apparently the half length figure of a veiled woman. At the back,
where it was embedded in the wall, is an arched cavity, about
eight inches high, closed by an oaken panel, and containing a
small cylindrical wooden vessel, three inches in diameter, and but
slightly more in height, broken and decayed, and containing at the
bottom a layer of some dark substance, pronounced, after careful
examination, to be the remains of blood. It is a bold guess, but
still a guess that has much to support it, that this cup was one
of the very reliquaries dispersed through the country after
Becket's martyrdom; that it once held no less precious a relic
than "Canterbury Water"; in short, that the dark layer at the
bottom is what passed, seven centuries ago, for the blood of the
blessed St. Thomas himself.
The monastery is now a dwelling-house. The windows of a modern
farm look out through the walled-up arches of the priory. Quaint
gargoyles peer through the mantling creepers of the ruined
cloister. Grey stems of ivy have sapped right through the
crumbling masonry. Wallflowers bloom on the worn crowns of the
turrets. It is a quiet spot, "here, at the farthest limit of the
world." Yet it is not strange that a corner so remote should have
been chosen for the site of a monastery dedicated "to God, the
blessed Mary, and the blessed Martyr Thomas." All four of Becket's
murderers were men of the West Country.
De Brito and Fitzurse were landowners of this district; De Traci
and De Morville belonged, at farthest, to the neighbouring county.
This crumbling relic is to us but an item on the shelf of a
museum. The great churchman himself is to most of us nothing but a
name, a mere figure in a page of history. And although poet and
player, past and present masters of their art, have done their
best to bring him again before the world; although his counterfeit
presentment stands to-day before us as full of fire, of valour, of
resolute determination as on that fatal Tuesday more than seven
centuries ago--yet the Becket of the players is but "a fable, a
phantom, a show." When the curtain falls upon that last sad
scene, we are conscious of no sinking of heart at the remembrance
of an awful figure lying white and still upon the bloodstained
pavement. The curtain down, our Becket is alive again. The actor
lives, the martyr is forgotten.
There is another figure in the play whose memory lingers in this
far-off spot. At the foot of the low blue hills yonder lies the
village which was the ancient home of the Cliffords.
Rosamund herself,--the fair girl over whose tomb at Godstow her
royal lover wrote--
"Hic jacet in tumba Rosa mundi non Rosa munda,"
was born almost within sight of Curtenai's tower. When the fair
fugitive pleaded, in excuse for wandering out unguarded, that
"... there stole into the city a breath
Full of the meadows,"
she was, it may be, thinking of the hamlet where, in quiet
cloisters, long since gone to ruin, she passed her girlish days.
There by the
"... river, widening through the meadows green,
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,"
there may have come to her in vision some glimmer of the coming
time, some forerunning shadow of the
"Love that is born of the deep, coming up with the sun from
the sea."
[Illustration: THE MONK'S RETREAT.]
KEWSTOKE: THE MONK'S STEPS.
A grey November day, with sad-coloured clouds hanging low over a
grey and sullen sea. At intervals there rolls across the water the
dull boom of distant fog-guns, echoing like thunder under the
heavy veil of mist. From the shore below comes the ceaseless fret
of waves sweeping swiftly in across the sand. Along the edge of
the tide and over the wide mud-flats are scattered the white
figures of gulls; and at times there comes faintly up the low
musical call of a whimbrel, or the plaintive wail of a curlew. At
times, too, there rises in the air a great flock of sandpipers,
like a thin smoke-cloud drifting down the shore, until, as they
wheel, their snowy breasts and upturned wings gleam for a moment
silver white on the grey sky behind them.
It is a grey world altogether; grey sea, grey shore, grey shingle.
Grey, too, are the ragged sand hills, whose shifting ramparts the
gales of many winters have piled so high over the old sea wall.
Below this hollow--a narrow gorge worn deep into the hill--there
lies a little hamlet, still half-hidden by the trees, thinned and
tattered though they are, and nestling close under the shelter of
the hill;--a score or so of white-walled houses, with roofs of red
tiles weathered to soft shades of brown and russet, with plumes of
blue smoke all trailing seawards, and with a fringe of orchards
round it, where the mellow fruit is still glowing on the boughs.
High over the roofs of the village rises the grey tower of the
church, its turrets just clear above the clustering elms, in whose
shadow lies the crowded graveyard,
"Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap."
A wide stretch of pasture-land divides the village from the sea.
Yet, in old days--before the coming of the friars to the priory
yonder, whose tower shows faintly against the low green hill that
dies in a rocky headland by the sea, perhaps even before the
legionaries stormed the great stronghold whose ruins crown this
breezy hill-top--the little hamlet, now so far above the tide
line, was, if antiquaries read its name aright, a place of boats.
The fields about it are still below high-water mark. A high spring
tide, before a gale from the westward, would even now reach right
up to the village, were it not for the sea wall and the sand
hills.
The sand hills are mere desert now. Yet they are pleasant enough
in the summer time, when their short turf is bright with
rest-harrow and crowfoot, when the great bells of the
sea-convolvulus open wide on the hot sand, when tufts of pale
thrift blossom in the shingle, and clumps of white campion, and
frail flowers of yellow poppy. Pleasant then is the sweet breath
of thyme and clover. Pleasanter still the smell of the sea, blown
by soft summer airs over the wide mud-flats and the trampled sand.
The little hamlet, high and dry this many a day, is a port no
longer. The only harvest of the sea that the villagers can glean
in our time is that which wind and wave bring ashore upon this
sandy beach. In the broken spars, the splintered timbers, the
nameless waifs and strays of wreckage which the storm brings to
their doors, the dwellers in the cottages that seem to crouch for
shelter behind the old sea wall, find all their winter fuel.
There are traditions that many a cargo of spirits was run ashore
here in smuggling days. Tales are still current of the hiding
places where the goods were stored. It is said that even the
church tower has in its time afforded sanctuary to bales of lace
and kegs of liquor that never paid the King his due. This narrow
pass may well have served the "free-traders" as a secret way into
the hills.
But the long flight of rude stone steps that leads down it towards
the village dates from an earlier time. To its use and history no
clue remains. It is likely enough that it was the pathway to the
camp from the long-vanished port below.
There is a legend in the country-side that it led up to the cell
of an anchorite, a solitary who inhabited this ravine, and who,
with his own hands, hewed and fitted the stones of the old
stairway, now worn smooth by the feet of many centuries. Half-way
up the pass, under the shelter of the limestone cliff, is his
traditional dwelling place, a chamber hollowed in the living rock
and roughly faced with masonry.
Who was he? A monk from the old priory yonder,--an outlaw with
blood upon his soul?
"Had you, Father, hid away
In your heart, some load to bury,
That you chose so long to stay,
World-forgot and solitary?"
It is a quiet spot. The crumbling walls look down through the
rocky gateway of the gorge to the village at its foot; over the
grey curve of shingle to the wet sands that, as the cloud veil
lifts and scatters, are beginning now to shine like silver in the
sunlight; to the grey sea, with sails showing ghost-like here and
there; to the far shore, whose rugged outline looms faintly
through the haze.
The brown elms of the village redden in the sunshine. There is a
flush of colour on the belfry walls, on the limestone battlements
above the pass, on the worn steps of the old stairway winding
downward to the sea.
Yes, a quiet spot. There is no sound but the slumbrous music of
the waves, at times the bark of a sheep-dog, a cattle-call from
distant meadows, or the chatter of linnets on the hill.
On such a scene the old monk looked down. Such sounds were in his
ears. Such rest and calm brooded over his rude dwelling--beast and
bird his sole companions, the busy world shut out.
Was he the Father of the village, summoned from his cell to
shrieve the dying, bless the dead? Was he a surly recluse, fond of
solitude and silence?
"Tell, when all the boughs were bare,
Did you dread each dreary waking?
Hewing out your stony stair,
Were you glad at thorn-buds breaking?
Did you mark the flashing white
On the breast of earliest swallows,
Or the wavering, yellow light
On the cowslips in the hollows?
As day grew 'twixt dawn and dark
Did the shy birds learn to love you?
Sang the silver-throated lark
Out of sight in skies above you?
When the burning noontide sun
Made the gorge grow hot and hazy
Did you wish your work were done?
Were you ever tired--or lazy?
When you sat beside your door
In the dusk, you ancient man, you,
Did the broad-leaved sycamore
Wave and rustle low to fan you?
Did you sometimes, in the night,
Rise and quit your quiet shieling,
Climbing up the grassy height
With a still, expectant feeling?
Where the wind went whispering by
Underneath pale stars that glisten,
From the open, upper sky
Did God speak, and did you listen?"
From the rocky brow above the hermit's chamber the eye looks out
over a wider world. A world no longer cold and colourless. The
clouds have lifted from the sea; the sky has cleared; a flood of
sunshine covers the whole landscape. It kindles on the red roofs
of the village, it gilds the sombre leafage of the elms, it
brightens the green meadows, turning all their straight-cut
waterways to lines of silver. A tall beech that lifts its stately
head above its fellows in the wood yonder reddens in the sunset.
And the bright foliage of a row of Spanish chestnuts along the
path that winds upwards from the shore flames like a river of
light among the quiet-coloured elms and larches. A passing sail
gleams white upon an opal sea. Over the wide west is spread a soft
and golden glow; while far hills, range beyond range, are wrought
in amethyst upon the lighted sky.
[Illustration: TINTAGEL.]
BY COACH TO TINTAGEL.
The traveller from Clovelly, making his way by coach towards the
northern coast of Cornwall, pays no slight penalty, in the early
stages of his ride at any rate, for the ease and comfort of his
journey. It is but a dull and featureless road that crosses the
miles of windswept moorland which fill so wide a stretch of the
Devonshire marches. We have to leave unseen some of the grandest
coast scenery in the county. We miss altogether the pleasant Vale
of Hartland and the precipitous rocks of Black Mouth; and, above
all, we see nothing of the world-forgotten nook of Hartland Quay,
nestling close under its mighty wall of cliff.
It is a pleasant mode of travelling. There is a much greater charm
about the box-seat of a coach than there is in the cosiest corner
of a railway carriage. There is the charm of freshness and the
open air, of hills and meadows and deep country lanes. But a man
on a coach is not entirely his own master. The coach-ride gives no
opportunity for anything like a leisurely survey. There is little
time for exploring church or manor-house or abbey ruin. The old
encampment, the cluster of grave-mounds, or the ancient cross of
which perhaps the traveller may have caught a glimpse in passing,
appeals to him in vain.
Morwenstow is among the spots we have to pass unseen. Yet it is
well worth a pilgrimage. No picture, either of pen or pencil, can
give a fair idea of that grey old tower by the sea, among its
gnarled and storm-beaten trees, and set round with old
figure-heads,--the sorrowful memorials of lost ships and of
drowned mariners. And as at Clovelly, Kingsley is the central
figure of all legends, old or new, so Morwenstow is haunted by
memories of Hawker, for forty years the Vicar of the parish. He
left his mark there in many ways. He built the vicarage, and above
the vicarage door he traced these lines:--
"A house, a glebe, a pound a day,
A pleasant place to watch and pray.
Be true to Church, be kind to poor
O minister for evermore."
Morwenstow we have to take on trust. But the coach goes through
Kilkhampton, and here again it is the Church that is the centre of
interest. Outside the old grey walls we are reminded of Hervey,
sometime curate in Bideford, who in this quiet churchyard wrote
his once famous _Meditations_. Within the building lie the ashes
of a line of Grenvilles;--the greatest of them, indeed, rests not
here, but somewhere in the Spanish Main. One monument is in memory
of Sir Beville Grenville, who, after routing on Stamford Hill a
Roundhead army twice as numerous as his own, was killed, a few
weeks later, in the fight on Lansdowne. The field of battle is
only four miles to the southward; and there, on the wall of the
village inn, may still be seen this inscription, from the
monument,--long since destroyed,--which was set up on the scene of
conflict:--
"In this Place
Ye Army of ye Rebells under ye command of
ye Earl of Stamford
Received a signal Overthrow by the Valor
Of Sir Bevill Grenville and ye Cornish Army,
On Tuesday, ye 16th of May, 1643."
As we drove out of Kilkhampton a brilliant sunset was flaming in
the west, and the shadow of the coast was strangely lengthened on
the grassy fringes of the road. By the time we had entered on the
last league of the journey, the air, that all day long had been
sweetened by the breath of wide sheets of gorse and heather, was
blowing cool across the moors. And as we slowly descended the long
hill to Bude, darkness was fairly settling down over the
landscape.
Morning broke almost without a cloud. It was still summer, but
there was a sign of coming change in the great flights of swallows
that had assembled in the village street, clustering in thousands
on roofs and telegraph wires, as if pausing for rest, or waiting
until some coming storm should be overpast.
The sea was in quiet mood as we stood on the grassy brow of the
cliff that skirts the shore; and they were the very gentlest of
waves that rolled lazily in across the shining sand. But on every
side there were tokens, only too plain to read, that this is among
the most perilous of shores. Here a party of men were breaking up
the iron frame-work of a wreck. There the life-boat crew, cleaning
and painting and overhauling, stood ready by their gear. In many
of the gardens by the canal are the battered figure-heads of
ships, half hidden among shrubs and flowers. And in the churchyard
above the village the white effigy of a turbaned warrior that once
looked proudly down from the bows of the _Bencoolen_, now guards
the grave of thirteen of her crew, lost when she came ashore here
on these smooth sands some five-and-thirty years ago. In one of
the houses of the village are preserved some arms--cutlases and
muskets--that have been recovered from the wreck, so corroded and
so encrusted with sand that their original shapes are hardly
recognizable.
The sun went down behind an ominous-looking bank of cloud. That
night the wind roared in the chimneys of the inn, and clouds of
driving sand rattled like shot against the windows. Next morning
found the sea in another temper altogether. Great green rollers
were thundering up the beach, and leaping over the break-water in
sheets of spray. Heavy clouds were rolling up from the southward,
and altogether it was sufficiently clear that the swallows were
well advised to put in for calmer weather.
The day's ride began under no pleasant conditions. Cold squalls of
pitiless rain drove fiercely in our faces as we sat huddled
together on the coach, glad to make use of every wrap and rug we
had, and forcibly reminded of the old fisherman, who surveying the
prostrate forms of his party of holiday makers, lying helpless in
the boat, overcome by dire extremity of sickness, muttered softly
to himself: "And they calls this goin' a-pleasurin!"
But the sun came out again as we went down the long slope into
Boscastle; and, at length, when we drew up before the inn, the sky
was clear. But the wind was blowing harder than ever as we made
our way along the strange little harbour; and by the look-out
station on the cliff it was as much as we could do to hold our
own against the gale. A tremendous sea was breaking on the reefs
outside, and thundering against the rocky wall below. Before us,
far as eye could reach, stretched away the sunlit levels of the
Atlantic, touched with a thousand twinkling points of light, and
shot with changing tones of green and blue and amethyst.
Boscastle Minster lies in an ideal setting in its quiet woodland
valley. But some travellers, at any rate, will look with less
interest on its massive walls, on the decorated timbers of its
noble roof, or on the time-blackened carvings of its beautiful
bench-ends, than on the other church of Boscastle, at Forrabury, a
mile or so to the westward. For this is the Silent Tower of
Bottreaux, whose bells lie at the bottom of the sea, just outside
the harbour.
All the world knows the story. How, when the church was first
built, the village folk petitioned the Lord of Bottreaux for a
peal of bells to hang in the new tower. How the bells were cast,
and were on their way by sea from London. How, as the ship drew
near Boscastle harbour, the pilot, a Tintagel man, heard the
chimes of his own village ringing, and thanked God for fine
weather and a prosperous voyage. How the captain scoffed: "Thank
your own skill," said he, "and our stout craft and able
seamanship." How the words were hardly uttered, when a sudden
storm caught the vessel and dashed her to pieces on the rocks. How
only the pilot reached land alive. And how, on wild nights of
winter, when a storm is coming up from the Atlantic, the fisherman
on the shore still hears the muffled tones of the long-lost
Bottreaux bells, as the unquiet surges swing them in their ocean
rest.
But the glory of the whole coast is Tintagel,--the birth-place of
Arthur, the palace of King Marc of Cornwall. Though the village of
Tintagel is half a mile or more inland, the ruins of the ancient
stronghold stand partly on the brink of a cliff that overhangs the
sea, but mainly on a bold headland almost surrounded by the waves.
Some of the masonry is older even than the days of the Round
Table, for in St. Juliet's Chapel there are, it is said, traces of
Roman workmanship. Tintagel was still inhabited, either as a
fortress or a prison until early Tudor times; but Leland describes
it as having wholly gone to ruin. "It hath bene," he says in his
gossiping _Itinerary_, "a marvelus strong and notable forteres,
and almost _situ loci inexpugnabile_, especially for the donjon
that is on the great high terrible cragge. But the residue of the
buildinges of the castel be sore wether-beten an yn mine."
Standing on the brink of the tremendous cliff, with the waves and
the wave-girt rock before, with the wind-swept downs behind, where
the lonely church seems to crouch upon the short turf like a
storm-driven sea-bird, and with the whole air full of the fretful
murmur of the sea, we look down upon a page of old romance.
His must be a dull soul who, when the stern lines of the headland
are dark against the glowing west, cannot people the old halls
with shadowy figures, with the shapes of Arthur and his Knights,
who, more than all other heroes, have been so
"Magnified by the purple mist
The dusk of centuries and of song."
As we look over the perilous verge we have no eyes for the dark
hues of the rock, for the whiteness of the leaping foam-cloud, or
for the beauty of the blue levels of "the unquiet, bright Atlantic
main." We have no ears for the croak of the raven, or the wail of
the herring-gull, or even for the thunder of the sea. Our souls
are with the past. As we climb the steep pathway to the summit of
the headland, we think of Uther Pendragon and of Merlin. We see
Sir Bedivere stooping beneath his burden. We hear the clink of
"... harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms,"
when
"... all to left and right
The bare, black cliff clanged round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armèd heels."
We see in fancy the prostrate figure of the guilty queen. We see
"Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire."
We hear the shock of that last battle in the west when
"... friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle."
And when at length we stand within the windswept ruin we remember
that it was here King Marc of Cornwall kept his court. It was to
this sea-girt rock that Tristram of Lyonesse, the peerless
hunter, harper, knight, brought home his master's bride, Iseult of
Ireland. Within these very walls stood the two helpless, hapless
lovers, caught all unaware in the fatal mesh of the enchanter. For
among the treasures on board the ship that brought them to
Tintagel was a golden cup, with a love-potion in it, prepared by
the bride's mother, for Iseult and King Marc to drink upon their
marriage day, "and for ever love each other."
But, alas, Iseult and Sir Tristram, in all innocence, drained the
magic cup. The subtle potion fired their veins;
"... their hands
Tremble, and their cheeks are flame
As they feel the fatal bands
Of a love they dare not name."
In fancy we see that other chamber, far off upon the coast of
Brittany, where, after long years the Knight lay dying. We see him
"... weak and pale,
Though the locks are yet brown on his noble head,
Propt on pillows on his bed,
Gazing sea-ward for the light
Of some ship that fights the gale
On this wild December night."
We see Iseult standing in the moonlight, the spray of the
sea-voyage on her cloak and hair. We hear her singing, in sweet
voice and low, the promised
"... tales of true, long-parted lovers,
Joined at evening of their days again."
We catch the last low murmur of the dying Knight:--
"Now to sail the seas of Death I leave thee--
One last kiss upon the living shore."
_Printed at the Office of the Publisher, St. Stephen Street,
Bristol._
End of Project Gutenberg's In the West Country, by Francis A. Knight