“Why, the Miss Kitties, sure. When I were young, maidens would have blushed to do such a thing. And come down the chimbley too!” After a pause, mother’s pride overmastering sense of what befitted her sex: “But Ezekiel must be rare handsome, for the maidens to be after him so. And, I reckon, the Miss Kitties is quality-folk too.”
Mr. Hawker thus describes the Wellcombe people: “They have amongst them no farrier for their cattle, no medical man for themselves, no beer-house, no shop; a man who travels for a distant town (Stratton) supplies them with sugar by the ounce, or tea in smaller quantities still. Not a newspaper is taken in throughout the hamlet, although they are occasionally astonished and delighted by the arrival, from some almost forgotten friend in Canada, of an ancient copy of The Toronto Gazette. This publication they pore over to weariness; and on Sunday they will worry the clergyman with questions about transatlantic places and names, of which he is obliged to confess himself utterly ignorant. An ancient dame once exhibited her prayer-book, very nearly worn out, printed in the reign of George II., and very much thumbed at the page from which she assiduously prayed for the welfare of Prince Frederick.”
The people of Wellcombe were very ignorant. Indeed, a good deal of ignorance lingered late in the West of England. The schoolmaster had not thrown a great blaze of light on the Cornish mind in the first half of the present century.
I give a specimen of English composition by a schoolmaster of the old style in Devonshire; and it may be guessed that the Cornish fared not better for teachers than their Wessex neighbours.
This is an advertisement, said to have been written over a little shop:—
Roger Giles, Surgin, Parish clark and Skulemaster, Groser, and Hundertaker, Respectably informs ladys and gentlemen that he drors teef without wateing a minit, applies laches every hour, blisters on the lowest tarms, and vizicks for a penny a peace. He sells Godfather’s Kordales, kuts korns, bunyons, dokters hosses, clips donkies, wance a munth, and undertakes to luke arter every bodies nayls by the ear. Joes-harps, penny wissels, brass kanel-sticks, fryinpans, and other moozikal hinstrumints hat grately reydooced figers. Young ladys and genelmen larnes their grammur and langeudge, in the purtiest manner, also grate care taken off their morrels and spellin. Also zarm-zinging, tayching the base vial, and all other zorts of vancy-work, squadrils, pokers, weazils, and all country dances tort at home and abroad at perfekshun. Perfumery and znuff, in all its branches. As times is cruel bad, I begs to tell ey that i his just beginned to sell all sorts of stashonary ware, cox, hens, vouls, pigs, and all other kinds of poultry. Blakin-brishes, herrins, coles, skrubbin-brishes, traykel, godly bukes and bibles, mise-traps, brick-dist, whisker-seed, morrel pokkerankerchers, and all zorts of swatemaits, including taters, sassages, and other gardin stuff, bakky, zigars, lamp oyle, tay-kittles, and other intoxzikatin likkers; a dale of fruit, hats, zongs, hare oyle, pattins, bukkits, grindin stones, and other aitables, korn and bunyon zalve and all hardware. I as laid in a large azzortment of trype, dogs’ mate, lolipops, ginger-beer, matches, and other pikkles, such as hepsom salts, hoysters, Winzer sope, anzetrar.
P.S.—I tayches gografy, rithmetic, cowstiks, jimnastiks, and other chynees tricks.
I should have held this to be an invention inspired by Caleb Quotem, in George Colman’s play “The Review,” but that Mr. Burton of the Curiosity Shop, Falmouth, has shown me old signboards almost as absurd.
The people of Wellcombe were not only ignorant, but superstitious. Mr. Hawker shared at least some of their superstitions. Living as he did in a visionary dream-world of spirits, he was ready to admit, without questioning, the stories he heard of witchcraft and the power of the evil eye.
Whenever he came across any one with a peculiar eyeball, sometimes bright and clear, and at others covered with a filmy gauze, or a double pupil, ringed twice, or a larger eye on the left than on the right side, he would hold the thumb, fore and middle fingers in a peculiar manner, so as to ward off the evil effect of the eye.