A Drake by George!. Trevena John
chapter was devoted entirely to the royal visit, concerning which tradition was happily not silent. It was indeed a simple matter to follow the Queen's progress towards its culminating point, which was unquestionably Highfield Manor, as Black Anchor Farm was known in those days, through the adjoining parishes, all possessing manors of which some had survived to the present time, but most had fallen down, at each of which the royal lady had enjoyed a few hours' slumber.
Several pages were allotted to this habit of Elizabeth, who was apparently unable to travel more than five miles without going to bed; and in these the author sought to prove the existence of some malady, a kind of travelling sickness, no doubt exaggerated by the roughness of the roads and constant jolting of the coach, so that the physician in attendance felt himself compelled to advise his royal mistress to sleep at every village through which she passed.
The peculiarities of monarchs, remarked the author, are more conspicuous than the virtues or vices of ordinary people. The nervousness of King Charles the Second was no less remarkable than Queen Elizabeth's recurring fits of somnolence: he was continually retiring into cupboards, standing behind doors, or climbing into oak trees, owing to a morbid dread of being looked at. King Charles had secreted himself inside a cupboard within the boundaries of Highfield parish, but this was not to be regarded as a coincidence, for a patient inquiry into local traditions elicited the fact that, wherever Queen Elizabeth had slept in the best bed of the manor house, King Charles had climbed a tree (usually the common oak, Quercus robur) in the garden. As the writer was dealing with the parish of Highfield only, it would be outside the scope of his work to give a list of villages, in Devonshire alone, which claimed to possess pillows upon which Elizabeth had deigned to rest her weary head; but he was satisfied that the Highfield pillow had been stored away in precisely the same cupboard used by Charles during one of his secretive moments. Both these interesting relics had been destroyed, as was customary, by fire.
The fourth chapter flourished the Drake pedigree, copied from the original document in the author's possession; and went on to give a pathetic account of Amelia, the lonely and eccentric lady who was the last representative of the famous family to reside at Highfield Manor. Three facts concerning her could be stated with certainty: she was of a singularly retiring nature, she was accustomed to wear a black silk dress upon all occasions, and she was murdered by some unknown ruffian for the sake of certain valuable heirlooms she was known to possess. It appeared probable that she was a poetess as, according to local tradition, she could frequently be heard singing; while her fondness for cats, a weakness which had descended to her great-grandson, was a clearly marked feature of her character.
The fifth chapter was a triumph of literary and artistic handiwork. Even Mrs. Drake, who did not approve of the undertaking because she had to meet the expenses of publication, felt bound to admit that, if William had not chosen to become a great sea-captain, a certain other William, who had written plays for a living, might conceivably have been toppled from his eminence; for nothing could have been more thrilling than the story of a family vault, "filled with the bones and memories of the greatest centuries in British history," becoming first neglected, then forgotten, and finally overgrown by brambles and nettles: a vault, let the reader remember, not containing rude forefathers of the hamlet, but members of the family of Drake; a vault, not situated in the Ethiopian desert, nor abandoned within some Abyssinian jungle, but built beneath the turf of an English churchyard hard by a simple country Bethel. This vault became entirely lost! Summer followed spring, autumn preceded winter, year after year, while the nettles increased, and the brambles encroached yet more upon the consecrated ground, until the very site of the famous vault was lost to sight – this sentence being the one literary flaw upon an otherwise perfect chapter – and the oldest inhabitant had ceased to tell of its existence.
Here the History of the Parish of Highfield was interrupted by some chapters dealing with the birth, education, early struggles, voyages, adventures, success, and retirement of Captain Francis Drake; together with an account of Mrs. Drake and her relations; with a flattering notice of George Drake, Esquire, who was later to win renown as the explorer of Highfield churchyard and the discoverer of the long-missing vault. It was shown also how the Captain had been guided by Providence to the village, formerly the home of his ancestors, and how "the lure of the place had been nothing but the silver cord of an hereditary attraction stretched through the centuries to reach the golden bowl of his soul." Mrs. Drake objected to this sentence, and the printer made still stranger stuff of it; but George upheld his uncle's contention that poetical prose could not be out of place in a work dealing with the origin and progress of a wayside village.
At this point the author interpolated, by means of footnotes, a few remarks, which he owned were unconnected with the purport of his work: Domesday Book alluded to Highfield in one deplorably curt sentence; the church contained nothing of interest; an oak tree, which had formerly shaded the village green, no longer existed; the views were local, charming, and full of variety; the streams contained fish; botanists would discover furze and heather upon the adjacent moorland; the name of the place was derived probably from two Anglo-Saxon words which signified a field standing in a high place.
The author arrived at that fateful day when George, led by his interest in arboriculture to inspect a magnificent specimen of sycamore upon the south side of the churchyard, found his progress checked by tangled growths which, to the eternal disgrace of the parish, had been permitted to conceal "the precious memorial and cradle of British supremacy upon the main." Mrs. Drake opposed this sentence still more strongly, but the Captain pleaded inspiration and retained it.
There followed a stirring account of "the wave of indignation that burnt with its hot iron the souls of the villagers, when their attention had been drawn to a state of neglect which threatened to deprive them of the obvious benefits of their own burying ground, and was rapidly making it impossible for the mourner to drop the scalding tear or the fragrant flower upon the sepulchre of some dear lost one." A vivid page described the destruction of brambles and nettles, the removal of five cart loads, the subsequent bonfire in which "these emblems of Thor and Woden melted into flame and were dissipated into diaphanous smoke clouds."
The style unfortunately became confused when the author dealt at length with the actual Discovery, and represented himself as head of the family kneeling in humble thankfulness beside the mouldering stone marking the hallowed spot where Drakes lay buried.
The work included with an account of Windward House, a description of the furniture, a complete list of the antiquities, among which, owing to a printer's error, appeared the names of Kezia and Bessie; with a reference to the cats, monkeys, parrots, and giant tortoise. Then Captain Drake lay down his pen, put aside the well-thumbed dictionary, and, calling wife and nephew, informed them solemnly, "The last words are written. I have rounded off my existence with a book."
Nothing much was said for some minutes. The author was obviously struggling with emotion; Mrs. Drake put her handkerchief to her eyes; George smiled in a nervous fashion and trifled with the coppers in both pockets. Kezia and Bessie were called in and the news was broken to them: the Parish of Highfield now possessed a history.
"This," said the Captain gently, "is one of the great moments in the thrilling record of a most distinguished family. I feel as the sublime founder must have done while standing with wooden bowl in his hand gazing across the sparkling sea." Then he murmured brokenly, "Heaven bless you all," and stumbled from the room.
When the publisher sent in his estimate, Mrs. Drake was quite unable to understand how a newspaper could be sold for one halfpenny. The leading item, which was a charge for sufficient paper to print one thousand copies, came as a revelation to her; for she had always supposed that paper, like string and pins, could be had for nothing. As the publisher pressed strongly for a few illustrations of local scenery, the Captain was compelled to sacrifice, for economical reasons, three chapters of his voyages, together with the whole of his valuable footnotes. When George suggested that the history of the parish itself did not appear to be treated with that fullness the Captain was capable of giving it, the old gentleman replied, "What we lose in the letterpress we'll make up by the pictures. I quite agree with the printer, my lad: the beauty and dignity of my work will be enhanced considerably by the addition of a few engravings."
Six photographs were therefore taken exclusively for this volume, by the son of the postmistress who was an expert with the camera;