Perhaps he knew it and convinced himself, while still at the noon of intelligence, that he was no creator. Perhaps he abandoned art, through failure to satisfy his own ideals. At any rate it would seem that he stopped writing at a time when most men have still much to give.
One would like at least to believe that he found in his birthplace the distinguished privacy he desired and an abode of physical and mental peace. He may, indeed, have come home again to Devon when his work was ended; he may have passed the uncertain residue of life in seclusion with wife and family at this estate of his ancestors; his dust may lie unhonoured and unrecorded at Ilsington, as Herrick's amid the green graves not far distant at Dean Prior.
It is all guesswork, and the truth of John Ford's life, as of his death, may be forever hidden. One sees him a notable, silent, subtle man, prone to pessimism as a gift of heredity—a man disappointed in his achievement, soured by inner criticism and comparison with those who were greater than he.
So, weary of cities and the company of wits and poets, he came back to the country, that he might heal his disappointments and soothe his pains. His life, to the unseeing eyes around him, doubtless loomed prosperous and complete; to himself, perchance, all was dust and ashes of thwarted ambition. Again he roamed the woods where he had learned to walk; won to the love of nature; underwent the thousand new experiences and fancied discoveries of a townsman fresh in the country; and, through these channels, came to contentment and sunshine of mind, bright enough to pierce the night of his thoughts and sweeten the dark currents of his imagination. It may be so.
OKEHAMPTON CASTLE
A high wind roared over the tree-tops and sent the leaf flying—blood-red from the cherry, russet from the oak, and yellow from the elm. Rain and sunshine followed swiftly upon each other, and the storms hurtled over the forest, hissed in the river below and took fire through their falling sheets, as the November sun scattered the rear-guard of the rain and the cloud purple broke to blue. A great wind struck the larches, where they misted in fading brightness against the inner gloom of the woods, and at each buffet, their needles were scattered like golden smoke. Only the ash trees had lost all their leaves, for a starry sparkle of foliage still clung to every other deciduous thing. The low light, striking upon a knoll and falling on dripping surfaces of stone and tree trunk, made a mighty flash and glitter of it, so that the trees and the scattered masonry, that ascended in crooked crags above their highest boughs, were lighted with rare colour and blazed against the cloud masses now lumbering storm-laden from the West.
The mediæval ruin, that these woods had almost concealed in summer, now loomed amid them well defined. Viewed from aloft the ground plan of the castle might be distinctly traced, and it needed no great knowledge to follow the architectural design of it. The sockets of the pillars that sprang to a groined entrance still remained, and within, to right and left of the courtyard, there towered the roofless walls of a state chamber, or banqueting hall, on the one hand, a chapel, oratory and guard-room on the other. The chapel had a piscina in the southern wall; the main hall was remarkable for its mighty chimney. Without, the ruins of the kitchens were revealed, and they embraced an oven large enough to bake bread for a village. Round about there gaped the foundations of other apartments, and opened deep eyelet windows in the thickness of the walls. The mass was so linked up and knit together that of old it must have presented one great congeries of chambers fortified by a circlet of masonry; but now the keep towered on a separate hillock to the south-west of the ruin, and stood alone. It faced foursquare, dominated the valley, and presented a front impregnable to all approach.
This is the keep that Turner drew, and set behind it a sky of mottled white and azure specially beloved by Ruskin; but the wizard took large liberties with his subject, flung up his castle on a lofty scarp, and from his vantage point at stream-side beneath, suggested a nobler and a mightier ruin than in reality exists. One may suppose that steps or secret passages communicated with the keep, and that in Tudor times no trees sprang to smother the little hill and obscure the views of the distant approaches—from Dartmoor above and the valleys beneath. Now they throng close, where oak and ash cling to the sides of the hillock and circle the stones that tower to ragged turrets in their midst.