[Illustration: BAGTOR.]
From the little southern salient of Bagtor at Dartmoor edge, there falls
a slope to the "in country" beneath. Thereon Bagtor woods extend in many
a shining plane--from wind-swept hill-crowns of beech and fir, to
dingles and snug coombs in the valley bottom a thousand feet beneath.
On a summer day one loiters in the dappled wood, for here is welcome
shade after miles of hot sunshine on the heather above. Music of water
splashes pleasantly through the trees, where a streamlet falls from step
to step; the last of the bluebells still linger by the way, and above
them great beech-boles rise, all chequered with sun splashes. On the
earth dead leaves make a russet warmth, brighter by contrast with the
young green round about, and brilliant where sunlight winnows through.
There, in the direct beam, flash little flies, which hang suspended upon
the light like golden beads; while through the glades, young fern is
spread for pleasant resting-places. Pigeons murmur aloft unseen, and
many a grey-bird and black-bird sing beside their hidden homes.
At last the woodlands make an end, old orchards spread in a clearing,
and the sun, now turning west, has left the apple trees, so that their
blossom hangs cool and shaded on the boughs. Behind--a background for
the orchard--there rise the walls of an ancient house, weathered and
worn--a mass of picturesque gables and tar-pitched roofs with red-brick
chimneys ascending above them. No great dignity or style marks this
dwelling. It is a thing of patches and additions. Here the sun still
burns radiantly, makes the roof golden, and flashes on the snow-white
"fan-tails" that strut up and down upon it.
Great Scotch firs tower to the south, and the light burns redly in their
boughs against the blue sky above them. A farmhouse nestles beside the
old mansion under a roof of ancient thatch, that falls low over the
dawn-facing front, and makes ragged eyelashes for the little windows.
The face of the farm is nearly hidden in green things, and a colour note
of mauve dominates the foliage where wistaria showers. There are
climbing roses too, a Japanese quince, and wallflowers and columbines in
the garden plot that subtends the dwelling. Mossy walls enclose the
garden, and beneath them spreads the farmyard--a dust-dry place to-day
wherein a litter of black piglets gambol round their mother. Poultry
cluck and scratch everywhere, and a company of red calves cluster
together in one corner. A ploughman brings in his horses. From a byre
comes the purr of milk falling into a pail.
On still evenings bell music trickles up to this holt of ancient peace
from a church tower three miles away; for we stand in the parish of
Ilsington on the shoulder of Dartmoor, and the home of the silver
"fan-tails" is Bagtor House--a spot sanctified to all book-lovers. Here,
a very mighty personage first saw the light and began his pilgrimage; at
Bagtor was John Ford born, the first great decadent of English letters,
the tragedian whose sombre works belong to the sunset time of the
spacious days.
In April of 1586 the infant John received baptism at Ilsington church;
while, sixteen years later, he was apprenticed to his profession and
became a member of the Middle Temple. At eighteen John Ford, who wrote
out of his own desire and under an artist's compulsion only, first
tempted fortune; and over his earliest effort, _Fame's Memorial_, a veil
may be drawn; while of subsequent collaborations with Webster and
Decker, part perished unprinted and Mr. Warburton's cook "used up" his
comedies. Probably they are no great loss, for a master with less sense
of humour never lived. But _The Witch of Edmonton_ in Swinburne's
judgment embodies much of Ford's best, and his greatest plays all
endure.
The man who wrote _The Lover's Melancholy_, _'Tis Pity She's a Whore_,
_The Broken Heart_ and _Love's Sacrifice_ was born in this sylvan scene
and his cradle rocked to the murmur of wood doves. True he vanished
early from Devonshire, and though uncertain tradition declares his
return, asserting that, while still in prime and vigour, he laid by his
gown and pen and came back to Bagtor, to end his days where he was born,
and mellow his stormy heart before he died, no proof that he did so
exists. His life's history has been obliterated and contemporary records
of him have yet to appear.
As an artist he must surely have loved horror for horror's sake, and,
too often, our terror arouses not that pity to which tragedy should lift
man's heart, but rather generates disgust before his extraordinary plots
and the unattractive and inhuman characters which unravel them. One
salutes the intellectual power of him, but merely shudders, without
being enchained or uplifted by the nature of his themes. It has been
well said of Ford that he "abhorred vice and admired virtue; but
ordinary vice or modern virtue were to him as light wine to a dram
drinker.... Passion must be incestuous or adulterous; grief must be
something more than martyrdom, before he could make them big enough to
be seen."
There is a little of Michaelangelo about Ford--something excruciating,
tortured. The tormented marble of the one is reflected in the wracked
and writhing characters of the other; but whether Ford felt for the
sorrow of earth as the Florentine; whether he shared that mightier man's
fiery patriotism, enthusiasm of humanity and tragic griefs before the
suffering of mankind, we know not. One picture we have of him from old
time, and it offers a gloomy, aloof figure, little caring to win
friendship, or court understanding from his fellows:--
Deep in a dump John Ford was alone got,
With folded arms and melancholy hat.
So depicted the gloomy artist might serve for tragedy's self--arms
crossed, brows drawn, eyes darkling under the broad-brimmed beaver, with
the plotter's night-black cloak swept round his person. Or to a vision
of Michaelangelo's "Il Penseroso" we may exalt the poet, and see him in
that solemn and stately stone, finally at peace, his last word written
and the finger of silence upon his gloomy lips.
Hazlitt finds John Ford finical and fastidious. He certainly is so, and
one often wonders how this mind and pen should have welcomed such
appalling subjects. He plays with edged tools and too well knows the
use of poisoned weapons, says Hazlitt; and the criticism is just in the
opinion of those who, with him, account it an artist's glory that he
shall not tamper with foul and "unfair" subjects, or sink his genius to
the kennel and gutter. That, however, is the old-world, vanished
attitude, for artists recognise no "unfair" subjects to-day.
Indeed, Ford can be not seldom beautiful and tender and touched to
emotion of pity; but by the time of Charles, the golden galaxies were
gone; their forces were spent; their inspiration had perished; England,
merry no more, began to shiver in the shadow of coming puritan eclipse;
and that twilight seems to have cast by anticipation its penumbra about
Ford.
There is in him little of the rollicking, superficial coarseness of the
Elizabethans; the stain is in web and woof. His great moments are few;
he is mostly ferocious, or absurdly sentimental, and one confesses that
the bulk of his best work, judged against the highest of ancient or
modern tragedy, rings feebly with a note of too transparent artifice. He
is moved by intellectual interest rather than creative inspiration;
there is far more brain than heart in his writings.
Perhaps he knew it and convinced himself, while still at the noon of
intelligence, that he was no creator. Perhaps he abandoned art, through
failure to satisfy his own ideals. At any rate it would seem that he
stopped writing at a time when most men have still much to give.
One would like at least to believe that he found in his birthplace the
distinguished privacy he desired and an abode of physical and mental
peace. He may, indeed, have come home again to Devon when his work was
ended; he may have passed the uncertain residue of life in seclusion
with wife and family at this estate of his ancestors; his dust may lie
unhonoured and unrecorded at Ilsington, as Herrick's amid the green
graves not far distant at Dean Prior.
It is all guesswork, and the truth of John Ford's life, as of his death,
may be forever hidden. One sees him a notable, silent, subtle man, prone
to pessimism as a gift of heredity--a man disappointed in his
achievement, soured by inner criticism and comparison with those who
were greater than he.
So, weary of cities and the company of wits and poets, he came back to
the country, that he might heal his disappointments and soothe his
pains. His life, to the unseeing eyes around him, doubtless loomed
prosperous and complete; to himself, perchance, all was dust and ashes
of thwarted ambition. Again he roamed the woods where he had learned to
walk; won to the love of nature; underwent the thousand new experiences
and fancied discoveries of a townsman fresh in the country; and, through
these channels, came to contentment and sunshine of mind, bright enough
to pierce the night of his thoughts and sweeten the dark currents of his
imagination. It may be so.