Ulverton Page 16

  desperate fellows in the main. They are well-known abouts and are unmarried. They had blackened their faces with soot,

  chalked right across the door: ‘We have Not yet Dun.’ Squire in a heat: thunder on the stairs, & in the pantry. In the Riots, he was conciliatory – says Wellington is a ruffian, for Wellington made suggestion that the magistrates hunt them down for sport with horsewhips and fowling pieces. If Squire were to have his way, there wd be Prison only for these fellows. His own farm has lost three ploughmen and a pig-man, two of whom might hang and all are certain to be transported – if the Briefs do their work. I say to him the Law, in this case, must act as the Example to some, and be merciful to others (we cannot have 2,000 guilty – our prisons are already stuffed with them, and there will be more agitation). He says, that is not our way: he blames all on the machines – and certain ‘Radical scoundrels’ – & France – and mutters darkly against the tithes – and wd against our local Lord, if he was not enamoured of the dark wine up there, that is served in crystal. Most tedious supper yesterday, at the Doctor’s – much of the party & their daughters of the mind that we shd bring the price of Bread lower, & feed these fellows. I said we cannot have robbery, Arson, extortion & machine-breaking without shewing how Diabolical these acts are, or tomorrow our transport ships wd be lower still in the water with the consequence of imaginary grievances – that we must nip in the bud, to save the flower – that Lord C. is for swinging the Mob in toto – that these Horrid acts must spread like a Contagion without hard medicine – and other such ruminations, that impressed the Assembled no end, as all visitors from the Town must, tho’ they be cork-brained as the wine. The company included the Archdeacon of Salisbury, a plump fellow by the name of Fisher, & his friend Mr Constable the painter, who then broke out of gloom to strike a somewhat stained fist upon the table, spluttered against various types of dregs – was all for sluicing out the rabble forthwith – that the agitators of Reform were sent by the Devil – that Mechanicks must be kept solitary or their evil dispositions wd be fanned into flame – thus buttressing my argument, but with a degree of passion that almost undid the whole. He is sketching the Cathedral in Salisbury for a great work which shall shew a rainbow over the edifice – this the Ecclesiastical Government according to the Archdeacon, whereupon Mr Constable broke into an exceedingly admirable discourse on opticks, and the lustre of wet grass, and the calm white edges of moving clouds being his soul – or the wet grass was – or both at once – leastways he ended by stating that Paradise was a slimy post in a ditch, or some such, which provoked all present into peals of mirth. Upon returning to the subject of our troubled times, one daughter, of a fierier disposition, stated – looking at me as the chief organ of this illumination – that ’twas hard to call it Extortion, for the like shillings-round was done at Whitsun for the feast, & was an ancient practice in all the villages, & that the labourers were dressed as for this Procession – in ribands & suchlike, & blew horns as on that day. Thereupon there fell a hush, and a clearing of throats – & I kept, as Lord Erskine wd have done, an auspicious silence – that cowed the company quite – until I spoke but these words with a serious demeanour: ‘I see no blossom on the trees, madam. Pray excuse me, I did not know it was Whitsun here, & Extortion in London.’ This made enough break into laughter, as to patch the threadbare situation. So I hone my rhetoric even at the table. I keep to the road and take a servant with a lanthorn, for I will not be bludgeoned to death in this wretched hole. I am almost finished – the wigs will be huffing and puffing in the Courthouse next Thursday. The tightness in my chest is gone – I am better with the medicine – tho’ this cough hangs

  that many were starving. The said Rector Willington answered, that he & his fellows must leave at once, but here is 3 Sovereigns, and he would be seeing to their requests. I staid by the fireplace until the Mob left. As I served the Rector Willington with some kidneys, he said to me that I must not go out this day, and that he hoped the Church wd not be ent

  the dregs remain: I stir them to a kind of cloud of comprehensibility, but their minds are slow and stupid, and they slouch, as it were, without a burden on them but one of sloth. My clerk tells me they are weak from hunger – but this cannot be in such provident country, of rich tilth, when the very Hedgerows have been evidently dripping with fruit. But O this wretched winter! – I am feeling pinched and vexed today, from an incident earlier: some children, seated before what I perceived to be a tumbled-down cot – but was on closer inspection teeming with life as a corpse teems with maggots – on the outer edge of the village, whence I was bent on exercising my legs after a crabbed term of duty at my desk – these ragamuffins (all of the most swarthy hue, like sweeps – it appears to me this whole village is inked in dirt) followed me at a distance until I reached the first ridge of the hill, whereupon they stirred themselves to a clamour of the most injudicious calumny against my person, as being knock-kneed – scrawny-necked – the smallest pig in the litter – a ‘carroty-pawled cadger’ and other descriptions I will not blush you with, all in a dialect so ripe as to be barely comprehended but by those, like myself, forced to become adepts thro’ no fault of their own – and upon my waving my walking-cane at them, knob-first, and calling them to be Off, a large fellow joined them, of as Outdoor an appearance as all the labourers here, but somewhat more bent in the back, with filthy black hands – & who stood and watched me for a moment, with a hand upon the shoulders of the Riff-raff about him, as (I thought) a prelude to cajoling and punishment – but who then emitted a chortle that kindled the like in his brood (for I guessed he was the Father) and I was forced to beat an ignominious retreat over the Ridge and out of sight, where I was taken with a small Fit – for I have never been able to withstand Mockery of any sort, but crumble like a Biscuit in hot tea. Such topsy-turviness makes me fear for the Country, as if every weedy word of these inflammatory pamphlets have seeded themselves deep in the fallow hearts of the peasant classes, and by dint of one’s mere presence one Ploughs them up willy-nilly to the surface – and thus may be imagined the Harvest to come. Does it rain the like in Matlock? You might paint indoors, if so. Here we tear up turf – these sodden slopes be our canvas – the foamy Horse is shaped so:

  I put the straw beneath the Plough. It was not I who put it to the flame. I don’t know who did. Then the pieces of the Machines were placed in a heap in the Court & we

  down the widest ride yet I fell from the damned beast into

  candles on the table. They were took when the Mob departed. About ten men staid the main of the day, demanding of me beer & bread & cheese all the while, until there was none

  hurt, bar a laceration upon my arm. My only black-silk coat, with the pearl buttons, is Chalk from collar to tail. I have been baptised, says the good Norcoat, in the veritable sod. But that is little matter when thou, my sweetest love, art in my mind: your letter, that I have kept in my breast pocket, close to my heart, gave me some service this Morning – or rather, the envelope did – as I was taken with a fit of coughing during an Examination – this an effect of the fall, no doubt – and finding my mouth full of Blood, had nowhere to deposit, but bending down behind the desk as if to pick up my pen, that I had knocked to the floor for this purpose – took the letter from my pocket – released it from the envelope – and used that last sweet-scented vessel as my spittoon. The pauper before me was none the wiser through this salvatory Action, tho’

  almost night then. There was no moon: I could not see who it was knocking on the Door. A horn was blown and a man made a noise like an owl

  all night of thick words like cheese to be cut up, then wake in a sweat, cough

  banged on the roof with our hay-forks: there is no upstairs. The said Roger Pennell came to the Window and said not to do him any harm & we answered that we would not crush a flower,

  O – O my Emily! But to set it down sends my pulse sudden up, & I fear these palpitations – no, I must cease worrying you on the instant – this fearful sight was made h
ideous by the night’s exertions: I had no sleep – I was too tight in the Chest to lay down & coughed the hours away fearfully but not too much Blood – & our sharp north-east of the last days having turned I thought to exercise myself – at dawn – no faintness – nay, I should have stayed within –

  were civil. They broke the drum of the machine with a sledge-hammer, and said it was to make better times. I did not know which men they were

  muffled from the mist I assure you, my heart. Suffice to say, as I mounted the opposite slope, & the mist clearing, I turned & saw – but the Rooks upon the ridge above, & their infernal clamour, combined with the sight – & made me flushed – & fair giddy – so that I was forced to sit upon a mossy log, until my wits recovered – that I was not mad

  about two hundred & fifty of them. They were carrying flags and a horn was blowing: I saw them tear up me fences upon the crest

  to anticipate a thing – & to have it dashed! – but I lack sleep, surely – & these wretched papers, that are too thick, & ever roll from my desk to the floor – but to turn & see such a thing, to have one’s mind turned inside out, as it were

  with a rake. I saw about two hundred persons come up from the river towards me over the Lawn

  Black, black as tho’ of a sudden cast into deathliness – that mocked the albescence of the frost about it – yet the Eye glittered still! O Emily – ’twas a spectre of the most awful hideousness – that leapt up at me – an effect of sleeplessness – & thin light – O the Squire rails & sobs, yet

  John Oadam, with a crown of Bedwine (meaning wild Clymatis) wound about his head like feathers & took from the Hedgerows. When I took the said Prisoner into custody I said to him to remove his Crown of bedwine for it was unseemly, and he was no King, not even a Captain

  not bombazeen – as you must don soon if our Expectation is correct, my heart – nay, not cloth but soot – common soot – & cinder! Aye – this – awful change but the work of these secret surly creatures, that no doubt hoarded every crumb of charred stuff out their meagre hearths – & scraped their chimneys free of all ancient & inky detritus – then last night like sheep – nay, like wolves – like wolves silently & cunningly – we all unawares, in our rooms – softly mounting that slope – no doubt the whole Mob of them – man, woman & child – all – with bare hands – Donkeys – pails – I can conjecture only – such awful silent cunning – of wolves – and I coughing upon my bed unawares, all the while – they wd have heard – over the night – across the vale – but half a moon – my coughing, & a frost – such stillness – O Emily – scattered about & trampled with ne’er a creak of pail, not a cry! – till that chalky gleam was blinded – doused – to the last – the very last hoof

  answering: ‘No it bee only plumes of seed that must be planted on the wind

  8

  Shutter

  1859

  Plate XXV

  A RIVER-SCENE

  HERE ONCE MORE the transient poetry of nature is most eloquently caught, and I am emboldened to suggest that no brush, wielded by whatever genius, could fashion the rushing water about the rocks with so fine a hand as my humble lens. Though recent rains had swollen the course of the Fogbourne to a considerable degree, this day began clear and fine; but in the time it took to set up my apparatus, the clouds (visible to the left) had altered the light considerably. Passing as they did quite slowly across the sun (being early spring, this was not sufficiently low as to be concealed by the foliage upon the left bank) they imparted a most attractive possibility, that reminded me of none other than the painter Herr Friedrich and his stormy effects. The girl upon the bridge is placed to conceive human variety, but I had a deal of difficulty in persuading her to look into the water, and not at my lens!

  The bridge is called Saddle Bridge, and is the southern ‘gate’ into our Village; in rendering a picturesque quality to the subject, its severe state of disrepair serves an ideal purpose, that is naturally lost on those having to clatter across in the dustier world of affairs: indeed, that absent parapet-stone, like a gap in a set of teeth, was reputedly dislodged by nothing heavier than a rook alighting upon it! – causing a coachman a deal of trouble with his reins. The bare poplars upon the right-hand bank assert perspective, and impart a certain grandiosity to the scene, in which the figure of the human might symbolise the fleetingness of our existence. As fleeting, indeed, as the beam of sun that peeped through a slit and silvered the wet rocks in the foreground; an effect one might wait two hours for, and lose in a minute.

  Reflections in slow-moving (or still) water, have preoccupied a majority of photographers for quite natural reasons: the beauty of the conception requires merely a stand of trees upon a bank, and favourable light, to succeed – but, it should be cautioned, the result may be as a thousand others. Here, however, the water, upon skipping about the foreground rocks in (as it were) its whitest frocks, takes a tiny plunge and settles, before passing under the darkness of the bridge, into the slow calm that so gratifyingly mirrors, and barely corrugates, that ancient stone arch – to form an O that puts one in mind of gateways, and entrances, and elicits quite other responses from the conventional. And yet, note how the contrary plane of the water surface, highlighted by the glints of leaves and other such matter the river carries upon its bosom, returns the viewer to the strong current of plain reality – which, perhaps, this country girl has averted her gaze from, seeing only fulfilment in the rippling other-world of her fancy!

  Plate XXVI

  THE PROPOSAL

  This may occasion surprise, as I am not given to the artificial posing so beloved of my contemporaries in the field of both plate and canvas. Notice, dear viewer, the abashed and twisted posture of the girl – and the blur that should have been, if ordered circumstances had prevailed, the face of her admirer. No, I did not set up my apparatus with a clatter, then move the limbs of my lovers like so many waxworks, and introduce the boat, whose oars had never before been subject to the young man’s sturdy grip. Why otherwise is there that hazy penumbra about the girl’s hand, caught in the act of wiping away collected moisture from the summer heat (for you have no doubt noted the elms beyond in full leaf, and the absence of smoke from the distant cottage, and the creamy frock) or the man’s foot so ungainly twisted inwards as he leans forward – as if the boat is drifting from the bank and he might lose the touch of his love’s fingers, or topple her into the languid water?

  On fine summer days of good light, preferably on a Sunday, when the fever of the week’s activities ceases, and the drone of the plump bumble-bee is the busiest sound above the sigh of the waters by the mill, the clanking of buckets at the well, and the idle chatter of the population at the wayside (or, alas, upon the tavern benches!), then nothing pleases better than to wrap my machine in brown paper, leaving but a slit for aperture, and wander the Village and its environs for human subjects that may be caught without that formality of response, that considered design and self-conscious air, that the posed picture erstwhile involves. Indeed, in this wise we gentler sex have a distinct advantage, for what better use my otherwise cumbersome crinoline, than as a type of black hood or cover? – if pockets be cut into the material, so that the camera may be held within and remain unseen.

  Imagine my pleasure, then, when faint murmurings came to me upon the towpath, and on creeping forward what should I have seen to my astonishment, but the oldest and loveliest of all scenes – two lovers in a boat, in the first and most innocent bloom of love: that first courtship which Shakespeare and all our immortal poets have, at their most exquisite and poignant, immortalised for the world to cherish. May I add my own small reed upon the altar, with this picture, which has as its protagonists not the Illyrian lords and ladies but the rustics of Arden. Or – to be more prosaic and (in the true manner of this art) precise – two of the labouring class, whose vessel is a craft belonging to the butcher and renowned for its leaking qualities, that has soaked the hem of my own dress before now (it serves as the general factotum for the Vill
age at a penny a time): With (I might say) only a moment’s hesitation, I plucked this bloom in its full glory – or rather (as might be conceived from the girl’s attitude) in its ‘crumpled bud’ phase, for Silvius appeared distinctly unripe in these matters (he is, I later ascertained, the eldest son of the harness maker, and she a horseman’s daughter – though whether yet happily bridled is not for me to say).

  This part of Ulverton is called of old ‘the Vanners’ – for what reason I cannot discover. Bottom Bridge is just concealed by the verdant curve; though mediaeval in origin, it is little more than a footbridge, of partly wooden structure, and is soon to be replaced, thus removing the reliance of carriages on the oft-flooded ford beside it. I made several attempts to photograph this bridge, but none was successful. It is said, in the less enlightened corners of our parish, that long ago it was the haunt of a woman, whose love for a man (a departed seaman) went unrequited: until, after many years of waiting upon its boards, she donned widow’s weeds, threw herself from the rail, and quickly drowned. My lack of success was no doubt due, in the view of these credulous folk, to the woman’s ghostly presence – that blacked out the plates.

  Plate XXVII

  THE HOUSEHOLD OF SIR HUMPHREY CHALMERS, M.P., AT ULVERTON HOUSE

  The posing of large groups should present no special difficulties, if it is remembered by the enthusiastic photographer that heads and hands are forever eager to make their mark and ruin the picture in fuss and needless business, especially where head supports are undesirable. Long exposure is necessary for full detail: it is to be noted here, for instance, that the gold buttons of the footman (fourth from left) are exactly rendered; for the occupation of this gentleman means that the frigidity of good posing presents him with no difficulties, used as he is to ‘standing guard’. The plump figure slightly to the front is the steward: his stovepipe has exaggerated the trembling of his head (the result of an injury received, I was informed, as a drummer boy at Waterloo) and I might, if I were (God willing!) to repeat the exercise, request that this good man remove the offending headwear. On the either extremity I have turned the ladies (parlourmaids only) inwards, so that the eye is drawn to the centre of the group, thence to the magnificent copper beeches behind, and so to the house. On the extreme left the edge of the lake might be regarded as a distraction, being heightened by the two swans, but such a picturesque detail could hardly be rejected, and the weighty stature of the house supersedes all else. I do not know what the faint figure in the extreme rear of the picture was doing, for I did not notice him at the time: it must be stressed, that the photographer on this sort of commission must make as sure as possible that the area within the camera’s purview is cleared of distractions.