The stage from Bampton to Dulverton was not easy for John Ridd and his serving-man, nor is it easy for us. From the very heart of the town is a toilsome ascent to High Cross, fitly so named, and reputed to be haunted. Chains have been heard to rattle there, and the enemy of mankind is alleged to have a predilection for the spot. On this subject an old Bamptonian once told me an amusing story. In the days when the “bone-shaker” wooden bicycle was a novelty, and the Barretts (relations of Mrs Barrett Browning) resided at Combehead, someone belonging to the house was riding down the hill in the twilight on his machine, which was rattling and creaking to a merry tune. Half-way down he encountered a labourer, who, never having seen or heard of anything of the kind, and totally at a loss to account for the phenomenon in the “dimpse,” as he would have called it, incontinently jumped to the conclusion that the strange shape advancing towards him was that of Apollyon, and, in abject terror, turned and fled.

Whatever the explanation may be—whether it is the beetling trees or the unfrequentedness—there is no doubt, as is proved by the universal testimony of those who have used the road, especially by night, that it differs from most roads in being distinctly uncanny.

Combehead is the property of the lord of the manor (Mr W. H. White), and the manor is, roughly speaking, the parish. But just as there are wheels within wheels, so there may be manors within manors, and it happens that Mr Wensley, an excellent yeoman who lately purchased the farm which he had previously occupied as a tenant—Birchdown, at the right base of the hill—is also a lord, though he modestly disclaims any intention of proceeding to the Upper House of Parliament. Locally, however, he has his rights, and I believe the other lord has to pay his lesser brother “quit-rent” for certain land “within the ambit” of the manor of Bampton.

From the summit of Grant’s Hill one gains the first sight of Somerset, and very prepossessing one finds it, with the twin valleys of the Exe and Barle cleaving the high ground, and Pixton enthroned between. By their junction the two rivers form a wide basin in which lies the township of Exebridge. This, as will be shown, was the scene of one of the exploits of the famous Faggus. There is nothing uncanny about Exebridge; indeed, it may be called an open, sunny hamlet. Nevertheless, the river here has its black pool, to which was “banished”—when or for what reason I cannot say—Madam Thorold, of Burston, an old house in the neighbourhood. In like manner, but rather less cruelly, Madam Gaddy, of Great House, Bampton, was “banished” to Barton, with leave to return at a cock’s-stride a year. When she gets back, she will be horrified to find her grand old mansion gone and a modern public-house usurping its name and place. Similarly, the late Captain Musgrove, of Stone Farm, Exford, is reputed to have been conjured away by so many parsons to Pinkery Pond, whence he is on his way back at the conventional cock’s-stride.

As chance wills, without going out of my way, I have it in my power to supplement these brief, but poignant, accounts of the supernatural with other and more detailed ghost-stories derived from the history or traditions of the Sydenham family. Close to Dulverton Station are two roads branching off to the left; either of these will conduct you to the village of Brushford, and from there to the entrance to Combe, a beautiful Elizabethan manor-house built in the usual shape of an E. The Sydenhams were a distinguished Somersetshire family, and, although some of its branches are extinct, and others fallen from their high estate, there are left ample proofs of its former greatness, and, if I may be permitted to say so much of those whom I have been privileged to know as friends, “still in their ashes glow their wonted fires.”

It was in 1568 that John Sydenham bought the manor of Dulverton from Francis Babington, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, but the connection of the family with Dulverton is of much longer standing; and as a John de Sydenham is mentioned as marrying Mary, daughter and heir of Joan Pixton, of Pixton, in the fourteenth century, this may perhaps be taken as the period of their first settlement in the neighbourhood. They had other homes in Somerset—notably at Brympton d’Evercy, near Yeovil, now the property of Sir Spencer Ponsonby Fane; and the canopied monument, erected in the little church hard by, to a Sydenham by a Sydenham, is worth going a day’s journey to see.

So far as the house and estate of Combe are concerned, they first came into the possession of the Sydenhams through the marriage of Edward, son of John Sydenham, of Badialton (Bathealton), with Joan, daughter and heir of Walter Combe, of Combe, in 1482. Part of the original mansion still remains, and is used as servants’ quarters; the house, however, was rebuilt during the reign of Elizabeth, and probably towards its close, as two medals, struck to commemorate the defeat of the Armada, were found, some few years ago, beneath the floor of the entrance porch. The main entrance of the older building appears to have been in the east wing, where cross-beams, over what were once two very wide doorways, are still to be seen. The second doorway opened into the inner court or quadrangle. The stone, a species of shillett, was quarried near the house, and, instead of mortar, clay was largely used. A better sort of stone was employed in the later building, with plenty of lime and sand. The oak work is magnificent.

There was a close connection between the Sydenhams of Combe and those of Brympton. Humphry, well-known as the “silver-tongued,” Sydenham, was a scion of the latter branch. He entered at Exeter College, Oxford, became Fellow of Wadham in the same university, and then chaplain to Lord Howard, of Escrigg, and Archbishop Laud successively. Appointed rector of Pockington and Odcombe, he resided in the latter place (Tom Coryate’s native village); and his preferments included a prebendal stall at Wells. On the establishment of the Commonwealth, he was deprived of his living by the Commissioners, and retired to Combe, where he performed the church service for tenants and others who chose to attend in the chapel-room over the hall. This eloquent divine was buried at Dulverton.

Major Sir George Sydenham, another brother of Sir John Sydenham, of Brympton d’Evercy, and a knight-marshal in the army of Charles I., had married his cousin Susan, daughter of George Sydenham, of Combe; and, whilst staying with his wife at her father’s house, received an urgent summons to accompany his brother on some public occasion. Nothing more was heard of him until one night, as his wife was sleeping peacefully, he appeared to her in his military dress, but deathly pale. Starting up in affright, she exclaimed that her husband was dead, and announced her intention of joining him. Accordingly, the next morning she set out, and on the way was met by a messenger who unluckily confirmed her presentiment, saying that her lord had died suddenly.[11]

Ever since then the spirit of the major has had an uncomfortable trick of turning up at unexpected hours in the mansion in which he made his first apparition. One day Mrs Jakes, a tenant of the family, was ascending the stairs, when she met a strange figure coming out of one of the rooms, and, according to her account, motioned as if he would snuff the candle for her. She was not alarmed, because Sir George looked kindly on her, and it was only later that she remembered the story of the ghost.

More extraordinary still were the circumstances of another visit. When the late rector of Brushford was a young man, he invited a college-friend to stay with him. The evening of his arrival was spent in the usual way, with plenty of fun and pleasantry, after which the party broke up for the night. The following morning the guest came down in the same good spirits, but he had a tale to tell.

“You fellows thought you were going to frighten me last night,” he observed. Everybody disclaimed such an intention, and begged to know what he meant. There were signs of incredulity on the part of the collegian, and then he was induced to explain that an old cavalier arrayed in a wide cloak and Spanish hat had presented himself at his bedside. The spectacle, however, had given him no concern, as he had taken it for a practical joke.

Major Sydenham’s portrait was painted at Combe, and is still in the possession of the family. It is that of a man with the pointed beard and moustache of the period, wearing a cavalier’s hat and feather; and within living memory was concealed behind curtains. In view of what was said about the subject, this was not unnatural, but the picture itself had a peculiar quality. A boy, it is remembered, refused to look at it, and hid under the table, because the eyes followed him.

I have not yet done with the Sydenham phantom. As may easily be supposed, the country-side has its legends of these great people, who, it is averred, drove a carriage with six or eight horses shod with silver. Amongst the legends is one that narrates the laying of Major Sydenham’s ghost, whose visits became so frequent and inopportune that the family at Combe resolved on serious measures to prevent their recurrence. They communicated with the Vicar of Dulverton, desiring him to perform the rite of exorcism, and accordingly that divine, attended by his curate, proceeded to the large upper room still known as “the chapel,” where, as we have seen, the “silver-tongued” Sydenham had so often read prayers under the Commonwealth. At the conclusion of the service the man-servant was ordered to lead a handsome watch-dog to Aller’s Wood, on the border of the present highway to Dulverton, and there release him. Particular instructions were given him on no account to hurt or ill-use the animal, but these he seems to have disobeyed. The result was a sudden flash of lightning, followed immediately by a loud clap of thunder, in the midst of which the dog disappeared. On returning to the house the terrified emissary reported the occurrence, but the opinion was expressed that the spirit had been effectually laid.

The country-side, however, was unwilling to resign its ghost, and, amongst other “yarns,” the following has been told. There is a stone staircase at Combe, and one step was always coming out. If it was put back one day, it was found dislodged the next; and this was believed to be Major Sydenham’s work. At length the two Blackmores, father and son, were sent for. They were masons of Exebridge, and skilled men at their trade, of which they were proud. They thought they had secured the step in its place firmly.

“Damme, Major Sydenham, push it out if

you can,” exclaimed one of them. No sooner said than done.

I now come to what may be either the basis or a variant of the main tradition, unless, as may well be the case, it is an entirely independent narrative—namely, a circumstantial relation quoted in the Treatise of the Soul of Man, which edifying composition was published in 1685. It is, word for word, as follows:—

“Much to the same purpose is that so famous and well-attested story of the apparition of Major George Sydenham to Captain William Dyke, both of Somersetshire, attested by the worthy and learned Dr Thomas Dyke, a near kinsman of the captain’s, and by Mr Douch, to whom both the major and captain were intimately known. The sum is this:—The major and captain had many disputes about the Being of a God and the immortailty of the Soul, on which points they could never be resolved, though they much sought and desired it, and therefore it was at last fully agreed betwixt them, that he who died first should on the third night after his funeral, come betwixt the hours of twelve and one, to the little house at Dulverton in Somersetshire; and the captain happened to lie that very night which was appointed in the same chamber and bed with Dr Dyke. He acquainted the doctor with the appointment, and his resolution to attend the place and hour that night, for which purpose he got the key of the garden. The doctor could by no means divert his purpose, but when the hour came he was upon the place, where he waited two hours and a half, neither seeing nor hearing anything more than usual.

“About six weeks after, the doctor and captain went to Eaton, and lay again at the same inn, but not the same chamber as before. The morning before they went thence the captain stayed longer than was usual in his chamber, and at length came into the doctor’s chamber, but in a visage and form much differing from himself, with his hair and eyes staring and his whole body shaking and trembling. Whereat the doctor, wondering, demanded, ‘What is the matter, cousin captain?’ The captain replies, ‘I have seen my major.’ At which the doctor seeming to smile, the captain said, ‘If ever I saw him in my life, I saw him but now,’ adding as followeth. ‘This morning (said he) after it was light, someone came to my bedside, and suddenly drawing back the curtains, calls, ‘Cap, cap,’ (which was the term of familiarity that the major used to call the captain by), to whom I replied, ‘What, my major.’ To which he returns, ‘I could not come at the time appointed, but I am come now to tell you that there is a God, and a very just and terrible one, and if you do not turn over a new leaf, you will find it so.’ This stuck close to him. Little meat would go down with him at dinner, though a handsome treat was provided. These words were sounding in his ears frequently during the remainder of his life, he was never shy or scrupulous to relate it to any that asked him concerning it, nor ever mentioned it but with horror and trepidation. They were both men of a brisk humour and jolly conversation, of very quick and keen parts, having been both University and Inns of Court gentlemen.”

The intimacy to which this narrative bears witness, though easily accounted for in officers of the same regiment, is further explained by the fact they were near neighbours at home. The Sydenhams, as has been shown, dwelt at Combe, and the Dykes, I may now add, at Pixton, the former residence of the Sydenhams, whilst the salutation “Cap, cap” indicates much friendliness. The Dyke dynasty came to an end when Sir Thomas Acland (seventh baronet) married Elizabeth Dyke, and joined her estates at Dulverton and elsewhere to his own vast patrimony. With them I am not concerned, more than to state that they were the grandparents of John Dyke Acland, who wedded in 1771 the Lady Christian Harriet Caroline Fox-Strangways, sister of Stephen, first Earl of Ilchester.

In the commonplace book of Thomas Sayer, parish clerk and schoolmaster of Dulverton, I find the following entries relating to the family:—

“Jn^o Dyke Acland, Esq., married Jan^y 7, 1771. The above Jn^o Dyke Acland born Feb. 18, 1746, and died Nov. 15, 1778. The old Sir Thos. Dyke Acland, Father of above Jn^o Dyke Acland, born Aug. 12, 1722, and died Feb^y 20, 1785.”

The same manuscript includes particulars regarding Pixton House, which prove the existing structure, the “frozen music” of which is superbly classical, to be differently laid out from its predecessor, which we may conjecture to have been of some type of English domestic architecture, and, according to Saver’s measurements, contained some fine rooms. The old house was pulled down in February 1803, and the new, built by Hassell, of Exeter, was finished in November 1805. This work was carried out on the initiative of Lady Harriet Acland, after whom the private road through the serried woods of the sequestered Haddeo valley is named “Lady Harriet’s Drive”—doubtless, because she ordered its construction.

Two or three years ago Mr Broomfield, of Dulverton, showed me an old picture, dim, dirty, and discoloured, yet significant. Through the crust of time one could discern a man, a woman, and a boat; and the attitudes and certain of the details convinced me that the faded, and not very valuable, heirloom represented a scene in the life of the great lady of Pixton, to which she must have looked back with horror, and her posterity will ever refer with pride. I will try to interpret that picture, and conjure up the scene it so feebly portrays.

It was the year 1777, and Major Acland’s grenadiers, forming the advanced guard of General Fraser’s brigade, were advancing against the American insurgents. Lady Harriet had already endured cruel privations, and in the course of the previous year had nursed her husband through a dangerous bout of sickness, contracted in the campaign. Now it had begun again. Only a short time before, the tent they were sleeping in had caught fire, and most of their clothing had been burnt. It was winter, and bitter cold.

Now, however brave a woman may be, unless she is a professed Amazon, she is not expected to fight, and, as an action was about to take place, Acland requested his wife to remain with the baggage. In a small log-hut with three other ladies—the Baroness Ruysdael, Mrs Ramage, and Mrs Reynell—Lady Harriet spent hours of agonising suspense, the high notes of the incessant musketry fire mingling with the diapason of the artillery, to be varied erelong by the groans of the wounded borne into their place of shelter, and littering the ground around.

After a while the news reached Mrs Ramage that her husband had been killed. Then came another message that Lieutenant Reynell had been dangerously wounded; and finally, at the close of the day, Lady Harriet received the information that Major Acland, seriously hurt, was in the hands of the enemy.

With equal courage and affection, the devoted woman resolved to go in search of him, and that without delay. Accordingly, with Dr Brudenell, chaplain of the regiment, she entered a small boat and proceeded down the river to the enemy’s outposts. Here they were challenged by the sentry, and Brudenell, hoisting a white handkerchief on a stick, attempted to explain their errand. The sentinel, however, proved obdurate, not only refusing to carry any message to the officer in command, but warning them not to move, or he would fire on the boat. So all through that inclement night, insufficiently clad, without a particle of food, and in imminent danger of becoming a target for the foe, they sat and waited.

With the morning their situation improved. The general, on being made cognisant of the facts, received the lady with soldierly sympathy, and accorded her full permission to attend on her husband until his recovery.

Soon after they returned to England, and to Pixton, but Colonel Acland was born to ill-luck. He fought a duel on Bampton Down, November 11, 1778, with Captain Lloyd, an officer of his own regiment, whom he had offended by praising the humanity of the American people, and caught a chill. Four days later he was dead.

Lady Harriet had two children—Elizabeth Kitty and John Dyke. The latter, after succeeding to the baronetcy, died at the age of seventeen, whilst his sister married, in 1796, Lord Porchester (afterwards second Earl of Carnarvon), and died in 1816. Lady Harriet outlived both husband and children, dying in 1818.

The present possessor of Pixton is the Dowager Countess of Carnarvon; and her sons are the lineal descendants of the intrepid woman whose adventures I have described.

Pixton Park, with its beeches and herd of fallow deer, and Lady Harriet’s Drive, flanked on each side by gorgeous oak woods or oak coppice, vocal with streams, and centred by brown Haddon, are among the features which enable Dulverton to maintain its proud claim to extraordinary beauty of scenery. In this respect it has no superior in the West Country, and Tennyson, who visited the neighbourhood not long before his death, went away delighted with it. An account of this visit appears in the life of the poet by his son, the present Lord Tennyson; and, although rather inaccurate in some of the details, yet, as a piece of impressionism, deserves to be reproduced.

“In June, Colonel Crozier lent us his yacht, the Assegai, and we went to Exmouth, and thence by rail to Dulverton—a land of bubbling streams, my father called it.

“Lord Carnarvon had told him years ago that the streams here were the most delicious he knew.

“We drove up the Haddon valley, and to Barlynch Abbey on the Exe. The ragged robin and wild garlic were profuse. We returned by Pixton Park.

“The Exe is ‘arrowy’ just before its confluence with the Barle, running, as my father remarked, ‘too vehemently to break upon the jutting rocks.’ We sat next on a wooden bridge over the Exe, and he said to me, ‘That is an old simile, but a good one: Time is like a river, ever past and ever future.’

“In the afternoon, we drove through the Barle valley to Hawkridge, then to the Torr Steps, high up among the hills, with an ancient bridge across the river, flat stones laid on piers. Some tawny cows were cooling themselves in mid-stream; a green meadow on one side, on the other a wooded slope. ‘If it were only to see this,’ he said, ‘the journey is worth while.’

“We climbed Haddon Down [Draydon Knap?], and then to Higher Combe—a valley down which there was a most luxuriant view, the Dartmoor range as background, almost Italian in colouring.”

Lord Tennyson adds, that, at Dulverton, his father began the Hymn to the Sun in a new metre, for his “Akbar.”

A most exquisite view is to be obtained from Baron’s Down, situated on the lofty height of Bury Hill. Formerly the seat of the Stucley Lucases (who were as great in stag-hunting, or nearly so, as Tennyson was in poetry), it afterwards served as the country-house of Dr Warre, Headmaster of Eton, who resigned his tenancy, much to the regret of his neighbours and friends, as recently as last year.

Of Dulverton town, as distinct from its environs, it is impossible to say much. It is, however, one of the chief centres of Exmoor stag-hunting and fishing, and the hotels, which thrive on these attractions, provide adequate accommodation. Owing to the constant stream of fashionable visitors from all parts of the world, Dulverton, though in point of size a mere village, wears, during the season, a quite cosmopolitan aspect; and, as if to emphasise its superiority to other rustic communities, the enterprising inhabitants have lately caused to be installed a system of electric lighting by means of high poles with wire attachments.

Here, it will be remembered, dwelt Master Reuben Huckaback, John Ridd’s maternal uncle, who, when bound on the back of the frightened mountain pony, described himself as “an honest hosier and draper, serge and long-cloth warehouseman, at the sign of the Gartered Kitten, in the loyal town of Dulverton.” Huckaback, I am disposed to think, was Blackmore’s creation, the name in itself being suspicious. What is Huckaback? Nuttall defines it as “a kind of linen with raised figures on it, used for tablecloths and towels”—the sort of thing that a shopkeeper in Uncle Ben’s line would be likely to sell. Blackmore, no doubt, somewhat exaggerates the commercial advantages of Dulverton, but in the good old days, tradesmen managed to subsist very comfortably, and even to retire on a competence. The premises now occupied by Mr Bayley were probably those Mr Blackmore had in his eye, though their spick-and-span appearance does not suggest anything venerable. The proprietor, however, has good warrant for ascribing a decent antiquity to the house, whose traditional sign is the Vine, not the Gartered Kitten. That it may have been partially remodelled or reconstructed since the seventeenth century, is readily granted, as being in the nature of things, but, having been the head shop at Dulverton time out of mind, it is, at all events, in the apostolic succession.

Some Dulverton streets bear interesting names. Thus we have Rosemary Lane and Lady Street. The latter was formerly much narrower at its entrance into Fore Street, and an old inhabitant once told me that he believed that anciently it had been built over, and that the front of the superincumbent structure was adorned with an image of the Virgin Mary.

The widening process involved the demolition of two ancient cottages, which had formed the Nightingale Inn; and amongst the dÉbris was discovered an old coin, on seeing which a local connoisseur forthwith pronounced it Spanish, adding that it had been probably left by the Dons when they invaded England in 1600. A companion denied that England was ever invaded by the Spaniards, but the other would not be contradicted. “He knowed they did, and it weren’t likely they could pass Dulverton without stopping for a drink.” In point of fact, the coin was a poor specimen of a sixpenny bit, struck in 1566.