Excerpt from The Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker: Sometime Vicar of Morwenstow

The materials for this book have been collected from a great many sources, and consist chiefly Of letters and manuscripts of Hawker's, preserved by the various friends to whom they were addressed. He spent a great deal of his time in correspondence, which, indeed, took the place Of social intercourse in a remote and solitary life. It is very remarkable to find with what care and affection these records Of his many friendships, some of them dating as far back as 1832, have been treasured up so many years after his death.

An intimate friend Of his, the late Mr. William Maskell, writing in 1876, says: Mr Hawker was an admirable correspondent: his letters were full of curious illustrations of the subject he was writing about, Often filled with anecdote and graphic in description. Nor was there any want of satire about most people whom he had lately seen or come in contact with. To publish his correspondence after he became Vicar of Morwenstow, could it be collected from the different quarters Where possibly portions still exist, would, even at the present time, set the whole neighbourhood in a blaze. Many and many a Scandal - supposed to have perished long ago by being buried - is there (shall we say P) embalmed. Few, again, to whom he was accustomed to write, can have forgotten the warm tone of his thick, yellow-tinted paper, and the thin red lines (all prepared for his own use), and the bold, firm hand writing, and his peculiar seals - the one, the mystic fish; the other, the pentacle of Solomon.

It Will be seen, therefore, that the task of editing these letters has been somewhat delicate.

In addition to letter-writing, he always kept at hand on his desk sheets of paper stitched together into little books for memoranda. In these he jotted down continually ideas as they occurred to him in the course Of his daily reading. Hundreds of these little stitched brochures are in existence, forming a mine Of Odd notions and recondite information. It is not always possible to determine What is his own and what is quoted, particularly as his method Of quotation was not to transcribe exactly, but to put the pith (as he termed it) of an author's sentence into his own words. Hawker cherished the idea that these memoranda might some day be published as Fragments of a Broken Mind.'

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