Though I have been in places, such as Chios and Messina, where there were earthquakes a little while before or after, I have never felt an earthquake in any place but London, 22 April 1884. It was in the morning, and I was going to take a coat down from a rack on which four coats were hanging, when I saw them swing like pendulums, and heard a bell ring. I knew what it was; but, when I asked other people if they had felt the earthquake, they were so impolitely incredulous that I felt embarrassed. I did not recover my character until the afternoon, when the papers issued their sensational posters.
On first seeing this house, a friend of mine began to think there might be ghosts about; but he changed his mind, on looking at some portraits that are hanging here. People of that type would never turn into ghosts that went wandering round a house at midnight: their ghosts would all be sitting round the fire drinking punch. These ghosts might tell me many things that I should like to know; and I hope that, if I meet them here, I shall have the presence of mind of Dante, when he met Adam and forthwith asked him for an ‘interview’ upon primæval language and other forgotten things, Paradiso, xxvi. 94-96.
Another friend was puzzled about the Inner Parlour the first time that he came here: he had seen something like it once before, but could not remember where. He told me afterwards that he had thought of it. It was in a Pantomime, and it was called The Kitchen In The Ogre’s Home.
Strangers come here now and then, and ask if they may see the garden and the house. One day some Americans came, and were much taken with it all. One of them said to another:—“I should like to pho-to-graph that house.” But the other answered:—“No. That house ought not to be pho-to-graphed. It ought to be paint-ted in oi-il.”
Two of the sitting-rooms here are called the Tallet and the Shippen. Both names are common in this district; but one of them is Latin, and the other one is Saxon. Tallet is merely a corruption of tabulatum, which means an upper floor. Shippen comes from scipen, like Ship from scip, and means some sort of shed.
The names Beer and Brewer are also common here, both for persons and for places. Beer means a grove of trees, bearu in Saxon. And that is why so many orchards have that name. Brewer means heather, brueria in late Latin, bruyère in modern French. Teign Brewer, not far from here, belonged to Geoffrey de la Bruere; and then a part of it came to his son-in-law, Thomas le Gras, and was named Teign Grace. This fat (gras) Thomas was contemporary with the gallant (preux) William—William le Pruz, or Prowse—whose effigy rests in the transept of the church at Lustleigh.
Teigncombe, further up the Teign, has given its name to a family that came from there. Their name is written as Tinckcom on the court-roll of Wreyland manor; and I believe that one branch of the family now bears the name of Tinker. The family of Pipard gave its name to Piparden, which now is Pepper Down; and Genesis Down owes its name to the Genista, the broom plant of the Plantagenets.
From a point on Reddiford Down there is a grand view over hill and dale; but in all that wide expanse of country there are
