Cecil Torr

“ Who should think to find choice works of ancient Greece with a roof of what you call the Thetch. In another house I find antiquities of Egypt, in another the Oriental porcelain and the lacquer, in another I find pictures most superb. Where originals do not exist, I find reproductions of the greatest works. Surely your England is the most artistic country in the world.”—I fear that England is Artistic in another sense. ”

“ Mr Torr chats to us. We feel that we have been invited to Wreyland and are sitting with him over the fire while he turns through his grandfather’s and his father’s letters and reads us little extracts, and lets his talk wander as it will from suggestion to suggestion.... A quaint ingenuity and originality of idea plays about it all: a sly wit flashes here and there. ”

“ Looking back on my eight years of Harrow and Cambridge and judging them by results, I find that Classics have supplied me with a mass of interesting and amusing facts to think about, whereas Mathematics only taught me how to think on abstract things. Hardly any Mathematics linger in my mind. ”

“ Farmers often blundered, and have been ridiculed for that; but after all they only blundered here and there and now and then. As things are, they have to blunder on a bigger scale, and may be prosecuted if they fail to blunder as prescribed.
As for the people who prescribe these blunders, it is charitable to think that they are merely fools: they may be something worse. The law assumes that everyone intends the natural consequences of his acts, and might very well assume that they intended doing all they could to damage agriculture, without increasing the supply of food. ”

“ Sometimes, when I am going to sleep, I think of Space and wonder whether it is circumnavigated by the curves that go away to Negative Infinity and come back again from Positive Infinity, as if the two Infinities met. Sometimes I snap at people for saying Two and Two make Four as if it were an axiom, instead of being a result attained by rigid proof. ”

“ This was a secluded place until the railway came. My grandfather writes on 23 September 1849, “I find most people like Wreyland, that is, those advancing in years: so quiet and so sheltered.” And then on 3 January 1864, “I cannot fancy that any railway improves scenery, but this will not so disturb it as one might imagine.... They fancy it is cutting up the country and letting in more people, which will destroy the scenery and the quiet of the neighbourhood; but they think more of its introducing new society than destroying the scenery.” ”

“ The arguments for democracy are embodied in stock phrases, ‘the will of the people,’ ‘vox populi,’ and so on, all implying that the people or populus or dêmos is always going to be unanimous, just like a jury. ”

“ In very early life I felt certain that a woman here must be a witch, because she looked it. She lived in a cottage that had a great big open fireplace, and she sat there cowering over the fire on the hearth, with her walking-stick leant up across her knees. I had no doubts about her flying up the chimney on that stick, and always hoped she would while I was there.
We have substitutes for most things now, even substitutes for witches. My father noted in his diary on 7 April 1844, “Witch-craft a common belief to this day in Lustleigh, and prevalent even among the better-informed classes.” ”

“ If anybody says Iota Subscript, I say iota was not subscript in good Greek, but kept its dressing in the line.
We write English in the same style as Italic type, yet print it with the Roman type that represents handwriting of four hundred years ago. If we are going to copy other writing than our own, we might as well adopt the Gothic type that still survives in Germany. Gothic and Italic both look well, but nothing can be uglier than Roman. I consider it clear proof of mania in a bibliomaniac, if he buys books in Roman type for anything but common use. ”

“ There are people everywhere just now with such a comprehensive hate of Germany that they tell us to abjure all German things for evermore; but I notice that the men who talk like this, are almost always wearing German hats. Instead of saying that the hat is Tyrolese or Homburg or whatever German type it really is, they say it is of English make and call it Trilby or some other name like that. Yet these same men are always preaching that a German is a German always, although he has been naturalized or born here and has assumed an English name. ”

“ People can read newspapers there and bring away light literature to read at home. But such libraries are seldom of real use. There is not a library in Devon where real work can be done on very many subjects; and the buildings of these libraries might be turned to some account, if each one took a subject and acquired the proper books.
Being a Cambridge man, I can get books from the University Library—Oxford men cannot get books from theirs—and by going to the Reading Room at the British Museum, I can use the books in the immense collection there. ”

“ I wish we could fence off a district of Mr Torr’s Devonshire, and preserve it and its population as an exhibit.... I wish quite passionately that the inhabitants of Wreyland as a type could be preserved. It is a rest to pause and contemplate them. ”

“ Like the rest of the farmers, they are not much of politicians: they see or know but little beyond their own and parish affairs, and seldom go beyond their market towns, where they assemble and talk of the price of cattle and corn and advise each other how to cut down their little tradesmen and labourers. Government may do what it likes to oppress any other class, so as they are not meddled with.... ”

“ If things are bad, by all means do away with them; but do not replace them by things that may be just as bad, though with another kind of badness. Look at the great west window in Exeter Cathedral: the new glass has not the same demerits as the old, but as a work of art it is every bit as bad, and it is much less interesting. ”

“ But always, behind everything, we feel Wreyland, the Devon home, the rooted life. We should like to give some examples; but choosing them is as difficult as choosing raspberries when all are ripe; for, in the classic phrase of the reviewer, there is not a dull page in Mr Torr’s book. We confess to skipping a single paragraph. On turning back to read it we found that we had missed a fragrant bit of social history.... As to good stories, open any page that you will and you will find one.... The only point of capping a good talker’s stories is to egg him on to tell more. ”

“ Usually, when people think of numbers, they see the Arabic figures with their mind’s eye; and some people can see these figures manœuvring at each stage of a calculation. (I heard this from George Bidder, who was famous as The Calculating Boy a hundred years ago.) Within narrow limits I see this manœuvring myself; but, although they are mere figures, I feel that they are moving like soldiers on parade. ”

“ There was an arbitration, and the tree was awarded to my grandfather. I suppose the fattest man in the parish was no wider than a shovel, or else the neighbour had made room for him by digging into the hedge.
A man diverted a watercourse, and in heavy rains the water stirred his cesspool up and spread the contents on another man’s land below. He said it would enrich the land—“it is worth some pounds a year”—but the other man would not have it—“if it is so very valuable as he makes out, why trouble other people with it?” ”

“ I suppose the Legislature understands the workings of the criminal mind, but I sometimes wonder whether men can be deterred from crime by dread of seven years penal servitude, if they are not deterred by dread of five. If they reckon things up at all, they probably pick out the biggest crime they can commit for any specified sentence—“may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”—and then act accordingly. ”

“ Not knowing the story, he called there to inquire the way to Widdicombe, and asked for water also, but did not get it, as the woman fled. I think she had a vision, merely based on what she saw, and going far beyond that. She said she saw his horns.
People who have seen the Devil, all say he is just like the pictures of him: so I suppose they carry these pictures in their mind, and see them with the mind’s eye, when they are in a fright. Pictures may also be the basis of many of our outlandish dreams. ”

“ There is always a temptation to turn foreign names into some English words with which we are familiar: we still say Leg-horn for Livorno, though we have dropped Lush-bone for Lisboa, and call it Lisbon now. ”

“ Keeping sheep used to be almost the only employment: now that does not pay, agriculture is gaining ground, and instead of sending our coin to America for wheat, we grow our own. Altho’ sprung up like a mushroom in relation to the older towns of England, Sydney is as large as Exeter, its market buildings as good, its streets wider and the houses (that is, those recently built) as good as any: our George Street is fully two miles long, with all the bustle of Exeter Fore Street. ”

“ These people vindicated Moses as strenuously as Strabo vindicated Homer. They had no suspicion of misreadings in the Hebrew or the Greek, or mistranslations in the English version: they just adopted Burgon’s view, “every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every syllable, every letter, was the direct utterance of the Most High.” In other words, the Most High would not merely send a message off, but would see that it got through.
Now-a-days superior persons scoff at these benighted folk, but very often seem to be astray in just as dark a night themselves. ”

“ The ordinary local historian is industrious, but wanting in other ways. Mr Torr is a scholar: he has, too, an excellent sense of humour, an inquiring mind and an observant eye.”—Saturday Review.
“A man who takes a keen interest in his ancestral place and in his humble neighbours, and who at the same time is in touch with the world of scholarship through his special studies, may be said to make the most of life.... Mr Torr, like a true scholar, wastes no words. ”

“ You form a higher opinion of a man if you have only seen him at his best, than if you have also seen him at his worst and in all intermediate states. It is the same with scenery. Most strangers see this district in the height of summer, whereas the natives see it in the winter time as well, and have both aspects of it in their mind when they are looking at it; and they sometimes show impatience when strangers praise it overmuch. ”

“ Mr Torr’s book is as typically English as a Christmas pudding.... His book is far more than a local history, however; it should be read as a complementary volume to Mansfield Park and Pendennis, to Life’s Little Ironies and The Way of all Flesh.... From Mr Torr we learn just how good life could be for a wealthy, self-contained, enterprising Englishman in the last hundred years or so. It was all more or less comic relief to him. Old walls are almost serious, and old roofs, and the beauty of fine days and fine landscape ”

“ Not many years ago a man at Moreton said something slanderous about another man there. He was threatened with an action, and compromised it by agreeing to publish an apology and devote a sum of money to any public purpose that the injured party chose to name. The public purpose was chosen very astutely—taking the whitewash off the almshouses, a fine old granite building dated 1637. The building is mentioned in the guide-books, and many people go to see it. Finding it improved, they ask about it; and then (as the astute man had foreseen) they hear the story of the other man’s discomfiture. ”

“ In early life the mind takes facts in and remembers them, but does not judge them critically, whereas it afterwards becomes more critical and less receptive. It would surely be good policy to feed the mind with facts in the years when it retains them, and leave the reasoning for the years when it can reason. But the policy has been to “make boys think”—at least, that was my experience at Harrow—and that policy defeats itself, as one cannot think effectively without a stock of facts to think about. ”

“ If children are only told that a certain creature is a cat, they will afterwards learn the word ‘chat’ as a translation of the word ‘cat.’ But if they are told that the creature is called ‘cat’ by some people and ‘chat’ by others, they are prepared to find that other people call it ‘katze,’ others ‘gatto,’ and so on. ”

“ Very nice vases were found at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, and Ruskin bought them for the British Museum; but they have none of those great qualities that make Greek art worth studying, nor even a foretaste of such qualities. In its maturity Greek art was far the greatest that the world has ever seen, but it was not so in its infancy or its senile decay.
Apart from any merit they may have as works of art, Greek vases often have a human interest, especially if they are inscribed. One vase here tells you as an interesting fact, “Tleson, the son of Nearchos, made me.” ”

“ Both methods are annoying to real artists, though they will some day make their mark, whatever the critics may say. But the new method is more harmful, as it gives the scamps their chance. They see that critics can talk the public into giving 50 or 100 guineas for things that would not otherwise fetch more than 18 pence; and they can easily hoax the critics.
I believe that public taste is guided more by Baedeker than by any other man or body of men or books. When I go sightseeing abroad, I see people of all nations relying on his Guides. ”

“ The ancients were convinced that Corfu was Phæacia, and there is a certain austerity about Corfu that exactly suits the theme; whereas Taormina is all riotous luxuriance, befitting a Cyclops or a Satyr, but not Nausicaa. And surely Ulysses and Nausicaa are worlds away from Goethe and the ladies who adored him. Croce has called him ‘gran poeta’ and ‘borghese’ also, that is, ‘bourgeois’ or ‘middle-class’; and I think it hits him off.
Tradition has made Homer old and blind, and knows nothing of his maturity or youth. ”

“ The uprights are drums of columns and the lintels are squared stones, evidently taken from a temple or some other building of Greek or Roman times. So the circle is comparatively modern, yet its builders were aiming at the same effect as the builders of Stonehenge.
Those rough stones on Dartmoor show no signs of high antiquity. The avenues might be tracks for driving sheep or cattle, and the circles might be pounds for penning them in; and some may really be no more than that. But the circles often have a grave in the centre, and the avenues sometimes have one at the end ”