Chapter II: Part 2

Latimer was the proprietor of the _Western Times_, and it called the 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.”

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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

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.

* * * * *

Davy took the title of his work from Bacon, and planned it while he was 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_.

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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.”