Perlycross

Perlycross was Blackmore's penultimate novel, published when he was 69 years old. It recalls his childhood years when his father held the post of curate at Culmstock in Devon in 1835.Blackmore portrays his father in the story as the widowed Rev. Penniloe. The villages in the novel, Perlycombe, Perlycross and Perliton, represent the real villages of Hemyock, Culmstock and Uffculme respectively. Perlycross: a tale of the western hills is a three-volume novel by R. D. Blackmore published in 1894. The story is set in eastern Devon around 1830. Plot Sir Thomas Waldron, the squire of Perlycross, is suffering from a terminal disease. The news is kept from him and his family so long as possible, and his death comes as a great shock. Sir Thomas was aware that Dr. Jemmy Fox has fallen in love with his daughter Inez, and expresses to his friend Rev. Philip Penniloe his approval of the match should the girl herself care for the doctor. On the very night of the squire's funeral it is found that the grave has been rifled and the body stolen.The only man with a clue to the mystery is a blacksmith who has been called up late at night by a mysterious party with a cart. He declares, on first telling of this, that he saw Dr. Fox with the cart, and this makes people suspect that Dr. Fox performed the sacrilege for medical purposes. Fox finds himself pointed at and shunned by nearly everybody in the parish of Perlycross. Lady Waldron, who never liked Fox, eagerly adopts the story. He has however, an alibi, as at the time of the occurrence he had been summoned to a distant place where his father was ill. Penniloe and others remain staunch to him, and one or two of the villagers take his side. Fox tries to see Lady Waldron, but she refuses him admittance; he, however, meets Inez, and not only finds that she does not believe the calumny, but that she reciprocates his affections. Time passes, and there is no clue found to the mystery; everybody is worried over it, especially, of course, Lady Waldron and her daughter, Dr. Fox, and Mr. Penniloe. The mystery is only resolved on the return of Sir Thomas's son from abroad, as he proves to be the means of finding the solution........ Richard Doddridge Blackmore (7 June 1825 - 20 January 1900), known as R. D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century. He won acclaim for vivid descriptions and personification of the countryside, sharing with Thomas Hardy a Western England background and a strong sense of regional setting in his works. Blackmore, often referred to as the "Last Victorian," was a pioneer of the movement in fiction that continued with Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He has been described as "proud, shy, reticent, strong-willed, sweet-tempered, and self-centred." Apart from his novel Lorna Doone, which has enjoyed continuing popularity, his work has gone out of print. Biography: Richard Doddridge Blackmore was born on 7 June 1825 at Longworth in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), one year after his elder brother Henry (1824-1875), where his father, John Blackmore, was Curate-in-charge of the parish. His mother died a few months after his birth - the victim of an outbreak of typhus which had occurred in the village. After this loss John Blackmore moved to Bushey, Herts, then to his native Devon, first to Kings Nympton, then Culmstock, Tor Mohun and later to Ashford, in the same county. Richard, however, was taken by his aunt, Mary Frances Knight, and after her marriage to the Rev. Richard Gordon, moved with her to Elsfield rectory, near Oxford. His father married again in 1831, whereupon Richard returned to live with him. Having spent much of his childhood in the lush and pastoral "Doone Country" of Exmoor, and along the Badgworthy Water (where there is now a memorial stone in Blackmore's honour), Blackmore came to love the very countryside he immortalised in Lorna Doone. ...........