Creek on a wooden viaduct. Then came a notice, warning all and sundry
of what dreadful things should be done to all them that trespassed upon
the line. We therefore crossed over here, and on the other side found
ourselves on the Warren, a broad expanse of sand, partly covered at
high water. Above high-water mark the sand is held together by rank
grasses and tufts of furze; and beneath are the thickly populated
burrows of innumerable rabbits. In shallow pools herons were patiently
waiting; while, as we walked along, we disturbed plovers, which rose up
and flew away with whirring wings. Wild ducks and sea-gulls were plenty.
At the western end of the Warren we came upon Langstone Point, the
eastward boundary of the port of Teignmouth. At top of it is a trim
coastguard station, and across the line rise the red cliffs of Mount
Pleasant, fronted with a chalêt-like inn. Then we came upon the
sea-wall that leads into Dawlish.
[Illustration: LANGSTONE POINT.]
When the excursionist from London sees the yellow sands and rippling
sea, the red rocks, the green lawns, and the sliding rivulets and
miniature cascades of Dawlish from the railway platform, he is unhappy,
because the place looks so charming, and he is going to leave it for
places he knows not, but which (he thinks) cannot begin to compare
with this fairyland. But Dawlish is seen at its best from the railway
station and under such hurried circumstances. The place affords little
satisfaction when one comes to the exploration of it. The town is
bright and lively, and the sands crowded in summer, and the sea-wall
well frequented, but Dawlish lives only for and on the visitor; when
its short season is done and the visitors have departed, there is
(consequently) no business of any kind. It is just a little town,
bandbox neat, called into existence by these touring times, and in the
spring, autumn, and winter it is as deserted and woebegone as any dead
city of the plains. For here is no port, nor river, nor any anchorage,
and, for all that is doing in winter months, the inhabitants might
hibernate like the dormouse and not miss anything.
[Illustration: MOUNT PLEASANT.]
Dawlish Station is built on the sands, and the Great Western Railway
runs along under the cliffs, on a sea-wall of solid masonry, from
Langstone Point, through the five tunnels of Lee Mount and Hole Head,
to Teignmouth.
Dawlish did not detain us long. We dusty pilgrims shunned the
spick-and-span society of summer frocks and immaculate blazers,
and fared forth up the steep paths of Lee Mount on to the highroad
for the distance of a mile, when we walked down Smugglers’ Lane to
the sea again, where the Parson and Clerk stand at the extremity of
a precipitous headland--the Parson on the face of the cliff, the
Clerk cooling his heels in the water. For the recognition of the
faces supposed to be seen on the sandstone rock, the Eye of Faith is
imperative: but many folk possess that.
[Illustration: LEE MOUNT, DAWLISH.]
XXXV.
There is a legend accounting for this petrified couple. It seems that
the vicar of a neighbouring parish had business with his bishop at the
Palace of Exeter. He set out late in the afternoon, on horseback, for
the city, accompanied by the parish clerk, and, a storm coming on, they
promptly lost their way in the mist and rain; the incessant flashes of
lightning, brilliant as they were, would not have sufficed for them to
regain their road, even had their horses been less terrified. The vicar
was speedily drenched to the skin. “Damme,” says he, “there’s not a
soul at hand of whom to inquire our way in this misbegotten wilderness.
I’d take the devil himself for a guide if he were here.”
No sooner had the vicar uttered this profane sentiment, than they
heard, above the howling of the storm, the clattering sound of a
horse’s hoofs, and a prolonged flash of lightning showed them an old
gentleman, clad in sombre garments, cantering past on his mare. The
clerk hailed him, and he drew rein.
“I suspect, sir,” said he, addressing himself to the vicar, “you have
lost your way. Can I be of any service to you? If so, pray command me,
for it is ill wandering abroad on such a wild night.”
“Sir,” said the vicar, who was, indeed, no mealy-mouthed man, for all
his holy office, “we have lost our road, and are wet through,” adding,
“this is the most damnable night that ever I have had the ill fortune
to travel in.”
“You may well say that,” rejoined the old gentleman briskly, with a
complacent smile; “but allow me to put you in the right way.”
In scarcely five minutes from their encounter, the party drew rein
before a cosy inn. The vicar, the clerk, and their guide dismounted,
and sending their riding cloaks to the kitchen fire to dry, sat down to
a bowl of punch. They caroused until a late hour, while the storm raged
unceasingly without.
At length the vicar rose, saying, “Storm or no storm, he must be going,
for he had important business that demanded his presence at Exeter
early the following morning.”
“Well,” said the old gentleman, “if you are so resolved, I will
accompany you, for I make no doubt that without my company you would
soon go astray again. Fortunately my way runs with your own.”
The three set out again, and rode some distance, until they heard the
roar of the sea even above the shrieking of the gale, and felt the
flecks of sea-foam upon their cheeks.
“Man,” said the vicar, in a rage, as a more than usually vivid flash
of lightning showed them to be upon the verge of a tall cliff, “do you
know what you are doing--bringing us to these fearful rocks?”
“Yes,” replied the stranger, “this is my road,” and he laid his hand
upon the vicar’s shoulder.
“Take your hand off,” yelled the vicar, “it’s devilish hot,” as indeed
it must have been, for where the old man’s hand had been placed there
rose up a thin curl of smoke from scorched cloth.
“Hot is it?” inquired the old gentleman mildly, “perhaps I am slightly
feverish.”
[Illustration: SEA WALL, TEIGNMOUTH.]
But the vicar had perceived into what terrible company he had fallen,
and shouting to the clerk, he lashed his horse furiously. But, no
matter how hard he or the clerk plied their whips, not an inch would
the horses budge. The winds changed into demoniacal shouts; troops of
fiends, warlocks, and witches gathered round, shrieking, as the pair
sank down into the face of the cliff, and a horrid peal of mocking
laughter was the last thing they heard on earth.
The next morning, when the farmer’s men came down to the sands with
their carts for the seaweed thrown up by the storm over night, they
were astonished at beholding a face in the cliff’s overhead, and,
standing out in the sea, crowned with screaming cormorants, and
buffeted by the heavy waves, a tall pillar of rock which had not been
there before.
I take this moving story as a warning to parish clubs to be careful in
the selection of their vicars.
XXXVI.
From here it is a two miles’ walk along the sea-wall into Teignmouth.
Time and again, in winter storms, hundreds of feet of massive masonry
have been torn down, and often carried away bodily, by the sea, and on
two or three occasions great landslips have occurred from the soaring
red-sandstone cliffs overlooking the railway. Railway engineering here
is no play.
“Teignmouth” (says my Bædeker) “is a large watering-place, prettily
situated at the mouth of the Teign.” Thus far the guide-book. It
is a peculiar feature of this class of literature that information
is hurled at one’s head in stodgy lumps, in which are embedded
measurements and statistics, enclosed in brackets sprinkled over the
pages, like--like currants in a penny bun. Yet there are misguided folk
who read guide-books continuously: these are people with an insatiable
rage for general information, who spout dates at every turn.
[Illustration: RAILWAY AND SEA-WALL, NIGHT.]
[Illustration: From East Cliff, Teignmouth]
But Teignmouth may well be termed a watering-place, if one may take
the fact of its being partly surrounded by water as a valid claim to
that obscure appellation, although I wot of places bearing it which are
like unto the great Sahara for dryness.
The town, which ranks next after Torquay in size, is continually
growing, and climbing up the hillsides. They have built in every
direction; the tunnels that were used to render its railway station
even as the stations of the Metropolitan Railway for gloom have been
opened out; the pier has burst into a dreadful variegated rash of
advertisements, and the bathing-machines are blatant with the name of a
certain Pill.
But with the growth of the town, the local rates, say the ratepayers,
with doleful intonation, keep pace, and the ambition of the local
governing body accompanies the onward march, and tends to o’erleap
itself in matters of public improvements.
There is the market-house for the pointing of an example. I well
remember the cavernous ramshackle old place that stood here years ago,
a dim and dismal hole, where the blinking, owl-like stall-holders sold
beans by the hundred and (so say the malicious) peas by the dozen.
The Local Board pulled it down, which was, by itself, a well-advised
action; but when there presently arose on its site another building
devoted to the same purpose, wiseacres shook their heads and prophesied
evil things.
When Teignmouth sages foretold these things, they displayed a foresight
that would not have disgraced the Delphic Oracle; for, although the new
market was in every way adapted to modern needs, yet in a short while
its complete failure, commercially, was sufficiently demonstrated, and,
to this day, he who would be alone and shun his fellow-men, betakes
himself to the market, and broods there undisturbed. You may wander
in the by-lanes of the countryside, or sit upon the hardly accessible
rocks beyond the Ness, but, even then, you shall not be so secure
from human gaze or so unutterably lonely as in the “market.” Yet the
business of the town has not decayed; neither, I suspect, are the
tradesfolk less prosperous than of yore: the market simply was not
wanted.
[Illustration: THE TEIGN.]
When we were at Teignmouth we became of a mildly inquiring turn of
mind, and wandered along the sands to where the Teign flows out, across
the sandy shifting bar, into the sea. Across the wide estuary is the
fishing-village of Shaldon, now growing out of all knowledge, and the
bold red front of the Ness, crowned with firs, confronting the waves.
[Illustration: TEIGNMOUTH HARBOUR.]
Round here by the sand spit, past the battery _pour rire_, is the
little lighthouse, and behind it the lifeboat-house, with its window
illuminated at night, where the barometer and weather-chart are
anxiously scanned in the summer months by eager visitors. For the
proverbial inconstancy of the weather is very marked here. One may
stand looking up the Teign in fine weather, to where the Dartmoor hills
loom grey in the distance, and presently see the rain-clouds gather and
sweep swiftly down the valley, blotting out the landscape with driving
mist; and yet, in a little while, it shall be all bright again with
sunshine. It is, indeed, not often that a day in Devon is entirely
hopeless, for clouds disperse frequently as quickly as they come. It
is to this moist climate that softly beautiful Devonshire owes its fair
name.
Behind the lifeboat-house is the harbour, where is to be found the
real life of the place, as distinguished from that entirely different
existence lived in summer months on the sands, the pier, or the Den,
that wide lawn fronting the sea.
Teignmouth, in fact, is not merely a summer resort. It has a select
and proper society, which is nothing if not dignified and stately,
Teignmouth society being composed of retired half-pay officers and
their families, with slim purses and inflated pride--a curious and
exceptional combination. The attitude of this circle is one prolonged
sniff.
A small shipping trade, and a fairly commodious harbour to accommodate
it, together with quays and queer waterside inns and storehouses and
a custom-house, are livelier attributes of the town. Also, there are
sail-lofts and seafaring smells, and a shipbuilding yard, where I
remember, years ago, to have seen a vessel built. Boats there are, and
a yacht or two anchored out in the channel, a cluster of ships buoyed
out in deep water, and at ebb tide, two or three big vessels heeled
over in the ooze. There is a very nautical flavour, figurative and
realistic, about the harbour, and an ancient and fish-like smell about
the jetty where the fisher-boats land their catches. Hereabouts, in the
sunshine, sit rows of amphibious loungers, who smoke, chew tobacco, and
curse the livelong day--such of them as have not been converted at the
Gospel Hall yonder.
Up the river, beyond the harbour and the clustering masts, is the
bridge. A remarkable bridge this, built of wood in the first years of
the present century, with thirty-four arches, and (to descend to the
particularity of the guide-book) a total length of 1670 feet.
Shaldon is reached by it, and the Torquay road. The ferry-boats from
the harbour take passengers across for the same toll of a penny either
way. We went across by boat, and instead of taking the highroad for
Torquay, climbed round under the Ness, among the fallen rocks and
seaweed-slippery boulders by the sea.
XXXVII.
I knew an artist once who climbed round by these jagged rocks, and
slipped down between two of them and sprained his ankle, just as
they do in the penny novelettes. But there the resemblance ceased.
The artists in the novelettes are always handsome and of a god-like
grace, and they wear moustaches of a delightfully silken texture, and
velveteen coats, and talk pretty, like nothing or no one ever _did_
talk. This fellow, to the contrary, was as ugly a beggar as one might
meet in a long day’s march, and he was as awkward as a duck out of
water, and instead of a velveteen coat he wore a blazer of the most
inartistic and thrilling combinations of coloured stripes. He said
velveteen coats were all “bally rot,” which shows how vulgar he could
be on occasion. No artist in the novelettes ever said “bally rot,” I’m
sure.
Also, he smoked tobacco of the rankest and most objectionable kind,
and he never wore a moustache at all, and shaved only once a week,
so that no self-respecting girl was ever known to allow herself to
be kissed by him more than once. I can’t understand how all this
could be: it doesn’t resemble the novelettes one little bit. But this
artist was like the artists in the tales in one particular; he painted
superlatively, as thoroughly, indeed, as he swore and drank, and that
is saying a great deal.
Well, as I was saying, he slipped down between two rocks and sprained
his ankle. He didn’t, like those (I fear) apocryphal artists in the
stories, lie there gracefully and quote Shakespeare and Dr. Watts
about it, until two lovely heiresses to untold millions came along in
a boat and rescued him from the rising tide, and fell in love with
him and married the fellow (one of them, I mean; the other--in the
stories--dies of a broken heart).
No! He lay there and swore dreadfully, until some fishermen came along
and refused to take him off in their boat until he had paid them a
sov., money down, when he swore (if possible) more dreadfully than
before. No beautiful girls came and rescued him at all; only one old
maid passed, who, thinking he was drunk, gave him a tract, warned
him against the evils of intemperance, and went away, shocked at the
“language” he used.
This is a very sad and unromantic episode, I know, but things do fall
out thus in real life. If this simple story should prove of any use to
realistic novelists, I’m sure I should be only too proud for them to
use it.
Meanwhile, let us away to Torquay. Here a steep and rugged path,
leading up the face of the cliff, brings us to Labrador. Every visitor
to Teignmouth goes also to Labrador, a name not usually coupled with
sunshine and sparkling sea, _al fresco_ teas, and roses at a penny
a piece. He was a romantic mercantile Jack, who, retiring from the
Newfoundland and North American seas, laid out his precarious little
estate and built this little house on it, and named his domain after
an inhospitable coast. He has voyaged long since into the Unknown, and
his romance has gone with him, for the place is now but a superior
sort of tea-garden, where you drink your tea and eat your cream and
strawberries in the open-air arbours and the society of innumerable
centipedes and spiders.
You cannot fare farther along the coast-line, just here, without
becoming bedevilled amid fallen rocks and rising tides; and to climb
the cliffs at a venture might haply result in being hung up on
some impracticable ledge, whence advance or retreat would be alike
impossible. So we climbed the usual, though precipitous, path past
Labrador on to the cliff-top, and from thence across ruddy fields to
the dusty highway, along which, to our surprise, came two Italians with
a piano-organ. O Herrick!
The minstrels from the town are gone--
On Devon roads you’ll find ’em;
They play “Ta-ra,” “He’s Got ’em On”
(Those cursed tunes), and grind ’em,
Both day and night, in curly chords,
On organs called “piano;”
They hail, these handle-turning hordes,
From Tiber, or the Arno.
To “Get Your Hair Cut” they incite,
In thrilling shakes and catches,
With notes that thunder day and night;
They grind ’em forth in batches.
“’Ow _you’d_ like ’Awkins for your other name,”
They play “_expressione_”--
Away! you errant sons of song,
To home, and--macaroni.
“_Piano_” do they call the things?
I wish they were so, really.
“_Fortissimo_,” their torture rings--
I’d like to smash ’em, dearly.
_Tommaso_ from Bologna hails;
_Paolo_ from Napoli;
Their organ, with its trills and wails,
Proceeds from place unholy.
“Would the signori lika ze musique?” and, suiting the action to the
word, the chief brigand gave the organ-handle a turn. Out leaped the
initial bars of--yes, let it be named--“Ta-ra-ra Boom de Ay.” The
signori would _not_ like any; please to go away. “What,” asked the
Wreck, “is the Italian for ‘take your hook?’” But I didn’t know, and
so, in default, to cut matters short, we took ours.
There was no escaping the ubiquitous tune that was our “only wear” in
matters musical last year. The very trains that rattled one down to
the sounding sea pounded it out to the alert ear as they ran along the
metals; the fly-man, who drove you at a crawling pace to your “digs.,”
whistled it; and your landlady’s daughter (“a dear good girl, sir, an’
clever at ’er music, which she takes after me in, though I ses it as
shouldn’t. Play the gentleman something, there’s a love”) thumped it
out unmercifully. Seaside landladies, by the way, have always, by some
strange dispensation of Providence, three things apparently inseparable
from their race--a daughter, a piano, and a sea-view. The daughter
plays on the piano, and the landlady harps upon the view--both musical,
you see. Most, also, have “seen better days,” and as it usually rains
when I visit those yellow sands, the statement admits of no dispute.
XXXVIII.
The coast here is serrated with tiny bays, from which run valleys,
called in Devonshire “coombes,” or “combes,” variously. Of these,
Watcombe is perhaps best known. Sometimes the combe has become a town,
as at Babbacombe.
Maidencombe is one of the smallest and prettiest of those deep and
narrow valleys, clothed with a rich vegetation, and thickly wooded with
giant elms, retired, and, what Devonshire folk call “loo,” or “lew,”
that is, sheltered. There is, indeed, a secluded parish in Devon to
whose name this commendatory adjective is prefixed--Lew Trenchard,
to wit--noteworthy also as being the home of that strenuous author,
the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould. On the other hand, there is yet another
Lew in Devon--North Lew--in the northern part of the county, a wild,
stormy, bleak, misbegotten place, whose name was probably conferred in
derision by some deluded inhabitant; it is the place where, according
to the local saying, the devil died of the cold!
[Illustration: MAIDENCOMBE.]
Watcombe we passed, with its towering red rocks rising sheer out of
the coombe; and, after toiling up hill and down dale, arrived at
Babbacombe, a fairy settlement of villas adjoining Torquay’s suburb of
Marychurch. Red sandstone rocks give place to lofty limestone cliffs,
clothed in luxuriant foliage, and skirted about their base with beaches
of rounded limestone pebbles of every size, smoothed and polished by
constant friction of the water.
We took tea at the Carey Arms, upon the lawn that gives on the water;
and admired, with the fleeting tourist’s regretful admiration, those
blood-red and milk-white cliffs, and that foreshore of the whitest,
hugest, and hardest marbles, and that sea of the most bewitching and
impossible light-blue--impossible, that is to say, from the point of
view of he or she who would transfer it to canvas--and bewildered
brush-wielders are here the commonest objects of the seashore. Not the
least of the things for which Torquay and Babbacombe are responsible
are the wasting of good paint and the spoiling of many acres of fair
primed canvas.
Beauty, you see, of any sort, is never harmless.
Leaving Babbacombe, we turned aside to visit Anstey’s Cove, that deep
pool, guarded by ghostly pinnacles of rocks, and overhung with silver
birch and brambles. Who was Anstey, and why was this cave named after
him? Who, again (forgive the digression), was Tooks, and why was a
court in Holborn made ridiculous with his name? We can only fold our
hands, and say in either case, “We don’t know.”
Anstey’s Cove is a favourite bathing-place, and has at its entrance
from the road a famous sign. The sign has been here for years, and is
become quite a time-honoured institution. The original “Thomas,” I
fear, is long since gathered to his fathers.
“Picnics supplied with hot water and tea
At a nice little house down by the sea;
Fresh Crabs and Lobsters every day,
Salmon Peel sometimes, Red Mullet and Grey;
The neatest of Pleasure Boats let out on hire;
Fishing Tackle as good as you can desire;
Bathing Machines for Ladies are kept,
With Towels and Gowns all quite correct.
Thomas is the man who provides everything:
And also teaches Young People to Swim.”
Excellent and most moral Thomas! Mindful both of provisions and the
proprieties, your truly British characteristics shall excuse your
errors of rhyme and rhythm; and though your lines don’t scan, I trust
your actions _là bas_ have attained a ready scansion _là haut_.
And now Torquay is near, happily situated on a down grade, for which
praise be. But let us be duly reverent, for Torbay, shining yonder in
the afternoon sun, is the gate by which entered, “for our goods,” as
Fraulein Kilmansegg innocently observed, the Hanoverian dynasty, to
save a nation which could not save itself.
XXXIX.
When first I saw Torquay and Torbay (I am afraid to think how many
years ago), and the long line of curving coast stretching away past
_parvenu_ Paignton to Berry Head, I thought that here was a veritable
fairyland amongst seaside resorts. Many things have happened since
then: the South Devon coast, once so solitary, so quiet, has everywhere
its fringe of trim-built villas; the lonely coombes, once the home
of rabbits and some few fishermen, echoing only with the querulous
cries of sea-gulls, are now filled, or are filling, with bungalows, as
quick-multiplying as were those ousted rabbits, and the brazen clang
of German bands makes miserable the soul of man. These are the defects
that make this fairyland of other years something less gracious and
more prosaic than before; but bungalows and bands, and other kindred
afflictions of a popular populous watering-place, have power only to
discount, not altogether to bankrupt, its charm.