like Brighton or Scarborough, is enough to give even a Mark Tapley
thoughts of committing _hari kari_. The only local optimists then are
the boatmen, and they beat every possible Tapley into fits; with them
it is always a fine day--for a sail. Nothing is to do on a seaside wet
day. Nothing to read at the circulating library: the old maids have
borrowed all the spicy novels, and left nothing on the shelves but
such enthralling devotional works as “Skates and Shin-plasters for
Backsliders” for the appeasement of your literary hunger. The local
news-room on such depressing occasions contains a parish magazine,
the last number of Blowhard’s “Sermons,” Sharpshin’s “Local Gazetteer
and Directory,” last week’s London papers, and half-a-hundredweight
of “Bits” prints. With even all this wealth of literature you are not
happy, but long, like Wellington at Waterloo, for night and--oblivion.
Charmouth was the scene of a thrilling incident in the hunted
wanderings of Charles II., for it was here that he sought to have his
horse’s cast shoe replaced, and was imperilled by the blacksmith’s
discovery that the shoes were of a make unknown in that part of the
country.
We had of late experienced a sufficiency of rough walking, and so
struck inland to avoid Lyme Regis and the seaward cliffs. In another
three miles we had reached the Devon border, where the highway,
running on a lofty ridgway, is carried through a spur of the hills in
tunnel. For rather more than a mile the road forms the boundary line
between the counties of Devon and Dorset, right and left. Then came,
at the end of a long rising vista, bordered by murmuring pines, the
welcome sign of Hunter’s Lodge Inn, where we celebrated our entrance
upon Devon soil by draughts of cider. Here was a humorous wheelman,
garbed fearfully in white flannel breeches and black jacket, who
retailed his experiences of rural inns on Dartmoor, experiences in a
minor key, for he told us in happy epigram that, in Devon at least,
innkeepers divided creation into an unholy Trinity of man, beast, and
cyclist, and that, of the three, the cyclist was the lowest order.
[Illustration: “HUMOROUS WHEELMAN, GARBED FEARFULLY.”]
Two miles and a half further on, and we came to the dull little
market-town of Axminster, beside the clear-running Axe.
XXVIII.
Axminster, for all its quietude and respectable insipidity, has had its
stirring times. In the immediate neighbourhood was fought the battle of
Brunenburgh, between a huge army of invading Danes and the Saxon forces
of Athelstan. To quote the curious phrasing of an old chart of Henry
VIII.’s time, “There entrid at Seton dywse strange nacions, who were
slayne at Axmyster to the number of v Kings, viij erles, a busshoppe,
and ix score thousand in the hole, as a boke old written doth
testyfye.” To this day the level lands of the Axe valley and the lush
meadows that border the river bear names that perpetuate those bloody
onsets of upon a thousand years ago: Warlake, Kingsfield, Battleford
recall the day of that great Saxon victory.
In the time of the great Civil War the country round about was harassed
with the varying fortunes of Cavaliers and Roundheads, who, making
sorties from their respective strongholds of Exeter and Lyme Regis,
laid waste this unfortunate debatable ground. But it was during the
Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, and after the failure of that desperate
emprise, that a peculiarly lurid light is shed upon this town in
common with all these counties of Dorset, Devon, and Somersetshire.
There is a manuscript book of the time, still preserved in Axminster
Independent Chapel, written by the minister, called “Ecclesiastica, or
a Book of Remembrance,” which sets forth the doings of the period, and
the persecutions to which the Dissenters were subjected. “Now” (the
writer says) “the Lord stirred vp James, Duke of Monmouth (reputed son
of the former king C. II.), who had bin in an exile state for some
time, and on the 11th day of the 4th moneth of this year, 1685,[2] he
safely and peaceably landed at the hauen belonging to Lyme Regis with a
small number of men, about eighty, hauing their ship laden with armour
and ammunition, who, immediately vpon his landing, gaue forth his
declarations to restore liberty to the people of God for the worship
of God, to preserue the rights and priueledges of the nation, &c.
Tydings of his landing were spread abroad far and near very speedily,
and divers persons from severall quarters hasted to resort to him.
Now were the hearts of the people of God gladded, and their hopes and
expectations raised, that this man might be a deliuerer for the nation
and the interest of Christ in it, who had bin euen harrous’d out with
trouble and persecution, and euen broken with the weight of oppression
vnder which they had long groaned.” So presently Monmouth’s army
“jncreased to seuerall thousands,” and on the 15th of June they began
their march from Lyme, “with much dread and terrour, to the amazement
and wonder of many what the Lord had wrought. The first day of their
march they came into the town of Axminster,” and there they lay some
five days. Marching out towards Taunton, several skirmishes occurred,
with loss on both sides, and “one Henry Noon, a pious and liuely
Christian, a vsefull member related to this body, was also slain.
And this church began to be diminished.” Then came the catastrophe of
Sedgemoor, and a dreadful orgie of hangings and quarterings in this
West of England. Axminster, however, witnessed only one execution, that
of Mr. Rose, one of Monmouth’s gunners. As the rebellion was not merely
a political movement, but also in some sort religious--a Protestant
rising against Roman Catholicism--it followed that its failure was the
beginning of bitter persecutions against Protestants--Churchmen and
Dissenters alike. It must not be supposed, however, that Protestantism
has a monopoly of martyrs. When that original form of dissent obtained
the upper hand, there generally followed an equally bad time for
members of the older Church, which then had the peculiar honour of
furnishing victims for stake or gibbet. Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” only
shows us one side of religious persecution; the other side, were it
equally well compiled, would be as lurid, as merciless: religious
bigots seem to have been sadly deficient in humour.
Axminster has given an undying name to a particular make of carpet
that is no longer manufactured here, but at Wilton, in Wiltshire. The
Axminster factory was finally closed in 1835, having been in work for
eighty years.
XXIX.
Two miles south of Axminster, on our way to Seaton, we came upon the
farmhouse of Ashe, at one time the mansion of the Drakes. Here was
born, on May 24, 1650, John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough.
Here, too, in the private chapel of the house, now used as a cider
cellar, was married Lord North, one of that tactless ministry who lost
us the New England States. In 1782, the last of the Ashe Drakes died,
and five years later the greater portion of the house was destroyed by
fire.
[Illustration: AXMOUTH from Seaton]
In Musbury church, a mile farther down the road, are monuments to
Drakes of Ashe. Amongst those commemorated is that Sir Bernard Drake
who disputed so hotly with his kinsman the great Sir Francis, most
renowned of all Drakes, the question of armorial bearings. When
Elizabeth granted the latter a new coat-of-arms, Sir Bernard replied
that “though her Majesty could give him a nobler, yet she could not
give him an antienter coat than his,” and with that flattering unction,
self-administered, he was fain to be content.
To Ashe presently succeeds the straggling village of Axmouth, whence
the sea is visible at the farther end of the marshy lands where the
Axe struggles out into the Channel over a bed of shingle. Just above
Haven Cliff the highroad is carried over the river by a bridge of three
arches that gives access to Seaton.
[Illustration: Seaton Bridge.]
Seaton is in process of rising, and to all who have witnessed the
evolution of a seaside town from fishing village to “resort”--that is
sufficient to say _Verb. sap. sat._ It possesses a terminal railway
station on a branch line, and is the scene of Sunday “there and back”
excursions from London in the summer season. On those occasions the
place is crowded for a brief three hours or so, when trippers snatch a
fearful joy. At other times Seaton is sluggish and dull, and really the
bourgeois plastered buildings of the little town are an insult to the
magnificent scenery on either hand.
Visitors there were a few on the beach--quiet folk mostly, and
provincial of aspect, save indeed a loathly Cockney worm who had
by some mischance missed his Margate, who leaned against a seaworn
capstan, the sole representative of his particular stratum of
civilisation--lonely, ineffable.
[Illustration: “LOATHLY WORM.”]
When the rain came down that had been impending all the forenoon,
Seaton became doleful. There was nothing to do but take the next train
to Exeter in search of a waterproof civilisation.
XXX.
Preconceived ideas are, when not realised, apt to disturb one’s peace
of mind, and so it happened that we, who had conjured up a mental
picture of Exeter, had indeed imagined a vain thing: the reality came
upon us with something of a rude shock. Used to the more familiar
type of cathedral city, dreamy old places where the atmosphere of the
Minster is all-pervading, and where the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter,
and their doings hold the foremost rank in men’s minds and talk, we
were not prepared to come upon so busy a place as Exeter, where the
ecclesiastical element is only one among many and is not pre-eminent.
There is, indeed, no holy calm in the “Queen City of the West:” the
tramway bell is familiar in its streets, and from end to end of the
main thoroughfares tall telegraph poles lend an American air to the
view.
But Exeter, although entirely different from one’s dreams, is extremely
interesting and picturesque: its slums are the dirtiest, and their
smells the vilest of any out of London, and the ancient rotten
tenements the most tottering of any I have seen.
Yet there be those who like not mention of the place. These are
evil-doers, for whose benefit the Assizes are holden at the picturesque
fifteenth century Guildhall, so conspicuous an object in the busy
High Street. There is a fine old highly coloured character in English
history, Richard III. to wit (who, if history speaks truly, fully
deserved a place amongst the malefactors of his age), who had,
according to Shakespeare, no occasion to love Exeter. The incident may
be read in Richard III., Act iv., Scene 2:--
“Richmond!--when last I was at Exeter,
The mayor in courtesy show’d me the castle,
And call’d it--Rouge-mont: at which name I started,
Because a bard of Ireland told me once,
I should not live long after I saw Richmond.”
No man who writes upon Exeter, even if he only writes as superficially
as I do here, can be expected to forego this quotation--the expectation
would be too much for endurance: indeed, there are virtues of omission
in this book which might gain me the tolerance of that chivalric myth,
the “gentle reader,” for this one small sin of hackneying the hackneyed
once more. I take it, for instance, as a generous forbearance on my
part, that I did not quote at Winchester that oft-quoted epitaph on
Izaak Walton, although I hold it charming.
Among the first things we did at Exeter was to inquire (for we know our
Shakespeare well) for Rougemont Castle. But, as the first passer-by
whom we button-holed declared, with a glorious west-country confusion
of pronouns, that he “had never heard of he,” so also did every other
person at whom we directed our inquiries protest his or her ignorance
of such a place, saving, indeed, one who directed us to what proved to
be the Rougemont Hotel, “a large red building” indeed, but not the one
we wished.
Others had all the same tale to tell, ancient inhabitants equally with
the “strangers in these parts,” so we wavered between a consciousness
of absurdity and a feeling of indignation against the unlettered strata
into which we had penetrated, until, by good fortune, we encountered a
bookish “commercial,” to whom the place was known under its old-time
name equally well with its modern appellation of Northernhay.
Northernhay is a public garden, set about with statues of local
celebrities, and with one whose original was of imperial fame--Sir
Stafford Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh. It was the site of that
stronghold, Rougemont Castle, whose poor remains are now enclosed
in private grounds. The gardens stand on a considerable height,
and overlook, through the trees, the Queen Street Station of the
South-Western Railway. All day long, and all the night, the snorting
of engines and their shrill whistles, the metallic crash of carriage
buffers, and the thunderous impacts of railway trucks are heard.
Behind the station the eye rests upon the county gaol and the military
barracks. Exeter has all the appliances of civilisation, I promise you.
It is a relief to turn from here and from the thronging streets to the
quietude of the Cathedral precincts, shadowed by tall trees and green
with lawns.
[Illustration: EXETER CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT.]
Externally, the Cathedral is of the grimiest and sootiest aspect--black
but comely. Not even the blackest corners of St. Paul’s Cathedral
in London show a deeper hue than the west front of St. Peter’s
at Exeter. The battered, time-worn army of effigies--kings, saints,
crusaders, bishops--that range along the screen in mutilated array
under the great west window of Bishop Grandison’s, are black too, and
so are the obscene gargoyles that gibber and glare with stony eyes
down upon you from the ridges and string-courses of the transepts,
where they abide ever in an enduring crepuscule. The sonorous note of
the Great Peter bell, sounding from the south transept tower, is in
admirable keeping with the black-browed gravity of the close.
But within the Cathedral it is quite another matter. Few of our great
minsters are so graceful, so airy and well lighted, as the interior of
Exeter Cathedral. The great windows of the aisles shed a flood of light
upon the clustered columns of warm-coloured stone that bear aloft the
elaborately carved vaulting of the nave, and the clerestory windows,
high up in the walls, illuminate the springing of the arches and the
carven corbels of the vaulting shafts. Exeter Cathedral windows are the
triumph of Geometrical Decorated work. North and south, those windows
run the length of the building in pairs, each pair of different design.
One of the quaintest of Exeter’s many churches is that of Saint Mary
Steps, by the site of the old West Gate, with its clock face and three
ancient figures nodding the hours and striking the quarters upon bells.
The central figure represents Henry VIII., but is traditionally known
as Matty the Miller.
“Every hour on Westgate tower
Matty still nods his head.”
XXXI.
We passed down the steep High Street of Exeter, crowded with
ruddy-towered churches, and bordered, as to its farther end, with the
low-lying slums of Exe Island. Across Exe Bridge is the suburb of St.
Thomas, and we explored its one long street to its end, where it joins
the Dunsford Road, from whose rise this prospect of Exeter is taken.
Then we retraced our steps some distance, and set out for Teignmouth,
coming in rather over a mile to Alphington, a pretty village, with tall
and slim church tower looking straight down the road, making, with its
red sandstone, a striking contrast with the vivid green of the
rich foliage around, and the dazzling whiteness of the “cob” cottages,
whose whitewash seems ever fresh. We glanced inside the church, but a
christening was in progress, and we fled, pursued by the ear-piercing
yells of the unhappy infant.
[Illustration: SAINT THOMAS.]
With Alphington were passed Exeter’s latest encroachments upon the
country in this direction, and the road presently became perfectly
rural. To the left was the rich level through which the Exe flows, now
restrained by cunningly constructed canals, weirs, banks, and sluices
from flooding the pastures, in some instances below its level, and
intersected by little dykes for their better irrigation.
[Illustration: EXETER, FROM THE DUNSFORD ROAD.]
The road shortly descended into a pretty valley, where were some
cottages beneath a peculiar isolated hill, crowned with a windy
coppice; below were pools of water that reflected hurrying clouds. At
the extremity of the valley the road was bordered by evergreen shrubs,
firs, and larches, and a dense undergrowth of brambles and wild-flowers
harmonised with the rich colour of a disused quarry, from whose red
ledges dripped drops of water with hollow sound.
[Illustration: ALPHINGTON.]
Then, past the huge building of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum, we
came into Exminster, standing on somewhat high ground. For sketching
purposes it does not group well: there are, though, some points of
interest within the church, among them a recessed portrait effigy of
Grace Tothill.
“GRACE, wife of William Tothill
of the Middle Temple, Died 1623, æt. 18.”
“If grace could lengthe of dayes thee give,
or vertue coulde haue made thee live
If goodnesse could thee heere have kept
or teares of frindes which for thee wept
Then hadst thou liv’d Amongst us heere
to whom thy vertues made thee deer
But thou a Sainte didst Heaven aspire
whiles heere on Earth wee thee admire
Then rest deere corps in mantle claye
Till Christ thee raise the latter daye.
Thy yeres were fewe thy glasse beinge runn
Where death did ende thy lyfe begunn.”
[Illustration: AN EXMINSTER MONUMENT.]
But the most interesting feature of Exminster church is the series of
saints on the ceiling at the east end of the south aisle. The aisle has
the “wagon” roof, so frequently met with in Devon, and it is divided
into square panels by old carved woodwork. The panels are filled with
plaster, on which are executed a series of saints and prophets, in low
relief, conceived and wrought in the most grotesque vein. The ceiling,
woodwork, and all, has been treated to a liberal coat of whitewash.
This figure, representing St. James the Less, takes the palm for
eccentricity of appearance, though the others are not far short of his
somewhat ungainly prominence. He is apparently in a great hurry, intent
on some hot-gospelling expedition, but he has a wicked eye that ill
beseems his errand, and a cudgel that seems out of keeping with the
book.
[Illustration: EXMINSTER SAINT.]
XXXII.
I think him a very charming saint indeed, with a happy lack of anything
like a priggish austerity: one might be happy in the society of such a
saint as this--if only he wore boots. Pity is that the average run of
saints one hears or reads of are very gorgons for grimness: they look
not upon the wine when it is red (nor white, either, for that matter).
They are not like this old fellow, who is my _beau idéal_ of the jovial
anchorite. The first editor of my acquaintance (he was the editor of a
pseudo-religious magazine--it is solemn food for reflection that nearly
all young fellows of literary-artistical tastes start with magazines of
this stamp), my first editor, I was saying, would not, some years syne,
print this, my pet saint, “for,” said he, “he is irreverent, and”--with
a fine disregard of grammar--“the proprietors would not like it.”
I argued that he might tickle the readers’ fancy; but the proprietors
came between the readers and myself, and the article went to press
without St. James the Less.
“I assure you,” said the editor, defending himself from the charge
of “unco’ guidness,” “I would not object to him in the least, but”
(sighing) “you don’t know our proprietors.”
I murmured gently that I had no wish to make their acquaintance.
“Do you know,” resumed the editor, “that I am not allowed to mention
the name of Shakespeare in our pages?”
“Great Bacon!” quoth I, astonished; “why not?”
“Well,” said he, “you may laugh at the idea; but our people consider
him immoral. If we find any particularly devout sentiment that makes an
apt quotation, we may use it, but must, under no circumstances, ascribe
it to Shakespeare.”
(I may remark, _en parenthèse_, that the magazine in question is
defunct: it was too pure for this wicked world.)
For such good folk, prone to see evil in everything, pruriently pure,
even to the wrappaging of piano-legs, even the name of the Andaman
Islands must have a suspicious sound; and the Teutonic “Twilight of the
Gods,” unenglished, would savour of the rankest blasphemy.
XXXIII.
Exminster lies close to the river, and from its church-tower there is
a magnificent view down as far as Exmouth, and then out to sea. The
scenery is very beautiful: the Exe broadens into an estuary, and at
low tide the smell of the seaweed and the mud-flats comes across the
low-lying fields between the river and the highway with a refreshing
breeze, doubly welcome after a hot and dusty walk. There is a walk
beside the estuary atop of the banks that restrict the waters to their
proper channel--a walk that affords delightful views. It leads past
the lock of the Exe Navigable Canal at Turf, whose buildings form a
charming composition, with foreground of tall grasses, and a glimpse
of the twin towers of Exeter Cathedral, distinct, though nearly seven
miles away. We came to Powderham this way, and crossed the railway to
Powderham church, that stands beside the road within the bounds of
Powderham Park. Park and castle have been for centuries the home of the
Courtenays, earls of Devon, whose family history goes back to a very
remote and misty antiquity. Many Courtenays have been laid to rest
in the church, and in a chapel of it is a beautiful altar-tomb, with
recumbent portrait-effigy of the eleventh earl’s countess. From here
was a glorious view of park and castle, with herds of deer trooping
down to the waterside to drink. The light was waning, and the salt
breeze blew chill after the hot and scorching day. The light from the
western sky shone redly upon the windows of the castle, which, save for
this, lay dark and half-defined amid the groves and alleys of forest
foliage.
[Illustration: TURF.]
We turned and gazed upon the broad and placid Exe. Lights were
beginning to twinkle from the opposite shore, where lay Exmouth, the
commonplace, two miles away, across channels, shoals, and sandbanks,
whose treacherous surface the rising tide was swiftly covering. Gulls
were screaming over their evening feast of sprats and pilchards, their
harsh cries breaking the stillness of departing day.
Signal-lamps on the railway shone green and red and white, where
Starcross Station lay ahead, making, with the curve of river mouth,
ships at anchor behind the Bar, and the soaring tower of the old
Atmospheric Railway, a natural composition which no artist could
possibly resist noting. So I sat on a wall and sketched in the
gathering gloom, while the Wreck (who, I fear, has no soul for these
things) went on in advance to negotiate for high tea and quarters for
the night.
XXXIV.
I left off somewhat abruptly last night, you may say, but indeed I
think there is nothing which it would be profitable to set down in
this place of what befell at Starcross. Referring to my diary, I find
a mention of cockles (upon which Starcross prides itself), which some
kindly stranger invited us to partake of as we were having tea, all
three of us, in the hotel coffee-room. But cockles (if you will excuse
the Irishry) are very small beer, so I do not propose to trouble you
with an account of them. I will merely say that we had tea and went to
bed, and rose and breakfasted in the morning, and presently set out for
Teignmouth.
[Illustration: STARCROSS.]
Starcross has aspirations. It is a little village, whose fishers,
in a whimsical manner of shorthand, paint their boats *+ by way of
informing the world at large whence they hail. It fancies itself
a watering-place, but it is just a quiet settlement, with a ferry
to Exmouth, and a fishing jetty by the station, and, riding out at
anchor in the Exe, a curious pleasure-boat, fashioned in the shape of
a huge swan. This little town was, and possibly remains, dependent
upon the Courtenays. The chief of the two hotels, the Courtenay Arms,
exhibits the heraldic devices of that ancient family and its mournful
motto--_Quid feci? ubi lapsus_.