Part 7

Such was the solace that arrived to soothe the dreary path of Daniel Gumb. He wooed and won a maiden of his native village, who, amid the rugged rocks and appellatives of Cornwall, had the soft Italian name of Florence. But where, amid the utter poverty of his position and prospects, could he find the peaceful and happy wedding-roof that should bend over him and his bride? His friends were few, and they too poor and lowly to aid his start in life. He himself had inherited nothing save a strong head and heart, and two stalwart hands. He looked around him and afar off, and there was no avenue for house or home. Suddenly he recalled to mind his wandering days and his houseless nights, the scanty food, the absorbing meditation, and the kindly shelter of many a nook in the hollow places of the granite rock. He formed his plan, and made it known to his future and faithful bride; she assented with the full-hearted strength and trusting sacrifice of a woman’s love. Then he went forth in the might of his simple and strong resolve,--his tools in his scrip, and a loaf or two of his accustomed household bread. He sought the well-known slope under Carradon, searched many a mass of Druid rock, and paced around cromlech and pillared stone of old memorial,[71] until he discovered a primeval assemblage of granite slabs suited to his toil. One of these, grounded upon several others, the vast boulders of some diluvian flood, had the rude semblance of a roof. Underneath this shelving rock he scooped away the soil, finding, as he dug on, more than one upright slice of moorstone, which he left to stand as an inner and natural wall. At last, at the end of a few laborious days, Daniel stood before a large cavern of the rocks, divided into chambers by upstanding granite, and sheltered at a steep angle by a mountainous mass of stone. Nerved and sustained by the hopeful visions which crowded on his mind, and of which he firmly trusted that this place would be the future scene, he toiled on until he had finally framed a giant abode such as that wherein Cyclops shut in Ulysses and his companions, and promised to “devour No-man the last.” Materials for the pavement and for closing up the inner walls were scattered abundantly around--nay, the very furniture for that mountain-home was at once ready for his hand; for as Agag,[72] king of the Amalekites, had his vaunted iron bed, so did Gumb frame and hew for himself and Florence, his wife, table and seat and a bedstead of native stone. Then he smoothed out and shot into a groove a thick and heavy door, so that, closed like an Eastern sepulchre, it demanded no common strength to roll away the stone. When all had been prepared, the bridegroom and the bride met at a distant church; the simple wedding-feast was held at her father’s house; and that night the husband led the maiden of his vows, the bride of his youth, to their wedding-rock! If he had known the ode, he might have chanted, in Horatian[73] verse, that day--

“Nunc scio quid sit amor, duris in cotibus illum”

“Now know I what true love is; in rugged dens he dwells.”

Here the wedded pair dwelt in peace long and happy years, mingling the imagery of old romance with the sterner duties of practical life. As a far-famed hewer of stone, the skill and energy of this singular man never lacked employ, nor failed to supply the necessities of his moorland abode. Like a patriarch in his tent amid the solitudes of Syria, he was his own king, prophet, and priest. He paid neither rent, nor taxes, nor tithe. When children were born to him, he exercised unwittingly the power of lay-baptism which was granted in the primitive Church to the inhabitants of a wilderness, afar from the ministry of the priesthood, and his wife was content to be “churched” by her own cherished husband, among the altars of unhewn stone that surrounded their solitary cell. Who shall say that this simple worship of the father and the mother with their household, amid the paradise of hills, was not as sweet, with the balsam of the soul, as the incense-breathing psalm of the cathedral choir? Rightly or wrongly, it is known that Daniel entertained an infinite contempt for “the parsons” whose territories bordered on the moor. Not one of them, it was his wont to aver, could cross the Asses’ Bridge of his favourite Euclid, a feat he had himself accomplished in very early youth; nor could the most learned among them all unravel the mysteries of his chosen companions, the wandering stars that travelled over Carradon every night. Long and frequent were his vigils for astronomical researches and delight. To this day the traveller will encounter on the face of some solitary rock a mathematical diagram carefully carved by some chisel and hand unknown; and while speculation has often been rife as to the Druidical origin of the mystic figure, or the scientific knowledge of the early Kelts, the local antiquary is aware that these are the simple records of the patient studies of Daniel Gumb.

When the writer of this article visited the neighbourhood in 183-, there still survived relics and remembrances of this singular man. There were a few written fragments[74] of his thoughts and studies still treasured up in the existing families of himself and his wife. Here is a transcript: “Mr. Cookworthy told me, when I saw him last, that astronomers in foreign parts, and our great man Sir Isaac here at home, had thought that the planets were so vast, and so like our earth in their ways, that they might have been inhabited by men; but he said, ‘their elements and atmosphere are thought to be unfit for human life and breath.’ But surely God would not have so wasted His worlds as to have made such great bright masses of His creation to roll along all barren, as it were, like desert places of light in the sky. There must be people of some kind there: how I should like to see them, and to go there when I die!”

Another entry on the same leaf: “Florence asked me to-day if I thought that our souls, after we are dead, would know the stars and other wise things better than we can now. And I answered her, Yes; and if I could--that is, if I was allowed to--the first thing I would try should be to square the circle true, and then, if I could, I would mark it and work it out somewhere hereabouts on a flat rock, that my son might find it there, and so make his fortune and be a great man. N.B.--Florence asked me to write this down.”

On a thick sheet of pasteboard, with a ground-plan of a building on the other side, he had written: “_January 16, 1756_.--A terrible storm last night. Thunder and lightning and hail, with a tempest of wind. Saw several dead sheep on the moor. Shipwrecks, no doubt, at sea. A thought came into my mind, Why should such harm be allowed to be done? I read some reasons once in a book that Mr. Cookworthy lent me, called ‘The Origin of Evil;’ but I could not understand a word of it. My notion is, that when evil somehow came into the world, God did not destroy it at once, because He is so almighty that He let it go on, to make manifest His power and majesty; and so He rules over all things, and turns them into good at the last. N.B.--The devil is called in the Bible the Prince of the Powers of the Air: so he may be, but he must obey his Master. The poor wretch is but a slave after all!”

On the fly-leaves of an old account-book the following strange statement appears: “_June 23, 1764_.--To-day, at bright noon, as I was at my work upon the moor, I looked up, and saw all at once a stranger standing on the turf, just above my block. He was dressed like an old picture I remember in the windows of St. Neot’s Church, in a long brown garment, with a girdle; and his head was uncovered and grizzled with long hair. He spoke to me, and he said, in a low, clear voice, ‘Daniel, that work is hard!’ I wondered that he should know my name, and I answered, ‘Yes, sir; but I am used to it, and don’t mind it, for the sake of the faces at home.’ Then he said, sounding his words like a psalm, ‘Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening; when will it be night with Daniel Gumb?’ I began to feel queer; it seemed to me that there was something awful about the unknown man. I even shook. Then he said again, ‘Fear nothing. The happiest man in all the earth is he that wins his daily bread by his daily sweat, if he will but fear God and do no man wrong.’ I bent down my head like any one confounded, and I greatly wondered who this strange appearance could be. He was not like a preacher, for he looked me full in the face; nor a bit like a parson, for he seemed very meek and kind. I began to think it was a spirit, only such ones always come by night, and here was I at noonday, and at work. So I made up my mind to drop my hammer and step up and ask his name right out. But when I looked up he was gone, and that clear out of my sight, on the bare wide moor suddenly.[75] I only wish that I had gone forward at once and felt him with my hand, and found out if he was a real man or only a resemblance. What could it mean! Mem. to ask Mr. C.”

This event is recorded in a more formal and painful handwriting than the other MSS. which survive. Nothing could be further removed from superstition or fear than this man’s whole character and mind. Hard as one of his native rocks, and accurate as a diagram, yet here is a tinge of that large and artless belief which is so inseparable from a Keltic origin, and which is so often manifested by the strongest and loftiest minds. Another paragraph, written on the blank page of an almanac, runs thus: “Found to-day, in the very heart of a slab rock that came out below the granite, the bony skeleton of a strange animal, or rather some kind of fish. The stone had never been broken into before, and looked ages older than the rocks above. Now, how came this creature to get in, and to die and harden there? Was it before Adam’s time, or since? What date was it? But what can we tell about dates after all? Time is nothing but Adam’s clock--a measurement that men invented to reckon by. This very rock with the creature in it was made, perhaps, before there was any such thing as time. In eternity may be--that is, before there were any dates begun. At all events, when God did make the rock, He must have put the creature there.” This appears to be a singular and rude anticipation of modern discovery, and a simple solution of a question of science in our own and later time. It is to be lamented that these surviving details of a thoughtful and original life are so few and far between.

Gumb appears to have united in his native character the simplicity of an ancient hermit and the stern contempt of the solitary student for the busy hum of men, with the brave resolution and independent energy of mind which have won success and fame for some of our self-made sons of science and skill. But his opportunities were few, and the severance of his life and abode from contact with his fellow-men forbade that access to the discoveries and researches of his kind which might have rendered him, in other days, the Hugh Miller of the rocks, or the Stephenson or Watt of a scientific solitude. He and his wife inhabited their wedded cell for many years and long. The mother on her stony couch gladdened her anxious husband with sons and daughters; but she had the courage to brave her woman’s trials alone, for neither midwife nor doctor were ever summoned to “the rock.” These, as may well be imagined, were all literally educated at home; but only one of their children--his name was John--appears to have inherited his father’s habits or energy. He succeeded to the caverned home after Daniel’s death, and when his mother had returned to her native village to die also, the existence of John Gumb is casually seen recorded as one of the skilful hewers of stone at the foot of Carradon. But Daniel died “an old man full of days,” and he was carried after all _ad plures_, and to the silent society of men, in the churchyard of the parish wherein stood afar off his rocky home. He won and he still deserves a nook of remembrance among the legendary sons of the west, “the giants” of Keltic race, “the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” His mind, though rough-hewn, like a block of his native granite, must have been well balanced: resolute and firm reliance on a man’s own resources, and disdain of external succour, have ever been a signal of native genius. To be able to live alone, according to the adage of an ancient sage, a man must be either an angel or a demon. Gumb was neither, but a simple, strong-hearted, and intellectual man. He had the “mens sana in corpore sano” of the poet’s aspiration. A scenic taste and a mind “to enjoy the universe” he revealed in the very choice of his abode. In utter scorn of the pent-up city, and dislike for the reek of the multitude, he built like “the Kenite, his nest in the rock;”[76] nor did he pitch his stony tent by chance, or in a casual place in the wild. He chose and he fixed his home where his eye could command and exult in a stretch of circumferent scenery a hundred and fifty miles in surrounding extent. In the east, he greeted the morning sun, as he mounted the rugged saddle of Dartmoor and Exmoor for his daily career. To the west, Roche, the rock of the ruined hermitage, lifted a bold and craggy crest to the sky, where long centuries before another solitary of more ascetic mind lay, like the patriarch on his pillow of granite, and reared a ladder to heaven by the energy of nightly prayer. Far, far away to the westward the haughty sun of England went into the storied sea of Arthur and his knights, and touched caressingly the heights of grim Dundagel with a lingering halo of light. These were the visions that soothed and surrounded the worker at his daily toil, and roused and strengthened the energies of the self-sustaining man. The lessons of the legend of Daniel Gumb are simple and earnest and strong. The words of supernatural wisdom might be graven as an added superscription on his rock, “Whatsoever thou doest, do it with all thine heart.” If thou be a man friendless and alone, the slave of the hammer or the axe, and doomed to the sweat of labour day by day till the night shall come that no man can work, “aide-toi et Dieu t’aidera”--aid thyself and God will succour thee.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xv. pp. 206-210. 1866. See Appendix D.

[65] Spelt “Routorr” in the lines quoted on p. 234. It seems more natural to take the word as meaning “rough, or rugged, tor.” Hawker spells it “Roughtor” on p. 124.

[66] Now called “Brown Willy.” See the lines quoted on p. 80.

[67] Compare the lines on Sir Lancelot in “The Quest of the Sangraal,” and Hawker’s note--

“Ah me! that logan of the rocky hills, Pillar’d in storm, calm in the rush of war, Shook at the light touch of his lady’s hand!”

The ballad on “The Doom Well of St. Madron” records a similar test of innocence. For Carew’s description of a logan-rock, see end of Appendix D.

[68] See Appendix D_a_.

[69]

“On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.”

[70] William Cookworthy (1705-1780) started life as a small druggist in Nut Street, Plymouth. He had been educated by the Society of Friends, and at thirty-one he retired from trade, became a Quaker minister, and continued so for twenty-five years. About 1758, having discovered a new process of making porcelain, he set up a manufactory at Plymouth, which was after his death transferred to Bristol, and thence to the Potteries. “Cookworthy is said to have been a believer in the _dowsing_ or divining-rod for discovering mineral veins, and we learn that he became a disciple of Swedenborg.... As a lover of science he was much appreciated, as is proved by the fact that Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Captain Cook, dined with him at Plymouth before their voyage round the world” (“Dictionary of National Biography”). His duties led him to travel about the mining districts of Cornwall, and he was a great friend of Nancarrow of Godolphin, a superintendent of mines. It would be on these journeys, no doubt, that he came across Daniel Gumb. Cookworthy died on October 16, 1780, aged 76.

[71]

“On many a cairn’s grey pyramid, Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid.”

_Lay of the Last Minstrel._

[72] It was not Agag, but Og, the king of Bashan, who had the bedstead of iron. See Deuteronomy iii. 11.

[73] This is probably a slip of the pen for “Virgilian.” The line occurs in Virgil’s “Eclogues,” 8, 43. There is no stop at “illum.” The sentence is carried on to the next lines--

“Aut Tmaros aut Rhodope aut extremi Garamantes Nec generis nostri puerum nec sanguinis edunt.”

Conington translates the passage thus: “Now know I what love is; it is among savage rocks that he is produced by Tmarus or Rhodope or the Garamantes at earth’s end; no child of lineage or blood like ours.” Hawker’s translation, it must be owned, is preferable as far as it goes.

[74] Evidences of thought and style make it almost certain that these ingenious “fragments” are Hawker’s “own invention.” See note on p. 104.

[75] It was a trick of Hawker’s style to end a sentence with this or similar adverbs. Instances occur on pp. 17 and 172. Elsewhere he writes: “As the lightning leaps from the dark cloud suddenly.” Little points like this suggest the real authorship of Daniel Gumb’s diary.

[76] Numbers xxiv. 21, “And he (Balaam) looked on the Kenites, and took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock.”

ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH

GIANT[77]

On the brow of a lofty hill, crested with stag-horned trees, commanding a deep and woodland gorge wherein “the Crooks of Combe”[78] (the curves of a winding river) urge onward to the “Severn Sea,” still survive the remains of famous old Stowe,--that historic abode of the loyal and glorious Sir Beville,[79] the Bayard of old Cornwall, “sans peur et sans reproche,” in the thrilling Stuart wars. No mansion on the Tamar-side ever accumulated so rich and varied a store of association and event. Thither the sons of the Cornish gentry were accustomed to resort, to be nurtured and brought up with the children of Sir Beville Granville and Lady Grace; for the noble knight was literally the “glass wherein” the youth of those ancient times “did dress themselves.” There their graver studies were relieved by manly pastime and athletic exercise. Like the children of the Persians, they were taught “to ride, to bend the bow, and to speak the truth.” At hearth and hall every time-honoured usage and festive celebration was carefully and reverently preserved. Around the walls branched the massive antlers of the red deer of the moors, the trophies of many a bold achievement with horse and hound. At the buttery-hatch hung a tankard marked with the guests’ and the travellers’ peg, and a manchet, flanked with native cheese, stood ready on a trencher for any sudden visitant who might choose to lift the latch; for the Granville motto was, “An open door and a greeting hand.” A troop of retainers, servants, grooms, and varlets of the yard, stood each in his place, and under orders to receive with a welcome the unknown stranger, as well as their master’s kinsman and friend.

Among these, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a remarkable personage. He was the son of an old tenant on the estate, who occupied the manor-house of Stratton, a neighbouring town. His parents were of the yeoman rank in life, and possessed no singularity of personal aspect or frame, although both were comely. But Antony, their son, was from his earliest years a wonderful boy. He shot up into preternatural stature and strength. His proportions were so vast that, when he was a mere lad, his schoolmates were accustomed to “borrow his back,” and, for sport, to work out their geography lessons or arithmetic on that broad disc in chalk; so that, to his mother’s amazement and dismay, he more than once brought home, like Atlas, the world on his shoulders, for her to rub out. His strength and skill in every boyish game were marvellous, and, unlike many other large men, his mental and intellectual faculties increased with his amazing growth.

It was Antony Payne’s delight to select two of his stoutest companions, whom he termed “his kittens,” and, with one under each arm, to climb some perilous crag or cliff in the neighbourhood of the sea, “to show them the world,” as he said. He was called in the school “Uncle Tony,” for the Cornish to this day employ the names “uncle and aunt” as titles of endearment and respect. Another relic of his boyhood is extant still: the country lads, when they describe anything of excessive dimensions, call it, “As long as Tony Payne’s foot.”

He grew on gradually, and in accurate proportion of sinews and thews, until, at the age of twenty-one, he was taken into the establishment at Stowe. He then measured seven feet two inches without his shoes,[80] and he afterwards added a couple of inches more to his stately growth. Wide-chested, full-armed, and pillared like a rock on lower limbs of ample and exact symmetry, he would have gladdened the critical eyes of Queen Elizabeth, whose Tudor taste led her to exult in “looking on a man.” If his lot had fallen in later days, he might have been hired by some wonder-monger to astonish the provincial mind, or the intellect of cities, as the Cornish Chang. But in good, old, honest, simple-hearted England, they utilised their giants, and deemed that when a cubit was added to the stature of a man, it was for some wise good end, and they looked upon their loftier brother with added honour and respect.

So for many years Payne continued to fulfil his various duties as Sir Beville’s chief retainer at Stowe. He it was who was the leader and the authority in every masculine sport. He embowelled and flayed the hunted deer, and carried the carcass on his own shoulders to the Hall, where he received as his guerdon the horns and the hide. The antlers, cleansed and polished, were hoisted as a trophy on the panelled wall; and the skins, dressed and prepared, were shaped into a jerkin for his goodly chest. It took the spoils of three full-grown red deer to make the garment complete. His master’s sons and their companions, the very pride of the West, who were housed and instructed at Stowe, when released from their graver studies, were under his especial charge. He taught them to shoot, and fish, and to handle arms. Tilt-yard and bowling-green, and the hurler’s ground, can still be identified at Stowe. In the latter, the poising-place and the mark survive, and a rough block of graywacke is called to this day “Payne’s cast;” it lies full ten paces beyond the reach whereat the ordinary players could “put the stone.”