Dartmoor Poetry

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Our favorite Carrington a poet of some standing and recognised in his day, his poem "Dartmoor" follows the story of his life and how it was recorded. Followed by Jonas Coaker of Postbridge Dartmoor. 


N.T. CARRINGTON (1777-1830)

'My father and mother were natives of Plymouth, and to that town I owe my birth, which took place in 1777.  Soon after I was born, my parents removed to Plymouth Dock [now Devonport].  In addition to being employed in the dockyard, my father was in business as a grocer, and at one period of his life, he was possessed of considerable property.  When I had attained my fifteenth year, my father proposed to apprentice me to Mr. Foot, then first assistant in the Dockyard.  A handsome sum of money was to have been paid down as the price of my admission as Mr. Foot's apprentice.  Such thins were allowed then' I believe that they now manage differently.  In consequence, however, of some difference, I was finally bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas FOX, a measurer.  I was totally unfit, however for the profession.  Mild and meek by nature, fond of literary pursuits, and inordinately attached to reading, it is strange that a mechanical profession should have been chosen for me.  It was principally, however, my own fault.  My father was attached to the dockyard, and wished to see me in it; and as the popular prejudice in those days among the boys of the town was in favour of the yard, I was carried away by the prevailing mania, and was accordingly bound apprentice.  This, however, had scarcely been done when I repented, and too late found that I had embraced a calling foreign to my inclinations.  Dissatisfaction followed, and the noise and bustle of a dockyard were but ill suited to a mind predisposed to reflection and the quietest and most gentle pursuits.'  Such is an extract from a short autobiography of Carrington, the Dartmoor poet, as found , with other MSS., after his death, by his son, who, in 1834, published the 'Collected Poems of the Late N.T. Carrington' in two volumes, with a brief biographical preface.  Finding his situation in the dockyard distasteful, and his earnest and continual entreaties that his parents would remove him to more congenial occupation being futile, he left the yard - ran away, in fact - and, in a moment of desperation entered himself on board a man-of-war.  In this manner he was present at the victory off Cape St. Vincent.  Some juvenile verses, which he indited in honour of the event, introduced him to the Captain, who, immediately on the return of the ship to England, restored him to his parents.  After this naval frolic, he was allowed to adopt a profession better suited to his character and attainments; although, if we are to judge by his poetical complaints, it was not much more in accordance with the bent of his inclinations.  He would have greatly preferred rambling under hedgerows, or along the seashore, to teaching little boys.  However, having once taken up the cross of a schoolmaster, the remainder of his life was faithfully devoted to his duties; and poetry became only the plaything of his holidays or the recreation of an evening after the heat and burden of the day.
Residing at Plymouth, he dedicated his Muse for awhile entirely to the beauties of his native county.  He then removed to Maidstone, where, in 1805, he married.  For about five years he pursued his calling as a public teacher in that town, and then returned to Plymouth Dock, where, in 1809, he established an academy.  Here he continued up to within a few months of his death, in 1830, in the midst of heavy and unceasing toil in the scholastic labours, occupying such time as he could, before or after his daily tasks, in literary compositions.  In 1820 he published his 'Banks of Tamar' which was received with considerable favour, in fact elicited high encomiums both in the London and provincial journals.  In or about the year 1824, the Royal Society of Literature offered a premium for the best poem on 'Dartmoor.'  Carrington, knowing the district so well, was determined to become a competitor, but he missed his opportunity, failed to send in his poem in time, and the prize was awarded to Mrs. Hemans.  The poem, however, came under the notice of Mr. W. Burt, secretary of the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce, who advised its publication, and contributed some valuable historical and descriptive notes.    It was published in 1826, a second edition following within a few months.  His Majesty George IV, ordered his opinion of the poem to be transmitted to the author in the shape of fifty guineas.  After the publication of 'Dartmoor', Carrington continued, as before, to compose occasional pieces for magazines and annuals.  These were printed in a separate volume, in 1830, under the title of 'My Native Village', the name of the leading poem in the book.  In 1827 signs of pulmonary consumption made their appearance he continued, however, to discharge his duties until the end of March, 1830.  He then gave up his school and removed with his family to Bath, where he died on September 2, 1830, at the comparatively early age of fifty-three, leaving a widow and six children.  A few words respecting Mr. Carrington's personal character and his writings must suffice.

In manner he was reserved and grave, but mild affability, and an earnest desire to please all who crossed his path, constantly proved that it was the semblance only of sternness which sat upon his intelligent features.  He was, in spirit and in practice, an humble and an earnest Christian.  His local attachment, as manifested in his poems, was extremely strong.  In everything relating to his native county, and particularly tot he district round Plymouth and Devonport, he took a warm and constant interest.  To praise Devonshire and its scenery was the sure road to his heart.  His habits were simple and retiring; his love of Nature was intense; his impressions of all he saw were vivid and lasting.  The character of by far the greater portion of his descriptive poetry is as purely descriptive as it is perhaps possible for such poetry to be.  His episodes are, nevertheless, strikingly beautiful, and, together with his isolated poems on moral life, sufficiently prove that he possessed in a high degree the power of painting effective pictures of human thought and action as well as natural scenes.  There was a tinge of melancholy thrown over his writings, due to the untoward circumstances amid which they were written.  It may be added that Mr. CARRINGTON had projected another descriptive poem, to be entitled 'Devon', and also a volume in twelve short books, to be entitled 'The Months,' in which he intended to describe in blank verse the appearances of external Nature throughout the year.  These works were, however, prevented by his untimely death.

DARTMOOR
 

Dartmoor! thou wert to me, in childhood's hour,
A wild and wondrous region.  Day by day
Arose upon my youthful eye they belt
Of hills mysterious, shadowy, clasping all
The green and cheerful landscape sweetly spread
Around my home; and with a stern delight
I gazed upon thee.  How often on the speech
Of the half-savage peasant have I hung,
To hear of rock-crowned heights on which the cloud
For ever rests; and wilds stupendous swept
By mightiest storms; of glen, and gorge, and cliff,
Terrific, beetling o'er the stone-strewed vale;
And giant masses, by the midnight flash
Struck from the mountain's hissing brow, and hurled
Into the foaming torrent; and of forms
That rose amid the desert, rudely shaped
By Superstition's hands when time was young;
And of the dead, the warrior dead, who sleep
Beneath the hollowed cairn!  My native fields,
Though peerless, ceased to please.  The flowery vale,
The breezy hill, the river and the wood,
Island, reef, headland, and the circling sea,
Associated by the sportful hand
Of Nature, in a thousand views diverse,
Or grand, or lovely, - to my roving eye
Displayed in vain their infinite of charms;
I thought on thy wild world, - to me a world, -
Mysterious Dartmoor, dimly seen, and prized
For being distant and untrod; and still
Where'er I wander'd, - still my wayward eye
Rested on thee! 

In sunlight and in shade,
Repose and storm, wide waste! I since have trod
Thy hill and dale magnificent.  Again
I seek thy solitudes profound, in this
Thy hour of deep tranquillity, when rests
The sunbeam on thee, and thy desert seems
To sleep in the unwonted brightness, calm,
But stern; for though the spirit of the Spring
Breathes on thee, to the charmer's whisper kind
Thou listenest not, nor ever puttest on
A robe of beauty, as the fields that bud
And blossom hear thee.  Yet I love to tread
They central wastes when not a sound intrudes
Upon the ear, but rush of wing or leap
Of the hoarse waterfall.  And oh, 'tis sweet
To list the music of thy torrent-streams;
For thou too hast thy minstrelsies fro him
Who from their liberal mountain-urn delights
To trace thy waters, as from source to sea
They rush tumultuous.  Yet for other fields
Thy bounty flows eternal.  From thy sides
Devonia's rivers flow; a thousand brooks
Roll o'er they rugged slopes; -'tis but to cheer
Yon Austral meads unrivalled, fair as aught
That bards have sung, or Fancy has conceived
'Mid all her rich imaginings: whilst thou,
The source of half their beauty, wearest still
Through centuries, upon they blasted brow,
The curse of barrenness.

WOMAN
That man is stern of heart and purpose, born
For deserts, and by Nature aptly form'd
For deeds unnatural, whom not the tones
Of woman's voice e'er charm'd; and who can look
Upon the roses of her cheeks, and turn
With brute indifference away; or meet
The lightning of her eye-glance, and retire
Unscath'd by its keen fires! 

Avoid his path
As thou wouldst shun a serpent's. 
He that feels No love for woman has no pulse for thee,
For friendship, or affection!  He is foe
To all the finer feelings of the soul,
And to sweet Nature's holiest, tenderest ties
A heartless renegade.

Jonas Coaker (1801-1890)

Jonas Coaker, the Dartmoor poet, was born at Hartland, Post Bridge, on February 23, 1801.  His family came from Holne.   Jonas began life as a servant-boy to Parson RENDLE, of Widecombe, and remained in his service until he was fifteen, when he went to reside with a farmer named MAN, who lived at Blacklade, in the same parish.  Here he lived for about ten years, and then returned to Post Bridge, picking up a living as a labourer.  His favourite occupation was building newtake walls, and he reckoned he had a talent for this, in addition to the faculty he possessed of verse-making.  Later on, he became landlord of the New House, or Warren House Inn - a dreary spot, though much livelier then than now, as Vitifer and other mines were then in full swing.  Jonas used to get rough customers at times, for on one occasion a crowd of miners helped themselves to his liquor, and the landlord had to take to the moor to 'hidey-peep', as the old man termed it, until matters cooled down a little.  The old man had many stories to tell of moorland experiences and dangers.  He was man of fine physique, and in his youth was a long-distance runner; he was proud of an exploit of his at the age of thirty, when he ran from Post Bridge to Exeter, a distance of twenty miles in little over four hours.  No mean feat when the hilly character of the country is taken into consideration.
In October, 1888, a friend called to see him, and found him almost blind, but with intellect still active.  He, however, complained of his failing memory, accounting for it by saying that as he had always possessed a genius for poetry, he supposed he had over-whelmed his brain with over-much studying.   Latterly Jonas was the rate-collector for the parish of Lydford, and when he became too infirm for this he resided at Ring Hill, where kind and considerate attention soothed the few remaining years of the Dartmoor poet.  He died February 12, 1890, and his remains were carried, in the olden style, to Widecombe and buried on the Sunday following.

Coaker's verses which have been printed in fragments, disclose a poetic spirit, and had he possessed the advantages of education, they would doubtless have attracted some attention.  Describing himself, in his poem on Dartmoor, he says:
 

I drew my breath first on this moor;
  There my forefathers dwelled;
Its hills and dales I've traversed o'er.
  Its desert parts beheld.'
He proceeds then to describe its hoary hills, round which so many storms have raged in vain - 'its soft rivers,' and  'its granite piles.'  Something, too, of its climate he tells us -
It's oft enveloped in a fog
  Because it's up so high.'
Another verse displays the amount of historical knowledge which has penetrated to this far-away poet's-corner,' and describes a feature of the moor, which, though we may criticise the use of the word 'ornament,' as applied to it, has lately had its interest enhanced by becoming the abode, for a space, of a very celebrated and truly great man.
'Another ornament we find
  Stands on the dreary moor,
Which was first build and designed
  For prisoners of war.
'But now its turned to other use,
And convicts are put there,
Whose labours make the land produce
Much better than before.

'Hundreds of convicts now are placed
  To cultivate the land,
Which ever was a desert waste,
  Untouched by human hand.'

Dr. Johnson was pleased to define a tax-collector as a 'wretch hired to collect a hateful impost.'  Had he known our genial poet, he had thought better of his class, and would, perhaps, like many another, have gladly joined company with him and his red bag, as they pursued their rounds together.  The great Doctor might have heard, in the quaint language of Devon, many a strange tale of moor and fen, and might, possibly, have modified many of his opinions of things in general.

In a modest apology prefixed to a poetical 'Sketch of the several Denominations in the Christian World; with a short account of Atheism, Deism, Judaism, and Mahometanism,' (Tavistock, 1871), Jonas Coaker informs us that 'he is of a penetrating and inquiring mind' and that he has read 'the most intelligent books and histories,' so that his conversation must naturally prove not only entertaining but instructive.  In the summer of 1873, Jonas Coaker had much stirring of spirit anent the Dartmoor manoeuvres.  Happily the rain which damped valour did not wash away genius, for our poet gave a description of the manoeuvres that offers a lively contrast to the more hackneyed and technical efforts of mere newspaper correspondents/  In the place of paltry accounts of what was done and monotonous comments on the weather, he has given a fuller and more original description of the bedizenments of England's defenders that the reader will find elsewhere.  The poem is too long for publication here.