‘Willoughby Martyn: born 1615 died 1685: he fought at Marston Moor as Captain of a Troop of Norfolk men. We were always royalists. He was exiled in the Protectorate, went to Amsterdam; bought a bay horse off the Duke of Newcastle there; we have the breed still; he came back here at the Restoration, married Sally Hampton - of the Manor, but they died out last generation, and had six children, four sons and two daughters. He bought the Lower Meadow you know Betty,’ he jerked at his wife, to goad her unaccountably sluggish memory.
‘I call him to mind well enough now,’ she answered, placidly.
‘He lived here all the last part of his life; died of small pox, or what they called small pox then; and his daughter Joan caught it from him. They’re buried in the same grave in the church yonder.’ He pointed his thumb, and went on with his dinner. All this was volunteered as shortly and even curtly as though he were performing some necessary task, which from long familiarity had become quite uninteresting to him; though for some reason he had still to repeat it.
I could not help showing my interest in the story, although I was conscious that my questions did not entertain my host.
‘You seem to have a queer liking for these old fathers of mine,’ he commented, at last, with an odd little scowl of humorous irritation. ‘You must show her the pictures after dinner, John,’ put in his wife; ‘and all the old things.’
‘I should be immensely interested,’ I said, ‘but I must not take up your time.’
‘O John knows a quantity about them; he’s wonderful learned about pictures.’
‘Any fool knows his own ancestors, Betty;’ growled her husband; ‘still, if you wish to see what we have, Madam, I shall be proud to show you.’ The courtesy of the phrase, and the air with which he held the door open for me, made me remember the ‘y’ in his name.
He showed me round the Hall, pointing with a riding crop to one dark canvas after another; and rapping out two or three unhesitating words of description at each; they were hung apparently in chronological order, and it was clear in spite of the dirt and the dark that the later portraits were feebler examples of the art, and represented less distinguished looking heads. Military coats became less and less frequent, and in the 18th century the male Martyns were represented [in] snuff coloured garments of a homely cut, and were briefly described as ‘Farmers’ or ‘him who sold the Fen Farm’ by their descendant. Their wives and daughters at length dropped out altogether, as though in time a portrait had come to be looked upon more as the necessary appendage of the head of the house, rather than as the right which beauty by itself could claim.
Still, I could trace no sign in the man’s voice that he was following the decline of his family with his riding crop, for there was neither pride nor regret in his tone; indeed it kept its level note, as of one who tells a tale so well known that the words have been rubbed smooth of meaning.
‘There’s the last of them - my father,’ he said at length, when he had slowly traversed the four sides of the Hall; I looked upon a crude canvas, painted in the early sixties I gathered, by some travelling painter with a literal brush. Perhaps the unskilful hand had brought out the roughness of the features and the harshness of the complexion; had found it easier to paint the farmer than to produce the subtle balance which, one might gather, blent in the father as in the son. The artist had stuffed his sitter into a black coat, and wound a stiff white tie round his neck; the poor gentleman had never felt at ease in them, yet.
‘And now, Mr Martyn,’ I felt bound to say, ‘I can only thank you, and your wife for...’
‘Stop a moment,’ he interrupted, ‘we’re not done yet. There are the books.’
His voice had a half comic doggedness about it; like one who is determined, in spite of his own indifference to the undertaking, to make a thorough job of it.
He opened a door and bade me enter a small room, or rather office; for the table heaped with papers, and the walls lined with ledgers, suggested the room where business is transacted by the master of an estate. There were pads and brushes for ornament; and there were mostly dead animals, raising lifeless paws, and grinning, with plaster tongues, from various brackets and cases.
These go back beyond the pictures;’ he said, as he stooped and lifted a great parcel of yellow papers with an effort. They were not bound, or kept together in any way, save by a thick cord of green silk, with bars at either end; such as you use to transfix bundles of greasy documents — butcher’s bills, and the year’s receipts. ‘That’s the first lot,’ he said ruffling the leaves with his fingers, like a pack of cards; ‘that’s no. 1: 1480 to 1500.’ I gasped, as anyone may judge: but the temperate voice of Martyn reminded me that enthusiasm was out of place, here; indeed enthusiasm began to look like a very cheap article when contrasted with the genuine thing.
‘Ah indeed; that’s very interesting; may I look?’ was all I said, though my undisciplined hand shook a little when the bundle was carelessly dropped into it. Mr Martyn indeed offered to fetch a duster before desecrating my white skin; but I assured him it was of no consequence, too eagerly perhaps, because I had feared that there might be some more substantial reason why I should not hold these precious papers.
While he bent down before a book case, I hastily looked at the first inscription on the parchment. ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn,’ I spelt out, ‘kept by her at Martyn’s Hall, in the county of Norfolk the year of our Lord 1480.’
‘My grandmother Joan’s diary,’ interrupted Martyn, turning round with his arm full of books. ‘Queer old lady she must have been. I could never keep a diary myself. Never kept one beyond the 10th of February, though I tried often. But here you see,’ he leant over me, turning the pages, and pointing with his finger, ‘here is January, February, March, April — so on — a whole twelve months.’
‘Have you read it, then?’ I asked, expecting, nay, hoping that he would say no.
‘O yes, I’ve read it;’ he remarked casually, as though that were but a simple undertaking, it took me some time to get used to the writing, and the old girl’s spelling is odd. But there are some queer things in it. I learnt a deal about the land from her, one way and another.’ He tapped it meditatively.
‘Do you know her history too?’ I asked.
‘Joan Martyn,’ he began in the voice of a showman, ‘was born 1495.
She was the daughter of Giles Martyn. She was his only daughter. He had three sons though; we always have sons. She wrote this diary when she was twenty-five. She lived here all her life - never married. Indeed she died at the age of thirty. I daresay you might see her tomb down there with the rest of them.’
‘Now this,’ he said touching a thick book bound in parchment, ‘is more interesting to my mind. This is the household book of Jasper for the year 1583. See how the old gentleman kept his accounts; what they eat and drank; how much meat and bread and wine cost; how many servants he kept — his horses, carriages, beds, furniture, everything. There’s method for you. I have a set of ten of them.’ He spoke of them with greater pride than I had heard him speak of any of his possessions yet.
‘This one too makes good reading of a winter’s night,’ he went on, ‘This is the Stud book of Willoughby; you remember Willoughby.’
‘The one who bought the horse of the Duke, and died of small pox,’ I repeated glibly.
‘That’s so,’ he nodded. ‘Now this is really fine stuff this one.’ He went on, like a connoisseur, talking of some favourite brand of port. ‘I wouldn’t sell this for £20. Here are names, the pedigrees, the lives, values, descendants; all written out like a bible.’ He rolled some of the strange old names of these dead horses upon his tongue, as though he relished the sound like wine. ‘Ask my wife if I can’t tell ’em all without the book,’ he laughed, shutting it carefully and placing it on the shelf.
‘These are the Estate books; they go down to this year; there’s the last of ‘em. Here’s our family history.’ He unrolled a long strip of parchment, upon which an elaborate genealogical
tree had been inscribed, with many faded flourishes and extravagances of some mediaeval pen. The boughs spread so widely by degrees, that they were lopped unmercifully by the limits of the sheet — a husband depending, for instance, with a family of ten children and no wife. Fresh ink at the base of all recorded the names of Jasper Martyn, my host, and his wife Elizabeth Clay: they had three sons. His finger travelled sagaciously down the tree, as though it were so well used to this occupation that it could almost be trusted to perform it by itself. Martyn’s voice murmured on as though it repeated a list of Saints or Virtues in some monotonous prayer.
‘Yes,’ he concluded, rolling up the sheet and laying it by, ‘I think I like those two best. I could say them through with my eyes shut. Horses or Grandfathers!’
‘Do you study here a great deal then?’ I asked, somewhat puzzled by this strange man.
‘I’ve no time for study,’ he returned, rather roughly, as tho’ the farmer cropped up in him at my question. ‘I like to read something easy in the winter nights; and in the morning too, if I wake early. I keep them by my bed sometimes. I say them to send myself to sleep. It’s easy to know the names of one’s own family. They come natural. But I was never any good at book learning, more’s the pity.’
Asking my permission, he lit a pipe and began puffing forth great curls of smoke, as he ranged the volumes in order before him. But I kept No. One, the bundle of parchment sheets, in my hand, nor did he seem to miss it from the rest.
‘You would be sorry to part with any of these, I daresay?’ I hazarded, at last, covering my real eagerness with an attempt at a laugh.
‘Part with them?’ he returned, ‘what should I part with them for?’ The idea was evidently so remote that my question had not, as I feared, irritated his suspicions.
‘No, no,’ he went on, ‘I find them far too useful for that. Why, Madam, these old papers have stood out for my rights in a court of law before now; besides, a man likes to keep his family round him; I should feel - well kind of lonely if you take my meaning, without my Grandfathers and Grandmothers, and Uncles and Aunts.’ He spoke as though he confessed a weakness.
‘O,’ I said, ‘I quite understand -’
‘I daresay you have the same feeling yourself Madam and down here, in a lonely place like this, company means more than you could well believe. I often think I shouldn’t know how to pass the time, if it weren’t for my relations.’
No words of mine, or attempts at a report of his words, can give the curious impression which he produced as he spoke, that all these ‘relations’ Grandfathers of the time of Elizabeth, nay Grandmothers of the time of Edward the Fourth, were just, so to speak, brooding round the corner; there was none of the pride of ‘ancestry’ in his voice but merely the personal affection of a son for his parents. All generations seemed bathed in his mind in the same clear and equable light: it was not precisely the light of the present day, but it certainly was not what we commonly call the light of the past. And it was not romantic, it was very sober, and very broad and the figures stood out in it, solid and capable, with a great resemblance, I suspect, to what they were in the flesh.
It really needed no stretch of the imagination to perceive that Jasper Martyn might come in from his farm and his fields, and sit down here alone to a comfortable gossip with his ‘relations;’ whenever he chose; and that their voices were very nearly as audible to him as those of the labourers in the field below, which came floating in, upon the level afternoon sunlight through the open window.
But my original intention of asking whether he would sell, almost made me blush when I remembered it now: so irrelevant and so impertinent. And also, strange though it may seem, I had lost for the time my proper antiquarian zeal; all my zest for old things, and the little distinguishing marks of age, left me, because they seemed the trivial and quite immaterial accidents of large substantial things. There was really no scope for antiquarian ingenuity in the case of Mr Martyn’s ancestors, anymore than it needed an antiquary to expound the history of the man himself.
They are, he would have told me, all flesh and blood like I am; and the fact that they have been dead for four or five centuries makes no more diffence to them, than the glass you place over a canvas changes the picture beneath it.
But on the other hand, if it seemed impertinent to buy, it seemed natural, if perhaps a little simpleminded, to borrow.
‘Well, Mr Martyn,’ I said at length, with less eagerness and less trepidation than I could have thought possible under the circumstances, I am thinking of staying for a week or so in this neighbourhood — at the Swan at Gartham indeed - I should be much obliged to you if you would lend me these papers to look through during my stay. This is my card. Mr Lathom, (the great landowner of the place) will tell you all about me.’ Instinct told me that Mr Martyn was not the man to trust the benevolent impulses of his heart.
‘O Madam, there’s no need to bother about that,’ he said, carelessly, as though my request were not of sufficient importance to need his scrutiny, if these old papers please you, I’m sure you’re welcome to ‘em.’ He seemed a little surprised, however, so that I added, ‘I take a great interest in family histories, even when they’re not my own.’
‘It’s amusing eno’, I daresay, if you have the time,’ he assented politely; but I think his opinion of my intelligence was lowered.
‘Which would you like,’ he asked, stretching his hand towards the Household Books of Jasper; and the Stud book of Willoughby.
‘Well I think I’ll begin with your grandmother Joan,’ I said; ‘I like beginning at the beginning.’
‘O very well,’ he smiled; ‘though I don’t think you’ll find anything out of the way in her; she was very much the same as the rest of us - as far as I can see, not remarkable -’
But all the same, I walked off with Grandmother Joan beneath my arm; Betty insisted upon wrapping her in brown paper, to disguise the queer nature of the package, for I refused to let them send it over as they wished, by the boy who took the letters on his bicycle.
(1)
The state of the times, which my mother tells me, is less safe and less happy than when she was a girl, makes it necessary for us to keep much within our own lands. After dark indeed, and the sun sets terribly soon in January, we have to be safe behind the hall Gates; my mother goes out as soon as the dark makes her embroidery too dim to see, with the great keys on her arm. is everybody within doors?’ she cries, and swings the bells out upon the road, in case any of our men may still be working in the fields. Then she draws the Gates close, clamps them with the lock, and the whole world is barred away from us. I am very bold and impatient sometimes, when the moon rises, over a land gleaming with frost; and I think I feel the pressure of all this free and beautiful place - all England and the sea, and the lands beyond — rolling like sea waves, against our iron gates, breaking, and withdrawing — and breaking again — all through the long black night. Once I leapt from my bed, and ran to my mother’s room, crying, ‘Let them in. Let them in! We are starving!’
‘Are the soldiers there, child,’ she cried: ‘or is it your father’s voice?’ She ran to the window, and together we gazed out upon the silver fields, and all was peaceful. But I could not explain what it was that I heard; and she bade me sleep, and be thankful that there were stout gates between me and the world.
But on other nights, when the wind is wild and the moon is sunk beneath hurrying clouds, I am glad to draw close to the fire, and to think that all those bad men who prowl in the lanes, and lie hidden in the woods at this hour cannot break through our great Gates, try as they will. Last night was such a night; they come often in Winter when my father is away in London, my brothers are with the army, save my little brother Jeremy, and my mother has to manage the farm, and order the people, and see that all our rights are looked to. We may not burn the tapers after the church bell has struck 8 times, and so we sit round the logs, with the priest, John Sandys, and one or two of the servants who sleep with us in the
Hall. Then my mother, who cannot be idle even by fire light, winds her wool for her knitting, sitting in the great chair which stands by the cheek of the hearth. When her wool gets tangled she strikes a great blow with the iron rod, and sends the flames and the sparks spurting in showers; she stoops her head into the tawny light, and you see what a noble woman she is; in spite of age — she is more than forty — and the hard lines which much thought and watching have cut in her brow. She wears a fine linen cap, close fitting to the shape of her head, and her eyes are deep and stern, and her cheek is coloured like a healthy winter apple. It is a great thing to be the daughter of such a woman, and to hope that one day the same power may be mine. She rules us all.
Sir John Sandys, the priest, is, for all his sacred office, the servant of my mother; and does her will simply and querulously, and is never so happy as when she asks him for advice, and takes her own. But she would scold me well if I ever whispered such a thing: for she is the faithful daughter of the Church, and reverences her Priest. Again there are William and Anne, the servants who sit with us, because they are so old that my mother wishes them to share our fire. But William is so ancient, so curved with planting and digging, so bruised and battered by the sun and the wind that one might as well ask the pollard willow in the fen to share one’s fire, or join one’s talk. Still, his memory goes back a great way, and if he could tell us, as he sometimes tries to begin, of the things he has seen in his day, it would be curious to hear. Old Anne was my mother’s nurse; she was mine; and still she mends our clothes, and knows more about household things than any, save my mother. She will tell you, too, the history of each chair and table or piece of tapestry in the house; but most of all she likes to discuss with mother and Sir John the men whom it would be most suitable for me to marry.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 260
