I alighted on two books, which I purchased in first edition. Walter Raymond's Two Men o' Mendip (Longmans, Green, 1899) and Under Cheddar Cliffs (Seeley, 1903) by Edith Seeley. Baker summarised the first as: Lawless and uncivilized character, and strong, elemental passion, are the basis of this tragedy of country life. It represents a state of things that actually existed a century ago among the lead-miners near Cheddar and their unfriendly neighbours, the farmers. The picturesque scenery of the Mendip Hills, and the traits of speech and manners, are depicted with familiar knowledge.
Walter Raymond (1852-1931)
Raymond was born in Yeovil and remained a Somerset man all his life. His novels, written between 1888 and 1928, were based on Somerset rural life and they were praised by contemporary critics for their ‘simplicity and wholesomeness’. One recent commentator remarks that the books were very simply written with no convoluted plots or wordy descriptions. Nevertheless, his spontaneous and charming style was well suited to Somerset country life, the chief subject of his writing, and garnered him much critical acclaim. He also wrote under the pseudonym Tom Cobbleigh.
First edition - 1899
Now to Two Men o' Mendip. I must admit, I did not take heed of Baker's phrase this tragedy of country life. Tragedy there certainly is, as the tale contains two murders, two hangings (one for a murder, the other for sheep stealing) and a death through a broken heart. I was not really prepared for three of them. The story is set over exactly one year, from April 1813 to April 1814 (with ne'er a squeak about the Napoleonic War!) It concerns Little Patty Winterhead, short in stature, slight in figure, and little in limb. She lives with her father, John - a man every inch of him, in the very prime of life, and firm and sound as an oak tree - in Charterhouse Farm nigh on Cheddar Gorge. Aged 20, coming on 21, she has never had a boyfriend or been in love. Her emotions are all bound up with her Vather, who was so fond o' me as ever his heart can hold. All is set to change. She finds love with young Giles Standerwick, a groover (lead miner) and the unfolding tragedy pits father against lover - the Two Men o' Mendip - towards a grim conclusion.
Other well-drawn characters include Solomon Moggridge, the constable, whom Nature had blessed with a good disposition and a flat fallow-field of a face, which art had fenced around with a hedgerow of ragged whisker; Sophia Pierce, as tall as a maypole and hard as a nail...her long face was thin and sharp as a hatchet, with a prominent chin and a nose like a reaping hook; Aunt Maria who was really a-most as big as a house;
There's more than a sprinkling of Zummerzet phrases and words, but not overbearingly so. Such as Let's go up along the road an' zee if anybeddy is a-coming. There's plenty of humour in the exchanges: "'Tes," "Iss 'tes." "Zo 'tes." I had to look up a few words in my two-volumed Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, compiled by Thomas Wright (Bohn, 1857)
e.g. stumpole - thick head; dough-fig - turkey ; gilauffers - sweet williams; caddle - scolding; libbets - rags in strips; dimmet - twilight; tutty - nosegay.
The very last paragraph in the novel, as well as the feeling of cruel nature's law, reminds one to a certain extent of Thomas Hardy: And still the ancient, weather-beaten rocks look down, cold and unchangeable, as if human love and passion, sorrow and tears, are all too brief to be of moment in the vast immensity of time. Poor Tess; poor Little Patty Winterhead.
Baker has this to say about the second Somerset novel, Under Cheddar Cliffs: Life among the ignorant and brutal lead-miners, farmers, and village-folk of the Mendip Hills in Somerset. Hannah More (1745-1833) is introduced, with her efforts to reform them; and William Wilberforce (1759-1833) just appears.
First edition - 1903
Although the topographical area is exactly the same, with several hamlets appearing in both novels, Edith Seeley has a very different thrust (purpose?) to Raymond's book. The latter is what might be portrayed as being entirely 'secular' in outlook and narrative, with tragedy looming over its ending; this, while not exactly didactic, is framed on an evangelical canvas: William Wilberforce starts the story, Hannah More and her sister prod it along and it ends with a paean to 'the Master' as 'tis the way the best work is done. On two counts it comes across as quite natural: the story is, after all, accurate as to how two real sisters brought the Christian message to the uncouth miners and, to a lesser extent, farmers of the Cheddar area; moreover, one hundred years later Seeley represented a still strongish strain of fervour in the 'church militant' Occasionally, the piety grates, but that's as much the fault of the 21st century reprobate reader!
As with Raymond, Seeley can draw realistic characters from the inhabitants of the farming and mining communities. Here she is on the latter: they were a savage and benighted race, and if report speaks truly, the money earned underground by day was for the most part squandered at night in orgies of a disgusting description. Such had been the traditional custom for many generations; and ass the grimy, savage-looking company crept forth like rabbits from their burrows, and their uncouth figures threw strange and weird shadows along the ground, the repulsive sight made the spectator long for the quiet and more lonely landscape of the working hours. The former are well described in the various members of the Westover family: 23 year-old Lawrence, the eldest son back from a ten year escape to the sea, now to settle on the old family farm; ousting Noll (Oliver), who had expected the inheritance and who was more a chip off the recently dead brute of a father; the widowed mother, with plenty of steel in her backbone and deep knowledge of the individual members of her large brood; Dorcas, the sister who was not a soft and delicate maiden, and hysteria was a word and a complaint of which she knew nothing. Lawrence found that many of the Cheddar folks held him in suspicion and doubt, and were apt to seem averse to taking him into their confidence. His ways were not their ways...his walk, his talk, and his notions astonished them; they had yet to learn whether he was not a secret emissary of those dreaded powers, the justices and the constables, or a spy of the Government.
Then there are (very) old Jacob Carson, deaf as a post, who lives with his son (just) old Joe, a thieving rogue whose wife had been hanged and whose daughter had drowned herself; and equally old Nancy Sponge, who lived in an even more tumbledown cottage hidden away from society, with her little wizen face, burnt almost to a cinder, her sharp little eyes, and her toothless mouth which had a weird but not altogether repellant effect on those who met her; and her lodgers, Carrol Sandford, a young reprobate gone to the dogs, and his sister Joyce, who a decade previously had sworn eternal friendship with Lawrence. The love story, as there must be, rises above the brutality and coarseness of others' lives and above the rather treacly evangelical tinge (especially in the final few pages - the last chapter is entitled A Holy Day), and comes to a happy ending (unlike Raymond's tale) after much trial and tribulation.
Both Raymond and Seeley are good at narrative, have created realistic characters and set them in well described scenery. They have tempted me to buy yet another book soon, Under the Mendips by Emma Marshall (1889). We shall see!
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