Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

Many attempts were made by his family to reclaim him, by Lord Clifford who was his first cousin, but all in vain.

He died in obscurity in 1758, at the age of fifty-five, at Bickleigh, where he is buried. It is not known what became of his daughter, the only child he had.

WILLIAM GIFFORD

William Gifford, the satirist, was born at Ashburton in April, 1756. His father’s name was Edward, and he says that his great-grandfather “was possessed of considerable property at Halsbury, a parish in the neighbourhood of Ashburton.” There is no such parish, but there is the manor of Halsbury that belonged to the Giffords or Giffards in the neighbourhood of Bideford, in Parkham parish.

As William Gifford does not give the Christian names of his grandfather and great-grandfather, it will not be an easy matter to trace descent from the Giffards of Halsbury. That estate was sold by Roger Giffard, who died in 1763, seven years after the birth of William.

Roger had inherited Halsbury from his great-uncle, of the same Christian name, who died without issue in 1724. There is no trace of any legitimate son of this Roger.

No Giffords appear in the Ashburton register prior to 1716, when Mary, daughter of Edward Gifford, was baptized; but there were Giffords, but not gentlefolk, in the neighbouring parish of Ilsington.

William Gifford’s great-grandfather was of the same generation as Roger Giffard of Halsbury, second son of John Giffard, of Brightleigh, who succeeded to Halsbury, under some family arrangement, in consequence of the then heads of the Halsbury Giffards dying without issue. It is possible that the last Halsbury Giffard may have left his estate to Roger of Brightleigh, in consequence of his having disinherited a worthless son. In this case William Gifford’s story of a disinheritance may have some foundation. But one would expect to find an entry in the Parkham registers of the baptism of such a son; and there is none.

William’s grandfather was dissipated and extravagant, and his father, Edward, was not much better. He had been sent to the Grammar School at Exeter, but ran away, and entered on board a man-of-war. His father bought him out, but he was incorrigible; he again ran away, and joined Bampfylde-Moore Carew in his vagabondage, when the latter was an old man. On leaving this choice society he became a plumber and glazier at Ashburton, and married a carpenter’s daughter named Elizabeth Cain, 3 September, 1750.[20 - She was daughter of George Cain, carpenter, and was baptized 8 December, 1728.] Edward Gifford now moved to South Molton and set up there; but after four or five years, having involved himself in trouble by attempting to excite a riot in a Methodist conventicle, he deemed it advisable to show a pair of heels, and went to sea on board the Lyon, a transport. Mrs. Gifford then returned to her native place, Ashburton, where William was born.

So away went Edward, singing, I doubt not, a popular Devonshire song —

My fortune is pretty well spent,
My lands and my cattle and corn;
I must put on a face of content,
When as naked as when I was born.
No more I’ll be troubled with wealth,
My pockets are drained full dry,
I walk where I please for my health,
And never fear robbing, not I.

O once I could lie on the best,
The best of good beds made of down,
If sure of a flock of good straw
I am glad to keep off the cold ground.
Some say that Old Care killed the cat,
And starv’d her for fear she should die;
Henceforth I’ll be wiser than that,
To my cares bid for ever good-bye.
So adieu to old England, adieu!
And adieu to some thousands of pounds!
If the world had been done, ere my life was begun,
My sorrows would then have had bounds.

Mrs. Gifford was left very badly off. All she had for her maintenance was the rent of four small fields – all that remained of the land as yet unsold.

Edward Gifford returned from sea in 1764, having been absent eight years. He had received over a hundred pounds of prize money in addition to his wages, which were considerable; but as he reappeared in Ashburton his pockets were nearly empty. The little property yet left was therefore turned into money, and Edward Gifford set up a second time as glazier, plumber, and house-painter. William was now sent to the free school in S. Laurence’s Chapel, the master of which was Hugh Smerdon. This school was founded by Bishop Stapeldon in the tower of the old Chantry Chapel. On the dissolution of the chantries, the scholars and master moved out of the tower into the body of the chapel. It was further endowed with funds by Edward Gould, Esq., of Pridhamsleigh, and Mr. Peter Blundell, of Tiverton. In this school William Gifford learned to read, write, and cypher. He remained there till his father’s death three years later. Edward Gifford had learned nothing by his misfortunes. He preferred to drain the pewter in the tavern to doing pewterer’s work in the shop. He died and was buried 9 June, 1767, leaving beside a widow and his son William another son aged six or eight months. Mrs. Gifford unwisely continued the business without knowing anything about it, and committed the management to a couple of journeymen, who wasted her property and embezzled her money. In less than a twelvemonth she died, and was buried 29 November, 1768. William was then thirteen and his brother not two years old; and they had not a relation or friend in the world. Everything left was seized by a man named Carlile for money advanced to Mrs. Gifford. The youngest child was sent to an almshouse, and William was taken charge of by Carlile, who was his godfather, not out of pity, but because he was afraid of forfeiting the respect of his fellow citizens if he turned the orphan adrift.

The life of the unfortunate youngest child was short. He was indeed

The child of misery, baptized in tears.

When aged seven the parish bound him apprentice to a farmer of the name of Leman, with whom he endured incredible hardships, and at nine broke his thigh. On his recovery he tried the sea, and went on board the Egmont, but was allowed to do this by the grasping Leman, as his apprenticeship was not expired, only on condition that his wages should be paid into his (Leman’s) hands. The poor lad knew no favourable change of fortune, for he fell sick and died at Cork.

Carlile sent the unfortunate William to drudge at the plough; but William was physically incapable of driving the plough. During his father’s life, in attempting to clamber up a table, he had fallen backwards and drawn it after him; its edge fell on his chest, and it is possible that his spine was also jarred, giving him ever after a look of deformity. Ploughing was out of the question, and he was forced to be withdrawn from field labour.

His guardian then thought of sending him to Newfoundland to assist in a storehouse, and for this purpose entered into correspondence with a Mr. Holdsworth, of Dartmouth, who consented to see the boy. When, however, he had cast eyes on the puny, sickly child, he declined to have anything to do with him, and Carlile then sent him on board a coaster at Brixham, with a man named Full, plying between Dartmouth and Plymouth, and sometimes going as far as Portsmouth.

In this boat he continued for a twelvemonth.

On Christmas Day, 1770, he was summoned back to Ashburton by his godfather. It seemed that the fishwives who went from Brixham to Ashburton with their wares had spoken there pretty freely of the little ragged urchin who wandered about the quay, and of his delicacy and of the rough treatment to which he was exposed. This roused a strong feeling in Ashburton against Carlile, and he was constrained to bring the boy back so as to allay the prejudice his conduct had awakened. He sent him again to school in the old chapel, where he sat on the benches at the long desks, and looked up at the huge plaster-work gaily-painted shield and bearings of Ashburton over the headmaster’s desk, and those of the benefactors to the school down the sides. Here he worked assiduously at his books and made astonishing progress. He was even employed as a monitor to teach the younger boys, and received a few coppers for his services. The ambition of his young heart was to qualify himself to take the place of the old schoolmaster, Smerdon, who was becoming infirm and past work.

But these dreams of future happiness in the school where he had passed his most enjoyable hours were dashed. Carlile wanted to get the lad out of Ashburton and relieve his pocket of the burden of finding him clothes and bread and butter. He was determined to wash his hands of the orphan altogether; and accordingly, without consulting the boy’s wishes, indentured him in January, 1772, to a cobbler, a cousin of his in Exeter, with whom he would be bound to remain till he was twenty-one. The shoemaker with whom he was placed was a sour and narrow-minded Presbyterian, who read nothing but controversial pamphlets relative to a theological dispute then raging between two of the clergy of Exeter and some of the Dissenting preachers of the city, and of these controversial pamphlets the cobbler read only those of his own side.

Gifford had no books save a Bible, a Thomas à Kempis, and a black-letter romance, Parismus and Parismenus, that had belonged to his mother, together with some chapbooks, The Golden Bull, and such like trifles. However, he found a stray treatise on algebra in a lodging-house, and commandeered it. But this last book was not at this time of any advantage to him, as to understand it a preliminary knowledge of simple equations was necessary – and what “equations” meant he knew no more than did the man in the moon, who had at his command no library whatsoever.

However, his master’s son had a Flemming’s Introduction to Knowledge, which, as a spiteful boy, he refused to let Gifford use, and hid it away. William, however, by accident discovered where the book was concealed and carried it off, sat up for several nights, and poring over it with avidity mastered the contents, and was then able to pursue his studies in algebra.

He says: “I hated my new profession with a perfect hatred; I made no progress in it, and was consequently little regarded in the family, of which I sank by degrees into the common drudge.”

Whilst at Ashburton his dreary life had been cheered by making friends with some of his schoolfellows. One of these was young Hoppner, afterwards a famous portrait painter, a rival of Sir Thomas Lawrence, and in after years he looked back to this friendship with pleasure, and wrote to him, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds —

One Sun is set, one Glorious Sun, whose rays
Long gladdened Britain with no common blaze;
O may’st thou soon (for clouds begin to rise)
Assert thy station in the Eastern skies,
Glow with his fires, and give the world to see
Another Reynolds rise, my friend, in thee!

But dearer still to him had been the Ashburton butcher’s son, John Ireland, afterwards Dean of Westminster, and to him he wrote —

Sure if our fates hang on some hidden Power,
And take their colour from the natal hour,
Then, Ireland! the same planet on us rose,
Such the strong sympathies our lives disclose!
Thou know’st how soon we felt this influence bland,
And sought the brook and coppice, hand in hand,
And shaped rude bows, and uncouth whistles blew,
And paper kites (a last great effort) flew;
And when the day was done, retired to rest,
Sleep on our eyes, and sunshine in our breast.

But in Exeter he had no friends, none who would associate with him. He was utterly alone and miserable. He had not a penny wherewith to bless himself. One only little streak of sunlight entered his gloomy life, and this was the cheery notice of a young woman, a neighbour, who daily gave the depressed boy, as he passed her door, a smile and a kindly greeting, and the gratitude he felt for this slight encouragement was the first pleasing sensation he had ventured to entertain for many dreary months.

In his Autobiography he says: “Pen, ink, and paper were for the most part as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre.” He had but one resource, which required the utmost caution and secrecy in applying it. He beat out pieces of leather as thin and smooth as possible, and in his garret, by the tiny window, with a blunt awl worked out on the leather his algebraical calculations.

Hitherto he had not so much as dreamed of poetry, but his first attempt was on the occasion of a person who had undertaken to paint a sign for an inn; it was to have been a lion, but the artist had produced a creature much more like a dog. One of his acquaintances wrote some lines on it. Gifford looked them over, shook his head, and said that he thought that he could do better. Accordingly he composed an epigram on the theme, so cutting and droll that his shopmates declared he had succeeded in a masterly manner. After that he ventured on other attempts – doggerel, he says they were, but all caustic and humorous, and these circulated, were laughed over, and gained him not a little applause. When he had composed some brief little satire he would read it to a select circle, and was rewarded by the gift of a few pence, amounting occasionally to sixpence. Did he write also a few tender and grateful lines to the pretty, smiling girl on the doorstep in the same street, who had cheered the lonely boy? I have not the smallest doubt in my mind that he did.

To one so long in absolute want of money, such a resource seemed like a gold-mine, and although at this time he thought lightly, even contemptuously of the Muse, and all his energies of mind were devoted to mathematics, yet, as these trifles brought him in money, and so enabled him to buy paper and ink, and books on geometry and algebra, he continued to compose verses.

But a storm was gathering. There is a delightful picture by Phiz in David Copperfield, where Mr. Creakle, the schoolmaster, enters the schoolroom leaning on the arm of his factotum Tungay, just as a boy has drawn a caricature of both on the blackboard.