Table of Contents

SMALL TALK
AT WREYLAND

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DOWN here, when any of the older natives die, I hear people lamenting that so much local knowledge has died with them, and saying that they should have written things down. Fearing that this might soon be said of me, I got a book last Christmas—1916—and began to write things down. I meant to keep to local matters, but have gone much further than I meant.

My memory is perhaps a little above the average; but my brother had a memory that was quite abnormal, and sometimes rather inconvenient. One day, in talking to a lady of uncertain age, he reminded her of something she had said at the Great Exhibition of 1851. She hastily replied:—“Yes, yes, you mean 1862.” But he missed the point of the reply, and went minutely into details showing that it must have been in 1851.

I can remember the interior of a house that I have not seen since I attained the age of three. I am quite clear about the drawing-room, its carpet, chandeliers and mirrors, and a good deal of the furniture; less clear about the dining-room; but very clear indeed about the outlook from the windows in the front—a drive, a lawn, and then a road with houses on the other side. Of course, I can remember many other things that I saw before I was three; but I cannot be quite certain that my recollection of them dates from then, as I have seen them since. Here, however, I am certain. The family left that house at Michaelmas, 1860, and I was not three until October.

I remember being taken by my father to call upon a very old man, who gave me an account of the beheading of King Charles the First, as he heard it from somebody, who heard it from an eye-witness. Unluckily, I am uncertain of the details, as I cannot separate what he told me then from what I may have heard or read about it since.

Some years afterwards my father took me to call upon an old Mr Woodin; and from him I had an account of the Fire of London, as he heard it from a great-aunt of his; and she heard it from an old lady, who was about ten years old at the time of the fire. But it was only a child’s account, dwelling on such things as the quantities of raisins that she ate, while they were being salved.

My father kept a diary from 1833 to 1878. When he was abroad or at any place of interest, he kept a diary upon a larger scale, and sent it round to aunts and other relatives, instead of writing to them separately; and I have gone through these diaries, and made some extracts from them. He kept all letters that he thought worth keeping, and sorted them according to writer, date or subject; and I have made extracts from the letters that his father wrote to him from here. The rest of my people seem to have destroyed their letters: at any rate, there are not many letters of theirs among my papers here.

My mother’s parents died before I was born; but I remember my father’s parents very well indeed. I used to come down here to stay with them; and I see that my first visit was in 1861. My grandmother lived from 1781 till 1866, and my grandfather from 1789 till 1870. As a boy, he used to stay here with his mother’s parents; and he has told me of many things he did here then, such as helping his grandfather to plant the great walnut-tree, when he was seven years old—which is now 120 years ago.

His grandmother, Honor Gribble, died here in 1799; and his grandfather, Nelson Beveridge Gribble, left the place in 1800. The property passed from Nelson Beveridge Gribble to his eldest son, John Gribble. After John’s death in 1837, his widow let the house to my grandfather; and in this quiet place he dreamed away the last thirty years of his life.

At times he looked as though he were a little weary of it all; and in a book of his I found this note:—“16 April 1869. My birthday—now 80 years old—and have no wish to see another. My good wishes to all behind.” In the following March he would persist in sitting out upon the seat behind the sun-dial, to listen to the black-birds and the thrushes, although the winds were bleak and cold; and there he caught the chill of which he died. He did not see another birthday.

In his last illness he was nursed by Mrs *****; and thirty years and more afterwards she was very fond of discussing with me what had happened to him—whether he had gone to Heaven or elsewhere. She would weigh the two sides of the question very carefully, and finish up with “Well, I hope he be in Heaven.”

She had no doubts about her own destination, and very often told me that she needed no parsons to hoist her into Heaven. But she was not in any hurry to get there. Looking out across her garden on a gorgeous summer afternoon, she turned to me, and said, “I were just a-wonderin’ if Heaven be so very much better ’an this: ’cause, aless it were, I don’t know as I’d care for the change.”

One thing, however, troubled her—the old belief that people who die before the prime of life, remain for all eternity at the age at which they die, whereas people who die in later years, go back to their prime. And she told me of the difficulties that she foresaw:—“If I went back to what I were like some forty year agone, how could they as only knowed me afterward come forth and say ‘Why, here be Mrs *****’, when I came steppin’ up?”

As for my grandfather, his Works were undeniable; but she had her doubts about his Faith. He was interested and amused by the controversies that raged around religion, and thought the kettle might be better than the pot, yet had no wish for being boiled in either. I doubt if he had any beliefs beyond a shadowy sort of Theism that was not far removed from Pantheism. And that made him a very kindly personage, doing all manner of good.

He writes to my father, 16 September 1861:—“I have attended the sick rooms of the poor in this neighbourhood on all occasions, typhus or anything else, and I often say the alwise Governor of the Universe has protected me, and allowed me to arrive at the age allotted for man; and I find generally speaking, when people attend the sick from pure philanthropic motives, they are preserved from infection.” But he did not concur in similar reasoning by the Rector’s wife. He writes, 30 December 1860:—“Mrs ***** says Never anyone yet took cold in a church, and I cannot agree with her, for I believe many more colds are taken at church than elsewhere.”

My grandfather often enjoins my father not to let his letters be seen, as he writes offhand without consideration. And this is very evident in many of them. He will begin with some assertion, then qualify it with ‘not but what’ etc., ‘though no doubt’ etc., and so on, till at last he talks himself quite round, and ends by saying just the opposite of what he said at first. His sister-in-law, my great-aunt Anne Smale, had her last illness here; and he writes to my father, 8 January 1865:—“It has been a dreary week having a corpse in the house. It is seventy years ago that my grandmother died [really sixty-six years] and there has not been a death in the house since. Well, she was buried in a vault in the chancel of Manaton church.” And this leads him on to speak of other members of the family lying in that vault, and thus to reminiscences of some of them, ending quite jocosely.

He used to keep a record of the weather here; and in this he sometimes noted things quite unconnected with the weather, such as, “Mr ***** called: had no wish to see him.” But generally there was some connexion. Thus, on 25 January 1847, he notes “St Paul’s day, sun shining, and according to prediction we shall have a plentiful year: may God grant it.” On 1 September 1847, “Woodpecker called aloud for wet: wish he may be true, the turnips want it.” On 12 May 1857, “Soft mild rain: what the old people call butter-and-barley weather.” On St Swithin’s day, 15 July 1867, “Heavy rain: so 40 days of it.”

There are also many notes about the singing of the birds—26 January 1847, “the home-screech singing merrily this morning”—1 May 1850, “the nut-hatch a cheerful singer”—22 April 1864, “how delightful and cheering is that old grey-bird”—and so on. I may note that the home-screech is the mistle-thrush, and the grey-bird is the song-thrush, sometimes known here as the grey thrush, just as the black-bird is known as the black thrush. In these parts the field-fare is the blue-bird.

Their singing was always a pleasure to him; and he writes to my sister, 10 March 1852:—“I have often fancied that the thrushes know that I am pleased, when I am listening to them, from the cast of their little sharp eye down on me.” But he liked birds better in the spring, when they were singing, than in the autumn, when they were eating up his fruit. Even in the spring he writes to my father, 29 April 1849:—“I certainly do like to hear them sing, but it is vexing to lose all the fruit.... I loaded my gun; but, when I came out, one of them struck up such a merry note that I could not do it—so I suppose the fruit must be sacrificed to my cowardice, humanity, or what you may call it.” The crops were sacrificed as well. He writes, 21 June 1846:—“There are two nests of wood-pigeons here, and they daily visit me. I have taken the gun twice to shoot them, but my heart failed me.”

He welcomed the prospect of a rookery here, and wrote to my father, 23 March 1861:—“We have one rooks’-nest in a tall elm in the village, a pleasant look-out from this window to see how busy they are in building. If this saves itself, there will be more next year.” And on 23 February 1862:—“Rooks plentiful here about the trees, but not building yet.” And then on 2 December 1863:—“Six large elms blown up in the village to-day quite across the path, those that the rooks built on, six in a row; so no rooks’-nests in future.” This row of elms was at the west end of the Hall House garden. He says they were blown up; and that is the usual phrase here. Trees are not blown down, nor are rocks blown up. They say:—“Us put in charges, and bursted ’n abroad.”

Although he noted the barometer in that record every day, he knew by experience that there were safer guides. And he writes to my father, 28 March 1847:—“Yet at Moreton, if the sign-board of the Punch Bowl creaked upon its hinges, and the smoke blew down at Treleaven’s corner, rain was sure to follow, let the quicksilver be high or low.”

I find little need of a barometer here. If the wind blows down the valley, the weather is going to be fine. If it blows up the valley, there is going to be wet. And there is going to be a spell of wet, if there is damp upon the hearthstones in the Inner Parlour. When I hear *****’s leg be achin’ dreadful, then I know it will be rainin’ streams.

Sometimes, to make quite sure, I inquire of people who are weather-wise. After surveying every quarter of the sky, an old man told me:—“No, I don’t think it will rain, aless it do rain.” I interpreted the oracle as meaning that there would be heavy rain or none. Another wise one told me that, “when the weather do change, it do generally change upon a Friday.”

The moon was usually held responsible for these changes in the weather, and sometimes for less likely things as well. My grandfather writes to my father, 13 April 1856:—“A Saturday moon, they say, is too late or too soon, and there is no other prospect but a wet moon throughout.” On 29 June 1848:—“The old women here say we may expect to see measles in the growing of the moon: they tell me they never knew a case on the waning of the moon.” Measles were prevalent just then, and the moon was new next day; and on 23 July he remarks that the old women had proved right, so far.

My grandfather had a notion that all ordinary ailments could be cured by Quiet and Diet, and possibly such homely remedies as Coltsfoot Tea, or, better still, “a glass of real Cognac—the sovereign remedy, but not to be obtained down here,” as he writes to my father, 19 July 1869. But, if he did not recognize an ailment, he got medical advice at once.

A visitor being taken ill here, the local doctor was called in; and my grandfather writes to my father, 25 July 1847:—“He said it was occasioned by her imprudently sleeping with her window open one hot night.... I hope you do not admit the night air into your room, however hot—a most injurious practice, I am told. I never did it.” My grandmother writes to him, 15 May 1850:—“I fear you trifle with yourself in some things, such as dressing mornings with your bed-room window open. Nothing can be more injurious than that, particularly this very cold weather—indeed, it is wrong at any season to open it before you are dressed.”

These opinions are supported by Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, ed. 1788, which was one of the books in use here. It says, page 148:—“Inflammatory fevers and consumptions have often been occasioned by sitting or standing thinly cloathed near an open window. Nor is sleeping with open windows less to be dreaded.”

But these old people faced the air outside quite early in the mornings. My grandfather writes, 29 April 1849:—“I often wonder how anyone can lie in bed in May, not witnessing the beauty of the crystalled May-dew.... The barley throws up its blade or leaf about three inches high, quite erect, and on its tip top is this little spangled dew-drop. The leaf else is perfectly dry, if real dew—if from frost, the leaf is wet.” Again, on 7 January 1856:—“This morning the wheat was looking beautiful, like the barley in May. I stayed some time admiring it, with its little spangled tops shining like crystals.”

A child was born here on 20 November 1902, and had a rupture. Some while afterwards I asked the father how the child was getting on, and the answer was—“Oh, it be a sight better since us put’n through a tree.” And I found that they had carried out the ancient rite. The father had split an ash-tree on the hill behind this house, and had wedged the hole open with two chunks of oak. Then he and his wife took the child up there at day-break; and, as the sun rose, they passed it three times through the tree, from east to west. The mother then took the child home, and the father pulled out the chunks of oak, and bandaged up the tree. As the tree-trunk healed, so would the rupture heal also.

I asked him why he did it, and he seemed surprised at the question, and said—“Why, all folk do it.” I then asked him whether he thought it really did much good, and the reply was—“Well, as much good as sloppin’ water over’n in church.”

Some years ago there was an ash-tree growing in the hedge of a field of mine at Moreton. The field was let as allotments; and the tree was a nuisance to the man who had the allotment next it, as its roots spread out along his ground. He asked me several times to have the tree cut down; but I liked the look of the tree, and was unwilling to lose it. And then there came a thunder-storm, and the tree was struck by lightning and destroyed. I thought it strange, but he explained it simply:—“I’d prayed ag’in’ that tree.”

He was a very old man; and people of his generation never looked upon your actions as your own, but as the actions of a Power that directed you. I am pretty sure he said that the Lord had hardened my heart about that tree, though I did not actually hear him say it. In a case where I was able to do a kindness, I got no thanks till some months after; and then I got them in this form:—“I’ve a-said it to othern, and I don’t know as I mind a-sayin’ it to you—I do believe as you were sent for some good purpose.” In another case I heard indirectly how the thanks were given:—“I were a-sittin’ there, a-wonderin’ whatever I should do, when I lifted up my eyes, and there were Mr Torr like an Angel o’ God a-comin’ down the path.” I was all the more flattered by the comparison, as one of my neighbours had lately been mistaken for the Devil.

My father notes in his diary, 7 April 1844:—“Witch-craft a common belief to this day in Lustleigh, and prevalent even among the better-informed classes.” My grandfather writes to him, 21 December 1851:—“I am very curious to know the origin of the Horse Shoe, having had to walk over and under so many in my time. I believe they have generally disappeared now, but thirty or forty years ago you could scarcely go into a house without seeing one nailed over or under the durns [frame] of the door. They said it was to prevent the Witches coming in. You have heard me relate the story of the broom that I took up, when a little boy, in a passage down in the village. It was laid for a Witch, and I was put down for one, as having taken it up. I was told no one but a Witch would think of taking it up: so it appears everyone stepped over it, for fear of being counted a Witch. I believe this has all passed away.”

He had great skill in bandaging the cuts and wounds that are inevitable in agricultural work; and he always said some words, while he was doing this. I do not know if these were magic Words of Power, or only little objurations at the wincing of the sufferers. But he always saw that wounds were washed out thoroughly with water and with brandy; and that was perhaps the cause of his success.

He writes to my father, 12 April 1842:—“Since you left, one of our cows got very lame, and I discovered she had a shoe-nail in her foot, and I went with the men about taking it out, when Farmer ***** of ***** came by, and did it for us. He missed the nail in the straw, and could not find it, which he appeared very anxious to do. I said it was of no consequence, the straw should be removed, and I would take care that it should not get there again. He looked up with such astonishment at my ignorance, and said he was surprised I did not know no better, for the cow’s foot would surely rot, if the nail was not found and stuck into some bacon. However, I said I would run all risks, and desired him to make his mind easy: so I threw in some brandy, and the remainder I gave him to drink for his trouble. He went away still saying it would be sure to rot. She was lame for two days, but now is quite well, bacon or no bacon.”

Staying at Poitiers, 13 August 1861, my father writes:—“Then went to the church of S. Radegonde, to whose coffin pilgrims are now (in this month of August) repairing to get healed of their diseases by touching the coffin; and numbers of children, lame and diseased, were brought to touch it, while we were there. The streets leading to the church are lined with stalls for sale of votive offerings to hang on the coffin. In a side chapel is a large figure of Christ appearing to S. Radegonde over a stone on which there is a print-mark like a foot, declared to be Christ’s footprint in the apparition.”

All this has passed from Poitiers to Lourdes, the apparition being modernized by putting the Madonna for the Christ and a peasant for a queen, and altering the date from the Sixth Century to 11 February 1858. My father and mother stayed a night at Lourdes, 27 August 1861; but their diaries say nothing of Bernadette or any cures or miracles there. My father just notes “walking out by the small rocky hill”; and that, I presume, was the hill where one sees processions of pilgrims now.

I went to Lourdes, 11 September 1894, and it profited me £1. 14s. 7d. or thereabouts. I was going to Gavarnie in the Pyrenees, and found that the fare to Lourdes was lower than the fare to Pau, though Lourdes was further off from Paris, and further on towards Gavarnie. Zola’s Lourdes had come out in the spring; and I took it with me, and read it in the train, holding it well up at the window. It acted as a scare-crow, and gave me a compartment to myself. On reaching Lourdes, I bought the antidote that was on sale there—Réponse complète au Lourdes de M. Zola. But the antidote seemed hardly powerful enough to counteract the poison.

There were pilgrims there in thousands, not nearly so much in earnest as pilgrims I have seen in Palestine, but much more so than some I encountered at Ancona going to Loreto, 20 August 1898. They were certain of absolution there, and meant to make it cover a multitude of sins.

In the Papal Registers—Avignon, 1 August 1346—there is an entry of an absolution to Thomas de Courtenay and his wife, to take effect at death, and therefore covering all sins committed meanwhile. They were the owners of this place—Wreyland—and probably were scared by the Black Death. The disease was spreading westward, and its victims died too suddenly for the priests to shrive them.

In the Middle Ages it was the fashion to bring earth home from the Holy Land for burial, and there is still a fashion for bringing Jordan water home for baptism. I was down by the Jordan with my mother and a friend of mine, 21 March 1882, and she insisted on bringing some water home. So we filled up some empty soda-water bottles from this uninviting stream. (The rivers of Damascus are better: there is no doubt about it.) A year or two afterwards there was a birth in some friend’s family, and she sent a bottle for the baptism. But the child was not baptized in Jordan water after all. When the water was uncorked, it sent forth such an overpowering smell, that it had to be poured down the sink at once.

I was on the French mail-steamer Tage at anchor in the Dardanelles, a little way below the Narrows, on Friday 30 April 1880. There were many Mohammedans on board; and, when prayer-time came, they unrolled their prayer-rugs, and laid them out on deck, pointing them to Mecca. Just as they began to pray, the current caught the ship, and she began to swing; and, as soon as they looked up, they saw that they had got their bearings wrong. So they slewed round, and put their rugs straight; and then, of course, the same thing happened again. And it went on happening till they had finished their prayers.

They had a procession at Thebes in Bœotia, when I was there, 11 April 1888. They were badly in want of rain, and reckoned on getting some, if they marched solemnly round the place in honour of Elijah. They were of the Greek Church, and had greater faith in him than in the saints of later times.

There is a pleasant procession in Rome on Christmas morning, the True Cradle being carried round S. Maria Maggiore. I saw that done in 1909, and somehow in the clouds of incense I saw the cradle of Romulus and Remus carried in procession through the Forum.

The high-altar at St Peter’s is scrubbed on Maundy Thursday; and, as I was in Rome, 14 April 1892, I went to see it done. This rite comes after Miserere, and therefore in the twilight. St Peter’s is not lighted up, and looks the vast size that it really is, as one cannot see the details that impair it. The dignitaries of the church come down in procession, each one carrying a candle and a mop; and they throw oil and wine upon the altar, and then begin to scrub. I was close by, and noticed how differently they all did it. Some evidently thought it symbolical, and merely waved their mops across the altar, hardly touching it. And others would scrub hard, and then put their heads down and look carefully through their spectacles to see what they had done, and then go on scrubbing again till they were satisfied that they had done their bit.

I was in Rome with my father and my mother in 1876, and Monsignor Stonor arranged that we should be presented to the Pope. There were about a hundred other people to be presented, 22 September, and we were all ranged in groups round one of the big rooms in the Vatican. And then the Pope came in, and went leisurely round the room, saying a few words to each of us. Stonor told him that I had just left Harrow, and was going up to Cambridge: whereupon he beamed, and said he hoped that I should be a good historian. It was an odd remark, for nothing had been said of history, and that was not my line. But some years afterwards I took to writing books on history.

Pius IX was then in his eighty-fifth year, and was altogether a most pleasant person to behold—tall, big and genial, with nothing ecclesiastical about him but his dress. He had a judge’s face, rather than a bishop’s.

The next time I was here, I was talking to Mrs *****—she was of an earlier generation than the Mrs ***** of whom I spoke just now—and I told her that I had been to Rome and seen the Pope. She asked me eagerly, “Well now, maister, what be he like? I reckon he be a proper tiger to fight.” As a thoroughgoing Protestant, she knew no difference between the Devil and the Pope.