TEIGNMOUTH—THE PLYMOUTH BRETHREN—THE TEIGN—LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS
The further West you go, the more distinctly religious you find the
people, and the stronger you find the hold of Dissent upon them. Religion
is a very real thing in the West, and the more real it is, the weaker
is the hold of the Established Church. Peculiarly strong, among other
forms of Dissent, are the Plymouth Brethren in Devonshire, and the Bible
Christians in Cornwall.
It should be said at once that “Plymouth Brethren” is only the name
by which the world at large knows that body of Christians, who, like
the “Friends,” whom the world styles “Quakers,” do by no means label
themselves with any specific title. They are among themselves just
“Brethren,” and their places of worship are merely the “Brethren’s”
meeting-rooms. The “Plymouth Brethren,” who more closely than any other
sect resemble the Quakers, follow the practice of the early Christians,
insomuch that all are brothers in Christ; and no dogma made of man, nor
any official hierarchy or pastorate, has yet been suffered to obscure
that essential fraternity.
The “Plymouth Brethren”—to speak of them by the style which the world has
agreed to use—took their origin about 1827, in the workings of conscience
of John Nelson Darby and A. N. Groves, who, independently of one another,
had arrived at the conclusion that no existing church was firmly based
upon the Gospel. Darby, who was at that time twenty-seven years of age,
had been educated for the law, but had entered the Church, and was a
curate in Ireland when the light that came to him led to his resigning.
He was brought into communication with Groves, and in 1830 the first
meeting of the “Brethren” was opened, in Dublin. That same year, on a
visit to Oxford, Darby was asked to open a meeting at Plymouth, whither
he forthwith proceeded and took “Providence Chapel,” thus, with the
spread of the movement from that town, unwittingly giving a topographical
name to the new religious body.
The tenets of the “Brethren” are simple. They rely upon the teaching and
the promises of the Gospel, and reject all ecclesiastical forms. Like the
Quakers, they have no ministers and no prayer-books. Prayer at meeting
is extempore, and offered up when the Spirit moves, by members of the
meeting. It is thus, it will be seen, essentially a democratic body, but
in practice those whose natural vocation is preaching, missioning and
district-visiting become more prominent, and, if they feel they have a
call, will obey that call by giving up all worldly occupations. Those
with a sufficiency of means of their own, will give themselves and their
wealth to the work of the Master, and those others who have nothing
will devote their lives to the work of spreading the Gospel, visiting
the sick, and in general performing the salaried work of a clergyman of
the Endowed Church; all without stipend, without fee or reward asked,
suggested, or hinted, except in secret to that One whose work they
do. This it is to “live by faith,” as they term it. Nor is that faith
misplaced. Shall I not, although a sinner, speak of that which I know,
and testify to the miracles I have seen wrought in my own generation, by
which I am assured of the love of the living God for His servants?
[Illustration: IN THE HARBOUR.]
Those who have once fallen under the spell of Teignmouth are never likely
to be freed from it. You leave, after perhaps the fifth or sixth visit,
declaring you have exhausted the place, but you inevitably return, if
not next year, in the near future. There is, in fact, something in
Teignmouth to please all tastes, and custom never stales it. It enjoys
that inestimable advantage in a seaside resort, a tidal estuary; and
round by the sandspit, over against the bold red cliff of the Ness, you
come from the somewhat artificial front and its pier and its seats for
visitors, to the harbour, where the Teign flows out at the ebb and the
sea comes swirling in at the flood, across the shifting sand-bar that
from time immemorial has afforded a living for Teignmouth pilots and
tug-boats, bringing the craft of strange skippers, ignorant of the state
of the channel, safely into the haven. There are no seats, or other such
concessions to visitors, in the harbour, but there are boats innumerable
for sailing or rowing upon the Teign, and in the deep midstream anchorage
to one side of the sandbank called “the Salty,” there is generally a
tier of foreign barques that have brought deals from Norway, or are to
take china-clay to the uttermost parts of the earth. And there are ropes
and anchors and much waterside litter, and a fragrant scent of what the
sailors call “Stockhollum” tar about the harbour; and if the visitor does
not promptly succeed in tripping over the ropes and chains and anchors,
why then he is an exceptional visitor indeed. Fragrant sail-lofts look
down upon the water, and old superannuated buoys and other buoys that
only want a lick of paint, are drawn up on the sand, and from the open
windows of sailors’ homes come the voices of parrots, mingled not
unmusically with a midstream yo-hoing.
[Illustration: TEIGNMOUTH HARBOUR: LOOKING OUT TO SEA, SHOWING THE NESS
AND SHALDON, AND THE MAIN LINE OF THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.]
The trade of Teignmouth harbour, after a long period of decay, is in
these times looking up, for the South Devon Trading Company has built
new quays and sheds, which, like all new things, do not add to the
picturesqueness of the spot; but the casual lanes and odd slips remain,
with the old quay, and that unconventional inn, “Newbery’s Old Quay
Hotel,” that with every flood-tide dabbles its feet in the water, and
with every ebb stands once more upon dry ground, much to the amazement
and delight of children. Did I not myself once think the “Old Quay” inn
the most desirable of all possible homes!
There is a homeliness in the harbour that draws the visitor away from
the exotic front, and it is to the harbour he first resorts when he
revisits Teignmouth, for it seems almost to welcome him back. There, up
stream, is that hoary old landmark, the long bridge that spans the Teign,
which is 1,671 feet in length, and was built in 1827, and is the longest
wooden bridge in England. “Further on,” as the guide-book says, “are the
gas-works.” It is only too true, and they might, with advantage to the
scenery, be still further on; but in that case they would not get their
coal barged cheaply up to the very walls, which everybody knows to be a
greater consideration than the preservation of mere scenic amenities.
Away in the misty distance are the tors of Dartmoor, prominent among
them Rippon Tor and Heytor Rocks, grey-bearded—as you know when you have
visited them—with sage-green lichen, and altogether very reverend and
inscrutable. They seem with a grave benevolence to welcome you back.
[Illustration: THE NESS: ENTRANCE TO THE TEIGN.]
Above Teignmouth is Haldon, that vast expanse of tableland whose heights
we first saw from Exmouth, and whose range—marked on maps “Great Haldon”
and “Little”—extends across the whole of the back country between Exe
and Teign. He who, in search of fresh air and vigour on some stewing day
in the Teign valley, essays to climb from Teignmouth to Little Haldon,
comes, very soon after he has set out, and very long before he has
arrived, to the conclusion that the “littleness” of Little Haldon is a
misnomer; for the way is long and the road steep. But once there, you are
in another and more bracing climate, where the air is keen and charged
with the scent of the bracken and the heather that clothe the wild
moorland. From Haldon you look one way to the Exe and the other to the
Teign, and, standing in one and the selfsame spot, can see both, for it
is an exceeding high place. The solitude of it is perhaps intensified to
some by the fact of Teignmouth’s cemetery being here; but it is a large
and a populous place, and to those of us who knew in life many who lie
here, this is no solitude. God rest them. The summer sun that shines on
Haldon shines no more for them, nor winter storms blow.
Although Teignmouth has its literary and artistic associations, it does
by no means obtrude them upon the stranger, who, indeed, only discovers
them after some considerable pains, and is perhaps regarded as a little
eccentric, for his trouble. Two poets—Winthrop Mackworth Praed, and John
Keats—have described the town, and although Praed was not actually born
here, the connection with the family was close, the Bitton property
belonging to his father, who lies in the churchyard of West Teignmouth.
Bitton, in fact, only passed from the Praeds in 1863. The poet was born
in 1802 and died in 1839, when member of Parliament for Aylesbury.
There are reasons all-sufficient why Teignmouth’s poetic associations
should not be flaunted. Too great insistence upon Praed would advertise
more fully the brutal vandalism permitted of late years at Bitton, when
no finger was stirred to save that lovely wooded riverside park from
being cut up and demolished, to build cheap houses upon. Bitton was one
of the loveliest places upon the Teign. In the words of Praed himself:
“There beamed upon the river side
A shady dwelling-place
Most beautiful! Upon that spot,
Beside the echoing wave,
A fairy might have built her grot,
An anchorite his grave.
The river with its constant fall
Came close up to the garden wall,
As if it longed, but thought it sin,
To look into the charms within.
Behind majestic mountains frowned
And dark, rich groves were all around.”
The “dark, rich groves,” were no mere poetic imagery. They were largely
ilex, or “evergreen oak,” for which streets of the flimsiest houses in
close-packed ranks are the sorriest exchange.
Keats, of course, no self-respecting Devonian would mention. He came,
himself consumptive, to Teignmouth in 1818, to cheer the last hours of
his brother Tom, dying of that disease. Here, lodging at No. 35, Strand,
he completed _Endymion_ and wrote _Isabella_; but it was winter and
spring at the time of his sojourn, and although spring and winter in
South Devon are preferable to those seasons elsewhere, he found the moist
humours of the rainy West anything but pleasant:
[Illustration: KINGSTEIGNTON.]
“You may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy,
rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The
hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of ’em; the primroses
are out, but you are in; the cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then
the clouds are continually vieing with them. … The flowers here wait
as naturally for the rain twice a day as mussels do for the tide. This
Devonshire is like Lydia Languish, very entertaining when it smiles, but
cursedly subject to sympathetic moisture.”
But occasionally the weather was kinder. It does not rain all day and
every day in Devon, even in winter; and during these dry interludes
Keats discovered some of those amazingly many villages that owe their
name to the Teign:
“There’s Bishop’s Teign,
And King’s Teign,
And Coombe at the clear Teignhead—
Where close by the stream
You may have your cream
All spread upon barley bread.
There is Newton Marsh,
With its spear-grass harsh,
A pleasant summer level
Where the maidens sweet
Of the Market Street
Do meet in the dusk to revel.”
A poet _en deshabille_. Reduced from poetry to the matter-of-fact
nomenclature of the ordnance maps, those places are Bishopsteignton,
Kingsteignton, and Coombe-in-Teignhead—the “Cumeintinny” of local speech.
The poet who might wish to know all the “Teign” villages and hamlets,
would need to make acquaintance with Teignharvey and Stokeinteignhead, on
the salt estuary; and thence find his way inland, to the back of Newton
Abbot, where, beside the freshwater stream that comes prattling down from
Dartmoor he shall find Teigngrace, Canonteign, and Drewsteignton.
For six miles above Teignmouth the Teign runs up salt: a broad estuary
at high water: above the bridge an oozy expanse of mingled sand and mud
flats at low; and “Newton Marsh,” the water-logged meadows just below the
market town and important railway junction of Newton Abbot. Midway is
Coombe Cellars, a waterside offshoot of Coombe-in-Teignhead; a place, you
perceive, even in Keats’ time, it was the recognised thing to visit and—
“… have your cream
All spread upon barley bread.”
[Illustration: COOMBE CELLARS.]
It was then a highly rustic spot; the oddest little promontory jutting
out into the stream, and on it the “Ferry Boat” inn, built behind stout
sea walls, and itself built of whitewashed cob, and heavily thatched. The
“Cellars” were fish cellars, and the place was, and is, oddly amphibious;
the inn being half farmhouse and half fisherman’s tavern, the landlord
himself a farmer down to the waist, and a fisherman as to the legs and
the sea-boots. At night you would find him out with the trawl-nets,
to sea; at low tide in the morning cockling on the mud-flats off his
inn; and in the afternoon milking the cows or urging the plough in his
hillside fields. To take boat from Teignmouth Harbour, and row up on
the flood to tea at Coombe Cellars, returning with the ebb, was once
a delightful thing, and, with a difference, is so still; but you must
not expect to be the only party there—no, not by a very long way, and
you must by no means expect to get your tea, with or without Devonshire
junket, strawberries and cream, or cockles, in quite so rustic a fashion
or at such moderate prices as once obtained. And, although the house
remains very much the same as of yore, the thatch has given place to a
something less rural.