at Balliol. And he read widely, making notes and extracts and abstracts
and indices, all with a view to writing a systematic treatise on
Divinity. But (unconsciously, I think) he departed from his plan, though
he retained the title; and in the end his work was not what Bacon meant,
nor what anybody wanted. Being in the form of sermons, it was useless as
a book of reference; and, being in substance an encyclopædia, it did not
make good sermons. One wonders how his country congregations felt, when
he preached to them in this wise, vol. i, pages 292-4, “The most ancient
Nations, the Egyptians and Phœnicians, did agree with the Grecians that
the World did begin etc.... Aristotle himself says etc.... Maximus
Tyrius also observes etc.... Josephus and all the Jewish Doctors do
abundantly confirm it.” But he also had many shrewd things to say, and
often said them very neatly, especially in his foot-notes. And these
sayings of his might well be put together in a little volume as _The Wit
and Wisdom of the Rev. William Davy_.
* * * * *
For many years he lived at Lustleigh Rectory, a venerable house that was
transformed to something new and strange at the time of the Gothic
Revival. But that was after his time; and he speaks of it as “nearly in
ruins” in 1808. He quitted it in 1818, and went to live at Wilmead,
which his son had lately bought. And the old man used always to come
striding down across the fields, and take the path from Wreyland, when
he went from Wilmead to the village or the church.
While living at the Rectory, he built a terraced garden that was
celebrated in its day, but vanished when the grounds were laid out more
ambitiously. And, when he moved to Wilmead, he built himself a garden
there, on the knoll of ground behind the house. One can see that this
knoll was covered with rocks, and that he cleared some of them away by
blasting, and used the fragments for retaining-walls. In this way he
formed five terraces, which still remain.
There are stories of his planting the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten
Commandments in his garden up at Wilmead. According to the memoir of him
by his son, he actually did plant (in box) some texts of Scripture and
his own name and the date. “Into whichever walk any one turned, some
divine or moral precept met the eye, as the different letters were
nearly six inches long, and being kept regularly trimmed were easily to
be read.” In 1838 one could read ‘know thyself,’ ‘act wisely,’ ‘deal
fairly,’ ‘live peaceably,’ ‘love one another,’ ‘W Davy 1818.’ There must
have been much more, as he called it his “Living body of Divinity” in
contrast to his _System_. But, whatever it was that he planted, it has
all vanished now.
Box has been put to quite another use in the Pope’s private gardens at
the Vatican. They have a gigantic Cardinal’s Hat, with all its cords and
tassels, edged with box and filled with brilliant flowers. I have seen
it only in the autumn, when the flowers are going off; but in the early
summer it must be magnificent.
In this neighbourhood a great deal of box-edging has been destroyed in
recent years, the pretext being that it harbours slugs, and they eat up
all the flowers in the beds. But slugs seldom eat begonias; and begonias
look very gorgeous against the dark green of the box. I have used them
most successfully these last fifteen years.
Most of the old houses here have groups of box-edged beds with narrow
paths between them, making up some pattern as a whole. And these are
known as Pixey Gardens. As pixies are twelve inches high, these little
paths are pretty much the same to them as Devonshire lanes to human
beings. I was taught that one could always tell a pixey from a fairy, as
fairies wear clothes, and pixies go without; but I have never seen
either sort myself, in a pixey garden or elsewhere.
A very cautious old lady once remarked to me that she had never seen any
pixies herself, but she knew so many people who said they had seen
pixies, that she would not undertake to say that there were no such
things. This puts the pixies in pretty much the same position as the
Russian soldiers who passed through England at the beginning of the War.
There was formerly a draw-well in front of the house, and its site is
marked by the second of the round beds in the Pixey Garden. I imagine
that the garden was not made until the well had been filled in, and that
this was not till 1839, when the present well was sunk; but I do not
know for certain. The garden was rectangular till 1899; and then I added
the semi-circular end, and made a gateway through the orchard hedge,
carrying the main path round the semi-circle to the gateway.
In altering the path, a dog’s skeleton was found at the foot of the
espalier pear tree. There is a dog in the full-length portrait of my
grandfather’s grandfather, and there is the same dog in the picture of
the family in 1787; and somebody suggested that this might be the dog,
whose grave we had disturbed. The skeleton had crumbled, but the skull
was sound; and I showed it to various people, who were fond of dogs, and
thought they understood them. Some thought it might be that dog’s skull,
while others thought the dog was of another breed. At last, I got an
introduction to a high authority at the Natural History Museum at South
Kensington, and I showed him the skull and photographs of both the
pictures. I became aware that he was staring at me in amazement, and at
last he gasped:--“But it isn’t a dog at all. It’s a badger.”
However, we were not the only people that ever made such a blunder. They
had a wonder-working relic in the church at Skifvarp. It was reputed to
be the hand of a saint; and, as such, it healed many people of diseases.
I saw it in the Museum at Stockholm some years ago, resting from its
labours. It is only a seal’s paw.
Down here a man remarked to me one day, as he was gazing across some
fields:--“It be a wonder-workin’ thing, that Consecrated Bone.” I began
to think we had a relic here. But he spoke of concentrated bone manure.
A party of Italians was being shown round the gardens on the Isola Bella
one day when I was being shown round; and the thing that struck them
most, was what we call the common laurel. I cannot remember seeing it at
any other place in Italy except the monastery on Monte Cavo, and I
suspect that it was brought there by the Cardinal of York. (In Italy the
common laurel is what we call sweet-bay.) Few people in England know how
beautiful our common laurel is when fully grown, for here they are
always clipping it and cutting it down as soon as it begins to grow. On
the Isola Bella it is almost a forest tree. In this garden and in Parson
Davy’s it grows to 25 or 30 feet, and so also the sweet-bay.
There are two young olive trees growing in sheltered places in this
garden. The smaller one (below the Oval Lawn) is from an olive that I
picked up at Rapallo, 10 January 1910, when the olives were being shaken
down. It is nearly four feet high now--September 1917. The larger one
(near Dogtrot Hill) came here from Cornwall in a pot, and was planted
out in the summer of 1904. It then was six feet high and very slender,
and now is nearly fifteen feet high and nine inches in girth. It has not
borne olives yet.
Many of the people here had never seen an olive tree before, and were
curious about its fruit: so I gave them olives to try. One comment
was:--“Well, Mrs *****’d never have christened her daughter Olive, if
her’d a-tasted one of they.”
One afternoon all the strawberries on the strawberry tree were picked
and eaten by a boy, who was working in the garden; and they held an
Indignation Meeting under the Rotunda. I asked him what the matter was,
and he replied:--“Please, zir, my inwards be all of a uproar.”
Besides the strawberry tree (_arbutus unedo_) I have the toothache tree
(_xanthoxylum planispinum_) growing in the garden. My gardener told me
that he had no toothaches for a long while after it was planted, though
he often had before: but this immunity wore off. A decoction of the bark
is what is needed, and the tree has very little bark as yet. The cork
tree also grows here, and this soon developes a thick coat of bark. I
expect the bark on mine to yield me cork enough to bung my cider casks;
but at present it does not.
During the winter of 1911-12 I planted sixteen acres of new
cider-orchards, putting 5½ acres of early trees in Crediford and
Blackmore, 5¾ acres of mid-season trees in Middle Parke, and 4¾ acres of
late trees in Above Ways. Some such division is usual in new orchards
now, as the fruit is handled with less labour, and sheep can go on
grazing in the late orchards till the early orchards have been cleared.
The early trees were of three sorts in equal numbers--Knotted Kernel,
Cherry Pearmain and Cherry Norman: the mid-season trees were of four
sorts in the ratio of one Cap of Liberty and one Kingston Black to two
each of Eggleton Styre and Strawberry Norman; and the late trees were
also of four sorts in the ratio of one Skyrme’s Kernel and one Hagloe
Crab to two each of Michelin and Chisel Jersey. These combinations make
good blends. But apple trees do not bear uniformly every year: one sort
may bear heavily one year, and another sort the next; and that upsets
the blend.
In this district the older orchards have mostly been neglected, losses
being made good with any kind of apple tree that came to hand. No doubt,
the kinds were chosen carefully at first, but not (so far as one can
see) in such proportions as to give a definite blend. With all kinds of
apples mixed up indiscriminately, no two casks of cider are the same in
flavour or in strength.
Cider used always to be made of apples, but I fear that it is very often
made of other things now. However, the name does not imply that it is
made of apples, but only means that it is strong. And in that sense
Wyclif has “wyn and sydir” in Luke, i. 15, where later versions say
“strong drink.” Non-alcoholic cider is a contradiction in terms.
Men can easily get drunk on cider; but they do not suffer for it next
day, if they have had pure cider of fermented apple-juice and nothing
else. Unhappily, this wholesome drink has given way to other drinks that
are less wholesome. A shrewd observer said to me:--“When each man had
three pints of cider every day, there was not half this bickering and
quarrelling that goes on now.” And that, I think, is true. They were
always in the genial stage of drunkenness, and seldom had the means of
going beyond that. A few, however, very often went beyond; and they have
been described to me as “never proper drunk, nor proper sober neither,
but always a-muddled and a-mazed.”
This failing was not confined to Devonshire. My father notes in his
diary, 7 August 1847, at Dinan in Brittany:--“The apples thick beyond
conception, and the priests already praying to avert the evil
consequences they apprehend from the plenty and cheapness of cider.” He
writes to my grandmother from Dinan, 15 August 1847:--“The apples are so
abundant this year that the country will almost be drowned in cider. How
they will consume it all, is a wonder, for they export none. The lower
orders are drunk, it seems, a great deal of their time. The priests
always pray for a bad apple crop as the only hope of saving the people
from perpetual drunkenness.”
A former rector of Lustleigh was remonstrating with a man one afternoon
for reeling through the village very drunk. But the man had his
reply:--“Ay, ’tbe all very fine for you to talk, but you goes home to
dinner late, and us doesn’t see you after.”
On the whole, less harm is done by cider than by tea; but cider gets
more blame, as its ill effects are visible at once, whereas tea works
its mischief slowly. Nobody says anything against tea-drinking now; but
Parson Davy in his _System of Divinity_, vol. xix, page 235, which he
printed at Lustleigh in 1803, spoke with indignation of “the
immeasurable use of that too fashionable and pernicious plant, which
weakens the stomach, unbraces the nerves, and drains the very vitals of
our national wealth; to which nevertheless our children are as early and
as carefully enured, from the very breast, as if the daily use of it
were an indispensable duty which they owed to God and their country.”
And in his _Letter to a Friend concerning Tea_, published in 1748, John
Wesley spoke of tea-drinking as tea-drinkers speak of drinking alcohol
now:--“wasteful, unhealthy self-indulgence”--“no other than a slow
poison”--“abhor it as a deadly poison, and renounce it from this very
hour.”
My grandfather had a new cider-press in 1842, and I had a new one in
1901. He set up his in what is now the potting-shed, and I set up mine
in what is now the donkey’s house, but shifted it in 1904 to its present
place in what had hitherto been the stables. The cider-press of 1901 is
quite unlike the cider-press of 1842, and is practically the same as the
wine-presses that are used in France. With three men at work, it will
turn 800 lbs. of apples into 60 gallons of cider in about two hours. The
old press was not so quick or clean, but was more picturesque.
Cider-making is not a very pleasant sight; and I have known people say
that they would never touch cider again, having once seen how it was
made. A crushed apple is not a pretty thing at any time, and is none the
prettier for being in company with several thousand others. However,
cider-making is not quite as bad as wine-making in Southern Italy and
Sicily. There they tread the grapes: if the vat is small, they get the
cramp; and I have seen men jump out of the vat, take a sharp run up and
down a very un-swept road, and jump straight in again.
The _Asti_ wine of Northern Italy is curiously like the wine that we
make out of rhubarb here; and one might suspect the Asti of being
rhubarb wine, only rhubarb costs much more than grapes down there. Our
wine is not pure rhubarb: sugar and other things are used as well. And
one year it was an utter failure. The sugar had been given to a certain
damsel to put in, “and ’stead of tendin’ her duty, her were a-talkin’ to
that Jarge, and atween’m they put pretty nigh all the sugar in one of
they barryels and scarce any in t’other.”
Another liquor might be made here, as this soil grows the fungus that is
used for Vodka. That liquor is in bad repute just now; but I must say
that I found it very comforting on a long and dreary journey from Moscow
down to Warsaw in the autumn of 1889.
* * * * *
My grandfather writes to my father on 3 December 1857:--“A glass of good
mellow full-bodied cider is far superior to your Rhenish wine: there is
no body in that.” And if Devonshire cider is to be compared with any
class of wines, the Rhine wines certainly come closest to it. He thought
the very best cider was wasted on the country-folk, and he writes on 18
September 1868:--“They do not much care what it is, so as its cider.”
But they cared very much for that. He writes on 16 March 1845:--“The old
workmen here think we shall have cider plenty: they think more about
that than the crops in the fields.” And again on 17 July 1856:--“As you
know, the men here are passionately fond of cider.”
He writes to him on 18 June 1851:--“People say that Ashburton Fair is
past, and the apples are safe.” People still say that, meaning that all
frosts have ceased by the first Thursday in June. But many of these
sayings are of earlier date than 1752: the calendar was altered then by
cutting out eleven days; and the seasons did not alter with the
calendar. Father Christmas should arrive in snow, but seldom has it now:
the snow comes with Old Christmas Day in January.
Writing on 2 February 1851, my grandfather says:--“Not a flake of snow
fell on the Forest of Dartmoor in the month of January: not the oldest
man living on the Moor recollects the like before.” On 2 March
1862:--“Well, the old people say there never was a February without
snow. There has not been any this year, unless it came Friday night
before twelve o’clock. A man that was out about sheep says that it did
fall before twelve but after eleven: so they still adhere to the old
saying. But the others that did not stay up, say that the snow came with
March.”
Like many other people of his time, my grandfather was certain that the
climate had improved, and he thought he saw the cause. He writes to my
father on 22 December 1850:--“I attribute the mildness of the winters
and the warmth of the summers to the better state of cultivation of the
land draining off the cold stagnant waters that lay about in all
directions in my youthful days.” He writes on 23 November 1851:--“The
old plan was to have the wheat up in grass at Christmas, as the farmers
used to say ‘high enough to cover a crow,’ but they find now from the
altered winters that to till in this month and the next is sufficiently
early, and better crops.”
My grandfather tried farming here; and I gather from his accounts that
he sank about £20 per acre in the first three years. That meant draining
the ground, and getting it into good condition; and after that he made
it pay, except in the years of the potato famine. He writes to my father
on 8 March 1846:--“I should say a diligent clever man, farming his own
estate, can make more money now than he could in war time [that is,
before 1815] for the system of farming is quite changed, and the land is
made to produce nearly double what it did then.”
His knowledge of farming was derived from books; and he did things that
were not customary here, sometimes with failure, but often with success.
Thus, he writes to my father, 2 April 1854:--“I tilled some barley
yesterday.... It was another such March fifteen years ago, when I tilled
this same field to barley. I then hired horses and gave it a good
working; and the weather was so tempting that I tilled it in March to
the amusement of my neighbours. The storms in April made it look blue,
which amused them still further. But they all acknowledged they could
not produce its equal to harvest.”
He writes on 25 April 1843:--“Folks are waiting to see what spade
husbandry will produce. I tell them its not new to me, for I adopted it
elsewhere some twelve or fourteen years ago, and was fully compensated
for my trouble. But that will not do: they must see themselves. The
field is turned up with the spade, all the spine put under, a foot deep;
and I have taken out nearly stones enough to build a wall through the
field. The cost in turning is 4_d._ [per rod] with a quart of cider to a
shilling, so with cleaning and bringing it fit for the potato the cost
is £4 per acre, about double the old system, which would leave all the
stones, and the field not half worked.
“Our farmers are loth to believe that any other method but the old one
is beneficial. They fancy all manure is in dung and the like. I tell
them the quantity of carbon, etc., etc.... But all will not do: they
must see to believe. I have tried 1 cwt. of nitrate of soda on an acre
of grass, and it is astonishing the effect it has had.”
On 13 January 1851 he writes:--“I am trying an experiment, that is, I
am fetching every day some of the refuse from the kilns at the Pottery.
It is principally burnt clay. I have often looked at it on passing, and
fancied it might turn to use--old Cobbett speaks well of burnt clay. My
neighbours say they will try it also.”
In a letter of 11 February 1850 my grandfather suggests a sliding scale
for agricultural rents, based on the average price of corn. He did not
wish to fix a rent-charge once for all, as with the commutation of the
tithe, but merely to provide for variations during the period of a
lease. In practice the landlord makes remissions of rent in bad years;
but I have not yet heard of a farmer giving his landlord a War-bonus on
these good years.
The old copyhold system was better than the leasehold for agricultural
land. Here in Wreyland manor a man took a tenement for the term of his
life; and that included “his wife’s widowhood therein.” If he wished to
give it up, there was always someone ready to take it on. The new tenant
paid him for his life interest and his wife’s, and bought the reversion
from the lord; and at the next sitting of the court the old tenant
surrendered the tenement, and the new tenant was admitted in his stead.
If he wished to keep the tenement in his family, he bought the reversion
for his son. The tenants were answerable to the manor court, if they
allowed their buildings to fall into decay, or let down the gates and
hedges against their neighbour’s tenements. But in this manor the court
could not take cognizance of bad cultivation, which so often accompanies
security of tenure.
These copyhold tenements have developed into freeholds, and the manor
has decayed. This is a district of small estates. In districts where
estates are large, it is usually the other way. Manorial rights have
grown, until at last the manor has unrestricted freehold, and the former
copyholds are let as farms.
Estates here being small, the farms are small also; and they could not
well be large in such a hilly country--haulage would be too costly, if a
farm went over many ridges and coombes. Usually they are too small, and
two or three might be thrown into one, one set of buildings serving for
the whole, likewise one set of implements, and fewer horses--six horses
have sufficed, where three farmers had each been keeping three. Even in
districts where estates are large, and ground is flat, the farms are
seldom large enough to give the best results. The ideal is the largest
area that can possibly be worked from one homestead; and in some
districts that may be very large indeed. No doubt, the _latifundia_ were
not a success; but that was due to slavery, not to size. Here in England
our countryfolk would make a better stock as labourers on big estates
than in starvation on small-holdings.
The labourer has certainly fared badly in the past. He grew the dear
loaf, and never had a bite at it. But, when economists go writing of
“the hungry ’forties,” they should remember that there were such things
as trout and salmon, hares and rabbits, partridges and pheasants.
My grandfather writes to my father, 3 December 1844:--“I was told
yesterday at Moreton that many travellers now give their horses a
portion of wheat flour. Some are too scrupulous to do it: but the
labourer would say Why give barley, as that is my food, and the Scotch
and Irish may say Why give oats.” He writes a few days later, 15
December 1844:--“I had some conversation with the Lustleigh parson
yesterday. He said we had no poor here, and the labourers were better
off than where he came from.”--He had just left a living in
Norfolk.--“There the wages were less, and they never tasted animal food
from one year to another, but here they all managed to salt in a pig.”
He writes on 2 December 1849:--“Bad as times are, I have known them far
worse under Protection.... Such was the distress among farmers then that
labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired
for 6_d._ to 9_d._ per day.” And on 7 February 1850:--“There is no
grumbling among the labourers, for now they have a cheap loaf, and are
able to get a bit of meat to eat with it.... Besides under Free Trade
they get salt, sugar, tea, coffee, etc., at a much lower rate than
formerly, when their wages were but a half or a third.”
On 13 July 1851 he writes:--“I see a vast improvement in agriculture in
this neighbourhood since Free Trade came in.... Protection did but
foster indolence.” Fifty years later, when Protection was allied with
Tariff Reform, an ardent Liberal said to me:--“No, ’t ain’t no tariffs
and ’tection that they farmers need: ’t be nothin’ but lime and doong.”
And certainly the land was starved.
My grandfather was converted to Free Trade somewhere about 1817 or 1818,
but I do not know exactly when or how. He writes on 3 June 1843:--“I
have been a Free Trader for more than five-and-twenty years.” And on 28
January 1844:--“I almost stood alone in Moreton as a Free Trader about
five-and-twenty years ago.” As for the other party, he writes on 25
November 1849:--“Protection is substituted for Church & State and King &
Constitution, and what they will have next I am at a loss to say.” He
was a Liberal then; but the party went beyond his principles, and my
brother writes from here, 4 July 1868:--“Grandpapa now calls himself a
Conservative, and makes dire prophecies of the political future of
England.”
Lord John Russell was the only politician whom he altogether trusted.
There was some slight acquaintance; and Lord John gave my father a very
nice desk upon his coming of age. My father used it always, and I have
it still, not much the worse for wear, but somewhat damaged by burglars
on one of their visits to our house in town.
* * * * *
Writing to my father on 25 January 1846, my grandfather
says:--“Agricultural labourers are very scarce: most of the young and
able bodied are gone on the railways.” Men got better pay as navvies
than they had ever got in agriculture. Better pay meant better food; and
the navvies developed into finer men than anyone had seen before--at
least, old people always told me so. I fancy this displacement of labour
had more effect on wages and employment than the change from Protection
to Free Trade.