statement appears: “_June 23, 1764_.--To-day, at bright noon, as I was
at my work upon the moor, I looked up, and saw all at once a stranger
standing on the turf, just above my block. He was dressed like an old
picture I remember in the windows of St. Neot’s Church, in a long
brown garment, with a girdle; and his head was uncovered and grizzled
with long hair. He spoke to me, and he said, in a low, clear voice,
‘Daniel, that work is hard!’ I wondered that he should know my name,
and I answered, ‘Yes, sir; but I am used to it, and don’t mind it,
for the sake of the faces at home.’ Then he said, sounding his words
like a psalm, ‘Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until
the evening; when will it be night with Daniel Gumb?’ I began to feel
queer; it seemed to me that there was something awful about the unknown
man. I even shook. Then he said again, ‘Fear nothing. The happiest man
in all the earth is he that wins his daily bread by his daily sweat,
if he will but fear God and do no man wrong.’ I bent down my head like
any one confounded, and I greatly wondered who this strange appearance
could be. He was not like a preacher, for he looked me full in the
face; nor a bit like a parson, for he seemed very meek and kind. I
began to think it was a spirit, only such ones always come by night,
and here was I at noonday, and at work. So I made up my mind to drop
my hammer and step up and ask his name right out. But when I looked
up he was gone, and that clear out of my sight, on the bare wide moor
suddenly.[75] I only wish that I had gone forward at once and felt him
with my hand, and found out if he was a real man or only a resemblance.
What could it mean! Mem. to ask Mr. C.”
This event is recorded in a more formal and painful handwriting than
the other MSS. which survive. Nothing could be further removed from
superstition or fear than this man’s whole character and mind. Hard as
one of his native rocks, and accurate as a diagram, yet here is a tinge
of that large and artless belief which is so inseparable from a Keltic
origin, and which is so often manifested by the strongest and loftiest
minds. Another paragraph, written on the blank page of an almanac, runs
thus: “Found to-day, in the very heart of a slab rock that came out
below the granite, the bony skeleton of a strange animal, or rather
some kind of fish. The stone had never been broken into before, and
looked ages older than the rocks above. Now, how came this creature
to get in, and to die and harden there? Was it before Adam’s time, or
since? What date was it? But what can we tell about dates after all?
Time is nothing but Adam’s clock--a measurement that men invented to
reckon by. This very rock with the creature in it was made, perhaps,
before there was any such thing as time. In eternity may be--that is,
before there were any dates begun. At all events, when God did make
the rock, He must have put the creature there.” This appears to be
a singular and rude anticipation of modern discovery, and a simple
solution of a question of science in our own and later time. It is to
be lamented that these surviving details of a thoughtful and original
life are so few and far between.
Gumb appears to have united in his native character the simplicity of
an ancient hermit and the stern contempt of the solitary student for
the busy hum of men, with the brave resolution and independent energy
of mind which have won success and fame for some of our self-made sons
of science and skill. But his opportunities were few, and the severance
of his life and abode from contact with his fellow-men forbade that
access to the discoveries and researches of his kind which might have
rendered him, in other days, the Hugh Miller of the rocks, or the
Stephenson or Watt of a scientific solitude. He and his wife inhabited
their wedded cell for many years and long. The mother on her stony
couch gladdened her anxious husband with sons and daughters; but
she had the courage to brave her woman’s trials alone, for neither
midwife nor doctor were ever summoned to “the rock.” These, as may
well be imagined, were all literally educated at home; but only one
of their children--his name was John--appears to have inherited his
father’s habits or energy. He succeeded to the caverned home after
Daniel’s death, and when his mother had returned to her native village
to die also, the existence of John Gumb is casually seen recorded
as one of the skilful hewers of stone at the foot of Carradon. But
Daniel died “an old man full of days,” and he was carried after all
_ad plures_, and to the silent society of men, in the churchyard of
the parish wherein stood afar off his rocky home. He won and he still
deserves a nook of remembrance among the legendary sons of the west,
“the giants” of Keltic race, “the mighty men that were of old, the men
of renown.” His mind, though rough-hewn, like a block of his native
granite, must have been well balanced: resolute and firm reliance on a
man’s own resources, and disdain of external succour, have ever been
a signal of native genius. To be able to live alone, according to the
adage of an ancient sage, a man must be either an angel or a demon.
Gumb was neither, but a simple, strong-hearted, and intellectual man.
He had the “mens sana in corpore sano” of the poet’s aspiration. A
scenic taste and a mind “to enjoy the universe” he revealed in the
very choice of his abode. In utter scorn of the pent-up city, and
dislike for the reek of the multitude, he built like “the Kenite, his
nest in the rock;”[76] nor did he pitch his stony tent by chance, or
in a casual place in the wild. He chose and he fixed his home where
his eye could command and exult in a stretch of circumferent scenery
a hundred and fifty miles in surrounding extent. In the east, he
greeted the morning sun, as he mounted the rugged saddle of Dartmoor
and Exmoor for his daily career. To the west, Roche, the rock of the
ruined hermitage, lifted a bold and craggy crest to the sky, where long
centuries before another solitary of more ascetic mind lay, like the
patriarch on his pillow of granite, and reared a ladder to heaven by
the energy of nightly prayer. Far, far away to the westward the haughty
sun of England went into the storied sea of Arthur and his knights,
and touched caressingly the heights of grim Dundagel with a lingering
halo of light. These were the visions that soothed and surrounded the
worker at his daily toil, and roused and strengthened the energies of
the self-sustaining man. The lessons of the legend of Daniel Gumb are
simple and earnest and strong. The words of supernatural wisdom might
be graven as an added superscription on his rock, “Whatsoever thou
doest, do it with all thine heart.” If thou be a man friendless and
alone, the slave of the hammer or the axe, and doomed to the sweat
of labour day by day till the night shall come that no man can work,
“aide-toi et Dieu t’aidera”--aid thyself and God will succour thee.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xv. pp. 206-210. 1866. See
Appendix D.
[65] Spelt “Routorr” in the lines quoted on p. 234. It seems more
natural to take the word as meaning “rough, or rugged, tor.” Hawker
spells it “Roughtor” on p. 124.
[66] Now called “Brown Willy.” See the lines quoted on p. 80.
[67] Compare the lines on Sir Lancelot in “The Quest of the Sangraal,”
and Hawker’s note--
“Ah me! that logan of the rocky hills,
Pillar’d in storm, calm in the rush of war,
Shook at the light touch of his lady’s hand!”
The ballad on “The Doom Well of St. Madron” records a similar test of
innocence. For Carew’s description of a logan-rock, see end of Appendix
D.
[68] See Appendix D_a_.
[69]
“On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.”
[70] William Cookworthy (1705-1780) started life as a small druggist in
Nut Street, Plymouth. He had been educated by the Society of Friends,
and at thirty-one he retired from trade, became a Quaker minister, and
continued so for twenty-five years. About 1758, having discovered a
new process of making porcelain, he set up a manufactory at Plymouth,
which was after his death transferred to Bristol, and thence to the
Potteries. “Cookworthy is said to have been a believer in the _dowsing_
or divining-rod for discovering mineral veins, and we learn that he
became a disciple of Swedenborg.... As a lover of science he was much
appreciated, as is proved by the fact that Sir Joseph Banks, Dr.
Solander, and Captain Cook, dined with him at Plymouth before their
voyage round the world” (“Dictionary of National Biography”). His
duties led him to travel about the mining districts of Cornwall, and
he was a great friend of Nancarrow of Godolphin, a superintendent of
mines. It would be on these journeys, no doubt, that he came across
Daniel Gumb. Cookworthy died on October 16, 1780, aged 76.
[71]
“On many a cairn’s grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid.”
_Lay of the Last Minstrel._
[72] It was not Agag, but Og, the king of Bashan, who had the bedstead
of iron. See Deuteronomy iii. 11.
[73] This is probably a slip of the pen for “Virgilian.” The line
occurs in Virgil’s “Eclogues,” 8, 43. There is no stop at “illum.” The
sentence is carried on to the next lines--
“Aut Tmaros aut Rhodope aut extremi Garamantes
Nec generis nostri puerum nec sanguinis edunt.”
Conington translates the passage thus: “Now know I what love is; it
is among savage rocks that he is produced by Tmarus or Rhodope or the
Garamantes at earth’s end; no child of lineage or blood like ours.”
Hawker’s translation, it must be owned, is preferable as far as it goes.
[74] Evidences of thought and style make it almost certain that these
ingenious “fragments” are Hawker’s “own invention.” See note on p. 104.
[75] It was a trick of Hawker’s style to end a sentence with this
or similar adverbs. Instances occur on pp. 17 and 172. Elsewhere he
writes: “As the lightning leaps from the dark cloud suddenly.” Little
points like this suggest the real authorship of Daniel Gumb’s diary.
[76] Numbers xxiv. 21, “And he (Balaam) looked on the Kenites, and
took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou
puttest thy nest in a rock.”
ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH
GIANT[77]
On the brow of a lofty hill, crested with stag-horned trees, commanding
a deep and woodland gorge wherein “the Crooks of Combe”[78] (the curves
of a winding river) urge onward to the “Severn Sea,” still survive
the remains of famous old Stowe,--that historic abode of the loyal
and glorious Sir Beville,[79] the Bayard of old Cornwall, “sans peur
et sans reproche,” in the thrilling Stuart wars. No mansion on the
Tamar-side ever accumulated so rich and varied a store of association
and event. Thither the sons of the Cornish gentry were accustomed to
resort, to be nurtured and brought up with the children of Sir Beville
Granville and Lady Grace; for the noble knight was literally the “glass
wherein” the youth of those ancient times “did dress themselves.” There
their graver studies were relieved by manly pastime and athletic
exercise. Like the children of the Persians, they were taught “to
ride, to bend the bow, and to speak the truth.” At hearth and hall
every time-honoured usage and festive celebration was carefully and
reverently preserved. Around the walls branched the massive antlers
of the red deer of the moors, the trophies of many a bold achievement
with horse and hound. At the buttery-hatch hung a tankard marked with
the guests’ and the travellers’ peg, and a manchet, flanked with
native cheese, stood ready on a trencher for any sudden visitant who
might choose to lift the latch; for the Granville motto was, “An open
door and a greeting hand.” A troop of retainers, servants, grooms,
and varlets of the yard, stood each in his place, and under orders to
receive with a welcome the unknown stranger, as well as their master’s
kinsman and friend.
[Illustration: ANTONY PAYNE’S HOUSE, STRATTON, now the Tree Inn.]
Among these, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a
remarkable personage. He was the son of an old tenant on the estate,
who occupied the manor-house of Stratton, a neighbouring town. His
parents were of the yeoman rank in life, and possessed no singularity
of personal aspect or frame, although both were comely. But Antony,
their son, was from his earliest years a wonderful boy. He shot up
into preternatural stature and strength. His proportions were so vast
that, when he was a mere lad, his schoolmates were accustomed to
“borrow his back,” and, for sport, to work out their geography lessons
or arithmetic on that broad disc in chalk; so that, to his mother’s
amazement and dismay, he more than once brought home, like Atlas, the
world on his shoulders, for her to rub out. His strength and skill in
every boyish game were marvellous, and, unlike many other large men,
his mental and intellectual faculties increased with his amazing growth.
It was Antony Payne’s delight to select two of his stoutest companions,
whom he termed “his kittens,” and, with one under each arm, to climb
some perilous crag or cliff in the neighbourhood of the sea, “to show
them the world,” as he said. He was called in the school “Uncle Tony,”
for the Cornish to this day employ the names “uncle and aunt” as titles
of endearment and respect. Another relic of his boyhood is extant
still: the country lads, when they describe anything of excessive
dimensions, call it, “As long as Tony Payne’s foot.”
He grew on gradually, and in accurate proportion of sinews and thews,
until, at the age of twenty-one, he was taken into the establishment at
Stowe. He then measured seven feet two inches without his shoes,[80]
and he afterwards added a couple of inches more to his stately growth.
Wide-chested, full-armed, and pillared like a rock on lower limbs of
ample and exact symmetry, he would have gladdened the critical eyes of
Queen Elizabeth, whose Tudor taste led her to exult in “looking on a
man.” If his lot had fallen in later days, he might have been hired by
some wonder-monger to astonish the provincial mind, or the intellect of
cities, as the Cornish Chang. But in good, old, honest, simple-hearted
England, they utilised their giants, and deemed that when a cubit was
added to the stature of a man, it was for some wise good end, and they
looked upon their loftier brother with added honour and respect.
So for many years Payne continued to fulfil his various duties as Sir
Beville’s chief retainer at Stowe. He it was who was the leader and
the authority in every masculine sport. He embowelled and flayed the
hunted deer, and carried the carcass on his own shoulders to the Hall,
where he received as his guerdon the horns and the hide. The antlers,
cleansed and polished, were hoisted as a trophy on the panelled wall;
and the skins, dressed and prepared, were shaped into a jerkin for
his goodly chest. It took the spoils of three full-grown red deer to
make the garment complete. His master’s sons and their companions, the
very pride of the West, who were housed and instructed at Stowe, when
released from their graver studies, were under his especial charge.
He taught them to shoot, and fish, and to handle arms. Tilt-yard and
bowling-green, and the hurler’s ground, can still be identified at
Stowe. In the latter, the poising-place and the mark survive, and a
rough block of graywacke is called to this day “Payne’s cast;” it lies
full ten paces beyond the reach whereat the ordinary players could “put
the stone.”
It is said that one Christmas-eve the fire languished in the Hall.
A boy with an ass had been sent to the woodland for logs, and the
driver loitered on his homeward way. Lady Grace lost patience, and
was displeased. All at once a sudden outcry was heard at the gate,
and Sir Beville’s Giant appeared with the loaded animal on his mighty
back. He threw down his burden in triumph at the hearth-side, shouting
merrily, “Ass and fardel! ass and fardel for my lady’s Yule!” Another
time he strode along the path from Kilkhampton village to Stowe with
a bacon-hog of three hundredweight thrown across his shoulders, and
merely because a taunting butcher had doubted his strength for the
feat. Among the excellences of Sir Beville’s Giant, it is told of him
that he was by no means clumsy or uncouth, as men of unusual size
sometimes are, but as nimble and elastic, and as capable of swift and
dexterous movement, as a light and muscular man. Added to this, his
was a strong and acute intellect; so happy also in his language, and
of such a ready wit, that he was called by a writer[81] of the last
century, from his resemblance, in these points only, to Shakespeare’s
knight, “the Falstaff of the West.”
But a great and sudden change was about to come over the happy halls
of Stowe. The king and his Parliament were at fatal strife; and there
could be but one place in the land for the true-hearted and chivalrous
Sir Beville, and that was at his royal master’s side.[82] The
well-known rallying cry went through the hills and valleys of Cornwall,
“Granville’s up!” and the hearts and hands of many a noble knight and
man-at-arms turned towards old Stowe. Mounted messengers rode to and
fro. Strange and stalwart forms arrived to claim a place in the ranks.
Retainers were enrolled day and night; and the smooth sward of the
bowling-green and the Fawn’s Paddock were dinted by the hoofs of horses
and the tread of serried men. Foremost among these scenes we find, as
body-guard of his master, the bulky form of Antony Payne. He marshalled
and manœuvred the rude levies from the western mines, “the underground
men.” He served out arms and rations, and established order, by the
mere terror of his presence and strength, among the wild and mixed
multitude that gathered “for the king and land.”
Instead of the glad and hospitable scenery of former times, Stowe
became in those days like a garrison surrounded by a camp. At last,
one day tidings arrived that the battalions of the Parliament, led by
Lord Stamford, were on their way northwards, and not many miles off. A
picked and goodly company marched forth from the avenue of Stowe, and
among them Payne, on his Cornish cob Samson, of pure Guinhilly breed.
The next day, eight miles towards the south, the battle of Stratton
Hill was fought and won by the royal troops. The Earl of Stamford
was repulsed, and fled, bequeathing, by a strange mischance, his own
name, though the defeated commander, to the field of battle. It is
called to this day Stamford Hill.[83] Sir Beville returned that night
to Stowe, but his Giant remained with some other soldiers to bury the
dead. He had caused certain large trenches to be laid open, each to
hold ten bodies side by side. There he and his followers carried in the
slain. On one occasion they had laid down nine corpses, and Payne was
bringing in another, tucked under his arm, like one of “the kittens”
of his schoolboy days, when all at once the supposed dead man was heard
pleading earnestly with him, and expostulating, “Surely you wouldn’t
bury me, Mr. Payne, before I am dead?” “I tell thee, man,” was the grim
reply, “our trench was dug for ten, and there’s nine in already; you
must take your place.” “But I bean’t dead, I say; I haven’t done living
yet; be massyful, Mr. Payne--don’t ye hurry a poor fellow into the
earth before his time.” “I won’t hurry thee: I mean to put thee down
quietly and cover thee up, and then thee canst die at thy leisure.”
Payne’s purpose, however, was kinder than his speech. He carried his
suppliant carefully to his own cottage not far off, and charged his
wife to stanch, if possible, her husband’s rebellious blood. The man
lived, and his descendants are among the principal inhabitants of the
town of Stratton to this day.[84]
That same year the battle of Lansdown, near Bath, was fought. The
forces of the Parliament prevailed, and Sir Beville nobly died. Payne
was still at his side, and, when his master fell, he mounted young
John Granville, a youth of sixteen, whom he had always in charge, on
his father’s horse, and he led the Granville troop into the fight. A
letter[85] which the faithful retainer wrote to his lady at Stowe still
survives. It breathes in the quaint language of the day a noble strain
of sympathy and homage. Thus it ran:--
“HONOURED MADAM,--Ill news flieth apace. The heavy tidings no doubt
hath already travelled to Stowe that we have lost our blessed
master by the enemy’s advantage. You must not, dear lady, grieve
too much for your noble spouse. You know, as we all believe, that
his soul was in heaven before his bones were cold. He fell, as he
did often tell us he wished to die, in the great Stuart cause, for
his country and his king. He delivered to me his last commands,
and with such tender words for you and for his children as are
not to be set down with my poor pen, but must come to your ears
upon my best heart’s breath. Master John, when I mounted him on
his father’s horse, rode him into the war like a young prince, as
he is, and our men followed him with their swords drawn and with
tears in their eyes. They did say they would kill a rebel for every
hair of Sir Beville’s beard. But I bade them remember their good
master’s word, when he wiped his sword after Stamford fight; how
he said, when their cry was, ‘Stab and slay!’ ‘Halt, men! God will
avenge.’ I am coming down with the mournfullest load that ever a
poor servant did bear, to bring the great heart that is cold to
Kilkhampton vault. Oh, my lady, how shall I ever brook your weeping
face? But I will be trothful to the living and to the dead.
“These, honoured madam, from thy saddest, truest servant,
“ANTONY PAYNE.”
[Illustration: ANTONY PAYNE (p. 118)
_From the picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller_]