The Days of a Man C1913 



inDari- Ashbuiton Oil the road to Princetown. Dartmoor, 

 moor overshadowed by cloud and drenched with rain, 

 lacked much of its endearing charm on the day of 

 our pilgrimage, yet the ancient village we sought, 

 the home of some of my reputed forebears, lies in a 

 pretty valley along a swift trout brook, surrounded 

 by rather barren hills crimson with Cornish heather — - 

 Erica vagans — taller and more showy than the 

 Scotch Erica vulgaris. Set on the stream was an 

 antique gristmill run by an overshot wheel, the most 

 venerable I ever saw in Europe, and about a little 

 common stood four very old stone houses occupied 

 by tenants who seemed suspicious of our errand, 

 though their pigs were friendly enough. 



After inspecting the original seat of the Jordans 

 our polite London chauffeur seemed perhaps a shade 

 less deferential, but this we may have imagined. In 

 CoU any event, the medieval manor-house had long since 

 hearth- vanished, and with it all the family, the various 

 members of which made their way to Exeter and 

 Teignmouth.^ Indeed, not a single one of the name 

 now lies buried in the parish graveyard at Widecombe. 

 Robert Prideaux of Ashburton, a cultured bar- 

 rister of Elizabeth's time and a supposed ancestor of 

 my mother, described the original dwelling as a 

 forbidding but adequate refuge from attack i^ 



' While I was in London in 1914, one William Jordan from Exeter, butler to a 

 royal princess in Kensington Palace, wrote asking me for an interview. He 

 hoped to marry, but "as married butlers are not in demand in England," he 

 wished my advice about going to America. For some reason, however, we failed 

 to meet, a matter I much regretted, as I have always been curious to see what a 

 high-class butler is really like beneath his mask of superhuman poise. And he 

 soon afterward entered the service of Lord Kitchener, whose tragic fate he 

 probably shared. 



2 From an old autobiographical manuscript entitled "Ashburton in ye good 

 old Times" by Robert Prideaux, 1570, printed in modern spelling by the Western 

 Guardian of Totnes, 1891. Its author being in the family, so to speak, I venture 



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stones 



