Under a farmer’s will his farm went to his only son, but nearly all the stock was sold for paying the daughters’ legacies, as he had not reckoned on a fall in prices. The young man only got an unstocked farm and had no money for stocking it; but an aged relative of his made light of that. She said to me, “I tell’n he must marry one that hath some hornéd cattle,” and he chafed at such restriction of his choice. Another old lady, a relative of hers, was asking after a friend of mine who had been badly wounded in the War. I told her that he had quite recovered, and added that he had married his nurse: whereat she threw up her hands, exclaiming, “Oh, that War, it hath been a terrible thing for some of’n.”
There was an old saying here, “I would rather go to the funeral of a daughter than to her wedding of a doctor.” My grandfather quotes it in a letter of 30 November 1865 as if he quite agreed with it, and adds, “Strange, those doctors are always poor, and a miserable affair of it generally.” He did not much approve of marrying for love, or anything else, unless there were sufficient means. I remember that he thought the answer insufficient when somebody had cried out, “There she is, marrying him all in the depths of poverty,” and another person answered, “He hath blood.”
In his letters to my father on the death of relatives or friends, he enumerates all possible grounds of consolation. Thus, 30 June 1854, “Therefore on reflection I say we ought to be very thankful he was taken off as he was without pain or suffering.” He says this of a friend who had been staying with him a week before in full vigour of body and mind, and died just after leaving here from unsuspected weakness of the heart. In most cases he finds so many grounds for consolation that he comes very near saying it is really a good riddance. Thus, 18 September 1853, “On the whole, taking everything into consideration, I say there is nothing to grieve about, but all his friends ought to be thankful he is taken.” Again on 6 October 1853, “I should say a happy release for his mother,” and on 10 January 1855, “A happy release, I say, for himself and all about him,” and on 16 January 1855, “I say we ought all to be thankful he is taken before his sister, for what he would have done, had she been taken first, I cannot tell.”
This practical or utilitarian view was not uncommon here. He writes about a death at Lustleigh, 7 September 1845, “She died last evening. What will the old man do now. When his wife was very ill, I inquired for her. He said she was not likely to live, but then (he said) we can do without her. This is his son’s wife, a clever woman; and what they will do now, I am at a loss to say, for they have neither wife nor daughter, and of course must trust to a housekeeper.”
My grandmother generally saw things in another light. She writes to my father on 19 February 1845, “Report says we are to have Jane for a neighbour. It appears she has captivated Mr ***** and in due time, I suppose, will become his wife. It will be an excellent match for Jane. He is considered very wealthy and I believe a very nice man. He has called here several times and repeatedly requested your father to visit him: your father calls on no person, I am sorry to say.” Writing on 23 February, my grandfather just mentions the report and adds, “Depend on it, Jane will soon turn things upside down there.”
On another marriage he writes, 16 November 1851, “Your mother had a full and particular account of the wedding the day after.... I have often heard of throwing an old shoe after a new married couple to wish them good luck. I never knew it practised in Moreton but once, and then [the bride’s father] ran out in the street and threw an old shoe after the carriage. It did not carry luck with it, for that was an unfortunate marriage, so the story was he ought to have thrown more. To obviate all that, they threw shoes by the dozen: all the old shoes were looked up and thrown after and about the carriage like grape shot. Well, I hope they will be happy.”
As he thought all this worth mentioning, he might as well have gone to see it for himself, and also gone to see much else; but that was not his way. He writes on 9 June 1862, “This is Whitmonday, and the bells are ringing for two weddings that are solemnized today, so Lustleigh will be gay in addition to the usual holyday for the labourers and the children. I see nothing of it, but generally hear a squall of children and the hoarse voice of the men at the skittle playing. I give something to set the children a-running and something for the fiddler.” A younger man, of great ability, told my sister what he thought about it all, 11 October 1870, “He thought living in this remote part enough to rust the brains of any clever man, as you might pass a month without meeting anyone who could talk on any subject above pigs and cows.”
Flocks and herds, or pigs and cows, are not bad themes for talk, if anyone can handle themes judiciously and keep them in their place—flocks and herds are not like golf. But in reality they may be burdensome. My grandfather notes with pleasure, 13 December 1841, “My cows are regularly fed, three times a day, unlike farmer’s cows which catch what they can,” and then rather wearily, 10 August 1869, “My farm is a trouble and expense.” And the lesson is, never have a hobby that you cannot cast aside. You want no needless worries at a time when you have one foot in the grave and then get the gout in the other one.
In my father’s diary of his first visit to London he speaks of pictures at the Royal Academy and National Gallery and elsewhere, but the only artist whom he mentions by name is Benjamin West. This was in 1832, and West had died in 1820; he had been President of the Academy for nearly thirty years and was still in high repute. There are two wash drawings here signed, ‘B. West, 1785’ and ‘B. West, Windsor, 1788.’ The latter is one of his designs for the friezes at the Queen’s Lodge, built by George the Third and since destroyed. It is four feet long and seven inches high, with thirty-three figures personifying arts and sciences; the fine arts in the middle, the peaceful arts and sciences on one side and the warlike on the other. The earlier drawing is of Segestes giving his daughter to Germanicus as a hostage for Arminius. This was a favourite subject then, and West painted several pictures of it, the earliest in 1772.
West’s drawings are generally a great deal better than his paintings, and Galt gives the reason in his Life of West, II. 204.—In drawing and colouring he was one of the greatest artists of his age, but his powers of conception were far higher; “and it is this wonderful force of conception which renders his sketches so much more extraordinary than his finished pictures.” West is in oblivion now with most of the Academicians of his time, except the portrait painters. (There is a picture by one of those Academicians in Teign Grace church, a Madonna by James Barry, quite unnoticed now.) But repute depends on fashion, not on merit; and many artists of less merit are extolled.