HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
THE STORY OF PURTON. A Collection of Notes and Hearsay gathered by Ethel M. Richardson. Bristol: Arrowsmith. 1919. 7s. 6d. net.
Mrs. Richardson, something of a new-comer to Purton, as it would appear, makes no pretensions to original research, and has contented herself so far with giving rather a guide to Purton than a history of the village, a pleasant, ample, and leisurely place in North Wilts, with a fine church and an unusually fine stone-built manor house to its name. Her explanatory sub-title, "Notes and Hearsay," prevents the expectation of anything exhaustive. The notes, though excellent as far as they go, might have been considerably extended with advantage to the book; and as to the hearsay, it must be owned that, so far, she has not heard of much—nothing, we will engage, to what she will hear if she lives in Purton long enough to be accepted by the natives. There is abundant material in every old village in England for a good and useful contribution to history, and, if Mrs. Richardson looks forward (as it is to be hoped she may) to a new edition of her little book, we would recommend to her notice Kingham Old and New, by W. Warde Fowler, which was published by Mr. Blackwell, of Oxford, in 1913, and is a model for any such work. Another which might help her is How to Write the History of a Parish, by the Reverend John Charles Cox, of which a fifth edition was published in 1909. Her first care should be to get hold of the Enclosure Award and Tithe Commutation Map, which ought to be in the vestry. One will give her the names of the Common Fields; the other, compared with the large-scale Ordnance map and helped by local knowledge, should enable her to find them all. Then, with the Parish Registers and, with luck, some Court Rolls, she should be able to get well back in the centuries, and might then make arrangements for a prolonged stay in London and daily attendance at the Public Record Office. What she might find there, or fail to find, there's no telling. If she were fortunate she would light upon some great old Chancery or Exchequer suit—better than the one in the Star-chamber, good as that is, which concerns the adventures of the image of Saint George, and is one of her happiest discoveries—in which the pleadings would be written in pure Shakesperean prose, and the depositions of witnesses record very often the ipsissima verba of the peasantry of its time. Behind all that—since Purton belonged to Malmesbury Abbey—she would find very much more than she has found so far concerning the economy, temporal and spiritual, of her parish and manor. She should undoubtedly find Subsidy Rolls which would record the names and status of the villagers back to the day of the Poll Tax. Some of the early Court Rolls may be there, and possibly also a Survey or Extent, which would give her the services and "boon-works" due from the bondsmen to their lords. There is no limit to be set to what diligence, and help from Mrs. Story-Maskelyne (whose chapter on Braden Forest and the parish boundaries is the best in the book), may recover from the Mausoleum in Fetter Lane. To that adventure we heartily commend Mrs. Richardson, that of a good book she may make a better.
THE MANNERS OF MY TIME. By C. L. Hawkins Dempster. Richards. 1920. 10s. 6d.
Miss Dempster, who died in 1913, was authoress in her day of certain novels, of which one, called Vera, was translated into Russian, and another, Blue Roses, was to be found on every bookstall in America. It met, she tells us here, with the favour of the late Duke of Albany. "Ah," said his Royal Highness, "that is a wonderful book! But why did you make it so sad? Please to make your next one end well." "The next one will be all right, sir. It is a Scotch story, and it does end well." That was at Cannes, where Miss Dempster lived and moved in a society of exiled kings, Russian grand dukes, princes, statesmen, high ladies and clergymen. The manners of such folk are without doubt as worthy of record as those of any other people whomsoever; but Miss Dempster, in the letters to an unnamed uncle, of which her book chiefly consists, contents herself for the most part with recording their names, entrances and exits upon the scene of the Riviera. We are irresistibly reminded of Captain Sumph in Pendennis.
"I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawny, and myself dining with Cardinal Mezzocado at Rome," Captain Sumph began, "and we had some Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember how the Cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Aix-la-Vecchia two days afterwards, where Byron's yacht was—and, by Jove, the Cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he rather liked him."
Incidentally, one may call attention to the letterpress. On page 148 a lady is referred to in a note as "a grandchild of Mr. Nassau, senior, now married to Mr. St. Loe Strachey." It is not, we believe, even true of that particular grandchild of Nassau senior's. We read of "the great coups de logis" of a castle in Normandy, of "the causus belli of the Franco-Prussian War." On page 213 we have an epitaph which is worth preservation:
LIC JACIT
CASPARUS HAÜSER
ÆNIGMA
PIÙ LEMPORIS
IGNOTO NATIVITAS
OCCULTA MORS
1883.
Sic, or lic, at any rate jacit, or lies, the record of the unfortunate Caspar in this work.
THE BRITISH ACADEMY: SEALS AND DOCUMENTS. By Reginald L. Poole. Oxford University Press, 2s. 6d. net.
Recently an important transaction was nearly stopped because one of the parties saw on an official document what he took to be the initials of a particular person. The letters were, however, only an indication where the seal should be affixed. Dr. Poole's Seals and Documents, an offprint from the Transactions of the British Academy, deals with earlier days, and may induce similar ignorance. It is but twenty odd pages long, but full of matter which the judicious reader will value as from a master of diplomatic. It summarises much learning, and suggests, by the way, several inquiries, e.g., as to the displacement of papyrus by parchment; the period at which a seal to close a secret letter—like our modern sealing-wax—went out of fashion; and the use of the diminutive sigillum instead of the classical signum for seal. Dr. Poole shows how easy it was for a seal to be lost, and mentions that a unique document in the Bodleian has been "irreparably mutilated" under the direction of the late Librarian. When parchment was used, thin pieces of the actual material could be stripped from it to tie it up with a seal affixed. It is odd that this simple practice has not been carried further back. Much of interest is given concerning the Papal bull, a bulla of lead used in warm countries where wax would not retain its distinctness. Bulls employed by the universal "Papa" remind us of the classical "bulla" worn by boys. The most ancient in existence is that of Pope Deusdedit (615-8). In England the bull is earlier than the wax seal, but the double-pendent seal which led to the Great Seal is an English invention. The whole subject is confused by the existence of forgeries, which need erudition like Dr. Poole's to dismiss.
THE STONES AND STORY OF JESUS CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE. Traced and told by Iris and Gerda Morgan. Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 21s. net.
Jesus College, Cambridge, has a unique beginning, as it grew out of a Benedictine Nunnery, and Bishop Alcock, of Ely, its founder, when he did away with the discredited sisterhood, adapted their ruined buildings instead of destroying them. The college was erected to the honour of the Blessed Virgin, St. John, and St. Radegund, but Alcock added the new title which it still bears. The names of Prioresses are preserved from Letitia, circa 1213, to Joan Fulbourne, 1493. Though we do not know precisely when the nuns began, there is an unusual amount of records left concerning them which tend to show that they were distinguished in family rather than learning, and given to hospitality as well as good works. They owed their butcher £21 at a time when a sheep cost a shilling. Let us hope that the good man's daughters learnt something as boarders in the St. Radegund Guest House. What can be gathered concerning early days is told pleasantly. It may seem odd that a nunnery should exist in Cambridge, quite near the site of the famous Sturbridge Fair; but the ladies started before the colleges began, and they were some way off the nucleus of academic buildings. The excellent sketches are a great addition to the book. The beautiful piscina figured on page 286 has long been familiar to lovers of Cambridge architecture, but new discoveries have been made since Le Keux published his Memorials in 1845. Jesus has been lucky in its antiquaries and historians, also in escaping the full fervour of that debased Gothic which flourished in the nineteenth century. The discovery of the Chapter Arches by the Rev. Osmond Fisher in 1893 is quite a romance. He was able to supplement many years earlier the indolence of a Master and save the Tower from falling.
The notes, other than architectural, chronicle the varying fortunes of the foundation, with details of the plague, plays in English and Latin, militant and destructive commissioners, and worthies like Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II. Cranmer's is the first name in the college lists, and it has always been distinguished in theology, though for most people its main modern reputation is for athletics. This side of the college is, however, not touched by the authors, who deal with reverend signiors and men famous in literature.
The college can boast of Sterne, whose grandfather was one of its masters; but nothing is known of his academic behaviour. This is just as well, since his associate Hall-Stevenson can hardly have been a model young man. Coleridge, the only poet, we think, who ever won an academic prize for a Greek Ode, was decidedly eccentric, and had a reputation for saying good things, as we learn from the lively pages of Gunning. He was treated with great leniency by the dons of Jesus, and left through his own perversity. His poetry at this time is negligible, and his lines "to a young Jackass on Jesus Piece," whom he wished to take with him,
in the Dell
Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell,
reveal the coming exponent of Pantisocracy. We do not think that his rowdiness at the trial of Frend in the Senate House is to his credit, in spite of his explanations.
The work of both writer and artist shows a genuine enthusiasm for the college and its memories. Both illustrations and print gain by the ample page; but a book weighing well over two-and-a-half pounds will hardly do as a "handbook."
COMRADES IN CAPTIVITY. By F. W. Harvey. Sidgwick & Jackson. 10s. 6d. net.
Mr. Harvey's book strikes one immediately as amazingly truthful. He not only gives one facts about his prison life in Germany, he avoids giving too many facts. Deliberately he refuses to be preoccupied with the mere horrors, or the beastliness of some of his captors, or the nervous strain on the prisoners. And this surely is artistically right, if one is to get a picture of what prison life meant to the average normal prisoner. The men who wished to retain sanity had to keep out of their minds, so far as they could, the things which Mr. Harvey leaves out of his book. They endeavoured by work, by lectures, by concerts, by games, by theatrical performances to recall continuously to themselves that normal life still prescribed in spite of their untoward fate. And nobly most of them succeeded. Perhaps some of their efforts were a little uncalled-for. For instance, Mr. Harvey tells us that on their first arrival at Guterslob new prisoners were treated quite formally by their fellow-countrymen:
New arrivals were not ignored by the British. There was a system whereby they even fed (German food being totally inadequate) until their own parcels began to arrive. Clothes, too, were served out to those who seemed in need. And there were invitations to tea with senior officers and officials. Such preliminaries accomplished, however, one was dropped like a hot coal—for a time, that is, until one had proved oneself.
And he also states that when at Crefeld all prisoners other than British were turned out. "We thought it damnable." The truth is our Allies had been, far more than we realised, an interest and diversion in captivity. Certainly it must have seemed odd to be made welcome by Russians and French rather than by one's fellow-countrymen, and we think it is due not, as Mr. Harvey, "to the national tradition," but to the public school and university tradition of the new boy and the freshman. Mr. Harvey enlivens his book with specimen lectures—including an excellent one of his own on Shaw—poems and anecdotes; and there are amusingly rough sketches by Mr. C. G. B. Bernard.
WILLIAM SMITH, POTTER AND FARMER, 1790–1858. By George Bourne. Chatto. 1920. 6s. net.
Mr. Bourne has written a beautiful and sensitive little book about his grandfather, and his own memories of his grandfather's village. It has in it that deep and still appreciation of English country and of the ways of English peasants, which is so common to all who know and love them, and so very rarely expressed. It has the quality of Jefferies at his best, and of Mr. Hudson too. The scenes which he evokes—the broad green spaces, the silence, the interminable round of tasks, the handling of the earth and its store—will never come again in the places of which he tells us. Farnborough, Frimley, Camberley, Yateley are suburbs of London, over-run by the spawn of Aldershot and the railway. Nowadays one must go further afield to realise the presence of Saint Use; and a term seems to be set even there. It is not that, in the Roman poet's phrase, Nos patriæ fines et dulcia linquimus arva: rather that those fair fields are flying further from us—as well they may, seeing what we make of them. Such a book as Mr. Bourne's will be treasured hereafter for the sake of the quiet beauty and homely virtues which it records, but very much also for the tenderness and fidelity with which it does its work.