Stuart Johnson Reid

“ He was a keen judge of fruit, and often gave his friends delightful and quite unpremeditated lessons in its culture. Blackmore was a tall, square-shouldered, powerfully built, dignified-looking man, and was the picture of health with fair complexion and high colour. ”

“ After Blackmore's settlement at Teddington, the earliest product from his pen was 'The Farm and Fruit of Old,' a sonorous and happy translation of the first and second Georgics of Virgil, which appeared in 1862. Scholars recognised its merit, but their approval did not sell the book. Disheartened by the languid reception of his work in verse, alike original and in translation, Blackmore sought another medium of expression, and found it in creative romance. ”

“ Blackmore had, as he once put it, 'a crooked start in life.' His father took pupils at Longworth to train for Oxford, and three months after Blackmore was born an epidemic of typhus fever in the village attacked the household. ”

“ Unfortunately for himself he had received no business training, and was in consequence somewhat at the mercy of the men he employed, more than one of whom robbed him to a considerable extent. He was an expert in the culture of grapes and exotic plants, and for long years his fruit and flowers, and notably his pears, of which he was especially fond, found their way regularly to Covent Garden market, where, at one time — disgusted by the extortions of the middle men — he set up a stall. ”

“ Among his fellow-pupils was Frederick Temple, now archbishop of Canterbury, who had formerly been a private pupil of his father at Longworth, Blackmore acquitted himself well at Blundell's, He was head-boy for some time, and won a scholarship which took him to Oxford, and, what he esteemed a piece of good luck, to his father's college, Exeter, where he matriculated on 7 Dec, 1843. ”

“ BLACKMORE, RICHARD DODDRIDGE (1825–1900) , novelist and barrister, was born on 7 June 1825, at Longworth, Berkshire, of which parish his father, John Blackmore (d. 1858) , was vicar. His father, at one time fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, was a scholar of high classical attainments and exceptional force of character. The novelist's mother, a woman of charm and refinement, was Anne Basset, eldest daughter of the Rev. Robert Knight, vicar of Tewkesbury, a descendant of Sir John Knight 'the elder' (1612-1683) [q. v.] ”

“ His father recovered ; but his mother, her sister, two of his father's six pupils, the family doctor, and all the servants died. The place became unbearable to the elder Blackmore, and he quitted it for a living at Culmstock, near Barnstaple. He finally settled in that of Ashford in the same county. Meanwhile Blackmore came to live with his maternal grandmother, Mrs, Knight, at Newton House, Newton, and after some years his father married again. ”