Methuen's Shilling Novels A SERIES of popular novels by distinguished authors at is. net. The books are reprinted in nandy form— fcap. 8vo.— on good paper, and they are tastefully bound in cloth. The first volumes published have been a great success. The following are (itker ready or in the press : — Dan Russel the Fox E. CE. Somerville and Martin Ross Fire in Stubble Splendid Brother Joseph Said the.Fisherman Hill Rise The Guarded Flame The Mighty Atom Jane Light Freights The Demon C. N. Baroness Orczy W. Pet, Ridge Frank Danby Marmaduke Pickthall W. B. Maxwell VV. B. Maxwell Marie Corelli Marie Corelli W. W. Jacobs and A. M. Williamson Lady Betty Across the Water C. N. and A The Tyrant Anna of the Five Towns The Secret Woman The Long Road The Severins Under the Red Robe Mirage Virginia Perfect Spanish Gold Barbary Sheep The Woman with the Fan The Golden Centipede Round the Red Lamp The Halo Tales of Mean Streets The Missing Delora The Charm M. Williamson Mrs. Henry de la Pasture Arnold Bennett Eden Phillpotts John Oxenhara Mrs. A. Sidgwick Stanley Weyman E. Temple Thurston Peggy Webling G. A. Birmingham Robert Hichens Robert Hichens Louise Gerard Sir A. Conan Doyle Baroness von Hutten Arthur Morrison E. Phillips Oppenheim Alice Perria Methuen & Co., Ltd., 36 Essex Street, London, W.C. ISAAC FOOT Methuen's Shilling Library A SERIES of general literature issued in fcap. 8vo. at is. net, printed on good paper and well bound in cloth. The books are reprints of well-known works by popular authors. The foUo-.ting are eiiher reniy or in the press : — Two Admirals Admiral John Moresby The Parish Clerk p. H. Dltchfield Thomas Henry Huxley p. Chalmers Mitchell Hills and the Sea H. Belloc Old Country Life S. Baring-Gould The Vicar of Morwenstow s. Baring-Gould Intentions Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan Oscar Wilde De Profundis Oscar Wilde Selected Poems Oscar Wilde Lord Arthur Savile's Crime Oscar Wilde A Little of Everything E. V. Lucas John Boyes, King of the Wa-Kikuyu John Boyes *Jimmy Glover — His Book James M. Glover Vailima Letters Robert Louis Stevenson Tennyson A, C. Benson The Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck Mary Magdalene Maurice Maeterlinck Sevastopol and other Stories Leo Tolstoy *The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson Graham Balfour *The Life of John Ruskin w. G. CoUingwood The Condition of England c. F. G. Masterman, M.P. Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son George Horace Lorimer The Lore of the Honey Bee Tickner Edwardes Under Five Reigns Lady Dorothy Nevill *From Midshipman to Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood Man and the Universe sir Oliver Lodge • Slightly abridged. Methuen & Co., Ltd., 36, Essex Street, London, W.C. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW BEIKG A LIFE OF ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER, M.A. BY S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. METHUEN & CO., LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON First Published ai /s. net, tit /g/j Thii Book xfas First Published by Methuen & Co., July, iS()'n of Lifton and Tonacombe. * There is one such not far from Morwenstow, in the parish of Kilkhampton. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 41 Some years ago a member sauntering into the Cos- mopolitan Club would find a ring of listeners gathered about a chair. In that ring he would recognise the faces of Thackeray, Dickens, and other literary celebrities, wiping away the tears which streamed from their eyes between each explosion of laughter. He would ask, in surprise, what was the attraction. " Only the Uttle fat Cornishman from Bodmin telUng a story. "1 His tales were works of art, wrought out with admir- able skill, every point sharpened, every detail considered, and the whole told with such expression and action as could not be surpassed. His " Rabbit and Onions " has been essayed by many since his voice has been hushed ; but the copies are pale, and the outlines blurred. The subject of this memoir had inherited the Cornish love of story-telhng, and the power of telling stories with dramatic force. But he had not the skill of Mr. Hicks in telling a long story, and keeping his hearers thrilling throughout the recital, breathless lest they should lose a word. Mr. Hawker contented himself with brief anecdotes, but those he told to perfection. I shall, in the course of my narrative, give a specimen or two of stories told by common Cornish peasants. Alas, that I cannot reproduce the twinkling eye, the droll working countenances, and the agitated hands, all assistants in the story-telling 1 CHAPTER III Description of RIorwenstow — The Anerithmon Gelasma — Source of the Tamar — Tonacombe — Morwenstow Church — Norman Chevron-Moulding — Chancel — Altar — Shoot- ing Rubbish — The Manning Bed — The Yellow Poncho — The Vicarage — Mr. Tom Knight— The Stag, Robin Hood— Visitors— The Silent Tower of Bottreaux— The Pet of Boscastle. ^ He was formerly governor of the lunatic asylum at Bodmin, and afterwards clerk of the Board of Guardians, and in turn Mayor of Bodmin. Being very fat, he had 42 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW A WRITER in The Standard gives this descrip- tion of Monvenstow : " No railway has as yet come near Morwcnstow, and none will probably ever approach it nearer than Bude. The coast is iron-bound. Strangely contorted schists and sand-stones stretch away northward in an almost unbroken line of rocky wall to the point of Hartland ; and to the south-west a bulwark of cUfTs, of very similar character, extends to and beyond Tintagel, whose rude walls are sometimes seen projected against the sunset in the far distance. The coast scenery is of the grandest description, with its spires of splintered rock, its ledges of green turf, inaccessible, but tempting from the rare plants which nestle in the crevices, its seal-haunted caverns, its wild birds (among which the red-legged chough can hardly be reckoned any longer, so much has it of late years lessened in numbers),^ the miles of sparkling blue sea over which the eye ranges from the summits ablaze and fragrant with furze and heather ; and here and there the little coves of yellow sand, bound in by towering blackened walls, haunts which seem specially designed for the sea-elves : Who chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back. " Even in bright weather, and in summer — in spite of the beauty and quiet of the scene, and in spite, too, of the long, deep valleys, filled with wood, which, in the parish of Morwenstow especially, descend quite to the sea, and give an impression of extreme stillness and seclusion — no one can wander along the summit of the cliffs without a consciousness that he is looking on a giant, at rest indeed for a time, but more full of strength himself once announced at dinner as " The Corporation of Bodmin." A memoir of Mr. Hicks, and a collection of his stories, has been written by Mr. W. Collier, and published by Luke, Plymouth. ^ This is inaccurate. There is scarce a cliff along this coast which has not its pair of choughs building in it. On the day on which this was written, I went out on Morwenstow clitf, and saw two red-legged choughs flying above me. A friend tells me he has counted six or .seven together on Bude sands. The choughs are, however, becoming scarce, being driven away by the jackdaws. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 43 and more really terrible than any of the Cormorans or the Goemagots who have left their footprints and their strongholds on the hills of Cornwall. The sea and the coast here are, in truth, pitiless ; and, before the con- struction of the haven at Bude, a vessel had no chance whatever of escape which approached within a certain distance of the rocks. Such a shipwreck as is described in Gait's story of The Entail — when persons standing on the cliff, without the smallest power to help, could see the vessel driven onward, could watch every motion on its deck, and at last see it dashed to pieces close under their feet — has more than once been observed from the coast of Morwenstow by Mr. Hawker himself. No winter passes \vithout much loss of life. The httle churchyards along the coast are filled with sad records ; and in that of Morwenstow the crews of many a tall vessel have been laid to rest by the care of the vicar himself, who organised a special band of searchers for employment after a great storm. "^ The road to Morwenstow from civiUsation passes between narrow hedges, every bush on which is bent from the sea. Not a tree is visible. The whole country, doubtless, a century ago was moor and fen. At Chapel is a plantation ; but every tree crouches shrivelled, and turns its arms imploringly inland. The leaves are burnt and sear soon after they have expanded. The glorious blue Atlantic is before one, with only Lundy Isle breaking the continuity of the horizon Une. In very clear weather, and before a storm, far away in faintest blue, the Welsh coast can be seen to the north- west. Suddenly the road dips do\vn a combe ; and Morwen- stow tower, grey-stoned, pinnacled, stands up against the blue ocean, with a grove of stunted sycamores on the north of the church. Some way below, deep down in the glen, are seen the roofs and fantastic chimnej^s of the vicarage. The quaint lyche-gate and ruined cottage beside it, the venerable church, the steep slopes of the hills blazing \\'ith gorse or red with heather, and the background of sparkling blue sea half-way up the sky — from such a height above the shore is it looked upon — form a picture, once seen, never to be forgotten. * Standard, ist September, 1S75. 44 THE VICAR OF iMORWENSTOW The bottom of the glen is filled with wood, stunted, indeed, but pleasant to see after the treeless desolation of the high land around. A path leads from church and vicarage upon More- wenstow cliffs. On the other side of the combe rises Hennacliffe to the height of 450 feet above the sea, a magnificent face of sphntered and contorted schist, with alternating friable slaty beds. Half-way down Morwenstow cliff, only to be reached by a narrow and scarcely distinguishable path, is the well of St. Morwcnna. Mr. Hawker repaired it ; but about twenty years ago the spring worked itself a way through another stratum of slate, and sprang out of the sheer cliff some feet lower down, and falls in a minia- ture cascade, a silver thread of water, over a ledge of schist into the sea. On a green spot, across which now run cart-tracks, in the side of the glen, stood originally, according to Mr. Hawker, a chapel to St. Morwenna, visited by those who sought her sacred well. The green patch forms a rough parallelogram, and bears faint traces of having been levelled out of the slope. No stone remains on another of the ancient chapel. From the cliff an unrivalled view can be had of the Atlantic, from Lundy Isle to Padstow point. Tintagel Rock, with its ancient castle, stands out boldly, as the horn of a vast sweep against glittering water, lit by a passing gleam behind. Gulls, rocks, choughs, wheel and scream around the crag, now fluttering a little way above the head, and then diving down towards the sea, which roars and foams several hundreds of feet below. The beach is inaccessible save at one point, where a path has been cut down the side of a steep gorse-covered slope, and through sUdes of ruined slate rock, to a bay, into which the Tonacombe Brook precipitates itself in a broken fall of foam. The little coves with blue-grey floors wreathed with sea-foam ; the splintered and contorted rock ; the curved strata, which here bend over like exposed ribs of a mighty mammoth ; the sharp skerries that run out into the sea to torment it into eddies of froth and. spray — are of rare wildness and beauty. It is impossible to stand on these cliffs, and not cite the ai-hptefiov ytXacj-La, -ira/xfxTiTop tc yq of the poet. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 45 If this were quoted in the ears of the vicar of Morwen- stow, he would stop, lay his hand on one's arm and say : " How do you translate that ? " " ' The many-twinkling smile of ocean.' " " I thought so. So does every one else. But it is wrong," with emphasis — " utterly wrong. Listen to me. Prometheus is bound, held backwards, with brazen fetters binding him to the rock. He cannot see the waters, cannot note their smiles. He gazes up into the sky above him. But he hears. Notice how i^schylus describes the sounds that reach his ears, not the sights. Above, indeed, is the ' divine aether ' ; he is looking into that, and he hears the fanning of the ' swift-winged breezes,' and the murmur and splash of the ' fountains of rivers ' ; and then comes the passage which I translate, ' The loud laugh of ocean waves.' " A little way down the side of the hill that descends in gorse banks and broken rock and clean precipice to one of the largest and grandest of the caves, is a hut made of fragments of wrecked ships thrown up on this shore. The sides are formed of curved ribs of vessels, and the entrance ornamented with carved work from a figure-head. This hut was made by Mr. Hawker him- self ; and in it he would sit, sheltered from storm, and look forth over the wild sea, dreaming, composing poetry, or watching ships scudding before the gale dangerously near the coast. It was in this hut that most of his great poem, " The Quest of the Sangreal," was composed. A friend says : " I often visited him whilst this poem was in process of composition, and sat with him in this hut as he recited it. I shall never forget one wild even- ing, when the sun had gone down before our eyes as a ball of red-hot iron into the deep. He had completed ' The Quest of the Sangreal,' and he repeated it from memory to me. He had a marvellous power of recita- tion, and with his voice, action and pathos, threw a life into the words which vanishes in print. I cannot forget the close of the poem, with the throbbing sea before me, and Tintagel looming out of the water to the south : He ceased, and all around was dreamy night ; There stood Dundagel, throned ; and the great sea Lay, a strong vassal at his master's gate, And, like a drunken giant, sobbed in sleep. 46 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW On a rushy knoll, in a moor in the parish of Mor- wenstow, rises the Tamar/ and from the same mount flows the Torridge. Fount of a rushing river ! wild flowers wreathe The home where thy first waters sunlight claim ; The lark sits hushed beside thee while I breathe, Sweet Tamar spring ! the music of thy name. On through thy goodly channel, on ! to the sea I Pass amid heathery vale, tall rock, fair bough ; But never more with footstep pure and free, Or face so meek with happiness as now. Fair is the future scenery of thy days, Thy course domestic, and thy paths of pride : Depths that give back the soft-eyed violet's gaze. Shores where tall navies march to meet the tide. Yet false the vision, and untrue the dream, That lures thee from thy native wilds to stray : A thousand griefs will mingle with thy stream. Unnumbered hearts will sigh these waves away. Scenes fierce with men, thy seaward current laves ; Harsh multitudes will throng thy gentle brink ; Back with the grieving concourse of thy waves. Home to the waters of thy childhood, shrink. Thou hcedest not ! thy dream is of the shore. Thy heart is quick with life ; on ! to the sea ! How will the voice of thy far streams implore Again amid these peaceful weeds to be ! My soul ! my soul ! a happier choice be thine, — Thine the hushed valley and the lonely sod ; False dream, far vision, hollow hope, resign. Fast by our Tamar spring, alone with God I In the parish of Morwenstow is one very interesting old house, Tonacombe, or, as it was originally called, Tidnacombe. It belonged originally to the Jourdains, passed to the Kempthornes, the Waddons, and from thence to the Martyns. The present proprietor is the Rev. W. Waddon Martyn, rector of Lifton. ^ Tamar in Cornish is Taw-mawr, the great water ; Ta\'y is Taw-vach, the lesser water. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 47 It is an ancient mansion of the sixteenth century, quite perfect and untouched, very small and plain, but in its way a gem, and well deserving a visit. It is low, crouch- ing to the ground like the trees of the district, as for shelter, or as a ptarmigan cowering from the hawk, with wings spread over her young. A low gate, with porter's lodge at the side, leads into a small yard, into which look the windows of the hall. The hall goes to the roof with open timbers ; it is small — thirty feet long — but perfect in its way, with minstrel's gallery, large open fireplace with andirons, and adorned with antlers, old weapons and banners bearing the arms of the Jour- dains, Kempthornes, Waddons and Martyns. The hall gives access to a dark panelled parlour, with pecuhar and handsome brass andirons in the old fireplace, looking out through a latticed window into the old walled garden, or Paradise. It is curious that Mr. Kingsley, when writing Westward Ho ! should have overlooked Tonacombe, and laid some of his scenes at Chapel in the same parish, where there never was an old house nor were any traditions. Pro- bably he did not know of the existence of this charming old mansion. The minstrel's gallery was divided off from the hall, and converted into a bedroom ; but Mr. Hawker pointed out its original destination to the owner, and he at once threw down the lath-and-plaster parti- tion, and restored the hall to its original proportions.^ The hall was also flat-ceiled across ; but the vicar of Mor- wenstow discovered the oaken roof above the ceihng, and persuaded Mr. Martyn to expose it to view. A narrow slit in the wall from the bedroom of the lady of the house allowed her to command a view of her lord at his carousals, and listen to his sallies. ^ Tonacombe was panelled by John Kempthorne, who died in 1591. The panelling remains in three of the rooms, and the initials J. K. and K. K. (Katherine Kempthorne) appear in each. The date is also given, 1578, on the panelhng. In the large parlour on two shields are the arms of Ley quartered with those of Jordan and Kempthorne impaling Courtenay and Redvers. Prince, in his Worthies of Devon, gives a notice of Sir John Kempthorne, Kt., who put up this panelling. He is buried in the Morwenstow Church, where there is an in- teresting incised stone to his memory under the altar. His wife, Katherine Kempthorne, daughter of Sir Piers Courtenay of Ugbrook, is also buried there. 48 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW Morwenstow Church stands on the steep slope of a hill. My Saxon shrine ! the only ground Wherein this weary heart hath rest ; What years the birds of God have found Along thy walls their sacred nest. The storm, the blast, the tempest shock, Have beat upon those walls in vain : She stands I a daughter of the rock. The changeless God's eternal fane. Firm was their faith, the ancient bands, The wise of heart in wood and stone, Who reared with stern and trusty hands These dark grey towers of days unknown. They filled these aisles with many a thought ; They bade each nook some truth reveal ; The pillared arch its legend brought ; A doctrine came with roof and wall. Huge, mighty, massive, hard and strong. Were the choice stones they lifted then ; The vision of their hope was long, — They knew their God, those faithful men. They pitched no tent for change or death, No home to last man's shadowy day : There, there, the everlasting breath Would breathe whole centuries away. It is a church of very great interest, consisting of nave, chancel and two aisles. The arcade of the north aisle is remarkably fine, and of two dates. Two semi- circular arches are richly carved with Norman zigzag and billet : one is plain, eventually intended to be carved like the other two. The remaining two arches are tran- sition early English pointed and plain. At the spring of the sculptured arches, in the spandrels, are very spirited projecting heads : one of a ram is remarkably well modelled. The vicar, who mused over his church, and sought a signification in everything, believed that this represented the ram caught in a thicket by the horns, and was symbolical of Christ, the true sacrifice. Another projecting head is spirited — the mouth is con- torted with mocking laughter : this, he asserted, was the head of Arius. Another head, with the tongue lolling out, was a heretic deriding the sacred mysteries. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 49 But his most singular fancy was with respect to the chevron ornamentation on the arcade. When first I visited the church, I exclaimed at the beauty of the zigzag moulding. " Zigzag ! zigzag ! " echoed the vicar scornfully. " Do you not see that it is near the font that this orna- ment occurs ? It is the ripple of the lake of Genesareth, the Spirit breathing upon the waters of baptism. Look without the Church — there is the restless old ocean thundering with all his wakes : you can hear the roar even here. Look within — all is calm : here plays over the baptismal pool only the Dove who fans it into ripples with His heaUng wings." The font is remarkably rude, an uncouth, misshapen block of stone from the shore, scooped out, its only ornamentation being a cable twisted round it, rudely carved. The font is probably of the tenth century. The entrance door to the nave is of very fine Norman work in three orders, but defaced by the removal of the outer order, which has been converted into the door of the porch. Mr. Hawker, observing that the porch door was Norman, concluded that his church possessed a unique specimen of a Norman porch ; but it was pointed out to him that his door was notiiing but the outer order of that into the church, removed from its place ; and then he determined, as soon as he could collect sufficient money, to restore the church, to pull down the porch and replace the Norman doorway in its original con- dition. The church is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. A little stream runs through the graveyard, and rushes down the hill to the porch door, where it is diverted, and carried off to water the glebe. This, he thought, was brought through the churchyard for symbolic reasons, to typify Jordan, near which the Baptist ministered. The descent into the church is by three steps. " Every church dedicated to John the Baptiser," he said in one of his sermons, " is thus arranged. We go down into them, as those who were about to be baptised of John went down into the water. The Spirit that appeared when Christ descended into Jordan hovers here, over that font, over you, over me, and ever will hover here as long as a stone of Morwenna's church stands on this green slope, and a priest of God ministers in it." The 50 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW south arcade of the nave is much posterior to that on the north side. One of the capitals bears the inscription : THIS WAS MADE ANNO MVCLX, (1564)- Another capital bears : THIS IS THE HOUSE OF THE LORD. It has been put up inverted. The arcade is rich and good for the date. Of the same date are the carved oak benches. A few only are earlier, and bear the symbols of the transfixed heart on the spear, the nails and cross. These Mr. Hawker found laid as flooring under the pews, their faces planed. The rest bear, on shields, sea-monsters. There was a fine oak screen very much earlier in style than the benches. When Mr. Hawker arrived at Mor- wenstow, the clerk said to him : " Please, your honour, I have done you a very gude turn. I've just been and cut down and burned a rubbishing old screen that hid the chancel." " You had much better have burnt yourself ! " he exclaimed. " Show me what remains." Only a few fragments of the richly sculptured and gilt cornice, and one piece of tracery, remained. The cornice represents doves flying amidst oak-leaves and vine- branches, and a fox running after them. The date not later than 1535, when a screen in the same style, and character was erected at Broadwood Widger.^ Mr. Hawker collected every fragment, and put the pieces together with bits of modern and poor carved wood, and cast-iron tracery, and constructed therewith a not ineffective rood-screen. Outside the screen is an early incised cross in the floor, turned ^vith feet to the west, marking the grave of a priest. " The flock lie with their feet to the east, looking for the rising of the day-star. But the pastor always rests with his head to the east, and feet westward, that ^ The date is on a scroll, which is in a hand descending from the clouds, upon one of the bench-ends. Benches and screens are of the same date. The Morwenstow screen has been removed at the recent miserable " restoration." The wreckers are not extinct in Cornwall, they call themselves architects and fall on and ravage churches. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 51 at the resurrection day, when all rise, he may be facing those for whom he must give an account to the Maker and Judge of all, and may say with the prophet : Behold. I and the children whom the Lord hath given me." The chancel was originally lighted by lancets, which have, however, been blocked up and plastered over. The floor he kept strewn with southernwood and thyme, " for angels to smell to." The east wall was falling, and in 1 849 was rebuilt, and a stained window by Warrington inserted, given by the late Lord Clinton. It represents St. Morwenna teaching Editha, daughter of Ethelwolf,^ between St. Peter and St. Paul. The window is very poor and coarse in draw- ing and in colour. The ancient piscina in the wall is of early English date. Mr. Hawker discovered under the pavement in the church, when reseating it, the base of a small pillar, Norman in style, with a hole in it for a rivet which attached to it the slender column it supported. This he supposed was a piscina drain, and accordingly set it up in the recess beside his altar. Mr. Hawker used an old stable, very decayed, on the north side of the chancel, as his vestry, and descended by a stair from it to the church. Floor and roof and stair are now in the last stage of decay. His altar was of wood, and low. He had on it a clumsy wooden cross, without figure, vases with bouquets of flowers, and two Cornish serpentine candlesticks. There was an embroidered frontal on his altar, given him in 1843, ^■^d used for all seasons alike. Considering the veneration in which Mr. Hawker held holy things and places, a little more tidiness might have been ex- pected ; but his altar was never very clean, the top hav- ing strewn over it the burnt ends of matches with which he had lighted his candles. It had also on it a large magnifying glass, like those often on drawing-room tables to assist in the examination of photographs. For a long time Mr. Hawker used to say matins, litany and com- munion-service standing at his altar ; but in later years ^ This, as has been already shown, is an error ; he con- founded St. Morwenna of Cornwall with St. :^.Iod\venna of Burton-on-Trent. At the " restoration " frescoes were dis- covered throughout the church ; all but one were wantonly destroyed. 52 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW his curates introduced a reading-desk within the chancel near the screen. A deal kitchen-table likewise served for the furnishing of the chnncel. On this he would put his mufflers and devotional books. The untidy condition of the church affected one of his curates, a man of a somewhat domineering character, to such an extent that one day he swept up all the rub- bish he could find in the church, old decorations of the previous Christmas, decayed southernwood and roses of the foregoing midsummer festivity, pages of old Bibles, prayer-books and manuscript scraps of poetry, match- ends, candle-ends, etc. ; and, having filled a barrow with all these sundries, he wheeled it down to the vicarage door, rang the bell, and asked for Mr. Hawker. The vicar came into the porch. " This is the rubbish I have found in your church." " Not all," said Mr. Hawker. " Complete the pile by seating yourself on the top, and I will see to the whole being shot speedily." In the chancel is a vine, carved in wood, which creep thence all along the church — an emblem, according to him, of the Christian life. Hearken ! there is in old Morwenna's shrine, — A lonely sanctuary of the Saxon days. Reared by the Severn Sea for prayer and praise — Amid the carved work of the roof, a vine. Its root is where the eastern sunbeams fall First in the chancel ; then along the wall Slowly it travels on, a leafy line, With here and there a cluster, and anon More and more grapes, until the growth hath gone Through arch and aisle. Hearken ! and heed the sign. See at the altar-side the steadfast root, Mark well the branches, count the summer fruit : So let a meek and faithful heart be thine. And gather from that tree a parable divine. Formerly, whilst saying service he kept his chancel screen shut, and was invisible to his congregation ; but his curates afterwards insisted on the gate being left open. The chancel is very dark. Access to his pulpit was obtained through a narrow opening in the screen just sixteen inches wide, and it was a struggle for him to get through the aperture. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 53 After a while he abandoned the attempt, and had steps into the pulpit erected outside the screen. Above the screen he set up in late years a large cross painted blue with five gold stars on it, the cross of the heavens in the southern hemisphere. Near the pulpit he erected a curious piece of wood-carving, gilt and coloured, which he brought with him from Tamerton. It represents a castle attacked by a dragon with two heads. From the mouth of a beardless face issues a dove, which is represented flying towards the castle. This, he said, was an allegory. The castle is the Church assailed by Satan, the old dragon, through his twofold power, temporal and spiritual. But the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Son flies to the defence of the Church, On the other side of the castle was originally a bearded head, and a dove issuing in a similar manner from it ; but it has been broken away. This represented the Paraclete proceeding from the Father as from the Son. In the churchyard of Morwenstow is a granite tomb bearing the following inscription : Here Liet John Maning of , . Who Died Without Issue . . I AM Beried in THE VI DaIE of Av GVST 1 60 1. John Manning of Stanbury, in Morwenstow, Uved in the sixteenth century. He married Christiana Kemp- thorne. About six weeks after their marriage the husband was gored by a bull in a field between Tona- combe and Stanbury, His young bride died of grief within the year, and was buried in this altar tomb beside him. The bed of this ill-fated pair, with their names carved on the head-board, was found by Mr. Hawker in one of the farms in the parish. He was very anxious to get possession of it. He begged it, and when refused offered money, but to no avail : the farmer would not part with it. After trying persiiasion, entreaty, and offering large sums in vain, he had recourse to another expedient. The vicar said to the farmer : " Does it ever strike you, S , when lying in that bed, as you do of a night, how many corpses have preceded you ? There 54 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW was first of all poor John Manning, all dead and bloody, in 1 60 1, his side ripped up by a bull's horns, just where you lie so snug of a night. Then there was his bride, Christiana, lying there, where your wife sleeps, sobbing away her life, dying of a broken heart. Just you think, John, when you lie there, of that poor lone woman, how her tears dribbled all night long over the pillow on which your wife's head rests. And one morning, when they came to look at her, she was dead. That was two hundred and fifty years ago. What a lot of corpses have occupied that bed, where you and your wife lie, since then I Think of it, John, of a night, and tell your wife to do the same. I dare say the dead flesh has struck a chill into the bed, that the feel of it makes you creep all over at times at dead of night. Doesn't it, John ? Two hundred and fifty years ago ! That is about five generations — five men washed and laid out, their chin tied up on your pillow, John, and their dead eyes looking up at your ceiling ; and five wives dead and laid out there too, and measured for their coffins, just where your wife sleeps so warm. And then, John, consider, it's most likely some of these farmers were married again, so we may say there were at least six or seven female corpses, let alone dead babies, in that bed. Why, John, there have been at least fourteen corpses in that bed, including John Manning bleeding to death, and Chris- tiana weeping her Ufe away. Think of that of a night. You will find it conducive to good." " Parson," said the farmer aghast, " I can never sleep in that bed no more. You may take it, and welcome." So Mr. Hawker got the Manning bed, and set it up in the room that commanded the tomb in the churchyard ; " so that the bed may look at the grave, and the grave at the bed," as he expressed it. The writer in The Standard, already quoted, thus describes his first acquaintance with the vicar of Mor- wenstow : It was on a solemn occasion that we first saw Morwenstow. The sea was still surly and troubled, with wild lights breaking over it, and torn clouds driving through the sky. Up from the shore, along a narrow path between jagged rocks and steep banks tufted with thrift, came the vicar, wearing cassock and surplice, and conducting a sad procession, which bore along with it the bodies of two seamen flung up the same morning THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOVV 55 on the sands. The office used by Mr. Hawker at such times had been arranged by himself — not without reference to cer- tain peculiarities, which, as he conceived, were features of the primitive Cornish Church, the same which had had its bishops and its traditions long before the conference of Augus- tine with its leaders under the great oak by the Severn. Indeed, at one time he carried his adhesion to these Cornish traditions to some unusual lengths. There was, we remember, a peculiar yellow vestment, in which he appeared much like a Lama of Thibet, which he wore in his house and about his parish, and which he insisted was an exact copy of a priestly robe worn by St. Padarn and St. Teilo. We have seen him in this attire proceeding through the lanes on the back of a well-groomed mule — the only fitting beast, as he remarked, for a Churchman. We have here one instance out of many of the manner in which the vicar delighted in hoaxing visitors. The yellow vestment in question was a poncho. It came into use in the following manner : Mr. Martyn, a neighbour, was in conversation one day with Mr. Hawker, when the latter complained that he could not get a greatcoat to his fancy. " Why not wear a poncho ? " asked Mr. Martyn. " Poncho ! what is that ? " inquired the vicar. " Nothing but a blanket with a hole in the middle." " Do you put your legs through the hole, and tie the four corners over your head ? " " No," answered Mr. Martyn. " I will fetch you my poncho, and you can try it on." The poncho was brought : it was a dark blue one, and the vicar was delighted with it. There was no trouble in putting it on. It suited his fancy amazingly ; and next time he went to Bideford he bought a yellowish-brown blanket, and had a hole cut in the middle, through which to thrust his head. " I wouldn't wear your livery, Martyn," said he, " nor your political colours, so I have got a yellow poncho." Those who knew him well can picture to themselves the sly twinkle in his eye as he informed his credulous visitor that he was invested in the habit of St. Padarn and St. Teilo. After a few years at Morwenstow in a hired house, the vicar set to work to build himself a vicarage near the church. He chose a spot where he saw lambs take shelter from storm ; not so much because he thought 56 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW the spot a " lew " one (that is, a sheltered one), as from the fancy that the refuge of the lambs should typify the vicarage, the sheltcring-place of his flock. Whilst he was building it Mr. Daniel King came over to see him, and was shown the house in course of erec- tion. Mr. Daniel King and Mr. Hawker were not very cordial friends. " Ha I " said Mr. King, " you know the proverb — ' Fools build houses for wise men to live in.' " " Yes," answered the vicar promptly ; " and I know another — ' Wise men make proverbs, and fools quote them.' " He had the chimneys of the vicarage built to resemble the towers of churches with which he had had to do : one was like Tamerton, another like Magdalen Hall, a third resembled Wellcombe, a fourth Morwenstow. When Archdeacon, afterwards Bishop, Wilberforce came into the neighbourhood to advocate the cause of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he met Mr. Hawker. " Look here," said Archdeacon Wilberforce, " I have to speak at the meeting at Stratton to-night, and I am told that there is a certain Mr. Knight* who will be on the platform, and is a wearyful speaker. I have not much time to spare. Is it possible by a hint to reduce him to reasonable limits ? " " Not in the least : he is impervious to hints." " Can he not be prevented from rising to address the meeting ? " " That is impossible : he is irrepressible." " Then what is to be done ? " " Leave him to me, and he will not trouble you." At the S.P.G. meeting a crowd had gathered to hear the eloquent speaker. Mr. Tom Knight was on the platform, waiting his opportunity to rise. " Oh, Knight ! " said j\Ir. Hawker in a whisper, " the archdeacon has left his watch behind, and mine is also at home ; will you lend yours for timing the speeches ? " With some hesitation Mr. Knight pulled his gold repeater, with bunch of seals attached, from his fob, and gave it to the vicar of Morwenstow. Presently Mr. Knight was on his legs to make a speech. Now, the old gentleman was accustomed, when address- ing a public audience, to s\nng his bunch of seals round THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 57 and round in his left hand. Directly he began his ora- tion, his hand went instinctively to his fob in quest of the bunch : it was not there. He stammered, and felt again, floundered in his speech, and, after a few feeble efforts to recover himself, and find his bunch of seals, sat down, red and melting and angry. Mr. Hawker had a pair of stags which he called Robin Hood and Maid Marian, given to him by the late Sir Thomas Acland, from his park at Killerton. These he kept in the long open combe in front of the house, through which a stream dashes onwards to the sea. One day the same Mr. Knight proceeded too curiously to approach Robin Hood, when the deer ran at him and butted him down. The clergyman shrieked with fear, and the stag \v-ould have struck him with his antlers had not the vicar rushed to the rescue. Being an immensely strong man, he caught Robin by the horns, and drew his head back, and held him fast whilst the frightened man crawled away. " I was myself in some difficulty," said Mr. Hawker, when telling the story. " The stag would have turned on me when I let go, and I did not quite see my way to escape ; but that wretched man did nothing but yell for his wig and hat, wliich had come off and were under the deer's feet ; as if my life were of no account beside his foxy old wig and battered beaver." Dr. Phillpotts, the late Bishop of Exeter, not long after this occurred, came to Morwenstow to visit Mr. Hawker. Whilst being shown the landscape from the garden, the bishop's eye rested on Robin Hood. "Why ! that stag which butted and tossed Mr. Knight is still suffered to live ! It might have killed him." " No great loss, ray lord," said Mr. Hawker. "He is very Low Church." Early next morning loud cries for assistance pene- trated the vicar's bedroom. Looking from his window, he beheld the bishop struggling with Robin Hood, who, like his fellow of Sherwood, seems to have had little respect for episcopal dignity. Robin had taken a fancy to the bishop's apron, and, gently approaching, had secured one corner in his mouth. There is a story of a Scottish curate, who, when Jenny Geddes seized him by his " prelatical " gown as he was passing into the pulpit, quietly loosed the strings, rnd 58 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW allowed Jennjr and the gown to fall backward together. There was no such luck for the bishop. He sought in vain to unfasten the apron, which descended farther and farther into Robin's throat, until the vicar, coming to the rescue, restored the apron to daylight, and sent the " masterful thief " about his business. Mr. Hawker accompanied the late Bishop of Exeter on his first visit to Tintagel, and delighted in telling how the scene, then far more out of the world than it can now be considered, impressed the powerful mind of Dr. Phill- potts. He stood alone for some time on the extreme edge of the castle cliff, while the sun went down before him in the tumbling, foaming Atlantic a blaze of splen- dour, flaking the rocks and ruined walls with orange and carmine ; and as he turned away he muttered the line from Zanga : I like this rocking of the battlements. Another visitor to Morwenstow was the Poet Laureate ; he presented himself at the door, and sent in his card, and was received with cordiality and hospitality by the vicar, who, however, was not sure that the stranger was the poet. After lunch they walked together on the cliffs, and Mr. Hawker pointed to the Tonacombe Brook form- ing a cascade into the sea. " Falling like a broken purpose," he observed. " You are quoting my lines," said the Poet Laureate. " And thus it was," as Mr. Hawker said when relating the incident, " that I learned whom I was entertaining." He flattered himself that it was he who had introduced the Arthurian cycle of legends to Tennyson's notice. Charles Kingsley also owed to Mr. Hawker his first introduction to scenery which he afterwards rendered famous. Stowe and Chapel, places which figured so largely in Westward Ho ! were explored by them to- gether ; and the vicar of Morwenstow was struck, as every one have must been struck who accompanied Mr. Kingsley under similar circumstances, by the wonderful insight and skill which seized at once on the most char- acteristic features of the scene, and found at the instant the fitting words in which to describe them. Mr. Hawker, for his own part, not only did this for his own corner of Cornwall, but threw into his prose and THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 59 his poetry the pecuUar feeling of the district, the subtle aroma which, in less skilful hands, is apt to vanish altogether. His ballads found their way into numerous pubhca- tions without his name being appended to them, and, sometimes were fathered on other writers. In a letter to T. Carnsew, Esq., dated January 2nd, 1858, he says as much. My Dear Sir, — A happy New Year to yours and you, and many of them ! as v/e say in the West. The kind interest you have taken in young Blight's book^ induces me to send you the royal reply to my letter. Through Col. Phipps to the Queen I sent a simple statement of the case, and asked leave for the youth to be allowed to dedicate his forthcoming book to the Duke of Cornwall. I did not, between ourselves, expect to succeed, because no such thing has hitherto been permitted, and also because 1 was utterly unknown, thank God, at Court. But it has been always my fate to build other people's houses. For others I usually succeed ; for myself, always fail. Let me tell you one strange thing. Every year of my life for full ten years I have had to write to some publisher, editor or author, to claim the paternity of a legend or a ballad or a page of prose, which others have been attempt- ing to foist on the public as their own. Last year I had to rescue a legendary ballad — "The Sisters of Glennecten " — from the claims of a Mr. H. of Exeter College.* Yesterday I wrote for the January number of Blackwood, wherein I see published " The Bells of Bottreaux," a name and legend which, if any one should claim, I say with Jack Cade, " He lies, for I invented it myself ! " " The Silent Tower of Bottreaux " is one of his best ballads. To the poem he appends the following note :^ " The rugged heights that line the seashore in the neigh- bourhood of Tintagel Castle and Church are crested with towers. Among these, that of Bottreaux Castle, or, as ^ Ancient Crosses in Cornwall, by J. T. Blight. Penzance, 1858. * The mysterious sisters really lived and died in North Devon. Mr. Hawker transplanted the story to St. Knighton's Kieve. Any attempt in prose or verse to associate these sisters with Glennectan he afterwards resented as a literary theft. • Ecclesia . a volume of poems. Oxford, 1840. Really, the church of Forrabury on the height above Boscastle, which is a hamlet in the parish of Forrabury. 6o THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW it is now written, Boscastle, is without bells. The silence of this wild and lonely churchyard on festive or solemn occasions is not a little striking. On inquiring as to the cause, the legend related in the text was told me, as a matter of impUcit behef in those parts." THE SILENT TOWER OF BOTTREAUX. Tintagel bells ring o'er the tide : The boy leans on his vessel's side ; He hears that sound, and dreams of home Soothe the wild orphan of the foam. " Come to thy God in time ! " Thus saith their pealing chime : "Youth, manhood, old age, past, Come to thy God at last ! " But why are Bottreaux's echoes still ? Her tower stands proudly on the hill : Yet the strange chough that home hath found, The lamb lies sleeping on the ground. " Come to thy God in time ! " Should be her answering chime. " Come to thy God at last ! " Should echo on the blast. The ship rode down with courses free. The daughter of a distant sea: Her sheet was loose, her anchor stored, The merry Bottreaux bells on board. " Come to thy God in time 1 " Rang out Tintagel chime. "Youth, manhood, old age, past, Come to thy God at last ! " The pilot heard his native bells Hang on the breeze in fitful swells. " Thank God ! " with reverent brow he cried : "We make the shore with evening's tide." " Come to thy God in time ! " It was his marriage-chime. Youth, manhood, old age, past. His bell must ring at last. Thank God, thou whining knave, on land I But thank at sea, the steersman's hand. The captain's voice above the gale. Thank the good ship and ready sail. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 6i " Come to thy God in time ! " Sad grew the boding chime, " Come to thy God at last ! " Boomed heavy on the blast. Up rose that sea, as if it heard The mighty Master's signal word. What thrills the captain's whitening lip ? The death-groans of his sinking ship ! " Come to thy God in time ! " Swung deep the funeral chime. " Grace, mercy, kindness, past, Come to thy God at last ! " Long did the rescued pilot tell. When grey hairs o'er his forehead fell, — While those around would hear and weep,— That fearful judgment of the deep. "Come to thy God in time ! " He read his native chime : Youth, manhood, old age, past. His bell rung out at last ! Still, when the storm of Bottreaux's waves Is wakening in his weedy caves. Those bells that sullen surges hide Peal their deep notes beneath the tide. " Come to thy God in time ! " Thus saith the ocean chime : " Storm, billow, whirlwind, past. Come to thy God at last ! " I may be allowed, as this is a gossiping book, here to tell a story of Boscastle, which came to my ears when staying there a few years ago, and which is true. There lived at Boscastle, wdthin twenty years, an old seafaring man whom we will call Daddy Tregellas — his real name has escaped me. A w^idow in the village died, leaving a fair young daughter of eighteen, very delicate and consumptive, without a home or relations. Daddy Tregellas had known the wdow and felt great pity for the orphan, but how to help her he did not see. After much turning the matter over in his mind he thought the only way in which he could make her a home and provide her with comforts without giving the gossips occasion to talk, was by marrying her. And married accordingly they were. The Boscastle people to this day 62 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW tell of the tenderness of the old man for his young deUcate wife ; it was that of a father for a daughter — how he watched the carnation spots on her cheek with intense anxiety and listened with anguish to her cough ; how he walked out with her on the cliffs, wrapping shawls round her ; and sat in church with his eyes fixed on her whilst she sang, listened or prayed. The beautiful girl was his idol, his pet. She languished in spite of all his care. He nursed her through her iUness hke a mother, with his rough, brown hand as gentle as that of a woman. She died propped up in bed, with her chestnut hair flowing over his blue sailor's jersey, as he held her head on his breast. When he had laid his pet in Forrabury churchyard the light of his life was extinguished. The old man wan- dered about the cliffs all day, in sunshine and in storm, growing more hollow-cheeked and dull-eyed, his thin hair lank, his back bowed, speaking to no one and break- ing slowly but surely. But Mr. Avery, the shipbuilder, about this time laid the keel of a little vessel, and she was reared in Boscastle haven. The new ship interested the old man, and when the figurehead was set up he fancied he traced in it a likeness to his dead wife. " It is — it is the Pet," faltered the old man. The owner heard the exclamation and said : "So shall it be. She shall be called The Pet." And now the old love, which had wound itself round the wile, began to attach itself to the little vessel. Every day the old man was on the quay watching the growth of The Pet ; he could not bear her out of his sij:ht. When The Pet was ready to be launched Mr, Avery offered Tregellas the position of captain to her. The old man's joy was full ; he took the command and sailed for Bristol for coals. One stormy day, when a furious west wind was driving upon the land and bowling mountains of green water against the coast, it was noised that a vessel was visible scudding before the wind in dangerous proximity to the shore. The signal-rock was speedily crowded with anxious watchers. The coast-guardsman observed her attentively with his glass and said : "It is The Pet. The hatchways are all closed." Eyes watched her bounding through the waves, now THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 63 on the summit of a huge green billow, now deep in its trough, till she was lost to sight in the rain and spon- drift. That was the last seen of The Pet ; she, with old Daddy Tregellas and all on board, went to the bottom in that dreadful storm. Boscastle is a hamlet of quaint, gabled, weather-beaten cottages, inhabited by sailors, clinging to the steep sides of the hills that dip rapidly to the harbour, a mere cleft in the rocks, in shape like an S. The entrance is between huge precipices of black rock, one of them scooped out into a well ; it is the resort of countless gulls, which breed along the ledges. The harbour is masked by an islet of rock covered by a meagre crop of sea-grass and thrift. Mr. Claud Hawker, the brother of the subject of this memoir, resided till his death at Penally in Boscastle. CHAPTER IV Mr. Hawker's Politics — Election of 1857 — His Zeal for the Labourers — "The Poor Man and his Parish Church " — Letter to a Landlord — Death of liis Man, Tape — Kind- ness to the Poor — Verses over his Door — Reckless Charity — HospitaUty — A Breakdown — His Eccentric Dress — The Devil and his Barn — His Ecclesiastical Vestments — Ceremonial — The Nine Cats — The Church Garden — Kindness to Animals — The Rooks and Jackdaws — The Well of St. John — Letter to a Young Man entering the University. MR. HAWKER in politics, as far as he had any, was a Liberal ; and in 1857 he voted for Mr. Robartes, afterwards Lord Robartes. March 2b, 1857. My Dear Sir, — Your mangold is remark- ably fine. I must, of course, visit Stratton, to vote for Robartes ; and I do wish I could be told how far a few votes would throw out Kendall by helping Carew, then I would give the latter one. If I can contrive to call at Flexbury, I will ; but Mrs. Hawker is so worried by bad eyes that she will not risk the roads. Last time we were annoyed b^' some rascals, who came after the carriage, shouting, " Kendall and 64 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW protection ! " It will be a dark infamy for Cornwall if Nick, the traitor to every party, should get in. Tom S has been out to-day, blustering for Nick, but, when asked what party he belonged to, could not tell. How should he ? A note from IM to-night, dated Bude, informs me that he is there. I am glad to find that, though not yet registered as a Cornish voter, his heart and wishes are for Robartes. It will always be to me a source of pride, that I was the first, or well-nigh, I think, the only clergj-man in this deanery who voted for a Free-trade candidate. Yours, my dear sir, faithfully. R. S. Hawker, J. Carnsew, Esq, ... I cannot conclude without a word about the mighty theme of elections. When Carew's address arrived, and I read it to Mrs. Hawker, her remark was : " It doesn't ring well." Nor did it. There were sneaky symptoms about it. S writes that "sinister influence, apart from political, has been brought to bear against Carew." We save a break- fast by this ; for Mrs. Hawker had announced her intention to give one, as she did last time, to Mr. Robartes' voters ; and I save what is to me important — a ride. When I was in Oxford, there was a well-known old man, Dr. Crowe, public officer, etc. He had risen from small beginnings, and there- fore he was a man of mind. Somewhat rough, and so much the better, as old wine is. Him the young, thoughtless fellows delighted to tease after dinner in the common-room, over their wine at New College. (N.B. — The rumour used to run, that, when the fellows of the college retired from the hall, the butler went before, with a warming pan, which he passed over the seat of every stuffed chair, that the reverend fogies might not catch cold as they sat down.) Well, one day, said a junior to old Crowe : " Do you know. Dr. C, what has hapened to Jem Ward ? " — " No, not I. Is he hanged ? " — " Oh, no ! they say he is member of Parlia- ment." — " W^ell, what of that? " — "Oh, but consider what a thing for a fellow like that to get into the House of Commons — such a blackguard.'" — "And pray, young man, where should a blackguard go, but into the House of Commons, eh ? " Good-night, dear sir, good-night. Yours faithfully, R. S. Hawker, But Mr. Hawker's sympathies were by no means bound up with one party. He was as enthusiastic in 1873 for the return of a Conservative member for Exeter, as he had been in 1857 for that of a Free-trade candi- date for East Cornwall; THE VICAR OF iMORWEXSTOW 65 MORWENSTOW, Dec. II, 1873. My dear Mr. and Mrs. Mills, — The good tidings of your success in Exeter has only just arrived in our house ; and I make haste to congratulate you, and to express our hearty sympathy with Mr. jNIiUs' great triumph. Only yesterday Mr. M was here, and we were discussing the probabilities and chances of the majority. I had heard from Powderham Castle that the contest would be severe, and the run close ; but every good man's wishes and sympathies were with Mr. Mills I hope that God will bless and succour him, and make his election an avenue of good and usefulness to his kind, which I am sure you both will value beyond the mere honour and rank. Our men heard guns last night, but could not decide whether the sound came from Bude or Lundy. But to-day I heard there were great and natural rejoicings around your ElTord home. How you must have exulted also at your husband's strong position in London, and at the School Board ! He -nust have been very deeply appreciated there, and will, of ourse, succeed to the chairmanship of his district. You will oe sorry to hear that Mr. R * has disappointed us, and will not be back again until after Christmas. So, although I am so weak that I can hardly stagger up to the church, and 1 incur deadly risk, I must go through my duty on Sunday. Our dutiful love to you both. I am, yours ever faithfully, R. S. Hawker. It was liis intense sympathy with the poor that con- stituted the Radicalism in Mr. Hawker's opinions. A thorough-going Radical he was not, for he was filled with the most devoted veneration for the Crown and Con- stitution ; but his tender heart bled for the labourer, whom he regarded as the sufferer through protection, and he fired up at what he regarded as an injustice. When he broke forth into words, it was with the eloquence and energy of a prophet. What can be more vigorous and vehement than the following paper, which he wrote in 1861 ? There are in Morwenstow about six thousand acres of arable land, rented by seventy farmers ; forty large, and thirty small. There are less than sixty able-bodied labourers, and twenty five half-men, at roads, etc. With this proportion of one labourer to a hundred acres, there can be no lack of employ. ^A clergyman on whom he had calculated for his assistance in his services. c 66 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW The rate of wages is eight shillings a week, paid, not in money, but by truck of corn. A llxed agreement of a hundred and thirty-five pounds of corn, or eighteen gallons (commonly called seven scores), is allotted to each man in lieu of fourteen shillings, be the market price what it will. A man with a wife and three or four children will consume the above quantity of corn in fourteen days. Therefore, such a man, receiving for his fortnight's work fourteen shillings' worth of corn will only leave in his master's hand one shilling a week, which one shilling usually is paid for house-rent. Now this inevitable outlay for the loaf and for the rent will leave— for fuel, for shoes, for clothing, for groceries, for tools, for club . . . nil : ol. os. od. But, but. But in the year 1 860-61, the fourteen shillings paid for that corn will only yield in flour and meal ten shillings and sixpence, the millers being judges. " If a man have only a wife and two children to house and feed, his surplus money above his bread and rent will be one shilling (?) a week beyond the above example." But, but, in the recited list of exigencies, will that suffice ? It was from a knowledge of the state of the parish, that I assented to the collection, of which I enclose a statement. Two farmers only had the audacity to allege that the effort was uncalled for ; and a labourer of one of these must have gone barefooted to his work the whole winter had not the money for a pair of shoes been advanced to him by the victim of the parish. It appears to be a notion entertained by a chief patron of all our charities, that the wages and the treatment of the labourers in Kilkhampton are more favourable than in Morwenstow. But, but, but What is the weekly wage ? How paid ? If in corn, at what price ? And are there contracts in other respects ? These are not questions which I want to be answered, but only questions for your own private consideration. A letter narrating the success of this a]ipeal is in my hands, and may find a place here. Feb. 21, 1 861. My dear Sir,— I have postponed replying to your last letter until I could acquaint you with the progress or result of the subscriptions to the poor. Lord J. Thynne has given five pounds ; Mr. Dayman, three pounds ; Messrs. Cann and Harris, churchwardens, one pound each ; other parishioners, about three or four pounds. So that we shall THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 67 divide twenty-five pounds and upwards among the really destitute. I am much obliged to j'ou for your readiness to allow my inlluence to count with that of others in the parish ; but the reference in my letter to the churchwardens was to the past, and not altogether to the future. Be this as it may, when Moses languishes, manna falls, thank God ! You will be sorry to hear that Mrs. H is very ill. Her attack is so full of peril, and demands such incessant medical succour, that Capt. H resolved on removing her while she could be moved to London, to the charge of her accus- tomed doctor ; and thither they went last Monday. Our loss is deep. It was indeed a gift from God to have a thorough lady and gentleman in the parish to appreciate the utterance of truth, and the effects of duty : it was indeed a happiness, and it is now gone. Mrs. H had taken great trouble with our choir. Every Thursday evening she has allowed them to come to learn the musical scale, and they were fast learning to read and sing the notes. We have been visited of late b3' the new kind of hurricane, the KVKK'jL'y, or whirl. It is just as fierce and strong as the old storm ; but the scene of its onslaught is rigidly local : indeed, we might almost call them parochial. Thej^ had theirs at Kilkhaiupton two days before Mr. T 's christen- ing. The PoughiU rush was the week after the vicar brought home his wife. A pinnacle was snapped off there, and the wall of the church rent. At Kilkhampton the damage done was in the immediate vicinity of the church. We had ours last night, but the church did not suffer harm, although two- thirds of the roof are rotten, and the pinnacles overhang. Lent is always the demon's time, and the strength of evil. A woman who is just come in tells me that the new chimney in the kitchen at Tidnacombe was blown down last night, and is now lying on the roof in fragments. Yours faithfully, R. S. Hawker. The energy with which he upheld the cause of the labourer was one cause of some unreasonable resentment against him being felt by the farmers ; and this explains his expression " the victim of the parish," in reference to himself in his appeal. The same intense sympathy with the poor and the down-trodden breaks out in his ballad, " The Poor Man and his Parish Church," of which I insert a few verses : — The poor have hands and feet and eyes, Flesh, and a feeling mind : They breathe the breath of mortal sighs, They are of human kind ; 68 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW They weep such tears as others shed. And now and then they smile ; For sweet to them is that poor bread They win with honest toil. The poor men have their wedding-day, And children climb their knee : They have not many friends, lor they Are in such misery. They sell their youth, their skill, their pains, For hire in hill and glen : The very blood within their veins. It flows for other men. They should have roofs to call their own When they grow old and bent — Meek houses built of dark grey stone, Worn labourer's monument. There should they dwell beneath the thatch. With threshold calm and free : No stranger's hand should lift the latch To mark their poverty. Fast by the church these walls should stand. Her aisles in youth they trod : They have no home in all the land Like that old house of God ! There, there, the sacrament was shed That gave them heavenly birth. And lifted up the poor man's head With princes of the earth. There in the chancel's voice of praise Their simple vows were poured. And angels looked with equal gaze On Lazarus and his Lord. There, too, at last, they calmly sleep, Where hallowed blossoms bloom ; And eyes as fond and faithful weep As o'er the rich man's tomb. I know not why ; but when they tell Of houses fair and wide, Wliere troops of poor men go to dwell In chambers side by side, I dream of an old cottage door, With garlands overgrown. And wish the children of the poor Had flowers to call their own. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 69 And when they vaunt that in these walls They have their worship-day. Where the stern signal coldly calls The prisoned poor to pray, I think upon an ancient home Beside the churchyard wall, Where ros<^s round the porch would roam, And gentle jasmines fall. I see the old man of my lay. His grey head bowed and bare : He kneels by our dear wall to pray, The sunlight in his hair. Well ! they may strive, as wise men will, To work with wit and gold : I think my own dear Cornwall still Was happier of old. Oh, for the poor man's church again. With one roof over all, Where the true hearts of Cornishmen IMight beat beside the wall ! The altars where, in holier days, Our fathers were forgiven, Who went with meek and faithful ways. Through the old aisles, to heaven ! A letter to one ol the landlord.s in his parish shows how vehemently Mr, Hawker could urge the claims of one of the farmers. MoRWENSTOW, May 21, 1867. My dear Mr. Martyn, — Just as I was about to write to you on other matters, your advertisement for the letting of your lands reached me. It is not, of course, my dutj' to express any opinion between landlord and tenant, or to give utterance to my sympathy with any one candidate over another ; yet there is a matter on which I am sure 3'ou will forgive me if I venture to touch. It is on the tenancy of your farm of Ruxmoore by Cann. He has been m\' churchwarden during the whole of his last term. He and his have been the most faithful adherents to the church of their baptism in my whole parish ; and he has been to me so sincere and attached a frit-nd in his station of life, that he without Ruxmoore, or Ruxmoore without the Canns, would be to me an utterly inconceivable regret. It was I who first introduced him to the choice of your family, twenty-eight years agone ; and throughout the whole of that time he has been, in his humble way, entirely faithful to nie and to you. I do not imagine that you intend to exclude 70 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW him from your farm, but I venture to hope that you will put me in possession confidentially of your wishes in regard to his future tenancy. Do you mean that he shall tender as before ? and does your valuation of his part of your land ascend ? He is not aware that I write to you hereon ; and, if you are disinclined to answer my questions, I hope you will allow me to record my hearty hope and trust that you will give him the preference over other new and local candi- dates, in or out of Morwenstow. I have firm confidence in the justice and mercy of your heart. But you must not infer that Cann alone of all your tenants is, or has been, the object of my special regard. ... In Wellcombe, B whom you remember, no doubt, by name, is one of my regular communicants. And now the very kind and generous sym- pathy which Mrs. INIartyn and yourself have shown towards my school demands a detail of our success. The children on the day-school books amount to sixty- three. The inspectors (diocesan) pronounce it to be the most satisfactory school in their district. I always visit and instruct the children in person once a week. Mrs. Hawker has had a singing class of boys and girls weekly at the vicarage. But this duty and the harmonium in church are now undertaken by Mrs. T , for a reason that will readily suggest itself to your mind. But why should I hesi- tate to avow to old friends that we expect another guest at the vicarage ? How I hope that God may grant us a boy, that I may utter the words of the fathers of holy time, " My son, my son I " Morwenstow, Jan. 22, 1857. My dear Sir, — It is no longer possible to nourish the project which I have all along, every week and day, intended to essay, viz., a journey down to Flexbury Hall. We have continually talked of it, more than once fixed the day, but we have been as singularly prevented as if some evil spirit had it at heart to hinder our purpose. And these obstacles have very often been occur- rences full of pain, domestic or personal. You have no doubt heard of the frightful accident to poor old George Tape, my caretaker and very excellent servant. He lived all his early life with old Mr. Shearm, here in the old Vicarage House'; was sexton twenty-five years ; v.orked with me from 1835 to 1 85 1 ; then visited Australia as a gold-digger; returned about two years agi ne with enough to live on, aided by a little work, and came back to be again my hind at Michaelmas last. He was, therefore, a long-accustomed face, almost as one of my own family. You will, therefore, understand the shock when we heard a man rushing up stairs to our little sitting-room with the tale of fear ; and on going down, I found poor George scaled in a chair, with the hand crushed THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 71 into pulp below the wrist, and dangling by the naked sinews. I made a rude tourniquet, in haste, of a silk handkerchief and short stick, aud so the hemorrhage was stopped. We got him home. I was with him nearly all night, and the next day till he died ; but the amputation I could not witness. We found two fingers and other pieces of flesh among the barley afterwards. . . I remain yours, my dear sir, very faithfully, R. S. Hawker. T, Carnsew, Esq. The generosity of the vicar to the poor knew no bounds. It was not always discreet, but his compassionate heart could not listen to a tale of suffering unaffected ; nay, more, the very idea that others were in want impelled him to seek them out at all times, to relieve their need. On cold winter nights, if he felt the frost to be very keen, the idea would enter his head that such and such persons had not above one blanket on their beds, or that they had gone, without anything to warm their vitals, to the chill damp attics where they slept. Then he would stamp about the house, collecting warm clothing and blankets, bottles of wine, and any food he could find in the larder, and laden with them, attended by a servant, go forth on his rambles, and knock up the cot- tagers, that he might put extra blankets on their beds, or cheer them with port wine and cold pie. The following graphic description of one of these night missions is given in the words of an old workman named Vinson. It was a very cold night in the winter of 1874-75, about half-past nine : he called me into the house, and said : " The poor folk up at Shop will all perish this very night of cold. John Ode is ill, and cannot go : can you get there alive ? " " If you please, sir, I will, if you'll allow me," I said. " Take them these four bottles of brandy," he says ; and he brought up four bottles with never so much as the corks drawed. " Now," says he, " what will you have yourself ? " And I says, " Gin, if you plase, sir," I says. And he poured me out gin and water ; and then he gi'ed me a lemonade bottle of gin for me to put in my side-pocket. "That'll keep you alive," he says, " before you come back." So he fulled me up before I started and sent me oil to Shop, to four old people's houses, with a bottle of brandy for each. And then he says : " There's two shillings for yourself ; and you keep pulling at that bottle, and you'll keep yourself alive r- THE VICAli OF MORWENSTOW afore you come back." So I went there, and delivered the bottles ; and I'd had enough before I started to bring me home again, so I didn't uncork my bottle of gin. And it isn't once, it's scores o' times, he's looked out o' window, after I've going home at night, and shouted to me : "Here, stay', come back; Vinson," and he's gone into the larder, and cut off great pieces of meat, and sent me with them, and p'raps brandy or wine, to some poor soul ; and he always gi'ed me a shilling, either then or next da3^ for myself, besides meat and drink. " They are crushed down, my poor people," he would say with energy, stamping about his room — " ground down with poverty, with a wretched wage, the hateful truck system, till they are degraded in mind and body." It was a common saying of his, " If I eat and drink, and see my poor hunger and thirst, I am not a minister of Christ, but a hon that lurketh in his den to ravish the poor." The monetary value of the living was 1^365 . He wrote up over the porch of his vicarage : A house, a glebe, a pound a day, A pleasant place to watch and pray : Be true to Church, be kind to poor, O minister, for evermore ! Of his overflowing kindness to the shipwrecked, men- tion shall be made in another chapter. The many sufferers whom he rescued from the water, housed, fed, nursed and clothed, and sent away with liberal gifts, always spoke of his charity with warmth and gratitude. In no one instance would he accept compensation for the deeds of charity which he performed. He received letters of thanks for his services to the shipwrecked from shipowners in Norway, Denmark, France, Scotland and Cornwall, who had lost vessels on this fatal coast, as well as from the Consuls of the several nations. Like his grandfather. Dr. Hawker, he was ready to give away everything he had ; and he was at times in straitened circumstances, owing to the open house he kept, and the profusion with which he gave away to the necessitous. This inconsiderate generosity sometimes did harm to those who received it. One instance will suffice. The vicar of Morwenstow had, some years ago, a THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 73 servant, whom we will call Stanlake ; the man may be still alive, and therefore his real name had better not be given to the world. One day Mr. Hawker ordered his carriage to drive to Bidefoid, some twenty miles distant. The weather was raw and cold. He was likely to be absent all day, as he was going on to Barnstaple by train to consult his doctor. His compassion was roused by the thought of Stanlake having forty miles of drive in the cold, and a day of lounging about in the raw December air ; and just as he stepped into the carriage he produced a bottle of whisky, and gave it to Stanlake. Mr. Hciwker was himself a most abstemious man : he drank only water, and never touched wine, spirits, or beer. On the way to Bideford, at Hoops, thinking the coachman looked blue with cold, the vicar ordered him a glass of hot brandy and water, ^^"hen he reached Bideford Station he said : " Now, StanLke, I shall be back by the half-past four train : mind you meet me with the carriage. " All right, sir." But Mr. Hawker did not arrive by the half-past four train. Up till that hour Stanlake had kept sober, he had not touched his bottle of whisky ; but finding that his master did not arrive, and that time hung heavily on his hands, he retired to the stable, uncorked the bottle, and drank it off. At six o'clock Mr. Hawker arrived at Bideford. There was no carriage at the station to meet him. He hurried to the inn where he put up, and ordered his conveyance. He was told that his man was incapable. " Send him to me, ^end him here," he thundered, pacing the coffee-room in great excitement. " Please, sir, he is under a heap of straw and hay in a loose box in the stable dead drunk." " Make him come." After some delay the information was brought him, that, v.hen Mr. Stanlake after great efforts had been reared upon his legs he had fallen over again. " Put the horses to. I can drive as well as Stanlake. I will drive home myself ; and do you shove that drunken boor head and crop into the carriage." 74 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW The phaeton was brought to the door ; the vicar mounted the box, the drunken servant was tunibled inside, the door shut on liim, and off they started for a long niglit drive with no moon in the sky, and frosty stars looking down on the wintry earth. Half-way between Bidcford and Morwenstow, in descending a hill the pole-strap broke ; the carriage ran forward on the horses' heels ; they plunged, and the pole drove into the hedge ; with a jerk one of the carriage springs gave way. Mr. Hawker, afraid to get off the box without some one being at hand to hold the horses' heads, shouted lustily for help. No one came. " Stanlake, wake up ! Get out ! " A snore from inside was the only answer. Mr. Hawker knocked the glasses with his whip handle, and shouted 5'et louder : " You drunken scoundrel, get out and hold the horses ! " " We won't go home till morning, till daylight doth appear," chanted the tipsy man in bad tune from within. After some time a labourer, seeing from a distance the stationary carriage lamps, and wondering what they were, arrived on the scene. By his assistance the carriage was brought sideways to the hill, the horses were taken out, a piece of rope procured to mend the harness and tie up the broken spring ; and Mr. Hawker remounting the box, drove forward, and reached Mor- wenstow vicarage about one o'clock at night. In the morning Stanlake appeared in the library, very downcast. " Go away," said the vicar in a voice of thunder, " I dismiss you forthwith. Here are your wages. I will not even look at you. Let me never see your face again. You brought me into a pretty predica- ment last night." Two days after he met the man again. In the mean- time his wrath had abated, and he began to think that he had acted harshly with his servant. " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us," ran in his head. " Stanlake," said he, " you played me a hateful trick the other night. I hope you are sorry for it." " I'se very sorry, your honour, but you gave me the whisky." THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 75 " You think you won't do it again ? " " I'se very sure I won't, if you give me nu more." " Then, Stanlake, I will overlook it. You may remain in my service." Not many weeks after, the vicar sent Stanlake to Boscastle, and, thinking he would be cold, gave him again a bottle of whisky. Of course, once more the man got drunk. This time the vicar did not overlook it ; but which of the two was really to blame ? " Mr. Robert Stephen Hawker was a man of the most unbounded hospitalit}'. Every one who visited Mor- -.venstow met with a warm welcome : everything his larder and dairy contained was produced in the most lavish profusion. The best that his house could afford was freely given. On one occasion, when about to be visited by a nephew and his wife, he sent all the way to Tavistock, about thirty miles, for a leg and shoulder of Dartmoor mutton. If he saw friends coming along the loop drive which descended to his vicarage, he would run to the door, with a sunny smile of greeting, and both hands extended in welcome, and draw them in to break his bread and partake of his salt. Sometimes his larder was empty, he had fed so many visitors ; and he would say sorrowfully : ' ' There is nothing but ham and eggs ; I give thee all, I can no more." And visitors were most numerous in summer. In one of his letters he speaks of having entertained 150 in a summer. His drawing-room on a summer afternoon was often so crowded with visitors from Bude, Clovelly, Bideford, Stratton and elsewhere, come to tea, that it was difficult to move in it. " Look here, my dear," he would say to a young wife, " I will tell you how to make tea. Fill the pot with leaves to the top, and pour the water into the cracks." His tea was always the best Lapsing Souchong from Twining's. He was a wretched carver. He talked and laughed, and hacked the meat at the same time, cutting here, there and anywhere, in search of the tenderest pieces for his guests. " One day that we v/cnt over to call on him unex- pectedly," says a friend, " he made us stay for lunch. He was in the greatest excitement and delight at our visit, and in the flurry decanted a bottle of brandy 76 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW and filled our wine-glasses with it, mistaking it for sherry. The joint was a fore-quarter of l.imb. It puzzled him extremely. At last, losing all patience, he grasped the leg-bone with one hand, the shoulder with the fork driven up to the hilt through it, and tore it by main force asunder." Another friend describes a " high tea " at his house. A whole covey of partridges was brought on table. He drove his fork into the breast of each, then severed the legs by cutting through the back, and so helped each person to the wliole breast and wings. The birds had not been cooked by an experienced hand, and properly trussed. The whole covey lay on their backs with their legs in the air, presenting the drollest appearance when the cover — large enough for a sirloin of beef — was removed from the dish. " When you steal your own cream, my dear," was a saying of his to ladies, "don't take just a spoonful on a bit of bread, but clear the whole pan with a great ladle and no bread. " One story about a breakdown when driving has been told : another incident of the same description shall be given in liis own words : Nov. 4, 1856. My dear Sir. — When I relate the history of our recent transit through Poughill by night, I think you will allow that I am not nervous beyond measure when I say that I am obliged through fear to deny myself the pleasure of joining your hospitable board on Thursday next. Before we had crossed Summerleaze one lamp went out ; another languished. My clumsy servant John had broken both springs. A lan- tern, which we borrowed at Lake Cottage of a woman called Barrett, held aloft by our boy, just enabled us to creep along amid a thorough flood of cold rain, until we arrived at Stowe. There we succeeded in negotiating a loan of another piece of candle, and moved on, a rare and rending headache meanwhile throbbing under my hat Half-way down Stowe hill, the drag-chain broke suddenly, and but for extreme good be- haviour on the part of the horses — shall I add good driving on mine ? — we must have gone over in a heap, to the great delight of the Dissenters in this district. We did at last arrive home, but it was in a very disconsolate condition. Still, good came of our journey ; for Mrs. Hawker cannot deny that I drove in a masterly manner, and therefore is bound to travel anywhere with me by day. We mean, with your leave, to come down to you early one day soon, and depart so as THE VICAR OF MORWEXSTOW 77 to be at home before dark. Tell your son that on Saturday night last, at eight o'clock, tidings came in that carriage-lamps flared along our in-road. I found at the door " a deputation from the Parent Society," the Rev. L. H . Three friends had previously suggested his visit here, and all three had been snubbed. But he put into my hand a note from Leopold Ackland, so there was no longer any resistance. He had travelled far — Australia, Egypt, the Crimea during the Anglican defeat. So his talk amused us. With kindest regards to all at Flexbury, I remain, yours, my dear sir, very faithfully, R. S. Hawker. T. Carnsew, Esq. Mr. Hawker, as has been already intimated, was rather peculiar in his dress. At first, soon after his induction to Morwenstow, he wore his cassock ; but in time abandoned this inconvenient garb, in which he found it impossible to scramble about his chffs. He then adopted a claret-coloured coat, with long tails. He had the greatest aversion to an^^thing black : the only black things he would wear were his boots. These claret-coloured coats would button over the breast, but were generally worn open, displaying beneath a knitted blue fisherman's jersey. At his side, just where the Lord's side was pierced, a little red cross was woven in the jersey. He wore fishing-boots reaching above his knee. The claret-coloured cassock coats, when worn out, were given to his servant-maids, who wore them as morning-dresses when going about their dirty worlv. " See there ! the parson is washing potatoes ! " or, " See there ! the parson is feeding the pigs ! " would be exclaimed by the villagers, as they saw his servant girls engaged on their work, in their master's house. At first he went about in a college cap ; but after speedily made way for a pink or plum-coloured beaver hat without a brim, the colour of which rapidly faded to a tint of pink, the blue having disappeared. When he put on coat, jersey or hat he wore it till it was worn out : he had no best suit. Once he had to go to Hartland, to the funeral of a relative. On the way he had an accident — his carriage upset, and he was thrown out. When he arrived at Hartland, his relations condoled with him on his upset. 78 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW " Do, Hawker, let me find you a new hat : in your faU you have knocked the brim off yours," said one. " My dear -," he answered, " priests of the Holy Eastern Church wear no briins to their hats ; and I wear none, to testify the connection of the Cornish Church with the East, before ever Augustine set foot in Kent." And he attended the funeral in his brimless hat. He wore one of these pecuhar coloured hats, bleached almost white, at the funeral of his first wife, in 1863, and could hardly be persuaded to allow the narrowest possible band of black crape to be pinned round it. The pink hats were, however, abandoned, partly because they would not keep their colour ; and a priest's wide-awake, claret-coloured like the coat, was adopted in its place. " My coat," said he, when asked by a lady why he wore one of such a cut and colour, " my coat is that of an Armenian archimandrite." But this he said only from his love of hoaxing pei'sons who asked him imper- tinent questions. When Mr. Hawker went up to Eondon to be married the second time, he lost his hat, which was carried away by the wind as he looked out of the window of the train, to become, perhaps, an inmate of a provincial museum as a curiosity. He arrived hatless in town after dark. He tied a large crimson silk handkerchief over his head, and thus attired paced up and down the street for two hours before his lodging, in great excitement at the thought of the change in his prospects which would dawn with the morrow. I must leave to the imagination of the reader the perplexity of the policeman at the corner over the extraordinary figure in claret- coloured clerical coat, wading boots up to his hips, blue knitted jersej', and red handkerchief bound round his head. His gloves were crimson. He wore these in church as well as elsewhere. In the dark chancel, lighted only dimly through the stained east window, hidden behind a close-grated screen, the vicar was invisible when performing the service, till, having shouted " Thomas," in a voice of thunder, two blood-red hands were thrust through the screen, with offertory bags, in which alms were to be collected by the churchwarden who answered the familiar gall. Or, the first appearance of the vicar took place after THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 79 the Nicene Creed, when a crimson hand was seen gliding up the banister of the pulpit, to be followed by his body, painfully worming its way through an aperture in the screen, measuring sixteen inches only ; " the camel getting at length through the eye of the needle," as Mr. Hawker called the proceeding. In church he wore a little black cap over his white hair, rendered necessary by the cold and damp of the decaying old church. At his side he carried a bunch of seals and medals. One of his seals bore the fish sur- rounded by a serpent biting its tail, and the legend ix^vs. Another bore the pentacle, with the name of Jehovah in Hebrew characters in the centre. This was Solomon's seal. " Witli this seal," he said, " I can command the devils." His command of the devil was not always successful. He built a barn on the most exposed and elevated point of the glebe ; and when a neighbour expostulated with him, and assured him that the wind would speedily wreck it, " No," he answered : " I have placed the sign of the cross on it, and so the devil cannot touch it." A few weeks after, a gale from the south-west tore the roof off. "The devil," was his explanation, "was so enraged at seeing the sign of the cross on my barn, that he rent it and wrecked it." A man whom he had saved from a wreck, in gratitude sent him afterwards, from the diggings in California, a nugget of gold he had found. This Mr Hawker had struck into a medal or seal, and wore always at his side with the bunch. Attached to the button-hole of his coat was invariably a pencil suspended by a piece of string. He was a well-built man, tall, broad, with a face full of manly beauty, a nobly cut profile, dark, full eyes, and long snowy, hair. His expression was rapidly changing, like the sea as seen from his cliffs ; now flashing and rippling with smiles, and anon overcast and sad, sometimes stormy. Mr. Hawker, some short time after his induction into Morwenstow, adopted an alb and cope v,'hich he wore throughout his ministrations at matins, litany and communion service. But he left off wearing the cope about ten or twelve years ago, and the reason he gave 8o THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW for doing so was his disapproval of the extravagances of the Rituahst party. Till the year before he died he had no personal knowledge of their proceedings, and related as facts the most ridiculous and preposterous fables concerning them which had been told him, and which he sincerely believed in. The ceremonial he employed in his church was entirely of his own devising. When he baptised a child he raised it in his arms, carried it up the church in his waving purple cope, thundering forth, with his rich, powerful voice, the words : " We receive this child into the congre- gation of Christ's flock," etc. His administration of this sacrament was most solemn and impressive ; and I know of parents who have gone to IMorw^enstow for the purpose of having their children baptised by him. In celebrating marriage it was his A\ont to take the ring and toss it in the air before restoring it to the bride- groom. What was symboUsed by this proceeding I have been unable to ascertain, unless it were to point out that marriage is always more or loss of a toss-up. After abandoning the cope for the reasons stated, his appearance in girdled alb was not a little peculiar. The alb, to any one not accustomed to see it, has much the look of a nightgown. Over his shoulders he wore a stole of which he was very fond. It was copied for him from one found at Durliam, which had been placed in the shrine of St. Cuthbcrt, on the body. Mr. Hawker bore a special reverence for the memory of St. Cuthbert, who, living on his islet of Fame, the haunt of sea-mews, taming the wild birds, praying, meditating amidst the roar of the North Sea, he though occupied a position not unlike his own. The week before he died, Mr. Hawker sent to Morwenstow for this stole, and was photographed in it. " We are much taken with the old church," wrote a well-known public man a few years ago to a friend, " to say nothing of the vicar thereof, who reminds me immensely of Cardinal Wiseman. He is a sight to see, as well as a preacher to hear, as he stands in his quaint garb and ijuaint pulpit, and looks as if he belonged to the days of Morwenna Abbatissa herself." He was usually followed to church by nine or ten cats, which entered the chancel with him and careered about it during service. Whilst saying prayers Mr. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 8i Hawker would pat his cats, or scratch them under their chins. Originally ten cats accompanied him to church ; but one, having caught, killed and eaten a mouse on a Sunday, was excommunicated, and from that day was not allowed again within the sanctuary. A friend tells me that on attending jVIorwenstow Church one Sunday morning, nothing amazed him more than to see a little dog sitting upon the altar step behind the celebrant, in the position which is usually attributed to a deacon or a server. He afterwards spoke to Mr. Hawker on the subject, and asked him why he did not turn the dog out of the chancel and church. " Turn the dog out of the ark ! " he exclaimed : " all animals, clean and unclean, should find there a refuge." His chancel, as has been already said, was strewn with wormwood, sweet marjoram and wild thyme. He had a garden which he called his church garden, below his house, in a spot sheltered by dwarfed trees. In this garden he grew such flowers as were suitable for church decoration, and were named in honour of the Virgin Mary or the saints, such as columbine, lilies, Barnaby's thistle, Timothy grass, the cowslip (St. Peter's flower). Lady's smock, etc. Mr. Hawker's kindness to animals was a conspicuous feature in his character. The birds of Morwenstow became quite tame, and fluttered round him for food. " Ubi aves," he said, " ibi angeli." To the north side of the church, above the vicarage, is a small grove of trees, oaks and sycamores. There were nests in them of magpies ; Mr. Hawker thought that the}- were those of jackdaws, but these birds do not build nests among branches. He was very anxious to get rooks to inhabit this grove ; to obtain them he went to his chancel, and, kneeling before the altar, besought God to gi\e him a rookery where he wanted. Having made his prayer, full of faith, he had a ladder put to the trees, and he carefully removed the nests to a chimney of his house which was rarely used. " Jackdaws," said he, " I make you a promise : if you will give up these trees to rooks, you shall have the chimney of my blue room in scecula scecttlorum." The jackdaws took him at his word, and filled the 82 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW chimney with their piles of sticks which serve as nests. Somehow rooks were persuaded to settle amonp the tree- tops of his grove, and there the colony exists to the present day. •- Some years ngo, when Dr. Phillpotts was Bishop of Exeter, a visit of the bishop to Morwcnstow hatl been planned and decided upon. Mrs. Hawker insisted on having tlie blue room fitted up for his lordship. A fire would have to be lighted in the grate : the chimney would smoke unless cleared of nests. Mr. Hawker stood by whilst Mrs. Hawker and the maid prepared tlic blue room. He would not have the jackdaws disturbed ; he had given them his word of honour. Mrs. Hawker argued that necessity knows no law : the bishop must have a fire, and the jackdaws must make way for the bishop. She prevailed. " I wrung my hands, I protested, entreated and foretold evil," was the vicar's account of the affair. " Well, and did evil come of it ? " " Yes, the bishop never arrived, after all." Mr. Hawker was warmly attached to the Bishop of Exeter, and was accustomed to send him some braces of woodcocks every October. Not far from the church and vicarage was tlie Well of St. John, a spring of exquisitely clear water, which he always employed for his font. Sir j. Duller, afterwards Lord Churston, claimed the well, and an expensive lawsuit was the result. The vicar carried his right to the well, and Sir J. Duller had to pay expenses. Mr. Hawker would tell his guests that he was about to produce them a bottle of the costliest liquor in the county of Cornwall, and then give them water from the Well of St. John. The right to this water had cost several thousands of pounds. A letter dated 7th Feb. 1852, to a yound friend going up to the university, refers to his cats and dogs, and to his annual gift of woodcocks to the bishop, and may therefore be quoted at the conclusion of this chapter. Our roof bends over us unchanged. Berg (his dog) is still in our confidence, and well deserves it. The nine soft, furry friends of ours are well, and Kit rules them with a steady claw. Peggy is well and warm. . . I never knew game so scarce since I came to Morwcnstow ; except some woodcocks, which THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 83 I sent to the bishop as usual in October and November, we have had literally none. And now for one of those waste things, a word of advice. You are in what is called by snobs a fast college. I earnestly advise you to eschew fast men. I am now suffering from the effects of silly and idle outlay in Oxford. I do hope that nothing will induce you to accept that base credit which those cormorants, the Oxford tradesmen, always try to force on freshmen, in order to harass and rob them afterwards. No fast undergraduate in all my remembrance ever settled down into a respectable man. A.sk God for strong angels, and He will fulfil your prayer. Never forget Him, and He will never neglect you. CHAPTER V The Inhabitants of Morwenstow in 1834 — Cruel Coppinger — Whips the Parson of Kilkhampton — Gives Tom Tape a Ride — Tristam Pentire — Parminter and his Dog, Satan — The Ganger's Pocket — Wrecking — The Wrecker and the Ravens — The Loss of the Margaret Quail — The Wreck of the Ben Coolan — " A Croon on Hennacliff " — Letters concerning Wrecks — The Donkeys and the Copper Ore — The Ship Morwenna — Flotsam and Jetsam — Wrecks on 14th Nov., 1875 — Bodies in Poundstock Church — The Loss of the Caledonia — The Wreck of the Phoenix and of the Alonzo. WHEN the Rev. R. S. Hawker came to Morwen- stow in 1834, he found that he had much to contend with, not only in the external condition of church and vicarage, but also in that which is of greater importance. A writer in the John Bull says : " He found a manse in ruins, and partly used as a barn ; a parish peopled w^th w-reckers, smugglers and Dissenting Bryanites ; and a venerable church, deserted and ill-cared for amidst a heap of weeds and nettles. Desolate as was the situation of the gi'ey old sanctuary and tower, standing out upon the rugged incline that shelves down a descent of 300 feet to the beach, it was not more barren of external comfort than was the internal state of those who had been confided to his pastoral care. " The farmers of the parish were simple-hearted 84 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW and respectable ; but the denizens of the hamlet, after receiving the wages of the harvest time, eked out a precarious existence in the winter, and watched eagerly and expectantly for the shipwrecks that were certain to happen, and upon the plunder of which they surely calculated for the scant provision of their families. The wrecked goods supplied them with the necessaries of life, and the rended planks of the dismembered vessel contributed to the warmth of the hovel hearthstone. " When Mr. Hawker came to IMorwenstow, ' the cruel and covetous natives for the strand, the wreckers of the seas and rocks of flotsanr and jetsam,' held as an axiom and an injunction to be strictly obeyed : — Save a stranger from the sea, And he'll turn your enemy ! " The Morwenstow wreckers allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety — nay, more, for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed, permitted, and absolved the crime of murder V>y ' shoving the drown- ing man into the sea,' to be swallowed by the waves. Clin ! Cain ! where is thy brother ? And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered and pleaded in excuse, as in the case of undiluted brandy after meals, ' It is Cornish custom.' The illicit spirit of Cornisli custom was sup- plied by the smuggler, and the gold of the v.-reck paid him for the cursed abomination of drink." One of Mr. Hawker's parishioners, Peter Barrow,* had been, for full forty years, a wrecker, but of a much more harmless description : he had been a watcher of the coast for such objects as the waves might turn up to reward his patience. Another was Tristam Pentire,* a hero of contraband adventure, and agent for sale of smuggled cargoes in bygone times. With a merry twinkle of the eye, and in a sharp and ringing tone, he loved to tell such tales of wild adventure, and of " derring- do," as would make the foot of the exciseman falter, and his cheek turn pale. During the latter years of last century there lived in Wellcombe, one of Mr. Hawker's parishes, a man whose name is still remembered with terror — Cruel Coppinger. There are people still alive who remember his wife. THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 85 Local recollections of the man have moulded thenv selves into the rhj^me : Will you hear of Cruel Coppinger ? He came from a foreign land : He was brought to us by the salt water. He was carried away by the wind ! His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was sig- nalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. A strange vessel of foreign rig went on the reefs of Harty Race, and was broken to pieces by the waves. The only man who came ashore was the skipper. A crowd was gathered on the sand, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst rushed the dripping stranger, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel who had ridden to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her bridle, and, shouting in some foreign tongue, urged the double-laden animal into full speed, and the horse naturally took his homeward way. The damsel was Miss Dinah Hamlyn. The stranger descended at her father's door, and lifted her off her saddle. He then announced himself as a Dane, named Coppinger. He took his place at the family board, and there remained till he had secured the affections and hand of Dinah. The father died, and Coppinger at once succeeded to the management and control of the house, which thence- forth became a den and refuge of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighbourhood day and night. It was discovered that an organised band of smugglers, wreckers and poachers made this house their rendezvous, and that " Cruel Coppinger " was their captain. In those days, and in that far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were unprotected. There was not a single resident gentleman of property and weight in the entire district. No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the Tamar ; and, to put an end to all such surveillance at once, the head of a gauger was chopped off by one of Coppinger's gang, on the gunwale of a boat. Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the headlands 86 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW to lead them into the safest creek or cove. Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the chief terror of the Cornish Channel. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppingcr on board, she led a revenue-cutter into an intricate channel near the Bull Rock, where, from knowledge of the bearings. The Black Prince escaped scathless, while the Icing's vessel perished with all on board. In those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to Coppinger's men, he was seized and carried on board The Black Prince and obliged to save his life by enrolling himself in the crew. In 1835 an old man, of the age of ninety-seven, related to Mr. Hawker that he had been so abducted, and after two years' service had been ransomed by his friends with a large sum. " And all," said the old man very simply, " because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I would mention it." Amid sucli practices, ill-gotten gold began to flow and ebb in the liands of Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer, and paid the money in dollars, ducats, doubloons and pistols. The man of law demurred, but Coppinger with an oath bade him take this or none. The document bearing Coppinger's name it still extant. His signature is traced in stern, bold characters, and under his auto- graph is tlic word " Thuro " (thorough) also in his own handwriting. Long impunity increased Coppinger's daring. There were certain bridle-roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that no man was to pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did. They were called "Coppinger's trades." They all converged at a head- land which had the name of Steeple Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood 300 feet of perpendi- cular height, a precipice of smooth rock toward the beach, with an overhanging face 100 feet down from the brow. Under this was a cave, only reached by a cable ladder lowered from above, and made fast below on a projecting crag. It received the name of " Coppin- ger's Cave." Here sheep were tethered to the rock, and THE VICAR OF .AIORWEXSTOW 87 fed on stolen hay and corn till slaughtered ; kegs of brand}' and hoUands were piled around ; chests of tea ; and iron-bound sea-chests contained the chattels and revenues of the Coppinger roj-alty of the sea. The terror linked with Coppinger's name throughout the coast was so extreme that the people themselves, u-ild and lawless as they were, submitted to his sway as though he had been lord of the soil and they his vassals. Such a household as Coppinger's was, of course, far from happy or calm. Although when his father-in-law died he had insensibly acquired possession of the stock and farm, there remained in the hands of the widow a considerable amount of money as her dower. This he obtained from the helpless woman by instalments, and by this cruel means. He fastened his wife to the pillar of her oak bedstead, and called her mother into the room. He then assured her he would flog Dinah with a cat-o'- nine-tales till her mother had transferred to him the amount of her reserved property that he demanded. This act of brutal cruelty he repeated till he had utterly exhausted the widow's store. The Kilkhampton parson hated rook-pie. Coppinger knew it. He invited him to dine with him one day. A large rook-pie was served at one end of the table, and roast rooks at the other ; and the parson, who was very hungry, was forced to eat of them. When he departed he invited Coppinger to dine with him on the follo-\\ing Thursday. The smuggler anived, and was regaled on pie, whether rabbit or hare he could not decide. When he came home he found a cat's skin and head stuffed into his coat-pocket, and thereby discovered what he had been eating. Coppinger was furious. He had a favourite mare, so indomitable that none but he could venture on her back, and so fleet and strong that he owed his escape from more than one menacing peril to her speed and endurance. Shortly after the dinner off cat-pie, the rector of Kilkhampton was walking homeward along a lane when he heard behind him the clattering of horse-hoofs ; and Cruel Coppinger bore down on him, seated on his mare, whirling liis doublc-tlionged whip round his head. He lashed the back of the unfortunate parson, pursued 88 THE VICAR OF MORWEXSTOW him, struck and struck again till he had striped him hke a zebra, and then galloped off with the parting scoff : " There, parson, I have paid my tithe in full ; never mind the receipt." On the selfsame animal Coppinger is related to have performed another freak. He had passed a festive evening at a farmhouse, and was about to take his departure, when he spied in the corner of the hearth a little old tailor who went from house to house in exercise of his calling. His name was uncle Tom Tape. " Ha ! Uncle Tom," cried Coppinger, " we both travel the same road, and I don't mind giving you a hoist behind me on the mare." The old man cowered in the settle. He would not encumber the gentleman ; was unaccustomed to ride such a spirited horse. But Coppinger was not to be put off. The trembling old man was mounted on the crupper of the capering mare. Off she bounded ; and Uncle Tom, wath his arms cast with the grip of terror round his bulky companion, held on like ^rim death. Unbuckling his belt, Coppinger passed it round Uncle Tom's thin body, and buckled it on his own front. \Mien he had firmly secured his victim, he loosened his reins, and urged the mare into a furious gallop. Onwards they rushed, till they fled past the tailor's own door, where his startled wife, who was on the watch, afterwards declared " she caught sight of her husband clinging to a rainbow." At last the mare relaxed her pace ; and then Cop- pinger, looking over his shoulder said : "I have been under long promise to the Devil that I would bring him a tailor to make and mend for him ; and I mean to keep my word to-night." The agony, of terror produced by this announce- ment caused such struggles that the belt gave way, and the tailor fell among the gorse at the roadside. There he was found next morning in a semi-dehrious state, muttering : " No, no ; I never will. Let him mend his breeches v.ith his own drag-chain. I will never thread a needle for Coppinger or his friend." One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah's marriage with the Stranger. He was deaf and dumb, and mis- chievous and ungovernable from his youth. His cruelty to animals, birds and to other children was THE VICAR OF MORWEXSTOW 89 intense. Any living thing that he could torture yielded him delight. With savage gestures and jabbering moans he haunted the rocks along the shore, and seemed like some uncouth creature cast up by the sea. When he was only six years old, he was found one day on the brink of a cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing down- wards to the beach with convulsions of delight. There, mangled by the fall, and dead, they found the body of a neighbour's child of his own age ; and it was believed that little Coppinger had wilfully cast him over. It was a saying in the district that, as a judgment on his father's cruelty, his child had been born without a human soul. But the end arrived. Money became scarce, and more than one armed king's cutter was seen day and night hovering off the land. So he " who came with tie water went with the wind." His disappearance, like his arrival, was commemorated by a storm. A wrecker who had gone to watch the shore saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came to the beach, put off in a boat to the vessel and jumped on board. She spread canvas, stood off shore, and, with Coppinger in her, was seen no more. That night was one of storm. Whether the vessel rode it out or was lost none knew.^ Tristam Pentire* has already been mentioned. He was the last of the smugglers, and became Mr. Hawker's servant-of -all- work. The vicar had many good stories to relate of his man. " There have been divers parsons in this parish since I have been here," said Tristam, " some strict, and some not ; and there was one that had very mean notions about running goods, and said it was wrong to do so. But even he never took no part with the ganger ' Footpirints of Former Men. I have followed Mr. Hawker's tale closely, except in one point, where I have told the story as related to me in the neighbourhood differently from the way in which he has told it. Coppinger was wrecked at Hastland in 1792, and married to Ann (not Diana) Hamlyn in 1793. The entry is in Hastland Parish Register : " Daniel Herbert Coppinger of the King's lloyal Navy and Ann Hamlyn mar. (licence) 3 August." She was the elder of two daughters of Mr. Acklaad Hamlyn of Galsham of Hastland. She suc- ceeded to the property, and died at Barnstaple, and was buried at Hastland, 5th September, 1833, aged 82. 90 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW — never. And besides," said old Trim, "wasn't the exciseman always ready to put vis to death if he could ? " One day he asked Mr. Hawker : " ('an you tell me the reason, sir, that no grass will ever grow on the grave of a man that's hanged unjustly ? " " No, indeed, Tristam : I never heard of the fact before." " That grave on the right hand of the path as you go down to the porch has not one blade of grass on it, and never will. That's Will Pooly's grave, that ^^as hanged unjustly." " Indeed ! How came that about ? " " Why, you see, they got poor Will down to Bodmin, all among strangers ; and there was bribery and false swearing ; and so they agreed together, and hanged poor Will. But his friends begged the body, and brought the corpse home here to his own parish ; and they turfed the grave, and they sowed the grass twenty times over ; but 'twas all of no use, nothing would grow — he was hanged unjustly." " Well, but, Tristam, what was he accused of ? What had Will Pooly done ? " " Done, your honour ? Done ? Oh ! nothing at all, except killed an exciseman." Among the " king's men " whose achievements haunted the old man's memory with a sense of mingled terror and dislike, a certain Parminter and his dog occu- pied a principal place. " Sir," said old Tristam one day to the vicar, " that villain Parminter and his dog murdered with their shetting-irons no less than seven of our people at divers times, and they peacefully at work at their calling all the while." Parminter was a bold of&cer, whom no threats could deter and no money bribe. He always went armed to the teeth, and was followed by a large fierce dog, which he called Satan. This animal he had trained to carry in his mouth a carbine or a loaded club, which, at a signal from his master, Satan brought to the rescue. " Ay, they was audacious rascals — that Parminter and his dog ; but he went rather too far one day, as I reckon," said old Tristam, as he leaned on his spade talking to the vicar. " Did he, Trim ? in what way ? " THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 91 " Whj', your honour, the case was this. Our people had a landing down at Melhuach, in Johnnie Mathey's hole ; and Parminter and his dog found it out. So they got into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in wait ; and when the first boat-load came ashore, just as the keel took the ground, down storms Parminter, shouting for Satan to follow. But the dog knew better, and held back, they said, for the first time in all his life : so in leaps Parminter smack into the boat, alone, with his cutlass drawn, but " — with a kind of inward ecstasy — " he didn't do much harm to the boat's crew." " Why not ? " " Because, your honour, they chopped off his head on the gunwale." Near Tonacombe Cross is a stone called the Witanstone. To that Tristam one day guided his master, the vicar. " And now, your honour," he said, " let me show you the wonderfuUest thing in all the place, and that is the Gauger's Pocket." He then showed him, at the back of the Witan-rock, a dry secret hole, about an arm's-length deep, closed by a moss-grown stone. " There, your honour," said he, with a joyous twinkle in his eye, " there have I dropped a little bag of gold, many and many a time, when our people wanted to have the shore quiet, and to keep the exciseman out of the way of trouble ; and then he would go, if he were a reasonable officer ; and the byword used to be, when 'twas all right, one of us would meet him, and say : ' Sir, j-our pocket is unbuttoned ' ; and he would smile, and answer : ' Ay, ay ! but never mind, my man, my money's safe enough.' And thereby we knew that he was a just man, and satis- fied, and that the boats would take the roller in peace ; and that was the very way it came to pass that this crack in the stone was called evermore the Gauger's Pocket." In former times, when a ship was being driven on the rocks on Sunday, whilst divine service was going on, news was sent to the parson, who announced the fact from the pulpit, or reading-desk, whereupon ensued a rapid clearance of the church. The story is told of a parson at Poughill, near Morwenstow, who, on hearing the news, proceeded down the nave, in his surplice, as far as the font ; and the people, supposing there was to be a christening, did not stir. But when he was near the door he shouted : " My Christian brethren, there's a ship 92 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW wrecked in the cove ; let us all start fair ! " and, fling- ing off his surplice, led the way to the scene of spoliation. " I do not see why it is," said a Cornish clerk one day, " why there be prayers in the Buke o' Common Prayer for rain and for fine weather, and thanksgivings for them and for peace, and there's no prayer for wrecks, nor thanksgiving for a really gude one when it is come." Mr. Hawker relates a good story in his Footprints, which was told him by an old man in his parish named Tony Cieverdon. " There was once a noted old wrecker, named Kins- man : he lived in my father's time ; and when no wreck was onward he would get his wages by raising stone in a quarry by the seashore. Well, he was to work one day over yonder, half-way down the ToAver-clifi, when all at once he saw two old ravens flying round and round very near his head. They dropped down into the quarry two pieces of wreck-candle just at the old man's feet." (Very often wreckers pick up Neapolitan wax candles from vessels in the Mediterranean trade that have been lost in the Channel). " So when Kinsman saw the candles, he thought in his mind, ' There is surely wreck coming in upon the beach ' ; so he packed his tools to- gether, and left them just where he stood, and went his way wrecking. He could find no jetsam, however, though he searched far and wide. Next day he went back to the quarry to his work. And he used to say it was as true as a proverb — there the tools were all buried deep out of sight, for the crag had given way ; and if he had tarried an hour longer he must have been crushed to death. So you see, sir, what knowledge those ravens must have had ; how well they knew the old man, and how dearly fond he was of wreck ; how crafty they were to hit upon the only plan that would ever have slocked him away." Wrecks are terribl37 frequent on this coast. Not a winter passes without several. There are men living who can remember eighty. If wrecking is no longer practised, the wrecking spirit can hardly be said to be extinct, as the following facts will testify : In 1845 21 ship came ashore in Melhuach Bay, between Boscastle and Bude. The surge burst against the cliffs, and it was impossible to launch a lifeboat ; but a rocket THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 93 was fired over the vessel, and so successfully that the hawser was secured to the ship. Every life would, in all probabilit}', have been saved, had not some wretches cut through the rope, more greedy for prey than careful to save life. Of all the crew the only person saved was the captain. He confirmed the opinion of the coast- guard, that, but for the cutting through of the hawser, every one on board would have been rescued. In 1864 a large ship was seen in distress off the coast. The Rev. A. Tlnnne, rector of Kilkhampton, at once drove to ^lorwenstow. The vessel was riding at anchor a mile off shore, west of Hartland Race. He found Mr. Hawker in the greatest excitement, pacing his room, and shouting for some things he wanted to put in his greatcoat-pockets, and irritably impatient because his carriage was not round. With him was the Rev. \V Valentine, rector of Whixley in Yorkshire, then resident at Chapel, in the parish of Morwenstow. " \Vhat are you going to do ? " asked the rector of Kilkhampton : " I intend to drive at once to Bude for the lifeboat." " No good ! " thundered the vicar, " no good comes out of the West. You must go East. I shall go to Clovelly, and then, if that fails, to Appledore. I shall not stop till I have got a lifeboat to take those poor fellows off the wreck." " Then," said the rector of Kilkhampton, " I shall go to Bude, and see to the lifeboat there being brought out. " Do as 5'ou like ; but mark my words, no good comes of turning to the West. Why," said he, " in the primi- tive Church they turned to the West to renounce the Devil." His carriage came to the door, and he drove off with Mr. Valentine, fast as his horses could spin him along the hilly, wretched roads. Before he reached Clovelly, a boat had put off \\dth the mate from the ship, which was the Margaret Quail, laden with salt. The captain would not leave the vessel ; for, till deserted by him, no salvage could be claimed. The mate was picked up on the way, and the three reached Clovelly. Down the street proceeded the following procession — the street of Clovelly being a flight of steps : Firsi, the vicar of Morwenstow in a claret-coloured 94 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW coat, mth long tails flying in the gale, blue knitted jersey, and pilot-boots, his long silver locks fluttering about his head. He was appealing to the fishermen and sailors of Clovelly to put out in their lifeboat, to rescue the crew of the Margaret Quail. The men stood sulky, lounging about with folded arms, or hands in their pockets, and sou'-westers slouched over their brows. The women were screaming at the tops of their voices, that they would not have their husbands and sons and sweethearts enticed away to risk their lives to save wrecked men. Above the clamour of their shrill tongues and the sough of the wind, rose the roar of the vicar's voice : he was convulsed with indignation, and poured forth the most sacred appeals to their compassion for drowning sailors. Second in the procession moved the Rev. W. Valentine, with purse full of gold in his hand, offering any amount of money to the Clo\-eIly men, if they would only go forth in the lifeboat to the wreck. Third came the mate of the Margaret Quail, restrained by no consideration of cloth, swearing and damning right and left, in a towering rage at the cowardice of the Clovelly men. Fourth came John, the servant of ^Ir. Hawker, with bottles of whisky under his arm, another inducement to the men to relent, and be merciful to their imperilled brethren. The first appeal was to their love of heaven, and to their humanity ; the second was to their pockets, their love of gold ; the third to their terrors, their fear of Satan, to whom they were consigned ; and the fourth to their stomachs, their love of grog. But all appeals were in vain. Then Mr. Hawker returned to his carriage and drove away, farther east, to Appledore, where he secured the lifeboat. It was mounted on a waggon. Ten horses were harnessed to it, and, a5 fast as possible, it was conveyed to the scene of distress. But, in the meanwhile, the captain of the Margaret Quail, despairing of help, and thinking that his vessel would break up under him, came off in his boat, with the rest of the crew, trusting rather to a rotten boat, patched with canvas which they had tarred over, than to the tender mercies of the covetous Clovellites, in whose veins THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 95 ran the too recent blood of wreckers. The only living being left on board was a poor dog. No sooner was the captain seen to leave the ship, than the Ciovelly men lost their repugnance to go to sea. They manned boats at once, gained the Margaret Quail, and claimed ;^3,ooo for salvage. There was an action in court, as the owners refused to pay such a sum ; and it was lost by the Ciovelly men, who, however, got an award of ;^i,200. The case turned somewhat on the presence of the dog on the wreck ; and it ivas argued that the vessel was not deserted, because a dog had been left on board, to keep guard for its masters. The owner of the cargo failed ; and the amount actually paid to the salvors was/600 to two steam-tugs (/300 each), and /300 to the Ciovelly skiff and sixteen men. The ship and cargo, minus masts, rigging, cables and anchors, were valued at /5,ooo. Mr. Hawker went round the country indignantly denouncing the boatmen of Ciovelly, and with justice. It roused all the righteous wrath in his breast. And, as may well be believed, no love was borne him by the in- habitants of that little fishing village. They would pro- bably have made a wreck of him, had he ventured among them. Another incident, at Bude, called forth a second burst of indignation, but this time not so justiy. A fine vessel, the Ben Coolan, laden with Government stores for India, ran ashore on the sand, outside Bude Haven. The lifeboat was got out ; but the sea was terrible, and there was no practised crew to man her. Crowds were on the pier, hooting the boatmen, and call- ing them cowards, because they would not put to sea, and save those on the vessel ; but an old Oxford eight man, who was present, assures me that the crew were not up to facing such a sea : they were gardeners, land- labourers, canalmen, not one among them who, when he rowed, did not look over his shoulder to see where he was going. The crew shirked putting out in the tremendous sea that was bowling in ; and the vessel broke up under the eye of those who stood on the pier and chffs. The first rocket that was fired fell short. The second went beyond the bows. The third went over the ship. The mate was seen to run forward to catch the rope, when a wave burst against the side, and spun him up in the 96 THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW foam, and he was seen no more. The ship turned broad- side to the waves, which tore her to pieces with great rapidity. Only a few of the crew w^re saved. The captain was drowned. Mr. Hawker wrote shortly afterwards : A CROON ON HENN.VCLIFF Thus .said the rii^Iiinp raven I'nto his huMi^ry mate : " Ho. gossip ! for Bude Haven ! There he corpses six or ei^ht. Cawk, cawk ! the crew and .-.kipper Are wallowing in the sea. So there's a >;ivoury sui)pcr For my old dame and me ! " " Cawk ! gaffer ! tliou art dreaming : Tho shore hath wreckers bold, \Voul