SMALL TALK
AT WREYLAND
THIRD SERIES

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E. C. 4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SMALL TALK
AT WREYLAND

BY

CECIL TORR


THIRD SERIES

CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1923



CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY
W. LEWIS
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.

PREFACE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SMALL   TALK
AT WREYLAND

THIS slumberous place has had another rude awakening. Five years ago an aeroplane passed over us—the only one that has been seen from here. And now, recently, a cow-boy on a buck-jumper came galloping down the lane here, firing off his pistols in the air. It was for a film; and the rider (as I learned afterwards) was The Thrill-a-Minute Stunt King himself.

The theme was of a cow-boy, born in England, revisiting his early home. Considering the Atlantic, I am not sure he would have come home on a buck-jumper with all his toggery on; but a producer knows exactly what audiences want. A film (I learned) requires ‘love interest’: so a pair of Stars made love outside the Hall House door. And an old inhabitant who came along, was so shamed at their brazenness that he could only gasp out, “Well, Now, There.”

There is a Wreyland theme that would have made as good a film. It is a story of John Dynham, who was lord of the manor here from 1381 to 1428; and, though it cannot be entirely true, it embodies some undoubted facts. Briefly, the Bishop of Exeter admonished him, for the avoidance of scandal, to cease from visiting the lady Isotta, even in the daytime; and as this had no effect, he excommunicated him. Dynham appealed to the Archbishop, which took up a year, and then he appealed to the Pope, which took up two years more: by which time he had voluntarily ceased from visiting the lady Isotta and was visiting the lady Muriel.

Films are dreary things when seen upon a screen; but the making of a film is as good as a play. You hear the heroine told to put more passion into it and look really moved, and then you see her putting in passion and looking really moved. And the villain who kidnaps her, is told to spring out like a tiger and put a sack over her head; and he springs out as like a tiger as he can, and there is no need for telling her to struggle and scream: she does that automatically when the sack drags down her hair. Theatrical rehearsals may be just as funny; but I do not see rehearsals on the stage.

I may just mention here that I was not the author of a Gaiety burlesque called Cinder-Ellen up too late. (Ellen was Nellie Farren, and the whole thing was a skit on Cinderella up to date.) Fred Leslie wrote it and also acted in it, and he took the pseudonym of ‘Actor’ but had it printed ‘A. C. Torr.’ He also wrote Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué, and (I think) some other Gaiety burlesques, with this same pseudonym of A. C. Torr; and people who knew me very slightly, assumed that I had written it all, although the style was not a bit like mine.

This was some thirty years ago, when I was writing solemnly on the chronology of the Egyptian kings—including Tut-anch-Amen, who was not so well known then as he is now. (Most of them deserved the title of the Duchess d’ Agio Uncertanti in Ruy Blas.) When my book on them came out, a friend of mine described it to me as a book to be given away with a pound of tea—he said readers would require at least a pound to keep them awake all through; and he could not possibly have said that of these plays. Style, however, is no sure guide to authorship. Think of “The owl and the pussy-cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.” Unless the authorship were known, few people would ascribe it to the man whose travels inspired Tennyson, “Illyrian woodlands, echoing falls ... I read and felt that I was there.” Lear’s travels are forgotten, but his nonsense books are in the memory of everyone who read them when a child.

Looking back to early years, I find the things I have remembered best, have seldom been the things best worth remembering; and other people tell me that they suffer from the same defect. I remember a pump at the Great Exhibition of 1862: many other things besides, but nothing else as clearly as that pump. It was rather like a four-post bedstead with four impervious sheets of water coming down between the posts; and it just took my fancy. I wrote two letters about it to my grandfather, telling him that I would take him round to see it, if he came up to town. Being four years old, and getting on for five, I felt quite capable of taking him about. And he wrote back to my father, 22 July 1862, “I certainly shall avail myself of his very kind promise to take me to the Exhibition and show me that very wonderful pump, for I did study hydraulics one day.”

In a letter of his, 23 February 1862, mentioning his aunt’s first husband, he tells my father, “I remember him coming here to see my aunt before marriage, and he brought down the finest pine-apple I ever saw.” That was close on seventy years before, when my grandfather was a very small boy; and I suspect he had a clearer recollection of the pine-apple than of the man who brought it.

The pump and pine-apple were real things; but the youthful mind will often grip a blunder as firmly as a fact. The first scene in the first piece I ever saw, was described as A Tin Mine in Cornwall. (I fancy it was in the pantomime at Drury Lane at Christmas 1860.) The scene was not like any tin-mine I have ever seen; but when tin-mines are mentioned, this is the one that I first picture in my mind. In another pantomime there was a scene of The Great Pyramid, and King Cheops appeared. My grown-ups laughed about it afterwards, saying Cheops did very well, but it was not his pyramid—the scene painter had got the pyramid of Cestius at Rome; and they looked out an old engraving of that attenuated thing. And in after years when I have seen the thing at Rome, my thoughts have always turned to Cheops rather than to Cestius or to Shelley or to Keats.

There was a Judge of whom I should have said with confidence that I had never seen him except upon the Bench. But in looking through a diary I found that 9 July 1865 ended with a note that he called in the evening; and then I saw it all. It was in London, in our drawing-room, and cups of tea were being handed round at 9.0, as was the custom then; and he came in, took hock-and-seltzer in preference to tea, and then talked away. I cannot remember what he talked about, but I can see him and the room and all its furniture and the other people on the chairs on which they sat, just as I saw it from the chair where I was sitting. That picture had been dormant in my mind for more than fifty years, and then came out quite bright and clear; and I do not know how many thousands of these pictures are lying dormant there.

Though such a picture may be bright and clear, it only shows things from the point of view from which I happened to see them, and at the moment when I happened to be there. I am not like the Reluctant Dragon: he could manage to “think of things going on, and how they kept going on just the same, you know”; and I cannot manage that. I went to Constantinople in 1880—I had not seen an Oriental town before—and I was very much impressed by the great streams of people going along the bridge of boats across the Golden Horn; perhaps, in my small way, as much impressed as Dante was in 1300, when he saw the people streaming across the bridge at Rome, Inferno, XVIII. 28-33. But the crowds he saw were only for the Jubilee, whereas the crowds I saw went streaming on year after year; and I can never realize that what I saw was always to be seen there, or that other sights “keep going on just the same” as at the time I saw them.

Before the War I had a notion of repeating all my early travels year by year, beginning in 1917, as that would be the jubilee of my first going abroad. I wanted to go over the same ground again and see what changes fifty years had made; but my last journey was in 1913, and I came home through Châlons, Reims, Laon, Amiens, and other places too well known next year.

I went up to Haytor rocks on 25 April 1922, having noticed in my father’s diary that we were there on 25 April 1862, and that I “climbed up both the rocks with great agility.” I climbed up both the rocks again, but cannot say I did it with agility—the sixty years had told. A fortnight later I was out near there again, beating the parish bounds: a solemnity performed each year on the Monday after Roodmas. It was a long procession at the start, but quite short at the finish five hours later on; and as we went along, I heard men saying things in French and others replying with a word or two of Japanese.

My thoughts again went back to sixty years ago. Saying things in French would have been quite as heinous then as saying things in German now. After being our ally in the Crimean war, the new Napoleon was threatening us with invasion, just as his uncle had threatened our progenitors sixty years before: volunteers were being raised again, as in the old Napoleon’s time, to fight against the French invaders; and the old hereditary hatred was blazing out afresh. It was the Saxon hatred of the Norman, kept alive by endless wars with France. In 1690 the French burned Teignmouth and anchored in Torbay, and all the West was roused by beacon fires from Haytor to the other heights; and the French seemed bent upon another trial. Buonaparte in Britain is the sort of book that people used to read, “a catalogue of French cruelties, and a short appeal to mothers, widows, wives, sisters and daughters upon the brutality of the French armies.” It is full of the same charges that were made against the Germans in the war of 1914. And in 1814 there was the same wild joy when victory came at last.

They had a festival at Moreton, 26 July 1814, with a dinner and a procession like a Lord Mayor’s Show. The programme has been preserved. ‘Smiths at work in a cart, beating weapons of war into implements of husbandry.’ ‘The four corporals late of the Moreton volunteers.’ Blaze led the woolcombers and Crispin led the cordwainers, but the true patron saint was ‘Bacchus on a tun, dressed in character, with a bottle, glass, &c., drawn on a car.’ And at the dinner there was a cask of cider at the foot of every table.

My grandfather got Camden’s History of Napoleon Bonaparte when it first came out, and I have the volumes here. The first volume came out in 1814 with a title-page and preface saying that the history would be continued to the restoration of the Bourbon Dynasty in the present year. But the second volume has a different title-page, recognizing the fresh start the author had to make at what would otherwise have been the end. “We had fondly imagined that a total end was put to the war.... But, alas! Napoleon no sooner perceived a fit opportunity,” etc. etc.

My grandfather always seemed much satisfied at having seen Napoleon on the Bellerophon, safely under guard. He had no scruples about Saint Helena, but my father had—he was not born till 1818, and Napoleon was no bogey-man to him, but a colossus in the history of the world. He thought Napoleon had been harshly used at Saint Helena, and took O’Meara’s view, in spite of all he heard from an old soldier who had been in garrison there. “He wasn’t badly treated, I assure you, sir, he fared a great deal better than I did.” This old soldier—I can just remember him—said he often saw Napoleon walking up and down the garden, thinking of something and looking at nothing, until he came to some turn where he caught sight of the sentry’s bayonet, and then he would stop angrily and go indoors.

In looking through some notes my father made in 1835, I happened upon this—“France, altho’ vanquished, has materially lost less than England. The finances of France are again the most prosperous in Europe. England bends under the weight of its debt; and the European continent supplies itself with most of the products that England once supplied.” Napoleon had stopped the English exports to the Continent by his Berlin Decree, 1806, and trade is not easily regained when once it has been lost; and this was felt acutely here, as there had hitherto been large exports of woollens from this part of Devon.

In the latter years of that long war there were more than fifty thousand French prisoners-of-war in England, and half of them were sailors. Some three thousand of them were on parole and the remainder in confinement, and six or seven thousand were confined in Dartmoor prison. All prisoners-of-war were under the Commissioners for conducting His Majesty’s Transport Service, and the Commissioners selected various little towns for prisoners on parole, and appointed an Agent in each town to censor the prisoners’ letters and see they did not misbehave. One of the towns was Moreton, and Ashburton was another; and the Agent at Ashburton was an uncle of my grandfather’s. And this, I presume, was how my grandfather got acquainted with so many of these prisoners-of-war.

Another great-great-uncle of mine (on my mother’s side) was a prisoner-of-war in France, and he married a French lady. I remember his son, a country parson down in Wales, and I must have heard the story many times, but cannot now recall much more than the main facts. His ship was captured in the war of 1795, and he was sent to Verdun as a prisoner-of-war. Instead of coming back to England at the Peace of Amiens in 1802, he stayed loitering about, and was still in France when hostilities broke out again and all English were interned. He was interned near Dijon, and thus met his future wife; and he found life so pleasant there that he did not come back to England until 1817, not long before his death.—These mixed marriages were fairly frequent then. One of my great-uncles finished up the Waterloo campaign by marrying a Belgian lady he had met in Brussels.

I can just remember the widow of a French naval officer who had been a prisoner-of-war in England and had made her acquaintance then. It was not quite a happy match, as she was very English; but the family doctor wrote to my father, 15 December 1851, after paying them a visit at their place in France, “Looking at all she endures from himself and his family, one of the most tormenting things (to her) is want of punctuality at meal times.” He died before I was born, but I heard stories of him: for instance, when asked about his health, he always said, “I am much better, but I am not good.” He had received the Légion d’Honneur from the Emperor and the Saint Louis from the King; and when he came to England, visiting, unmannerly young men would sing The Vicar of Bray. And he would fret and fume and finally bounce up from his chair, vociferating that he served no Emperor and no King: he only served La France.

When on parole at Ashburton and Moreton and other little towns, the prisoners-of-war were obliged to live in houses which the Agent had approved: they were not allowed out before six in the morning or after six or seven or eight at night according to the season of the year: they might not go further than a mile from the end of the town; and they had to keep to the main roads—if they went further or into cross-roads, fields or woods, it was the Agent’s duty to send them into prison again. However, Agents and others sometimes had blind eyes; and now and then there were escapes. In fact, there were escapes from Dartmoor prison itself—a good-looking sailor-boy once got a country-lass to let him take her clothes, and thus escaped.

According to the Entry-book of French prisoners-of-war on parole at Moreton (now in London at the Public Record Office) twenty-eight arrived in 1807: four of them (a Navy captain and three midshipmen) broke their parole on 27, 28 September—the Entry-book says ‘run’: another midshipman ‘ran’ in 1809, another one remained till 1810, and a general (Rochambeau) and his servant remained till March 1811; but all the rest, and nine new-comers, left in May 1808, and no more came till March 1810. In that month ninety-three arrived, and fifty others before October. One of them died there, and thirty-three ‘ran,’ including eight captains, eight commanders, and fourteen other Navy officers. They mostly ‘ran’ in batches: six on 28 October and seven on 21 December 1810, five on 18 January and four on 26 January, and six on 11 October 1811. Fifteen of the others left in 1810, forty-four in 1811, and the remaining fifty in February 1812.

Up to October 1810 the prisoners-of-war at Moreton were chiefly Navy men; but in that month a hundred and twenty-eight arrived, and these were chiefly Army men. In the Entry-book seventy-one of them are marked ‘General Dupont’s Army, Spain.’ (This army had capitulated at Baylen, 20 July 1808.) Only one of these men ‘ran’—he was a surgeon—and the other seventy left in March 1811 together with thirty-three other Army men who arrived in October 1810 but are not entered as Dupont’s. Of the other twenty-four who arrived then, two died, two ‘ran,’ two left in 1811 and eighteen in February 1812. There were only twenty-eight arrivals from November 1810 to March 1812: four of them ‘ran,’ ten left during 1811 and seven in February 1812, after which date a general (Reynaud) and six others were the only prisoners remaining, and they all left in November 1812. There were no more prisoners there until May 1814: then forty-three arrived, and these very soon left.

This gives a total of 379 French prisoners-of-war on parole at Moreton at one time or another; and the greatest number at any one time was 250 at the beginning of 1811. Rochambeau was the best known of them—he came out in full uniform on hearing of any French successes. He had been commander-in-chief at San Domingo, capitulated there in 1803 and was not exchanged till 1811, and in 1813 he was killed at Leipzig.

The three who died at Moreton were buried in the churchyard, and the tombstone of lieutenant Arnaud Aubry is still there, but I cannot now find the tombstones of the other two, lieutenant Louis Quaintain and midshipman Jean François Rohan. The tombstones were there not long ago, and must have been destroyed or carried off—nothing is safe now from a curiosity hunter in a motor car. Out at Dartmoor prison the graves were all obliterated in the following thirty years while the place was uninhabited and derelict; and the present monument, for all the French who died there, was not erected until 1865.

It has no names; and till these last few years there was no notion of commemorating people individually because they fell in a great war. We see monuments to Wellington and Nelson and other great commanders, and neat marble tablets in old parish churches to officers who happened to be squires, but never any record of the rank and file. We do not know who went from here to serve with Wellington or Nelson or Marlborough or Drake; and this is all the more annoying as we have lists of all the men here who ‘protested’ in 1641: see page 68. There will be lists enough of those who fell in this last war, thanks to all the busybodies who disguised their own pet schemes as War Memorials.

They pulled down the old Market House at Moreton to make way for their War Memorial there. The structure was an upstair room supported on granite columns and sheltering the open space between them; and it was a four-sided room with the corners rounded off, eight of the columns standing at the eight points where the sides began to curve. It was not a masterpiece of architecture; but it looked quite comfortable in its surroundings there until a new public-library was built on one side of it and a new public-house on the other, and then it looked like one of the New Poor between two Profiteers. If they were bent on pulling down the room, they might at least have left the granite columns and the architrave, put on a roof, and placed their War Memorial in the space below; or if the space seemed disproportionately large, they could have moved the columns closer in.

This is a granite country; and if men are to be commemorated here, their names should be inscribed on granite. But cutting names on granite slabs costs more than casting them on metal plates: so an inscription was cast, an ungainly piece of granite was put up, and the metal plate fixed on. That is the War Memorial for which the Market House was swept away. It is like a notice-board. The metal thing at Bovey is like a kitchen-fender. There is an old town-cross there, and this unsightly piece of metal has been fixed on round its base; and the medieval mouldings were chiselled away in order to fit this on. No doubt, the cross was not intact before: it had been restored, removed from its old site, and set up on a new substructure. But that was all done by a gifted architect who saw exactly how to gain a great effect; and this addition just spoils it.

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 6s. 8d. 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 4d. 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 7d. 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 20s. above the rental value, he pays 4s. 6d. 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 20s. at a net cost of only 15s. 6d., or possibly no more than 10s. 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.

There is a very complete extinguisher here, addressed to a relative of mine, the husband of my mother’s eldest sister. “Stratfield saye Nov. 27 1838 The Duke of Wellington presents his Compliments to Mr. Drummond and has received his Letter. The Duke begs leave to inform Mr. Drummond that he is not the Commander in Chief of the Army or in political office; he has no Patronage Power or Influence, & he has no means whatever at his disposal of forwarding Mr. Drummond’s views in any manner.” It is the old Duke’s writing, not dictated.

I have always envied the Drummonds their pedigree, a thoroughgoing Scottish pedigree, showing their descent from Attila, King of the Huns. But I am still more envious of my Urquhart cousins. They have a pedigree showing their descent from Alcibiades, whose son (being incensed at the Athenians’ unjust treatment of his father) migrated out of Athens into Ireland.

Among my family papers I found a document of 19 June 13 Elizabeth (1571) quoting one of 24 March in the preceding year—“Symon Knyghte of the Cittie of Exceter, marchaunte, hathe graunted unto Richard Wannell of Moreton Hampsteede, gent, one annuytye or yearly rente of twenty poundes during the naturall lyef of the said Richard and after his deathe unto Katheryne, his wief, duringe the terme of fouerscore yeares yf she so longe lyve.” Knight now lends Wannell £110 on bargain and sale of this annuity as security for repayment, such bargain and sale to be utterly frustrated and void, “yf yt shall happen the said Richard Wannell to contente and paye unto the said Symon Knyghte in the now mansion house of the said Symon in the citty aforesaid in the xxiiijth daye of Auguste nexte ensuing the date of these presents betweene the houers of one and fower of the clock in the afternoone of the said daye thirtie eight poundes eleven shillings and fouer pence of lawfull Englishe money at one enteere paymente withoute fraude or delaye and in the firste daye of Nouember nexte ensuinge in the said house and betweene the said howers the full some of other thirty eighte poundes eleven shillings and fower pence and also yf the said Richard Wannell in the seconde daye of Auguste next ensuinge the date hereof doo delyver or cause to bee delivred unto the said Symon Knyghte fyfteene hundreds of coyned white tynne good and marchantable without the letter H every hundred wayinge sixscore poundes at and accordinge to the Queenes Maiesties beame at Chagford.”

This letter H is mentioned in a document of 3 April 10 Henry VII (1495) by which the Duke of Cornwall—Prince Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII—confirmed a set of by-laws: printed in Rowe’s Perambulation of Dartmoor, appendix XV. “Also that no man from hensforth make no synder tynne after that it is wartered, be it allayed with oder tynne or not allaide, or eny oder manner of harde tynne without it be marked with this letter H as well as with the markes of the owners and blowing howses.” (Blowing houses were blast furnaces for smelting tin.) “Also that th’owners of everye blowing howse shal bryng a certen marke of his blowing howse to the court of the Stayniery within the precinct wher the said blowing howse is sett, to the entent that al suche markes may be drawen in a boke.... Also that every owner of tynne that shal bring tynne into ony blowing howse to be blowen and fyned shal bryng a certen marke in to the said court, ther to be put in a boke.” (Tin was ‘coined’ by stamping these marks on it, so that the owners and blowers could be identified.) “And if it shal happen from hensforth ony marchaunt to bye eny false tynne and so to be disseyved,” the warden shall compel the owners and the blowers of it “to satisfye the marchaunt of al suche hurte and damage as he hath take by such false tynne.”

These by-laws had been “enacted and establysshed by the hole body of the Stayniery in the high court of Crockerntorr” on 11 September. This court was composed of the Duchy officials for Devon with twenty-four jurors from each of the four Stannary towns in Devon; and it held its sittings in the open air on Crockerntor, a Dartmoor hill about midway between the towns, say, nine miles from Tavistock, ten from Chagford, ten from Ashburton, and thirteen from Plympton. And besides this high court (magna curia) there was a court in each of these four towns for its own quarter of the Stannaries. In his Survey of Devon Risdon says of Chagford, “This place is priviledged with many immunities which tinners enjoy, and here is holden one of the courts for Stannery causes”; and he mentions a catastrophe that happened in his time. The court-house stood on pillars; and on 6 March 1618 these pillars gave way at a crowded sitting of the court, the building ‘rent in sunder’ and the walls fell in, killing ten people and injuring many more.

The old courts and their jurisdiction sank slowly into insignificance as the amount of tin grew less. Mine after mine was given up, and very little tin is raised in Devon now—it can be got more easily by mining in Nevada. But all round Dartmoor there are remains of the old works, showing what a scene of industry it must have been. There was a blowing house near here: it was in Lustleigh parish and was known as Caseleigh blowing house. Caseleigh mine was for micaceous iron, which has only little bunches of tin ore in it; but tin may have been brought from the Peck Pits a couple of miles away.

A small Venetian coin was dug up at Lustleigh in the spring of 1922 in a garden about fifty yards west of the church tower; and this may be connected with the trade in tin. It is a silver ‘soldino’ of Leonardo Loredano, whose features are well known in England from Bellini’s portrait of him in the National Gallery. He was Doge from 1501 to 1521, and the moneyer’s initials (P.C. for Piero Cocco) show that the coin was struck between the summer of 1501 and the summer of 1502. At that period a squadron of armed gallies made a voyage from Venice to England almost every year; and they brought merchandise for sale here, and took back other merchandise, including tin. Their usual port was Southampton; but in Sanuto’s Diary, 9 March 1504, there is a note of their going to Falmouth, and they probably went to other ports as well. The coin may have come over in the gallies, and then found its way to Lustleigh in the course of trade.

On the Close Rolls there is an entry of a writ, 26 June 1414, stating that the merchants of Venice who came over in their galleys, used to bring their own money of Venice, called galley halfpence; and directing the Mayor of London to enjoin them not to circulate this money here—they must take it to the Mint to be converted into English coin. There were many prohibitions of these ‘galey halpenys’, from Proclamations in 1399 and 1400 to an Act of Parliament in 1519; and these repeated prohibitions show that there were many such coins about.

Gold moidores from Portugal were afterwards in circulation here at 27s. apiece or thereabouts. For a century or so the Courtenay family received a moidore, in addition to the market price, on granting a new lease of any copyhold in Moreton Manor; thus, on 27 October 1739 a new tenant paid £70 “and one moyder of gold.” This manor did not include the whole of Moreton: there were parts of other manors in the parish; and in one of these, “the mannour or lordship of Moretonhampstead and North Bovie,” the custom was pretty much the same. Richard Knight, the lord of the manor, granted a new lease there on 30 September 1689 for £28 “and a broad peece of gould,” and another on 1 June 1693 for £12 “and a gennye of gould.”

My father told me that one day in Exeter he was walking along a street in which a trench was being dug for laying pipes, and a coin of Constantine rolled out from a shovelful of earth that was thrown up as he passed: he gave the workmen sixpence and took the Roman coin. One of his notebooks gives the date, 6 December 1836; and for several years before then Roman coins were dug up almost every day, as gas and water mains were being laid and there was much rebuilding.

In digging for foundations on Bell Hill—the part of South Street between the turnings into Guinea Street and Bear Street—the workmen came upon some tesselated pavement, broken bits of Samian ware, and part of a sistrum of Egyptian green-glazed porcelain. That was in 1833, and the sistrum is now in Exeter Museum. It has the usual head of Hathor (or Isis) on each side, and below that a column of hieroglyphic, reading “neter nefer, neb taui, ...” on one side, and “nesu-bat (Ra ...)” on the other. The lower part was not found. Many Egyptian kings had cartouches beginning with ‘Ra’; but the glazing of the sistrum shows that it was made for one of the kings of Dynasty XXVI somewhere about 600 B.C.

This head of Isis being found upon Bell Hill, some rash antiquaries said that Bell was really Bel or Baal. But it is a fact that there are traces of outlandish gods in other parts of England. An inscription has been found at York (Corp. Inscr. Lat. VII. 240) recording the dedication of a temple to Serapis by the officer commanding the sixth Legion, which then was stationed there; and two altars have been found at Corbridge with Greek inscriptions (Inscr. Græc. XIV. 2553, 4) dedicating one of them to Astartê and the other one to Hercules of Tyre. There is a dedication to this Hercules in the Greek part of a bi-lingual inscription at Malta (Inscr. Græc. XIV. 600) and in the Phœenician part he is called Baal Melkarth of Tyre. This is the god at whom Elijah jibed, “he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.” He was the guardian of navigation: in the depth of winter all navigation ceased; and then he went to sleep and made no more journeys till the festival of his Awakening in the early spring.

Coins of Roman Emperors are sometimes dug up in this neighbourhood. In 1837 a little hoard of them was brought to light on Furzeleigh farm, three miles from here, while gravel and stone were being dug out to mend a road; and these were coins of Valerianus, Gallienus, Postumus, Victorinus, and Claudius Gothicus, whose short and stormy reigns began and ended between 253 and 270 A.D. Hoards are buried even now. Countryfolk lose money by bad investments or through the failure of a bank; and then there is a scare, and many of them convert their savings into coin, and hide or bury it. Burying is more secure: if money is merely hidden in the house, the missus may get hold of it and squander it away—at least, an old man told me so. He buried his (somewhere on Dartmoor, I believe) and in 1917 he had a stroke and died without ever telling anybody where it was. And some day somebody will come upon this hoard of three or four hundred gold coins of Queen Victoria and King Edward. The coins at Furzeleigh may have been buried there by such a man some sixteen centuries before; and possibly they represent his savings, or possibly his robberies and thefts.

Apart from coins, there are few relics of the Romans in any part of Devon excepting Exeter; and the coins may only prove that there was plundering or trade. A century before the Romans came, Diodoros was writing (V. 22) of the natives of these parts as kindly, mannerly folk, accustomed to dealing with foreigners over their trade in tin. Such people would make good neighbours, and could be left alone. At the date of the Antonine Itinerary the Roman roads did not come further west than Exeter, and probably were not carried on to Land’s End until the reign of Constantine—his name is on a Roman mile-stone at Saint Hilary, and his colleague’s name, Licinius, is on another at Tintagel. That was more than 250 years after Britain was annexed by Claudius; and the wonder is that the Romans did not make the road before, or that having left it for so long, they should have made it then. Something must have happened just before to give occasion for it; and I would hazard a guess that ‘something’ was the subjugation of Britain by Constantius in 296 A.D. after Carausius and Allectus had held the country for nine years.

The natives here were probably Iberians or Celtiberians, that is, wholly or partly of the old stock that the Celtic immigrants pushed back into the west. Tacitus observes in his Agricola, II, that the people in the west of Britain were so like Iberians that anyone would think their ancestors had come from Spain. He wrote this in 98 A.D., and would have heard it from Agricola himself, who was many years in Britain. No doubt, there was a likeness; but there is another explanation of it—the Iberians had once migrated westward like the Celts, and some of them migrated into Britain and others into Spain. That seems more likely than migration here from Spain.

In the Colonies and India there are races quite impervious to our civilization and living in their own ancestral way; and I imagine that these natives lived their own lives here regardless of the way the Romans lived. They were Prehistoric in the sense that they were living like primeval ancestors of theirs whose history is unknown; but they were not Prehistoric in the sense of having lived in that far past themselves, nor are their implements and buildings Prehistoric in that sense. Yet enormous dates B.C. are given to Prehistoric remains here which may not be much earlier than 300 A.D., or even as old as that.

Prehistoric remains may often be an obstacle to agriculture when they are in a field; and thousands of them must have been destroyed to make way for the plough. They are common enough on Dartmoor and other open land round here, and probably were just as common on the land that is enclosed. There are the remains of a little hamlet of hut-circles, with a rampart round it, on the open land in Lustleigh Cleave a mile from here; and in a field at Plumleigh, also a mile from here, there were six hut-circles in a group. When the granite boulders in the field were being cleared away, four bronze palstaves were found under one boulder and four under another, all standing up on end. (Two are now in Exeter Museum; and I remember others on a mantelpiece at Plumleigh, but cannot find out what became of them.) They were found in 1836; and the six hut-circles were destroyed soon after, to complete the clearance of the field. This is not an isolated case, but typical of what is always going on.

There is only one cromlech left in Devon—the Spinsters’ Stone. It is on a farm called Shilston, two miles from Drewsteignton, three from Chagford and nine from here. It consists of a flattish piece of granite about two feet thick and ten or twelve across, resting on three upright pieces about six feet high; and altogether it looks rather like a toadstool with three stems instead of one. In 1862 one of the uprights slipped away and let the top slide off, but the owner of Shilston had it set up again; and several people have set up menhirs that had fallen down. In such cases there can be no mistake; but I should not like to see a group of fallen stones set up by anyone who had a theory about Prehistoric things.

There were two rocks in the sea near Dawlish called the Parson and the Clerk; but the Parson perished in a gale. The sea had undermined him, and a big wave threw him down. There was no setting him up again, and the Dawlish people felt the want of him: so they ordained another rock as Parson with another for his Clerk. And if you go to Dawlish and inquire for the Parson and the Clerk, you will be directed to a couple of big rocks that lean up against a cliff; and there are pictures of these two imposters, not only on the post-cards but even in such books as the Devonshire volume of the Cambridge County Geographies.

The real Parson and Clerk were in the sea off Holecombe headland, half way from Dawlish to Teignmouth. They were big rocks, more or less of human shape; and the rock nearer to the headland was a good deal taller than the other rock further out. There was some point in calling them the Parson and the Clerk, as the Clerk’s place in churches was in front of the Parson and somewhat lower down; but there is no point in giving the name to these imposters, as they are of equal size and side by side like Siamese Twins. I remember the old Parson very well indeed, and sometimes feel the loss of him as if he were a personal friend. I fear that the old Clerk is doomed. He has lost his head, and now looks more like a mummied cat, as one sees him from the train.

These rocks are ‘new’ red sandstone, and there are others on the coast with grotesque forms of human figures and heads; and such forms may be seen in granite rocks at no great distance from the coast. The best is Bowerman’s Nose, four miles from here and fourteen from the Parson and the Clerk. (I take ‘nose’ to be the same as ‘naze’ or ‘ness,’ as in Hope’s Nose at the entrance to Torbay.) In Dartmoor, a poem, Carrington calls Bowerman’s Nose “a granite God, | to whom, in days long flown, the suppliant knee | in trembling homage bow’d.” He there assumes that it was in its present shape when there were tribes here who would worship it; but the shape is due to weathering. In the Dartmoor granite there are fissures which are widened out by frost and wet until large blocks become detached and fall away. And this god was created by the fall of the surrounding granite from four upright fissures. These enclosed a mass a dozen feet thick and forty high; and there are other fissures running across this and giving it somewhat the appearance of a man.

I once took the trouble to go up to Mount Sipylos in Asia Minor to see the figure of Niobê, 20 April 1882. Homer speaks of it (Iliad, XXIV. 617) as Niobê herself, turned into stone, and still brooding on the wrongs the gods had done her. But the figure has been worn down by weather to an almost shapeless mass, and it is not big enough to be impressive. Pausanias went there 1700 years before me, and I can say no more for it than he says, I. 21. 3: at a distance you might take it for a human figure, but you must not come too close.

After going to see Niobê, I felt there might be something in what Philo of Byzantium says at the beginning of his book about the Seven Wonders of the World—instead of taking troublesome journeys, people had much better stay at home and read his book. However, I have been to see the remains of two of the Seven, the Pyramids at Memphis and the Temple of Diana at Ephesos, and the sites on which two others stood, the Zeus at Olympia and the Colossos at Rhodes, and the site also of another, the Pharos at Alexandria, if that is to be reckoned in the Seven.

One wet day when I had visitors here, we happened to be speaking of how things ran in sevens—the seven planets, the seven liberal arts, the seven deadly sins, and so on. There were seven of us in the house and we drew lots, to fill up time until the rain would let us out. When I drew Gluttony, they said it was appropriate; and we had all said it was appropriate when a lady with blue stockings drew Astronomy, and again when she drew Chastity; but it was a little embarrassing when she drew Lust as well.

The seven planets were Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon; and Pythagoras said these seven and the Firmament of Stars and our Earth and the other Earth (Antichthon) were all revolving round a Central Fire. I thought that I had met a follower of his a little while ago. I said something about the sunlight, and was told that I was wrong—light did not come from the Sun. I hoped to hear him say that light came from the Central Fire and was reflected from the Sun, for he seemed to think that something came from there, as he was sitting in the shade. But he referred me to the Bible, where it is distinctly said that Light was created on the first day but the Sun was not created till the fourth.

Pythagoras fancied that there must be simple ratios for the distances between the heavenly bodies and the Central Fire, and that the motion of these bodies would therefore cause harmonious sounds, just as octaves and fifths and fourths arise from lengths of string with ratios of 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 and 3 to 4. There were two answers to the question why no one ever heard this Music of the Spheres. Aristotle (De Cælo, II. 9) makes the Pythagoreans say that we all hear it from the moment we are born, only we never notice it, as it is always going on. (If so, they must have thought it was a chord and not a tune.) The other answer, Aristotle’s own, was that there was not anything to hear.

There are many versions of the Music of the Spheres; but judging by what Ptolemy says (Harmonica, III. 16, and Excerpta Neapolitana, 2, 24) I think Pythagoras put the Firmament at 36, Saturn at 32, Jupiter at 24, Mars at 21⅓, the Sun at 18, Venus at 16, Mercury at 12, the Moon at 9, the Earth at 8, and (probably) the Antichthon at 6, with the Central Fire at 0. Thus, if the Firmament gave forth the sound of f, the Sun gave f an octave higher up and the Moon gave f an octave higher still. Saturn, Venus and the Earth gave g in these three octaves, and Jupiter, Mercury and the Antichthon gave c in these three octaves also, while Mars gave d in the lowest octave by itself. And if that is what these orbs are ‘quiring to the young-eyed cherubins,’ I do not much regret ‘this muddy vesture of decay’ that hinders me from hearing it.

If the heavenly bodies went round in circles, their notes would never vary, as the distances would always be the same; but if they go round in ellipses, their notes will rise and fall with every variation in the distances. And as soon as Kepler had discovered that the Earth and other planets make ellipses round the Sun, he set to work to ascertain how far their notes run up and down the scale; and he published his results in 1619 in his Harmonice Mundi, V. 4-9. According to this, Saturn’s note went up and down a major third, and Jupiter’s went up and down a minor third; and Jupiter’s note at its lowest was an octave above Saturn’s at its highest. Similarly, the rise and fall was a fifth for Mars, a semitone for the Earth, and practically nothing for Venus, as its ellipse is nearly circular, whereas the long ellipse of Mercury produced a rise and fall of an octave plus a minor third; and between these rising and falling notes there were clear intervals of a major sixth from Mercury to Venus, a minor sixth from Venus to the Earth, a fifth from the Earth to Mars, and two octaves plus a minor third from Mars to Jupiter. And of course the trebles played their scales much faster than the basses, as they go round the Sun in much less time.