Bishop a consecrated “perverter of facts.” He was indicted for libel,
and tried at the assizes. Cockburn--afterwards Chief Justice--was a
friend of his, and came down (without fee) to defend him; and the Bishop
had a very bad time in cross-examination. The judge told the jury
plainly that, if they acquitted Latimer, they would brand their bishop
as a liar. And they branded him.
There was another case of which I heard a good deal from my father--a
murder by highwaymen about six miles from here. The facts are noted in
his diary. On 16 July 1835:--“Mr Jonathan May murdered at Jacobs Well
near Moreton at half past ten in the evening: he dined at my father’s
that day.” On 28 July 1836, at Exeter during the assizes:--“Buckingham
Joe (Oliver) and Turpin (Galley) tried for the murder of Mr Jonathan
May, found guilty and sentenced to be hung.” On 12 August 1836:--“Saw
Buckingham Joe hung.”
He doubted if they hanged the right man after all, but felt it did not
really matter, as the man should have been hanged for other things, if
not for that. I fancy his attention may have wandered from the trial,
for after “sentenced to be hung” his diary goes on:--“Bought the models
of the Elgin Marbles of Field.” This was W. V. Field, afterwards a Judge
and finally a Law Lord; and it was a set of Henning’s models of the
frieze of the Parthenon. I have them here.
* * * * *
Duelling did not quite cease in England until just before my time; and I
used to hear the older men lamenting its cessation. They complained of
being deprived of their redress for an affront. And that is practically
what happened, for these affronts were mostly of the sort for which a
jury gives a farthing damages.
My mother used to tell me what a shock it was to her, at the age of ten,
when she was told one afternoon that an old friend of the family had
been killed that morning in a duel--shot dead at twelve paces. It was a
quarrel of two retired officers over facts which they could easily have
verified. They had both got the facts wrong, and each was right in
disbelieving what the other said; but neither of them would allow his
veracity to be impugned, and they settled the matter in this fashion at
five o’clock next morning.
Among my papers here I have a memorandum of a better way of settling
such disputes:--“London, 4 January 1854. Mr Torr bets Mr Jackson (& Mr
J. Mr T. vice versa) that Buttern Down summit is at least 700 feet above
Forder, Moreton, a dinner at the White Hart, Moreton, to all the friends
the winner chooses to invite.”--It is only 500 feet above.
* * * * *
My grandfather writes to my brother, 16 January 1862:--“I enclose a
piece of poetry, which was sent to me, on the old Cross Tree at Moreton.
The stone cross erected there with a bason on the top to contain holy
water, you are aware, is a relic of Popery. There was one at Chagford
like it until some three years ago the lord of the manor, old Mr
Southmead, destroyed it cross and all, for he had such dislike of
Popery. I have known others in town-places, but this at Moreton is the
last that I know of remaining; and the old tree is going to decay. I
should tell you that some fifty years or more ago Mr Harvey’s house was
an inn, and the innkeeper had the interstices of the tree floored over
like a room, and people used to go up and drink and smoke, and all
holyday times dancing was kept up for many nights together. I have
danced there and drank there with good jovial parties: times were
different then.” And he goes on to mention other people who used to
dance there--people whom I remember in their old age, sedate and solemn,
and looking as though they had never danced anything less stately than a
minuet.
At the close of the Crimean War he had some peace-rejoicings of his own
for the people in this hamlet: thirty-eight all told, men, women and
children. He writes to my father, 1 June 1856:--“Well, I gave our
villagers roast beef, plum pudding, vegetables, bread, etc., a regular
good hot dinner, and plenty of good beer. The dinner was at 1 o’clock,
and the tea at 5. For tea plenty of Ashburton cakes and bread with
plenty of cream and butter. It was held in the barn [next Pit Lane] as
the air was cold and no sun. They had fiddlers, and walked in
procession: afterwards returned to the barn to dance, which they kept up
merrily until 12 o’clock. We had the Union Jack over the barn, and many
arches well decked with flowers.”
There were rejoicings at Lustleigh on the marriage of the Prince of
Wales. And on 12 March 1863 he writes:--“Where all the folks came from I
can hardly tell, but I am told there were but few that did not belong to
Lustleigh or the Tithing. Tho’ they all knew me, there were many I could
not recognize until they spoke to me. There are but very few here about
that belong to the parish: for instance we have but one in all the
village that was born in Lustleigh.”
Here ‘tithing’ means the bits of Hennock and Bovey Tracey parishes that
lie in Wreyland manor, and ‘village’ means Wreyland hamlet, Lustleigh
village being called the ‘town.’ Thus in old notes here I find:--“All
the children in the village and Lustleigh town”--“Sent over to town to
buy stamps”--and so on. And again:--“Poor old ***** from yonder town
dropt down in the town-place in a seizure.” The yonder town is the group
of houses near the Baptist chapel, and the town-place is the open space
outside the church-yard--at Moreton it is the King’s-acre outside and
God’s-acre within. King’s-acre and town-place are good old names,
connoting certain rights; but our Uitlanders want to call these places
Squares.
* * * * *
My grandfather did not always approve of everything his neighbours did,
but he kept his comments for his letters to my father. Thus, on 13
August 1843, he writes:--“There was a party of parsons and doctors at
*****’s at Gidly last week. They played at wrestling, and ***** of
Manaton was thrown with a broken arm in two places. High time to do
something with these fellows. How can people go to church and sit under
them.”
Writing on 31 March 1860 about a staghound that had been worrying sheep,
and had killed above a hundred in a month, he observes:--“The farmer is
generally a selfish man, not caring much about his neighbour; and they
did not take the thing up in good neighbourly spirit until Thursday
last, when all the farmers in the different parishes assembled, some
150, to drive up the country, which was the only way to succeed; and
they succeeded in finding him in a coppice not far from Meacombe. A man
discharged both barrels at him, and wounded him: then the horsemen went
in full chase for some three or four miles, and regularly rode him down
and dispatched him.... I often find farmers laughing at the misfortunes
of another, but now the loss was so general that there were but few to
laugh.”
On 19 January 1840 he has a few words on a neighbour who was too fond of
talking politics:--“Old ***** is very cross and tedious--I can hardly
bear with him. He is all but a Tory, indeed he likes to associate more
with Torys than Liberals: he detests Whigs; and nothing but Chartism, or
something like it, will do for him, for he has lived all these years in
expectation of a Revolution, and none come, and is afraid he shall die
without seeing it.”
He writes on 24 May 1852:--“A greater nuisance there cannot be than a
magistrate in a little rural district.... We never before had a
magistrate nearer than *****, and if any little paltry squabble happened
between parties, their courage invariably cooled down on crossing the
water, and almost invariably they returned home without a summons. But
now whilst passion is up they have only to go to *****, and a summons is
granted, I find, much to the regret of many after cool reflection.”
There is a footpath here that cuts off the corner at Wreyland Cross, and
leads down to Wreyford Bridge; and he writes, 20 July 1856:--“The farmer
has nailed up and wreathed up Wreyford Park gates, and says (I am told)
he will summons anyone who passes that way. I asked his landlord if he
had sanctioned it; he said No, but when the farmer applied to him, said
he might do as he liked.... I told him I should take down the wreath,
and if he chose to summon anyone, I was the best he could summon, for I
would prove about sixty years a quiet and unmolested pathway, and my
mother about eighty, and others in the village more than fifty.” (He was
sixty-seven then, and my great-grandmother was ninety-one.) He writes
next day that the farmer is taking the obstruction down.
In a letter of 19 March 1854 he says:--“In my growing up we heard
nothing of game preserving hereabout, and game was in abundance; and at
certain seasons you could see at times all classes of people out for a
day’s sport. They would kill but little; but then it was an amusement,
and a day’s holyday, and apparently an unrestricted right to go where
they liked unmolested: so they enjoyed a right old English liberty, and
came home tired and happy, not caring whether they had game or not. But
since the game is preserved, and they are restrained from killing it in
the old way, they appear determined to kill it some way or another.
Consequently game is not so plenty now as heretofore.”
In a letter of 7 October 1852 he notes another change here:--“The old
barn-door or dung-hill cock appears to be extinct, being crossed with
China, Minorca, etc. I well remember when a boy you could not go out,
particularly up the vale of Lustleigh, but you heard them all crowing in
all directions, each on his own dung-hill, challenging each other, and
their shrill clarion-like sound echoed through the valley.... The sort
they have now are so hoarse and dull in their crowing that there is
nothing to attract attention, nothing agreeable in their sound, and not
loud enough to be heard by one another, so there is no answering each
other. In my boyhood the whole valley would ring with them.”
Again, on 6 March 1854 he writes:--“I am going up again soon, and shall
take some feathers from two cocks I saw, a blue and a red, which I
consider will do. The real colours are very scarce: people mix up their
breeds so, that there are but few of the old sort left.” I presume that
he wanted the feathers for making flies for fishing. He always made his
own flies, and made them very neatly: so also did my father; but I never
made a fly that could even be offered to a fish.
On 21 May 1848 he gives my father a little lecture on his
fishing:--“Kneel down on one knee. I have done so many a time, when the
water has been clear, and thrown my fly with the greatest precision, and
almost sure of a fish, but seldom succeeding in the second throw if
failing in the first. That sort of careful fishing is practised by all
good fishermen, though no doubt one threshes away and often takes
fish--not so with your grandfather or with myself in my early days: we
were more particular, and took large catches of fish.”
He writes to him, 24 May 1842:--“I certainly have enjoyed the Teign
fishing as much as anyone, for besides the fishing I always so much
enjoyed the scenery--particularly on that part above and below Fingle
Bridge. In my early days I seldom went on any other part, but used to
begin at Whiddon, fish down, and return to Fingle; and home over the
woods.” After a day’s fishing there, 12 April 1849, my father notes in
his diary:--“My father walked up Fingle Hill without resting or feeling
fatigued, although sixty in a few days time.” That was the age at which
my father died, and the age that I have now attained; and I cannot walk
up that interminable hill without an effort.
My father fished there sometimes, and sometimes in the Dart near Post
Bridge, but much more often in the Bovey and the Wrey, as they were so
much nearer. He also liked scenery as well as fishing; and there is as
good scenery on the Bovey under Lustleigh Cleave as on the Teign at
Fingle Bridge.
He also fished in many of the trout-streams in the Alps and Pyrenees and
Ardennes; and in 1858 and other years he went to Muggendorf for fishing
in the Wiesent, and to Lambach and Ischl for the Traun. The people used
to ask for flies, but very soon found that he owed less to flies than to
his way of casting them. My mother fished with him, and got many good
fish; but she never thought the sport was worth the journey and the
discomfort in the smaller inns. I remember my brother at one of them: he
made no comment of his own, but just quoted Shakespeare:--“Now am I in
Ardennes: when I was at home, I was in a better place.”
They tried the Wiesent and the Traun again in 1873, but it was no longer
what it used to be--ten or a dozen trout about fifteen inches long.
There was too much fishing, and few fish were left. I went to Munich,
while they were at Muggendorf, but was at Ischl with them. And at Ischl
it was curious to see how casually the Emperor Francis Joseph went
strolling round the place in shooting-clothes, the Crown Prince Rudolph
with him. At first I took them for the squire and his son.
By all accounts there have always been better fish in the Wrey than ever
came out of it with rod and fly. At the present time--June 1917--there
are two big otters in it close by here, and I presume they have not come
for nothing. On 6 May 1844 my grandfather writes to my father:--“I
conjecture the poachers have not let this fine weather pass without
dipping their nets for some.” And on 10 December 1848 he writes:--“They
have been very busy lately in taking all they can, but Mr ***** got foul
of some last week, and took their spears from them, and told them, if
again caught, he will prosecute them.”
He writes to him on 21 December 1851:--“The fish will soon be up for
spawning: the water has been too low for them. I was amused for four
days following to see three trout about 8 in. long so busy at work in
the meadow. Direct above the bridge under the bushes there is a plain,
and just by the bridge it runs out a little stickle with a rubble-stone
bottom and very little water, so that when at work the water did not
cover their back-fins. Not having seen them for some days, I have no
doubt they deposited their spawn. I never saw such before, but the
poachers tell me that is the way they do--always deposit it in the
stickle and where the bottom is rubbly, and not in the sand beds as I
always suspected. And then the poachers go and take them in the act of
laying it; and those pieces of broken earthenware that you frequently
see are thrown in near the works, so that at night if they see anything
over the shord (as they call it) they strike and depend on its being a
fish.”
He writes on 12 December 1847:--“They are killing truff [bull-trout] in
all directions. I looked in the little stream near Forder, where many
fires had been made, and saw three huge fish in work.” Fires were made
to attract the fish to points where they could easily be speared.
On 13 December 1841 he writes:--“The poachers are catching the
salmon--two have been taken in the meadow going to Lustleigh town, not
large, about 10 lbs. each. I hear many truff have been taken also. I
believe they go further up, and are mostly taken by the Moreton men.” On
18 March 1844 he writes that Mr Wills of East Wrey is making a leet from
the Wrey to irrigate his land. And on 9 April 1853 he writes:--“Mr
Wills’ man told me this week that they take up lots of fish on the grass
at East Wrey that get out in irrigating the meadows, and that they took
up one as big and long as his leg. I should say it was a salmon that
went up at Candlemas: what they call Candlemas fish.”
And then on 8 April 1868 he writes:--“No wonder the fish are scarce in
our brook, for they have embankments for irrigation, which destroys such
numbers of fish in spawning time that truff and white fish [bull-trout
and salmon-trout] are rarely seen now. One of the old poachers tells me
that he does not know of one being taken for three years past--except
those that do succeed in going up are sure to be seen on the grass
returning. Since my remembrance they had a free course up to Bughead in
Moreton, and the Moreton fellows used to take them with their hands, and
plenty left after. But all that is stopped: none to take.”
* * * * *
From 1866 until his death in 1878 my father had some fishing on the
Wandle a little way from Mitcham, which was then a quiet country village
with fields of lavender and roses for making scented waters. The level
country and the broad and sluggish stream seemed very dreary, when one
thought of the little rivers that come tumbling down the valleys here.
And the sport was of another kind. Here there was a chance of a dozen or
twenty trout, none of them more than a pound in weight. Fish of that
size were thrown back in the Wandle, to let them have a chance of
growing bigger. There were trout of two and three pounds there, and a
few such fish made a good catch. As a matter of fact, the catch depended
much more on the landing-net than on the rod and fly. I had to take the
landing-net, while my father played his fish; and that cured me of what
little love I had for fishing.
Friends of my father’s came down now and then to fish with him; and
amongst them Robert Romer, who was afterwards a Lord Justice. He had
been Senior Wrangler; so my father led him on to giving me a little good
advice, when I was going up to Cambridge. He began:--“Whatever you do,
never work more than five hours a day.” I noted the expression on my
father’s face--that was not the sort of advice that he wanted anyone to
give me. But the advice was really good. Romer held that nobody could
work at high pressure for more than five hours in the day; and it was
better to put on high pressure for the five than low pressure for eight
or ten or twelve. It gave more time for other things.
In those days George Bidder lived in a large house near Mitcham. He was
then a very eminent civil-engineer, but in his early days he was The
Calculating Boy. He was born at Moreton in 1806, and was well known to
my grandfather. There is a book here, dated 1820, giving calculations
that he made, always correctly, and generally in less than a minute.
They include such things as finding the cube root of 304, 821,
217--answered instantly--of 67, 667, 921, 875--answered in ¼ minute--and
of 897, 339, 273, 974, 002, 153--answered in 2½ minutes. I had the cheek
to ask him how he did it. And he told me that he used his mind’s eye,
and could see the figures manœuvring in front of him.
I found it was unwise to talk at random in his presence: there were
snubs at hand. When I was about ten years old, I was talking about the
well at Grenelle, which I had lately seen. The well is 1800 feet deep,
and the water rises 150 feet above ground level: temperature 80°
Fahrenheit. I said I could not make out what sent it up like that.
Between two puffs of his cheroot Bidder grunted:--“Steam.”
Parson Davy was always asking Bidder questions, when he was still The
Calculating Boy. But the Parson always got the worst of it, although he
had some gifts that way himself, and might have been more eminent as an
engineer than as a theologian.
Davy was born in 1743 near Tavistock, but passed his early years near
here at Chudleigh and at Knighton, went to the Grammar School at Exeter
and thence to Balliol College at Oxford, was then ordained, and held the
curacies of Moreton, Drewsteignton and Lustleigh, remaining in the last
from 1786 until about six months before his death in 1826. For that
space of nearly forty years he was practically the parson of the parish,
the rector being a pluralist and rarely visiting the place.
In his sermons at Drewsteignton “he denounced the vices of his
congregation in such terms that the people fled from the church and
complained to the bishop.” But he set the bishop’s mind at rest by
showing him twelve volumes of manuscript, containing the sermons he had
preached. I have those twelve volumes in my library here. They have an
expensive binding of that period, and the penmanship is good, but
antiquated, _e.g._ vol. xi, p. 333, “& carry yʳ youthful Vices wᵗʰ yᵐ to
yᵉ Grave.” The dates are 1777 in the first volume, 1779 in the next
five, and 1781 in the remaining six. The first four volumes (of six
sermons each) are “on yᵉ Attributes of God,” the fifth and sixth (of
seven sermons each) are “on some of yᵉ most-important Articles of yᵉ Xⁿ
Religion,” and the last six (of fourteen sermons each) are “on yᵉ
several Virtues & Vices of Mankind.” These were the sermons that upset
the people at Drewsteignton. But clearly he was making a general survey,
and no more charged them with all the vices than he credited them with
all the virtues.
In 1786 he got these sermons published by subscription in six volumes,
duodecimo. And then he went on writing till he had five hundred sermons
of such scope that he felt justified in calling them _A System of
Divinity_. He failed to get this published by subscription; and it would
have cost about £2000 to print. So he set to work, and did it all
himself with a printing-press of his own make.
He began his printing in 1795, and in five months he turned out forty
copies of the first 328 pages of vol. i, with title, preface, etc.; and
he sent round twenty-six of these as specimens, to see if he could get
support. There was practically no response: so he went on with the
fourteen copies that remained, and of the rest
[Illustration: THE WREY AT WREYLAND. POOL COPSE]
of the work he printed fourteen copies only. The first volume was
finished in 1795, three more in 1796, two in 1797 and two in 1798, three
in 1799 and three in 1800, two in 1801, but only one in 1802, then two
in each of the next four years, 1803 to 1806, and the last volume in
1807, making six-and-twenty volumes altogether. On an average, there
must be about 500 pages to the volume, but they are troublesome to
count, as the numbering does not always run straight on. When there are
not any foot-notes, the page has twenty-six lines of about nine words
each; but on some pages the foot-notes rise to forty-one lines of about
twelve words each, with only one line of sermon at the top. Additions
and corrections are printed on separate slips of paper, and stuck in
very neatly at the proper places, like little folding-plates opening up
or down the page. Just at first the printing is erratic, but it soon
gets better and finally is pretty good. Of course, he had all the credit
of the printing; but much of it was done by Mary Hole, a servant in his
house. She died in 1808.
His own copy of his _System of Divinity_ is in my library here. The
volumes are still in their original boards, and fill a length of 3 ft. 8
in. upon the bookshelves. He pasted his press-notices into vol. i, and
added “Strictures on yᵉ preceding Review” and other notes of that sort.
And he interleaved the index (in vol. xxvi and part of xxv) and put in
references to the additions that he was always making to his work. In
1816 he made a fair copy of the index--which copy is also in my
library--“Intended as a Help to a future Edition, with the Additions
upon Revisal.” But that future edition never came.
In 1823, when he was eighty years of age, he went to work again, and
printed one more volume--_Divinity ... being improved extracts from a
System of Divinity_. Of this also there were fourteen copies only; and
one of them is in my library. It is uniform with his previous books, and
has about 540 pages altogether. It caused some stir, and led to an
enlarged edition in two volumes in 1825, and another in three volumes in
1827. But these editions were printed at Exeter in the ordinary way.
He sometimes used his printing-press for other subjects than Divinity;
and, when his son did something that he did not like, he printed a
pamphlet on the conduct of his son. But the son’s turn came, when he was
called upon to write a memoir of his father after his decease. He paid
him back in full.
* * * * *