lightning yesterday.” “There, Jem,” said he to one of his men,
triumphantly, “didn’t I say the parson would find it out? Yes, sir,”
he said, “it is as you say: it is all that wretched old Cherry[146]
Parnell’s doing, with her vengeance and her noise!” I stared with
astonishment at this unlooked-for interpretation which he had put into
my mouth, and waited for him to explain. “You see, sir,” he went on
to say, “the case was this: old Cherry came up to my place, tottering
along and mumbling that she wanted a fagot of wood. I said to her,
‘Cherry,’ says I, ‘I gave you one only two days agone, and another
two days before that, and I must say that I didn’t make up my woodrick
altogether for you.’ So she turned away, looking very grany, and
muttering something about ‘Hotter for me hereafter.’ Well, sir, last
night I was in bed, I and my wife, and all to once there bursted a
thunderbolt, and shaked the very room and house. Up we started, and my
wife says, ‘O father, old Cherry’s up! I wish I had gone after her with
that there fagot.’ I confess I thought in my mind I wish she had; but
it was too late then, and I would try to hope for the best. But now,
sir, you see with your own eyes what that revengeful old woman hath
been and done. And I do think, sir,” he went on to say, changing his
tone to a kind of indignant growl--“I _do_ think that when I call to
mind how I’ve paid tithe and rates faithfully all these years, and kept
my place in church before your reverence every Sabbath-day, and always
voted in the vestries that what hath a be ought to be, and so on, I do
think that such ones as old Cherry Parnell never ought to be allowed to
meddle with such things as thunder and lightning.” What could I--what
could any man in his senses--say to this?
The great charmer of charms[147] in this strange corner of the world
is a seventh son born in direct succession from one father and one
mother. Find such a person, and you have “the sayer of good words”
always at your command. He is called in our folk-lore the doctor of the
district. There is such an old man in my hamlet, popularly called Uncle
Tony Cleverdon. He was baptised Anthony; but this has been changed by
kindly village parlance and the usage of the West. For with us the
pet name is generally the short name, and any one venerable from age
and amiable in nature is termed, without relationship, but merely for
endearment, “uncle” and “aunt.”[148] Uncle Tony has inherited this
endowment in a family of thirteen children, he being the seventh born.
He often says that his lucky birth has been as good as “a fortin” to
him all his life; for although he is forbidden by usage and tradition
to take money for the exercise of his functions, nothing has hindered
that he should always be invited to sit as an honoured guest at the
table furnished with good things in the houses of his votaries. Uncle
Tony allowed me, as a vast favour, to take down from his lips some of
his formularies: they had never been committed to writing before, he
said; not, as I believe, for more than three centuries, for they smack
of the Middle Ages. He very much questioned whether their virtue would
not be utterly destroyed when he was gone, by their being “put into
ink.”
Uncle Tony was like an ancient augur in the science of birds. “Whenever
you see one magpie alone by himself,” said he, with a look of
inimitable sagacity, “that bird is upon no good: spit over your right
shoulder three times, and say--
“Clean birds by sevens,
Unclean by twos,
The dove in the heavens
Is the one I choose!”
Among the myriads of sea and land birds that throng this coast, the
raven is king of the rock.[149] The headland and bulwark of the slope
of Holacombe is a precipice of perpendicular rock. There, undisturbed
(for no bribe would induce a villager to slay them, old or young), the
ravens dwell, revel, and reign. One day, as we watched them in their
flapping flight, said Uncle Tony to me, “Sometimes, sir, these wild
creatures will be so merciful that they will even save a man’s life.”
“Indeed! how?” “Why, sir, it came to pass on this wise. There was once
a noted old wrecker called Kinsman: he lived in my father’s time; and
when no wreck was onward, he would get his wages by raising stone in a
quarry by the sea-shore. Well, he was to work one day over yonder, half
way down Tower Cliff, and all at once he heard a buzz above him in the
air, and he looked up, and there were two old ravens flying round and
round very near his head. They kept whirling and whirling and coming
so nigh, and they seemed so knowing, that the old man thought verily
they were trying to speak, as they made a strange croak; but after
some time they went away, and old Kinsman went on with his work. Well,
sir, by-and-by they both came back again, flying above and round as
before; and then at last, lo and behold! the birds dropped right down
into the quarry two pieces of wreck-candle just at the old man’s feet.”
(Very often the wreckers pick up Neapolitan wax-candles from vessels in
the Mediterranean trade that have been lost in the Channel.) “So when
Kinsman saw the candles, he thought in his mind, ‘There is surely wreck
coming in upon the beach:’ so he packed his tools together and left
them just where he stood, and went his way wrecking. He could find no
jetsam, however, though he searched far and wide, and he used to say
he verily believed that the ravens must have had the candles at hand
in their holt, to be so ready with them as they were. Next day he went
back to quarry to his work, and he always used to say it was as true
as a proverb: there the tools were all buried deep out of sight, for
the craig above had given way and fallen down, and if he had tarried
only one hour longer he must have been crushed to death! So you see,
sir, what knowledge those ravens must have had; how well they knew
the old man, and how fond he was of wreck; how crafty they were to
hit upon the only plan that would ever have slocked him away: and the
birds, moreover, must have been kind creatures, and willing to save a
poor fellow’s life. There is nothing on airth so knowing as a bird is,
unless it may be a snake. Did you ever hear, sir, how I heal an adder’s
bite? You cut a piece of hazelwood, sir, and you fasten a long bit and
a short one together into the form of a cross; then you lay it softly
upon the wound, and you say, thrice, blowing out the words aloud like
one of the commandiments--
“‘Underneath this hazelin mote
There’s a Braggoty worm with a speckled throat,
Nine double is he:
Now from nine double to eight double,
And from eight double to seven double,
And from seven double to six double,
And from six double to five double,
And from five double to four double,
And from four double to three double,
And from three double to two double,
And from two double to one double,
And from one double to no double,
No double hath he!’
“There, sir,” said uncle Tony, “if David had known that charm he never
would have wrote the verse in the Psalms about the adder that was so
deaf that she would not hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never
so wisely. I never knew that charm fail in all my life!” Tony added,
after a pause--“Fail! of course, sometimes a body may fail, but then
’tis always from people’s obstinacy and ignorance. I dare say, sir,
you’ve heard the story of Farmer Colly’s mare, how she bled herself to
death; and they say he puts the blame on me. But what’s the true case?
His man came rapping at my door after I was in bed. I got up and opened
the casement and looked out, and I asked what was amiss. ‘O Tony,’
says he, ‘master’s mare is blooding streams, and I be sent over to
you to beg you to stop it.’ ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘I can do it just as
well here as if I came down and opened the door: only just tell me the
name of the beast, and I’ll proceed.’ ‘Name,’ says he, ‘why, there’s
no name that I know by; we allus call her the black mare.’ ‘No name?’
says I; ‘then how ever can I charm her? Why, the name’s the principal
thing! Fools! never to give her a name to rule the charm by. Be off!
be off! I can’t save her.’ So the poor old thing died in course.” “And
what may your charm be, Tony?” said I. “Just one verse in Ezekiel, sir,
beginning, ‘I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.’ And
so on. I say it only twice, with an outblow between each time. But the
finest by-word that I know, sir, is for the prick of a thorn.” And here
it follows from my diary in the antique phraseology which Uncle Tony
had received from his forefathers through descending generations:--
“Happy man that Christ was born!
He was crownèd with a thorn:
He was piercèd through the skin,
For to let the poison in;
But His five wounds, so they say,
Closed before He passed away.
In with healing, out with thorn:
Happy man that Christ was born!”
Another time Uncle Tony said to me, “Sir, there is one thing I want to
ask you, if I may be so free, and it is this, Why should a merry-maid”
(the local name for mermaid), “that will ride about upon the waters in
such terrible storms, and toss from sea to sea in such ruxles as there
be upon the coast--why should she never lose her looking-glass and
comb?” “Well, I suppose,” said I, “that if there are such creatures,
Tony, they must wear their looking-glasses and combs fastened on
somehow--like fins to a fish.”[150] “See!” said Tony, chuckling
with delight; “what a thing it is to know the Scriptures like your
reverence! I never should have found it out. But there’s another point,
sir, I should like to know, if you please; I’ve been bothered about
it in my mind hundreds of times. Here be I, that have gone up and
down Holacombe cliffs and streams fifty years come next Candlemas, and
I’ve gone and watched the water by moonlight and sunlight, days and
nights, on purpose, in rough weather and smooth (even Sundays, too,
saving your presence), and my sight as good as most men’s, and yet
I never could come to see a merry-maid in all my life! How’s that,
sir?” “Are you sure, Tony,” I rejoined, “that there are such things
in existence at all?” “Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice! He was
out once by night for wreck (my father watched the coast like most of
the old people formerly), and it came to pass that he was down by the
duck-pool on the sand at low-water tide, and all at once he heard music
in the sea. Well, he croped on behind a rock, like a coastguard-man
watching a boat, and got very near the noise. He couldn’t make out the
words, but the sound was exactly like Bill Martin’s voice, that singed
second counter in church. At last he got very near, and there was the
merry-maid very plain to be seen, swimming about upon the waves like a
woman bathing--and singing away. But my father said it was very sad and
solemn to hear--more like the tune of a funeral hymn than a Christmas
carol by far--but it was so sweet that it was as much as he could do
to hold back from plunging into the tide after her. And he an old man
of sixty-seven, with a wife and a houseful of children at home! The
second time was down here by Holacombe Pits. He had been looking out
for spars: there was a ship breaking up in the Channel, and he saw some
one on the move just at half-tide mark. So he went on very softly, step
and step, till he got nigh the place, and there was the merry-maid
sitting on a rock, the bootifullest merry-maid that eye could behold,
and she was twisting about her long hair, and dressing it just like one
of our girls getting ready for her sweetheart on the Sabbath-day. The
old man made sure he should greep hold of her before ever she found
him out, and he had got so near that a couple of paces more and he
would have caught her by the hair as sure as tithe or tax, when, lo and
behold! she looked back and glimpsed at him. So in one moment she dived
head-foremost off the rock, and then tumbled herself topsy-turvy about
in the waters, and cast a look at my poor father, and grinned like a
seal!”
FOOTNOTES:
[138] Welcombe, to which Mr. Hawker became curate in 1850, and which he
continued to serve until his death. There is an allusion to Welcombe
church on p. 21.
[139] Hawker writes in one of his letters: “And now enough of myself.
Solitude makes men self-praisers, and a Bemööster Herr--as the Germans
call lonely readers--a mossy vicar likes to talk about his own
importance.”
[140] Compare p. 196.
[141] A similar sacrilege occurs in Hawker’s poem, “A Legend of the
Hive.”
[142] See Appendix A_b_.
[143] An echo from Shakespeare--
“... the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
[144] Compare p. 194.
[145] Horace, “Ars Poetica,” 185--
“Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet.”
[146] _Charity_ is the full name.
[147] There is a chapter on charms in Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the
West of England.”
[148] Compare Hawker’s poem, “Modryb Marya”--
“Now the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our dear Aunt Mary’s tree.”
[149] Compare the poem, “A Croon on Hennacliff.”
[150] Hawker was no doubt reminded of his own impersonation of a
mermaid at Bude. For many quaint legends about mermaids and mermen, see
Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England.”
HUMPHREY VIVIAN
Among the changes that have passed over the face of our land with
such torrent-like rapidity in this wondrous nineteenth century of
marvel and miracle, none are more striking and complete than that
which has transformed the torpid clergy of past periods into the
active and energetic ministers of our own Church and time. The country
incumbent of Macaulay’s “History,” the guests at the second table of
the patron and the squire--the Trullibers and the Parson Adams of
Fielding and Smollett--would find no deuterotype in the present day.
But in the transition period of our ecclesiastical history there are
here and there fossil memorials of the former men that would enable a
thoughtful mind to construct singular specimens of character which,
while embodying the past, would also indicate the future lineaments of
gradual change and improvement. Among these is one, a personal friend
of the writer when he first entered the ministry, whose kindliness
of heart and originality of character may supply sundry graphic and
interesting reminiscences. As old Johnson would have said, had he
written his life, so let me say of Humphrey Vivian, that he was at once
the stately priest, the genial companion, and the faithful, facetious
friend. Let me indulge some of these recollections, and gather up some
materials of personal history, which are by no means wanting. For it
was his great delight, when a guest at my table, after he had done more
than justice to the viands set before him, when his gold snuff-box had
been produced and ceremoniously offered to all around, and his glass
filled with his favourite wine--“sound old Tory port”--to recall in
whole volumes the events of his youth and manhood, and to dilate with
emphatic gusto on the contrasts of the age and times.
The personal aspect of my friend presented an imposing solemnity to
the eye. Tall, even to the measure of six feet two inches, but slender
withal as the bole of a poplar-tree, with small features and twinkling
eye, and a round undersized head, and yet with a demeanour so pompous,
such a frequency of condescending bows, and such a roll of words, that
he took immediate rank as a gentleman of the old school. And as to his
mental endowments, be it enough to record that there were few men as
wise as he looked. His garb was that of a pluralized clergyman of the
days of the Georges,--fine black broadcloth, that hung around him in
festive moments like mourning on a Maypole. His vest was of rich silk
with wide pockets, roomy enough to hold the inevitable snuff-box, the
gold _étui_, and the small cock-fighter’s saw, which was used to cut
away the natural spur of the bird when it was replaced with steel. This
last was a common equipment of a country gentleman, lay or clerical, in
those days. His apparel terminated in black silk stockings and nether
garments, buckled with gold or silver at the knee. Buckles also clasped
his shoes. Thus attired, he was no unfit representative of the clergy
who ruled and reigned in their parochial domain in the west of England
in the early part of the eighteenth century. His conversational powers
were ample and amusing; but it was when he could be brought to dilate
on his own adventures and history in earlier life that he most surely
riveted and requited the attention of his auditors.
At my table one day the topic of discourse was the marriage of the
clergy. “The young curates,” said he, “should always marry, and that
as soon as ever they are ordained. Nothing brightens up a parsonage
like the ribbons of a merry wife. I, you know, have buried three Mrs.
Vivians; and when I come to look back, I really can hardly decide
which it was that made the happiest home. If I had to live my life
over again, I should certainly marry all three. And yet I did not win
my first love, after all. Her grumpy old father came between us and
blighted our days, as the Psalmist puts it. Ah! the very sound of her
name is like a charm to me still. Bridget Morrice! But ‘Biddy’ she was
always called at home; and very soon she was ‘Biddy dear’ to me.
“I was at Oxford then, and when I came down for the ‘Long’ I used to
be very duly at church, because there I could see Biddy. Her pew was
opposite to mine; and there was I in full rig as we used to dress in
those days,--long scarlet coat, silk waistcoat with a figured pattern,
and tights. One Sunday after prayers up comes old Morrice, roaring like
a bull. ‘Mr. Vivian,’ he growled, ‘I’ll trouble you to take your eyes
off my daughter’s face in church. I saw you, sir, when you pretended
to be bowing in the Creed. You were bowing to Biddy, my daughter, sir,
across the aisle; and that you call attending divine service, do you,
sir?’ However, in spite of the old dragon, we used to meet in the
garden, and there, in the arbour, what fruit Biddy used to give me!
Such peaches, plums, and sometimes cheesecakes and tarts? Talk of a
sweet tooth! I think that in those days I had a whole set; and now I
have but one left of any kind, and that is a stump. But Biddy treated
me very unkindly after all. There was a regiment of soldiers stationed
in the town, and of course lots of gay young officers fluttering about
in feathers and lace. Well, one day it was rumoured about that old
Morrice and his wife were going to give a spread, and these captain
fellows were to be there, head and chief. There were to be dinner and
a dance, and I of course thought that, somehow or other, Biddy would
manage with her mother to get me a card and a corner. I waited and
watched; but no--none came. So at last away I went to the house, angry
and fierce, and determined to have matters cleared up. Old Morrice,
luckily, was out, and his wife with him; but there was Biddy, up to
her elbows in jellies and jams, fussing and fuming like a maid to get
things nice and toothsome for cockering up those red rascals, that
I hated like grim death. ‘Well, Biddy,’ I said, ‘do you call this
pretty, to serve me so? Here you ask everybody to your feasts and your
junkets--yes, every one in the town but me!’ And what with the vexation
and the smell of the cookery, I actually burst out sobbing like a boy.
This made Biddy cry too, and there was a scene, sure enough. ‘It is
father’s fault, Henry, utterly and entirely: he is so mad against you
because he thinks you want me for the sake of my money.’ ‘Money, Biddy
dear!’ I said--‘money! Now I do think that if I bring blood your father
ought to bring groats!’
“Just then some one lifted the latch, and poor Biddy began to scream:
‘O Henry, dear! what shall I do? That’s father come back. He’ll surely
kill you or me, or do some rash deed. What can I do? Here, here,’ she
said, opening a kind of closet-door, ‘step in, that’s a dear, and
wait till I can get you out. Don’t cough or sneeze, but keep quiet
and still as a mouse till I come to call you.’ In I went, and Biddy
shut the door. Well, do you know, I found she had put me in a sort of
storeroom, where they kept the sweets; and on a long table there was
such a spread: raspberry-creams, ices, jellies, all kinds of flummery,
and in the middle a thing I never could resist--a fine sugary cake.
Didn’t I help myself! and when I began to think that all these niceties
were got up to fill up the waistcoats of those rollicking fellows that
had cut me out of my Biddy’s heart, it did make me half mad. However,
when I thought of that cake, I said to myself, ‘Not one crumb of that
lovely thing shall go down their horrid throats after all--see if it
does!’ We wore long wide pockets in those days, big enough to hold a
Christmas-pie. So in went the cake; and there was room besides for a
whole plate of macaroons. Presently Biddy was at the door, and in such
a way. ‘Make, haste, Henry, dear--quick; and do go straight home! I
would not have you meet father for the world!’ You may guess how I
scudded away through the streets with my skirts bulging out, and the
boys shouting after me, ‘There goes the Oxford scholar with his humps
slipped down!’
“Next time I met Biddy, it was coming out of church. She could hardly
tell whether to laugh or cry. ‘How could you, Henry, dear?’ she
said,--‘how could you carry off our beautiful cake?’ ‘How? Biddy,
dear,’ said I; ‘why, in my pocket, to be sure.’
“But the worst of all was that Biddy was cold to me from that very
time; and when I came home from college the next year I heard that she
was engaged to a Captain Upjohns, and she was married to him not long
after. So he had Biddy and I had the cake. But she was my first love;
and I do think, after all, notwithstanding the three Mrs. Vivians, she
was verily my last love also. People say that Queen Mary declared that
if she was opened after her death, Calais would be found graven on her
heart.[151] And I, too, say often, that if my dead bosom were examined,
it would be found that Biddy Morrice was carved on mine.[152]
“Well, well; time passed away--years upon years. I was ordained, and
served half-a-dozen curacies--three at once for some time; and then I
got, one after another, my two first livings. I was a widower. I had
lost the first--no, no, I am sorry to say the second Mrs. Vivian, when
one day I heard that Biddy Morrice was a rich widow. Old Upjohns, it
seems, had died and left her no end of money. And then the thought
occurred to me that we two might come together after all. ‘’Twould be
like a romance,’ I said. I found out that she was settled in great
style at Bath. So up I went and found, sure enough, she had a splendid
house. A fine formal old butler received me, and I sent up my name. I
was shown into a splendid drawing-room, with rich furniture, like a
bishop’s palace, all velvet and gold. I sat down, thinking over old
times, when Biddy used to come to meet me with her rosy cheeks and her
strawberry mouth, and a waist you might span with your hand. At last
the door opened, and in she came. But alack, alas! such a cat! oh dear,
oh dear! and with such a bow-window: it was surprising,--more like old
Mrs. Morrice than my Biddy. I was aghast. I never kissed her, as I
intended, but I stood staring like a gawky. I remember I offered her a
pinch of snuff, which she took. We had a talk, but it was all prisms
and prunes with Biddy. However, she invited me to dinner the next day,
and I went. Everything first-rate,--turbot and haunch, and so on,
all upon silver; fine old Madeira, and glorious port; and that sleek
fellow, the butler, ruling over all! There was a moderate dessert, and
on the middle dish there was such a cake! ‘I remember,’ said Biddy, but
without the shadow of a smile--‘I remember that you are fond of cake.’
Well, after the cloth was removed, I felt all the better for my dinner,
and it is at that time I always have most courage, particularly after
the third glass. As I looked on the sleek butler and his pompous ways,
I thought to myself, ‘I should like to dethrone that rule, and reign
myself over her cellar.’
“So I broached the subject of my wishes. ‘Don’t you think, Biddy dear,’
said I, ‘now that my second Mrs. V. has gone, and old Upjohns also out
of the way, that we two----?’ ‘O Henry, Henry,’ she broke in; ‘the old
Adam is still, I see, strong as ever in you. As sweet Mr. Cheekey says
at our Bethesda, “We are all criminally minded to our dying day.”’
Never believe me if Bridget had not turned Methodist, and all that. And
so, in short, she cut me dead. However, she sent me this snuff-box, and
I had her picture put under the lid. Sweet face, isn’t it? But then it
was taken thirty years before that dinner at Bath.”