The Blackmore Country having achieved a second edition, it is proper to state that it is now presented to the public substantially in the same form as in the original issue. Advantage, however, has been taken of a friendly critique by Mr Arthur Smyth to effect some revision. Mr Smyth, who was well acquainted with the Blackmore family, and indeed a distant relation, is rather perplexed at the assertion that the novelist’s father was a poor man; but he certainly passed for such at Culmstock, and the fact that he took pupils, in addition to serving his poor cure, tends to show that he was by no means too well off.

In my Early Associations of Archbishop Temple it is stated with reference to the restoration of Culmstock Church: “Nobody knew from what source Mr Blackmore obtained the necessary funds, but it was supposed that his wife’s relations were rich.” This is, in a sense, confirmed by Mr Smyth, who says that Mr Turberville, R. D. Blackmore’s elder brother, inherited considerable property from his mother; but, when I wrote the passage above quoted, I was not aware that John Blackmore was married twice. His first wife, who died three years after their marriage, and before John Blackmore set foot in Culmstock, may not have been in possession of means, although Turberville’s estate—Mr Smyth says, “his will was proved for (I believe) £20,000”—may have been derived from his maternal connections. Mr Snowden Ward, in his Introduction to the Doone-land edition of Lorna Doone, informs us regarding R. D. Blackmore, also a son of this lady: “A bequest from the Rev. H. Hay Knight, his mother’s brother, put an end to his financial worries.”

Nevertheless, it may be doubted whether the novelist was ever in even “comparative affluence.” He himself publicly declared that he lost more than he gained from market-gardening—he was, by the way, a F.R.H.S.—and the late Rev. D. M. Owen, Blackmore’s old schoolfellow, with whom he maintained a lifelong correspondence, told me that he was constantly complaining of his pecuniary limitations. Mr Owen’s reply was that he had no excuse; he had only to write another Lorna Doone to replenish his treasury to the brim. When, also, he was asked for a subscription to the Culmstock flower show, Blackmore declined, assigning as the reason that he “couldn’t afford it.” This does not look like “comparative affluence.”

Mr Smyth says that he never saw or heard of any daughters of the Rev. John Blackmore. If he implies that there were none, he is certainly mistaken (see Prologue), but he raises a problem which, I confess, I am not able to solve. “In Charles Church there is a marble slab erected to the memory of the Rev. John Blackmore by his children, J. B., R. B., M. A. B. No allusion is made to M. A. B. in the pedigree either by the Rev. J. F. Chanter or Mr Snell.” The only explanation which occurs to me is that M. A. B. may represent the initials of their full sister, who died in infancy. The Rev. John Blackmore married in 1822. Three years later he sustained a terrible trial. “The novelist’s father,” says Mr Ward, “was a ‘coach’ for Oxford pupils, until, in 1825, a great outbreak of typhus fever swept away his wife, daughter, two pupils, the family physician, and all the servants, and almost broke John Blackmore’s heart.” R. D. Blackmore’s mother’s maiden name was Anne Basset Knight; and the A. in M. A. B. suggests that her daughter may have been called Anne—perhaps Mary Anne, if M. A. B. indicates that daughter. She had long been dead, but the brothers, as an act of piety, may have chosen to commemorate her in this way, whilst ignoring the daughters of the second family, whom Mr Smyth never saw or heard of.

In conclusion, the demand for a second edition of this work is a satisfactory answer to the disparaging remarks of the late Mr F. T. Elworthy in a presidential address to the members of the Devonshire Association for the Promotion of Literature, Science, and Art. It is a bad precedent that the title and contents of a new work should be officially censured on an occasion when it was by an accident that the author was not present to be lectured for his shortcomings, just as it was a pure accident that Mr Elworthy was not named in the book as accompanying Dr Murray and Professor Rhys in their visit to the Caractacus stone on Winsford Hill (p. 109)! I now repair this omission, and at the same time express regret that the secretaries did not take steps to delete from the reports of a learned and very useful association criticism which, to say the least, was beside the mark.

F. J. SNELL.

January 30, 1911.