S. Baring-Gould

William Robert Hicks was born at Bodmin on 1st April, 1808—not to be an April fool himself, but to be a right merry jester, and not infrequently to make fools of others. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and he, Sir William Molesworth, of Pencarrow, and Colonel Hamley were educated together for a while in the school of his father.

William Robert became Clerk of the Board of Guardians, Clerk of the Highway Board, and Governor of the County Lunatic Asylum. He was a man of many parts, a good mathematician, a clear-headed and cool man of business, a musician, who could play on the violin and play it well. But he was noted above everything else as a humorist.

He was a short man and inordinately stout, weighing sixteen stone. He had a broad, flexible, somewhat flabby face, with a pair of twinkling grey eyes, a short nose, somewhat protruding thick under lip, and double chin that was very pronounced, and whiskers. What was noticeable in Hicks's face was its flexibility. He possessed the art and the power to tell his story with his countenance as with his voice. Indeed, the alterations of mood in his face were like a musical accompaniment to a song. He was thought the best story-teller of his day; was known as such in Cornwall and Devon, but was not so well appreciated in London, where the peculiar dry humour of the West, as well as the dialect, did not appeal to ordinary hearers as they do in the two Western Counties. One of his many Cornish friends once took Hicks up to town and dined him at his club, thinking that he would keep the table in a roar. But it was not so. His stories fell somewhat flat, and that damped his spirits and he subsided.

One of Hicks's earliest and best friends was George Wightwick, the architect, born at Mold in Flintshire in 1802, who set up as architect in Plymouth in 1829, and was employed to build additions to Bodmin Gaol in 1842 and 1847. He was author of The Palace of Architecture, published in 1840. And though he was an excellent raconteur, second only to Hicks, he was a most egregiously bad architect. Yet, strangely enough, Mr. Wightwick supposed himself to be enlightened in the matter of Gothic architecture, and in 1835 published in Loudon's Architectural Magazine "A few observations on reviving taste for pointed Architecture, with an illustrated description of a chapel just erected at Bude Haven under the direction of the author."

Wightwick it was who had the merit of discovering Hicks and of introducing him to notables in Devon and Cornwall, for, miserable architect though he was, he had got the ear of the public in the West as a man of charming manners and teeming with anecdote. Through him Hicks obtained access into many a country house, where they would sing, accompanying themselves on the violin, and tell stories.

Hicks was made Governor of Bodmin Asylum in 1848, and found the old barbarous system of treatment of the insane in full swing. He at once adopted gentle methods and in a short while radically changed the entire mode of treatment, with markedly good results.

WILLIAM R. HICKS

One poor fellow, whom he found chained in a dark cell on a bed of straw as a dangerous lunatic, he nearly cured by kindly treatment. As the fellow showed indications of great shrewdness and wit, Hicks released him and made much of him. A gentleman on a visit to the asylum once said to the lunatic, "I hear, man, that you are Hicks's fool."

"Aw," replied he; "I zee you do your awn business in that line."

He was once asked, "Whither does this path go, my man?" He answered readily, "Zure I cannot tell 'ee. I've knawed un bide here these last twenty year."

He was sitting on the high wall of the asylum that commanded the road for some distance, with a turnpike at the bottom of the hill. The company of a circus passed by, with the various horses. As the manager rode past, the lunatic said to him, "'Ow much might 'ee pay turnpike for they there spekkady hosses?" "Oh," said the manager, "the same as for the others." "Do 'ee now?" said the man on the wall. "Well to be zure; my vather 'ad a spekkady hoss that never paid no turnpike. They there sparky (speckled) hosses don't pay no turnpikes here."

"Bless my life," said the manager; "I am much obliged to you for informing me of the fact. So, sir, I am to understand that piebald horses are exempt from paying at the toll-gate?"

"What I zed I bides by. They there spekkady hosses never pay no turnpikes here in Cornwall. What they may do elsewhere, I can't zay."

The lunatic watched the cavalcade proceed down the hill, and when it reached the turnpike, he enjoyed watching a lively altercation going on between the toll-taker and the manager. Presently the latter came galloping back, very hot and angry.

"What do you mean by telling me that in Cornwall piebald horses pay no turnpike?"

"Right it is so—cos you have to pay it vor 'un," said the man and stepped out of reach inside the wall.

One day this same man was put to watch a raving maniac, who, for his own safety, when the fit was on him, used to be put in a padded room. There was an eyehole in the door, and the lunatic, whom Mr. Collier calls Daniel, was set to watch him. The poor wretch in his ravings called, "Bring down the baggonets! Oh, marcy on me! Forty thousand Roosians! Oh! oh! oh! I wish I was in Abraham's bosom," and began to kick and plunge furiously. On which Daniel shouted to him through the hole, "Why I tell'ee if you was, you'd kick the guts out of 'un."

Daniel came from Tavistock, where he used to walk out with a girl. As he told the story himself—"I was keepin' company with a maid, and I went to the parson. Says I to he, 'I want you, however, to promise me wan thing,' says I. 'What is it?' says he. 'I want you to promise me,' says I, 'never to marry me to thickee there maid when I be drunk.' He zaid he'd promise me that, quite sure. 'Thankee, your honour,' said I; 'then I'm all right, for I'll take damned good care you never do it when I'm zober.'"

Daniel was then in the Volunteers and was out on Whitchurch Down in a review. An officer rode up to the bugler, and said "Sound a retreat!" The bugler tried, but could produce no sound. "Sound a retreat!" roared the officer. Again the bugle would not speak. "Sound a retreat!" shouted the officer for the third time. "Don't you see that the cavalry are charging down on us?" "There now, I can't," replied the bugler; "for why? I've gone and spit my quid of terbaccer in the mouthpiece o'un."

Hicks no doubt was quite justified in picking up and appropriating to himself stories wherever he could find them and from whomsoever he heard them. A common friend of ours was with him one day in Plymouth, and as they sat on the Hoe my friend told Hicks a couple of racy anecdotes about his own work.

That evening both dined with Lord Mount Edgcumbe, and Hicks told both these stories with immense humour, as though they had happened recently—the previous week—to himself.

And certainly some of Hicks's stories are very old chestnuts.

This, for instance, was told by Hicks as having to his knowledge occurred to two brothers, Jemmy and Sammy, in the Jamaica Inn, on the Bodmin Moors, between that town and Launceston.

They were to sleep in a double-bedded room, and they dined and drank pretty freely—the Jamaica Inn is now a temperance house—and went to bed. Before retiring to rest one of them put out the light.

After they had been in bed a little while Jemmy said, "I say, Sammy, there be a feller in my bed."

Sammy—"So there be in mine."

Jemmy—"What shall you do, Sammy?"

Sammy—"Kick 'un out."

Jemmy—"So shall I."

So they both proceeded to kick furiously, with the result that each fell out on the opposite side of the bed. By mistake in the dark the last to put out the light and go to bed had entered his brother's bed.

I have heard the same tale told of the Yorkshire moors some thirty to forty years ago.

The famous story of Rabbits and Onions, that Hicks would tell in such a way as to bring the tears rolling down the cheeks with laughter, may or may not be founded on fact, or it may be—and that is probably the case—a condensation into one tale of a good deal of experience with juries. But the same story is told by Rosegger of a trial in Styria.

The following is almost certainly genuine. Anyhow, it is an excellent example of the way in which Hicks could put a story.

"I met a man [name given] in Bodmin, and said to him, 'You are not looking well. What is the matter?'

"The man replied that he had spent an indifferent night.

"'How is that?' I inquired.

"'I sleep with father,' he replied; 'and I woke up all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and I reached forth my hand and couldn't feel nothing; so I ses, ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?" I got out of bed and strick a light, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and sarched the room; sarched under the bed and in the cupboards; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'I went down over the stairs, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and sarched under the stairs and in the kitchen; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'Then I went to the coal-hole, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and sarched all about; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'And I went down into the garden, all in the dead waste and middle of the night; and ses I, "Wherever is my poor dear old aged tender parent?"

"'I went down to the parzley bed, all in the dead waste and middle of the night, and there I found 'un. He'd a cut his throat with the rape(ing)-hook. I took 'un by the hair of his head, and I zaid, ses I, "You darned old grizzley blackguard, you've brought disgrace on the family." I brought 'un in, and laid 'un on the table, and rinned for the doctor; and he zewed up the throt o'un avore the vital spark was 'xtinct. Zo you zee, Mr. Hicks, I've had rather an indiffer'nt night.'"

Here is another of Hicks's stories:—

A young curate was teaching some boys in the Sunday-school, and was impressing on them the duties to their parents.

"What do you owe your mother, Bill Lemon?"

"I don't owe her nothin'! her never lent me nothin'."

"But she takes care of you."

The boy stared.

"What does she do for you?"

"Her gives me a skat in the vace sometimes, and tells me to go to"——(curate intervenes).

"That is not what I mean. When you are sick, what does she do?"

"Wipes it op."

Hicks, as already intimated, was a very short man, very rotund about the belly. Following the Mayor of Bodmin into the room on the occasion of a public dinner, he heard the Mayor announced in a voice of thunder, "The Mayor of Bodmin." Following directly after he intimated to the butler "and the Corporation." The man, without a moment's consideration, roared out, "and the Corporation."

A man of Hicks's acquaintance—every man of whom he had a story to tell was an acquaintance—made a bet that he would drink a certain number of gallons of cider in a given time. The trial of the feat came off, and the man was reduced to the last stage of helplessness, in an armchair, his head resting on the back of the chair, his mouth open, utterly unable to proceed, when he sighed out to his backers, "Try the taypot!" The spout was used to pour down the liquor and the bet was won.

Hicks had a story of a farmer whom he knew intimately, and who had been canvassed for the approaching election, and had promised his vote to the lady of the candidate. Said she, "Dear Mr. Polkinghorne, when you come up to town, do come and see us, come any time—come to dinner. You are sure to be welcome."

Now, as it so fell out, Zechariah Polkinghorne did go to London on some business, and in the evening, when his work was over, he called at the member's house. As it happened that evening, a dinner party was given. When his name was taken up, the member's wife said: "Good gracious! What is to be done? We must, I suppose, have him in, or he will be mortally offended, and next election will not only vote against us, but influence a good many more voters."

So Mr. Polkinghorne was shown up into a room full of ladies and gentlemen in evening dress, and felt somewhat out of it. Presently dinner was announced and he went in with the rest and took his place at the table.

"So sorry, Mr. Polkinghorne," said the lady of the house; "so sorry we have no partner for you to take in; but, you see, you came unexpectedly, and we had not time to invite a lady for you."

"Never mind, ma'am, never mind. It doth remind me o' my old sow to home. Her had thirteen little piglings—zuckers—for a brood, and pore thing had only twelve little contrivances for them to zuck to."

"What did the thirteenth do then, Mr. Polkinghorne?"

"Why, ma'am, thickey there little zucker was like me now—just out in the cold."

Hicks was driving along a road in the dark one night when he came upon an empty conveyance, and two men close to the hedge on the roadside. One man was drunk—a Methodist class-leader—but the other was sober. The drunken man was lamenting:—

"Ah, too bad! What shall I do when I be called to my last account? What shall I zay?"

"Zay, Nathaniel?" the sober man said. "What can 'ee zay but that you've been to Liskeard a auditing of accounts, and took an extra glass? 'Twill be overlooked for once, sure enough, up there."

A day or so after Hicks met the sober man, and asked how Nathaniel had got on that night.

The answer was: "He's a terrible affectionate man to his family, and when we got home he took the babby out o' the cradle for to kiss 'un, and valled vore with 'un over a vaggot of vurze. Jane, her got into a passion and laid onto 'un with the broomstick, while he kep' tumblin' over the babby. When I comed away her'd 'a thrashed 'un sober; and they'd 'a got the babby on the dresser, naked, and was a-picking out the prickles."

Hicks knew a man who was of a morose, fanatical humour; and this man had married a widow with a brisk, merry wench for a daughter. Once he reproved the girl for singing secular songs in this vale of woe, and said to her: "Suppose you was took sudden, and called to your last account with the Soldier's Tear in your mouth?"

Another of his stories was of a chapel where they sang a Cornish anthem; the females began—

To which the men, basses and tenors, responded—

A boy at church—another of Hicks's anecdotes; he knew the boy well—heard the parson give out the banns of "John So-and-so and Betsy So-and-so, both of this parish. This is the third and last time of asking."

"Mother," said the lad after service; "I shouldn't like it to be proclaimed in church that sister Jane had been askin' for a husband dree times afore her got one."

Again, another story told by Hicks:—

"Where be you a-bound to this afternoon?"

"Gwain to see the football match."

"Aw! Like to be a good un?"

"Yes, I reckon. There be a lot o' bitter feelin' betwixt the two teams."

But, indeed, the stories told by William Robert Hicks were many, and for those who would desire more, let them get Mr. W. F. Collier's Tales and Sayings of W. R. Hicks, Plymouth, Brendon and Son, 1893; and look at "An Illustrious Obscure," by Abraham Hayward, q.c., in the Morning Post, 8th September, 1868; and J. C. Young's Memoirs of C. M. Young, 1871, Vol. II, pp. 301-8.

Hicks died at Bodmin 5th September, 1868, at the age of sixty.