_ From the little southern salient of Bagtor at Dartmoor edge, there falls a slope to the "in country" beneath. Thereon Bagtor woods extend in many a shining plane--from wind-swept hill-crowns of beech and fir, to dingles and snug coombs in the valley bottom a thousand feet beneath.
On a summer day one loiters in the dappled wood, for here is welcome shade after miles of hot sunshine on the heather above. Music of water splashes pleasantly through the trees, where a streamlet falls from step to step; the last of the bluebells still linger by the way, and above them great beech-boles rise, all chequered with sun splashes. On the earth dead leaves make a russet warmth, brighter by contrast with the young green round about, and brilliant where sunlight winnows through. There, in the direct beam, flash little flies, which hang suspended upon the light like golden beads; while through the glades, young fern is spread for pleasant resting-places. Pigeons murmur aloft unseen, and many a grey-bird and black-bird sing beside their hidden homes.
At last the woodlands make an end, old orchards spread in a clearing, and the sun, now turning west, has left the apple trees, so that their blossom hangs cool and shaded on the boughs. Behind--a background for the orchard--there rise the walls of an ancient house, weathered and worn--a mass of picturesque gables and tar-pitched roofs with red-brick chimneys ascending above them. No great dignity or style marks this dwelling. It is a thing of patches and additions. Here the sun still burns radiantly, makes the roof golden, and flashes on the snow-white "fan-tails" that strut up and down upon it.
Great Scotch firs tower to the south, and the light burns redly in their boughs against the blue sky above them. A farmhouse nestles beside the old mansion under a roof of ancient thatch, that falls low over the dawn-facing front, and makes ragged eyelashes for the little windows. The face of the farm is nearly hidden in green things, and a colour note of mauve dominates the foliage where wistaria showers. There are climbing roses too, a Japanese quince, and wallflowers and columbines in the garden plot that subtends the dwelling. Mossy walls enclose the garden, and beneath them spreads the farmyard--a dust-dry place to-day wherein a litter of black piglets gambol round their mother. Poultry cluck and scratch everywhere, and a company of red calves cluster together in one corner. A ploughman brings in his horses. From a byre comes the purr of milk falling into a pail.
On still evenings bell music trickles up to this holt of ancient peace from a church tower three miles away; for we stand in the parish of Ilsington on the shoulder of Dartmoor, and the home of the silver "fan-tails" is Bagtor House--a spot sanctified to all book-lovers. Here, a very mighty personage first saw the light and began his pilgrimage; at Bagtor was John Ford born, the first great decadent of English letters, the tragedian whose sombre works belong to the sunset time of the spacious days.
In April of 1586 the infant John received baptism at Ilsington church; while, sixteen years later, he was apprenticed to his profession and became a member of the Middle Temple. At eighteen John Ford, who wrote out of his own desire and under an artist's compulsion only, first tempted fortune; and over his earliest effort,
Fame's Memorial, a veil may be drawn; while of subsequent collaborations with Webster and Decker, part perished unprinted and Mr. Warburton's cook "used up" his comedies. Probably they are no great loss, for a master with less sense of humour never lived. But
The Witch of Edmonton in Swinburne's judgment embodies much of Ford's best, and his greatest plays all endure.
The man who wrote
The Lover's Melancholy,
'Tis Pity She's a Whore,
The Broken Heart and
Love's Sacrifice was born in this sylvan scene and his cradle rocked to the murmur of wood doves. True he vanished early from Devonshire, and though uncertain tradition declares his return, asserting that, while still in prime and vigour, he laid by his gown and pen and came back to Bagtor, to end his days where he was born, and mellow his stormy heart before he died, no proof that he did so exists. His life's history has been obliterated and contemporary records of him have yet to appear.
As an artist he must surely have loved horror for horror's sake, and, too often, our terror arouses not that pity to which tragedy should lift man's heart, but rather generates disgust before his extraordinary plots and the unattractive and inhuman characters which unravel them. One salutes the intellectual power of him, but merely shudders, without being enchained or uplifted by the nature of his themes. It has been well said of Ford that he "abhorred vice and admired virtue; but ordinary vice or modern virtue were to him as light wine to a dram drinker.... Passion must be incestuous or adulterous; grief must be something more than martyrdom, before he could make them big enough to be seen."
There is a little of Michaelangelo about Ford--something excruciating, tortured. The tormented marble of the one is reflected in the wracked and writhing characters of the other; but whether Ford felt for the sorrow of earth as the Florentine; whether he shared that mightier man's fiery patriotism, enthusiasm of humanity and tragic griefs before the suffering of mankind, we know not. One picture we have of him from old time, and it offers a gloomy, aloof figure, little caring to win friendship, or court understanding from his fellows:--
Deep in a dump John Ford was alone got,
With folded arms and melancholy hat.
So depicted the gloomy artist might serve for tragedy's self--arms crossed, brows drawn, eyes darkling under the broad-brimmed beaver, with the plotter's night-black cloak swept round his person. Or to a vision of Michaelangelo's "Il Penseroso" we may exalt the poet, and see him in that solemn and stately stone, finally at peace, his last word written and the finger of silence upon his gloomy lips.
Hazlitt finds John Ford finical and fastidious. He certainly is so, and one often wonders how this mind and pen should have welcomed such appalling subjects. He plays with edged tools and too well knows the use of poisoned weapons, says Hazlitt; and the criticism is just in the opinion of those who, with him, account it an artist's glory that he shall not tamper with foul and "unfair" subjects, or sink his genius to the kennel and gutter. That, however, is the old-world, vanished attitude, for artists recognise no "unfair" subjects to-day.
Indeed, Ford can be not seldom beautiful and tender and touched to emotion of pity; but by the time of Charles, the golden galaxies were gone; their forces were spent; their inspiration had perished; England, merry no more, began to shiver in the shadow of coming puritan eclipse; and that twilight seems to have cast by anticipation its penumbra about Ford.
There is in him little of the rollicking, superficial coarseness of the Elizabethans; the stain is in web and woof. His great moments are few; he is mostly ferocious, or absurdly sentimental, and one confesses that the bulk of his best work, judged against the highest of ancient or modern tragedy, rings feebly with a note of too transparent artifice. He is moved by intellectual interest rather than creative inspiration; there is far more brain than heart in his writings.
Perhaps he knew it and convinced himself, while still at the noon of intelligence, that he was no creator. Perhaps he abandoned art, through failure to satisfy his own ideals. At any rate it would seem that he stopped writing at a time when most men have still much to give.
One would like at least to believe that he found in his birthplace the distinguished privacy he desired and an abode of physical and mental peace. He may, indeed, have come home again to Devon when his work was ended; he may have passed the uncertain residue of life in seclusion with wife and family at this estate of his ancestors; his dust may lie unhonoured and unrecorded at Ilsington, as Herrick's amid the green graves not far distant at Dean Prior.
It is all guesswork, and the truth of John Ford's life, as of his death, may be forever hidden. One sees him a notable, silent, subtle man, prone to pessimism as a gift of heredity--a man disappointed in his achievement, soured by inner criticism and comparison with those who were greater than he.
So, weary of cities and the company of wits and poets, he came back to the country, that he might heal his disappointments and soothe his pains. His life, to the unseeing eyes around him, doubtless loomed prosperous and complete; to himself, perchance, all was dust and ashes of thwarted ambition. Again he roamed the woods where he had learned to walk; won to the love of nature; underwent the thousand new experiences and fancied discoveries of a townsman fresh in the country; and, through these channels, came to contentment and sunshine of mind, bright enough to pierce the night of his thoughts and sweeten the dark currents of his imagination. It may be so. _