Lorna Doone. Richard Doddridge Blackmore

      January, 1873.

      PREFACE BY MISS KATHARINE HILLARD

      Author Of “The Doones Of Exmoor,” In “Harper’s Magazine,” Vol. LXV. Page 835.

      A novel that has stood the test of time so well as Mr. Blackmore’s charming story of “Lorna Doone” scarcely needs a preface. Certainly no word of introduction is necessary to testify to its exquisite humor, its dramatic force, its under-current of poetic feeling, its fine touches of landscape-painting, and the novelty and interest of its subject. Since it first appeared in 1869 all these have become as household words, only, perhaps, all the admirers of “Lorna Doone” have not had the good fortune to wander through the romantic and picturesque region where the scene of the story is laid. To travel in North Devon, and over its border into Somerset (“the Summerland,” as the old Northmen call it), is to be confronted with the scenes of the novel at every turn; for Mr. Blackmore has so successfully woven the legends of the whole countryside into his story that one grows to believe it a veritable history, and is as disappointed to find traces of the romancer’s own hand here and there as to find the hills and valleys laid bare of the forests which adorned them in the time of the Doones.

      It is a singular country, this Devonshire coast, made up as it is of a series of rocky headlands jutting far out into the sea, and holding between their stretching arms deep fertile wooded valleys called combes (pronounced coomes), watered by trout and salmon streams, and filled with an Italian profusion of vegetation, myrtles and fuchsias, growing in the open air, and the walls hidden with a luxuriant tapestry of ferns and ivies and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), where the sheep pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out of the red-fronted cliffs the querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine, and make their plaintive moan. Near Lynton there is the famous Valley of Rocks, where the wise woman, Mother Melldrum, had her winter quarters under the Devil’s Cheese-wring.

      The irregular pile of rocks that goes by this name is wrongly called Cheese-ring (or scoop) in some editions of “Lorna Doone,” instead of Cheese-wring or (press), which it somewhat resembles in shape. Southey began the fortune of Lynton as a watering-place, and wrote a glowing description of the village and the Valley of Rocks. Of the latter he says: “A palace of the pre-Adamite kings, a city of the Anakim must have appeared so shapeless and yet so like the ruins of what had been shaped after the waters of the flood subsided.” Great bowlders, half hidden by the bracken, lie about in wildest confusion; the remains of what seem to be Druidic circles can be traced here and there, and it is hard to persuade one’s self that the ragged towers and picturesque piles of rock are not the work of Cyclopean architects.

      “Our home-folk always call it the ‘Danes,’ or the ‘Denes,’ which is no more, they tell me, than a hollow place, even as the word ‘den’ is,” says John Ridd. “It is a pretty place,” he adds, “though nothing to frighten any body, unless he hath lived in a gallipot.” The valley is well protected from the wind, and “there is shelter and dry fern-bedding and folk to be seen in the distance from a bank whereon the sun shines.” Here John Ridd came to consult the wise woman toward the end of March, while the weather was still cold and piercing. In the warm days of summer she lived “in a pleasant cave facing the cool side of the hill, far inland, near Hawkridge, and close over Tarr-steps—a wonderful crossing of Barle River, made (as every body knows) by Satan for a wager.” But the antiquarians of to-day assert that the curious steps were made by the early British.

      Not far beyond the Valley of Rocks are the grounds of Ley Abbey, a modern mansion, but occupying the site of Lev Manor, to whose owner, Baron de Whichehalse, John Ridd accompanies Master Huckaback in search of a warrant against the Doones. In fact, all the way from Barnstaple over the parapet of whose bridge Tom Faggus leaped his wonderful mare, every nook and corner of the countryside teems with legends of the Doones. From Lynton we drive over the border into Porlock, in Somerset that quaint little village where Coleridge wrote his “Kubla Khan,” and where Lord Lovelace brought Ada Byron to his seat of Ashley Combe.

      It was while riding home from Porlock market that John Ridd’s father was murdered by the Doones, and from Porlock we drove in a pony-trap over the high moors to Malmsmead, in search of the ruined huts of the Doones.

      Over the heights of Yarner Moor, and past Oare Ford (now bridged over), the road lay past the old church of Oare, where Lorna Doone and John Ridd were married, and then into the deep flowery lanes that are the glory of Devon and Somerset. Malmsmead proved to be a little cluster of heavily thatched cottages, nestled under overhanging trees, where stood an ancient signboard with “Badgworthy” on one of its arms, pointing the way we should go. This d on the old sign-board accounted for the local pronunciation of Badgery, as the river is always called.

      At Malmsmead the road ends, and thence one must proceed on foot. Several deep and flowery lanes lead one at length to the river where a lonely stone cottage stands on its further brink. This is Clowd Farm, and here all paths cease. Two hundred years ago, in the time of the Doones, the narrow valley through which the Bagworthy now dances in the open sunshine was filled with trees; but now, with the exception of a withered and stunted old orchard and grove near the farm, there is not a tree to be seen, and the Bagworthy, a lonely but cheerful trout stream, rattles along in the broad sunshine through a deep valley, whose sides slope steeply upward.

      After walking about three miles into the heart of the wilderness, another deep glen, shut in by the same sloping heather-covered hills, suddenly opens to the right. There are no cliffs, no overhanging trees, not even a bush, but all along the stream, “with its soft, dark babble,” lie heaps and half-circles of stone nearly buried in the turf, and almost hidden by the tall ferns and foxgloves. And this is what we went out for to see! These are the ruins of the Doones’’ huts. There could not be anything more disappointing. Two hundred years have effectually destroyed all distinctive traits, and they might have been sheep-folds or pig-sties, or any other innocent agricultural erection for aught that we could tell. “Not a single house stood there but was the home of murder,” says their historian. The suns and rains of two hundred and odd years have effectually