BABBACOMBE—THE PEASANT SPEECH OF DEVON—ANSTEY’S COVE—KENT’S CAVERN
There are winding walks as I have said, down to Babbacombe, but for all
their circumbendability (what a lovely word that is!) they are so steep
that by far the easiest way to descend would be to get down on to your
hinder parts, and slide. To those who are not so young as they were, the
view down upon the beach of Babbacombe, and upon the roof-tops of its
few houses is the better part, for the walking down jolts the internal
machinery most confoundedly. Why, there are few more pitiful sights on
this earth—which we know, on eminent authority, to be a “wale”—than that
of a middle-aged _and_ stout gentleman gingerly descending these walks,
and sighing with envy as a troop of children dash, whooping, past him.
_Their_ actions have not yet begun to be regulated by their digestive
apparatus!
But for all that indiarubber-like infantile irrepressibility, I have
seen a little childish disaster here. It was a fall and a bruise and a
scratched face that meant little, after all; but the howls of that child
were worthy of an occasion infinitely more tragical. It were not worth
dwelling upon, except that it opened out some rustic Devon talk, when a
son of the soil set that injured innocent upon his feet again and said:
“Well done! My eymers: ’av ’ee valled down?”
[Illustration: BABBACOMBE.]
With so much sympathy on tap, my young martyr began to pity himself
infinitely, and sobbed the more. “Did ’ur, then?” said that kindly
comforter: “puir liddle bye, puir liddle bleed. You ’m proper ’urted
yo’self, have ’ee. Where’s his mammy, then? Where do ’ee live tu? Coom
’ee up-along an’ zittee on this zeat,” and much else.
The neighbourhood of these exploited seaside towns are, however, not the
places, as a general rule, in which to look for such fine survivals
of old Devon talk. The villages and the hamlets are the last homes of
it, and, generally speaking, the only times when an indweller hears the
Doric is when a servant, fresh-caught from “Dartymoor” or other remote
district, comes into residence. Then, indeed, one hears strange phrases.
_Then_ you learn, if you did not know it before, that in Devon all girls
are “maads” and all boys “byes,” large or small; or I should say, in the
Devon tongue, “gert” or “liddle.” In Devon most things that are thorough,
or difficult, or to be expressed in terms of bigness or admiration are
“proper,” and this expression, among some others, is not, like much else
of the rustic talk, obsolescent. It is, indeed, common in towns, and
seems, like the Devonian soft burring inflection, to be, after a period
of disuse, coming back again.
Anything very large is thus said to be “proper gert”; a difficult task
is still a “proper chore”; and—although to one not used to the West the
propriety of it is not evident—a person helplessly intoxicated is “proper
drunk,” or “durnk” may even be said; for (as in “gert” for “great”) your
true West countryman will always, whenever humanly possible, depose the
letter “r” from its proper place. He will overcome majestic difficulties
in this linguistic way, and will even “urn” instead of “run.”
A Devonian never lives “at” a place, only “tu” it; baskets to him
are either “flaskets” or “maunds”; he has a staggering way of saying
“Well done!” as an exclamation of surprise, even on the most tragical
occasions, so that he has seemed sometimes, to strangers who are not
acquainted with this peculiarity, to be callously superhuman or less than
human; which is a libel on the kindly race.
Babbacombe—the real Babbacombe of the beach, not the strange new thing
on the cliff-top—is the tiniest of places, with the “Cary Arms” inn,
a little stone fishing-pier, a few boats, a fortuitous concourse of
lobster-pots, a windlass or two, and a general air of being a natural
growth, as indeed it is. It seems remote from the evil passions of the
world, but for all that seeming, it was the scene of a dreadful tragedy
in 1884, when Miss Keyse, an elderly lady who lived in a picturesquely
thatched cottage on the very margin of the beach, was murdered by John
Lee, her manservant. He was a young footman, a native of Kingskerswell.
The motive was said to have been revenge for the reduction of his wages
by sixpence a week. The whole thing is sordid, and one had rather not
mention it at all; only the notoriety of the case compels. Lee saturated
the rooms with petroleum and set fire to the house, in the hope of
concealing the evidence of his crime, but fortunately the fire was
extinguished before it had made sufficient progress, and the marks on
the body were discovered and Lee arrested. He was tried, found guilty,
sentenced to death, and actually brought to the scaffold at Exeter Gaol;
but there the strange and unparalleled circumstances occurred which
saved him from execution and condemned him to lifelong imprisonment
instead. Three several times the trap-door on which the condemned man
stood refused to fall when the bolt was drawn, although each time, when
he was led away, and it was tried, it worked properly. After the third
attempt, it was decided, in the interest of the official spectators
and of the wretched criminal himself, to prolong the harrowing scene
no longer, and Lee was removed to his cell and a report sent to the
Home Secretary who first respited him and then commuted the sentence to
imprisonment for life.
These are supposed to be materialistic times, when everything is held
to have some discoverable natural cause, and the failure of the trap
is explained by the wood of it being swollen, and jamming every time a
weight was placed upon it. But the affair was so remarkable, that very
naturally the whole country was deeply stirred. Those who were present
never lightly dismissed the subject, and for one’s self, it seems very
like God’s protest against man’s injustice. But we, who were not present
and are not thrown off our balance by the dreadful experience, _must_
consider that in the long history of the world many innocent persons have
been hanged, and Providence stirred no finger on their behalf, while many
assassins have escaped the Avenger of Blood. It should be said that local
opinion has always been strong in the belief of Lee’s guilt.
The house, one is glad to say, exists no longer. Only an outhouse which
belonged to it remains, and the rest of the site is dense with trees and
undergrowth. In spite of repeated rumours of his release, Lee is still in
prison, nor does it appear likely that he will ever be permitted to go at
liberty again.
One of the most famous spots on this coast is that to which we now come.
Anstey’s Cove has been described and pictured times innumerable, and
I—ah! me—am going to do it again. The way to the Cove lies in between the
inevitable dead walls of the district: _these_ the high and solid ones
built by Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter some fifty years since, to enclose
the grounds of his villa of “Bishopstowe” and keep the public out of all
possible glimpses of this paradise: highly characteristic of a bishop.
These walls must have been extremely ugly when newly built, but nature,
more kindly than the dignified clergy, has toned down the rawness,
assuaged the harsh lines and set a green mantle over the bishop’s walls,
so that they are now stony cliffs, lichened and moss-grown, rich in tiny
ferns, and overhung by tall trees.
The bishop was, like many of the cloth, a man of sarcastic wit; for when
a lady, visiting him at Bishopstowe, gushingly exclaimed how like Torquay
was to Switzerland, he retorted very neatly with, “Yes, only _there_ you
have mountains and no sea, and here we have sea and no mountains.”
Anstey’s Cove is the same as ever: one of the few places that have not
changed of late years. Still the path leads down ruggedly to the little
beach of big white marble pebbles, still the hollow is filled with a
wild ferny brake and with old thorn-trees, hung, like the liana-choked
forest trees of South America, with tangled strands of wild clematis. And
although the original Thomas, who, half a century ago supplied picnics
with necessaries, has long since assumed his crown and robe of white
up above, the poetic notice-board written for him still survives, and
Thomases of a later generation are to be found in their wooden shanty on
the beach, where they continue the traditions—or some of them—of:
[Illustration: ANSTEY’S COVE.]
“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.”
Some enthusiastic scholar has even done this into Latin, and the result
is seen on the wooden walls of the shanty.
White limestone pinnacles shut in the eastern side of the Cove, and
shade off into pink and red and grey. On the western side a cliff path
goes winding round the headland of Hope’s Nose and Daddy Hole Plain.
The Hole there is a rift in the plateau, and “Daddy,” the affectionate
name bestowed upon the Devil by local folk, who perhaps did not stop to
consider when they did it that they thus proclaimed themselves children
of Satan.
On the inland road to Torquay is that famous place, Kent’s Cavern, whose
prehistoric contents led men of science to wholly revise their ideas of
the world’s history.
The situation of Kent’s Cavern, although only a mile from the centre of
Torquay and in the Wellswood suburb, is still semi-rural. A limestone
bluff, shaggy with bushes, trees and ivy, rises abruptly to the right
of the road, and in the side of it is a locked wooden door, upon which
you bang and kick for the guide, who is guide, proprietor, and explorer
in one. When he is not guiding, he is engaged in digging and turning
over the wet red earth, alone in the dank lonesomeness with the spirits
of prehistoric man and the bones of the extinct animals that ranged
the valleys of Torquay when the world was young. The freehold of the
famous cavern which ever since 1824 has been the theme of more or less
learned geological treatises was recently sold at auction for a trifling
sum; not to an institution or a scientific society but to the guide,
who has conducted many geological pundits over it, and by consequence
has acquired an air of greater omniscience than the most completely
all-knowing of those not remarkably modest men of science.
[Illustration: ANSTEY’S COVE.]
No one really knows who was that Kent whose name the cavern bears. The
popular notion that the place was only discovered in modern times is an
error, for evidences exist of its being known through the Middle Ages,
down to our own time. The prehistoric remains, and not the cavern itself,
are the modern finds, and that there were visitors and curiosity-hunters
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is evident in the names
scratched on the rocky walls, and still visible through the slowly
growing film of stalactite. Thus “William Petre, 1571,” writes himself,
by the mere fact of his scribbling here, ancestor of the ’Arries of
to-day, and of the same glorious company is one who boldly inscribes
himself “Robert Hedges of Ireland, Feb. 20, 1688.” This was no Irishman,
but a Devonshire yeoman from a farm or hamlet called “Ireland,” on the
other side of Dartmouth.
It remained for modern times to thoroughly explore this natural rift in
the limestone. There were several very potent reasons why this should
not have been done before. Perhaps a little dread of the unknown was
partly the cause; geological science was in its infancy, and in this then
solitary neighbourhood there was no one leisured enough, or sufficiently
interested, to investigate.
It was in 1824 Mr. Northmoore first broke into the stalagmite floor which
to a depth of three inches formed a continuous covering, like concrete,
to the red clay and its deposits of flint implements, charred bones, and
relics of the hyæna, mammoth, reindeer, bison, bear, wild cat, and a host
of other animals utterly extinct.
Above these relics of an almost incredible antiquity was a layer of black
earth containing remains of the British and Roman periods, odds and
ends of whetstones, spindle-wheels, bone awls and chisels, amber beads,
bronze rings, pieces of Samian pottery, and cakes of smelted copper,
intermingled with shells of sea-fish and bones of pigs, sheep, rats,
rabbits, and birds; the discarded things of periods of occupation ranging
from two thousand years ago; but, compared with the deposits of from ten
to twenty thousand years earlier, beneath the stalagmite flooring, things
merely of yester-year.
Northmoore’s discoveries, however, were few in comparison with those of
the Rev. J. MacEnery, who, as Roman Catholic chaplain at Tor Abbey, had
abundant leisure, and devoted three years, from 1825, to explorations
here. He saw a sight that would have doubtless roused a dentist to
wildest enthusiasm. Nothing less than “the finest fossil teeth I had ever
seen.” He was followed by Pengelly, and by the long series of researches
by the British Association, extending from 1864 to 1880, which resulted
in the almost complete stripping of the cavern; so that we who explore
Kent’s Cavern, the home of Prehistoric Man, to-day are very much in the
position of visitors to a house that has had the brokers in, or a museum
whose exhibits have been nearly all removed.
But there are still remains discovered which recall Pengelly’s
description of the cave being tenanted at the same period both by men and
wild animals; the cave-men going forth to fish or hunt and the hyænas
looking in during their absence for anything worth picking up. And there
are things belonging to remote geological periods which are of those
discoveries that first upset the chronology of the Book of Genesis and
gave staggering shocks to believers in the absolute literal accuracy
of the Bible: teeth of wild animals, not merely in the deposits of the
floor, but embedded in the limestone rock overhead. Who shall put a date
to these?
And here, at our elbow all the while, is the guide, complacently pointing
to all these things; lighting flares which disclose the roof, and playing
scales with sticks on metallic-sounding stalactites that have been
forming with incredible slowness, perhaps an inch in a thousand years,
just to be made a show of. The best of all the stalactites is broken. It
began to be formed when the world was young. It grew and grew with the
drops of water, charged with lime, percolating from the roof, and being
met by its fellow stalagmite with equal slowness rising from the floor.
And stalactite and stalagmite had nearly met, and only wanted another
three or four centuries to bridge the remaining interval of an eighth of
an inch, when a visitor, falling accidentally against them, broke them
off!
“What did you say?” one, with pardonable curiosity, asks the guide, and
“What _could_ you say?” says he; and when you consider it, _what_ is
there that would be equal to that tremendous occasion?
[Illustration: _The_ SOUTH DEVON COAST
TORQUAY _to_ PLYMOUTH _and the_ TAMAR]