NOTE.—The publisher of this work will esteem it a favour if the possessors of pictures or drawings by Prout will place themselves in communication with him. He is particularly anxious to obtain copies of letters by, or documents about, the artist—in short, any material which may be of use in the preparation of the exhaustive Life which is in progress. All communications should be addressed to Mr. John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London, W.
FONTELAUTUS
It may seem—in fact, it must seem—strange to have included in a volume of notices of remarkable Devonshire characters a biography of an infant who did not attain to the age of two years; but I leave the reader to judge from the sequel whether I should have been justified in omitting a notice of Fontelautus.
For an account of the life and adventures of this precocious infant we are obliged to refer to the following work, published 1826: Subversion of Materialism by Credible Attestation of Supernatural Occurrences.... Pt. I. Memoirs of Fontelautus, infant son of Prebendary Dennis, comprising his demoniacal obsession, and diversified apparition, with his father’s ante-nuptial vision and revelations. Pt. II. Supernatural Anecdotes of various Families’ Farewell Apparitions, Supernatural Fire tokens.... By Jonas Dennis, B.C.L., Prebendary of the Royal Collegiate Church of Exeter Castle.”
Prebendary Dennis hurls his son Fontelautus as a bomb into the camp of atheists, materialists, and rationalists. If Fontelautus does not shatter their unbelief, they are past arguing with, past praying for.
Prebendary Dennis begins with the ancestry of Fontelautus, who was derived in direct lineal descent from Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell, the rapacious and insatiable devourer of ecclesiastical estates, made fat on the plunder of Church property by Henry VIII. Mr. Jonas Dennis is led to observe that there was an hereditary tendency in the Dennis family to acquisitiveness, to avarice; but this proclivity, like gout, jumped a generation, and he informs us that he himself was so entirely free from the family taint that he declined a benefice from scruples respecting the administration of the sacraments; that he further rejected the advances of a lady with a fortune of £50,000, on the discovery of incompatibility of inclination; and that he subsequently married “a lady with ten pounds for her fortune, calculating probability of conjugal felicity from the endowment of amiable qualities, placid disposition, compliable temper, serious principles, polite accomplishments, and last, though not least, domestic habits.” But if acquisitiveness jumped a generation, it manifested itself in Fontelautus, who from the earliest age clawed and endeavoured to ram into his mouth whatever he could lay his hands on.
The Dennis family had been one of warriors: their arms were battle-axes; and the Rev. Jonas admits that combativeness remained as a pronounced feature in his own character, the hereditary principle in himself prompting him to engage in controversy. Some of his achievements he records. It seems that the priest vicars of the cathedral of Exeter had petitioned the Dean and Chapter to suppress the week-day matins. The Chapter was more than half inclined to agree, when the stalwart Jonas threw himself into the midst, and stormed, threatened, pointed to the Constitutions, dared the Chapter to give way, and so saved the choral matins in the minster.
The cathedral, he informs us, was kept open, and was used for assignations and for various objectionable gatherings. At his instigation the doors were locked between the hours of Divine service. It is possible that what he here refers to may be the performance of the Gloria in Excelsis by the choir in the Minstrel Gallery at midnight on Christmas Eve. This was stopped about the same time on account of the disorderly scenes that took place in the nave; but he does not specially refer to this.