Envoy
The most expeditious mode of returning from the precipices and cascades of Lynton is by means of the light railway to Barnstaple. The conscientious pilgrim, however, will not quit the neighbourhood without visiting Parracombe, which ought to be, in a peculiar sense, his Mecca. In the prologue, reasons have been advanced, which need not be repeated, why this is the case, and although our course has been a devious one, it will now be recognised that there was method in the madness. The spot which must have been to Blackmore the most sacred of all—except, perhaps, Teddington Churchyard, where his wife slept her last sleep—was surely Parracombe—the home of his race; and here I propose to take leave of the reader. The local traffic being small, trains do not stop at Parracombe all the year round, but at any time this courtesy will be extended to passengers desiring it.
The manor of Parracombe was formerly in the hands of the St Albans (or Albyns) family, joined by Blackmore (Maid of Sker, chapter lxvi.) with the Tracys and Bassets, as among the most distinguished in North Devon. About a century and a half ago their lands were sold, principally to yeomen who farmed the soil; and, as we have seen, the Blackmores belonged to this category. A representative of the clan still owns Court Place and Church Town farms; and Mr H. R. Blackmore, proprietor of the “Fox and Goose,” can claim to be second cousin of the novelist.
Situated on the south-west of the river Heddon is Halwell Farm, the property of Sir Thomas Acland, where is a circular British encampment, standing, as such encampments usually do, on a height. The trenches are about fifteen feet deep. There are two or three similar remains within a short radius, but they are less conspicuous and important. It is said that cannon balls have been dug up at Halwell Castle.
Mr Page does not speak too flatteringly of the scenery, but Parracombe Common, with its scent-laden breezes, is by no means destitute of charm, for the purple eminence of Chapman Barrows, the highest point in North Devon, and the lovely valley of Trentishoe below, compose a landscape fair enough for the most exacting eye. Beyond is Heddon’s Mouth, where Old Davy landed on a memorable occasion (Maid of Sker, chapter liii.), and on the road is that well-known and most quaint and attractive hostel, the Hunter’s Inn.
This, however, is to wander away from Parracombe, which is itself a quaint old village, while Parracombe Mill, Heal, and Rowley are picturesque hamlets. The old twelfth-century church has been abandoned, since 1878, for ordinary uses, but it still stands—about half a mile from the village—and the tower has been recently in part restored. And now, with a final reminder of East Bodley and Barton and Kinwelton (in Martinhoe parish), our pilgrimage has reached its goal. In a few moments we shall be tumbling downhill along the surprising curves of the Lynton railway, to re-enter the world of commonplace.
Notes
I. Mr Arthur Smyth believes that the founder of the Quartly herd was Mr Henry Quartly, who married Betty Blackmore. His mother often visited her uncle Quartly, and he tells us that he had heard her speak of the care and attention they received, and how fat they were. They were brought to perfection by his son, Mr James Quartly, of West Molland House, who was one of the judges at Smithfield. Mr John Quartly of Champson never exhibited. Mr James Quartly had no children, and on his retirement the herd was dispersed.
II. Son of the before-named John Quartly, and grandson of Henry Quartly, he had never exhibited, but kept up the reputation of the family as breeders.
A sister of John and James Quartly married her cousin, the Rev. Richard Blackmore, of Charles, and another sister married Captain William Dovell, to whom at one time the novelist’s brother, Mr Turberville, bequeathed his property. Captain Dovell’s mother was a Blackmore. To what branch of the family she belonged is uncertain, but it was through her that Court Barton came to the Dovells.
Mr Smyth tells an extraordinary story of this gentleman.
“Captain Dovell,” he says, “was born at Killiton. He hated farming, and at last his family gave him his desire and he went to sea. He related a story of his wreck off the coast of Ireland, and how the natives fought for the wreckage. At last, as captain of an East Indiaman (his own), he took his wife and son, a boy of eight years, with him to sea. The vessel was wrecked. He never saw the boy, but he caught his wife and swam for hours; she died in his arms from exposure. He got ashore at last, and had to read the burial service over his wife. He was never the same after that. When I knew him in the early sixties, he was a powerfully built man of the kindliest disposition. I was an invalid then, and he would sit with me for hours relating stories of his boyish scrapes or playing for hours. He married again, and settled at Barnstaple, where he died about twenty years ago. His wife survived him only about one week; both are buried in the family vault at Parracombe churchyard.”
Footnotes
1 Cosgate is mentioned in chapter xlviii., where the county boundary is defined.—F. J. S.
2 This term recurs to me almost as often as I think of moors and commons, and for the following reason. An old friend of mine, who lived to be nearly ninety, a lawyer by profession and a wit by practice, once told me how he attended an inquiry held in West Somerset by a certain Government Commission, concerning a well-known tract adjacent to his property. To his surprise, a fussy solicitor, who did not know that he was addressing another “limb of the law,” rushed up to him, and after expatiating volubly on the difference between a claim in gross, a claim appendant, and a claim appurtenant, begged to be informed what was the nature of his claim. “Impertinent, if any,” replied my friend, delighted at the opportunity, “as I am not here on business.”
3 Vancouver, referring to this custom, observes: “Their day’s work at plough or harrow is usually performed in a journey of about eight hours, during which time the ploughboy has a peculiar mode of cheering them on with a song he continually chaunts in low notes, suddenly broken and rising a whole octave. The ceasing of the song is said to occasion the stopping of the team, which is either followed by a man holding the plough, or as occasion may require, in attending the drag or harrows.”
4 Here and elsewhere in the chapter these references are to Blackmore’s local romance Perlycross, unless otherwise stated.
5 Two species of furze are produced in Devonshire—the rank luxuriant sort flourishing in the spring, and the smaller dwarf or dale furze, which blooms in the autumn. The larger, which goes by the name of French furze, forms considerable brakes, and is usually cut at four years’ growth. Its crane stems used to be burnt for charcoal, whereas the dwarf furze was cut and grubbed by farmers and labourers for fuel.
6 Lorna Doone, chapter iii.
7 This is, of course, assuming that they did not take the turning to Bolham. By an apparent anachronism, Blackmore talks of “the village of Bolham on the Bampton Road” (Lorna Doone, chapter lx.) as the place where the ladies’ coach was stopped by Faggus. There was no coach-road passing through Bolham at that date.
8 Perhaps a more likely explanation is that it was a Norman motte, specimens of which are to be found not only in England, but in France, and which is depicted in several scenes of the Bayeux. These earthworks are usually planted not on hill-tops, but on low sites in or near villages, and not far from a church.
9 This story, repeated in directories and guide-books for generations, receives short shrift from Mr R. N. Worth. “It has been claimed as the Beamdune where Kynegils defeated the Britons in 614, but that was Bampton in Oxfordshire” (History of Devonshire, p. 98). Sic transit gloria mundi.
10 “And truly, the Dulverton people said that he was the richest man in their town, and could buy up half of the county armigers” (Lorna Doone, chapter xiii.). Some of the local “armigers” figure in the following pages.
[11] It may be worth mentioning that an incident similar to that which marred the happiness of Susan Sydenham occurred in the life of the celebrated John Donne. In 1610, on the third day after his arrival at Paris, he was left alone in a room where he had been dining with Sir Robert Drury and others. Half an hour later the knight returned, and was surprised to find him in a curious sort of ecstasy. At first he was unable to speak, but after a time he declared—
“I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw you. I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms.”
Sir Robert suggested that it was nothing but a dream, which he advised him to forget, but Donne replied, “I cannot be surer that I am now living than that I have not slept since I saw you, and I am so sure that at her second appearance she stopped, looked me in the face and vanished.”
As he seemed so certain, a messenger was sent to Drury House, who brought back the news that he had found Mrs Donne ill in bed, after the birth of a dead infant—an event which had happened on the very day and hour that her husband had seen the vision.
12 In chapter iii. of Lorna Doone, Blackmore speaks of Dulverton as a town near which “the Exe and his big brother Barle have union.”
13 A Dulverton farmer once remarked to me on the great size of Exmoor farmhouses, saying that it would be possible to put into one of them two or three average homesteads.
14 According to one writer, that mighty hunter, Katerfelto, earned huge glory both for himself and for his owner, a lusty farmer, by taking the bit between his teeth on the Barkham Hills, and carrying him bodily over a twenty-foot gap in an old Roman iron-mine.
15 The original of “Red Rube” in Melville’s Katerfelto.
16 Subject to variation, e.g., “children.”
17 Lorna Doone, chapters ix., xlviii.
18 Blackmore refers to the subject in Lorna Doone, chapter xxxix. Speaking of Jeremy Stickles, he says that “his duty was first and most ostensibly to see to the levying of poundage in the little haven of Lynmouth and further up the coast, which was now becoming a place of resort for the folk whom we call smugglers, that is to say, who land their goods without regard to the King’s revenue, as by law established. And indeed there had been no officer appointed to take toll, until one had been sent to Minehead, not so very long before” (see also Lorna Doone, chapter xii.).
19 These worthies are coupled by Blackmore in the Maid of Sker (chapter lxviii.). “Since Tom Faggus died, there has not been such a man to be found, nowhere round these parts.”
20 See Note I., p. 280.
21 See Note II., p. 280.
22 True, in chapter liii. Blackmore speaks of the place as five or six leagues distant from Heddon’s Mouth; still, Chowne’s frequent appearances at Barnstaple and beyond, and such indications as the fate of the Sherwill girl (chapter xlvii.), produce the opposite impression.
23 Groats.
24 The Devil.
Typographical error corrected by the etext transcriber:
the neighbournood in connection=> the neighbourhood in connection {pg 241}