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A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly keep my hands off you." An anonymous correspondent kindly furnishes me with this description of the Valley of Flowers as it was in more recent years: "I visited Combe Florey, with camera and vasculum, in 1893.
"Life is a difficult thing in the country, I assure you, and it requires a good deal of forethought to steer the ship, when you live twelve miles from a lemon." The church of Combe Florey was described by Francis Jeffrey as "a horrid old barn."
At this writing establishment, unique of its kind, he could turn his mind with equal facility, in company or alone, to any subject, whether of business, study, politics, instruction, or amusement, and move the minds of his hearers to laughter or tears at his pleasure." The daily life at Combe Florey was eminently patriarchal.
His gaiety does not get on one's nerves as does that of some perhaps most professional jokers: neither, as is too frequently the case with them, does it bore. But the following specimens are fairly representative. They were written at an interval of about ten years: the first from Foston, the second from Combe Florey.
On the 14th of July 1829 he wrote from the "Sacred Valley of Flowers," as he loved to call it: "I am extremely pleased with Combe Florey, and pronounce it to be a very pretty place in a very beautiful country. The house I shall make decently convenient." "I need not say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods.
We have had a little plot here in a hay-loft. God forbid anybody should be murdered! but, if I were to turn assassin, it should not be of five or six Ministers, who are placed where they are by the folly of the country gentlemen, but of the hundred thousand squires, to whose stupidity and folly such an Administration owes its existence. Ever your friend, COMBE FLOREY, October, 1829.
Then she was seized by the rest, by the Comtesse de Mirandole, by Madame de Florey, and several others who had stopped at Marseilles on their way to Monte Carlo to meet the Carcassonne and greet the girl who had alone survived the wreck of the Gaston de Paris, some of these people knew her only slightly, but once a person becomes famous or notorious it is astonishing how slight acquaintanceship blossoms into full friendship.
This is the dovecot, on the other side of the road, now converted into a village reading-room. Withiel Florey, a village 7 miles N.E. from Dulverton. The church is a small Perp. building with a low W. tower, to which a partial casing of slate scarcely adds additional beauty. Withycombe, a village 2-1/2 m. S.E. of Dunster. Withypool, a village on the Barle, 8 m. N.W. from Dulverton.
Old villagers still talk of his medical dispensary, and of the care with which he drove round to collect and carry into Taunton their monthly deposits for the Savings Bank." Meanwhile, great events were transacting themselves in the political world, and they had an important bearing on the tranquil life of Combe Florey.
Sixteen years later, when he lay dying and half-conscious, the cry "Douglas, Douglas!" was constantly on his lips. The prebendal stall at Bristol carried with it the incumbency of Halberton, near Tiverton; and Sydney Smith exchanged the living of Foston for that of Combe Florey in Somerset, which could be held conjointly with Halberton.
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