December 1897
Stockton ~ Village Notes By Pamela Tennant
Introduction by Danny Howell ~
Pamela Tennant (one of the Wyndham sisters) was a writer. Her books included verses and essays. In one of her books, Village Notes And Some Other Papers, published in 1900, she wrote for the most part about Stockton in the Wylye Valley. The following notes formed chapter VII in that book and concern December 1897. Pamela and her first husband Edward Priaulx Tennant (1st Baron Glenconner) lived at Stockton House; they leased it from 1897 to maybe 1906. Their son Edward Wyndham “Bim’ Tennant was born at Stockton House on 1st July 1897. Edward, who is remembered as a war poet, was killed at the Battle of The Somme in 1916. (Pamela wrote a memoir of him, which was published in 1919).
Village Notes ~ Chapter VII
Our annual festivities being at hand, the Almshouse must, of course, be invited. It has six inmates, and stands a little back from a side road, among wet green meadows. It is a small grey stone building of Elizabethan architecture, with an old orchard sloping away at the back, full of twisted leaning apple trees. In the front is a tiny paved courtyard with a magnificent stone gateway crowned with the arms of the founder. Well mossed over, and the home of many lichens, are some words deeply cut in the grey stone, to the effect that he who cares for the needy and houses the shelterless shall not want the protection of God.
Elijah Hampton was the first to be invited, and he was found closely drawn up to a newly lit fire, with the Bible he must know so well by now open on the little table to his left.
“It’s not as I shouldn’t like to come, Marm, up t’House, and very kind I’m sure. I’ve heerd of a magic lantern, and I’d mortal like to see ‘un. But I’ve got such a turrifyin’ cough. At times that cough, he do take me so bad that I ‘most think I sha’n’t never come out again. And there, I shouldn’t be no mortal comfort to any one, as you might say. Not to any one as I sat down by at the show, you understand’. And thank you very much, I’m sure.”
He has a kind face with a quantity of iron-grey hair. His white beard is in a fringe beneath his chin. If you meet him out walking, he stands quite still in the road while he changes his knobbed stick from one hand to the other, that he may touch his cap to say “Good morning.” He sits close under the lectern in church, and wipes his eyes on a very coloured handkerchief when the more beautiful of the lessons are being read.
Mrs. Stead could not come, but was grateful for her tea and gift being taken to her next day. She was especially pleased with some oranges.
“A treat I find ’em. I do assure you! S’beatiful and moist.” And these words give a disquieting insight into the nature of that dozen and a half oranges whose dinted sides display themselves so patiently against the small panes of the village shop.
The Almshouse came to be founded in this way. In the sixteenth century a rich man [John Topp] lived at the Great House, famed for his carelessness towards God and for riotous living. One day riding on the Downs, which at that time were traversed only by rude tracks known as sheep tracks, he lost his way, and the dark of a winter’s afternoon closed about him, with the snow beginning to fall. Taken with a great anxiety, he prayed to the Virgin Mary, promising that, were he saved, he would shelter the next houseless creature he knew of, and keep him in comfort all the days of his life. As he made the vow he became aware of a tall cloaked figure at his horse’s head, laying a hand on the bridle rein, began to lead the horse silently forward. For some time they travelled thus, till certain landmarks looming through the bewildering dusk of falling snow told him he was safe. The figure disappeared, and the man rode home. But once within the shelter of his own walls the remembrance of his vow faded from him. Seven years after, the small-pox brought him face to face with Death, and once more he prayed, promising that were he to recover, his promise should be kept; and God’s poor be provided for. And not only the vow he had neglected should be performed, but he would find a home for seven others, one for each year wherein his vow had lain unfulfilled. And he recovered. The Almshouse was built and endowed by him with room for eight souls within its walls, though but six live in it now.
Often an ear for sound, and that pleasure in an easily falling cadence, is shown in the Christian names selected for the children.
And how well chosen they are sometimes!
“Yes, m’m. Seven wi’ the one at work, and nine wi’ the two we buried. Our eldest he’s Edgar. We called him just Edgar. Then there’s Mabel Kate, Gertrude Jane, Mary Florence (I give ’em always the two names – I seem to like it, m’m), then Prudence Amelia, and Priscilla May.”
“And the baby?”
“Oh! the baby’s Ernest Frederick. But we ca’s him Hurney.”
Each pair of eyes in the little crowd has brightened in turn and appropriated its own particular names, with a sidling smile or a curtsey. Then some one treads on the tame jackdaw, and the conversation naturally, if rather suddenly, changes.
“Poor Jack! he do seem never to be in the right place. But the children make a great fuss wi’ un. Last week I thought we’d lost him, but he was all right in the end. I were cleaning the house and Jack were about, so Prissy, she hunted him out of the door so he shouldn’t dirt the place up, and he ran out all of a flutter. The top were off the well, though we didn’t know it, and poor Jack he went down the well! Oh, dear! I thought we’d lost him. But I let a slip o’ wood down, and he hopped on that, and then I let the bucket down, and he hopped on that. Then I drawed him up, and he was glad to be out again! But he must ha’ felt the fright, you know, for he just hopped into the kitchen and went to roost; he didn’t do nothen’ till next day.”
Some phrases convey their meaning well, though the words are not those of common usage.
“Mild weather!”
“Very mild.”
“Don’t seem like as if we were weren’t going to have no winter!”
“Quite.”
“Too mild, I think, for the time o’ year; but I ‘xpect t’ull winter up when the days draw out – and time too. For we be pretty nigh swabbed wi’ rain.”
“T’ull winter up when the days draw out.” And the words bring before one those long, grey weeks, when half the day seems twilight and the weather “winters up” in low hanging skies and a darkened earth that rings beneath the tread. There is an old proverb that says:-
The blackest month in all the year
Is the month of Janiveer;
and so it would be, were it not for the snowdrops, thick as ever in the frozen lumpy mould. The snowdrops, with their ice-cold stalks, and bitter smell that is one of the memories of childhood. Flowers embody and express seasons of the year that owns them. The sheeted blue in the clean woods, of bluebell time, with white companies of wind flowers growing between, speak of the pale wide blue of the new May skies with small white clouds scudding their perfection. The hot yellow lilies, their golden dust and velvet spots, with the gorgeous ruby tulips stand for glowing, basking June; the heavy nicotinas hidden through the day and the milky clustering jessamine, like another nearer firmament, for the still, star-laden nights. And the shining yellow aconites, and vestal snowdrops, image the glittering winter sunshine, and icy radiance of the snow.