Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact, inland or
on the sea, have no attractions for me and I was more than satisfied
with a day or two of Sidmouth. Then one evening I heard for the first
time of a place called Branscomb--a village near the sea, over by Beer
and Seaton, near the mouth of the Axe, and the account my old host gave
me seemed so attractive that on the following day I set out to find
it. Further information about the unknown village came to me in a
very agreeable way in the course of my tramp. A hotter walk I never
walked--no, not even when travelling across a flat sunburnt treeless
plain, nearer than Devon by many degrees to the equator. One wonders why
that part of Devon which lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actually
hotter than other regions which undoubtedly have a higher temperature.
After some hours of walking with not a little of uphill and downhill,
I began to find the heat well-nigh intolerable. I was on a hard dusty
glaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on either side. Not a breath of
air was stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud appeared.
If the vertical sun had poured down water instead of light and heat on
me my clothing could not have clung to me more uncomfortably. Coming at
length to a group of two or three small cottages at the roadside, I went
into one and asked for something to quench my thirst--cider or milk.
There was only water to be had, but it was good to drink, and the woman
of the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was glad to rest an
hour and talk with her in her cool kitchen. There are English counties
where it would perhaps be said of such a woman that she was one in a
thousand; but the Devonians are a comely race. In that blessed county
the prettiest peasants are not all diligently gathered with the dew
on them and sent away to supply the London flower-market. Among
the best-looking women of the peasant class there are two distinct
types--the rich in colour and the colourless. A majority are perhaps
intermediate, but the two extreme types may be found in any village or
hamlet; and when seen side by side--the lily and the rose, not to say
the peony--they offer a strange and beautiful contrast.
This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any pale town
lady; and although she was the mother of several children, the face was
extremely youthful in appearance; it seemed indeed almost girlish in its
delicacy and innocent expression when she looked up at me with her blue
eyes shaded by her white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six in
number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms--all clean and
healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces.
I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired the
distance.
"Branscomb--are you going there? Oh, I wonder what you will think of
Branscombe!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyes
sparkling with excitement.
What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and what did
it matter what any stranger thought of it?
"But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless words. "I
was born there, and married there, and have always lived at Branscombe
with my people until my husband got work in this place; then we had to
leave home and come and live in this cottage."
And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that Branscombe
was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That she had been to other
villages and towns--Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis
and Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place
like Branscombe--not one that she liked half so well. How strange that I
had never been there--had never even heard of it! People that went
there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was such a funny,
tumbledown old place; but they always said afterwards that there was no
sweeter spot on the earth.
Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in the
excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before me. A pretty
sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have been
taken for a woman of Spain--the most natural, perhaps the most lovable,
of the daughters of earth. But all at once she remembered that I was a
stranger, and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Her
shame, too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural; for
we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more clothing than
the Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the soul," as the
late Professor Kitchen Parker would have said; and that which was only
becoming modesty in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rank
prudishness.
In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift, running
between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand,
like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded. This was the Branscombe,
and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way
ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side,
and on the other the widely separated groups and little rows of thatched
cottages.
Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, the end of the
village nearest to the sea, within ten minutes' walk of the shingly
beach. Here I was glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stony
waste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits live, and had for
neighbours the adder, linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey titlark
that soared up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little
tune. On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted and had come
to seek--the wildness and freedom of untilled earth; an unobstructed
prospect, hills beyond hills of malachite, stretching away along the
coast into infinitude, long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide expanse
and everlasting freshness of ocean. And the village itself, the little
old straggling place that had so grand a setting, I quickly found
that the woman in the cottage had not succeeded in giving me a false
impression of her dear home. It was just such a quaint unimproved,
old-world, restful place as she had painted. It was surprising to find
that there were many visitors, and one wondered where they could all
stow themselves. The explanation was that those who visited Branscombe
knew it, and preferred its hovels to the palaces of the fashionable
seaside town. No cottage was too mean to have its guest. I saw a lady
push open the cracked and warped door of an old barn and go in, pulling
the door to after her--it was her bed-sitting-room. I watched a party
of pretty merry girls marching, single file, down a narrow path past a
pig-sty, then climb up a ladder to the window of a loft at the back of a
stone cottage and disappear within. It was their bedroom. The relations
between the villagers and their visitors were more intimate and kind
than is usual. They lived more together, and were more free and easy in
company. The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their day's work
they would sit out-of-doors on the ground to smoke their pipes; and
where the narrow crooked little street was narrowest--at my end of the
village--when two men would sit opposite each other, each at his own
door, with legs stretched out before them, their boots would very nearly
touch in the middle of the road. When walking one had to step over
their legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and join in the
conversation. When daylight faded the village was very dark--no lamp
for the visitors--and very silent, only the low murmur of the sea on the
shingle was audible, and the gurgling sound of a swift streamlet flowing
from the hill above and hurrying through the village to mingle with the
Branscombe lower down in the meadows. Such a profound darkness and quiet
one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where there
were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and infinitely
refreshing.
No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one square
path of yellow light was visible. To enjoy the sensation I went out and
sat down, and listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound of
the swift-flowing streamlet--that sweet low music of running water to
which the reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to
imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.
A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the coast east
of the village; it was bold and precipitous in places, and from the
summit of the cliff a very fine view of the coast-line on either hand
could be obtained. Best of all, the face of the cliff itself was the
breeding-place of some hundreds of herring-gulls. The eggs at the period
of my visit were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that
stage both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state of
anxious suspense. I had seen a good many colonies of this gull before at
various breeding stations on the coast--south, west, and east--but never
in conditions so singularly favourable as at this spot. From the vale
where the Branscombe pours its clear waters through rough masses of
shingle into the sea the ground to the east rises steeply to a height of
nearly five hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many
another, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in some former
time, there has been a landslip, a large portion of the cliff at its
highest part falling below and forming a sloping mass a chalky soil
mingled with huge fragments of rock, which lies like a buttress against
the vertical precipice and seems to lend it support. The fall must have
occurred a very long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the
rude slope--hawthorn, furze, and ivy--has an ancient look. Here are huge
masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in their forms ruined
castles, towers, and churches, some of them completely overgrown with
ivy. On this rough slope, under the shelter of the cliff, with the sea
at its feet, the villagers have formed their cultivated patches. The
patches, wildly irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground
as to suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all
fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of rock, deep
fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn and furze bushes.
Altogether the effect was very singular the huge rough mass of jumbled
rock and soil, the ruin wrought by Nature in one of her Cromwellian
moods, and, scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots or
patches of cultivated smoothness--potato rows, green parallel
lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant
cabbage-globes--each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves,
crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a
narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots;
while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repass
wholly occupied with their own affairs.
I spent hours of rare happiness at this spot in watching the birds.
I could not have seen and heard them to such advantage if their
breeding-place had been shared with other species. Here the
herring-gulls had the rock to themselves, and looked their best in their
foam-white and pearl-grey plumage and yellow legs and beaks. While I
watched them they watched me; not gathered in groups, but singly or in
pairs, scattered up and down all over the face of the precipice above
me, perched on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock. Standing motionless
thus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like sculptured figures
of gulls, set up on the projections against the rough dark wall of
rock, just as sculptured figures of angels and saintly men and women
are placed in niches on a cathedral front. At first they appeared quite
indifferent to my presence, although in some instances near enough
for their yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they were very
silent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their whiteness
something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to and fro along the
face of the cliff, purely for the delight of bathing in the warm lucent
air. Gradually a change came over them. One by one those that were on
the wing dropped on to some projection, until they had all settled down,
and, letting my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it
was plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had made the
discovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old travel-stained clothes
and tweed hat I might have passed for a Branscombe villager, but I
did no hoeing and digging in one of the cultivated patches; and when
I deliberately sat down on a rock to watch them, they noticed it and
became suspicious; and as time went on and I still remained immovable,
with my eyes fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and
turned to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and
came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and join in
the loud chorus of alarm. It was a wonderful sound. Not like the tempest
of noise that may be heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, and
at many other stations where birds of several species mix their various
voices--the yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming
scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's wonderful
onomatopoetic lines. Here there was only one species, with a clear
resonant cry, and as every bird uttered that one cry, and no other,
a totally different effect was produced. The herring-gull and lesser
black-backed gull resemble each other in language as they do in general
appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike the guttural
black-headed and common gull. But the herring-gull has a shriller, more
piercing voice, and resembles the black-backed species just as, in human
voices, a boy's clear treble resembles a baritone. Both birds have a
variety of notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with danger,
utter one powerful importunate cry, which is repeated incessantly until
the danger is over. And as the birds breed in communities, often very
populous, and all clamour together, the effect of so many powerful and
unisonant voices is very grand; but it differs in the two species,
owing to the quality of their voices being different; the storm of
sound produced by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the
herring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic.
It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of sharpness
and resonance was heightened by the position of the birds, perched
motionless, scattered about on the face of the perpendicular wall of
rock, all with their beaks turned in my direction, raining their cries
upon me. It was not a monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; for
after two or three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and the
cries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread again, bird
after bird joining the outcry; and after a while there would be another
lull, and so on, wave following wave of sound. I could have spent hours,
and the hours would have seemed like minutes, listening to that strange
chorus of ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlike
that of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which I had ever
heard. When by way of a parting caress and benediction (given and
received) I dipped my hands in Branscombe's clear streamlet it was with
a feeling of tender regret that was almost a pain. For who does not make
a little inward moan, an Eve's Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leave
thee, Paradise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot, however brief
his stay in it may have been? But when I had climbed to the summit of
the great down on the east side of the valley and looked on the wide
land and wider sea flashed with the early sunlight I rejoiced full of
glory at my freedom. For invariably when the peculiar character and
charm of a place steals over and takes possession of me I begin to fear
it, knowing from long experience that it will be a painful wrench to get
away and that get away sooner or later I must. Now I was free once more,
a wanderer with no ties, no business to transact in any town, no worries
to make me miserable like others, nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go, inland, towards
Axminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton, Axmouth, and so on to
Lyme Regis, I turned to have a last look and say a last good-bye to
Branscombe and could hardly help waving my hand to it.
Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse-maker, so as to say my
farewell in numbers? My answer was, Because I am too much occupied in
seeing. There is no room and time for 'tranquillity,' since I want to go
on to see something else. As Blake has it: "Natural objects always did
and do, weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me."
We know however that they didn't quite quench it in him.