First and Last Loves

medievalists almost to a man. And not medievalists of a lovable kind. Theirs is the mental calibre of Sir Gilbert Scott, translated into the present day. They have not the originality of Butterfield, Burges, Teulon or Comper, in their play with Gothic. Palgrave writing of the Albert Gross (Memorial) says: “It fails, not because much of it is inspired from older sources—for in all architecture copying holds a great place—but because it is unimaginative copying, and hence neither fused into harmony with itself, nor appropriate to its situation. Imagination is the vital quality in art; and the want of it will always be found to resolve itself into want of intelligence.” Comper has lent me his copy of Palgrave’s book, and he has pencilled in the margin against this passage, “mostly true.” Palgrave’s strictures and Comper’s comment may be applied to the clergy and to antiquarians (or archæologists as they now call themselves) generally. Let us see, while we are dealing with these literal archæologists, and before we pass on to the wider influence of antiquarian prejudice, what their outlook is. The best illustration I can think of is to put side by side passages of prose, each describing the same place. It gives you an idea, incidentally, of the debasement of topographical literature. First: The Guide, 1901; reprinted 1902, ’03, ’04, ’05, ’06, ’07, ’08, ’09, ’10, ’14, ’18, ’20, ’21, ’22, ’23, ’24, ’25, ’26, ’27, ’28, ’29, etc.:

“Tickleby Tomcat. (Station: West Lincolnshire Light Railway—1½ miles.)—The manor of Tuckoldbury is mentioned in Domesday Book as being worth XVIII pence, and held by one Lanfranc de Tuckoldbury, its glebes, messuages, and pottages for all time. Thence the manor of Tuckoldbury seems to have had that of Tommecutte added to it by bill of Attainder from Simon de Montfort. It passed from the family of the Lanfranc mentioned in Domesday to John Strongitharm, Abbot. We have no record of the goodly abbot’s residence on the twin estates, though doubtless the revenues derived therefrom to the Abbey of Walsinghame, where a certain ‘John String-i-ham’ was abbot in 1301, and who can probably be identified with the John Strongitharm (see Victoria County History, Vol. I, p. 659). At the dissolution of the monasteries the estates passed to one Edward Stronghorn, doubtless a relative of our abbot, in whose family it remained until comparatively recent times (1682). Tomcat Park is modern.

“The Church, Norm., E.E., Dec., with Perp. features; Trans. window in S. Transept, has an interesting double piscina in the N. Porch.”

That’s the stuff for tourists—also for the vicar who has had it copied out in script and hung framed above the alms box, an inducement, if ever there was one, to contribute to the fabric of a building which has so interesting a record in the annals of our land. Notice the grisly facetiousness of “one Lanfranc” and “the goodly abbot” and “a certain John String-i-ham.”

The vicar’s wife, however, is on the C.P.R.E., and by no means so dry-as-dust an antiquarian. She much prefers the account of the village given by Mr. Sussex Tankard in his popular work, Hiking down the Valleys Wild, based perhaps on The Guide and the Ordnance Map:

First to the right after Claxby, then sharp left again down a winding lane, and another turn to the right at the fork, and you are in Tickleby Tomcat. There’s something of a good old Lincolnshire ring about a name like Tickleby Tomcat, and, indeed, the name goes back in various forms till Domesday. Now there is something about picturesque Tickleby that makes it quite possible to imagine that Norman Barons and monks of old took (like Abbot Strongitharm, of whom more anon) pleasure in leaning over picturesque Tickleby Bridge—or perhaps there was only a ford then—watching the beautiful Tickold wind its way to the North Sea. The ancient church has a fine double piscina in the porch on the North side.

You will notice the plentiful scattering of the words “picturesque,” “ancient,” “fine,” “beautiful”—adjectives taken straight from antiquarian literature and consequently now become quite meaningless. “Picturesque” may be used fearlessly to describe anything remote which one has not had time to visit; “Beautiful” is equally safe with a stream that is not actually a sewer, and directions of a most precise kind can be written by anyone able to read a map. “Ancient” is a pretty safe word for a country church which Kelly’s Directory does not describe as having been rebuilt by Sir Gilbert Scott or Street, and “piscinæ,” if they are distinguishable as piscinæ, are always “fine.” So are aumbries, stoups, apses, lancets, squints, niches and other paraphernalia.

So far we have seen Tickleby Tomcat through the eyes of persons, who, for all we know, have never been there. True, the writer of The Guide may have visited the church to rub a brass, but finding no brass, have gone off in a temper as black as his own heel ball, pausing to note the piscina to which an antiquarian vicar desperately drew his attention.

What is Tickleby Tomcat really like? We shall never know. Let me point what it may well be. Fifty grey limestone cottages with thatched roofs in a clay district where oaks and elms are numerous. There are no hills near, and an east wind comes straight off the east coast twenty miles away, full of salt and very cold. The four most prominent features of the village are: (1) a sequence of Georgian bow-windowed shop-fronts in the main street; (2) a water tower in the Scottish Baronial style; (3) Tomcat Park, a decayed house, possibly early Georgian, inhabited by the surviving sister of an extinct and unimportant peer. In the Park are some temples, a grotto and an obelisk ascribed to Sir William Chambers. The house inside has complete Georgian fittings, oil-lamps, portraits, furniture, earth-closets, except in the new wing, which is 1880 Tudor, result of a final bust on