There’s a Heart that is harder than Granite:
There’s a Voice that will thrill you with gloom:
There’s a Look—how a Lover would ban it—
The Maid of the Crooks of Combe!
Good Lord! what a World we do pine in!
Where the Rose on the Bramble will bloom:
Where a Fiend like an Angel is shining:
The Maid of the Crooks of Combe.
The “Crooks of Combe” is a name given to the windings of the stream that runs down Combe Valley to the sea (see p. [109]). It seems possible that these verses may have been written to accompany the story of Alice of the Combe, and then discarded. On the other hand, the legend of the mole is associated with Tonacombe Manor, and Tonacombe and Combe are two different valleys. The poem may have been addressed to Miss Kuczynski (afterwards Mrs. Hawker), who used to visit Combe and was fond of riding about the valley. The third line of the last verse is an echo from Coleridge’s poem “Love.” This poem was marked in a copy of Coleridge given by Hawker to his future wife.
Tonacombe Manor.
APPENDIX C (pp. [80] and [87])
ARSCOTT OF TETCOTT
This was John Arscott, whose epitaph in the parish church of Tetcott ran as follows:—
“Sacred to the memory of John Arscott late of Tetcott in the Parish, Esqre, who died the 14th day of January 1788.
What his character was need not here be recorded. The deep impression which his extensive benevolence and humanity has left in the minds of his friends and dependents will be transmitted by tradition to late Posterity.”