Three Stories Of Chagford

Five years ago, during our tour of the British county of Devon, we spent an evening in Chagford. One reason the village, located in Dartmoor National Park, was on our radar was due to the TV series Doctor Who. In the mid '70s, Tom Baker won the role of the 4th Doctor, taking over from actor Jon Pertwee, who had brought the show to new heights of popularity. During Tom Baker's first season, the cast and crew spent their days filming for the story "The Sontaran Experiment" at nearby Hound Tor, and their evenings in Chagford. 

While filming around the windswept boulders at Hound Tor, Tom Baker fell and had to be rushed to hospital. As he had only filmed one previous Doctor Who story at this point, the actor worried that the BBC might scrap his first filmed story, and recast him. Tom Baker had been working at a building site for lack of acting roles when he won the starring role, so this understandably scared him. The rest of the cast and crew had similar worries. 

That evening, when Tom Baker reunited with the cast and crew in a pub in Chagford where they would be spending the night, he only had a broken collarbone. His jacket and colorful scarf could conceal his neck brace in closeups for the following day's filming, and a stunt man, clad in his clothes, could fill in for him on for distance shots. This allowed him to continue in the role, saved the series from scrapping the filming, and hiring a new Doctor. 

Tom Baker would star as the 4th Doctor for a record-setting seven years. During his tenure, the program would reach even greater heights of popularity, and the actor would become a national hero in Britain. But first, there was the crisis of "The Sontaran Experiment."

Another reason we visited Chagford was that part of Bernard Knight's novel The Tinner's Corpse was set in the historic village. This was the first novel I read in Bernard Knight's Crowner John series. The book so impressed me that I sought out more of his books. While these books may not be for the faint of heart, or those who prefer cozy mysteries such as those written by Agatha Christie, they paint a vivid portrayal of the working and living conditions faced by British coroners in the late twelfth century. 

At one point in The Tinner's Corpse, Crowner John visits Chagford, where the miners bring the tin they've dug from the Earth to be graded. Some of that tin would prove of sufficient quality to be used as coinage.

A third reason we visited Chagford was because the village had real-life associations with events that may have inspired part of the historic novel Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore. The local church, St. Michael the Archangel, has a memorial to Mary Whiddon, who was murdered outside the church on her wedding day in 1641. I have not yet read Lorna Doone. When I do, I imagine it will feel more real to me after visiting Chagford.

After checking into a local pub, we wandered around the village. As the afternoon waned, our footsteps led us to the church yard. As we sat and gazed at the local church of St. Michael the Archangel, we debated what to do that evening. We had spent the day driving, and exploring the windy moorland of Dartmoor National Park. We were tired from our exertions and exposure to the elements. 

A sign outside announced an Evensong service, but did we really want to sit in a pew for an hour? Yet, when a couple arrived, they invited us to join them. While we were tempted to return to our room above the pub to read and relax, we accepted, and followed them inside. Who could say what other stories we might discover, inside this country church, in the historic village of Chagford?

As you can see, we discovered a very beautiful church, which tells a story in its own right.

Dragon Dave

Related Link:
St. Michael the Archangel

Arthur Conan Doyle in Princetown and Cromer

Visit Dartmoor National Park in England, and you'll see the desolate landscape Sherlock Holmes braved in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Travel to the town of Princetown, deep within this brooding landscape, and you'll see the prison from which the murderer Seldon escaped to terrorize the local inhabitants. Stop by the Dartmoor National Park High Moorland Visitor Centre, and you'll see the great detective himself, along with the terrible black hound that haunted the Baskerville family.

It was here that Arthur Conan Doyle stayed a century ago, when the visitor center was the Rowe Duchy Hotel. From there, he investigated the claims of his friend, journalist Fletcher Robinson, who told him of about the Black Shuck, a dark, spectral beast that prowled the lonely moors, looking for souls to devour.

Travel north, to the seaside town of Cromer in the county of Norfolk, and you'll see where Fletcher Robinson first told Arthur Conan Doyle about the Black Shuck. The two were visiting Cromer for a golfing holiday, when Robinson told Doyle about the legendary Black Shuck that had haunted the good people of Norfolk for centuries. 

According to researchers, Arthur Conan Doyle transformed Dartmoor's Fox Tor Mire into Grimpen Mire for The Hound of the Baskervilles. He transformed stories of a notorious Dartmoor lord of the manor, Richard Cabell of Brock Hall, into Hugo Baskerville. He even combined several large houses, so say Dartmoor historians, into Baskerville Hall. 

Historians in seaside Cromer disagree, at least with the latter. They point to Cromer Hall, a local manor house, as the inspiration for Baskerville Hall. They claim that descriptions in The Hound of the Baskervilles portray Cromer Hall, not some backward Dartmoor manor house. 

Did an evil lord of Cromer Hall once live to hunt and terrorize the peasantry? Was this wicked aristocrat killed by the ghostly Black Shuck, whose fearsome howls could be heard across the land at night? And does the Black Shuck still roam Cromer and Dartmoor?

If you visit either place, and the wind sweeps over the land, then you'll know.

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle on the Dangers of Collecting Butterflies

Warning: This post contains a spoiler for Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. Read on at your own risk!

In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr John Watson takes a walk across the moor. There, in the wilds of England's Dartmoor National Forest, he meets a man dressed in a grey suit and wearing a straw hat. Or, as Watson describes him: A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly net in one of his hands. The man introduces himself as Mr Stapleton of nearby Merripit House. Then, after warning Watson to beware the dangers of Grimpen Mire, he dashes off in the hopes of capturing a Cyclopides, a type of butterfly also known as a South American Skipper. 

Dartmoor National Forest is a place of rugged natural beauty. As my wife and I drove through the park, stopping off at Princetown, the home of the famous prison, where Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired to write The Hound of the Baskervilles, and several important tors, I could not help but wonder what it was like to travel through and live on the moor in the day when people crossed it on foot, on horseback, or in wooden wagons pulled by those delightful Dartmoor ponies. It's hard to imagine living there, especially when the wind howls across the land. But people do, and some of them own some pretty large spreads.

Mr Stapleton could have enjoyed a long life in Dartmoor, spending each evening in Merripit House, and days out wandering the moors in search of his beloved butterflies and insects. He was a noted naturalist, and made several important finds there. Unfortunately, he decided to covet his neighbor's property, and reawakened the old myth about the Hound of the Baskervilles to frighten away the residents of Baskerville Hall, in the hope that he could gain possession of it instead. Unfortunately for him, Sherlock Holmes takes the information Watson gathers on Mr Stapleton to the British Museum. There he learns that the man's really a Baskerville, and that he was the first to describe a species of moth while living in Yorkshire.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you plan on becoming a criminal, keep your hobbies at the amateur level. Otherwise, the police will discover your true identity, these days via a quick internet search. Either that, or you can devote yourself to pursuing your interests, and sharing that passion with others.

Dragon Dave

E. F. Benson & Charles Kingsley on Collecting Butterflies

England's Dartmoor National Forest:
A great place to capture Butterflies.

"I hate water except when it’s a hot bath. Water is meant not to drink, but to heat and wash in.”

“Babe, do you mean to say you have hot baths in the morning?”

“Invariably when the weather is cold, and a cigarette, whatever the weather is. I am no Charles Kingsley, though I used to collect butterflies when I was a child.”

--from The Babe by E. F. Benson

Like the title character in The Babe, Georgie in E. F. Benson's novel Mapp And Lucia also likes to collect butterflies. He's a man who is fascinated by everything: every aspect of our world fascinates him, with the possible exception of sex. For him, that's a topic best left undiscussed. Even after he and Lucia marry, in the later books, one gets the feeling that theirs was a sexless marriage. But that's part of Georgie's charm: he's a little boy who never quite got around to growing up.

A search regarding Charles Kingsley and Butterflies sent me to an essay entitled "The Unconscious Naturalist," part of a selection of essays written by Charles Kingsley, another English author who was fascinated about every aspect of our world. Unlike Georgie, he was presumably interested in sex, as Mary St Leger Kingsley, who wrote under the pen name Lucas Malet, succeeded her father in becoming a popular Victorian author. In any event, here's the passage on Butterflies from Charles Kingsley's essay:

At a foreign barrack once, the happiest officer I met, because the most regularly employed, was one who spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing about them scientifically--not even their names. He took them simply for their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope too--in which he was really scientific--that if he carefully kept each form which he saw, his collection might be of use someday to entomologists at home.

Collecting butterflies used to be a hobby practiced by English gentlemen of culture and refinement. They were most like introduced to this hobby during childhood. Growing up in America, in a far from aristocratic family, I remember being instructed in how to collect butterflies. Today, with our concentration on preserving the natural world, you don't hear a lot about collecting butterflies. Instead, we build playgrounds near zoo exhibits, and hope children learn to appreciate animals while they're playing on a lifelike facsimile.

Isn't it ironic how most of us live in cities, spend most of our workdays indoors, spend much of our free time on our computers, laptops, and smart phones, and then preach the virtues of nature conservation to our children? I suppose it's a very different thing to promote capturing and killing any animal or insect as a hobby, when we live in a world of six billion people, versus the quarter of that who lived in Arthur Conan Doyle's time. But does posting photographs of butterflies on Instagram, and sharing videos of Butterflies on Facebook really constitute a superior way to teach children about their world?

Dragon Dave

Charles Kingsley & E. F. Benson on the Importance of Bathing: Part 2

The front yard of The Church House Inn
in Charles Kingsley's birthplace of
Holne, England

"I hate water except when it’s a hot bath. Water is meant not to drink, but to heat and wash in.”

“Babe, do you mean to say you have hot baths in the morning?”

“Invariably when the weather is cold, and a cigarette, whatever the weather is. I am no Charles Kingsley, though I used to collect butterflies when I was a child.”

--from The Babe by E. F. Benson

Apparently, the washing that The Babe is referring to in E. F. Benson's novel refers to a character in The Water Babies, a Charles Kingsley novel that I have yet to read. A quick Google search led me to a preview of a book called If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley. Here's a short passage from Worsley's book:

The poor little chimney sweep in Charles Kingsley's Victorian children's story The Water Babies learned that he could only go to heaven if he kept himself clean. He needed to "work very hard and wash very hard" before he could be considered worthy.

According to Worsley, Charles Kingsley wrote this at a time in which the public attitude toward bathing was changing. Although it seems odd to us today, the people of Kingsley's day were only beginning to realize that regularly cleaning the body could promote health and prevent illness. Many still felt that bathing was a wasteful use of water, if not downright dangerous, as it could cause people to catch a cold or some more debilitating illness. 

This was the second Charles Kingsley reference that the Babe offers in E. F. Benson's novel, and unlike the first, which I understood, this one I decided to investigate. I'm glad my wife suggested that I read another novel by E. F. Benson, as his stories always bring me such pleasure. The Babe certainly offers a nice change of pace, after immersing myself for so long in Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. 

As with Bronte and Kingsley, Benson liberally peppers his novels with references that I feel compelled to check out, such as the Charles Kingsley association with bathing. As with bathing, researching those references takes time, but leaves me feeling as if I learned something important. Unfortunately, hunting down those references can prove equally dangerous as bathing, as it takes time away from my fiction writing, just like catching a cold, the flu, or some other illness. 

As with anything else is life, E. F. Benson's novels offer a wealth of knowledge and delight. Yet they can also prove dangerous, as my example of research, and writing these two blog posts, has demonstrated. Therefore, I must caution you when approaching any of the Benson's novels: Read with care!

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Other Side of Dartmoor

In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr John Watson describes Dartmoor Forest as a dark, dangerous, and wild place. This is largely the way we found it during our two days there last year. But there were a few exceptions to the rule, and one of those was in a Bed & Breakfast near Hay Tor.

Hay Tor is a cluster of boulders, strewn across the top of a fell in Dartmoor. The wind rushes up and over these small hills, or fells, battering your body and howling in your ears. But at our Bed & Breakfast near Hay Tor, the air was quiet and still. After continually getting inundated by the angry elements, I enjoyed wandering the grounds outside our room, and marvel at the beauty of the gardens.

I suppose part of the reason for this is that this little neighborhood was surrounded by trees, that form a natural windbreak, preventing the wind from rushing over this area and tearing their plants, bushes, and flowers to shreds. Had Baskerville Hall been surrounded by tall trees, Arthur Conan Doyle might have described the estate differently. Come to think of it, I believe Dr John Watson mentions a number of tall shrubs that formed barriers around the grounds, so perhaps these offered Baskerville Hall a little shelter from the wind. But then, Sir Henry only employed two servants, a butler and a cook. Had he employed a full-time gardener, perhaps Baskerville Hall could have enjoyed a more pleasant aspect.

I suspect Arthur Conan Doyle wished readers to see Baskerville Hall as dark and forbidding as the surrounding countryside. Of his four Sherlock Holmes novels, only one takes place in and around London. Half of the first novel, A Study in Scarlet, takes place in the wild western state of Utah, where cowboys drive cattle across the range, covered wagons bring settlers to untamed lands, and bandits pillage and murder those they encounter. Half of his final Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, takes place in a mining town in the United States. There, the local branch of a men's club has become the headquarters for organized crime. The men in this group steal from nonmembers, extort businesses, and beat and kill other residents in their lust for riches and power. So it makes sense that for his third novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle sought to make a Dartmoor Forest seem wild and forbidding to English readers. 

Given the way the elements had raged at us, my wife and I brought food with us, and planned on eating in our room that night. But the air was so still, the temperature so moderate, and our surroundings so beautiful, we enjoyed a pleasant, relaxing dinner at a picnic table outside our room. Which just goes to show that no matter how vividly an author describes a particular place, you really can't know what it's like until you actually visit. But then, isn't that a great reason to travel: to check out the places that inspired authors like Arthur Conan Doyle to use them as settings for their stories?

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle: Punishment in Dartmoor

In his investigations, Sherlock Holmes sometimes allows a prisoner to escape capture. He regards it as his duty to solve the case, not catch the criminal. In Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, it is Dr. John Watson who allows a prisoner to go free. While staying at Baskerville Hall, Dr. Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville learn that the brother of a servant is hiding out on the moor. When they try to apprehend the fellow, the butler and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore, intercede on the criminal's behalf. They beg the gentlemen to leave him alone for a few days, as they have secretly secured his passage aboard a ship traveling to South America.

While exploring the glories and dangers of Dartmoor, Arthur Conan Doyle stayed in the Duchy Hotel in Princetown, which now serves as the visitor center for Dartmoor National Park. 

There, Doyle doubtless heard shocking tales of the inhuman crimes for which inmates of the famous prison located on the outskirts of the town had been sentenced. Yet we mainly see Seldon, a dangerous escaped convict, through his sister's eyes. 

"Yes sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humored him too much when he was a lad, and gave him his way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then, as he grew older, he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke his mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower, until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with, as an elder sister would."

The next day, rain covers the land, and Watson cannot help thinking of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor.

While visiting Dartmoor this summer, wearing long pants and a rain jacket proved mandatory. Winds howled across the barren landscape, and rainclouds sped across the land. The sheep and cattle grazing on the rocky ground seemed inured to their surroundings. But despite its rugged beauty, I couldn't imagine living in Dartmoor.

And that was during the summer, not during the hard autumn rains, or the bitter winter snowstorms.

Whatever Dr. John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, or Arthur Conan Doyle thought of England's prison system in the early twentieth century, I can sympathize with Watson's thoughts on anyone forced to live rough on the moor.

Poor fellow! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them.

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle: Fatal Attraction

"It's gone!" said he. "The Mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather, and never know the difference until the Mire has them it its clutch."

--The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

Like Dr John Watson, we had our own encounter with the wild ponies of Dartmoor. Thankfully, it ended safely for all concerned. But it could have ended far more tragically.

As we drove along the narrow strips of tarmac that wound like ribbons through Dartmoor forest, we often saw ponies along the road. Usually, they ignored us as we slowed, steered around them, and continued on our way. But once they looked up, forsook their grass, and wandered over to meet us.

While one walked boldly toward us, another approached us from the side. The latter peered in through the window, as if he wished to converse with us.

When I shared our encounter with a local, she said that the greatest danger the ponies faced was human visitors. The wild ponies get used to the human visitors feeding them. Their visitors' kindness emboldens them with the expectation of more handouts. 

Unfortunately, sometimes the ponies wander onto the road before a passing car can stop. Some of the ponies we saw bore scars from their encounters with vehicles. Thankfully, we never saw results of this human/pony fatal attraction during our time there. 

I gather an initiative is underway to daub the ponies with reflective paint, after dozens of vehicle-related deaths this year. Hopefully, this will help the situation, particularly for visitors driving through Dartmoor at night. For, like Dr John Watson, no one wants to hear the mournful cry of a dying pony, echoing across the moors.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links
Dartmoor Ponies Daubed With Paint

Arthur Conan Doyle: Equine Fascination

Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upwards and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves seemed to be stronger than mine.

--Taken from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Some people are fortunate enough to befriend our equine cousins. They raise horses, groom them, ride them, and really get to know them. The rest of us, the vast majority of humankind, look on from afar, and wonder what such relationships are like. We find it all too easy to ascribe general characteristics to them. 

We may stereotype donkeys and mules as irritable, disobedient, and general bad company. Even when they have our best interests at heart, as the Biblical prophet Balaam discovered when his donkey steered him away from an angel sent to kill him, still, they can't help but irritate their owners. 

Horses radiate tremendous power, but can prove standoffish and skittish. No matter how much we respect them, we learn to give them the expect they deserve. For all that power can backfire on their human friends. In one moment of passion, playfulness, or inattention, a horse can main or kill its owner.

Less powerful than their larger, more regal cousins, ponies possess the disarming ability to always appear cute and cuddly. One's heart readily goes out to ponies. They're so sweet, good-natured, and adorable, aren't they? How terrible that they must wander alone across the moors!

What better way could Arthur Conan Doyle demonstrate the dangers of Dartmoor, than by the land itself claiming the life of one of those cute, adorable ponies?

For proof of this, visit Dartmoor Forest. Search for the wild ponies, and when you find them, you will most likely see people nearby. "Quick honey, grab the camera." "Oh, what a poor creature!"  "I wonder if it needs something to eat?" "Oh, aren't you a beautiful little fellow?"

Just watch your step when you explore Dartmoor in search of ponies. Or, like the poor brown pony Dr John Watson saw, you may find the very ground beneath you desires nourishment. And other walkers may hear a dreadful cry echoing over the moor.

Dragon Dave

Arthur Conan Doyle on the Devil and Hellhounds

Folk tales of the devil riding through the forest on a magnificent black steed, leading a pack of hellish hounds, prompted Arthur Conan Doyle to visit Dartmoor Forest in Devon, England. It was there he would later send Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles. A hellish hound certainly features in the novel, and seems perfectly at home amid a landscape of such wild and rugged beauty. But it is not the devil, nor a magnificent black horse, that personifies Dartmoor's beautiful but dangerous character in his classic story. Instead, it is the carefree, inoffensive ponies that wander the moor.

One day, Dr Watson steps outside of Baskerville Hall to take a walk across the moors. Hearing the approaching footsteps, Watson turns to see a small, slim man carrying a butterfly net. The naturalist introduces himself as Jack Stapleton, a former schoolmaster. As they talk, Stapleton warns Watson of the dangers of wandering alone through the countryside. 

"Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of a bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!"

There's a reason that Arthur Conan Doyle paints Dartmoor as a dark, forbidding place. It's a windswept stretch of gently rolling hills, or fells. Crowning these rises are wild grasses, spindly shrubs, and trees bent by the winds that howl over the land. Or at least, that's how we found it, when my wife and I visited this year.

Did I mention that we visited there in summer?

Nearly everywhere else we went in Devon and Cornwall, I wore shorts. But long pants, a thick shirt, a windbreaker, and a knitted hat proved essential to battle the winds that screamed in your ears and threatened to freeze you from exposure. (Try wearing a baseball cap, and the winds will tear it off your head!) I imagine residents adore Dartmoor's unique beauty in winter, but I can't imagine living there in the summer, let alone during the colder seasons. 

No wonder folktales of Dartmoor feature the devil and hellhounds. But what place could be more evil, than a forest that regularly claims the lives of sweet, adorable ponies?

Dragon Dave