He took it into his head that he could eat nothing but clotted cream. He therefore made his meals, breakfast, dinner and tea, of this. He became consequently exceedingly bilious, and his depression grew the greater.
He was sitting, crying like a child, one night over his papers, when there shot a spark from the fire among those strewn at his feet. He did not notice it particularly, but went to bed. After he had gone to sleep, his papers were in a flame: the flame communicated itself to a drawer full of MSS., which he had pulled out, and not thrust into its place again; and the house would probably have been burnt down, had not a Methodist minister seen the blaze through the window, as he happened to be on the hill opposite. He gave the alarm, the inmates of the vicarage were aroused, and the fire was arrested.
Probably much of his MS. poetry, and jottings of ideas passing through his head, were thus lost. “Oh, dear!” was his sad cry, “if Charlotte had been here this would never have happened.”
The vicar had brain fever shortly afterwards, and was in danger; but he gradually recovered.
MORWENSTOW PARISH CHURCH.
ANCIENT FONT IN MORWENSTOW CHURCH.
“PARSON HAWKER,” OF MORWENSTOW.