DAWLISH—ASHCOMBE—THE PARSON AND CLERK
Dawlish looks its very best from the railway station; not the least doubt
of it, and looks best of all to passengers bound elsewhere. From the
train you have on one side the blue sea, the red rocks, the yellow-brown
sands; and on the other the lovely lawns and gardens in midst of the
town, with the little stream called “Dawlish Water,” tamed and trimmed,
and made to tumble over half a hundred little cascades, in between. In
short, like any tradesman, Dawlish displays its best goods—nay, more, its
entire stock-in-trade—in the shop window.
The name of Dawlish is rather by way of being a calamity. Antiquaries
declare it derives from the Celtic _dol isc_; that is to say, “the meadow
by the water”—and as we have seen, the stream and the gardens are the
chief feature of the place—but the modern form of the name is fatally
attractive for cheap wits. Even great minds have declined to the remark
that “Dawlish is dawlicious”; and as the excursion trains in summer draw
up to the platform and strangers step out from the carriages, to stretch
their legs for a moment before going on, the idiot jape trips off a
hundred tongues.
At Dawlish, however, the traveller first realises himself fully in the
West. The view, the colour, the speech, all proclaim it.
Ah! the old familiar cries of the West, they warm the heart with the
fires of remembrance. As the traveller comes down the line, so insensibly
he comes into the districts where the soft slurring burr of the West
of England prevails. You first notice it, if you are travelling by a
stopping train, at Swindon, on whose platforms the newspapers—in the
speech of the bookstall imps—become “Londun pay-purr”; and when the train
draws up to the seaside platforms of Dawlish, the shibboleth has become
“Lundee pay.” Long, too, may the fishwives of Teignmouth continue their
rounds, with their endearing “Any nice fresh whiting to-day, my dear?” to
old and young, gentle or simple.
There are wild and beautiful valleys away behind Dawlish; in especial
that vale down whose leafy gullies flows the clear stream of Dawlish
Water, which, rising out of the green bosom of Great Haldon, up Harcombe
way, comes down by Ashcombe and, reaching Dawlish, is made to perform
quite a number of parlour tricks before it is allowed to straggle out
over the sands and pebbles of the beach, and find a well-earned rest in
the sea.
There are folk of primitive ways of thought and rugged speech up the
valley of Dawlish Water, and their characteristics are those of old
Devon, of whose peasantry it has been truly said: “They work hard, live
hard, hold hard, and die hard.”
“My tongue has two sides to et, like a bull’s; a rough an’ a smuthe,”
said a sharp-spoken woman up at Harcombe—or I should say, “up tu
Harcume”—and up tu Ashcombe they talk in a way that no mortal man coming
fresh to Devon can understand. There is a picturesque rustic church high
up on a knoll in the dwindling village of Ashcombe, and there is a quaint
old smithy with an equally quaint old couple of bachelor brothers, the
smiths of it, who have the simplicity of children, the richest brogue in
all Devon, and the unaffected courtesy we associate with great nobles.
“We’m plazed tu zee ’ee, ye knaw, ye bain’t a stranger tu Ashcume, they
tell me”; while their housekeeper says, “Zittee down, do ’ee,” and with
her apron vigorously dusts a chair which, like all else in this spotless
interior, is absolutely innocent of dust. It is the rustic way of showing
politeness.
As for their speech, all Devonians have that characteristic rich twist
of the tongue which one cannot well convey in all its richness in paper
and print, and for “stranger” say “strangurr.” Similarly, when, during
a conversation with them, an insect of sorts bites you painfully, they
inform you it is a “hoss-stingurr.”
[Illustration: DAWLISH.]
There is a prized possession at the smithy, in the shape of an old
bureau, which has been in the family for goodness knows how many
generations, and the visitor will probably be invited to see the “sacred”
drawer they discovered. Here, in the cold medium of print it is obvious
enough that a “secret” drawer is meant, but I assure you it is by no
means so immediately obvious on the spot, and you quite expect an
introduction to some holy of holies.
Dawlish is shut in on the west by the great cliff of Lea Mount, which
forms, both in colour and shape, an unforgettable feature.
Lea Mount owes its formal, straight-cut outline to the anxieties that
followed the falling of a portion of the cliff on August 29th, 1885,
when over fifty tons of rock buried a party of seven women and children,
killing three of them. To prevent further accidents, all overhanging
portions were cut away.
Through this vivid red mass plunges the main line of the Great Western
Railway, in a series of five longer or shorter tunnels, emerging through
Parson Tunnel upon the long sea wall that brings it into Teignmouth. From
Dawlish sands the long and bold range of cliffs ending in Hole Head and
the Parson and Clerk rocks is distinctly seen, but there has ever been
some considerable doubt as to which of these rocks of Hole Head is the
Clerk. Commonly the solitary wave-washed pillar standing out to sea has
been given the name, but there are certainly the likenesses of two faces
on the cliff itself, one immediately under the other; and there have
always been those who have pointed them out as the unworthy pair.
From one of the little coves that notch the cliffs between Dawlish and
Teignmouth, those giant profiles are seen with advantage. They are
impressive at a distance and even in calm weather, but near at hand, and
when the clouds lower and the screaming winds tear off the crests of the
waves and dash them in clouds of flying spume over the hurrying trains,
they are not a little awesome. The Parson, with round, bullet-like head,
looks sternly out, with calm, inscrutable face, and all the dignity of a
colossal Rameses, upon the whirl of wind and water. The Clerk, beneath
him, a senile, doddering countenance, with wide-open mouth and thick,
pendulous lips, seems to laugh and gibber maniacally at the racket of the
elements, and is a little dreadful to behold.
There is no way round Hole Head to Teignmouth. Sheer walls of rock and a
stark descent into the sea forbid; but some day, when local authorities
take the hints that nature and latter-day circumstances have thrown out,
a road will be made under those cliffs, and the sundered towns made
neighbours.
Meanwhile, there are two prime ways of getting to Teignmouth: the one
a threepenny journey by train from Dawlish station, the loveliest
threepenny railway ride in the kingdom; the other a shockingly hilly
climb up by the high road that goes over Lea Mount, and so, in a series
of sharp rises and falls brings you, at one mile from Teignmouth, to a
breakneck descent into the town, usually ending, for cyclists some few
years ago, in a pantomime-trick disappearance through the window of the
“Dawlish Inn” and a removal, as the case might be, to the hospital or
the cemetery. But more scientific brakes have happily neutralised these
dangers.
[Illustration: THE PARSON AND CLERK ROCKS.]
There is, however, a delightful variant of this road journey that cannot
too greatly be praised. This is found when coming to the cross-lanes
in the hollow at Holcombe, one mile from Lea Mount, by turning to the
left down a tree-shaded way known as “Smugglers’ Lane.” A short distance
brings the explorer to a sight of the sea again, glimpsed between the
stone arches of a railway-bridge spanning a tiny cove or inlet. A walk
through the arches on to the sands, if the tide be out, or the ascent
of a dozen steps up to the sea-wall, if it be in, brings the stranger
into the best and easiest, and certainly, into the most beautiful,
approach to Teignmouth, by the sea the whole way and under the shadow
of the tremendous red cliffs, at whose foot the railway, by the daring
of Brunel, is made to run along the most massive of sea-walls. The
engineer here wrought more picturesquely than he knew, and performed an
inestimable service to the public by providing a ten-foot wide masonry
pathway nearly two miles and a half long, where the contemplative visitor
has the trains on one side and the sea on the other; and where he may,
when it blows great guns off the sea, witness such a spouting and a
buffeting of furious waves against the wall as scarce to be equalled
around the coast.
The railway has here, at any rate, left the shore more picturesque than
it found it, and the trains themselves give a last touch of romance. You
see them, in summer, coming down from London, a wondering and expectant
face thrust from every window: the faces of holiday-makers enraptured
with the scene. You see the holiday-makers again, a little later, with a
deep tan colour, but with expressions wistful and melancholy; returning
home, and taking a long lingering glance before the Parson Tunnel finally
occults the view.
There is an added majesty to the sea-wall and the railway when night is
come. The red cliffs become black and minatory, the trees and shrubs
against the skyline assuming weird shapes; and stillness reigns; for
mankind is gregarious and congregates in the town, leaving the sea-wall
to shy lovers; and the contemplative crickets chirp in the ballast and
on the sleepers, and the wash of the waves sounds in a restful undertone
until a red eye in the darkness along the line changes to green and, with
a rush and a scream, the express thunders by.
[Illustration: TEIGNMOUTH: THE SEA WALL.]