Part 2

They cut down an old oak tree at Newton to make way for a War Memorial there; and it was a well-known tree, one of the landmarks of the place. The memorial is a classic column with a figure of Victory on the top. If people want that sort of thing, they would get far better results by copying some ancient masterpiece, instead of carrying out an ancient notion in a modern way. In this case they might have tried a restoration of the figure of Victory by Pæonios, together with its pedestal. It is a triangular pedestal, about twenty feet high, and exactly suited to the site, which is a triangle between three roads.

There is an excellent precedent in Vitruvius, II. 8. 15, for dealing with a War Memorial. Artemisia captured the city of Rhodes about 350 B.C. and put up a War Memorial there, comprising two bronze figures: one, a portrait of herself, in the act of scourging the other, a personification of the city. After the Rhodians had driven her out, they wanted to remove this War Memorial; but they had scruples, as it had been consecrated. So they decided that the site was holy ground on which no foot might tread, and therefore built a wall round it; and they made the wall so high that nobody could see the War Memorial.

In such figures as Rhodes, personified, the ancients had a great advantage over us, as they were all accustomed to these personifications. We have only John Bull for England, and Britannia for the British Isles. There is nothing Britannic about Britannia: she is merely Athenê holding Poseidon’s trident instead of her own spear. John Bull is out of date: one cannot imagine that worthy person using any weapon but his fists; and there would be very little dignity in a pugilistic group of John Bull knocking out the German Michael. Some sculptor should create a type that really would personify England.

Though personification appears to be a lost art now, it may (I think) come into vogue again. Sooner or later, landscapes will be photographed in colours with such perfection that no artist could do more. Then the artist will either turn photographer and go out with a camera and wait for days or weeks till he can catch the right effect, just as photographers wait now for untamed birds and beasts in pictures of wild life; or else the artist will go back to the old Greek plan, personifying clouds and hills and streams and all the other features of the landscape--not (I hope) just copying the ancient type of river-gods and nymphs and fauns, but creating new types of his own. I should much like to see the river Wrey personified: a lithe figure dancing merrily but with great reserve of strength.

Wreyland would be quite unlike the river Wrey, if they were both personified in human shape: it would be more like Autumn, as portrayed by Keats, “sitting careless on a granary floor, ... or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, ... or by a cider-press.” The ‘half-reaped furrow’ would be a fitting symbol of the projects that are undertaken here with so much zeal and then abandoned incomplete. And the figure would embody all the lethargy and drowsiness that come of this relaxing air.

Time seemed to be of very little value when I first knew the place. After the railway had been made (1866) my grandfather took his time from the station clock--he could see the hands with his big telescope, looking over from a stile near here. Till then he took it from the sun-dial: he writes to my father, 16 January 1853, “My watch has taken to lose lately: unfortunately the sun does not give me an opportunity to see about the time.... I shall depend on my own time as soon as the sun will give it me.” Though the sun gave him his time, he allowed for the equation; but many of the people here ignored the difference between mean time and solar time. The equation varies from fourteen minutes one way to sixteen minutes the other; and a variation of only half an hour was hardly worth considering in a sleepy place like this. He writes on 14 January 1851, “My watch kept stopping and brought me late to meals, and I had the frowns of the folks: so returned to the old one, which is sure to bring me home in time, as it gains a half-hour in a day.”

After the railway came, the trains proclaimed the hours, as most people knew the time-tables approximately, calling the 8.19 the 8, the 11.37 the 12, etc.--odd minutes did not count. As the trains upon this branch were ‘mixed,’ partly passenger and partly goods, there generally was some shunting to be done; but this caused no delay, as the time-tables allowed for it. If there was no shunting, the train just waited at the station till the specified time was up. The driver of the evening train would often give displays of hooting with the engine whistle while he was stopping here, and would stay on over time if the owls were answering back.

The engines on this branch were quite unequal to their work, and there were no effective brakes then. Coming down the incline here, trains often passed the station; and passengers had to walk from where their train had stopped. My grandfather writes to my father, 12 March 1867, “On Saturday we had a runaway on the rails. The train passed here at 4 o’clock with two carriages two trucks and a van, and could not get on further than Sandick road, so unhooked the trucks, and was not careful to secure them, and they went off and passed the station full 40 miles an hour. I was at the stile when they passed. Luckily did no harm and stopped at Teigngrace, and the engine came back and fetched them.” I once saw a goods train stopping at the station here, most of it upon the level, but the tail end not clear of the incline; and as soon as couplings were undone for shunting, the tail end started off with all the other trucks that were behind the couplings. It is a single line, and up and down trains pass at Bovey; and the runaway ran past there. Luckily, no train was coming up.

I fancied that this line was worked in rather an easy-going way, but I found the Eskdale line quite beat it. I took that line from Ravenglass to Beckfoot, 19 August 1906, and there was a carriage-full of bee-hives on the train. Besides stopping at the stations, the driver stopped at places where the bees would make good heather-honey; and the guard got out and fixed the hives there, two or three at one place, one or two at another, and so on.--It is a little line of 3-foot gauge, built in 1875 for bringing iron ore from Boot, and quite transformed since 1906: it is now worked as a toy for trippers, with model engines representing engines for expresses on main lines.

When it was a novelty here, our line had great attractions for young men and boys, and many of them left their work upon the land. I lost sight of one family for thirty years or more, and on inquiry I found their history was this--“Well, one of’n went on the line, and he become a station-master; and ‘nother, he went on the line, and he become a ganger; and t’other, he were a-runned over by a train; and so, as us may say, they was all connected with the railway.”

Bovey has a fire-engine, but no horses for it: so the engine is not sent to fires. This does not matter much to people living near the water-mains, as there is pressure enough for working with a stand-pipe and a hose, and the fire-brigade can come by car. People living further off have been instructed what to do, 6 August 1920, “The Parish Council feel it is their duty to notify all or any persons requiring the Fire Brigade with Engine that they must take the responsibility of sending a Pair of Horses for the purpose of conveying the Engine to and from the Scene of the Fire.” Motors are superseding horses, even here; and the horses that remain cannot take the fire-engine at more than a funereal pace. If a motor car or lorry towed it, there would probably be an upset in coming down steep lanes; and a motor fire-engine is a costly thing to buy.

After motoring over to Moreton from Okehampton, a distance of twelve miles, a man told me that he had met no horses all the way--a camel and an elephant were the only beasts he met. The explanation was, a wild-beast show was going round the towns just then, and these beasts had to walk. There was a salamander in one of these wild-beast shows, and an old lady here described it to me as ‘a noxious critter as they calls a Sammy Maunder.’ Sammy Maunder was a Lustleigh boy--died in the War--and had played tricks on her; and she thought his fame had spread. She used to call him ‘an anointed one.’ Shakespeare says, ‘Aroint thee, Witch’; and I suspect she meant ‘arointed.’

I once had a letter from Jamrach’s informing me that they were now in a position to execute my esteemed order for antelopes. I had not ordered any antelopes or any other creatures, and found the letter was intended for a man whose name came next to mine in an alphabetical court-guide. I often have letters from foreign booksellers addressed to me as Monsieur Torresq--I suppose ‘Torr Esq’ has been misprinted in some list they use--and I have had one from a dealer in antîkas addressed to me as Torr Bey: also a local letter addressed to Thistletor Squire, as if I were a Dartmoor hill as well as being Torbay.

There is a Seven Lords’ Land four miles from here; and if you go up there from Bovey, you pass Five Witches on the way. There is a Four Lords’ Land near Combe Martin, and the four were joint lords of a manor there; and Wreyland might likewise have become Four Ladies’ Land, had the last lord Dynham’s sisters all outlived him. I suppose the seven were joint lords of a manor, but I have no record of the fact. Prosaic people say the witches were wych elms.

There were Seven Men of Chudleigh; and the wonder is they never called themselves the Septemvirs, seeing that the schoolmaster called himself Gymnasiarch. There were Four Men of Chagford, Eight Men of Moreton, and other Men of other parish towns. In 1670, when small change was scarce, tokens were issued by the Moreton Men, inscribed, “Ye 8 Men and Feeffees of Morton.” As feoffees they held the parish lands in trust; and in 1756 the sole surviving Man enfeoffed thirteen new Men, and they agreed that if ‘by their mortality’ they should ever be reduced to one, this one should enfeoff not less than seven more; but the agreement was not kept, and the parish lands passed to the last survivor’s heir-at-law as sole trustee. These parish lands were the church-house, the school-house, the almshouse, two public-houses called the White Swan and the Sun, and a rent-charge of 6_s._ 8_d._ Like many other public-houses, the White Swan became the Union in 1801 in honour of the United Kingdom and the new Union Jack. A public-house at Bovey has suffered a more drastic change. It was called the King of Prussia in 1760 in honour of Frederick the Great, but in 1914 the obnoxious word was painted out at once: for some while it was ‘The King Of,’ and now it has a brand-new name.

Two fields in Bovey are called the Portreve’s parkes: a Tracey gave them to this Bovey (Bovey Tracey) as endowment for a banquet at the beating of the bounds. But the Charity Commissioners have flouted the pious donor’s wishes, and the rents are now applied to praiseworthy prosaic purposes. Till these Commissioners came, the bounders all rode horses decked with ribbons and flowers; and it was called the Mayor’s Riding. And now we all trudge round on foot, and are reduced to ginger-beer and buns.

There was a story of a landowner near here going to an Exeter lawyer in great alarm, “That scoundrel ***** has forged a Mortgage on my land,” and the lawyer soothing him, “Well, we can forge a Reconveyance.” Such documents could not be forged successfully except by lawyers or their clerks, but anyone can forge a Will. Forgery, however, is not what disappointed relatives suggest, at any rate in Devon: they always say the Will has been destroyed by someone who would profit by a former Will or an Intestacy. The thing is done, though rarely; but such suggestions are quite lightly made, as if it were a thing that anyone would do if he just had the chance. About twenty years ago a farmer told me that a certain person had destroyed the Reconveyance of a Mortgage on his farm. As he said he had the Mortgage, I asked to see it, and found the Reconveyance was endorsed on it. He thought the Reconveyance was a separate document, and seemed annoyed at finding that the other man was not as great a villain as he thought.

Two masons who did not like each other, were working at a granite wall that I was building here in 1906. Hearing angry voices, I went down and found one of them accusing the other of having stolen his spirit-level. I asked him where he used it last, and told him to take a few stones off the wall just there--I knew the way he worked--and there was the spirit-level in the mortar underneath a stone. He had put it there and overlooked it, and now was vexed to find he had no charge to make against the other man.

Thefts are very rare here. If there are goods or parcels for anyone who does not live near a main road, they are put down on the wayside where his road turns off, and he comes over to fetch them. There was a sad case some while ago--near Ipplepen, if I remember right. A man came over on a Monday to fetch some things that had been left for him on the Saturday; and they had gone. And people shook their heads and wondered what the world was coming to, if you couldn’t leave things by the wayside from a Saturday to a Monday without their being carried off.

In going to the Scilly islands in 1907 part of my luggage went astray at Penzance between the railway-station and the pier. I reported this at the police-station, thinking that the things might have been stolen; but the inspector seemed quite hurt at the suggestion, and answered, “No, sir, we have no thieves here.” (The things were found at an hotel, but not until the boat had left.) There was no policeman in the Scillies: no thieves there, and when sea-faring men got drunk, the coastguard quelled them down. So also at Sark I found no policeman on the island, and no need for one, as the Seigneur sent unsatisfactory people into exile. Afghanistan was likewise kept in order in this autocratic way, but by more drastic means: an old Anglo-Indian explained to me that if a man was even suspected of committing a crime there, the Ameer would have him beheaded at once.

Of course, apples are not quite safe here. One of my neighbours had an orchard from which he got no fruit at all; and nobody would buy the crop, as it was always picked by someone else. At last the local policeman bought it; and this caused such a scare among the boys that they left the fruit alone. One does not so much grudge the fruit they take as the damage that they do in taking it--small boys will break a branch off a young tree to get a little fruit. At one time cider apples were secure; but in these democratic days boys think one apple as good as another, and eat sorts that their forefathers would never touch. Cider apples are not good to eat, and if you eat them, you will have less cider; and this was possibly a reason why the wise old folk avoided them.

Cider is perhaps less safe here than the apples, especially if there are converted drunkards or teetotalers about. In a fit of temporary insanity a man will take the pledge and let everybody know that he has taken it. After that he cannot decently buy cider or accept it, if it is offered to him; but he cannot do without it, and therefore has to steal. A man of that sort took to preaching in the open air here; and when people interrupted with, “Who stealed that zider?” his language was un-pulpity.

In the War years, when things had to drift, some of my cider turned so sour that I sold it to a firm of vinegar-makers. It really was vinegar already, and needed no more making; but there was a duty of 4_d._ a gallon on the sale of cider, and no duty on the sale of vinegar: so I had to prove to the Excise that I was selling vinegar, not cider. One of the Excise officials came here, to prove that it was cider; and I wish I had a snap-shot of the face he made at tasting it. The duty has been taken off now (1923) and cider is free again, as it was from 1916 back to 1830, when the old duties were taken off. The old duties did much harm in Devon, many of the orchards being rooted up soon after 1763, as the profit had become a loss. But there will never be a duty or a tax that does no harm at all.

My grandfather writes to my father, 12 April 1842, “The farmers are grumbling about Sir Robert Peel’s measures. The shoemakers and the tanners are all by the ears as well, fearing the French will undersell them. I told them it was high time, for they had amongst them pocketed all the duty that was once on leather, and the public had received no benefit: which their friend Sir Robert saw.” The obnoxious measures were the Act reducing import duties and the Act imposing income tax, and the small traders were doubly aggrieved: they were called upon to pay a new tax to make up for loss of revenue from Customs, and the reduction in the Customs subjected them to foreign competition.

The tax was 7_d._ in the £, which does not seem much now, though it seemed heavy when the tax was new; but it was the assessment, rather than the payment, that caused the irritation. A friend of my father’s writes to him from Moreton, 5 January 1843, “They have been most unjust and tyrannical here: those that appealed were scarcely permitted to say a word.... The poor people having a small house each have been assessed, and have been obliged either to dance attendance at appeals at Crockernwell or pay Harvey half-a-crown for letting them off.” I presume it was well known that these poor people’s incomes were under £150 and thus exempt from tax.

Income tax, then known as property tax, was brought in as a temporary measure for the next three years, but was renewed time after time and finally made permanent. My grandfather writes in the third year, 23 February 1845, “The property tax is an inquisitorial and annoying thing: a real-property tax would not be so much amiss, even if it were to be made a permanency: in my opinion they could not levy a better tax.” His opinion was disinterested, as he had real-property enough for such a tax to hit him rather hard.

The tax would not yield much, if levied on net receipts: at any rate, not nearly as much as might have been expected then. He writes on 27 November 1853, “I never heard of land being valued at more than thirty years in Moreton,” that is, yielding less than 3⅓ per cent.; but on 13 March 1868 he writes, “I can say safely that no property that has been sold in this neighbourhood for above twenty years past is paying over 2½ p. ct. and some not over 2 p. ct. nor will it.” Ten years later (after he was dead) there was a greater fall.

Our present income tax supposes that the net receipts from land will be just double the rent. The owner pays the tax upon the rent, and the occupier pays the tax upon the other half, that is, his supposed profits after paying the rent. He pays no more if his real profits are more than the supposed amount, and pays less if they are less. As the occupier usually rents the land to make a living out of it, he tries to make as large a profit as he can; and large profits may mean reckless farming that impoverishes the land. But when the owner occupies the land himself, he may try to make as small a profit as he can, if he will thereby benefit the land. Suppose his net receipts are 20_s._ above the rental value, he pays 4_s._ 6_d._ in income tax and possibly as much or more in super tax; but he escapes these payments if he farms more prudently and thus reduces these net receipts to 0. He benefits the land to the extent of 20_s._ at a net cost of only 15_s._ 6_d._, or possibly no more than 10_s._ Taxes seem to be imposed without foreknowledge of their full effect.

In principle a tax on incomes is quite wrong: it ought to be a tax upon expenditure--not a penalty on amassing wealth, but a penalty on frittering wealth away--and import duties are a tax upon expenditure, as they are finally paid out of prices. Yet smuggling seems to be regarded as a game of skill, a sort of hide-and-seek in passengers’ luggage: the hider need not betray the lair, if the seeker cannot find it. I have seen this smuggling done by people of great probity, not because the payment would have hurt them, but just (I think) because the searching was a challenge to their skill. And once I met some foreigners on the Mont Cenis line smuggling things out of Italy into France, and not only priding themselves upon their skill but also on their merit in the sight of Heaven, as the things were destined for a convent or a church. They seemed to think that Heaven had helped them in dodging the douaniers; and I rather wondered if their confessors would take that view or would enjoin them to send conscience-money to the State.

While travelling in Switzerland in 1840, my father found a firm of watch-makers who would deliver gold Geneva watches in London at prices that did not allow for duty. When he wanted to make a handsome present, he would send over for a watch, and friends sometimes asked him to send for watches for them. He never enquired how the watches came, nor did his friends enquire; but one man (a diplomatist) took some pains to find out, and the explanation was, “We usually smuggle them in some diplomatist’s baggage, as that is not examined; and in this instance we smuggled them in your Excellency’s own.”

My father got my grandfather an English watch in London in 1850, and my grandfather did not consider it as good as one that he had chosen for himself in 1807. That always was the trouble about getting things for people here. A century ago Newton was a smaller place than Ashburton, and Torquay was smaller still; and though there were good shops at Exeter, they were not like the London shops. If people did not want to go up there themselves, they had to get some friend up there to choose things for them; and this was an invidious task, as they did not always like his choice, and then said unkind things about his judgement or his taste.

When my father was in London, his country friends were never shy of telling him of things they wanted done; and sometimes these were rather troublesome things to do. One friend (a lady) writes to him from Leicestershire, 15 February 1848, “We have a Ball here on next Thursday evening. Shall I be asking too great a liberty from you to procure some flowers for that occasion from Covent Garden?” Another writes from Exeter in the autumn of 1842, “I am obliged to give the Mayor a dinner next week.... Will you enquire the price of a haunch of venison at Burch’s and also turtle soup, a quart, and whilst you are about it, will you ask at Myer’s, I think--the great fish man in Vulture Court--the price of a turbot for about twelve, as I believe good fish is cheaper in London than here, and a certainty of getting it, which is not so here.”

The most naïve of all requests is from an Admiral who had just gone on the Retired List and found time heavy on his hands. He writes to my father, 15 April 1872, “You will perhaps be able to tell me if I am eligible to sit on the special jury they will most likely have in the coming Tichborne trial: several Naval men were on the last.... What steps, if any, should I take to get on the list?” I expect the reply was an extinguisher.