Once more the manuscript passed to and fro between the friends. But a new and absorbing interest for a time diverted Ford’s energies from literature. In the late summer of 1834 he bought an Elizabethan cottage, called Heavitree House, near Exeter, standing in about twelve acres of land. Here he gradually rebuilt and enlarged the house, laid out the ground in terraces and gardens with Moorish-patterned flower borders, and planted pines from the Pincian and cypresses from the Xenil. The first mention of the purchase, in his correspondence with Addington, occurs in a letter written from Oxford, September 13th, 1834.
I am wandering (he says) inter Academiæ silvas, to my great delight, poring over old books in the Bodleian, and copying barge-boards and gable-ends, in order to ruin myself as expeditiously as possible at Heavitree.
Within and without, as time went on, he made the house and gardens express his varied tastes. Old houses in and about Exeter furnished many of the treasures which enriched his home. Thus the fireplace in the hall came from an ancient house pulled down in Rack Street; the gates, the staircase, much of the panelling and carved woodwork were brought from “King John’s Tavern.” The cornice of the bathroom had once adorned the Casa Sanchez in the Alhambra; the old Register chest from Exeter Cathedral formed the case of the bath. Here, too, he stored his curious library and exhibited many of the spoils of his foreign travels—pictures, etchings, engravings, and specimens of Majolica ware.
For the moment books were laid aside for building and gardening. His letters are filled with his new pleasure. In April 1835 the house began to be habitable, although he is still “ashamed of it as in presenti; there are beds but no kitchen,” and “it will hardly hold the accumulation of books. I am sighing,” he adds, “to drink the sweet waters of the Nile; and when my book is written, when my house is built, and when I am ruined, shall go and economise in hundred-gated Thebes.” Writing April 16th, 1834, he says:
The move from Southernhay to Heavitree was accomplished in three most sunny days. All the books and other traps duly conveyed into Myrtle Bower to the tune of a triple bob major of the village bells. I have already begun digging, and moving plants; to-morrow comes my man of mortar to plan the kitchen. My pink thorn will be out in a month: quite a nosegay. You can’t think how snug my upper drawing-room looks, now it is full of books, ormolu, drawings, etc. I expect to see you here very shortly, as London must be detestable now O’Connell rules the land.
The work of destruction (he writes a week later) proceeds as rapidly as Dr. Bowring or Lord Johnico could desire. The removal of the cob has let in a flood of light and a side view over my extensive landed estate. A part is preserved, overmantled with ancient ivy (the harbour of slugs, black-beetles, and earwigs), which is to be converted into a Moorish ruin, and tricked out with veritable azulejo from the Alhambra. The myrtles only want an Andalucian muchacha to be shrubs worthy of Venus. The foundations of the kitchen will be laid on a rock on Monday next. Meanwhile my cook roasts meat admirably with a nail and a string.
I have no vote, or I would go ten miles on foot to record my contempt for that aristocratical prig, that levelling lordling.
I have given up the pen for the hoe and spade, all a-delving and digging. I hope, however, in a week or so, that the obra will be so far planned and definitely arranged as to send me back to my old books, which I find the best and surest of resources.
For one brief interval Ford was swept from his garden into the excitement of political life. On April 8th, 1835, Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues resigned office over the question of the Irish Church and Irish Tithes. Under Lord Melbourne a new Government was formed, in which Lord John Russell, as Home Secretary, was a member of the Cabinet. Ministers offered themselves for re-election, and Lord John found his seat in South Devonshire threatened by Mr. Parker. The contest was keenly fought, excitement ran high, but in the end Mr. Parker won by twenty-seven votes, and Lord John eventually found a seat at Stroud.
Heavitree House, May 3 [1835], Friday Evening.