Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

“But I must have the book of airs for the instrument,” said Gainsborough; “the instrument is no good without the book.” After much haggling, at last the German parted with the music-book for another ten guineas. “In this way,” says Jackson, “Gainsborough frittered away his musical talents, and though possessed of ear, taste, and genius, he never had application to learn his notes.”

Another acquaintance of Jackson’s was Sir Joshua Reynolds. Of him he says: “Whatever defects a critical eye might find in his works, a microscopic eye could discover none in his heart. If constant good-humour and benevolence, if the absence of everything disagreeable, and the presence of everything pleasant, be recommendations for a companion, Sir Joshua had these accomplishments.”

Of Jackson’s musical powers it is not necessary to speak. Details concerning his compositions may be found in Grove’s Dictionary of Music, and his songs “Love in thine eyes for ever dwells,” “Take, O take those lips away,” and “Time hath not thinned my flowing hair,” are still not quite dead. His “Te Deum in F” rang through every village church in England.

He made many visits to London, and returned each time more dissatisfied with Exeter, to which he was bound by his occupation as organist of the cathedral, and by his family.

The Literary Society of Exeter and its environs was not inconsiderable in number. Several of the resident clergy, some physicians and other gentlemen, had instituted what they called “The Exeter Society.” They proposed to rival, by volumes of their own, the Transactions of the Manchester Society, whose occasional appearance had attracted some notice. But a committee sitting judicially on the contributions of their neighbours and of each other nearly broke up their friendly intercourse.

In this “Exeter Society” from the first Jackson had declined to enrol himself as a member. He kept aloof; he took no interest in their enterprise. He kept on good terms with the members, not entering into friendship with any, but also keeping free from their rivalries and contentions.

He was known throughout England as “Jackson of Exeter.” This was because, on the publication of his first set of songs, he had described himself as “William Jackson of Exeter” to distinguish himself from another Jackson who was a musician at Oxford. The last twenty years of his life were passed in a voluntary seclusion. A good many regretted this; he supposed that his talents made him an object of jealousy in the petty world of a cathedral city. He was not made as much of there as he deemed that he deserved. Few strangers, however, visited Exeter without seeking an introduction to this eminent man; and his door was always open to those young men who were of a poetical cast of mind. Even Dr. Wolcot, the venomous Peter Pindar, had a kindly word to say for him in verse. His favourite composer of words for his songs was one Bampfylde, a Devonshire poet, whose sonnets have never been collected, and which would not commend themselves to modern taste. Rendal, a polished versifier, composed for him a series of fairy personifications, with distinct scenery and appropriate action, to introduce new combinations of music. The fays were in caverns, on lakes, on a volcano, among glaciers, in the billows of the sea, in groves lit by the evening star. The music of the “Fairy Fantasies,” as these were called, was one of the latest compositions of Jackson.

Jackson occupied and amused himself with literary compositions. His Thirty Letters touched on many interesting points of art, literature, and philosophy.

In The Four Ages he put together a collection of various articles and stories. The volume took its title from the leading essay, in which he showed that the opinion of the Ancients as to a sequence of Golden, Silver, Brass, and Iron Ages should be inverted – that early man began in the Iron Age, and that society and culture were rapidly progressing to the Golden Age.

Dr. Burney said with severity, yet not without some truth, of Jackson: “He has never been remarkable for sailing with the tide of general opinion on any occasion. He would, perhaps, suppose the whole universe rather than himself to be in the wrong, in judging of any of the arts.” The critic ascribed his perverse ingenuity to “prejudice, envy, a provincial taste, or perhaps all together, which prevented his candid attention.”

He possessed a certain amount of wit, but it was of a cumbrous nature. On one occasion, being called upon at a public dinner for a toast, he said: “I have great pleasure, Mr. Chairman, in complying with your command, and give you the opening words of the third Psalm.” The chairman, astonished at the inappropriateness of the idea, stopped the musician short by exclaiming: “Oh, fie, Mr. Jackson! the beginning of a Psalm as a convivial toast?”

“Yes, sir, unless you can suggest a better. I give you Lord How.”

But what humour he had acidulated into sarcasm, as he could not move musically with the times. He could not advance out of the restricted circle of his own ideals, which was very narrow. To such a mind, Gothic architecture could only exhibit “an incongruous mass of absurdities – it is a false style, only showing the want of skill in the builders in mixing forms which cannot accord.”

He was greatly incensed that the public appreciated the music of Haydn, Mozart, and even Handel, whose strains were “an imposition of the feelings drawn from illegitimate sources.” Why could not English ears rest satisfied with Greene and Boyce and Blow? He affected to smile on “musical expression,” which he considered so contemptible that fantastic Germans were only capable of attempting it. Did the poet ask, “What passion cannot music raise or quell?” I ask in turn, What passion can music raise or quell? Poets or musicians can only produce different degrees of pure pleasure, and when they have produced this last effect they have attained the utmost in the power of poetry or music. Jackson published his Observations on the Present State of Music in London in 1791, in which he gave vent to his spleen. Dr. Burney replied, “And must we go to Exeter to ask Mr. Jackson how to please and be pleased? Are we to have no music in our concerts but elegies and balads? Mr. Jackson’s favourite style of music has been elegies, but what is an elegy to a tragedy or to an epic poem? He sees but one angle of the art of music, and to that all his opinions are referred. His elegy is no more than a closet in a palace.”

The great Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey in 1784 affected the organist of Exeter Cathedral with an attack of the spleen, from which he seems never to have recovered. At first, when that gigantic project was announced, he declared it to be impracticable, for that so stupendous a band, composed of many hundred instruments, could produce only a universal and deafening clash. When, however, the miracle succeeded, he took exception at the selection of pieces that had been performed. Lest Handel should obtain an exclusive triumph, he protested that there were other musicians beside Handel who deserved to be heard, and merited as high honours as were accorded to him. In 1790 came Haydn to London, and the cup of Jackson’s wrath overflowed. His ear could not endure the lively melodies and gorgeous effects of The Creation. It was then, in the rage of his heart, that he published his Observations. Artists and amateurs, according to him, who welcomed the ravishing music of Haydn were taking “their present musical pleasure from polluted sources.” And on his accustomed principle and in his usual style he declared that, “judging of the sensations of others by his own, the public is not pleased with what it applauds with rapture.”

Jackson entertained the greatest contempt for the physicians of his day, and perhaps not unjustly. He imagined that all the diseases to which man is heir are produced by misconduct and intemperance, and that they could be resisted by sobriety; and prevention, said he, was better than cure. His decision, persevered in, of using only abstinence, when his constitution was broken, precipitated his end. He died of asthma on 5 July, 1803, and was buried in S. Stephen’s Church, Exeter, where is a tablet to his memory, with a eulogistic description of his talents and attainments, written by his friend, William Kendall. The tablet also records the death of his widow, his daughter Mary, and four sons. One of his sons was ambassador to the King of Sardinia, and afterwards to Paris and Berlin. His eldest son, William, at an early age entered the service of the East India Company, and was secretary to Lord Macartney in his embassy to China. He amassed a considerable fortune in India, and married Frances, the only plain daughter of Charles Baring, of Courtlands, near Exmouth. One of the other daughters married Sir Stafford Northcote, Bart., of Pynes, another Sir Samuel Young, Bart., of Formosa Place, on the Thames. William purchased Cowley Barton, where he built Cowley House. The design is said to have been suggested by his father, as bearing some resemblance to an organ front. He was High Sheriff of Devon in 1806. He died in 1842, without leaving any issue.

Among William Jackson’s musical compositions was a setting of Pope’s elegy, Vital Spark of Heavenly Flame, which was sometimes used as an anthem, and has been known to be given out by a clerk in a village church thus: “Let us sing to the praise and glory of God – Poppy’s Legacy.”

The authorities for Jackson’s life are: —

Grove’s Dictionary of Music.

A Dictionary of Musicians. London, 1827.

The autobiography already referred to in The Leisure Hour, 1882.

“Jackson of Exeter,” in the New Monthly Magazine for 1832.

G. Townsend, “William Jackson,” in Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1882.

The Dictionary of National Biography, etc.

JOHN DUNNING, FIRST LORD ASHBURTON

At Walkhampton is an old farm called Guatham that had pertained for several generations to the family of Dunning, originally well-to-do yeomen, but not dignified enough to be recorded as bearing arms at the Heralds’ Visitation of 1620. In 1661 Richard Dunning, in a deed, mentions his mother, Wilmot, his sister Mary, and his brother, John Dunning. His wife was Mary, and he had besides his sister Mary another, Margaret, who married Edward Gould, gent., of Pridhamsleigh, in Staverton; the marriage settlement was dated 7 February, 14 Charles II (1662). She died shortly after her marriage, and was buried at Staverton 26 April, 1662, where was erected a brass to her memory bearing the inscription: —

Here lies the gentle Margaret
A pearl in Gold right meetly set.

Her brother Richard held Guatham, and wrote himself “Gentleman.” He was the author of a tract published in the year 1686, in which he described the condition of the poor of the county. Macaulay says: —

“That he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According to him the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food, about five shillings a week.”

Richard died s.p.

John Dunning, brother of the pamphleteer, lived with Mary, his wife, at Guatham. After eleven years of married life he died in 1706, leaving four sons and three daughters. The second of their sons who attained manhood was born in 1701, and bore his father’s name of John. He was bred to the law, and having married Agnes, daughter of Henry Jutsham, of Old-a-Port, in Modbury, settled down as an attorney at Ashburton, probably drawn there by the representations of his uncle Edward Gould. He settled into a house at Gulwell, in the parish of Staverton, a stone’s-throw from the boundary of Ashburton.

This attorney Dunning had a son John born on 18 October, 1731. Attorney Dunning now moved into Ashburton into a house in West Street, where he resided till his death, which took place in 1780. Day by day in his youth did the ugly, ungainly boy John Dunning trudge to the school of Ashburton, occupying the ancient chapel of S. James. This chapel had been decorated with large coats-of-arms in plaster, coloured periodically, of benefactors. Above the master’s desk at the east end were the arms of Ashburton. The other coats were Harris, Gould, Blundell, and Young. As the urchin, ugly as an imp from the abyss, sat on his form looking up at the great blue and gold lion of the Goulds – his uncle’s coat – did it ever flash across his mind that he might eventually, like the cuckoo, kick them out of their nest and gather all their property into his own hands?

At the early age of thirteen he left school and was taken into the paternal office for five years’ service as an articled clerk. Here he acquired the neat and formal hand that distinguished his writing through life.

One of Attorney Dunning’s clients was Sir Thomas Clarke, Master of the Rolls, who employed him as agent to his property about Ashburton. An incident in his stewardship led to important consequences. A legal instrument was prepared by the young John Dunning, who forwarded it to Sir Thomas in his father’s absence, and was accordingly taken to task by his father for his presumption. A letter was dispatched in hot haste to the client, apologizing for the errors which it was feared must be found in a draft prepared by a lad under nineteen, and which his father had not been allowed opportunity of revising. Greatly to the parent’s relief, however, the distinguished lawyer expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the document, and volunteered to push the young man in his profession, and incur the sole charge of fitting him for a career at the Bar. Under this patron’s auspices young Dunning, in the twenty-first year of his age, was entered as a student at the Middle Temple on 8 May, 1752. In turn he made acquaintance with Kenyon, afterwards Lord Kenyon, who succeeded Lord Mansfield on the King’s Bench; also Horne Tooke, who addressed to Dunning that Letter on the English Particle, which was afterwards expanded into The Diversions of Purley. Out of term these three friends dined together at a little eating-house near Chancery Lane at the modest charge of 7

⁄

d. each. Tooke and Dunning would generously add to this a penny for the waitress; but the more thrifty Kenyon rewarded the girl with a halfpenny, and sometimes with the promise to remember her next time.

After four years Dunning was called to the Bar in July, 1756, and betook himself to the Western Circuit, but with little success, owing mainly to his forbidding appearance. Polwhele declares that “had Lavater been at Exeter in 1759, he must have sent Counsellor Dunning to the hospital for idiots. Not a feature marked him for the son of wisdom.” He was stunted in growth, his limbs were misshapen, and his features mean and the general expression repellent. Horne Tooke was wont to tell a story illustrative of Dunning’s personal appearance. On one occasion Thurlow wished to see him privately, and went to the coffee-house that he frequented and inquired of the waiter whether Mr. Dunning was there. The waiter, who was new to the place, said that he did not know him. “Not know him!” roared Thurlow with a volley of oaths. “Go into the room upstairs, and if you see a gentleman there like the Knave of Clubs, tell him that he is particularly wanted.” The waiter did as desired, and returned promptly with Dunning. He alone seemed to be unaware of his own ungainly appearance. One story is told of this when he was retained in defence in an assault case, and his object was to disprove the identity of the person named by an old woman as the aggressor. Abandoning his usual tactics of browbeating the witness, he commenced the cross-examination with much gentleness.

“Pray, my good woman,” he inquired, “are you thoroughly acquainted with this person?”

“O, yes, sir; very well indeed.”

“Come now, describe him to me. Was he short or tall?”

“Stumpy, sir; almost as much so as your honour.”

“Humph! What kind of nose had he?”

“Snubby, as I should say, just like your own, sir, only not cocked up quite so much.”

“Humph! His eyes?”

“Well now, he has a kind of cast in them, sir, a sort of a squint very much like your honour’s eyes.”

“Psha! You may go down.”

In or about 1768 John Dunning was retained in a case of murder. The story told is this: —

Edward Gould, of Pridhamsleigh, died in 1736, and as he was the last of the elder branch of the family, he left all his lands in Staverton, Ashburton, Holne, Widdecombe-on-the-Moor, and Chudleigh to William Drake Gould, of Lew Trenchard, the representative of the next branch, who was then a minor. This William Drake Gould died in 1766, and all his estates devolved on his only son Edward, born in 1740. Edward was a spendthrift and a gambler. One evening he had been playing late and deep, and had lost every guinea he had about him. Then he rode off, put a black mask over his face, and waylaid the man who had won the money of him, and on his appearance, challenged him to deliver. The gentleman recognized him and incautiously exclaimed, “Oh! Edward Gould, I did not think this of you!”

“You know me, do you?” was his reply, and Edward shot him dead. Then he rode to Pridhamsleigh, reversed his horse’s shoes, and sped across Dartmoor to Lew Trenchard.