“The Exe is ‘arrowy’ just before its confluence with the Barle, running, as my father remarked, ‘too vehemently to break upon the jutting rocks.’ We sat next on a wooden bridge over the Exe, and he said to me, ‘That is an old simile, but a good one: Time is like a river, ever past and ever future.’
“In the afternoon, we drove through the Barle valley to Hawkridge, then to the Torr Steps, high up among the hills, with an ancient bridge across the river, flat stones laid on piers. Some tawny cows were cooling themselves in mid-stream; a green meadow on one side, on the other a wooded slope. ‘If it were only to see this,’ he said, ‘the journey is worth while.’
“We climbed Haddon Down [Draydon Knap?], and then to Higher Combe—a valley down which there was a most luxuriant view, the Dartmoor range as background, almost Italian in colouring.”
Lord Tennyson adds, that, at Dulverton, his father began the Hymn to the Sun in a new metre, for his “Akbar.”
A most exquisite view is to be obtained from Baron’s Down, situated on the lofty height of Bury Hill. Formerly the seat of the Stucley Lucases (who were as great in stag-hunting, or nearly so, as Tennyson was in poetry), it afterwards served as the country-house of Dr Warre, Headmaster of Eton, who resigned his tenancy, much to the regret of his neighbours and friends, as recently as last year.
Of Dulverton town, as distinct from its environs, it is impossible to say much. It is, however, one of the chief centres of Exmoor stag-hunting and fishing, and the hotels, which thrive on these attractions, provide adequate accommodation. Owing to the constant stream of fashionable visitors from all parts of the world, Dulverton, though in point of size a mere village, wears, during the season, a quite cosmopolitan aspect; and, as if to emphasise its superiority to other rustic communities, the enterprising inhabitants have lately caused to be installed a system of electric lighting by means of high poles with wire attachments.
Here, it will be remembered, dwelt Master Reuben Huckaback, John Ridd’s maternal uncle, who, when bound on the back of the frightened mountain pony, described himself as “an honest hosier and draper, serge and long-cloth warehouseman, at the sign of the Gartered Kitten, in the loyal town of Dulverton.” Huckaback, I am disposed to think, was Blackmore’s creation, the name in itself being suspicious. What is Huckaback? Nuttall defines it as “a kind of linen with raised figures on it, used for tablecloths and towels”—the sort of thing that a shopkeeper in Uncle Ben’s line would be likely to sell. Blackmore, no doubt, somewhat exaggerates the commercial advantages of Dulverton, but in the good old days, tradesmen managed to subsist very comfortably, and even to retire on a competence. The premises now occupied by Mr Bayley were probably those Mr Blackmore had in his eye, though their spick-and-span appearance does not suggest anything venerable. The proprietor, however, has good warrant for ascribing a decent antiquity to the house, whose traditional sign is the Vine, not the Gartered Kitten. That it may have been partially remodelled or reconstructed since the seventeenth century, is readily granted, as being in the nature of things, but, having been the head shop at Dulverton time out of mind, it is, at all events, in the apostolic succession.
Some Dulverton streets bear interesting names. Thus we have Rosemary Lane and Lady Street. The latter was formerly much narrower at its entrance into Fore Street, and an old inhabitant once told me that he believed that anciently it had been built over, and that the front of the superincumbent structure was adorned with an image of the Virgin Mary.
The widening process involved the demolition of two ancient cottages, which had formed the Nightingale Inn; and amongst the débris was discovered an old coin, on seeing which a local connoisseur forthwith pronounced it Spanish, adding that it had been probably left by the Dons when they invaded England in 1600. A companion denied that England was ever invaded by the Spaniards, but the other would not be contradicted. “He knowed they did, and it weren’t likely they could pass Dulverton without stopping for a drink.” In point of fact, the coin was a poor specimen of a sixpenny bit, struck in 1566.