Part 6

I once said a swear-word here--at least, they thought I did. A bee was pestering me persistently one afternoon, while I was sitting in the garden; and at last in a moment of irritation I called it a coleopterous creature. Someone heard me, and afterwards I heard him telling someone else:--“He were a-swearin’ fine: called ’n bally-wopserous.”

A few years ago there was a child in the village, who was so absurdly like the Flora in the _Primavera_ that we always called her the little Botticelli. But this disquieted her mother; and she sent up to say that she would like to know the meaning of that word.

Being of opinion that some fields near here would never yield enough to cover their rent, the farmer’s wife approached the landlord in this way:--“‘But, maister,’ saith I, ‘us cannot pluck feathers from a toad.’ And he saith, ‘so I’ve heard tell afore now, and I believe ’t be true’.” It is just the metaphor they use in France:--“Il est chargé d’argent comme un crapaud de plumes.” And when someone did a work of supererogation here, the comment was strangely like “le Bon Dieu rit énormément.”

* * * * *

Devonshire speech is not capricious, but has a syntax of its own. The classic phrase is ‘her told she.’ A pious person told me that ‘us didn’t love He, ’twas Him loved we.’ They never say ‘we are,’ but ‘us be’ or else ‘we am,’ contracted into ‘we’m.’ They say ‘I be’ as well as ‘I’m,’ but never ‘me’m’ or ‘me be,’ though invariably ‘me and Jarge be,’ or ‘me and Urn,’ or whatever the name is, and never ‘Ernest and I’ or ‘George and I.’ They say ‘to’ for ‘at’--‘her liveth to Moreton’--and formerly said ‘at’ for ‘to’--‘I be goin’ at Bovey’--but now it is the fashion to say ‘as far as’ Bovey.--A complete Grammar might be compiled.

Happily, the school has not taught them English that is truly up to date. They have not learned to say:--“The weather conditions being favourable, the psychological moment was indulged in.” They still say:--“As ’twere fine, us did’n.” And their pronunciation is unchanged: beetles are bittles, beans are banes, and Torquay is Tarkay.

Down here the Education Act of 1870 was not altogether a success. There had been a school in Lustleigh since 1825, maintained by a small endowment and the fees. Only the brightest children went there, and the others did not go to school at all. Had it gone on after 1870 as a higher-grade school, it might have done much service here; but the trustees shut it--by a breach of trust, so far as I can see. The bright children had to go to the board-school with the others who were not so bright; and their progress was retarded by these others, as the staff was never large enough to take them separately. As it is, I think more progress might be made, if the classes were only half the size, and the children were only half the time in school, some going in the morning and others in the afternoon.

In most of the parishes round here there are cottages too far away for young children to attend school in all weathers. As a rule, the able-bodied men have always got young children--families are long, and spread over many years. There is thus a difficulty in getting suitable tenants for these cottages; and many of them have been allowed to go to ruin, after being unoccupied for some long time. Families move down into villages, which now have many of the defects of a town, without its merits; and real country life is dying out--an unforeseen result of Education Acts.

Agriculture has suffered from a cause that seems equally remote--“farm-house lodgings.” People say that farms are let at so much per acre, but all farms have a house, and the house will often pay the rent; and, when the house does that, the farmer is less careful of his land. The profit is not only from the letting of the rooms, but from selling butter, eggs, fowls, etc., without the trouble and expense of going to market, and often (I am told) at more than market prices.

People crowd down here in summer, and will put up with any kind of lodging, as they mean to be out-doors all day. I have heard of rooms with “Wash in the Blood of the Lamb” in illuminated letters, where there should be a wash-stand. But this craze for rustic lodgings is comparatively new. My grandfather writes to my father, 16 January 1862:--“Tremlett they say will leave Lustleigh at Ladyday, and Hurston of Way has taken Harton and will leave Way, even Crideford (who used to let one room) will leave on Ladyday for Torquay: so no lodgers will come to Lustleigh. Perhaps when the railway comes, there may be accommodation.”

Like many other country places, Lustleigh started a flower-show, which soon became a show of vegetables and poultry, with fewer prizes for flowers than for such things as cream and honey, needlework and cookery. There were athletic sports as well, and kiss-in-the-ring and dancing on the grass to the strains of a brass band, the church bells ringing changes while the brass band played--a proper old Pandy Romy Un, as some one called it, meaning Pandemonium, I think. People came to it from a distance, as it was held on the bank-holiday in August, and they could spend their morning on the Cleave and finish off with this.

I missed the Lustleigh flower-show in 1900, having just gone up to town; 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

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.