the period of Puseyism, and every innovation was supposed to be the
outcome of a plot to Romanize the church. People generally knew nothing
of ritual or doctrine, and would not have been so vehement about such
things, had there not been another cause behind--they thought the clergy
were not altogether honest over this. A few had gone over to Rome, and
there was a notion that many others would have done the same, if they
could have done it without giving up their livings. And from this point
of view Anglicanism was merely a fraudulent device for holding on to
livings, while assenting to the doctrines and ritual of Rome; or, as my
grandfather puts it, 10 November 1850, “to remain in receipt of the
Protestant pay while practising all the eccentricities of Romanism.”
However, there was not much sign of Romanism here, or of its
eccentricities. Once a stranger came to church and crossed herself, and
no one knew what she was at. It was described to me--“Her were
a-spot-in’ and a-stripe-in’ of herself”--as if it were telegraphy by dot
and dash.
There was a policeman who used to work here in the garden before he
joined the force; and, when he was home on leave, he came round to see
the gardener. I found them in the cider-cellar, looking at a dozen empty
casks that I had lately bought. These were port-pipes of over a hundred
gallons each; and, on seeing them ranged round the cellar, I began to
think of Ali Baba and the oil-jars for the Forty Thieves. The policeman
did not know the story, and listened very attentively and thoughtfully
while I recounted it to him; and then he said in a regretful way, “We
ain’t allowed to do that now.” Some years afterwards he had a murderer
in his hands, and the murderer died. It was really a very satisfactory
ending to the case, as it saved all the time and trouble that is wasted
on the trial and execution of a murderer caught red-handed in the act. I
presume the murderer died legitimately, but I thought about the Forty
Thieves.
I have a planisphere, and a young carpenter noticed it when he was
working in the house; and he showed an interest in it that astonished me
until I saw what he was at. He learnt the names of the constellations
and their places in the sky; and then, when he took damsels for romantic
walks, he had a topic of conversation that his rivals could not
touch.--An astronomer tells me that he has sometimes given a popular
lecture and invited questions at the end, and more than once he has been
asked--“You say the spectres [spectra] showed you what the stars be made
of, but how did you get at their names?”
Some years ago I transferred a youthful maidservant from my house here
to my house in town, and for several evenings after her arrival I heard
thunderous noises overhead. At last I made inquiry, and was informed
that she took exercise last thing at night by turning somersaults in her
room. Another time two youths from here were staying at my house in
town, while they were up for an examination; and the ample staircase
tempted them to descend it on their heads. Coming downstairs in the
twilight, I just saw the soles of their shoes, and could not imagine
what those four objects were, hovering in mid-air far down below me.
This method of progression is much in vogue at Lustleigh. On a hot day I
have seen a dozen boys going along the mill-leet upside down. With
sleeves tucked up, the water only wets the arms and scalp; but there is
always a chance of overbalancing and going in full-length. That sends
the water flying over anyone upon the path alongside; and sometimes, I
think, they do it purposely for that. As an exasperated man once said,
“they Lustleigh boys be hardly human.” Yet they might learn a little
from the boys in Italy. When those boys go stealing fruit, they leave
their clothes at home, as they run less risk of recognition, being
naked. But the boys here keep their clothes on, and so are recognized at
once.
On a Sunday morning I met a Lustleigh damsel on her way to church,
wearing a new dress and evidently wishing it to be observed. For want of
anything better to say, I said, “You don’t go in for hobble skirts, I
see.” She answered, “No, not I: a proper fright I’d look in they.” And I
inquired Why. The answer was, “Why, mother says my thighs be like prize
marrows at a show.” Three old ladies, on their way to church, just
caught the last remark, and passed on with averted eyes in consternation
at our talk.
Some summers ago a young lady of about nineteen was lodging at a house
near here; and, like many other townsfolk, she found the country more
entrancing than the countryfolk find it themselves, “And her were proper
mazed a-gettin’ up all hours of the mornin’ and goin’ out for walks. And
her waked up everybody in the house a-bath-in’ of herself afore her
went. And one of they mornin’s after her’d a-bath’d herself, her went
off right across the valley without ever thinkin’ to put any of her
clothes on. And Jim *****, he were a-goin’ early to his work, as he had
a bit of thatchin’ to do four mile away, and he come sudden on her in
that copse. And he saith, ‘Bide thee there ahind that rock, and I’ll
tell my missis to bring’e a garment’.”
As a mid-Victorian bachelor, I was perturbed at post-Victorian spinsters
coming down to stay with me unchaperoned. The custom is established now;
but when it was an innovation, I wrote to one inquiring if she really
meant to come alone. And she answered--“Yes, of course. Sans chaperon,
sans culottes, sans everything.” Another one assured me that she could
not possibly need a chaperon, as she was thirty and had three false
teeth.
A man who often came to Lustleigh, was careless of the clothes he wore;
and one of the Lustleigh people told him that he was lowering himself in
everybody’s estimation by dressing in that untidy way. He was looking
down the valley towards a house a long way off, as if he did not hear
the other man’s remarks: then, nodding towards the house, he said--“Did
you ever hear how old *****’s grandfather made all that money of his?”
The other man pricked up his ears, and said he had not heard. The answer
was--“Well, I can tell you, then. He always gave his whole attention to
his own affairs.”
That was about sixty years ago, before the railway came here bringing
fresh interests in. There were a good many people then who might have
done much better in the world by giving as much attention to their own
affairs as they were giving to other people’s. And in spite of all their
curiosity they very often got things wrong. It was all ‘putting two and
two together,’ drawing inferences and passing inferences on as facts. I
hear echoes of it still. People tell me positively of things that
happened in this neighbourhood at such or such a date, and I find
diaries and letters and other papers contradicting them. Sometimes they
tell me very unexpected things about myself, although they could have
ascertained the facts at any time by merely asking me. I used often to
go for a long Sunday walk, starting off along the Bovey road; and I was
told I went to church at Bovey most Sunday afternoons.
This ‘putting two and two together’ is a ticklish process even for a
careful man. I remember my father saying that he saw the Alabama at
Calais and the Kearsarge waiting for her outside. Now, the Alabama never
was at Calais: she went into Cherbourg, and the Kearsarge caught her
coming out from there, 19 June 1864. I thought it was merely a slip of
the tongue, Calais for Cherbourg; but his diary shows that he was not at
Cherbourg at the time. There is an entry on 23 April 1864, “saw a
Federal war-steamer lying off Calais, watching a Confederate vessel
within the harbour,” and at that date the Alabama was about latitude 17°
S. and longitude 32° W. I think he would have noted the ships’ names, if
he had ascertained them at the time; and I suppose that some years
afterwards he fancied that they must have been the Alabama and the
Kearsarge.
My father was puzzled about a lady who lived at Moreton, where she could
not possibly have many interests in life, yet seemed as active-minded
and alert as if she mixed in the great world. He spent some time one
afternoon in conversation with her, trying to discover where her
interests lay; but the only thing that was elicited was this--she always
made a point of knowing what everyone in Moreton had for dinner on a
Sunday.
Very small things made a great commotion in a little town like that.
There is a letter to my father from a friend there, 30 June 1843--“We
had Sand’s Horsemen here on Friday last, who managed to take about
100_l_, which is a larger sum than they took in Exeter in one day or
almost any other place. All the Beauty, Rank and Wealth of the
neighbourhood for some miles were present--quite grand for
Moreton--indeed I never saw so many persons in Moreton before. ***** and
his wife came to my house and brought two Miss *****s, and I escorted
one of them to the Horsemanship. Next day I was told that people said I
was after Miss ***** and the cash--she has about 7000_l._ I am
thoroughly sick of these reports.”
Not many years ago a man at Moreton said something slanderous about
another man there. He was threatened with an action, and compromised it
by agreeing to publish an apology and devote a sum of money to any
public purpose that the injured party chose to name. The public purpose
was chosen very astutely--taking the whitewash off the almshouses, a
fine old granite building dated 1637. The building is mentioned in the
guide-books, and many people go to see it. Finding it improved, they ask
about it; and then (as the astute man had foreseen) they hear the story
of the other man’s discomfiture.
In another country town a man did something that really was
discreditable; but people went on exaggerating it until at last they
dropped the real facts out, as these were much too trivial to be worth
mentioning in such a lurid tale. And thus he found himself in a position
to deny it all on oath. So he denied it, threatening prosecutions, and
received a whitewashing that he did not at all deserve, the local papers
denouncing “these unjustifiable aspersions on a man of blameless life.”
When people had to see a lawyer, they seldom told him the whole tale,
and thus got bad advice, unless he knew enough of their affairs
beforehand to enable him to get at all the facts. They would never trust
a lawyer if he kept a clerk, and hesitated if he were in partnership,
feeling that a clerk was sure to gossip and a partner might. And thus
the little country towns were full of lawyers with small practices, each
doing his own office work. There is a letter to my father, 12 September
1852, from a lawyer at Moreton, a very able man, who died in early life
from no complaint but being bored to death. He says--“I copied 29 sheets
draft and engrossed a deed and settled two mortgages and a lease
yesterday: hard work that.”
There came a time when lawyers (and others) did not work so hard at
Moreton. In his diary on 20 January 1870, two months before his death,
my grandfather notes that he had been to Moreton in the morning to see
the lawyer and the doctor--“neither at home, one hunting, the other
shooting: so lost my labour.”
That lawyer who went hunting, used to tell his clients, when they had a
good possessory title, they had much better burn their title-deeds, as
these were certain to have some blunder in them that would cause trouble
some day. He had drawn a good many of these deeds himself, so I suppose
he knew what they were likely to contain.
Writing to my father on 3 December 1844, my grandfather says--“There is
a literary society formed in Moreton. I suppose it must be a sort of
mechanics’ institute. I fear the intellect of Moreton is too shallow to
make much progress for some time. However, that is the way to make it
better.”
A friend of my father’s writes to him from Moreton on 23 November 1844,
“We have a meeting tomorrow for the purpose of establishing a Reading
Room and Library for all classes,” and then on 13 December, “I enclose a
copy of the rules of our Society for the promotion of knowledge.... We
have £11 to lay out in books at once. We have expended a portion of that
sum already in the purchase of selections from the ‘Family Library’ 2/6
per vol, Cabinet and Lardner’s Cyclopedia 3/-, and Chambers very useful
elementary books on the sciences etc., all the nos (27) of Knights
weekly volume 1/-each (the cheapest and best almost now publishing) and
two or three of Murrays cheap edition etc. etc., in all nearly 90
volumes: cost about £7. We are going to take in weekly the ‘Athenæum’,
Chambers Journal and Chambers Miscellany, some mechanics magazine and
one or two other monthlys. Lectures once a week till April. The object
of the Society is to benefit all classes and particularly tradesmen and
their apprentices and mechanics etc. who will be much better in the
reading room for a couple of hours than in a public house.” The reading
room was to be open three times a week, and the librarian was to have £8
a year for the use of the room (it being in his house) including coals
and candles and his own services.
There is now a Public Library at Moreton, an ostentatious building which
must have cost at least a hundred times as much as the books that it
contains. People can read newspapers there and bring away light
literature to read at home. But such libraries are seldom of real use.
There is not a library in Devon where real work can be done on very many
subjects; and the buildings of these libraries might be turned to some
account, if each one took a subject and acquired the proper books.
Being a Cambridge man, I can get books from the University
Library--Oxford men cannot get books from theirs--and by going to the
Reading Room at the British Museum, I can use the books in the immense
collection there. That was all I needed when I had a house in town: if I
wanted a book down here, I had only to wait till I went up. Now that I
am always here, I feel the loss of it, and have to buy extensively. I
have about four thousand books, and find I want quite eight or ten. If
you have only a single subject, you may perhaps get the necessary books;
but you can hardly manage that, if you have several subjects, and do not
want mere books-of-reference or text-books, but the books containing the
material on which such works are based. These books cannot always be
obtained without delay, and therefore must be ordered in advance, as
soon as you foresee that you will need them. And then, before a book
arrives, you may perceive another way of dealing with the subject, and
find you do not need the book at all.
I have tried to arrange my books by subjects, or alphabetically by
author’s names--with Roger Ascham next to Daisy Ashcroft--but it always
ends in my arranging them by sizes. If a book is higher or wider than
the book alongside, it bulges at the edges where the other does not hold
it in; and the slightest bulging lets the dust creep in between the
leaves. Books are classed as 4to, 8vo, 16mo, &c., according to the
folding of the sheets; but the sheets themselves are of all shapes and
sizes, crown, royal, demy, and so on. And books come out in dozens of
different heights and widths, as if they never were intended to stand in
rows on shelves.
In the Pepysian Library at Cambridge the books are all arranged by
sizes; and the arrangement is so rigid that the volumes of a work are
separated if there is the slightest difference in their size. But then
Mr Pepys had a catalogue of them that was “perfectly alphabeticall.”
They are in the bookcases that Sympson made for him in 1666, and they
number just three thousand. There is a story that he always kept that
number, neither more nor less, turning one book out if he brought
another in. But his catalogue has only 2474, and the other 526 were
added by his nephew: so it must really be a story of his nephew, not of
him.
There was a saying of Mark Pattison’s that no man can respect himself
unless he has at least a thousand books, and I have heard it argued that
no man need have more. But really it must all depend on what editions
they are. There are ninety-four volumes in one edition of Voltaire’s
works, and another edition is contained in three. I have these three
volumes on my shelves: 6,250 pages with two columns to the page and 78
lines to the column, making about ten million words in all. Goethe’s
works are only half that length, but they spread out into five-and-fifty
volumes on my shelves: 18,000 pages of 29 lines each.
I have two dictionaries here, written by two old friends of mine--I have
known one of them for nearly forty years and the other one for some
years more. They both come down to stay with me, but I keep their works
apart. Side by side upon a shelf, the dictionaries look like Dignity and
Impudence in Landseer’s picture of the dogs. The dictionary of Egyptian
Hieroglyphics is the mastiff, and the terrier is the dictionary of
Colloquial Chinese. The mastiff is seven times the terrier’s weight and
size. But the little one has 1038 pages, of which 1030 are vocabulary,
with 45 lines of Chinese type per page. The big one has 1510 pages, of
which 1065 are vocabulary, with 60 lines of Hieroglyphic type per page
in double column of 30 lines apiece. So the little one is nearly
three-quarters the length of the big one, measured in vocabularies, only
the paper is much thinner and the type is small--in my eyes, much too
small, the Chinese being only a third of the height of the Hieroglyphic,
though the characters are more complex.