OUR LITERARY CORNER.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13105, 2 May 1908, Page 7

OUR LITERARY CORNER.

" herrick's village in DEVONSHIRE. (gf Constance A. Barswut.) I had long wished to visit the Devon,W village where Herrick was enlod • tZ he thought, or pretended to thmk ' so many years, and where, from 'internal evidence, many of the _ Ho>acrides" seem to have been written, • 'L,t for some time I could not find out ■ w l-re it was. Jt is not on a railway, „ that railway guides do not help one, and it is too small to be marked on ma „v mar*. Having found out where it was the next thing; to do was to find out whether there was any place in >' it where it was possible to .stay; and '-" ,h* only way of doing this I could " " think of was to look up the name of Herricks successor in "Crockfords Clerical Directory," and write to him. His reply whs that there was only one cottage in the village where I and tho friend going with mc could possibly stay but the cottagers wife had been formerly a servant at the Vicarage, ' w that she would be able to make us comfortable. There was also a farm near, .which was mentioned as probak ■ bly preferable to the cottage. • *We wrote first to tho farm, but they - : 'wanted to charge us—in Devonshire, J that land of low rente—l7e a week each for a room, lights and fires being extra, •'and then thero would ha-vo been food. We'said at once, "No thank you." Wo "did not expect to pay London prices in DeTOnfihire. And as we have both retamed several times to Herrick's village, and taken and sent other friends, they at© now perhaps sorry to have - been so grasping. > The cottage, however, took us in, * and made us very comfortable in cot- •■. iage faahion. Food, fires, end overyr ihing, with two bedrooms, and quite a ""'pretty little sitting-room (save for the ornaments) came to about £1 a week. Herrick's village, Dean Prior by . name, must be very ancient. Tlie cottages „all took old, and I daro say some were standing in his day. The ' church' is very much restored, eke it /must" have long ago fallen to -pieces; amd there is an old yew in the orcifoaird of one -•farmhouse which mu6t have been an '-".■'"' old, a very old tree, even in Herrick's : time ,(the middle of the seventeenth .'■'■ century)." •■•'■,/ ■'''..'■'. Of tl»,ioany charming and quaint villages I have seen in England, I ' think, on the whole, Herrick's village is tho most charming. It is quite unspoiled, not in the least a "show place," not a tourist resort and no- . wise exploited: • It is, of t course, rather a long way from anywhere, and there * is nothing to attract anyone not •very • ' fond-'of" \rild floijers and absohitely quiet; country.. Herrick, nioreover, «yen if hois the first English lyrist, and; constantly quoted, is not'really well-known.to more than a. section of . -peopfo.' *** -:-•''• ■- - The nearest place to Dean Prior known to most persons, at any rate *-by name, *is the old Roman, town of .• Totnes. To get to Dean Prior you • have to go to Exeter, and change .there, if you are in an express; then j - .on to.Newton Abbott, and change there j again, and then 'take a little motor Strain, which puts you out at Buokfasfc. kigh, whence a queer old shanderadan, .rumbles you along to. Dean Prior, ' about three miles away. 1 ' Buckfestieigh is a much larger place than Dean Prior, very old-fashioned - and sleepy with a comfortable . little - inn where anglers often stay, for the '', river Dart, flowing through Buckfast- j ffeigh and near Dean Prior, affordb trout-fishing, and, for England, not i 'bad, trout-fishing. Hy friend was a] great angler, end used to spend all Dcsido\the stream, catching per- ■ baps "in a day enough tiny pink-flesh-ed,' but deJicaous, trout to make a supper for the two of us. Of course - v there is salmon fishing, too, in parts • J of Devonshire; and a groat manyner- - ens profit by this, to the extreme disgust of the fishermen. The- Dart, along which Herrick's ''Faire Daffodils" grew,' and where their descendants stUl bloom in March or early April every Spring, is a charming little stream, very clear and swift, just the place for trout. Every 4 little scrap of fishing is, of course, pro--tected in England, and. a license for " a short' time costs 10s. Even, in England there must be few more quiet, old-world places than Dean Prior, where Herrick grumbled so much at having to stay. On leaving London he\fchcd his "Teares to Tamesis," for he was a town-bred man and much, preferred -*».".' . 43ie golden Chewpsido, where the earth Of Julia Herrick gave tc mc my . birth/ , and drinking sack with Ben. Jonson .. in taverns, to the "dnll confines of 1 the drooping west," and the "dull Devonshire." where he knew more discontents than since lie was born. *Tet justly too I must confesse, [ne'er invented such Ennobled numbers for the Press©. " Then where I loath'd so much." Here he lived l a bachelor always, • looked after by his ma-id Prudenoo ; Baldwin (who is celebrated in several poem 6, and recorded as having been Wied, before her master's death, in Dean Prior Churchyard) from 1629 ' till 164"; when, a devoted loyalist, he ~ was ejected from his living. He was : overjoyed': J farewell; I never look t° see ..... - Deaue, or thy warty- incmlity. ... A people currish; churlish as the seas: j And rude (almost) as rudest Salvages: | With whom I did, and may re-eojourno ; » when ■ Itockes turn to Bivers, Rivers turn to Men." But rockes did not turn to rivers, r.or rivers to men, and in 1662 Herrick ; : did resojourne among the people ■ currish, "and got along wi£h them so well that ''the poore" among them .- wore away the threshold of his lowly door. Perha-os ho did not like living on charity (as" ho had to do), even in. ; his beloved Westminster. Not only dkl he resojourne in the drooping , West, but he resojourned thero till ho died—an old man, over eighty, in j ..1674. No one quite knows whore lie ! is buried; probably in the chancel, possibly just outside the churchy under th»- Turf pied with daisies, primroses, • and celandines. A collateral descendant has put up a memorial tablet to him in the church. )i /Wiiat remains of his lantotis "grange" JSI!LJ.-.' , -" : 'V'.' : Z'-X* r..'." ■"'",.- ...jr..'.- . - ■•• V..;'j'?:l.--;' r -"-'W"-v^^'-

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED MATTER.

NOTES ON BOOKS AND AUTHORS..

(hr.s house) has been built into the vicarage, and forms the kitchen and scullery.

••Low is my porch, as is my fate. Both void of state; And yot tho threshold of tot doore le. -worn by th' poj>re," "Who thither come and freely get Good words, or meat; Like as my Parlour, so my Hall And Kitchins small; A little Butterie, and therein. A little Byn. Which kcrps my little loafe of bread U-nchipt, unflead." The little '-buttone" exists still, if not the little "byn." Doan Prior is a most straggling village. Tlie streets wind about'anyhow; tho cotta-go cardens- are- often actually c-ii them without beiug fenced off; and tho church itself ie not in the main viila-jre, but in a kind of smn.ller and separate village, reached cither by winding lane*, with high ba-nks thickly starred with primroses and celandine in spring, or br a long straight xoad. plants on cither side by oaks and csh Ro ac to look like" a very fine avenue, loading to eowe private "mansion.

To many of the cottages are attached thoeo large apple-orchards for which Deyonshiro is famous, though tho trees look &o mossed and gnarled and ancient that it is difficult to imagine they can bear much fruit. Tho cottar gardens i.-i spring are gay ami fragrant with tho most beautiful brown wall-flowers I ™i"ro ever seen, oven in England, where wallflowers flourish peculiarly, and with quantities of primroses (-although t'hev grow wiJd in even- hedgerow a.nd wood and Jane), flowering currant, violets, double red and pink daisies, red and yellow and brown and yellow polyanthus, brown tulips, masses of arabis, periwinkles, doubio daffodils and narcissus pa nsies, forget-me-nots—ell the o.d-tashioned flowers that are associated with English cottage gardens in spring, and that nuigfct have been, and very likely wore, there in Herrifk'e time*; while over the cottages, and oven over the public-Jiouse and post office (which are only very charming cottages, tho ono with a nearly knrierblo "Licensed to Soil Spirituous Liquors," and the other with 'Tost Office"' in nearly effaced letters), grew all the oldfashioned creepers associated with English cottages—ivy, woodbine, variegated hone,v6uckle, red Pirus Ja.ponioa, roses, clematis, barberry, and that very quaint old the red-berried, dark-leaved "Emperor plant." By April a few trees, such as the flowering chestnut, were coming out into full leaf., the lardhes "are very fciittbery, and all tlhe woods have taken on a taut -tjiet means that. titeda- Joafleas branches will soon ,be leafy. There are many woods around Dean Prior, full of larches and wood-pigeons, and carpeted with wood anemones (wind flowere), fragile wood eorrei, .primroses and tihe lea.yes of tihe blue hyacrn'tths, which do not flower, except on very stromy banks, before May. *• Herrick speaks of cowslips often, but -no one-can now find a trace of a cowslip in or anywhere near . Dean Prior. Primroses, of-eourse, which he is constantly mentioning, are a very common wjlcl flower in most parts of England; but I never saw so many her such fine once as around Dean Prior.- It does not really matter how nany aTe, gathered; there are always superabundance more.- The banks along the lanes and roads, as far as could be seen, are yellow with them, a yellow Tolieved with tho deep mauve of the dog-violet, which 'blends perfectly with pximirose yellow, as dioes tihe deep yellow of. the celandine. Some of tlie tufts growing on the tops of 'banks are enormous. ' In damp, boggy piaoee marsh marigolds (a gulden ranunculus) cam. be found ; - along , tihe Dart grow quantities of wild garlic, very pretty, though ill-smelling; 'lords and ladies" (purple arums, the 'Hong purples," I think, of the Queen in Hamlet), are abundant, and in. summer there would be little orchids and , pink campion and I fox-gtoves- —all tho common, English, I wild-flowersi - •

The country aroirad. Dean Prior is very hilly, and in April even the billslopes are yellow in places with primroses. Badgers dwell somewhere in the hills, I believe, though I never saw any; they are difficult to see, and rather rare now in England. Much of the Devonshire earth is red, which lends much, colour to the landscape. Near the village, that is, about eight miles away, is Brent Tar, one of the highest hills in Devonshire; Darfcmoof is within a walk, but a very long walk; Tobnes, with its anebnt ruined castle, old market, and beautiful red sandstone church, is about seven miles away, and a most charming walk, whichever of the several ways to it is ■chosen. Plymouth k only twenty miles dietanit. Everywhere, in short, alro lovely walks. There was one littfe old ch-uroh I used to go to over the bills, between primrose-covered banks the whole time, then down into a hollow where wae a very quaint old 1 village,' quite hidden away, with immense old trees, such as may be found in many English villages, and this tiny church, extraordinarily richly fitted up, with a carved rood-ecreen which roany a wealthy city church might have envied.

It is not at al! difficult to find one's way about even in so quiet a part of the country, as there are plenty of ; fin,ger-poste. One need only know where one ultimately wishes to get.

■ 'Whichever direction is chosen, thero are charming winding roads and lanes, with old thatched cottages and grα-nibe-built farm-houses, with flowering gardens, little streams, grey old; ohureives, and dumps of high elma full of cawing, quarrelling rooks. Granite is cheap and common in this part of Devonshire, for most of the pigstyes and farm buildings aro built of it. as arc the little bridges across the Dart and the other streams.

The cottage in which we stayed was built of granite, too. In its garden, primroses, tulips, daffodils, onions and pota-toes were all in confusion. There was a large apple orchard attached, which served as a fowl-run and a duck-run, for the wife used every means to eko out the 10s which, she said, was the most, she ever got of her husband's earnings of 14s a week. The rest went, I suspected, chiefly to the pTiblichouse. Out of 'her fowls and ducks she managed to pay the rent. One or two of the five children were earning, though one boy of 12 or 13 only got sixpence a day. and a very long day, too; and of course there was the orchard, and in a lban-to lived the pig. We used to be called upon to admire him. "Ain't he a pretty pig, mum? Ain't he dean?" He was certainly very clean, but a hopeless mongrel, with mudh too long legs, and no poinihs that I could discover. However, wo did admire him; and, what was more important, never smelt or heard him, so thick weTe the cottare walls, though as v matter of fact he lived jnst outside the end of our sitting-room. We lived on (home-killed fowls, freeh ety?«, Devonshire, cream—far too d-ear for a luxury for cottage-folk, for it cos-te about 8d jkt Jb even, in spring— and home-cured bacon. A oottiage family like *hat, I found, has fresh

meat only onco a week, on Sundays. Tho resfc of the time they live on bacon, mostly boiled, potatoes, and bread, with perhaps cheese. Provisions seemed to mo very cheap in that district. Even the children only have skim milk, whie-h. perhaps accounted for their being very small, quite stunted, in fact. But they are tough, these old country folk, I sometimes think tougher than the colonial, after all. ' - '

It was curious how many of the people in that part of Devonshire were very dark. The labourer in whose cottage we stayed had dark eves of kind never seen in anyone of pure English bj<rth; and his name was certainly originally rTench. He must have had in him a trace of Franoh blood, probaWy southern French. A great many French prisoners were once upon Dartmoor, I believe, nnd seem to have managed to leave their traces upon the population. Devonshire farming methods wonJd not be considered up to date. Up-to-ind-eed. would ruin «j lovely ■an old placo as Dean Prior. The primroses, and I fear tho dog-violets, too, and perhaps the ivy and woodbine and foxgloves, would have to be brought under a Noxious Weeds Act. and sv>tpmatic.i!ly rooted up by all good landowners. All those- gnarled old apple-trees would -have to make way for voun.jror and moro efficient tribes. All those elms and onks f>r-d r.fJis growing in the fields., and nddin« so much to the charm of the meadows, would have to be cut. down; they must get dTondfully in the way of ploughs, and waste, much valuable land, as do also the beautiful tangled hedgerows and the flowery high banks. I dare say all those cW cottages arc very i.npanitarv. not at all what model dwe.llin.xs ought to be. ajid I expect the drainage is shocking—that is. if there i<? any. Probably no one has ever h«e.rd of cre.*\Ti separators or dairy factories; and I d^r» wiv all th"ir \rays are very slow and poky. With other tim-es otiher tr.ivs pome but slowly in Herrirk's village; yet, who would havo it otherwise?