SHALDON—LABRADOR—WATCOMBE—ST. MARYCHURCH—BABBACOMBE
At the point, just where the river and the sea meet, off the toy
lighthouse, is the noblest view of the Ness, the great red bluff that
turns a jagged front to the sea, and lifts a shaggy head of firs to the
sky. With a dark and oily smoothness that betokens depth and strength of
current, the estuary of the Teign empties itself at the ebb, and fills
again with feathered spray on yonder rocks. Above Shaldon, opposite, rise
the great hills, up whose sides climbs the road to Torquay: hills fertile
to their very summits, and remarkable for their subdivision by hedgerows
all the way up those staggering gradients. From nowhere better than from
Teignmouth can this beautiful and characteristic feature of a Devonshire
landscape be seen.
Let us leave Teignmouth here by the ferry-boat, in preference to walking
over the long bridge. Both bridge and ferry belong to one company, and
the toll each way, by either of them is the same modest penny. The ferry
goes from one sandy beach to another, touching the opposite shore
immediately under the roadway, the little forecourt gardens, and the
bow-windowed houses of Shaldon, which seems to the stranger the oddest,
brightest, cleanest and most quiet of townlets, and for a while puts
Teignmouth in the shade. Shaldon, however, is very much of a “dead end,”
a backwater, or still pool of life, and when the visitors are gone, when
the children have deserted the warm sands, and the half-dozen ferry boats
that are required in summer are reduced to two; and when nature, with
autumn past, frugally turns the lights down until next spring, Shaldon
is apt to be dull. But there is always the harbour to look out upon, and
Teignmouth across the river; although, to be sure, there is the reverse
view of the harbour and of Shaldon from Teignmouth. For myself, I incline
to think the outlook upon the harbour and Shaldon and the hills from
Teignmouth the best, especially since the appearance on the Bitton estate
of those houses you wot of. But this is certain, while human nature
remains true to itself: wherever you are not, there you would be, just
as, whatever you are doing, you look forward to the doing of something
quite different; or else, doing nothing, yearn to be busy, and being
busy, long for idleness.
It is a rocky scramble round beyond the Ness to the open sea and
Labrador, and no one, fortunately, has yet engineered a neat path that
way. For one thing, it would be scarce worth the trouble of doing so
while great fragments of rock come hurtling down from the cliff, thrust
out by the frosts and thaws of winter. The way is strewn with these
immense pieces of red conglomerate, weighing anything from five to twenty
tons; and those who wear india-rubber shoes and can best imitate the
chamois in rock-leaping are those who like best the exploration of the
Ness. For others there is that “harvest of the quiet eye” down in the
rock-pools that the tide has left, where, among the trailing seaweeds,
the limpet clings with the tightness of a moribund government clinging to
power, and only to be removed in the same way; by the sudden, unexpected
blow, like the Parliamentary snap-division; where transparent things,
showing their inwards in the most indelicate way, flit about unconcerned
at that publicity, and the hermit-crab justifies his sponsors by
hurrying, presto, to some rocky cell when you disturb this little _mare
clausum_.
[Illustration: AT SHALDON.]
Tumbled rock-heaps, alternating with beaches, lead to the foot of the
cliff by whose up-on-end path you breathlessly reach Labrador, a place
known to every one who has visited Teignmouth. Local traditions tell how
this cottage and garden, half-way up the four hundred feet of cliff, were
the work of a retired sea-captain who, settling here from a long career
in the Newfoundland trade, christened the place by the name it still
bears. I do not suppose he ever contemplated it being converted into a
picnic inn, but he _may_ have had an eye to a snug little traffic in
smuggling, for which in his time it must have been especially adapted.
However that may be, there is no questioning the popularity of Labrador,
where teas are provided and swings tempt the giddy-minded, and roses
clamber over the house-front in a manner suggestive of Persia and
Omar Khayyàm. Why, with leisure—and genius—one might compose another
_Rabaiyat_ when the tea-takers were gone.
“I reckon,” says one of the soil, whom we meet here and exchange remarks
with, “Twize up and down es a gude day’s work,” and it really is a
leg-aching job to climb to the top of the cliff, which must be done
to gain the Torquay road. South Devon is sleepy, and, experiencing
this steepest of paths and hottest of hot corners, the stranger is not
surprised. At any time it is possible to sit down and drop into a “bit of
a zog”—which is Devonian for a nap.
The Torquay road is inexorably hilly and white and hot, but it looks
inland down on to samples of Canaan, where, amid a blue haze of
fertility, you see trees and grass more nearly blue than green, among
the freshly turned fields that are red. It is a land of fatness. There,
down in those folded valleys, is a distant glimpse of the Teign, with the
white-faced, yellow-thatched cottages of “Stokeintinny” and “Cumeintinny”
enwrapped in an air of prosperity; and here is the ridge-road, like an
oven. “Aw! my dear sawls, ’tes tar’ble hot.”
Here stands the old toll-house the country folk call “Solomon’s Post”;
but why? Ah! he who pervades the country asking for the reasons of things
is not to be envied. For my part, the likeliest reason of this name is
that the tolls on this turnpike-trust may have been farmed by one of
those numerous Jews who took up that class of business.
Lanes on the left-hand presently lead down to Minnicombe and Maidencombe,
where there are embowered hamlets giving upon the sea; and in another
mile yet another leads down to Watcombe. Watcombe is not what it was
fifteen years ago. Then a countryfied lane opened out upon a grassy
valley dropping to the sea. From the turf there soared aloft the ruddiest
of all the ruddy cliffs of South Devon, seamed and seared with the
weathering of ages, and as thickly pocketed with holes as a Post Office
_poste-restante_ rack. The cliff is there, as ever, and the holes, and
the pigeons and jackdaws that inhabit them, but the undergrowth has grown
up in dense and tangled masses everywhere, the hedges of the rustic lane
have given place to stone walls, and all the pleasant approaches are
enclosed in the grounds of somebody’s private domain. Confound Somebody,
say I: may the dogs defile the grave of his great-great-grandmother.
But let us take these outrages as calmly as we may, or not seek to
further explore; for the approach to Torquay through Babbacombe and
Marychurch is a perfect orgie of Wall. It must have been a difficult and
an expensive matter to so successfully shut out the scenery, but it has
been so thoroughly done that when you do at last come to the cliff-top of
Babbacombe Downs, the lovely clear outlook there over the sea and down to
the beach seems, by contrast, like a hole in the wall.
But we anticipate, as the authors of Early Victorian novels were
accustomed to remark, and have not finished with Watcombe, which is
remarkable for having supplied the Romans with potters’-clay and for
providing us moderns with the same material. The Watcombe Terracotta
Works, that stand by the high road, were established somewhere about
1875. Their products of statuettes for advertising purposes are
sufficiently well-known, and I dare not hazard a guess how many of that
famous group, “You Dirty Boy!” the works produced for an eminent firm
of soap-makers. When what has been called the “Æsthetic Craze” set in,
and all manner of weird wares, alleged to have some “Art” quality, were
thrust upon the public, the Watcombe terracottas were fashioned in the
most awkward and “artistic” shapes, and painted with sunflowers and the
most abhorrent colours, and in them that good, long-suffering public for
a time found artistic salvation. But that was long ago, and the sunflower
has wilted and the lily faded away. To-day, rustic humour and Old English
models combined, capture the tourist. Puzzle-jugs and scraps of country
talk find the readiest sale, and many a holiday-maker takes home with him
butter-dishes, jugs, and plates with such legends as “Go aisy with the
butter,” “Help yo’self to some Demsher crayme,” or that noble triolet—
“Du zummat,
Du gude ef yo can,
Du zummat.”
Beyond Watcombe begins St. Marychurch. At the threshold of that suburb
a long lane leads to the left, down to Pettitor, where there are busy
quarries of Devon Marble, so greatly in favour with church-furnishers
that specimens of it are nowadays to be found in use, not in England
only, but in remote parts of the world.
You would not for a moment suspect the Domesday antiquity of St.
Marychurch, but it appears in that remarkable work—as a church—the
earliest, it is said, in Devon. Rebuilt in 1861, it is now merely one of
the many ornate places of worship in which Torquay, with its large, rich
and idle residential classes, greatly priest-ridden, abounds. Only the
ancient font, sculptured with a number of engaging devils, remains.
St. Marychurch would probably not produce so much disfavour in the
beholder were it not for its natural surroundings. This is a parable,
but one easily resolved into a plain statement. The place is, in short,
a bad nightmare of plaster. _Quâ_ plaster, not so very shocking, but
taken in conjunction with the exceptionally lovely nature of the scenery,
nothing less than a crime. A wanton, indefensible crime, too, for the
neighbourhood abounds with excellent limestone, most suitable for
building. I conceive there must be something radically wrong—beyond a
mere error of taste—with the generations that will go out of their way
to use a short-lived pretence like plaster, when limestone, calculated
to last until the universe shall again be thrown into the melting-pot,
offers. But there, it is done, and not unless all Torquay itself were
razed to the ground, and the place begun anew, could it be remedied.
Oddly enough, the first signs of enlightenment in this direction are
shown by the various banks, which are being substantially and tastefully
built of honest materials.
The long, long streets lead past Furrow Cross, where, turning to the
left, along the Babbacombe Down Road, that lovely opening, looking
out upon the sea, is disclosed. Here, from the carefully railed-in
cliff-edge, one looks sheer down on to the white pebble beaches of
Oddicombe and Babbacombe, with winding walks through luxuriant greenery,
leading hundreds of feet down to them. Red cliffs, white beaches, dark
blue sea, light blue sky, and the cool green of the vegetation; what a
feast of colour is the South Devon Coast! And the abounding growth of
flowers and shrubs in the gardens on these heights! Geraniums, putting to
shame the best efforts of ivy a-clinging and climbing: fuchsias, making
growth like trees, with substantial trunks; veronica shrubs in hedges,
the lovely blue masses of the heliotrope-like ceanothus, and others of
the acclimatised beauties of the Southern Hemisphere: all these glories
are rendered possible by the soft climate, which laps you as in cotton
wool, and takes all the energy out of you, and has rendered the folk of
Devon the kindly lotus-eaters they are.