COLNE***


Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman and Hall “Tales of All Countries”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





                  THE PARSON’S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE.


THE prettiest scenery in all England—and if I am contradicted in that
assertion, I will say in all Europe—is in Devonshire, on the southern and
south-eastern skirts of Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart, and Avon, and
Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated, and
the wild-looking upland fields are half moor.  In making this assertion I
am often met with much doubt, but it is by persons who do not really know
the locality.  Men and women talk to me on the matter, who have travelled
down the line of railway from Exeter to Plymouth, who have spent a
fortnight at Torquay, and perhaps made an excursion from Tavistock to the
convict prison on Dartmoor.  But who knows the glories of Chagford?  Who
has walked through the parish of Manaton?  Who is conversant with
Lustleigh Cleeves and Withycombe in the moor?  Who has explored Holne
Chase?  Gentle reader, believe me that you will be rash in contradicting
me, unless you have done these things.

There or thereabouts—I will not say by the waters of which little river
it is washed—is the parish of Oxney Colne.  And for those who wish to see
all the beauties of this lovely country, a sojourn in Oxney Colne would
be most desirable, seeing that the sojourner would then be brought nearer
to all that he would wish to visit, than at any other spot in the
country.  But there in an objection to any such arrangement.  There are
only two decent houses in the whole parish, and these are—or were when I
knew the locality—small and fully occupied by their possessors.  The
larger and better is the parsonage, in which lived the parson and his
daughter; and the smaller is a freehold residence of a certain Miss Le
Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres, which was rented by one
Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty acres round her own
house, which she managed herself; regarding herself to be quite as great
in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the article of
cyder.  “But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,” Farmer Cloysey would say,
when Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of her art in a manner too
defiant.  “Yeu pays no rent, or yeu couldn’t do it.”  Miss Le Smyrger was
an old maid, with a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred and thirty
acres of fee-simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age,
a constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every subject under
the sun.

And now for the parson and his daughter.  The parson’s name was
Woolsworthy—or Woolathy, as it was pronounced by all those who lived
around him—the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was Patience
Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the Devonshire world of
those parts.  That name of Patience had not been well chosen for her, for
she was a hot-tempered damsel, warm in her convictions, and inclined to
express them freely.  She had but two closely intimate friends in the
world, and by both of them this freedom of expression had now been fully
permitted to her since she was a child.  Miss Le Smyrger and her father
were well accustomed to her ways, and on the whole well satisfied with
them.  The former was equally free and equally warm-tempered as herself,
and as Mr. Woolsworthy was allowed by his daughter to be quite paramount
on his own subject—for he had a subject—he did not object to his daughter
being paramount on all others.  A pretty girl was Patience Woolsworthy at
the time of which I am writing, and one who possessed much that was
worthy of remark and admiration, had she lived where beauty meets with
admiration, or where force of character is remarked.  But at Oxney Colne,
on the borders of Dartmoor, there were few to appreciate her, and it
seemed as though she herself had but little idea of carrying her talent
further afield, so that it might not remain for ever wrapped in a
blanket.

She was a pretty girl, tall end slender, with dark eyes and black hair.
Her eyes were perhaps too round for regular beauty, and her hair was
perhaps too crisp; her mouth was large and expressive; her nose was
finely formed, though a critic in female form might have declared it to
be somewhat broad.  But her countenance altogether was wonderfully
attractive—if only it might be seen without that resolution for dominion
which occasionally marred it, though sometimes it even added to her
attractions.

It must be confessed on behalf of Patience Woolsworthy, that the
circumstances of her life had peremptorily called upon her to exercise
dominion.  She had lost her mother when she was sixteen, and had had