THE CATWATER—THE BARBICAN—THE “PILGRIM FATHERS”—THE HOE
Distances in and around Plymouth are most remarkably deceptive, and the
local geography is full of surprises. The famous Plymouth Sound is from
two to four miles wide, but the clear air and the heights on either side
give an impression of smaller scale. As you round the hilly coast from
Wembury and come within the Sound, you enter upon a panoramic scene,
where the great Breakwater, itself nearly a mile and a half long, with a
sea-passage on the hither side of a mile’s breadth, rests upon the blue
waters like some pigmy undertaking, and the ironclads seem quite trivial.
The ordinary vision is altogether at fault at Plymouth, and requires
careful adjustment to an unfamiliar scale of things; and in the meanwhile
the stranger, walking round the coast, discovers that in tramping these
last miles the way is quite twice as long as it seems. Plymouth town lies
distinctly in sight, but you seem for a long while never to approach any
nearer, and meanwhile you tramp up coastguard paths and down, and round
into coves and still more round headlands, gradually coming within the
area of War Department activities; where old forts and middle-aged forts,
and forts still in the making astonish the rabbits. The outstanding
features of garrison towns are grittiness, barrenness, and glare, served
up in squalor; and military strength is generally made to look silly by
clothes-lines fluttering signals of washing day over the embrasures and
the dry moats. Approaching Plymouth therefore by Bovisand and Staddon
Forts, the heat and the glare make the very brains ferment in your head,
the grit scarifies your feet, and the sordid garrison details, and
then the slumminess of Turnchapel sear your very soul. But in between,
there are some jewelled nooks: the green valley and woods of Bovisand
and little unexpected baylets, with tiny sands that you look down upon
suddenly, shamefacedly surprising young ladies bathing in a costume of
little more than nothing, supplemented thinly by their native modesty,
and piquantly surmounted with picture-hats. Convention would require them
to be embarrassed, but the startled pedestrian’s blushes and the nymphs’
comparative unconcern outrange the expected feelings of the situation.
At Turnchapel the ferry steamer takes the wearied exerciser upon Shanks’s
Mare across the Catwater to Phœnix Wharf and the old original Plymouth,
adjoining the Barbican and Sutton Pool.
[Illustration: OLD PLYMOUTH, FROM MOUNT BATTEN.]
Every one knows the stream that comes down from Dartmoor and falls into
the Laira creek as the Plym, but its original name was the Cad, and
Plymouth was originally “Sutton”: still known as “Sutton-on-Plym.” It is
found under this name in Domesday Book. The name Catwater, or Cattewater,
as it is also spelled, may be a survival of the original name of the
river, as well as being one of the numerous stretches of water with
this prefix: the Cattegat, _i.e._, the “narrow gate,” at the entrance
of the Baltic; Catford, near London, Catawade, on the river Stour, near
Manningtree; all with the same meaning of narrowness.
There is some ground for supposing that the original name of Plymouth,
or a portion of the vast site now occupied by the Three Towns of
Plymouth, Devonport and Stonehouse, was in Saxon times “Tamarweorth,”
and the present name only begins to figure in ancient documents of the
mid-thirteenth century, in a tentative way, as “Sutton-super-Plymouth.”
After that period it gradually rose to importance, being first
represented in Parliament in 1298. Sutton Pool, the innermost basin of
Plymouth, the old original harbour, and still the place to which the
fishing smacks and many of the local steamers come, is bordered by the
ancient quays and the queer old houses of the Barbican, once a district
inhabited by merchant princes, but now pre-eminently “Old Plymouth,” and
although exceedingly picturesque, scarcely a residential quarter. The
Barbican took its name originally from the castle, now the citadel, which
guarded the narrow entrance to Sutton Pool, across which was stretched
every night, in the time of Henry the Eighth, a protective chain. From
these defences the existing arms of Plymouth, four black castles between
a green saltire, are said to derive. The pious motto of the town is
_Tunis fortissima est nomen Jehovah_, but at the same time Plymouth is
very strongly fortified in the military way.
[Illustration: THE BARBICAN: WHERE THE PILGRIM FATHERS EMBARKED.]
Certain very definite and picturesque scenes arise out of the dim
abysmal, grey and confused rag-bag of history here in this fishy
Barbican. Most definite of all the last farewell to England of the
Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. On the pavement, by the quay, is a modest stone,
inscribed, “Mayflower,” with the date; and near at hand, let into a wall,
a less modest commemorative bronze tablet, with this inscription:—
“On the 6th of September, 1620, in the Mayoralty of Thomas
Fownes, after being “kindly entertained and courteously used by
divers Friends there dwelling,” the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from
Plymouth in the MAYFLOWER in the Providence of God to settle
in NEW PLYMOUTH, and to lay the Foundation of the NEW ENGLAND
STATES. The ancient Cawsey whence they embarked was destroyed
not many years afterwards, but the Site of their Embarkation is
marked by the Stone bearing the name of the MAYFLOWER in the
pavement of the adjacent Pier. This Tablet was erected in the
Mayoralty of J. T. Bond, 1891, to commemorate their Departure,
and the visit to Plymouth in July of that Year of a number of
their Descendants and Representatives.”
There were forty-eight men and fifty-three women and children in this
little band, and the voyage occupied sixty days.
The spot means much to Americans, for here the handful of emigrants
for conscience’ sake definitely cast adrift from their native land,
which denied them religious liberty, and made oversea to the coast of
Massachusetts, there to found a nation anew. The little _Mayflower_ had
sailed originally from Boston, in Lincolnshire, and bade farewell to old
England from the coast of Devon; and thus it seemed fitting to those
stern voluntary outcasts that they should—still fondly looking back to
their motherland—name their landing-place in the new world “Plymouth
Rock,” and the earliest among their settlements “Boston.” There was,
therefore, an exquisite fitness in the circumstance that it was into this
Boston harbour in America, a hundred and fifty-three years later, that
the colonists should fling the taxed tea, and thus begin the struggle
whence the dependent New England colonies emerged as the sovereign United
States.
Our sympathies go out, historically, toward those Pilgrim Fathers, but
they would seem, viewed closely, to have been not quite so lovable as
historic glamour makes them. Their religious fervency was undoubted, but
by all accounts it made them ill to live with, and they would have been
greatly improved by a little sense of humour. But then—it is a startling
thought—if humour had entered at all into their composition they had
never left their native shores at all, and the stern principles which
led them to refuse to acknowledge James I. as head of the Church, and to
expatriate themselves when that shambling travesty of a king declared
that if they did not conform, the country should not hold both, would
have melted into satiric laughter and an easygoing compliance.
But two autocrats may not reign side by side; as easily might a soliloquy
be conducted by two or more persons; and a king with a fondness for
omniscience and absolutism, and a people whose religious fervency had
risen almost to the white heat of fanaticism cannot abide together;
hence the voyage of the _Mayflower_, and this place of pilgrimage for
descendants of those New Englanders.
The greatest point of vantage in all Plymouth is the great open space
beside the citadel.
It is the Hoe. What the Rialto was to Venice, what the Hard to
Portsmouth, the Sandhill to Newcastle-on-Tyne, the Broomielaw to Glasgow,
that was the Hoe to Plymouth of old. From it, let us never forget, on a
memorable day of 1588, the “Invincible” Armada was sighted; that proud
fleet which was to conquer England, and place the foot of Spain upon
our necks, and the spiritual domination of the Pope of Rome over our
consciences. History tells us that the King of Spain was not making
that unprovoked attack upon us which the simple legends of an earlier
and uncritical age would have us believe, and we know that he was but
seeking a very natural revenge for the piracies Drake and others had long
practised upon his ships and foreign possessions; both sides played the
same lawless game, only in those days Spain was the richer country and
her treasure galleons the easier prey.
How did Elizabeth’s captains await the coming of the foe? Cheerily and
calmly enough, though their ships were few and small, and parsimony at
the fountain-head of State forbade the proper measures being taken in the
teeth of this long-threatened danger. Stout hearts and ready seamanship,
aided by the providential tempest that wrecked the stately ships of
Spain, served our turn, and Old England came victorious through that
time of storm and stress, as she has since come through many another, by
favour of Providence and through the handiwork of brave hearts alone.
Statesmanship and the proper preparations of Government had been to seek,
as they commonly are. Was ever there another so happy-go-lucky—and so
lucky—a country?
I like—and all Englishmen must needs like—to think of the proud spirit
of that gallant company of captains assembled upon the Hoe at their game
of bowls, when news of the Armada sighted off the Lizard, and coming
with the south-westerly wind up Channel, gave them momentary pause.
There were gathered together Lord, Howard of Effingham, the Lord High
Admiral of England, and with him were Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and
other great captains, among others of lesser fame. It was like to be a
crushing force that was advancing toward our shores, for it numbered no
fewer than one hundred and thirty-five men-o’-war, with crews of 8,000
men and 19,000 soldiers. But so confident were that gallant company of
their capacity to resist invasion that—so the story from that time has
run—on the suggestion of Sir Francis Drake, who boldly asserted that
there was plenty time to finish their game first and thrash the Spaniards
afterwards, they elected to complete their bout of bowls.
I will not seek the authority upon which that brave old tradition rests,
and a malison, I say, upon all who would whittle away our most cherished
beliefs. Cold-blooded commentators tell us that the famous expression,
“The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders,” was not uttered, and declare,
contrary from general belief, that the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo
never said, “Up Guards, and at ’em!” and very likely some one, somewhere,
has made hash of the heart-stirring tradition of Plymouth Hoe and claimed
to prove something craven and mean. Sufficient for me, however, the story
with which the Muse of History has hitherto been content.
For centuries the memories of that soul-stirring victory over the
Invincible abode only in the minds of Englishmen and between the covers
of history-books, but in these latter days, these post-heroic days of
criticism and commemoration, when all the great men are dead and all the
great deeds done, and we have for some time been engaged upon raising
monuments to the deeds and to the men who wrought them, or criticising
and explaining the why and the how and the uses, or the uselessness it
may be, of those men and the work of their hands,—in these latter days,
I say, an Armada Memorial has been set up upon the historic Hoe. It is a
tall pedestal, embellished with bronze plates and medallions, and bearing
the inscription, “He blew with His winds and they were scattered,” and
with the virago figure of a helmeted Britannia rushing in tempestuous
petticoats, atop. Close at hand is the statue of Sir Francis Drake, that
brilliant member of a brilliant group of Devonian Elizabethans; one who,
like Raleigh, in his time played many parts, was foremost among those
scourges of Spain we bred in those spacious days, pirate, filibuster,
patriot, benefactor, and the first to circumnavigate the globe. Little
wonder, then, that the name of Drake is honoured, even yet, in Plymouth.
They honour his memory so jealously every year, at the Corporation visit
to the weirs, not because of his martial exploits and the services he
rendered the nation, but for the benefit he conferred upon Plymouth by
bringing its water-supply from the inexhaustible springs of Dartmoor; and
thus, in piously exclaiming, “May the descendants of him who brought us
water never want for wine,” the Mayor sinks the repute of the Imperialist
of the Elizabethan age in that of the local benefactor.
The improving hand of modern times has indeed improved away much of the
outward and visible romance of the Hoe, which, from the rugged cliff-top
common of Elizabeth’s time, whence the great captains, roused from
their historic game of bowls, first glimpsed the dreaded Armada, has
been flattened out into trim lawns, and provided with broad gravelled
promenade paths, like the veriest urban park or recreation ground. All
the forces that make for the commonplace and the obvious have been let
loose upon the Hoe, and much of its highly picturesque character has been
lost under the treatment of the surveyor and the landscape gardener. But
this historic spot can never be quite spoiled, so long as it continues
to look out upon Plymouth Sound, and nothing less than a cataclysm of
Nature can alter that outlook.
[Illustration: THE CITADEL GATE.]
Consider how exceptional the site. A hundred and fifty feet above the
sea, it looks straight out to the Channel, three miles away, with the
many square miles of glorious Plymouth Sound in between, enclosed to
right and left by the wooded heights of Mount Edgcumbe and the terraced
hills of Mount Batten and Bovisand. Drake’s Island, immediately in front
of the Hoe, and looking so near, is a mile away, and at the distance of
another two miles is the famous Breakwater. The Hoe thus stands at the
head of one of the finest harbours in the world: finest alike from the
seafaring and the picturesque points of view; but it has yet another
function—or had, in those days before the giant ordnance of modern times
was dreamt of—for it is situated prominently between the further inlets
of the Catwater and the Hamoaze, where, unsuspected by the ill-informed
enemies of other centuries, lay the wealth of Plymouth. Then it was that
the Citadel, built upon the Hoe, was capable of challenging the foe,
wishful of sending exploratory keels up the many creeks and estuaries
that run in every direction inland, like the spreading fingers of a hand.
The citadel is a fine, impressive piece of late seventeenth-century
work, and although it was obsolete as a defence centuries ago, appeals
very strongly to the layman in fortification, to whom battlements and
castellated architecture appeal more forcibly than the earthworks of
yonder forts semicircling the crescented hills, from Staddon Heights and
Bovisand in Devon, to Tregantle and Screasdon in Cornwall.
Off the Hoe, in the most commanding position, disputing, if need were,
the entrance to Mill Bay, the Catwater and the Hamoaze, is the great crag
now known as Drake’s Island. It is a kind of islanded Gibraltar, a nest
of forts and batteries of a calibre not generally known, but reputed
immensely strong. Drake’s Island is not accessible to the public, and
like all mysteries, is looked upon with awe. In the old days, when it was
St. Nicholas Island, the place made an ideal prison, as regicides and
recusants discovered in the reign of Charles the Second.
That was a worthy and a noble idea by which Smeaton’s old
lighthouse-tower, superseded from its watch and ward over the Eddystone,
was rebuilt on the Hoe in 1882. From the gallery of it you may glimpse
its successor, diminished by the distance of fourteen miles to the
semblance of a tiny stalk rising lonely amidst the waste of waters. It
was no reflection upon the stability of the tower that it was found
necessary to remove it, after it had safely weathered the storms of a
hundred and twenty years in that exposed situation. It was the reef on
which it stood that had decayed. The interior of this wave-washed tower,
come ashore again after so many years, is open to inspection, and there,
around the cornice of what was the store-room, you read the expression
of the piety of those who built, in the text, “Except the Lord build the
house, they labour in vain that build it,” while above the lantern is the
further inscription, “24th August, 1759, _Laus Deo_.”
Unhappily for the romantic associations of the Hoe, fifth-rate and
utterly unhistoric streets and tramways conspire to render sordid the
immediate neighbourhood, and the place-name has itself been, time
beyond the memory of man, the sport of the H-less. It was H. J. Byron,
the dramatist, who made a crushing retort to an actor, who, late for
rehearsal, had excused himself by saying he had been for a “walk round
the ’oe.” “Next time,” said Byron, “don’t wander so far. Take a stroll
round the H.”