immm^y *»IW P " w> A. gumnniT owvwthiaiM ■H^vAMW »H tim w Bjwn %' v «ac BOUGHT WITH' THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Mettirs ^* Sage 1891 FRAGlLrUOES NOT Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013438738 JKrg. drag's £iotoels anii Romances. ■SEW AXD SEVISED EDITION. THE WHITE HOODS : A Romance of Flanders. DE FOIX : a Romance of Bearn. THE TALBA; OR, THE MOOR OF PORTUGAL. THE PROTESTANT: a Tale of the Times of Queen Mary. NOVELS FOUNDED ON TRADITIONS OF DEVON AND COBNWALL. FITZ OF FITZ FORD : A Tale of Destiny. COURTENAY OF WAL- REDDON. HENRY DE POMEROY. WARLEIGH ; OR, THE FATAL OAK. TRELAWNY OF TRE- LAWNE. HARTLAND FOREST, AND ROSETEAGUE. MISCELLANEOUS TALES. TRIALS OF THE HEART. A FATHER'S CURSE, AND A DAUGHTER'S SACRIFICE. AUiTOBIOGEAPHY ANNA ELIZA BEAT AUTOBIOG-EAPHY OF ANNA ELIZA BRAY {Born 1789 : died 1S83) EDITED ET JOHN A. KEMPE " There is not, perhaps, an educated human being who may not throw some hght on hia own character, and contribute somewhat to the phQo- sophy of the human mind, by recalling and preserving minute and early features of has life and habits." — Forster's Life of BUhop Jebb. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL Limited 1884 ^ n n g 3 1) : CLAY AND TAYLOE, PKISTERS. PEEFACE. Mrs. Bray's Autobiography is published in com- pliance with the directions contained in her will ; she rests her apology for the publication upon some passages in an essay of Dr. Johnson : " Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing -less every day, and in a short time is lost for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told, and when it might be told is no longer known. To preserve, there- fore, even fragments of what is truth, by written record, is alike valuable to ourselves and to our posterity : " and, " There has, perhaps, rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For . . . every one has, in the mighty mass of 'the world, greal; numbers in the same condition with him- self, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use." January, 1884. AN OBIttrARY. itJSA--»0 J| Ninety-two years between Christmas Day, 1790, And Ohristmas Day, 1882, measdre a period than . which it would be hard' to select one more eventful in the history of the modern wor^d. That and more .than that space is eovered by a^ife of which our obituary yesterday recorded the close, . Mrs, ' Bray had gifts toifascinate , the grasdsire$ of the present generation. She survived to be the most ' charming of old ladies out of a f«4ry tale. Though she was not and never claimed til be a great writer, her stories of Devonshire made the most varied, pf English counties familiar far beyond its borders. The authoress of " The ,Tamar and the Tayy " - deserves to be adopted among Devon worthies by right of good work. Her memoir of Thomas Stothard ranks high among art biographies. She had been an indefatigable helpmate to her first hns- ^ band, Charles Stothard, in his labours of antiqua- rian draughtsmanship, and completed his mcst^m- portant undertaking. As a novelist, she dischar^d, as our own columns testify, to a recent date the office of supplying the leading libraries with whole- some and kindly, if not inspired, fiction. But the real vocation of her almost centenarian career was to watcn time as it passed, and to bear benevolent witness to its humours and its graces. She hsd seen and remembered John Kemble and his more illus- trious siste^ion the stage. She had been praised by Sir Walter Scott ; she was the friend of Southey. She was a grown woman at the date of the Battle of Waterloo. She was middle-a^^ whei) the Re- form Bill passed. New schools 9? PMntirg had arisen and decayed since her famous wher-in-law introduced her to the beauties of art. A revolu- tion had been suffered by every department of . litecature. A deluge had swept over its face, a.nd obliterated most of the features she had been trained to admire. Society had changed altogether, and her patient eyes had observed and tolerated.. Its divers faspeots were noted in her faithful memory, and none were utterly condemned . After all, the world cannot have altered so that life is not worth living, when one sweet nature has been able to endure and to enjoy it for nibre than 90 busy years. ' almost llegible from dirt nnd neglect. The Bev. E. A . bSv lies under &b old arch (being part of the Abbey), immediately fxon.ting the entrance to the Bedford Hotel in Tavistock ohurc'iyard. This also exhibits an enually neelected condition Strange that one so fond o? chronicHng the past and its local legends should have oared so little for the uear.r antecedents o her own existence. But these matters are generally left tp the caieofsome Samaritan, a.nc) now I hope gtotTiards tombstone (if it still remains uncared for), will be Sned and looked to -and its inscription transferred totheooumnsof the Wt>Urn Antiauarp. If a mite sAouWbe required to i.id to keep his memory green (but not n green mould) I have one for such service through your hands. Doubtless many others will be\v DK. merivale's pkesidential ^bdkess. 51 years, I may add, has swept away an immense amount of pecuniaiy endowments which were meant to encourage and maintain this class of students, drawn, as so many of them must ever be, from the poorer orders among us. The recent changes at Oxford and Cambridge have tended griev- ously to the impoverishment of the Church, deterring our needier youth from aspiring to the ministry at all, or driving them to the cheapest and least furnished of educational nurseries. Such ill-starred legislation' has overtaken the Church often before, and the Church has still survived and triumphedl over it. She will not now despair of a like result, because of the raid which has been made upon her. On the contrary, there are many of us who hope and believe that the trial she is now called upon to endure — for we are in the midst of it at this laoment — will redound in the end to her advantage, and tha^i with her native zeal and spirit sfee will liTC to develop other resources. *But a truce to these misgivings. "Let us hdpe to the end, I come to my old country, the playground of my childhood, for a passiilf' draught of rejuvenescence, for a visit, such as is now rare with me, to " Lovely Devonia, land of flower and song," a land which I have venitured elsewhere to coin,pli- ment as thest" Garden of Bfltain." I have beheld once more the prospect from the Beacon HUl of Exmouth, which ever cUngs to my mental vision as the fairest of imaginable land- scapes. I have seen again my darling river, whidh I have traced so jiften u^ards and downwards, and know not whether I most affect it here, where it expands with open arms to rush into the embrace o^ ocean, or in the charm- ing valley 'above the city to which it gives a name, where it nestles under the graceful woods of Pynes and Mafypole. There, before the windows at which my childhood lingered, the drowsy Greedy, bearing with her the ripples of Winfrid's Holy Well at Kirton, Aakes curtsey to her brighter consort, and their united waters, stayed by the stately piers of Cow- ley, and the rampart of the weir below them, repose for a moment in a broad and lucid basin, and then bound gaily onwards— waters of -which many a year ago my brother sung in school-verses which have never slipped my memory — Qua petit occiduos tortilis Isca lacus : Purior oceani qua non subit unda recessus, Alluit 6t mmto prata Britanna sinu. " Where Exe meaudering seeks the western seas : !No glassier wave to ocean's depths descends, Lapping with many a curve our British leas," D 2 (^^jttuar^ Notices. COMPILED BY THE EEV. W. HARPLET, HON. SEC. OP THE ASSOCIATION. (Head at Exmoujji, July, 1883.) Mrs. Beay was bom in the parish of St. Mary Newington, on Christmas-day, 1790, and came of a family c^led Kempe* formerly resident in Corn'wiall, with nunfeuouig ponnections among its chief families. Bfer grandfather settled in London, and both he and her father hel^nhe officer of bullion porter in tlie Mint. Her brother, Alfred John Kempe, published several works on antiquarian subjects, such as a History of the Parith of St. Martin-le-Grand, and. an account, of the Losely Manuscripts, and contributed maiy histqmcal articles to the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine. Miss Kempe's first love was for painting. She sought the introduction of the chief artists of her early years, and was inspired by her enthusiasm for the art into some attempts in painting on her own account. Among those with whom she became acquainted was the venerable Thomas Stothard, a man endeared to all with whom he came in contact, both for his talents and his private character. i^ In 1818 Miss Kempe was married to the painter's second son, Charles Stothard, and in his company she rambled through the old towns of Normandy and Brittany, while he was studying their churches and municipal buildings, and soon afterwards published her first book — a series of letters descriptive of her tour. A long future of uninterrupted happiness seemed before her; but in 1821, as Charles Stothard was making, a drawing from the stained-glass in the chancel window of Beer Ferrers Church, Devon, he slipped from the ladder, and fell dead on the ground. OBIT0AEY NOTICES. 53 One only child, a daughter, was horn, just four weeks after the death ;^ but seven months after its birth the infant was taken away, to the grief of its agonized mother. The widow, with the assistance of her antiquarian brother, who supplied the biographical portions, finished her husband's work on the Monumental Effigies of Great Britain; and two years after his decease she published his memoirs, a duty which, twenty- two years later, she likewise paid to her father-^n-law, Thomas Stothard. Of her many works this perhaps has most per- manent value. Having numerous friends and relations in the two western- most counties, Mrs. Stothard made frequent, visits to the West of England, and there she inet her second husband, the Eev. Edward Atkyns Bray. In the course of a life of no long duratwn he had been in the army and dt the bar ; but was best known when he took, orders in 'the Church, ^nd bgcame vicar of Tavistock. ^ This marriage introduced her into a district abounding in striking legends and attractive family history. Her first novels — 2% White Hood, The Talba, and several others — had dealt with foreigr|> life and foreign scenery; and in these, as her abll alia kindly critic, Soj^they, candidly said, she was not so much at l|ome as on the moors and 'by the rivers of th^ West. Taking these, and the traditions which surroupd them, as fit themes ior her fancy, she produced in- rapid succession Fitz of Fitzford, WarleigJi; Trelawny of Trelawne, Henry de Pomeroy,mid Gourtenay of WalredSon, names which sufficiently ^indicate the subjects of her Novels. They met with so much popularity as to justify the publication of a complete set in ten volumes in 1845-6. Many ye^s before these dates she had been numbered among the correspepdents of Southey. Though he lived in the north of England, several of his friends resided beyond Exeter. He himself, while on his way to Portugal in 1795, had rested in the north of Cornwall; his acquaintances, the Farwells, were beneficed on the Cornish coast; Derwent Coleridge was at Helston, and Val. Le Grice was near Penzance. Southey passed a week with the Brays at Tavistock in 1836, and reviewed in the Qimrterly the works of Mary Colling, their poetic ^ro^e'e. In one of his letters to Mrs. Bray he suggested that she should undertake a work, on the model of White's Selborne, descriptive of the history, traditions, and manners of the neighbourhood aroimd Tavistock. The suggestion took root in Mrs. Bray's mind, and in 1838 she published, in a series of letters addressed to Southey, three charming 54 OBITUAKY NOTICES. volumes on the Traditions, Legends, and Superstitions of the Tamar and the Tavy, a work which met with much favour at the time, and was recently, in 1879, reissued in two volumes. Mrs. Brsty was again left a widow in 1857, and thence- forward settled in London. After the lapse of a few years, she once more resumed the congeniabtask of writing. This time she selecj:ed some of the events in French history, which have most attracted the interest of readers on this side of the Channel. Her volumes on The Good St. Louis, The Bevolt of the Cevennes, and Joan of Arc, were all marked by considerable research, and by a graceful style. The novel of Bosteague, a tale connected with one of the ancient seats of the Kempes, had long lain in MS. in her possession, and in 1874 sh^ determined upon its publication. IVJrs. Bray's mental vigour and capacity for work never failed, and there is hardly a"\nore remarkable incident in the whole range of English literature than the fact that at the age of 90 she undertook and carried through the press the revised edition of her well-known book; In this work she would have had the assistance, but «for his l%mente^ dfiath, of the late Mr. Eichard John King« but he died before' the " copy " finally passed into the printer's hands, andtiall the arrange- mante, both business and literary*, were made«by herself alone, the latter with a critical acumen and decision of judgment that bespoke the prime of life, and not advanced age. Not a single point of detail escaped her, and, save when an attack of illness for the fime incapacitated her from writing more than her signature, every correction was made, and every letter, from beginning to end was written, by her own hand. ' Mrs.i«Bray was elected an honorary member of this Asso- ciation in 1876, on the nomination of Mr. Eichard John King, and she repeatedly expressed her high appreciation of the work done by the Association, and t£e interest with which she perused the volumes of Tram^sactions annually sent to her. She died in January, 1883, in her ninety-third year, and leaves behind her a name which will long live in memory, by reason of her thorough acquaintance with every relic of a bygone age, be they preserved in monuments of stone, or in the warm hearts of its people, which can be found among the cleaves and tors of the borderland of Cornwall and Devon, and for the skill with which she imparted to others both her knowledge and her enthusiasm. INTEODUCTION. The pages of autobiography which follow deal only -with that part of Mrs. Bray's life which preceded the present generation. The natural task of her Editor would perhaps seem to be, to supplement her narrative by an account of her later years. But, partly through the attenuated (indeed, almost annihilated) ranks of the friends of her youth who could answer to the roll-call after the lapse of over ninety years; partly through the secluded manner of her life, which gave her but little opportunity or inclination to form new acquaintances, the circle of those who knew her in- timately is now an extremely limited one. I have therefore thought it best to introduce, rather than to close her own story, by a short sketch of her as she lived among lis during the last thirty years. I hope thus to enable the reader better to read between the lines of this record of a quiet literary life; and to B 2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. understand the position which is claimed for Mrs. Bray among those who have been entrusted with great gifts, and have faithfully striven not to hide their talent in a napkin. Upon a fly-leaf at the end of the MS. of the auto- biography is the following entry : — " I have re-read these memoirs of myself and others in 1864. They are left in an unfinished state : as since the above was written I have lost my beloved husband, in 1857. Removed to London the same year, and lost my dear sister-in-law very recently. If I do not live to add some little account of my husband and these matters, my Editor can do it for me briefly. My Editor will find that I have given some account of Mr. Bray in two volumes published in 1859, entitled ' Poetical remains, social, sacred, and miscellaneous, of the late Edward Atkyns Bray, B.D., F.S.A., selected and edited, with a Memoir of the Author, by Mrs. Bray.' Longmans, 1859. After, since I came to reside in London, I have written and published the following : — "The Good St. Louis and his Times. One vol. Grifiith and Farran, 1870. " The Revolt of the Protestants of the Cevennes, with some account of the Huguenots of the 17th century. One vol. Murray, 1870. " Joan of Arc, and the Times of Charles VII., King of France. One vol. Griffith and Farran, 1874. " Hartland Forest : a Legend of the West. Longmans, 1871. "Roseteague, or the Heir of Treville Creuse. Two vols. Chapman and Hall, 1874. INTRODUCTION. 3 " I have also revised for republication all my novels and romances. "My Editor can, if he pleases, give a short notice of Mr. Bray's life and loss ; my removal to Brompton in the year he died, and then some short notice of me and my death as he pleases." The record is brief: but I do not know that ex- pansion would add to its interest. In the quarter of a century which followed the close of the autobiography, the even course of a life of study and reflection flowed on with but little variety of incident. Its charm lay, not in the present, but in the past — in memory, imagination, and feeling. It was her period of rest — and of preparation. My first real acquaintance with my great-aunt and godmother dated from her settlement in London, after the death of Mr. Brdy. She was then already approaching her 70th year. Her singular energy and vitality threw into strong relief the quaint, old-fashioned ideas and habits which had crystallized in her during the thirty-five years of her life at the Vicarage of Tavistock. With a mind in its youth so versatile and open to impression from everything which ministered to her love of antiquity and romance, her lot had been cast from early childhood among singularly congenial influences. The antiquarian and dramatic tastes of her brother, to whom she was devotedly attached ; the world of art and antiquity into which she was intro- B 2 4 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. duced by her marriage with the accomplished son of Thomas Stothard ; and the consolidation and deepening of all these impressions through the close and sympathetic appreciation of her gifts by the scholarly tastes and refined judgment of Mr. Bray, all produced a strong effect upon a mind pregnant with unmistakable fire of genius. With such associations, a passionate love of history, a metnory which seemed to lose nothing it had once grasped, and an imagination which made the pages of the dryest old chronicler glow with romance, Mrs. Bray possessed unfailing stores of interest and amusement, as well as ample occupation for her declining years. Lamdator temporis acti, she yet had her sym- pathieSj too, with the present, especially where her family affections were concerned, but she did not understand it. It would have been surprising if she had, considering her limited intercourse with the outside world. Perfectly retaining recollections of very early childhood, incidents and traditions of the last century gave a distinct colour to her ideas and manner. She had already re^iched an age of intelligence before her grandmother died in her hundredth year ; and we may understand the strength of the impression made upon a precocious child by the tales of the old lady, who could Carry her memory back to the days of Queen Anne, when she lived among men who had witnessed INTRODUCTION. j the execution of King Charles T. And the influence exercised upon Mrs. Bray by this living link with a remote past was no imaginary one. To her latest day she was fond of dwelling upon it with pride, and such feelings would not be likely to lose any of their force during her long association with the similar, if less ardent, tastes of Mr. Bray. The faculty which was wanting in her, and for the want of which her genius fell short of the first rank, was that of selection and condensation. Surrounded by appreciative (not to say flattering) friends, and highly sensitive, she was left too long to work out her style by herself, subjected to very little wholesome criticism. The wonder is, that with such encourage- ment to self-esteem, she was so wholly free from any of the disagreeable qualities of self-consciousness or vanity, and retained to the last a simplicity of thought and manner which was one of her greatest charms. She believed profoundly in herself and her works, and made no secret of it, but there was a childlike openness and sweetness in her self-confidence which attracted instead of repelling. This want of the power of condensation told upon her literary style, but another intellectual deficiency which strongly marked her conversation, did not seem to affect her more studied writings, though traces of it may be now and then observed. It was one popularly attributed 6 , A UTOBIOGRAPHY. to her sex, that of defective logical judgment. The fault was doubtless in great measure due to nervous- ness, a constitutional weakness which accompanied her, and had its effect upon her fortunes throughout, life. Children are attracted by what is quaint and old- fashioned. My earliest impressions of my great-aunt are derived from a visit I paid to her at Tavistock, when I was a child. The trim old garden, with its straight shady arcades, up and down which the Vicar and his wife would pace for hours, composing, she her romances, he his sermons or -lyric pieces; the huge sepulchral stones, set up on end, discovered in the neighbourhood by the antiquarian researches of Mr. Bray ; the elegant classical inscriptions which met the eye in sequestered nooks ; the gloomy gateway shrouded with ivy, known to tradition as 'Betsey Grimbal's Tower,' and the scene of a thrilling murder, which still seemed to stain the turret stair with blood, and forms an incident in one of Mrs. Bray's local romances ; the old abbey Still House at the end of the long garden, and the lovely Tavy dashing over the rocks under the wall at its foot ; Mr. Bray's tall upright figure, and dignified, old-fashioned manners; the indescribable chariot of uncertain antiquity, with the slow plodding horses and ancient coachman ; and, most of all, Dartmoor with its rocks and streams, its legends of pixies and Druidical remains, giving such ample scope for the imaginative. INTRODUCTION. 7 mind : — all these are memories without which any picture of my great-aunt, even as the present generation knew her, would be incomplete. The picture has its humorous side as well. Tavistock in those old days abounded in strongly marked types of character such as are rarely met with in these levelling days. Mrs. Bray has handed many of them down to memory in her " Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy." But not the least remarkable of them were the Vicar and his wife themselves. My father was ordained to the curacy of Tavistock in 1833, and from his reminiscences I have derived many characteristic, particulars. It was (very pardonably) the opinion of Mrs. Bray that in her husband the Church possessed one of the most powerful preachers that then beat the " drum ecclesiastic." It might generally be known in Tavis- tock church when the congregation was being treated with one of Mr. Bray's own sermons, from Mrs.- Bray's head appearing above the tall enclosure of her pew under the pulpit, as she stood up with the strings of her bonnet untied so as not to miss the hearing of a word that fell from her husband's lips. She came to the hearing not only prepossessed in the highest degree in favour of the preacher's qualifications, theological, ' literary, and oratorical, but also in the secret of the extraordinary labour and pains which the production 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. had cost, to which she listened with such rapt atten- tion. The Vicar's own sermons were an angel's visit from that lofty pulpit. He rarely indeed failed to preach both of the Sunday sermons, except when prevented by illness or absence from home; but the great majority of his sermons consisted of adaptations from old Divines of the English Church, and of trans- lations from the ancient fathers and great French preachers, both Roman and Protestant. In this there was no laziness, for the care and time devoted to these compilations probably far exceeded any that the clergy in general can afford to give to their homiletics. Once or twice in a month the Vicar would come out with an original sermon. The process by which this would be produced was even more original than the result. A text having been chosen, the first step was to consult lexicons and com- mentaries, and make notes of what was found available there. Then certain ivory tablets, carried in his pocket, were called into requisition on every occasion, appro- priate more or less; and every thought that sprang directly or indirectly, nearly or remotely, not alone from the subject of the passage, but even from its separate significant words, was duly noted down. The tablets filled, their contents were transferred to paper in the order in which they stood, and when these and other notes filled paper enough for a sermon, the INTRODUCTION. 9 whole was gone through and classified by means of the capitals A. B. C, &c., written across the several sen- tences or paragraphs. The next thing was to copy out these as arranged under those different letters, with such links of connection as were needed to give them something like continuity. Of this mosaic, so fitted, and revised with a most critical and fastidious scrutiny, a copy was made for further adjustment and polishing. From this again — unless another rough copy seemed to be needed, which often happened — the MS. to be used in preaching was carefully transcribed in a large, clear hand, of a peculiar character and excellent calligraphy. It may be supposed that such a process could not supply original sermons with great frequency, and even yet there was much to do before appearance in the pulpit could be ventured. Mr. Bray was a consummate elocutionist of the old-fashioned school of J. Kemble and C. Young, and was gifted with an exquisite voice for reading, though not for singing. His reading of the Lessons, especially the more poetical ones, was a treat to listen to, as would also have been that of the Liturgy, but that he read that in so low a tone, in order to save himself for the pulpit, that he was not audible much beyond the reading desk. That sermons so laboriously composed might have due justice done them in the delivery, required a preparatory process hardly less laborious. The MS. was gone over word by word, lo AUTOBIOGRAPHY. and the gradations of emphasis to be used were indicated by underscoring with one, two, or more lines. As may be supposed, the effect was a delivery generally too formal and artificial; but now and then it would answer its end by startling and even thrilling the congregation. A few of these original sermons — oc- casional ones — were printed during Mr. Bray's lifetime. Stimulated by the enthusiastic praises of his wife, which touched an inward chord of unobtrusive, simple- minded vanity, he prepared for the press enough of them to supply ten or a dozen volumes, and provided by his will for their publication after his death. Fortunately he left to his widow, or alternative editor, a discretionary power to limit the number of volumes to be printed. Two only have appeared. The politics of the Vicarage wefe by no means in harmony with those of the Russell borough ; and as Mr. Bray believed himself to lie under the most solemn and sacred obligations to show his people the error of their ways in every relation of life, it may be feared that his diligence, earnestness, and eloquence lost a good deal of their due influence through the hostility which he sometimes aroused by his mode of treating the questions of the day. His practice too of referring to things quite out of the sphere of his hearers' knowledge, was cal- culated rather to distract than to fix attention. It was only such simple souls as could find blessedness INTRODUCTION. ii in the word " Mesopotamia, " that were edified by the proper names which often besprinkled his addresses. Many stories were told about the remarks and comments for which such references gave occasion. " Trismegistus 1 " asked a farmer of his friend, as they walked up the street from church together, "who is Trismegistus?" "Lord love 'e," was the reply, "how should I knoal why, there's no end to the 'postles." Though blinded by her deep reverence and admiration for her really good and accomplished husband, Mrs. Bray had a keen eye for humour of character, and in one of Mr. Bray's curates she found many a trait which she could bear in mind for use in her works of fiction. Her regard for "Parson Willesford" was sincere and hearty; the more so because, although some years Mr. Bray's senior, he held the Vicar in the most profound respect and even veneration. Mr. Willesford was a short, stout man, of rough exterior, a thick loud voice, very deaf, broad Devonshire in his utterance and dialect, but an excellent scholar withal, and, as Mrs. Bray always pronounced him, a thoroughly loyal, honest, and worthy man. As Mr. Bray's only curate he did every stick of the week-day work both in church and parish (the latter being the smallest conceivable), and on Sundays all that was possible consistently with his duties away from Tavistock. Besides the services at Brentor, a daughter church. 12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. perched high on a rocky eminence four miles from the town, he had to perform those of two small livings of his own, yet farther away, and then to get back to Tavistock in time to save his Vicar from the risk of catching cold by performing funerals in the evening. The Morning Service at Tavistock commenced at ten, and at that hour Mr. Willesford would follow his Vicar out of the vestry, and walk up the whole length of the Abbey church to the reading desk, wearing under his surplice buff breeches, finished by mahogany tops and plated spurs. Morning Prayer ended, he returned again by the way he came to the vestry, there doffed his surplice, and then stumped loudly out of the north door, if not noticed by the congregation because of their familiarity with the movement, certainly with no attempt or pos- sibility of concealment. In little more than half-an- hour he reached Brentor, where he tied up his horse in the "linney" at the foot of the rock, went through the full Morning Service, with a congregatiqn of some twenty rustics that half-filled the little church ; and this done, anthem and all, he hastened down again, mounted his horse that awaited him at the gate below, and galloped off for the other two services,* which were considerably shorter, as requiring the Evensong only to * My father when a boy accompanied him in one of these rides, and greatly enjoyed it, as well as the good dinner of which he partook on his return. INTRO D UCTION. 1 3 be said. Getting back to Tavistock, and finishing off his funerals there, in reasonable time, he sat down to an ample dinner and a bottle of full-bodied port, took his evening snooze, and went to -bed betimes, but not without provision for the wants of the midnight hour. By his bedside was always placed a tart, apple in winter, gooseberry in summer, with a cup of clotted cream; and it was a thing to alarm his faithful wife Susan, and to make her contemplate sending for Dr. H. as soon as she got down, if on looking at her husband's side- table when she awoke, she did not find pie-dish, cream- cup, and plate completely cleared. Besides the curacy of Tavistock cum Brentor, and the two small livings of which the names are forgotten, Parson Willesford was master of the Endowed Saxon Grammar School, which he carried on, if perchance a boy or two claimed the education of that ancient foundation, in the hayloft over his stable. The fact was that he turned the school building to that use which was, for the most part, the only one that could be found for it — that of a shelter for his own and his son's horses. For teaching he was sufficiently qualified by his knowledge of both Greek and Latin ; but there was in those days little demand in Tavistock for those luxuries of learn- ing, and such demand as there was was more satis- factorily met at the School of the Unitarian Minister. The articles he supplied were no doubt more highly 14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. valued than those of the far more learned curate because they had to be paid for, whereas the curate's could be claimed for nothing. Mrs. Bray was too impulsive in her benevolence, too excitable in her sympathies, too credulous, too nervous, and indeed too variable in health for anything like useful visiting amongst the poor. Such of them as she saw at her own home, where they came for their Sacra- mental alms or their Christmas gifts, were warmly at- tached to her, as she was to them ; though it may be feared that by too many of them she was sadly imposed upon. Except for paying calls — a custom which she honoured more in the breach than in the observance — she was rarely seen in the town; but weather alone or illness were suffered to interfere with the daily ride or drive, which was held to be indispensable to the preservation of health. During the earlier years of her residence at Tavistock, she would accompany Mr. Bray on what she called, in all seriousness, her horse — a pretty little rough Dartmoor pony, over whose body Mr. Bray could almost have stood with a leg on each side of it, without lifting either foot from the ground. The pair jogged on together, with their groom behind, and nearly always actively engaged in some literary conversation ; gener- ally too with the object before them of visiting some spot of romantic, picturesque, or antiquarian attraction. The pace seldom exceeded an amble, and never went INTRODUCTION. 15 beyond a moderate trot, chiefly because Mr. Bray considered those paces to be most conducive to good digestion, as best assisting " the peristaltic action of the stomach." In the winter their five o'clock dinner, and indeed all the meals, were taken in the drawing-room ; not with any view to economy, for the housekeeping was always liberal, but because of the dread which both master and mistress had of taking cold through variations of tem- perature between room and room. The doors of the rooms, both bed and sitting, were hung over with thick baize curtains, and woe to the servant or thoughtless young visitor who should leave one open at entrance or exit. Only two other kinds of carelessness were capable of causing more disturbance to the equableness and dignity of Mrs. Bray's temper and bearing. One was the making of any sudden noise by slamming a door, letting down the piano flap, oversetting a chair, dropping a piece of crockery, &c. The other, and the worse, con- sisted in the cook underboiling the vegetables, or sending up any dish of such a kind, or in such a state of culinary imperfection, as to threaten its eater with indigestion. On these occasions the poor Vicar would drop his knife and fork, throw up his hands, and, with a look and voice of genuine despair, exclaim " This is too bad ! I shall be starved to death ! " In anticipa- tion of the possibility of such reproaches, Mrs. Bray's i6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. extreme solicitude has been known so to overmaster her devotion, that she would pause in the midst of the family prayers, which she always read, and with great fervour, in order to give to the cook some caution or direction for the proper preparation of Mr. Bray's, and indeed of her own, dishes. The success of these precautions, and others having the same object, is suffi- ciently vouched by the fact that, although both in delicate health, and Mr. Bray of a decidedly weakly habit, he attained his 80th and Mrs. Bray her 95th year, both retaining until within a short time of their death all their mental powers and, for such ages, a fair portion of their bodily. After Mr. Bray's death, Mrs. Bray removed to Lon- don, in the neighbourhood of Brompton. With the necessary exceptions, but little change was made in her habits. As she was in those days at Tavistock, so she was to the end of her life. Surrounded by relics of the past — pictures by Thomas Stothard (whose biographer she was) ; prints of Mrs. Siddons, the idol of her youth and age ; her books, their every page scored with her marks, and their fly-leaves filled with notes of any thought or description which struck her fancy; her beloved Froissart and Monstre- let ; Matthew Paris, and Roger of Wendover — Hallam, Prescott, Froude, Alison, Motley, Henri Martin, and many another historian ; the works of Robert Southey^ INTRODUCTION. 17 who divided her affections with Mrs. Siddons — but it would be useless to attempt to describe all the contents of a library which embraced representative works upon most subjects, and not a book in which was uncut, or unmarked by her appreciative pencil. The most prominent object in her ordinary sitting- room, and the centre about which the whole of her later life revolved, was an old Indian cabinet crowned with china. In this cabinet was — and is, for it is now in my pc^session-^collected what were to her all the most precious memorials of her career ; it is in fact an epitome of her whole life, from the cradle to the grave. I can imagine no better method of laying open her innermost heart and character to the world, than by giving a brief description of some of its contents. , It had been to me an object of awe from childhood ; and it was with no different feelings that I first unlocked its secrets when it passed into my possession. It would be impossible fully to describe its varied treasures — various as the variety of life. At first sight, upon opening one after another its many drawers, my task seems to promise to be an easy one. Numberless little bundles of letters neatly tied up with red tape, and each with a short docket on the outside, present an appearance of great order and method. But a short examination dispels the delusion. There is great order, but no method., Arrangement ends with neatness: c i8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. and the fervour of the descriptive docket by no means necessarily corresponds with the importance of the con- tents of the bundle. Their value was to her measured by their associations. Every letter of any interest or consequence, and many of neither, that had been addressed to her in the course of some ninety years, have been here preserved. The great bulk is from members of her family, especially from her brother, Mr. A. J. Kempe the antiquary, beginning at an early age and continuing to the time of his death : but there are hosts of others. With the exception, however, of those of Robert Southey, many of which have been already published in his memoirs and elsewhere, of Mrs. Southey (Caroline Bowles), and a few more, some of which have been inserted in this Auto- biography, none are of public interest. The truth is that, save Southey, she had made but few acquaintances among the leading spirits of her day. This was due, partly to her care of her health and her own nervousness, which was aggravated by the still greater nervousness of Mr. Bray; partly to certain intellectual deficiencies before noticed, enhanced by a life of retirement. Her understanding of the current events of the day was guided more by feeling than by reflection. A great speech would rouse her by its eloquence, a great event by its dramatic interest; but she would have but little real perception of their bearing INTRODUCTION. 19 upon the present. If she spoke of them, they did but lead her back to the past. Had she mixed more with the world, she rnight htive acquired a juster appreci- ation of the present, but we should have perhaps lost some of that enthusiasm for the past which was so strong a characteristic in her. It was this failure in mental grasp which prevented her from taking rank as a letter-writer, and therefore as a receiver of letters. — To say this implies no depreciation of such works as her 'Letters from Normandy,' or 'Borders of the Tamar and Tavy,' because they are simply descriptive. They are rather journals or note-books than letters, and not such as would call for or suggest a reply. It is, in fact, a striking example of the " spontaneousness " as well as of the " one-sidedness " of genius that, with such obvious intellectual failings, and especially a singular weakness of critical faculty, Mrs. Bray should have been able to exercise her remarkable gifts of imagin- ation and expression in the production of works of so 'much unquestionable power, with admirable clearness and purity of style. It must not be inferred from these remarks, that it is upon her imaginative works alone that her _ claim rests to a position among English writers. The 'Historical Romance' was undoubtedly the class of literature most suited to her taste and genius. Her sphere was in the romance rather than in the philosophy c 2 20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. of history. To enlarge upon a hint, to invest the dry bones of obscure fact with life and reality, afforded her the greatest delight. To read history with her was like conversing with one who had been an eyewitness. But to one with such gifts, and with a tenacity of memory which gave her that mastery of facts and breadth of view so important in historical narrative, there was ample field for the useful exercise of her powers in serious as well as in romantic history. Her ' Joan of Arc,' ' Protestants of the Cevennes,' and ' Good St. Louis,' will always rank high with those who value a clear narrative told with strong feeling and much felicity of expression. But to return to the cabinet. Some of its contents date before her birth. I find sundry letters, for in- stance, addressed to her mother by her niece. Miss Jane "Wrather (including congratulations upon her marriage to Mr. Kempe), about the year 1750 ; very long, but full of character and humour.* In another drawer repose a few relics of earliest childhood. Miniature- notes from her mother, folded into the packet fashion of post letters in those days. "Rodney BuUdings, 1798. "Mt Dearest Elizabeth, " I hope you continue a good child and mind your book. Whenever Miss Wrather says you may come * One of them will be found inserted in the Autobiography, p. 97. INTRODUCTION. 21 home to see us, we will come and fetch you — and if she tells me you have been good I shall buy you a new doll, and take you with me to choose it .... " The doll appears to have been duly earned, for this is the next note : — "My Dearest Eliza, "If I hear that you are good, and make yourself happy, I shall send you a pocket-book to keep my letters in. "Your affectionate mother, "A. Kempe. "P.S. — I shall take your doll to have a fashionable wig to-morrow." I select the above not particularly characteristic notes, not for their intrinsic merit, but because the doll itself (which my father recollects as a child under the name of "Lumpy") is preserved, with its wig — both somewhat the worse for nearly a century's wear; yet the solid wooden joints have resisted time and youth- ful affection in a manner which would ruin modern trade. A relic of about the same period, I find the first germs of literary taste in the tale of which mention is made in the Autobiography. A few lines will be suffi- cient to show its character. There is nothing in it more original than in the ordinary run of infantine 22 A UTOBIOGRAPH Y. novels. Clever children can do wonders in this way,-^ they can be everything but original. A Novel called Oddities, by A. E. Kempe. " At a neat village : in a remote part of Wales, near Cardegan, lived a family as antient as the church, whose tumbling down condition declared it to be at least of Saxon date. Indeed, the singularity of this family demanded the admiration, wonder, and respect of all the ajacent Villages. It was composed of a maiden Aunt, whose mean groveling and avarices disposition atracted the Hatred of those whom she was desirous should not only respect her as a Woman, but pay her that adoration which the young and agreeable part of her sex alone could expect." And so on for some fifteen pages, when the novel abruptly breaks off. Next come relics of her dramatic tastes, in the play- bill of an entertainment in honour of Mrs. Kempe's birthday, when will be performed for the third time the tragedy of 'The Eevenge.' The part of Leonora is assigned to Miss Kempe ; who also " in the course of the evening will recite Collins' ' Ode on the Passions.' " The bill closes with the farce of ' The Portrait ; ' Isidora by Miss Kempe. But soon comes the more serious business of life. The correspondence with the actor Dowton, and the manager of the Bath Theatre, on the proposal that INTRODUCTION. 23 she should take up the stage as a profession. Here is preserved also the original play-bill, announcing her forthcoming appearance at Bath, the whole story of which is told in the Autobiography. The old play-bill, yellow with its seventy years, carries one irresistibly back to the Bath of Miss Austin's heroines. These relics may be said to represent her ruling characteristic. Her strong dramatic instinct gave the prevailing colour to her life. It might be traced into most of her tastes and accomplishments. It is impossible to read her novels without observing that in many of her most powerful scenes her mind's eye sees the personages move before her on the stage. Her age overlapped the great age of the drama, and Mrs. Siddons was her ideal. Proofs of her devotion to the sister art, of her industry, and of the degree of success to which she attained in it, remain in sundry scrap books of studies from the antique at the British Museum ; of sketches both architectural and from nature, showing no mean degree of talent. One of her architectural studies she would produce with not unmerited pride. It is a sketch of the market-place at Mechlin. Her husband, Charles Stothard, whose architectural drawings are unmatched for delicacy and accuracy of hand, undertook one half of the scene, while she sat bpside him and sketched the other half. The two are before me, and 24 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. it is not too much to say that when placed together it might easily be believed that the two were by the same masterly hand. Side by side with them reposes the bundle of original letters of Thomas Stothard, R.A., which afforded the material for her well-known biography of the 'English Raphael/ as she delighted to call him. Apart, in a drawer by themselves, are preserved waifs from the saddest episode of her life. The last letter written to her by the son of the great painter, her husband, Charles Stothard, before his fatal acci- dent. His little sketch book endorsed by his wife's hand : — " Little sketches made by my dearest beloved Charles as he passed along (according to his custom) in this most fatal journey. . ' Beer Ferrers, 28