There are letters of 13 and 17 August 1843 about some forks and spoons and other silver things that he was sending to my father: they have been packed into a carpet bag, and this is being rolled up in the middle of two feather beds, and the package will be sent by carrier’s wagon—“how long it will be going up, I am not aware.” It was sent to Moreton, and one carrier took it on to Exeter, another to Wellington, and so on. Seventy years afterwards I brought this silver back: 200 miles within 5 hours, house to house.
He writes on 13 February 1852, “Tho’ no snow in Plymouth, the wagons supplying provisions for Dartmoor could not go far upon their way, so it must be deep on the moor. Well, the convicts must go on short allowance. I do not know a better punishment for them.” Convicts were not sent to Dartmoor until 1850, and the natives did not welcome them.
In a letter of 17 July 1839 he describes a thunderstorm that caught him and a friend of his between this house and Kelly Cross. It shattered a great oak tree by the roadside just after they had passed. “The clouds appeared almost down upon us, and we were quite encircled in lightning: our umbrella was always full of it.” He writes about another storm, 26 June 1844, “It hung over us for near two hours: I think, the loudest thunder I ever heard. The rush of fire into water was so very distinct, and then followed the rapping and rolling—precisely as when a blacksmith inserts a large piece of iron into his trough full of water: the rush at first and then the rumbling which exactly resembles thunder. But I never before heard that rush: it was really very awfull.” He adds, “I remember Lustleigh tower being greatly damaged by lightning many years ago.”
He writes on 21 November 1852, “When you were here in the spring, you saw a rainbow in a field. Well, over in the Barleyparkes I saw a rainbow, both ends there. It literally lay on the ground: only the arch was erect and made a bend from the straight lines [he draws a capital U upside down] but both ends lay on the ground, and the ground sloped from me. I came within a yard of the ends of it, the arch not ten yards from me; but it receded as I approached. I walked it out of the field, and drove it before me to the Meadow, where I left it with both ends in the brook.”
Most people here lived patriarchally beneath their fig trees and their vines, and many of them found that ripe figs were like venison in tasting best with port. The older fig trees are usually on the sheltered sides of houses—the fig tree here is on the south side of the house, with its trunk close by the chimney and its roots in underneath the hearth—but of late years several have been planted on the sunny sides of some of the big rocks. The rock gives shelter, and also radiates the heat, so that the figs are ripened on both sides at once.
There has always been a vine on the west side of this house. My grandfather writes to my father, 7 November 1859, “Our grapes have turned out admirably this autumn, very large, equal to hothouse grapes in size and flavour. I only wonder that your mother has not been ill with them.” He writes on 1 July 1859, “Raspberries and strawberries in abundance, and I fear your aunt Ann has made too free with them, as she is ailing this morning.” My grandmother was 78 and her sister Ann was 80; but neither had learned wisdom yet. He writes on 4 January 1852, “I have been amused watching a nut-hatch. I see him go to the stock of the pear tree, take a nut from his little store and perch on another tree and knock away until he breaks it and eats the kernel. One nut appears to satisfy him at a time. Very provident it appears: a good lesson for man.” In two months time the lesson had been forgotten. He writes on 8 March 1852, “I see plainly that the malady was caused by my appetite being too good for my digestive powers.”
Writing about a dinner in London at which my father had made a speech, he says on 26 May 1858, “Too much of the old Corporation gluttony, I am sorry to see.... I should like to attend, to hear good speeches, but a slice of good cold beef would content me, with a glass of real French brandy.” In fact, plain living and high thinking: but not without Cognac.
He believed in brandy as a cure for everything, recommended it to everyone, and thought doctors ought to do the same. He writes, 24 January 1860, “I should say a little brandy would be beneficial, but doctors (you know) do not generally recommend what is easy to be got at by patients.” Of course, he could not recommend poor people to take brandy unless he gave them some to take. His advice was sought by many; and I have been told that when he died, there was quarts o’ tears a-shedded by the poor for he.
When he had a cider-press built here in the autumn of 1842, he had another one (exactly like it) built by the same man at an outlying farm. After his death the press here was neglected, and it finally was taken down; but I have now brought over the other press from the farm, and put it in the place of the press that he put here. In 1919 I made some cider with it, to compare it with the modern press that I put up in 1901. It requires about ten per cent. more apples and considerably more labour to produce the same amount of cider. And the cider is not quite the same, as the apples have to be packed in with straw, and the straw affects the colour and the taste.
Casks take up much more space upon a floor, when they are lying on their sides than when standing up on end. If a cask is full, both ends will be wet, when it is lying down; but, when a cask is standing up, the top end will be dry, and then will shrink and let the air in. (The ends are not as air-tight as the sides, as the cooper takes an end out when he scrapes a cask inside.) A little air soon spoils a cask of cider; and some of the big cider-growers have thought it worth their while to reconstruct their cellars and provide the extra space for casks to lie down on their sides instead of standing up. They might have saved all this by doing a very simple thing that I do here. When a cask is standing up, there is a shallow pan on top formed by the top end of the cask and the surrounding chine. Keep this pan filled with water, and that will keep the top end wet, so that it does not shrink and let the air in.