“What does that mean?” inquired the grocer.
“Well, I recken it means he must be a purty good rider.”
And Mr. Chapple was not far out. A curate did apply and breakfasted with Russell. The meal over, two likely-looking hunters were brought round ready to be mounted. “I’m going to take ’ee to Landkey,” explained Russell. Off they rode. The young cleric presently remarked, “How bare of trees your estate is,” as they crossed the lands belonging to Russell.
“Ah!” responded the sportsman, “the hounds eat ’em.” Coming to a stiff gate, Russell, with his hand in his pocket, cleared it like a bird, but looking round, saw the curate on the other side crawling over the gate, and crying out, “It won’t open.”
“Not it,” was the reply; “and if you can’t leap a five-barred gate like that, I’m sure you can’t preach a sermon. Good-bye.”
It is not my intention to give a detailed life of the Rev. John Russell. His memoirs by the author of Old Dartmoor Days, published in 1878, are very full. They are very laudatory, written as they were whilst Russell was alive. Cromwell when being painted was asked by the artist about his mole. “Paint the mole and all,” was the Protector’s reply. But others are not so strong-minded and do not care to have portraits too realistic. In 1880, Russell was appointed to Black Torrington.
When he was over eighty he rode a poor hack from Black Torrington to Mr. Williams, at Scorrier, to judge puppies, and Mrs. Williams was alarmed, as the old man was not well on arriving. She proposed to send him back by rail, fearing lest he should be seriously—fatally, perhaps—ill in her house. But although very poorly, he refused, and with one day between, rode home, something like seventy miles each journey.
He died in 1883, 3 May, in the arms of his medical attendant, Dr. Linnington Ash, at Black Torrington, and was buried at Swymbridge.
After the best type of the hunting parson we come to one of the worst, who exercised a good deal of influence over Russell, when he was young, at Southmolton. This was John Froude, vicar of Knowstone, who had succeeded his father, the elder John Froude, in September, 1803, and who held the incumbency, a veritable incubus to it, for forty-nine years till his death, on 9 September, 1852.