‘You ought to have seen the mess our town was in next morning. All the chimneys were slewed round, tiles were shaken off the houses, plaster was down everywhere. It just looked as if the Russians had been in and bombarded the place. It cost us on an average £100 apiece to put things straight.
‘Up in the churchyard all the gravestones were turned round, but the curious thing was that they had all gone in the same direction. The disturbance gave us conversation for a fortnight.
‘You know, when we go to call at a house in Wellington it is just as common to begin the conversation by—“That was a nasty shock last night,” as to begin by telling people “the weather is getting a little colder.”’
‘Which way do these earthquakes come?’ I asked.
‘Why, some folks say they come one way, and others say they come another. They go by their senses, you see, and half of them lose their senses when an earthquake comes.
‘Our old observatory man says they come from the sea, and that the motion we feel may be in all directions, twisting and squirming about, first one way, then another. Then again, you’re not moved so much if you’re up on high ground, as you are down on the soft stuff.’
To gain as much information as possible, I asked if there were any theories about how these things start.
‘Theories, why, yes, plenty of them. Some say they are volcanic—explosion of steam in fissures—others say they are caused by the rocks suddenly breaking, adjusting themselves to a position of equilibrium, the observatory man calls it. I don’t believe in the theories. I think earthquakes are just electrical phenomena, and kind of subterranean lightning and thunderstorm.
‘Just to show you what I mean, the other day I was out having dinner with Harris up the hill, when one of the hanged phenomena came along and shook the house as if it was going to fetch it down. I knew if it was so bad up there, down below I might expect at least to find my chimneys through the roof.
‘As I knew the state my wife and daughters would be in, I didn’t stop to finish dinner, but went off as hard as my legs could carry me home.