but a friend wrote me this account of it next day:--“We went in about 2,
when it opened, and found some disorder in the main tent, as it had
partially blown down early.... Then there was a horrible noise, and a
great gust of wind ripped the poultry tent almost in half. The whole
thing began to collapse, men were rushing in and being pulled out by
screaming females, some were tightening the ropes, which others
immediately loosed, and presently a great loose flap of canvas
overturned the stand of cages--a horrid mass of ducks and fowls
screaming and quacking and flapping all over the crowd, pursued by their
owners and upsetting everything. And just at this moment the big flower
marquee--which was of course deserted--was caught by a tremendous puff
of wind and torn right up and dropped on the tables inside. It wasn’t
heavy enough to be dangerous, but I wish I could give you any idea of
how funny it was to see ****, who was rather bossing the show, creep
from under the canvas with an old lady, an infuriated fowl pecking at
his knickerbockered calves. One of the nicest incidents was a little old
lady in a velvet mantle and black curls, careering backwards over the
ground, knocking people over as she clutched at the tail of a huge
escaping and crowing cock with one hand, and with the other arm embraced
a captured but still struggling and squawking goose. In about an hour
after it was opened everything on the ground was swept quite flat. But
excursion trains kept arriving, whose innocent passengers paid their
sixpences--you couldn’t see the ruin from outside--and wondered why the
crowd assembled at the gate laughed at them. However it was worth while
to see the village boys fighting and scrambling under the fallen tent
for the apples and potatoes.”
There is a May-day festival here, for which I am responsible. There used
to be dancing round the May-pole at the flower-show and other festivals,
but none upon May-day itself; and I put an end to that anomaly. The
children at Lustleigh school--boys and girls--elect one of the girls as
Queen, and her name is carved upon a rock on the hill behind this house.
Then on May-day the Queen walks in procession under a canopy of flowers
carried by four of the boys, her crown and sceptre being carried by two
others; then come her maids of honour; and then all the other children
of the school, most of them carrying flowers in garlands or on staves.
The procession winds along through Lustleigh and through Wreyland,
halting at certain places to sing the customary songs, and at last
ascends the hill behind here. The Queen is enthroned upon a rock looking
down upon the May-pole: the crown of flowers is placed upon her head,
and the arum-lily sceptre in her hand: the maids of honour do their
homage, laying their bouquets at her feet; and the four-and-twenty
dancers perform their dance before her. Then comes the serious business
of the day--the children’s tea. This year, 1917, there was a shortage of
cereals; but I saved the situation with two hundred hard-boiled eggs.
There are two Friendly Societies here, Rationals and Rechabites; and for
many years the Rationals had a church-parade upon Whit-sunday and a fête
upon Whit-monday. In 1908 they decided not to have their fête that year:
so the Rechabites announced a fête upon Whit-monday, and then the
Rationals announced their fête as usual, fearing that their rivals would
annex Whit-monday permanently. So there were two fêtes going on
together in fields not far apart, and each had a big brass band.
This little dispute gave rise to an incredible display of hatred and
malice between the two societies; and the Rector told the Rationals that
he could not have a church-parade for them till they were reconciled. As
that was out of the question, they had a church-parade without the
Rector or the Church. They went round as usual in procession with their
banner and regalia, collecting for the hospital, and halted in the
town-place just outside the Church at time of evensong. And they sang
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with such support from their brass
band, that the congregation could not hear a word the Rector said.
Before their fête the Rationals had a dinner, and I went. A man opposite
me was saying that he had given more benefit to the Society than the
Society had given to him, for he was now past fifty and had never drawn
sick-pay yet. I was able to say that I was past fifty also, and had
never yet been ill enough to stay in bed all day. But a man lower down
the table must have thought that we were getting proud, for he remarked
very audibly just then:--“There be a sort that do go sudden, when they
do go.” A few years afterwards I was ill enough to stay in bed for many
weeks, but I managed to get out of doors for May-day. I noticed a group
of people talking together and glancing at me now and then, and
presently one of them came over and explained:--“What us be sayin’, zir,
be this: whatever shall us do for our May-day, when you be dead.”
They were ringing a knell at North Bovey one afternoon when I was out
beyond there; and it sounded very weird, when the gusts of wind carried
the wail of the bells across the hills. I met one of the Lustleigh
ringers as I was coming back, and I asked him why they never did it
there. He answered:--“But us do. Sometime. Not for all folk like,
though. But us’ll ring’n for thee.”
When I was overhauling one of the old houses here, I made good some
panelling that had been covered up with lath and plaster. After it was
done, a man came over to tell me of some seasoned oak of extraordinary
width, which I might buy. I saw that it would make fine panels, but my
panelling was done. And then he said:--“Well, and if you didn’t use it
for panellin’, it might serve some other purpose. Why, th’old Mr *****
and his wife both had their coffins made from that same tree.”
One of the old Wreyland houses looked out upon an orchard at the back;
but the orchard was not let with the house, and at that time there was
no back-door. Riding down the lane one day, the owner saw a piece of
wood, as long as a fishing-rod, coming slowly out from one of the
windows at the back, and going on until it reached an apple on a tree:
it caught the apple in a sort of pocket at the end, and then went slowly
back into the house again, taking the apple with it. To make quite sure,
he waited till he saw this done a second time; and then he went round to
the front, and told the father of the family what he thought about the
sons, for obviously it was the boys who did it. The father said he would
no longer be the tenant of a man who spoke to him like that: so he
bought a piece of ground in Lustleigh, and built himself a house.
Another father of a family came to live in the old house; and a son of
his took something of more value than an apple, and went off to America.
After many years the son came back, and he was wanted by the police.
They thought that he was hiding in his father’s house, and they got a
warrant to search it. There is only one policeman here, and another one
was sent for to assist, lest the man should slip out at the back, while
our policeman came in at the front. Like all other things in little
country places, the whole scheme was known to everybody here--even the
train by which the other policeman would arrive; and a little crowd came
round to see the sport, as if it were a bit of rabbitting. Strange to
say, the man was not at home.
It was said that he was hiding in the cave in Loxter copse, and that
food was carried up to him at night; but I do not know the truth of
that. The copse is on the hill behind this house, and the cave is a
hollow in a cleave of elvan rocks, low and narrow at the entrance, but
more commodious inside, and branching into passages with practicable
exits. It suits foxes very well, but would hardly suit a man who was not
being hunted; though possibly I might get a tenant for it, if I gave the
letting to a firm that let an urban house near here as ‘a romantic
semi-detached villa,’ and another as ‘The Retreat,’ though it looked out
on a garage and a stable, front and back.
Some eighty years ago a man put an explosive in a log in his woodhouse,
and the log exploded on a neighbour’s hearth. The woodhouse was
inviolate after that, but the neighbour’s injuries were serious; and my
grandfather doubted if it was fair game. Taking things for personal use
is not the same as taking things for pawn or sale; and I have known it
done by men who otherwise were straight--except in horse-dealing and
flower-shows and other such matters as have ethics of their own.
A man told me with righteous indignation that his neighbour had removed
his landmarks in the night, and annexed a strip of his allotment, nearly
three feet wide. I saw the neighbour afterwards, rubbing his hands with
glee. He told me, “I’ve a-watched’n a-eggin’ they postes on, inch by
inch and night by night, and now I’ve set’n back right where they was
afore.” And a measurement proved that they were now in their right
places.
Another man came to me about potato-ground or something of the sort; and
on going away he said he would have come in earlier, only he had been
sitting longer than he meant with a neighbour who was ill. It was a case
of scarlet fever; and I said something about infection. But he said he
did not hold with that. “What I want to know, be this:--The very first
person as ever had the scarlet fever, who did he catch it from?”
In talking to a man who had been taken seriously ill, I asked him how
the attack came on; and he told me how. “The pain took me that sudden
round the middle, that I thought I’d parted right asunder. But it didn’t
so happen to be.” There was nothing of the wasp about him to suggest the
likelihood of such a severance.
An old man, who lived some way from here, was refusing his consent to a
thing that could have been done equally well without his consent, though
at much greater cost; and I went over to talk to him about it. He did
not know me, and resented my intrusion; but presently he asked:--“Be you
a son of Mr Torr as were a friend of Mr *****?” I said I was; and in a
moment he was genial, slapped me on the back, and said:--“Why, one day
they two pretty near drownded I.” He was going along a clam--a bridge
formed of a single tree-trunk thrown across a stream--and they gave the
trunk a twist, when he was half way over. The recollection of it put him
into such good humour that he promised his consent.
I once told this to a friend, while I was going along a clam myself; and
the notion struck him that he might perhaps give his children a claim
upon my gratitude, if he just rolled me off.
There is little danger of drowning in these streams, as they generally
are shallow. But accidents have happened. On the night of 27 December
1863 a man was going to Rudge from Wreyland by the clam across the Wrey;
and he fell in, struck his head against a rock, and lay there stunned
till he was drowned. His body was found next morning.
Just between Wreyland and Lustleigh the Wrey is very narrow; and I was
able to rebuild the bridge there in the primæval way. The timber was
decaying, and there were doubts about the liability for repair: so I
assumed the office of Pontifex. I got blocks of granite nearly twelve
feet long, and weighing nearly two tons each, and just placed them
across the stream.
As the whole rainfall of the valley has to pass through the little gap
between Wreyland and Lustleigh, there naturally are floods here after
very heavy rains or thaws; and then it is not easy to go from one place
to the other. Writing to my father on 26 December 1847 about a flood at
that time, my grandfather recalls an incident in a much worse flood
eight years before:--“Sally ***** could not come over the meadows, and
went round Bishop’s Stone, and there found it equally bad: so her
son-in-law Dick ***** took her to his back. But she being so
heavy--double Dick’s weight--Dick was obliged to put her down in the
middle of it.”
One afternoon a Church Lads’ Brigade came over from a seaside place to
see the Cleave and other sights, and they had their tea in these meadows
by the Wrey. The weather being warm, they all went for the stream, and
bathed with a publicity that was hitherto unknown here, though not
uncommon at the seaside. One of our oldest inhabitants was aghast at it,
and said to me:--“Well, Mr Torr, if this be Wreyland, us might live in
savage parts.”
Another day a Classic Dancer came over here to dance for me. She danced
the Spring Song on the turf, with the tall cypress hedges as a
background; and it really was a very pretty sight. But some of the
spectators thought less about her dancing than her dress. And their
verdict was:--“Her garments had not got no substance in them.”
Not long ago one of the old inhabitants was talking to me about the War;
and this was how it struck him:--“It be a terrible thing, this war:
proper terrible it be. I never knowed bacon such a price.” Another one
looked at it from another point of view:--“What be the sense of their
contendin’? Why, us in Lustleigh don’t wage war on they in Bovey, and
wherefore should the nations fight?”
In talking to a very old inhabitant, I spoke of something out on
Dartmoor, and he replied:--“Well, Dartymoor be a place I never were at.”
I remarked that it was within a walk, and he replied:--“I never had no
occasion to go there.”
Life is never very strenuous here. People always fancy there is time to
spare--“the days be long.” That answers to the Spanish
_mañana_--to-morrow--or the Arabic _ba‘d bukra_--the day after
to-morrow--and is almost worthy of Theodore and Luke. In the _Sayings of
the Fathers_ Palladius relates that they were discontented with their
dwelling, and in the winter they said they would move in the summer, and
in the summer they said they would move in the winter; and they went on
saying that for the space of fifty years; and they both died in that
place.
There was a project for a railway here as soon as the main-line had
reached Newton. My grandfather writes to my father on 25 April
1847:--“The surveyors have been from Newton to Okehampton, marking out a
new line. They seem to be guided by the stream, and (if it takes place)
they will go right up the meadows under here.... I cannot fancy it will
take place, for people are a little cooled down, and not so mad for
speculation. Had it been projected some little time ago, no doubt it
would have taken.” The project came to nothing then, but some years
afterwards it was revived; and he writes on 30 January 1861:--“I find
there was a meeting at Moreton yesterday about this line of railway from
Newton to Okehampton, and a meeting to-day at Newton, and at Okehampton
on Saturday.”
The existing railway from Newton to Moreton was projected in 1858, and
was carried out under the Moretonhampstead and South Devon Railway Act,
1862. My grandfather writes to my father, 8 February 1863:--“Mr Brassey
has been down, and gone over the line marked out, but I cannot find what
he thinks of it. He is staying at Torquay for the benefit of his health,
and rides over some part of it every fine day. So I suppose something
will be done, that is, if they can get the money, but people are not so
forward with their money as heretofore for railroads.” Work was begun on
10 August 1863, but not near here till 9 November. In the autumn of 1864
surveys were made for an extension of the line from Moreton to Chagford;
but nothing ever came of that. The line was opened to Moreton on 4 July
1866.
Financially the railway was a failure. There was a capital of £105,000
in shares and £35,000 in debentures, but the expenditure was £155,000.
And the company was amalgamated with the South Devon company on 1 July
1872, the £105,000 in shares being exchanged for £52,500 in ordinary
stock, and the £35,000 in debentures for £35,000 in debenture stock. And
then the South Devon company was amalgamated with the Great Western
company on 1 February 1876, each £100 of South Devon ordinary stock
being exchanged for £65 of Great Western ordinary stock, and each £100
of South Devon debenture stock for £100 of Great Western 5% debenture
stock. Thus £100 in
[Illustration: MAY DAY (_p. 58_)]
shares came down to £32. 10_s._ 0_d._ in stock; but part of the loss was
wiped out afterwards, when Great Western stocks went up, £32. 10_s._
0_d._ of the ordinary stock selling for nearly £60, while £100 of the 5%
debenture stock sold for nearly £200.
The navvies made things unpleasant here, while the line was building. My
grandfather writes to my father on 17 November 1864:--“More than a
hundred discharged on Monday, and a pretty row there was: drunk
altogether, and fighting altogether, except one couple fought in the
meadows for an hour and got badly served, I hear. The same night the
villains stole all poor old *****’s fowls. He had them under lock and
key, but they broke in and took the whole, young and old.... There is
not a fowl or egg to be got hereabout.” Writing on 29 March 1865, he
describes a visit from a drunken navvy the day before--“about as fine a
built tall likely a fellow as you ever saw, and nicknamed the Bulldog.”
He asked for meat and drink, and was sent empty away. “I learnt that he
worked Saturday and Monday, and received 5_s._ 6_d._ for the two days,
slept in a barn and spent all his earnings at the public-house.... Not
long after I saw the policeman who belongs to the line--not the
Lustleigh man--and he said, ‘If anything of the kind occurs again, send
for me, and I will soon put all right.’ But he spends all his time on
the line keeping the navvies in order; and before he can be got mischief
may be done.” One of the dogs here had been poisoned by meat thrown her
by a navvy, 22 September 1864. After that, he kept a revolver.
Now that the cuttings and embankments are all overgrown and covered with
verdure, one can hardly realize how hideous it all looked, when they
were raw and glaring. In that respect this was the worst piece of the
line, as there are four cuttings here in less than a mile, and
embankments almost all the way between them. But some of the viaducts
and bridges are worthy of all praise. Just below here the line crosses
and re-crosses the Wrey at a height of rather more than forty feet above
the stream, first on a viaduct of two arches and then on a viaduct of
three. And these are built of granite, and so well proportioned, that
there would be many pictures of them, could they be transferred to
Italy and attributed to Roman or Etruscan builders. A little further up
there is a splendid archway, where the road goes underneath the line
before ascending Caseleigh hill.
The line was intended to curve round the outer slope of Caseleigh hill
instead of cutting through it; but the curve was condemned as dangerous
on so steep a gradient. And the plans were altered, to the disadvantage
of the scenery, and also of the shareholders, as the cuttings were very
costly.
The old people here would often speak of London as though it stood upon
a hill. And they could give a reason:--“Folk always tell of going _up_
to London.” When the railway came, it was perplexing. This portion of
the line ascends about 400 feet in about six miles, with gradients of as
much as 1 in 40. Yet up trains went down, and down trains up.
Lustleigh station once had a signal-post, though it now has none. Seeing
both arms lowered for trains to come both ways, I felt a little uneasy,
there being only a single line. But the station-master said:--“Well,
there isn’t an engine up at Moreton; and, if a truck did run away, it
wouldn’t stop because the signal was against it.” Trucks do sometimes
run away, but have never yet done serious damage.
This line was laid with the old broad-gauge rails on longitudinal
sleepers, and was converted into narrow-gauge in 1892 by bringing the
off-side rails and sleepers in towards the near-side. It has all been
re-laid now with the usual narrow-gauge rails and transverse sleepers,
excepting a few sidings.
On the broad-gauge there were eight seats in a compartment, first class,
the narrow-gauge having only six. And in the Great Western carriages
there was often a partition with a sliding door, making a
sub-compartment on each side, each with two seats facing forward and two
facing back. Passengers’ luggage used to be carried on the roofs of the
carriages, being strapped down securely and covered with tarpaulins. But
this was not peculiar to the broad-gauge. I remember it on narrow-gauge
lines as well, especially the Great Northern.
Some of the old broad-gauge engines were worth seeing. On the Bristol &
Exeter line there were engines that had a pair of driving-wheels nine
feet in diameter, and four pairs of carrying-wheels set on two bogies
fore and aft. These engines were taken over by the Great Western on the
amalgamation of the companies; but the Great Western, I believe, had no
engines of its own with driving-wheels of more than eight feet, except
the Hurricane, whose driving-wheels were ten feet in diameter. I used to
hear it said that Brunel had driven the Hurricane himself, and made her
run a hundred miles an hour; and these Bristol & Exeter engines
certainly ran more than eighty. It was one of these that came to grief
at Long Ashton on 27 July 1876. She turned right over, and threw up her
driving-wheels to such a height that they cleared the train, and came
down upon the line behind it.
Engines were given names, just because stage-coaches had them. The most
suggestive names--Crawley and Saint Blazey--are really names of places;
and generally the choice of names is feeble. The managers of foreign
lines have more imagination. I once met Lars Porsenna at
Clusium--Chiusi--on the train for Rome.
* * * * *
A cousin of my father’s writes to him from Brighton, 28 April 1842:--“I
was very glad to find from your note that you reached home safely,
having escaped all the dangers of the railroad with its fearful tunnels.
I think of returning [to London] by the good old stage coach, slow
though it be: it is better to lose time than to run the risk of being
crushed to pieces in those dark tunnels, where you have not even a
chance of saving yourself by jumping out.”
There was an old gentleman near here, who was a reckless rider, and met
with many accidents out hunting, yet could not bring himself to face the
dangers of the railway. At last--in 1851, I think--he had to go to
London on some urgent business, and then (to use his own words) he
committed his soul to its Creator, and took a ticket by the train.
My grandfather did not travel in a train until 5 December 1846, and then
he writes:--“I had not much inclination to go in it after reading of so
many collisions and accidents, but now I think I could form a resolution
to go anywhere in it; but I shall not do so, unless it is for special
purposes.... I admit there is danger in all conveyances; but this, I
think, with proper caution is by far the safest, and I shall in future
(if ever I travel again) take about the middle carriage, for I see the
hinder carriages are liable to be run into--therefore the danger is
almost equal to that of the front, except the bursting of the engine.”
In a letter of 13 February 1852 he warns my father of another
danger:--“I do hope you will leave the train at Exeter, when you come
down, and not risk going on to Newton. The post is now arrived, near 3
o’clock: another landslip just as the mail train came up. This has been
the fifth slip.” And really the dangers were considerable then. They
were reduced, as years went on; but he never got quite reconciled to
trains. When eighty years old and tired of life, he writes to my father,
8 June 1869:--“However glad I should be to receive my call, I would
prefer home to a railway carriage.”
He writes on 27 April 1845 that Captain ***** has just returned from
London. By some misunderstanding he was driven to the wrong station
there, South Western not Great Western; and at that date the South
Western ran only to Gosport and Southampton. It being dark, he did not
notice this, and got into the train, and started off; and then “they
told him he must take another train and cross over to the Great Western;
but he said ‘the Devil take the train, I’ll have no more to do with it,
but coach it.’ So he coached it all the way home, and did not arrive
until Monday instead of Saturday.”
* * * * *