Read Ebook: The Vicar of Morwenstow: Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker M.A. by Baring Gould S Sabine

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Ebook has 1192 lines and 115350 words, and 24 pages

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Ordination--The Black Pig "Gyp"--Writes to the Bishop--His 20 Father appointed to Stratton--He is given Morwenstow--The Waldron Lantern--St. Morwenna--The Children of Brychan--St. Modwenna of Burton-on-Trent--The North Cornish Coast--Tintagel--Stowe--Sir Bevil Grenville--Mr. Hawker's Discovery of the Grenville Letters--Those that remain--Antony Payne the Giant--Letters of Lady Grace--Of Lord Lansdown--Cornish Dramatic Power--Mr. Hicks of Bodmin

Description of Morwenstow--The Anerithmon Gelasma--Source 47 of the Tamar--Tonacombe--Morwenstow Church--Norman Chevron Moulding--Chancel--Altar--Shooting Rubbish--The Manning Bed--The Yellow Poncho--The Vicarage--Mr. Tom Knight--The Stag Robin Hood--Visitors--Silent Tower of Bottreaux--The Pet of Boscastle

Mr. Hawker's Politics--Election of 1857--His Zeal for the 78 Labourers--"The Poor Man and his Parish Church"--Letter to a Landlord--Death of his Man Tape--Kindness to the Poor--Verses over his Door--Reckless Charity--Hospitality--A Breakdown--His Eccentric Dress--The Devil and his Barn--His Ecclesiastical Vestments--Ceremonial--The Nine Cats--The Church Garden--Kindness to Animals--The Rooks and Jackdaws--The Well of St. John--Letter to a Young Man entering the University

Wellcombe--Mr. Hawker Postman to Wellcombe--The Miss 148 Kitties--Advertisement of Roger Giles--Superstitions--The Evil Eye--The Spiritual Ether--The Vicar's Pigs Bewitched--Horse killed by a Witch--He finds a lost Hen--A Lecture against Witchcraft--Its Failure--An Encounter with the Pixies--Curious Picture of a Pixie Revel--The Fairy-Ring--Antony Cleverdon and the Mermaids

The Vicar of Morwenstow as a Poet--His Epigrams--The 202 "Carol of the Pruss"--"Down with the Church"--The "Quest of the Sangreal"--Editions of his Poems--Ballads--The "Song of the Western Men"--The "Cornish Mother's Lament"--"A Thought"--Churchyards

Restoration of Morwenstow Church--The Shingle Roof--The 218 First Ruridecanal Synod--The Weekly Offertory--Correspondence with Mr. Walter--On Alms--Harvest Thanksgiving--The School--Mr. Hawker belonged to no Party--His Eastern Proclivities--Theological Ideas--Baptism--Original Sin--The Eucharist--His Preaching--Some Sermons

The First Mrs. Hawker--Her Influence over her 241 Husband--Anxiety about her Health--His Fits of Depression--Letter on the Death of Sir Thomas Acland--Reads Novels to his Wife--His Visions--Mysticism--Death of his Wife--Unhappy Condition--Burning of his Papers--Meets with his Second Wife--The Unburied Dead--Birth of his Child--Ruinous Condition of his Church--Goes to London--Resumes Opium-eating--Sickness--Goes to Boscastle--To Plymouth--His Death and Funeral--Conclusion

FOOTNOTES xxx

LIFE OF ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER

Young Robert was committed to his grandfather to be educated. The doctor, after the death of his wife, lived in Plymouth with his daughter, a widow, Mrs. Hodgson, at whose expense Robert was educated.

The profuse generosity, the deep religiousness, and the eccentricity of the doctor, had their effect on the boy, and traced in his opening mind and forming character deep lines, which were never effaced. Dr. Hawker had a heart always open to appeals of poverty, and in his kindness he believed every story of distress which was told him, and hastened to relieve it without inquiring closely whether it were true or not; nor did he stop to consider whether his own pocket could afford the generosity to which his heart prompted him. His wife, as long as she lived, found it a difficult matter to keep house. In winter, if he came across a poor family without sufficient coverings on their beds, he would speed home, pull the blankets off his own bed, and run with them over his arm to the house where they were needed.

He had an immense following of pious ladies, who were sometimes troublesome to him. "I see what it is," said the doctor in one of his sermons: "you ladies think to reach heaven by hanging on to my coat-tails. I will trounce you all: I will wear a spencer."

In Charles Church the evening service always closed with the singing of the hymn, "Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing," composed by Dr. Hawker himself. His grandson did not know the authorship of the hymn: he came to the doctor one day with a paper in his hand, and said: "Grandfather, I don't altogether like that hymn, 'Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing': I think it might be improved in metre and language, and would be better if made somewhat longer".

"Oh, indeed!" said Dr. Hawker, getting red; "and pray, Robert, what emendations commend themselves to your precocious wisdom?"

"This is my improved version," said the boy, and read as follows:--

'Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing, High and low, and rich and poor: May we all, Thy fear possessing, Go in peace, and sin no more!

Lord, requite not as we merit; Thy displeasure all must fear: As of old, so let Thy Spirit Still the dove's resemblance bear.

May that Spirit dwell within us! May its love our refuge be! So shall no temptation win us From the path that leads to Thee.

So when these our lips shall wither, So when fails each earthly tone, May we sing once more together Hymns of glory round Thy throne!'

"Now, listen to the old version, grandfather:--

'Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing; Fill our hearts with joy and peace; Let us each Thy love possessing, Triumph in redeeming grace. Oh, refresh us, Travelling through this wilderness!

Thanks we give, and adoration, For the Gospel's joyous sound; May the founts of Thy salvation In our hearts and lives abound! May Thy presence With us evermore be found!'

"This one is crude and flat; don't you think so, grandfather?"

Robert was sent to a boarding-school by his grandfather; where, I do not know, nor does it much matter, for he stayed there only one night. He arrived in the evening, and was delivered over by the doctor to a very godly but close-fisted master. Robert did not approve of being sent supperless to bed, still less did he approve of the bed and bedroom in which he was placed.

Next morning the dominie was shaving at his window, when he saw his pupil, with his portmanteau on his back, striding across the lawn, with reckless indifference to the flower-beds, singing at the top of his voice, "Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing." He shouted after him from the window, but Robert was deaf. The boy flung his portmanteau over the hedge, jumped after it, and was seen no more at that school.

He was then put with the Rev. Mr. Laffer, at Liskeard. Mr. Laffer was the son of a yeoman at Altarnun: he afterwards became incumbent of St. Gennys. At this time he was head master of the Liskeard Grammar School. There Robert Hawker was happy. He spent his holidays either with his father at Stratton, or with his grandfather and aunt at Plymouth. At Stratton he was the torment of an old fellow who kept a shop in High Street, where he sold groceries, crockery and drapery. One day he slipped into the house when the old man was out, and found a piece of mutton roasting before the fire. Robert took it off the crook, hung it up in the shop, and placed a bundle of dips before the fire, to roast in its place.

He would dive into the shop, catch hold of the end of thread that curled out of the tin in which the shopkeeper kept the ball of twine with which he tied up his parcels, and race with it in his hand down the street, then up a lane and down another, till he had uncoiled it all, and laced Stratton in a cobweb of twine, tripping up people as they went along the streets. The old fellow had not the wits to cut the thread, but held on like grim death to the tin, whilst the ball bounced and uncoiled within it, swearing at the plague of a boy, and wishing him "back to skule again."

"I doan't care whether I ring the bells on the king's birthday," said the parish clerk, another victim of the boy's pranks; "but if I never touch the ropes again, I'll give a peal when Robert goes to skule, and leaves Stratton folks in peace."

As may well be believed, the mischievous, high-spirited boy played tricks on his brothers and sisters. The clerk was accustomed to read in church, "I am an alien unto my mother's children," pronouncing "alien" as "a lion." "Ah!" said Mrs. Hawker, "that means Robert: he is verily a lion unto his mother's children."

"I do not know how it is," said his brother one day: "when I go out with Robert nutting, he gets all the nuts; and when I go out rabbiting, he gets all the rabbits; and when we go out fishing together, he catches all the fish."

"Come with me fishing to-morrow, Claud," said Robert, "and see if you don't have luck."

Next day he surreptitiously fastened a red herring to his brother's hook, playing on his brother the trick Cleopatra had played on Anthony; and, when it was drawn out of the water, "There!" exclaimed Robert, "you are twice as lucky as I am. My fish are all raw; and yours is ready cleaned, smoked and salted."

The old vicarage at Stratton is now pulled down: it stood at the east end of the chancel, and the garden has been thrown into the burial-ground.

At Stratton he got one night into the stable of the surgeon, hogged the mane, and painted the coat of his horse like a zebra with white and black oil paint. Then he sent a message to the doctor, as if from a great house at a distance, requiring his immediate attendance. The doctor was obliged to saddle and gallop off the horse in the condition in which he found it, thinking that there was not time for him to stay till the coat was cleaned of paint.

His pranks at Plymouth led at last to his grandfather refusing to have him any longer in his house.

Robert held in aversion the good pious ladies, who swarmed round the doctor. It was the time of sedan-chairs; and trains of old spinsters and dowagers were wont to fill the street in their boxes between bearers, on the occasion of missionary teas, Dorcas meetings, and private expositions of the Word. Robert used to open the house door, and make a sign to the bearers to stop. A row of a dozen or more sedans were thus arrested in the street. Then the boy would go to each sedan in order, open the window, and, thrusting his head in, kiss the fair but venerable occupant, and then start back in mock dismay, exclaiming: "A thousand pardons! I thought you were my mother. I am sorry. How could I have made such a mistake, you are so much older?"

Sometimes, with the gravest face, he would tell the bearers that the lady was to be conveyed to the Dockyard, or the Arsenal, or to the Hoe; and she would find herself deposited among anchors and ropes, or cannon-balls, or on the windy height overlooking the bay, instead of at the doctor's door.

Two old ladies, spinster sisters, Robert believed were setting their caps at the doctor, then a widower. He took an inveterate dislike to them, and their insinuating, oily manner with his grandfather; and he worried them out of Plymouth.

He did it thus. One day he called on a certain leading physician in Plymouth, and told him that Miss Hephzibah Jenkins had slipped on a piece of orange peel, broken her leg, and needed his instant attention. He arrived out of breath with running, very red; and, it being known that the Misses Jenkins were intimate friends of Dr. Hawker, the physician went off at once to the lady, with splints and bandages.

Next day another medical man was sent to see Miss Sidonia Jenkins. Every day a fresh surgeon or physician arrived to bind up legs and arms and heads, or revive the ladies from extreme prostration, pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, heart-complaint, etc., till every medical man in Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport had been to the house of the spinsters. When these were exhausted, an undertaker was sent to measure the old ladies for their coffins; and next day a hearse drew up at their door to convey them to their graves, which had been dug according to order in the St. Andrew's churchyard.

This was more than the ladies could bear. They shut up the house and left Plymouth. But this was also the end of Robert's stay with his grandfather. The good doctor had endured a great deal, but he would not put up with this; and Robert was sent to Stratton, to his father.

When the boy left school at Liskeard, he was articled to a lawyer, Mr. Jacobson, at Plymouth, a wealthy man in good practice, first cousin to his mother; but this sort of profession did not at all approve itself to Robert's taste, and he remained with Mr. Jacobson a few months only. Whether he then turned his thoughts towards going into holy orders, cannot be told; but he persuaded his aunt, Mrs. Hodgson, to send him to Cheltenham Grammar School.

From Cheltenham, Robert S. Hawker went to Oxford, 1823, and entered at Pembroke; but his father was only a poor curate, and unable to maintain him at the university. Robert was determined to finish his course there. He could not command the purse of his aunt, Mrs. Hodgson, who was dead; and when he retired to Stratton for his long vacation in 1824, his father told him that it was impossible for him to send him back to the university.

But Robert Hawker had made up his mind that finish his career at college he would. The difficulty was got over in a manner somewhat novel.

There lived at Whitstone, near Holsworthy, four Miss I'ans, daughters of Colonel I'ans. They had been left with an annuity of ?200 apiece, as well as lands and a handsome place. At the time when Mr. Jacob Hawker announced to his son that a return to Oxford was impossible, the four ladies were at Efford, near Bude, an old manor house leased from Sir Thomas Acland. Directly that Robert Hawker learnt his father's decision, without waiting to put on his hat, he ran from Stratton to Bude, arrived hot and blown at Efford, and proposed to Miss Charlotte I'ans to become his wife. The lady was then aged forty-one, one year older than his mother; she was his godmother, and had taught him his letters.

Miss Charlotte I'ans accepted him; and they were married in November, when he was twenty. Robert S. Hawker and his wife spent their honeymoon at Morwenstow, in Combe Cottage. During that time he was visited by Sir William Call and his brother George. They dined with him, and told ghost-stories. Sir William professed his utter disbelief in spectral appearances, in spite of the most convincing, properly authenticated cases adduced by Mr. Hawker. It was late when the two gentlemen rose to leave. Their course lay down the steep hill by old Stowe. The moment that they were gone Robert got a sheet and an old iron spoon which he had dug up in the garden, and which bore on it the date 1702. He slipped a tinder-box and a bottle of choice brandy, which had belonged to Colonel I'ans, into his pocket, and ran by a short cut to a spot where the road was overshadowed by trees, at the bottom of the Stowe hill, which he knew the two young men must pass. He had time to throw the sheet over himself, strike a light, fill the great iron spoon with salt and brandy, and ignite it, before Sir William and his brother came up.

In the dense darkness of the wood, beside the road, they suddenly saw a ghastly figure, illumined by a lambent blue flame which danced in the air before it. They stood rooted to the spot, petrified with fear. Slowly the apparition stole towards them. They were too frightened to cry out and run. Suddenly, with an unearthly howl, the spectre plunged something metallic into the breast of Sir William Call's yellow nankeen waistcoat, the livid flame fell around him in drops, and all vanished.

When he came to himself Sir William found an iron spoon in his bosom. He and his brother, much alarmed, and not knowing what to think of what they had seen, returned to Combe. They knocked at the door. Hawker put his head with nightcap on out of the bedroom-window and asked who were disturbing his rest. They begged to be admitted: they had something of importance to communicate. He came down stairs in a dressing-gown, and introduced them to his parlour. There the iron spoon was examined. "It is very ancient," said Sir William: "the date on it is 1702--just the time when Stowe was pulled down."

"It smells very strong of brandy," said George Call.

Robert Hawker's twinkling eye and twitching mouth revealed the rest.

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