There is a House of Mercy at Bovey, a Gothic Revival building designed by Woodyer about 1865. Its inmates come from every part of England, not especially from Devon; and they have been described to me as “Maidens as hath gotten babies without ever goin’ nigh a church,” in other words, unmarried mothers. But less courteous terms were used when laundry-work was started there. One old lady gave me her whole mind--not merely a bit of it--about “they paltry gentry as took their washin’ away from honest folk to give it to they hussies.” The practical mind thought it a waste of money to have such institutions: the inmates could be married off, at much less cost, by giving them dowers. And really there is just as much marrying for money among the poorer classes as among the rich, though the amount of money may be smaller and sometimes very small indeed.
Under a farmer’s will his farm went to his only son, but nearly all the stock was sold for paying the daughters’ legacies, as he had not reckoned on a fall in prices. The young man only got an unstocked farm and had no money for stocking it; but an aged relative of his made light of that. She said to me, “I tell’n he must marry one that hath some hornéd cattle,” and he chafed at such restriction of his choice. Another old lady, a relative of hers, was asking after a friend of mine who had been badly wounded in the War. I told her that he had quite recovered, and added that he had married his nurse: whereat she threw up her hands, exclaiming, “Oh, that War, it hath been a terrible thing for some of’n.”
There was an old saying here, “I would rather go to the funeral of a daughter than to her wedding of a doctor.” My grandfather quotes it in a letter of 30 November 1865 as if he quite agreed with it, and adds, “Strange, those doctors are always poor, and a miserable affair of it generally.” He did not much approve of marrying for love, or anything else, unless there were sufficient means. I remember that he thought the answer insufficient when somebody had cried out, “There she is, marrying him all in the depths of poverty,” and another person answered, “He hath blood.”
In his letters to my father on the death of relatives or friends, he enumerates all possible grounds of consolation. Thus, 30 June 1854, “Therefore on reflection I say we ought to be very thankful he was taken off as he was without pain or suffering.” He says this of a friend who had been staying with him a week before in full vigour of body and mind, and died just after leaving here from unsuspected weakness of the heart. In most cases he finds so many grounds for consolation that he comes very near saying it is really a good riddance. Thus, 18 September 1853, “On the whole, taking everything into consideration, I say there is nothing to grieve about, but all his friends ought to be thankful he is taken.” Again on 6 October 1853, “I should say a happy release for his mother,” and on 10 January 1855, “A happy release, I say, for himself and all about him,” and on 16 January 1855, “I say we ought all to be thankful he is taken before his sister, for what he would have done, had she been taken first, I cannot tell.”