CANNINGTON—THE QUANTOCKS—NETHER STOWEY, AND THE COLERIDGE CIRCLE
WE leave Bridgwater by St. Mary’s church and the street called
curiously, “Penel Orlieu,” whose name derives from a combination of
Pynel Street and Orlewe Street, two thoroughfares that have long been
conjoined. “Pynel,” or “Penelle,” was the name of a bygone Bridgwater
family.
Up Wembdon Hill, we come out of the town by its only residential suburb.
Motor-cars have absolutely ruined this road out of Bridgwater, and on
through Cannington and Nether Stowey, to Minehead and Porlock. It is a
long succession of holes, interspersed with bumpy patches, and on
typical summer days the air is heavy with the dust raised by passing
cars; dust that has only begun to settle when another comes along,
generally at an illegal speed, and raises some more. The hedges and
wayside trees between Bridgwater and Nether Stowey are nowadays, from
this cause, a curious and woeful sight, and the village of Nether Stowey
itself is, for the same reason, made to wear a shameful draggletailed
appearance. The dust off the limestone road is of the whiteness of
flour, but looks, as it lies heavily on the foliage, singularly like
snow. The effect of a landscape heavily enshrouded in white, under an
intensely blue August sky, is unimaginably weird: as though the
unthinkable—a summer snowstorm—had occurred.
Cannington, whose name seems temptingly like that of
Kennington—Köningtun, the King’s town—in South London, especially as it
was once the property of Alfred the Great, is really the “Cantuctone,”
_i.e._ Quantock town, mentioned in Alfred’s will, in which, _inter
alia_, he gives the manor to his son Eadweard.
[Illustration: CANNINGTON.]
The village stands well above the Parret valley, and is described by
Leland as a “praty uplandische” place. A stream that wanders to this
side and that, and in its incertitude loses its way and distributes
itself in shallow pools and between gravelly banks, over a wide area, is
the traveller’s introduction to Cannington. Here a comparatively modern
bridge carries the dusty highway over the stream, leaving to
contemplative folk the original packhorse bridge by which in olden times
the water was crossed when floods rendered impracticable the usual
practice of fording it. The group formed by the tall red sandstone tower
of the church seen from here, amid the trees, with the long rambling
buildings of the “Anchor” inn below, and the packhorse bridge to the
left, is charming. The present writer said as much to the chauffeur of a
motorcar, halted here by the roadside. It seemed a favourable
opportunity for testing the attitude of such an one towards scenery and
these interesting vestiges of eld.
“Bridge, ain’t it?” he asked, jerking a dirty finger in that direction.
“Yes: that is the old packhorse bridge, in use before wheeled traffic
came much this way.”
“’Ow did they carry their ’eavy machinery, then?”
“Our ancestors had none.”
“Then what about the farm-waggons?”
“They went through the stream.”
“Kerridges too?”
“Yes, such as the carriages of those times were.”
“’Eavens,” said he, summing up; “what ’eathenish times to live in!” And
he proceeded with his work, which turned out, on closer inspection, to
be that of plentifully oiling the fore and aft identification-plates of
his car, to the end that the dust which so thickly covered the roads
should adhere to them and obscure alike the index-letters and the
numbers. He was obviously proposing to travel well up to legal limit.
The church is a noble example of the Perpendicular period, with an
ancient Court House adjoining, the property of the Roman Catholic Lord
Clifford of Chudleigh. It was made the home of a French Benedictine
sisterhood in 1807; and is now a Roman Catholic Industrial School for
boys. The tall, timeworn enclosing walls of its grounds form a prominent
feature of the village.
One of the monuments on the walls of the church, in the course of a
flatulent epitaph upon the virtues of various members of the Rogers
family, of early seventeenth-century date, indulges in a lamentable pun.
The subject under consideration is “Amy, daughter of Henry Rogers.”
“Shee,” we are told, “did Amy-able live.” Deplorable!
Cannington stands at the entrance to the Quantock country, that
delightful rural district of wooded hills and secluded combes which
remains very much the same as it was just over a century ago, when
Coleridge and his friends first made it known. The Quantock Hills run
for some twelve miles in a north-westerly direction, from Taunton to the
sea at West Quantoxhead; the high road from Bridgwater to Minehead
crossing the ridge of them at Quantoxhead. The highest point of this
range is Will’s Neck, midway, rising to 1262 feet. The capital of the
Quantock country, although by no means situated on or near the ridge, is
Nether Stowey. Behind that village rises the camp-crowned hill of
Danesborough, which, although not itself remarkably high, is so situated
that it commands an exceptionally fine panoramic view extending over the
flat lands that border the Parret estuary, and over the semicircular
sweep of Bridgwater Bay.
[Illustration: NETHER STOWEY; GAZEBO AT STOWEY COURT.]
Some wild humorist, surely, that was, who pretended to derive the name
of the Quantocks from a supposititious exclamation by Julius Cæsar, who
is supposed to have exclaimed, standing on the crest of Danesborough,
behind Nether Stowey, “_Quantum ad hoc!_” That is, “How much from here!”
in allusion to the view from that point. Serious persons, however, tell
us that the name is the Celtic “Cantoc” or “Gwantog;” _i.e._ “full of
combes.”
Peculiarly beautiful though the Quantock scenery is, it is probable that
the especially delicate beauty of it would never have attracted outside
attention, had it not been for the association during a brief space at
Nether Stowey of Coleridge and his friends. We will spare some time to
visit Nether Stowey, and see what manner of setting was that in which
the “Ancient Mariner” and other of Coleridge’s poetry was wrought.
The entrance to Stowey from the direction of Bridgwater is particularly
imposing. You come downhill, and then sharply round a bend to the right,
where a group of Scotch firs introduces Stowey Court and the adjoining
parish church: the view up the road towards the village made majestic
and old-world by another grouping of firs beyond the curious early
eighteenth-century gazebo that looks out in stately fashion from the
garden wall of the Court. From this, and from similar summerhouse-like
buildings, our great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers glanced from
their walled gardens upon the coaches and the road-traffic of a bygone
age. The roofs and gables, and the uppermost mullioned windows of the
Court are glimpsed over the tall walls.
Although Stowey Court dated originally from the fifteenth century, when
it was built by Touchet, Lord Audley, and although it formed an outpost
of the Royalists during the struggles of Charles the First with his
Parliament, the building is not nowadays of much interest, and the
church is of less, having been rebuilt in 1851, with the exception of
the tower.
The romantic promise of this prelude to Stowey is scarcely supported by
the appearance of the village street. It is a long street of houses for
the most part of suburban appearance, running along the main road, with
a fork at the further end, along the road to Taunton, where stands a
modern Jubilee clock-tower beside the old village lock-up. The
clock-tower seems to most people a poor exchange for the small but
picturesque old market-house that until comparatively recent years stood
in the middle of the street, with a streamlet running by.
To Leland, writing in the reign of Henry the Eighth, Stowey was “a poore
village. It stondith yn a Botom emong Hilles.” The situation is
correctly described, and no doubt the condition of Stowey was all that
Leland says of it, but no one could nowadays describe it truthfully as
“poor,” although it would be altogether correct to write it down as
desperately commonplace. There is nothing poetic about the village at
this time o’ day, and its position on a much-travelled main road has
brought a constant stream of fast-travelling motor-cars and waggons,
together with a frequent service of Great Western Railway
motor-omnibuses, with the result that a loathsome mingled odour of
petrol and fried lubricating oil and a choking dust pervade the long
street all the summer. The local hatred of motor-cars—a deep-seated and
intense detestation of them and those who drive them and travel in
them—is, perhaps, surprising to a mere passer-by, who may just mention
the subject to a villager; but it is only necessary to stay a day and a
night in Stowey, and then enough will be seen and heard and smelt to
convert the most mild-mannered person to an equal hatred.
They are naturally tolerant people at Stowey, and not disposed to be
censorious. If you do not interfere with their comfort and well-being,
you are welcome to exist on the face of the earth, as far as they are
concerned, and joy go with you. They even tolerate the notorious
Agapemoneites of Spaxton, two miles away, the dwellers in the Abode of
Love; and are prepared, without active resentment, to allow the Rev.
Hugh Smyth-Pigott to style himself Jesus Christ and to cohabit with any
lady—or any number of ladies—he pleases, and to style the resultant
offspring Power, or Glory, or Catawampus, or Fried Fish, or anything
that may seem good to him, with no more than a little mild amusement.
“They doan’ intervere wi’ we, and us woan’ intervere wi’ they,” is the
village consensus of expressed opinion, greatly to the wrath of certain
good Bridgwater folk, who come around, raving that the Agapemoneites
ought to be swept off the fair land of the Quantocks, and when none will
take on the office of broom, denounce all as Laodiceans, neither hot nor
cold, and so fit only to be spewed out. But it surely rests rather with
Spaxton and Charlinch to perform the suggested expulsion; and even then,
anything of the kind would be distinctly illegal, for it is part of the
law of this free and enlightened and Christian country that any man may,
if it pleases him to do so (and he can find others of the opposite sex
to join him), set up a harem, and even proclaim himself the Messiah,
without let or hindrance. The law no more regards him as a fit target
for soot, flour, or antique eggs, or even for tar and feathers, than a
respectable person.
The “Abode of Love,” founded in 1845 by the notorious “Brother Prince,”
a scoundrelly clergyman who appears never to have been unfrocked, is a
mansion maintained in the most luxurious style, but completely secluded
from the highway, upon which it fronts, by substantial walls. In the
time of “Brother Prince,” the flagstaff surmounting the strong,
iron-studded gateway, and supported by the effigy of a rampant lion, was
made to fly a flag bearing the Holy Lamb, but this practice appears to
be now discontinued.
Many inquisitive people nowadays visit Spaxton to view the exterior of
the place where these notorious blasphemers live. None find entrance,
for recent happenings have made the inmates extremely shy of strangers.
It is notorious that a raid was made upon the place one night towards
the close of 1908, and that Pigott, the successor of Brother Prince,
narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered by some adventurous spirits,
who came down from London and, chartering a motor-car, drove up from
Bridgwater to the Abode. Climbing the walls, they “bonneted,” with a
policeman’s helmet filled with tarred feathers, the first man they met.
This, however, proved to be only an elderly disciple, and not Pigott
himself; and the intruders found themselves presently in custody, and
were next day brought before the magistrates at Bridgwater, and both
fined and severely reprimanded. The magistrates were bound to observe
the law and to punish an assault; but the attempted tarring and
feathering aroused a great deal of enthusiasm at Bridgwater, where the
only regret expressed was that it had not been successful.
No one can complain that clerical opinion in that town is not freely
ventilated. Here is an extract from a sermon preached by the vicar of
St. Mary’s:
“Near to our town for some years past, alas, has sprung up one of the
most unhappy and miserable heresies that the world can show. Of course
there have been heresies very brilliant and very beautiful. But here is
a heresy foul, horrible, and bad, and a heresy with not one single
redeeming point in it. A few years ago the head of this movement, now
living in the little village under the shelter of the beautiful
Quantocks, made public proclamation in London that he was the very Lord
Jesus Christ, and that he should judge the world. This man escaped at
the risk of his neck—for however lethargic some people might be, these
Londoners were not—to the quiet of the country. Here the old heresy,
with a new name and with new horrible details, came into prominence
again. It had quietly settled down, and men hoped that it would have
died out, but the events of the past six months have revived it all
again. None can pretend to be ignorant of what has happened, and none
could pretend to be ignorant of the awful and blasphemous claims that
have been made in the name of a wretched child born into a wretched
world.”
But although Nether Stowey is tolerant of all these things, it is not
calm when motor-cars are under discussion. It would raise licences to
£50 per annum, reduce speed to ten miles an hour on the open roads and
three miles in villages and towns, and both heavily fine and award long
terms of imprisonment to any who transgressed these suggested limits.
Also, Nether Stowey suggests the reintroduction of turnpike-gates; or,
to speak by the card, “tarnpayke-geäts.” By all this, it will be
perceived that automobiles have become a nuisance, a terror, and a
source of injury to Nether Stowey; as they have to countless other
villages similarly circumstanced.
_THE MOTOR TERROR_
Upon the pleasant country road
The motor-lorry runs;
Its build is huge and clumsy, and
It weighs some seven tons.
And when its cylinder backfires,
It sounds like gatling-guns!
Hark! down the village street there comes
The motor “charry bong”:
And, gracious heavens! how it hums!
’Tis tall, and broad, and long;
And see its mountain-range of seats,
Filled with a motley throng.
Old Giles, who hobbled down our street,
Now he’s in—Paradise.
A Panhard took him in the rear,
And shattered both his thighs,
They gave the chauffeur “three months’ hard”
When tried at next Assize.
The motor-bus, with skid and lurch
And awkward equipoise,
Now fleets on Sundays past the church,
With hideous whirr and noise.
You cannot hear the parson preach;
It drowns the organ’s voice.
And children from the Sunday School
Hang on behind, before
Our little Billy lost his hold:
Now he’s (alas!) no more!
They rolled him pretty flat. His soul’s
Gone to the Distant Shore.
Racing, toot-tooting, slithering,
The private owner goes;
The dust he raises fills the eyes,
His petrol-reek the nose;
His face he hides behind a mask:
He wears the weirdest clothes.
Now thanks to thee, thou callous fiend,
For the lesson thou hast taught:
Thus hast thou shown us how our lives
And comfort are as naught,
So you may, reckless, go your way
And take your murd’ring sport!
[Illustration: THE COLERIDGE COTTAGE, NETHER STOWEY]
The cottage at Nether Stowey occupied by Coleridge, from 1797 to 1800,
stands at the further end of the village, and is, indeed, the last house
on the Minehead road. It duly bears an ornamental tablet proclaiming the
fact of the poet’s residence here in those critical years. Sentiment,
however, is not a little dashed at finding the house to be an extremely
commonplace one; now, owing to a succession of alterations, enlarged and
made to look like an exceedingly unattractive specimen of a typical
suburban “villa” of the first half of the nineteenth century, when
stucco was rampant and red brick had not come into vogue. A scheme
appears at the present time to be under contemplation by which the house
is to be purchased and presented to the nation, as a memorial of the
poet. It is to become something in the way of a “Coleridge Reading
Room,” or Village Institute; but at the moment of writing, it is a
lodging-house. A few years ago it was the “Coleridge Cottage” inn. Such
have been the varied fortunes of this home, for those short four years,
of “the bright-eyed Mariner,” as Wordsworth calls him. When it is
further said that a storey has been added to the house, and that the
thatch of Coleridge’s time has been replaced by pantiles, it will be
considered, perhaps, that the value of it as a literary landmark can be
but small. Coleridge himself had no love for it, as may be seen in his
later references to Nether Stowey, in which he refers to it as a
“miserable cottage,” and “the old hovel.” But the years he passed in
this place were the most productive of his career. It was while walking
along the hills to Watchet, that he composed “The Ancient Mariner” and
the first part of “Christabel.” Close at hand, at Alfoxden, was
Wordsworth, poetising on primroses and the infinitely trivial; and at
Stowey itself was the amiable Thomas Poole, literary and political
dilettante, friend and host of this circle in general. Southey sometimes
came, and friends with visionary schemes for the regeneration of the
social system, then in some danger of being overturned, following upon
the popular upheaval of the French Revolution, severely exercised the
conventional minds of the local squires and farmers with their
unconventional ways and rash speech.
The habits of these friends, accustomed to discuss and severely
criticise the doings of the Government, often to dress in a peculiar
manner, and to take long, apparently aimless walks in lonely places, no
matter what the weather, when honest country folk were cosily within
doors, or asleep and snoring, presently attracted the notice of the
neighbours, to the extent that whispers of those suspicious doings and
this wild talk were conveyed to the local magistrates, and the
Government eventually thought it worth while to send down an emissary to
keep a watch. The spy chanced to be a person with a long nose. He
readily enough tracked their movements along the hills and dales of
Quantock, and overheard much of their talk: probably because the friends
knew perfectly well that they were under suspicion and were being
watched, and were humorously inclined to make the spy’s eavesdropping as
fruitful as they could of incident. Prominent among their jokes was the
discussion, in his hearing, of Spinosa: that philosopher’s name being
pronounced for the occasion “Spynosa.” This the long-nosed one took to
be an allusion to himself. Coleridge, he reported to his employers to be
“a crack-brained talking fellow; but that Wordsworth is either a
smuggler or a traitor, and means mischief. He never speaks to any one,
haunts lonely places, walks by moonlight, and is always ‘booing’ about
by himself.” The curious notion of the amiable Wordsworth being
mischievous is distinctly entertaining.
[Illustration: NETHER STOWEY.]
The friends were generally gay and light-hearted, in spite of
philosophising upon ways and means of setting the world right by moral
suasion; and picnics punctuated the summer days. One of these, at
Alfoxden, has attained a certain fame. There were present on this
occasion: Coleridge, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and Cottle; the
good-natured, providential Cottle, friend in need of literary babes and
sucklings. The provisions consisted of brandy, bread-and-cheese, and
lettuces. Coleridge, in his clumsy way, broke the precious
brandy-bottle, the salt was spilled, a tramp stole the cheese, and so
all that remained was bread and lettuces.
The “Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth,” the poet’s sister and companion at
Alfoxden and elsewhere, have been published, but it cannot be said that
they add greatly to one’s intellectual appreciation of the society
formed by these friends, nor do they impress the reader with the mental
powers of the lady, or with her knowledge of country life. Here and
there are such passages as “saw a glow-worm,” or “heard the
nightingale;” as though such sights and sounds were things remarkable in
the Quantocks. To have been deaf to the nightingale in his season, or
not to have noticed the glow-worm’s glimmer: those would have been
incidents of an evening’s walk much better worth remarking for their
singularity in these still unspoiled hills.
But let us have a few specimen days from Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary, to
taste her quality. March 1798, for example, will serve:
“28th.—Hung out the linen.”
“29th.—Coleridge dined with us.”
“30th.—Walked I know not where.”
“31st.—Walked.”
And then “April 1st. Walked by moonlight.” What utter drivel and
self-confessed inanity; exasperating in its baldness, when an account of
what Coleridge said on the occasion of his driving with them would have
given us reading the world would now probably be glad enough to possess!
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