Excerpt
Little Clare’s first home.
“The mossy marbles restOn the lips he hath pressedIn their bloom,And the names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.” Oliver Wendell Holmes.
“Cold!” said the carrier, blowing on his fingers to keep them warm.
“Cold, bully Penmore!” ejaculated Hal Dockett,—farrier, horse-leech, and cow-doctor in ordinary to the town of Bodmin and its neighbourhood... “Lack-a-daisy! thou that hast been carrier these thirty years, and thy father afore thee, and his father afore him, ever sith ‘old Dick Boar’ days, shouldst be as hard as a milestone by this time. ’Tis the end of March, fellow!”
Be it known that “old Dick Boar” was Mr Dockett’s extremely irreverent style of allusion to His Majesty King Richard the Third.
“’Tis the end of as bitter a March as hath been in Cornwall these hundred years,” said the carrier. “Whither away now, lad?”
“Truly, unto Bradmond, whither I am bidden to see unto the black cow.”
“Is it sooth, lad, that the master is failing yonder?”
“Folk saith so,” replied Hal, his jocund face clouding over. “It shall be an evil day for Bodmin, that!”
“Ay so!” echoed the carrier. “Well! we must all be laid in earth one day. God be wi’ thee, lad!”
And with a crack of his whip, the waggon lumbered slowly forward upon the Truro road, while Dockett went on his way towards a house standing a little distance on the left, in a few acres of garden, with a paddock behind.
About the cold there was no question. The ground, which had been white with snow for many days, was now a mixture of black and white, under the influence of a thaw; while a bitterly cold wind, which made everybody shiver, rose now and then to a wild whirl, slammed the doors, and groaned through the wood-work. A fragment of cloud, rather less dim and gloomy than the rest of the heavy grey sky, was as much as could be seen of the sun.
Nor was the political atmosphere much more cheerful than the physical. All over England,—and it might be said, all over Europe,—men’s hearts were failing them for fear,—by no means for the first time in that century. In Holland the Spaniards, vanquished not by men, but by winds and waves from God, had abandoned the siege of Leyden; and the sovereignty of the Netherlands had been offered to Elizabeth of England, but after some consideration was refused. In France, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, nearly three years before, had been followed by the siege of La Rochelle, the death of the miserable Charles the Ninth, and the alliance in favour of Popery, which styled itself the Holy League. At home, gardeners were busy introducing the wallflower, the hollyhock, basil, and sweet marjoram; the first licence for public plays was granted to Burbage and his company, among whom was a young man from Warwickshire, a butcher’s son, with a turn for making verses, whose name was William Shakspere; the Queen had issued a decree forbidding costly apparel (not including her own); and the last trace of feudal serfdom had just disappeared, by the abolition of “villenage” upon the Crown manors....