Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

A YOUNG HERO.

BY DR. SPENCER T. HALL.

THERE have recently been interred on the quiet shore of Windermere, followed to the grave only by his relatives and a few sympathising villagers, the remains of a man more heroic and humane than many to whom national honours have been accorded. Frederick William Davies, late an employé at the Stanley Dock, Liverpool, was the only boy in a family of six. His father died while he was yet young; but from that hour the boy became as a husband-i.e., a house-band; took home regularly what he could earn to help his widowed mother and his sisters, and may be said to have all but entirely sustained them for some years.

When the Liverpool Sailors' Home was in flames, on the 30th of April, 1859, and some of the inmates had got out of the upper windows, where they were clinging between two chances of death, with their shirts on fire; on an escape-ladder being hoisted, it was found too short to reach them. The crowd below seemed perplexed and hesitant, while to the sufferers above every moment was a little eternity of terror; and it was just when all hope for them appeared to be gone, that Davies, who had been standing as a spectator, voluntarily sprang forth, and climbing the larger ladder, braced a smaller one near to its top, stave to stave, with his naked hands alone, while four men and a boy came down it and over his body, thereby escaping the death, one mode or the other of which seemed but an instant before inevitable. At one time a man and a boy were upon him together, when, to use his own expression, the shout of the crowd was so tremendous as to make him feel as if it were shaking the ladder under him; and the pressure upon him so great that his hands were forced all but entirely open a moment's longer pressure, and all the three must have been dashed to pieces by the threatened fall. By the mercy of God and Davies's noble persistence, however, the escape was complete. The case excited considerable interest at the time. His portrait appeared in one of the most popular pictorial weeklies, and the philanthropic feat was acknowledged by a public subscription, which realised about 220. for his benefit, though no thought of reward or applause had incited him to the action.

All accounts of Davies's life agree in this, that his general conduct harmonised with that brave and generous effort, as a concert chords with its keynote. "Prompt at pity's call," whatever he was, whatever he had, was ever at the service of the distressed and needy; and the crowning act of his career is a fine illustration of his character.

It is now about two years since he was paying his addresses to a young woman at West Derby, near Liverpool; his visits to her being sanctioned by the family with whom she was in service. One

evening, as he was sitting in the kitchen, where she was performing her ordinary duty, a boiler, owing to the ill construction of some apparatus connected with it, suddenly exploded, cut out one of her eyes, nearly destroyed the sight of the other, seriously burnt and disfigured other parts of her person, and laid her quite prostrate, while her clothes remained on fire. Davies was wounded in the head, his clothes were nearly destroyed on his back, and both he and his sweetheart would soon have died from suffocation if from no other cause, but that he had the presence of mind to kick out a panel of a bolted door, and let in a rush of fresh air. He soon recovered, but it was otherwise with the young As soon as she was capable of being removed, she was taken to a public infirmary, where her lover, now more devoted to her than ever, visited her as often as the rules of the institution would permit. The authorities there, struck by his constancy and tenderness, presently allowed him to visit her every day; and after she had so far as was possible recovered, his attentions to her were continued as regularly as before. When she had left Liverpool for the house of her parents at Bowness, he came down as frequently as his duties would allow him to see her; and on the 1st of January in the present year (1866), notwithstanding her personal disfigurement and semi-blindness, made her his bride.

woman.

That fidelity to Katie Martin, and that marriage, were, as time has proved, among the most providential things that ever happened to brave Frederick William Davies. A fatal disease (consumption), not apparent at the time, soon afterwards set in with slow but sure determination; and any close observer might plainly have seen that he who had so nobly saved the lives of others, must ere long lay down his own. Day by day his body diminished in bulk, and grew weaker; and since it was found that the medical skill, even of Liverpool, could do but little for him, he was removed to the home of his wife's parents in Westmoreland, to try what change of air could accomplish there. Neither change of air, nor ordinary medical treatment, however, could arrest his complaint; and it was about three weeks before his death, that I was first called in to see him. I can never forget the nobleness and benignity of the young man's countenance in the extreme emaciation in which I found him. His pale and beautiful brow was one of the most intellectual, and his face, altogether, rather of the Byronic type, only that the outline was filled up with something more benign than that of Byron, as generally presented to us. I have seen some physicians and ministers of religion with a similar aspect, but seldom, if ever, one in whom it excelled that of poor Davies. It was on that and several

succeeding occasions, that he was able to detail to me in whispers, some particulars of his history for which I inquired; and it was touching to hear him, instead of boasting of his feats, saying in somewhat of the manner of one apologising for himself, when speaking of that achievement at the Liverpool fire, "You see, it was very hard to stand by when the poor fellows were in such danger, and nobody seemingly able to help them, without making an effort of some sort; so I did it."

66

from all I can gather, had certainly been one more of life than of talk. But he had heavenward aspirations, and was deeply interested in and happier for any religious conversation as his end drew nigh. He was sometimes engaged in fervent though voiceless prayer, and was much comforted when others prayed, or talked in his presence of sacred matters. After the last ordeal of physical nature had commenced with him—trying as it was to a man in some respects so weak, but in others so strong as

as to the final change, upon some one stepping near, and in soothing words, (alluding to the presence and goodness of Jesus) saying in gentle tones, "Come unto me me all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest," a composure more beauti. ful than aught merely of the earth could have given, settled over his entire countenance; and presently, with one more earnest and loving look at his weeping wife, he passed away. This was about half-past seven on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 28th, and I have since heard that at the very time a pastor in Liverpool (of course without cognisance of what was then occurring at Bowness) was alluding in his pulpit to Davies's philanthropic effort at the burning of the Sailors' Home.

I have said that Davies's marriage to poor Cathe-he-and all stood around him in mournful anxiety rine Martin was providential. In the course of a life fraught with some adventure, and no inconsiderable professional experience, it has been my lot to see nurses of almost every possible kind, from those of the magnanimous type of Florence Nightingale downwards. No words of mine could adequately indicate the patience, gentleness, assiduity, tenderness and tact, of many a loving soul I have seen in that humane capacity. In the devotion of some-not for an odd day or night, but by day and night, from week to week, and in a few instances for periods so long that to specify them would be but to awaken doubt-I have seen all that it was possible for woman to do to lengthen out life's taper at the close," and sustain its glow with her watchful care and devotion. But I can never hence think at all on the subject, without remembering how poor Mrs. Davies's comparative blindness became sight at the bedside of her failing husband, how she seemed to see his every movement with her whole body, to hear his every breath with her quickened ear, and to the very last be to him all that man could have hoped of the strongest and healthiest woman in her circumstances. True, there were other kind spirits there to help her, and occasionally to take her place. But when at length he was dying, with his hand in hers, as she bent down to him to get a last glimpse of him ere life finally ebbed out, and almost anticipated him in every wish for change of position as his breathing became more difficult-while her vision could have been scarcely more expanded than that of the smallest bird-I felt that his devotion to her in the hour of her own sharp affliction was now meeting with its fit reward, and was thankful for his sake that he had ever known her.

Should any one wish to know what such a man thought and felt, in relation to futurity, it may be but justice to say that he had not, by any means, been indifferent to that question. His religion,

When two days afterwards the corpse lay in its coffiu, methought I had never seen a more striking instance of manly beauty in death. The noble and expansive brow, the fine development of the coronal arch, the benign and placid cast of face, altogether formed a most expressive index to the character of the soul that had so recently animated the now silent and motionless frame. Even children of tender years loved to linger in the room and gaze upon him as long as they could be allowed.

That

The young hero's humble funeral was on the Wednesday following his decease. Four of his wife's brothers, boatmen on Windermere lake, carried his remains from the door. They were relieved now and then by other friendly bearers on the way, but bore him at last to the side of the grave. grave is in the little retired cemetery of Bowness, whence glimpses of the lake may be caught beyond the old Rectory trees; and the cragged and wooded hills, just now in their last vestige of autumnal beauty, stand silently and mournfully round. Monument or no monument, as raised by man, can now be a matter of little importance to him; but— "Because he needs no praise shall we be dumb?”

IN KING ARTHUR'S LAND:

A WEEK'S STUDY OF CORNISH LIFE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX."

We had a whole week to throw away: and
keen are the pleasures that rarely come. The
question arose, How shall we waste these glorious
eight days, in that wise prodigality of idleness
which often proves to hard-working people a
true economy? Shall we go north, south, east,
west? Ay, that is it. In these late September
days-so gloomy now, with the long rainy summer
drawing to a close-lie possibilities, as one sees
sometimes in very sad but patient human lives, of a
second or "St. Martin's" summer, sweet and sun-
shiny, cool and calm. We may, for all we know,
have a lovely October; clear, bright days, and
gorgeous sunsets.
Let us travel towards the
sunset. Let us see him-the good old sun, now
missing for about ten weeks-watch him drop into
the wide Atlantic: we standing on the wild Cornish
coast, with nothing except some two thousand miles
of heaving sea between us and America.

It was a grand idea, quite Ulyssean, and tinged with that half pensive romance with which all tired souls turn to the ancient myths of sailing towards the sunset; like the old Greek heroes, like the Indian Hiawatha, like our own King Arthur "going a long way" towards the "island valley of Avilion."

and civilisation. Afterwards, we heard of an enterprising family who had breakfasted in London and supped at Tintagel; travelling by rail to Bodmin Road, and posting thence; who had abode near Tintagel for seven weeks, in a cottage where from the best bed-room you could hear the horse cough in the stable, where the ceiling was bare rafters, and the floors so full of holes that the occupants of any room could converse with the room beneath. When we thought of this glorious Robinson Crusoe life, nearly as grand as our childhood's ideal of running away to dwell in an uninhabited island in the midst of a lake, we sighed, and owned we had not taken the best-that is, the most picturesque-means of seeing King Arthur's land. Yet it seemed a wild land enough that we were coming to, when, that Wednesday night, we were tumbled out of the railway carriage and rumbled in the dim dusk across Bideford Bridge; while peering out of the omnibus window we had a view of a grand illuminated clock, and then of glimmering lights, dotting a grey slope of houses and streets, which we concluded to be Bideford town.

Everyone who has read Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" knows all about Bideford town, and the bold Bideford men of Elizabethan days, who went

Ah, now we have it! We will spend our holiday sailing with John Oxenham and Salvation Yeo: week in King Arthur's land.

But how best to get there? since going to Cornwall is nearly as difficult as, topographically speaking, going to Rome; and it takes more time and patience and money to wander about the lovely nooks of Britain than to investigate half the ContiBent. Our first intention was to go straight to the Land's End, which sounded very much like going to Jericho; or so everybody-the benevolent everybody who guides the destinies of all intending travellers seemed to consider. Innumerable were the warnings we received as to the length and fatigue of the journey, and the little to be seen when you got there. So we gave up 'ne Land's End. Next Dartmoor. But it had been such a rainy season, that Dartmoor was quite impassablea mass of "soppy" forests and misty bogs. So we negatived Dartmoor. Finally, being decidedly in the position of the old man and his ass, we listered to the advice of one of the wisest of our friends; who said, "Go to Bude. It's the grandest sea-coast imaginable. And go by Bideford, Northam Burrows, and Clovelly. There is not a place in England so queer as Clovelly, and not an inn in England more comfortable than the Westward Ho!' at Northam Burrows." Thus, lured doubly by curiosity and comfort, we started.

It was a mistake, in degree. We went a long way round; wasting two precious days in tame scenery

sturdy Devon lads who were the first to venture into the mysteries of tropical lands, and contest with southern Europe the sovereignty of the Spanish Main. But times are altered now. Instead of the wild sea-talk, rough and ready, which Kingsley puts into the mouth of his heroes, we caught, through the dark, crammed, shaky omnibus, fragments of loud neighbourly conversation in the broad accent which always strikes one on coming to a new region. It was chiefly about a lady lately deceased, who was “a bright, sound, cheerful Christian,"-(Dear, unknown, dead woman, would there were more like thee !)-and a young man, a minister in the neighbourhood, who was obliged to go to live in Scotland, to escape "the young ladies." Very funny was it, thus to drop in for the crumbs of domestic history and biography, which formed the staple food of this old-world place.

Queerer still was it, when arrived at the elegant modern hotel, to speculate on all the strange faces gathered round the table d'hôte; each with its own life, character, and history: totally hidden, or dimly guessed at by fragmentary indications, such as will under any circumstances crop out. My neighbour, for instance, with the kind honest eyes and the dropped h's: he is certainly a North-countryman, who has "made himself." But though ill-educated as to his English, he is not ill-bred; there is an air of gentle courtesy about him which implies a

refined nature: in the next generation his children will be gentlemen. I wish I could say as much for the young fellow opposite, who, though he is perfectly well-bred, apparently well-born, has evidently seen life in many countries, talks most politely and pleasantly-still- But what right have we to judge our neighbours? "Here to-day, and gone to-morrow," as saith Uncle Toby; what are we all, in our frail mortal lives, but fellowguests at an inn? Why pull long faces, or grudge small kindnesses, or shut ourselves up in unsocial grimness? Why not make the best of the passing hour?-it will never come again.

So, night settled down upon us, to the sound of waves breaking over the pebbly ridge, two miles long, the sole curiosity of Northam Burrows, and, we afterwards learned, one of the geological marvels of England. Alas! its wonders were lost upon us. We were far more attracted by the sight revealed by early morning-the bright open sea, with its long waves rolling in; real ocean waves; and the dim distance broken only by a hazy speck, said to be Lundy Island. Ah-we were nearing the Atlantic at last. Breakfast, and then farewell to the quiet, lonely shore-the thousand acres of public land, on which cows, asses, and geese, roam at will:-Query: for how long? A steep climb brought us to the green Devon lanes, rich in ferns and blackberries, and a picturesque village-just a church, a parsonage, and half-a-dozen cottages, where, as we drive past in the early morning, the only visible inhabitants seem to be two or three chubby, round-eyed, whitehaired children; as fat as, and just a trifle cleaner than, the ever-accompanying black pig. I think all pigs are black in Devon.

Now, we can really see the country: the fine open sea-board of Devon, high up the still barer tracts of Cornwall, over which mythical King Arthur reigned. Not as it was then, but modernized into a wide agricultural champaign; free slopes of hill and dale views so wide, that it looks, with its intersecting hedges, not unlike a child's puzzlemap. Mapped in colours, too. There are wheatfields, where, alas! half the wheat lies spoilt and blackening; red ploughed fields, where the industrious farmer is already preparing for next year's crop; green pasture-fields, dotted with cows, suggestive of junket and Devonshire cream. And on the road, owing to a review of the North Devon Mounted Rifles, we meet an extraordinary concourse of the aborigines-two persons every three miles at least-farmers' sons, all in uniform, and mounted bravely upon plough-horses, generally riding in couples, and chatting merrily. One bold youth we caught going through his sword exercise on horseback; till, seeing strangers, he suddenly sheathed his dazzling blade, and- blushed!-a first-rate boyish blush. May he never blush for any worse deed!

And once, in one of these narrow Devon lanes, we met a Devon parson, driving his family to see the sight; a fine thoughtful face, such as one casionally meets in far-away country-places, and

wonders how such an one, evidently a scholar and a gentleman every inch of him, came to be hidden, literally buried, there.

A word for these curious Devonshire lanes. They are deep cuttings, ten or twelve feet, by means of which the ancient road-makers lowered the steep hills. Nature has done the rest. From the roadway up to the level of the fields she has clothed the perpendicular bank with vegetation; ferns, mosses, flowers, creepers, bushes-all mingled in a wild luxuriance that makes every yard an endless study of form and colour. Better than all the rubbish of costume-pictures that cover the Academy walls, would be a careful study, in oil or water-colour, of three feet of a Devonshire lane. But we cannot stay, though the honeysuckle, red campion, and wild geranium are, even at this late season, most enticing; and the large, luscious, blackberries hang in a manner that, to a feeble, puerile mind, is perfectly maddening. Alas! we must go on: we have forty miles nearly to do to-day.

Our first halt is at Clovelly, undoubtedly the queerest village extant. Our driver tells us of

Clovelly from the Pier.

"The Hobby" and "The Park;" but, wisely or not, we eschew these. We have only a brief time, and we prefer the village itself. Here is its picture; but neither that, nor any description written, can half describe its oddity. You enter it at the top of the street,-there is but one,-much as if you were entering a church by the steeple, or a house by the trap-door on the roof. Indeed, it is a saying in Clovelly, that every one can look down his neighbour's chimney. And the street is not a street, but

The illustrations to this paper are from photographs by Mr. Harry Thorn, Bude Harbour.

[ocr errors]
[graphic]

a staircase, by which are ascending and descending foot-passengers; and donkeys, the only possible vehicles of traffic, carrying loads of coals, provisions, &c. Parallel with this winding stair, leaps a lively stream, whose course it follows down to the sea; and on either side, two or three on a level, are planted the little, old-fashioned grey stone houses, here and there, anyhow, in the nooks of the rock. What insanity could have possessed the original Clovellians to build thus, like a colony of cliff swallows, on a sloping rock, five hundred feet high, when, close above, was a level of smooth, smiling country! Picturesque as it is,—and as we sat on the pier and looked up from the sunshiny sea to the green-fringed, curving rock, which held in its arms the tiny village, we thought we had never seen so pretty a sight-still Clovelly must be a terrible place to live in.

We were sure of this, when, having got to the bottom of it, with the certainty of having to climb up again, with no possible help save our own feet we daringly tried a new road, which looked green and cool, and where an old woman was wearily climbing ahead of us.

"Ay, ay," she said, when spoken to, "this be a tough pull for old folks, and I be a widow with nine children, and my master was lost off the Cape o' Good Hope, fifteen years ago."

Whereupon, with the curious, touching frankness of country-folk, she began to tell us her whole history; how she had gone through a deal of trouble, and how the rector-"not this one, but t'other,Mr. Kin'sley he was," had known her well, and been very kind to her. And then, with noble ignorance of fame, she told us how "them Kin'sley lads" used to be always haunting the pier and the fishermen, climbing the rocks, and sailing in their boat about the bay. Doubtless much of that hearty tender love of nature and human nature, that wholesome, manly, English feeling, which shines out in every one of Charles Kingsley's books, was learnt by the parson's boys ("and venturous chaps they was," said the old woman,) along the green Devon lanes and on the wild Clovelly shore.

Another study of rural life. As we wound slowly and painfully up the green shady road, thankful that it was so shady, that there were lots of blackberries, and one flower, a sort of campion, quite new to me-which is saying a good deal for its rarity-we came upon a primitive saw-pit. Two men, one half-concealed below, the other the proverbial "top-sawyer," were conversing in broad Devon about a cleft log which lay before them.

"Eh, but I's been clean mistaken in he," said the top-sawyer, an elderly man, with a sharp, but kindly face. "Rotten, rotten, he'll never make nothin', not he!" kicking the log. "He's bad at the heart! Yes," added the old fellow, when sympathised with and questioned-"Yes, who'd ha thought it? He seemed as good a bit o' wood as ever you'd get-and you'll get the finest oak in England hereabouts the sea winds make it so

[ocr errors]

hard and close. But you never know what they're worth till you cut into 'em. They're like a good many more things in this world-mighty fine outside, and you can't get inside of 'em to see what's there. Eh!" moralised the old fellow (whose words I have tried to remember literatim), as he regarded, half-vexed, half-sadly, his rotten log, with a thoughtful wise face, wise with that mother-wit which is better than all book-learning-"Eh! but I have been mistaken in he!” (Cornish and Devon folk, I noticed, call everything down to an egg or a tea-cup "he.") However, he soon fell to work again on a fresh log: and for one resolute half-hour, his unceasing, monotonous saw-saw formed a sleepy under-tone to the other sounds, faint and few, which broke the intense silence of the autumn afternoon-the distant wash of the wave, the twitter of a robin, or the sudden drop of an acorn to the ground. At last the saw stopped, and the log fell cloven, showing two smooth surfaces of almost unequalled closeness and beauty of grain. contemplated them with pride. "There now, he's all right! smooth, and so firm, and hard. hard!" wiping the drops from the honest forehead. We asked if it were not very severe work?

Our top-sawyer

Look at him, so Lord, but he was

"Pretty well, but I's used to it; and I likes it rather specially when I get's a bit o' wood like that. Look'ee at him! there bean't a better piece of oak in all England." And again he stood and contemplated his work, and many a maker of books and pictures might regard theirs with a less innocent and lawful pride. Then tearing himself away to ordinary things, he said, sharply, “Now, Dick, we'll go to our dinners."

[ocr errors]

He put on his coat, and he and the younger man trudged off together up the hill and down again, for they lived, they said, in Clovelly "Street. They would be back in an hour, and go on with that incessant "saw-sawing" till dark. As we watched them disappear, the old man turning back civilly to give us some advice concerning our own route back to the inn, we thought, next time we get a tough piece of work to do, or a disappointment over good work uselessly done, we shall remember the "top-sawyer" of Clovelly.

Wonderful little village! a place to paint, to admire, to wonder at-but not to stay in. Life at Clovelly would be far too severe for any mortal feet not born on the spot. When we had once again ascended to the top of the street, we had just strength left to shake the dust from our feet, perfectly contented never, except in dreams, to see pretty Clovelly more. Besides, eighteen miles lay between us and our destination-Bude Harbour, Cornwall.

Another succession of Devonshire lanes, interspersed by glimpses of wide, open country, a long hilly tract of heather, breezy and bright,-oh! how gloriously the sun shone, and how blue was the sea that we left behind at Clovelly!-and we were fairly in King Arthur's Land.

« ForrigeFortsett »