Without Knowing Mr Walkley

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Without Knowing Mr Walkley Page 7

by Edith Olivier


  ‘When in Chicahgo in April lahst,’ he began, ‘I had the great pleasure of listening to Mr. Edison’s voice on the phonograph. It gives me great pleasure heah to congratulate him on his invention and to thank him for the pleasant hours we are enjoying this evening.’

  The self-satisfaction in the speaker’s tone came back when the speech was reproduced with a very funny effect.

  There is more to be said of this precisely speaking man. He was then Managing Director of the Wilton Carpet Factory, a very pious person and a strong teetotaller. The visit to Chicago of which he spoke that night was one of many, for he often went to the States, and he founded there a branch of the Wilton Carpet Factory. He died very suddenly, and his death was a great shock to the town, for no one had even heard that he was ill. He now was laid in state upon his bed, while the factory employees filed through the room in long lines, to see his face for the last time. As she went by, one of the factory girls was bold enough to lay her finger upon the dead man’s cheek, and then she sprang back, exclaiming:

  ‘Ain’t he warm!’

  After this no further visitors were admitted to the room.

  Two days later, as was the case with Tennyson’s Enoch Arden, it might have been said of Wilton that the little town—

  ‘Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.’

  The procession was two miles long and the orations delivered over the grave by ministers of various denominations were if anything even longer.

  Then followed an unexpected sequel. In transpired that this seemingly righteous man had been living a double life. He was no teetotaller in London or in the States, but had there spent his evenings entertaining chorus girls, and in drinking in restaurants. He had made away with a large amount of money belonging to the company which owned the factory. Its shareholders were ruined, and half the population of Wilton was out of work till a new company could be formed. The world marvelled at the fortunate appropriateness of his death; but those who lived near by reported that, on the night after the funeral, a mysterious, veiled widow, in height and proportions curiously resembling the dead man, had been seen to leave his house, and to drive away in a cab to an unknown destination.

  The lettering on the grave in the cemetery has long ago faded out.

  Chapter Seven

  THE OLDEST INHABITANT

  These words fill one with a passionate curiosity and hope, nearly always to be disappointed. The oldest inhabitant often has no desire to speak of his memories, and when he does speak, the things he remembers are seldom those which his questioner hopes to hear. When Mr. W. H. Hudson was walking about Wiltshire collecting materials for his book A Shepherd’s Life, he asked my father to direct him to some of the old people who might be likely to tell him things. They did not guess that he was a writer, for he looked, as he was, a very unassuming wayfaring fisherman, but in spite of that, he could not make them speak. Day after day he drew a blank.

  The old Wilton people were generally ready to talk to my father, because they knew him so well, but their memories often meant nothing at all to anyone except themselves. He once asked old Francis, who was nearly a hundred, what was the first thing he could remember.

  He remained quite silent for some minutes, sinking back into the past. Then, very slowly, he said:

  ‘I can mind when dthurteen vlocks did come to water to Bull Bridge.’

  Like many of the most outstanding memories of country people, this was a memory of a year of exceptional weather. There had been a drought. But old Francis could not remember when it was. Only ‘a long time ago’.

  My sister Mildred once gave a Nonagenarian tea-party, her guests being three very vigorous old women. Mrs. Blake was the wife of a smallholder, and in my childhood she was often to be seen driving three cows through the street. She was extremely practical, and refused to trouble about the past. The present was still her concern; and when we sat in the garden after tea, trying to make the old women talk, she pretended no interest in our conversation. With her face twisted to one side, her shrewd observant eyes were watching the gardener drive the ducks to bed. The silly birds were quite out of hand, straying off in all directions. Mrs. Blake could not tolerate this independence. She jumped from her seat, and running like a girl, she headed off one after the other the birds which had wandered the farthest, and got them back into line. Then she joined the gardener, and walked proudly behind the flock to the yard.

  Meanwhile, Mildred asked Mrs. Jeffery if she could tell us her real age.

  ‘I were barn’, she said, ‘in the year afore were all that there hanging and killing.’

  She was exasperated when my sister could not recognise this date.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘It’s in the Spelling Book.’

  We hopefully thought of the French Revolution. But no, that would make Mrs. Jeffery at least a hundred and twenty. We guessed again and again, showing ourselves in the old woman’s eyes as complete half-wits, and at last found that ‘hanging and killing’ was Mrs. Jeffery’s impression of the Battle of Waterloo.

  Granny Hayden of Netherhampton to the day of her death was a delightful companion. She was nearer a hundred than ninety when she stood merrily at her wash tub in the yard behind her cottage, declaring that the secret of her perpetual youth was that she ‘ Never ran up Harnham Hill to meet trouble,’ a real proverb in the making. She possessed a splendid old crinoline dress which she had worn as a young woman, and she also had lots of bright coloured shawls. On St. George’s day, she was always ready to dress up in some of her old clothes and ‘step out’ in the village procession, laughing and enjoying it with all her might.

  At the Mothers’ Meeting one afternoon, Mrs. Hayden was suddenly inspired to relate some of her early memories.

  ‘I can mind’, she began, ‘when Mr. Tom Wiles used to turn the barrel organ in church. ’Twer down be’ind the font, and the font ’e wurden the same one as it is now. ’E wur made o’ white stone, and all the church wer different then. ’Twas afore the restoration, see. I can mind when we ’ad a barrel organ in the barn for the first Jubilee. ’Twas for the dancing, and Mr. Taunton’e led off wi’ Mrs. Terrell, and when ’e couldn’t get anyone to stand up wi’ un, he danced wi’ a dog. Took un’ old by his front paws ’e did. I can mind the last one as was transported for stealing sheep. He was from Quidhampton, and ’e took un up to Bedford’s Folly and killed un there, and then the police come in, and they found the ’ead and the trotters in the room. My ’usband went to see someone ’anged at Salisbury. He stood up and spoke to the people, and then the bolt come down. My ’usband said as he never wanted to see another.’

  Mrs. Hayden’s mention of sheep-stealing, recalls a letter written long ago by Mr. Squarey of Downton, to Lady Jeane Petherick, then a child in her home at Longford.

  ‘My brother-in-law, Edward Hodding, was the tenant of Odstock Farm about the year 1837–38, and one late frosty evening in the winter, he and his shepherd Thomas Selfe, having taken a last look at their sheep which were folded near the Little Yews, were walking home. As they neared the road which leads by Odstock Wood to Odstock, Mr. Hodding looked round (I dare say he was scant of breath after walking up the hill), and saw a faint column of smoke rising out of the Great Yews. They speculated what it could mean, and then concluded they would try to find out. So back they trudged by Catherine’s Barn, and on and on till they could nearly fix the spot where the smoke still rose before them. They crept quietly onwards through the yew trees, and at last, in a pit, they espied three men sitting round a fire, over which was hanging, from two forked sticks, a leg of mutton being roasted. Hodding and his shepherd were plucky men, and they rushed on them, each catching hold of one man. The other bolted off, not staying to finish his roast mutton!

  ‘With their prisoners, they walked down to Odstock, and thence to Salisbury jail (there were no police then), where they were taken in charge.

  ‘Their companion was not caught. The two were brought to trial, when it was proved by the marks on the sheep
’s skin found near, that it had been stolen from a flock near Martin. Enquiry after they were taken, led to the discovery that many sheep had been stolen from distant flocks, and brought to the home of these gentry at the Great Yews to be eaten or sold when opportunity offered.

  ‘The thieves were convicted and sentenced to transportation. The farmers around counted their flocks more regularly thereafter, but sheep-stealing ceased to be a regular profession after the breaking up of this gang.

  ‘Now I will tell the pathetic story of Joshua Scamp, who lies buried in Odstock churchyard. It is well that you should know that your great great grandfather, Lord Radnor, and my father, knew all the circumstances that I am about to relate, and did their utmost to procure a mitigation of the sentence which had been passed on him for horse-stealing.

  ‘Odstock was a great gathering place at the time of the gipsies, who were then much more numerous than at present. They kept themselves more aloof and as a separate people. They had, and still have I believe their own language. I will not discuss the mysterious and interesting origin of these people, but merely say that they were then, as they still are in some degree, regarded more or less as outcasts and robbers.

  ‘Late in 1800 or early in 1801, a horse had been stolen in the neighbourhood, and suspicion fell on Joshua Scamp, whose tent was near. He was taken up and tried at the Assizes at Salisbury, and was convicted and sentenced to death, which was the penalty for horse- and sheep-stealing, and formerly other petty crimes which are now (thank God) more leniently dealt with.

  ‘After his conviction, he persisted in asserting his innocence, and implied that he knew who the culprit was, but refused to disclose his name.

  ‘“No,” he said, “I am an old man, and it is better for me to hang than the real man.”

  ‘My father from whom I heard this story, and who had then only just come to Salisbury, and many others, were convinced that Scamp was telling the truth, and they interested your ancestor in their efforts to procure a reprieve. But there were no telegraphs or quick posts in those days, and the short interval between conviction and execution ebbed fast away, before the Home Office authorities could be impressed with the circumstances. So, at the appointed time, Joshua Scamp walked bravely to the gallows asserting his innocence, but silent as to who was really guilty.

  ‘After his death, it became known that the real thief was Joshua Scamp’s son-in-law, who had married his favourite daughter, for love of whom the old man was content to bear the penalty which should have fallen on her husband.

  ‘The gipsies placed a tomb over his grave in Odstock churchyard, which still stands, and for many years they were in the habit of visiting his resting-place in large numbers on the anniversary of his death, April 1st, 1801.

  ‘And now please Lady Jeane, do you and your brothers and sisters make a pilgrimage to the grave of Joshua Scamp, and think of the unselfish love and self-sacrifice for his daughter’s sake, of the convicted, but innocent, horse-stealer, Joshua Scamp.’

  A contemporary of Mr. Squarey’s was Canon Jackson, who used to tell us another exciting old Wiltshire story. I am not sure whether or not he was actually present, but he well remembered that dark night in October 1816, when, as the London coach stopped at Winterslow Hut to deliver the mails, there broke upon the surrounding silence a terrifying roar, and a lioness leapt out: from the dark ominous spaces of Salisbury Plain. Canon Jackson gave a graphic account of the battle between the lioness and one of the coach horses, which fought furiously with its forefeet, striking at its enemy with its iron hoofs. He had nearly got her down, when he became entangled in the harness, and the lioness sprang upon his chest and hung there, her claws fastened into his throat, while blood spurted in all directions. Then there appeared upon the scene an enormous dog, which made a rear attack upon the lioness. She let go the horse, and turned upon this new enemy. The dog alternately attacked and withdrew, drawing the lioness after him towards what Canon Jackson used to call a ‘hovel’, which seems to have been a shed with a door which could be fastened. Here followed the last terrific fight, ending for the moment in victory for the lioness. The dog was killed. But reinforcements were now prepared. All this time, the innkeeper, the coach officials and the passengers had merely watched the amazing fight. They felt fairly safe so long as the animals were frantically engaged. Now the tremendous noise had called up the owners of the circus from which the lioness had escaped. Their vans were a short way up the road. By now they were on the spot. The mysterious ‘mastiff’ had, in the last round of his fight, lured the lioness inside the shed, and the spectators had the courage to shut the door. The cage was then brought up against it, and the lioness was successfully captured.

  This blood-curdling scene took place while Hazlitt was living in Winterslow, and it did not change his opinion of the peacefulness of the place. His Winterslow Essays suggest that one is not likely to meet there any animal fiercer than a bookworm, although as a matter of fact it has always been something of a magnet for lions. Hazlett himself of course, and then his admirer, Lord Grey of Falloden, in later days sometimes tried vainly to inspire distinguished American visitors with his own enthusiasm for the plain little inn with its sober associations with the prose of the countryside. I heard one such guest openly avow her preference for ‘a cassle’.

  Yet another lion to find himself in a dilemma at Winterslow was Siegfried Sassoon who once found his car and himself in a pond at the door of the inn, as he was driving from London in a thick fog. The owners retaliated by putting up a notice saying—

  THIS POND IS PRIVATE

  Another Winterslow character was Lyddie Shears, the witch, whose son had often been seen in my day by the oldest inhabitants—an old man, wandering about the ruins of his mother’s cottage. Lyddie herself lived I think quite early in the nineteenth century, and, like other witches, she had a way with hares. The poachers gave her presents of tobacco and snuff, and thus primed, she went on to the downs in the moonlight and, crouching low on the ground, she struck lights from flints. All about her, there then popped up startled heads with long quivering ears and mad eyes glancing from side to side. The poacher shot the hares while they sat thus, dazzled and bewildered.

  Lyddie was not so friendly with a neighbouring farmer who was less generous with his tobacco than the poachers were. When he was going coursing, he never omitted to ask Lyddie to tell him where he would find a hare that morning, and her answers always proved right. Then, time and again, the greyhounds ran it to the same place, the field at the back of Lyddie’s cottage, and there they always lost it. At last the disappointed farmer was advised by a friend, who knew something of the black arts, to make a bullet from a sixpence, and with that to shoot the hare just before it reached the crucial spot. He did so, but the hare vanished as usual. That evening a neighbour, calling upon Lyddie Shears, found her lying dead in her cottage, with a silver bullet through her heart.

  The hare is the English werewolf, though she seems a frightened harmless creature to keep company with witches. Mrs. Morrison told me of a witch drama in South Wales, with a strong family likeness to the story of Lyddie Shears. This witch was a middle-aged woman living with her old mother, and she too was credited with the power of changing herself into a hare. All the troubles in the district were laid at her door. She put spells on the ewes and they died in lambing: she dried up the cows: she sent children into such paroxysms of terror that they became imbeciles for life.

  Mrs. Morrison was one day walking near the witch’s cottage when she heard a gunshot. Almost immediately she came upon one of her keepers, who said breathlessly:

  ‘I’ve just shot Ruth Colt.’

  ‘Shot her?’ exclaimed Mrs. Morrison, aghast.

  ‘Yes. I caught her coming out of the cowshed, and when she saw me, she ran away. I went after her, and just outside her own door, I saw her change into a hare. I fired, and she fell, but she got up again, and she managed to get indoors. But I think I’ve done for her.’

  Mrs. Morrison walk
ed about the fields, pondering over this extraordinary story, and last she made up her mind to call upon the Colt family. The old mother came to the door, and invited her to come in. They sat talking by the fire.

  ‘Is Ruth out?’ asked Mrs. Morrison at last.

  ‘No. She’s in bed. She’s not well.’

  Mrs. Morrison was then allowed to visit the invalid, and found her lying in bed with a large patch of blood on the front of her nightgown. An abscess was said to have broken in her chest.

  From the stories told by oldest inhabitants, it would seem that until about 1860, the countryside was haunted by congregations of witches. Many people testify to having seen and known them, but the witnesses, like the witches, are dead. It is a curious phase of human history, and the attitude of their neighbours towards them was also curious. It was a mixture of toleration, fear, and respect, changing into actual antagonism only after the witch had gone to the length of becoming a hare. But I know one Wiltshire witch story of a later date, and it is vouched for by a panel doctor, which gives it a very matter-of-fact local-government atmosphere.

  Within the last twenty years, there lived in a village near Wilton a man who was such a complete neurasthenic that he had not even the energy to walk down the street to the surgery, but, day in and day out, he sat by his own fireside, bent and bowed in sullen gloom. He had hardly the wits to answer the doctor’s questions when his club certificate had to be signed. After some years of this semi-imbecility, the man one morning walked briskly into the surgery, and asked to be signed off. He returned at once to work, and he remained at it.

  A week or two later, the doctor heard the story which was believed by all the village. When the man had been ill for five years, a friendly neighbour offered to consult a witch who lived a few miles away. The witch pronounced that the man had had the evil eye ‘put on him’ by two Warlocks, but she could not utter the names of these monsters, as this would ‘add to their power’. She produced photographs of them, and she promised to ‘break the spell’. This she did in a manner which was never explained, but which was so effective that within a few weeks, both the sorcerers ‘died raving—a judgment of God for the wickedness they had done’. The witch would take no fee, and on the morning after the second of his two enemies had been buried, the bewitched man had come to see the doctor.

 

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