THE SOUTH DEVON COAST

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Portsmouth Road, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.

The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.

The Bath Road: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.

The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway.

The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.

The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway.

The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway.

The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road: Sport and History on an East Anglian Turnpike.

The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road: The Ready Way to South Wales. Two Vols.

The Brighton Road: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.

The Hastings Road and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”

Cycle Rides Round London.

A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.

Stage Coach and Mail in Days of Yore. Two Vols.

The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby Legends.”

The Hardy Country: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.

The Dorset Coast.

The Old Inns of Old England. Two Vols.

Love in the Harbour: A Longshore Comedy.

The Manchester and Glasgow Road. Two Vols.

[In the Press.

Frontispiece] THE MEWSTONE. [After J. M. W. Turner

THE SOUTH DEVON
COAST

BY
CHARLES G. HARPER

“Devonshire is the country of red earth, ruddy apples, rosy cheeks, and honest men.”

Raleigh.

London: CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd.
1907

PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The South Devon Coast

Lyme Regis to Torquay

The South Devon Coast

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

If the map of Devon be measured across in a straight line, it will be found that, from Lyme Regis, where it joins Dorsetshire, to King’s Tamerton on the River Tamar, where Devonshire at its westernmost extremity looks across to Saltash, in Cornwall, South Devon is fifty-five miles across. That line, however, would miss quite two-thirds of the coast, and would pass so far inland as Ashburton, on the borders of Dartmoor; the profile of the South Devon Coast exhibiting a remarkably bold and rugged south-westerly trend out of a straight line, westward of the Exe, and an almost equally bold north-westerly direction after passing Prawle Point. The actual coast-line is therefore very much greater, and is prolonged by the many important estuaries and their subsidiary arms; such, for example, as that of the Exe, which is navigable as far as the port of Exeter, nine miles from the open sea; the Teign, four miles; the Dart, nine miles; Kingsbridge River, seven miles; the Avon, three miles; the Erme, two miles; the Yealm, four miles; and the Hamoaze and Tamar, from Devonport to Calstock, ten miles. In one way and another, the South Devon Coast, tracing the creeks and the coastguard-paths, is not less than one hundred and eighty-nine miles in length.

It is a historic coast, and plentifully marked with towns and villages; with this result, that it is by no means to be treated of shortly. Devon has produced fully her share of great men, and many of them have been born within sight and sound of the sea; while the mere mention of Torquay, Brixham, Dartmouth, and Plymouth, recalls, not merely local annals, but prominent events in the history of England.

As the South Devon Coast is the most beautiful of coasts, so is it also among the most hilly. One hesitates to say that it is not the coast for exploring by means of a cycle, but certainly those who perform their touring in that sort must expect severe gradients, and must not anticipate, even so, an uninterrupted view of the actual coast; for there are many and considerable stretches along which you come to the sea only by unrideable footpaths. The pedestrian alone can explore this seaboard thoroughly, and he will find, in the tourist season, at least, that his progress is limited by the climate, which not infrequently in the months of July and August, resembles the moist and enervating heat of the great Palm House in Kew Gardens.

Lyme Regis, whence this exploration starts, is at the very door of Devonshire, and was, indeed, in recent years within an ace of being transferred from Dorset. At Lyme, which lies, as it were, at the bottom of a cup, you perceive at once the sort of thing in store for those who would fare westward: exquisite scenery combined with extravagantly steep roads.

CHAPTER II
ROUSDON—THE DOWLANDS LANDSLIP

Close by the border-line of the two counties, as you make from Lyme Regis, across the pleasant upland meadows to Uplyme, which is in Devonshire, is Middle Mill. The mill has seen its best days and no longer grinds corn, and the great wheel is idle, for the very excellent reason that the stream that once sent it ponderously revolving has been diverted. The thatched mill-house and its adjoining cottage, together with the silent wheel are, in short, in that condition of picturesque decay which spells romance to artists, who, discovering it, cannot resist a sketch. It appealed irresistibly, some years ago, to an artist in another craft; to none other, in short, than that distinguished novelist, Sir Walter Besant, who laid the scenes of his eighteenth-century story, ’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay, chiefly here and at Rousdon.

He describes Middle Mill just as it is situated: “At the back of the mill was an orchard, where the pink and red cider apples looked pleasant—they could not look sweet. Beyond the orchard was a piggery, and then you came to the bed of a stream, which was dry in summer, save for a little green damp among the stones, by the side of which was a coppice of alder-trees, and behind the alders a dark, deep wood, into which you might peer all a summer’s day and dream boundless things.”

MIDDLE MILL.

The only objection that can be taken to the verisimilitude of this description is the reference to the cider apples. As a matter of fact, they do look sweet—and are not. The novelist refers to the richly ruddy “Devonshire reds,” whose beautiful colour presupposes in the mind of strangers to cider-apples a fruit luxuriously sweet and juicy. Devonshire farmers take little care to fence their cider-apples from the stranger, who steals and tastes as a rule only one, finding with the first bite that sweetness is by no means necessarily housed within that captivating exterior.

The story is one of smuggling and of rival loves. At Middle Mill lived the miserly Joshua Meech, whose unrequited affection for Pleasance Noel, and whose revengeful jealousy, bring about all the trouble. To punish him for his betrayal of his friends to the Revenue Officers, Pleasance by night steals eight bags of his hoarded wealth from under the hearthstone, where Joshua kept his domestic bank, and hides them under the millwheel. The wheel “stood there, under a broad, sloping penthouse of heavy thatch, which made it dark in the brightest day”; and so you may find it, exactly as described, except that the penthouse is tiled, and not thatched.

The actual coast, for the six miles between Lyme Regis and Seaton is a roadless, and in parts an almost trackless, stretch of strenuous clambering among rocks and tangled thickets; among landslips old and new, and undercliffs overgrown with such a wilderness of trees and shrubs and bracken, and blackberry brakes as only Devon can produce. But for all these difficulties, perhaps because of them, the way is preferable to the hard high road that goes, a little way inland. Here, at least, “exploration” is no straining after effect, no misuse of the word.

When you have left the Cobb at Lyme Regis behind and passed the coastguard station, you have come to sheer wildness; the deserted cement works, standing amid a waste of wrecked earthy cliffs, themselves forming a not inappropriate prelude to the perfect abandonment of nature. Here the low promontory of Devonshire Point ends the Ware Cliffs; and the tangle, with the gaping fissures between the rock and earth half hidden by grass and bushes, becomes so nearly impenetrable as to render a retreat up along the boulders into Holmbush Fields absolutely necessary; Holmbush Fields, with their rustic stiles and hedgerow timber, and the winding footpath across, giving a sober and graceful interlude; and then you come upon a mile or so of wonderful pathway, roughly shaped amid the wild jungle that here has overgrown a tract of oozy and boggy undercliff, formed by a century or more of continual landslides. There surely is no more beautiful wilderness of the particular type in England, than this: a very great deal of its beauty being due to the happy circumstance that neither Lyme Regis nor Seaton are as yet large enough to admit of it being overrun. Hardy pioneers have beaten out the devious pathway, and the few who have followed in their footsteps have kept it from being again overgrown. Spring—the month of May—is the ideal time for this part of the coast; when the birds have again wakened to song, and the young foliage is tender and the landsprings have not been dried up.

Even the pioneers have not made all the way easy; for you come at last to what Devonshire people call “zoggy plaaces,” where the willow and hazel bushes stand in mossy ground, and the primroses grow an unwonted size, by reason of the excessive moisture. Here you must calculate every step and nicely test the mossy hummocks before fully trusting them; finally emerging upon an open plain midway between the sea below and tall cliffs above; a plain where rocks of every shape and size have been hurled down in extraordinary confusion. Here the explorer requires not a little of the suppleness and agility of the chamois, and growing at last weary of bounding hazardously from crag to crag, climbs with extraordinary labour, past monstrous grey, ivy-grown spires and pinnacles of limestone, up a winding footpath in the face of the cliff, to where the Whitlands Coastguard station looks down upon the tumbled scene. From this point the coastguard-path lies along the cliffs’ edge, to where the cliffs die down to the waterside in the deep coombe in whose woods the sea comes lapping at Charton Bay. Here a limekiln, that looks romantic enough for a castle, stands on the beach, with the dense woods climbing backwards, and on the skyline the roofs and tower and chimneys of Rousdon.

ROUSDON.

Rousdon is a remarkable place. It shows you what may be done in the wholesale grocery way of business, for the estate was enclosed, and the great mansion built by Sir Henry Peek, between 1871 and 1883. When that wealthy baronet set about becoming a landed proprietor here, he found a wild expanse stretching down from the high land by the main road between Lyme and Seaton, toward the sea, and he enclosed some two hundred and fifty acres, and on the upper part built a magnificent house, whose beauties we will not stop to describe in this place, because, if a beginning were made with it, and the collections of various sorts within, it would be no easy task to conclude. He found here, amid these solitudes, the ruinous little church of St. Pancras, of Rousdon, used as the outhouse of a farm. Its rector was an absentee, not greatly needed, for the entire parish numbered but sixteen persons, all employed on the farm itself. A new church was built in the grounds, and a member of the Peek family appointed rector; and thus we see the remarkable spectacle of a parish as self-contained as any box of sardines; with the whole of the inhabitants employed upon the estate, and free trade in religion abolished. I think no monarchy is quite so absolute.

A remarkable feature of Rousdon mansion is the extensive use, internally, of Sicilian marble. The great staircase, and other portions of the house are built of it, and a beautiful dairy is wholly decorated with this material. It came here in a romantic and wholly unexpected way; having been the cargo of a ship wrecked on the rocks off Rousdon at the time when plans for the building were being made.

By more undercliff footpaths you come at length, through the steamy hollows of Rousdon, to that “lion” of this district, the great Dowlands landslip, an immense wedge of cliff and agricultural land that on the Christmas night of 1839 suddenly parted its moorings with the mainland and made for the sea, halting before quite immersing itself, and ever since presenting the extraordinary spectacle of a jagged gorge winding between two sheer walls of cliff, with weird isolated limestone pillars, from one to two hundred feet in height, thrusting up here and there. It is the Landscape of Dream, and only saved from being that of nightmare by the soft beauty of the enshrouding verdure that has clothed the place since then. The well-known landslip in the Isle of Wight is altogether smaller and inferior to this: and more hackneyed.

The cause of this extraordinary happening is found in the geological features of this immediate neighbourhood; the limestone and other rock resting on a deep stratum of sand, which in its turn was based on blue clay. Springs percolating through the sand were probably obstructed, and the water found its way in unusual quantities to the blue clay, which in course of time became one vast butterslide, and thus brought about a landslip that engulfed fields and orchards, and sunk two cottages, unharmed fortunately, to a level one hundred and seventy feet lower than they had before occupied.

A charge of sixpence is attempted at a farm at the Seaton end, to view this remarkable place, and it is worth an entrance-fee; but explorers coming from Lyme Regis are not unlikely to stumble into the place, unaware; and in any case the attempt is an impudent and illegal imposition, for the question of free access was fought out successfully some years ago by the Lyme Regis corporation.

THE LANDSLIP.

Word-painting is all very well as a pastime, but the result makes poor reading. We will, therefore, not emulate the local guide-books; which, to be sure, transcend the descriptive art so greatly as to come out at the other end, as works of unconscious humour. Thus, when in those pages we read of “Dame Nature,” and “Old Father Time,” working these miracles of landslides, we get a mental picture of a stupendous old couple that fairly takes the breath away. Moreover, the scene is compared with “the island home of Robinson Crusoe,” and likened to “the wildness of Salvator Rosa or the fairy scenes of Claude,” while “the huge boulders you can convert into sphinxes,” and find “deep and thickly wooded dingles, in which lions and tigers could lurk unseen.” Still more, we read: “If you give full scope to your imagination, you may fancy that the pale moonlight would inhabit the ruins with the spirits of those who lived in the ages of mythology.” In short, if these directions are faithfully followed, and these lions and tigers and these spirits of mythological creatures—the “Mrs. Harrises” of ancient times—are duly conjured up, the too-imaginative explorer is likely to emerge fully qualified for a lunatic asylum.

The exceptional beauty of the scene does not require any of these fantastical aids to appreciation, and the hoar ivied rocks, the fairy glades, the brakes and willow woods are sufficient in themselves.

The mile-long beauty of the great Dowlands Landslip having been traversed, the way lies across the down over Haven Cliff, the striking headland that shuts in Seaton from the east.

CHAPTER III
SEATON

Down there lies Seaton, looking very new, along the inner side of a shingly beach, with the strath of the river Axe running, flat and green, up inland to the distant hills, and the silvery Axe itself looping and twisting away, as far as eye can reach.

But Seaton is not so new as might be supposed. Down there, on the wall that runs along the crest of the beach, is painted in huge black letters the one word Moridunum, which to passengers coming in by steamboat seems the most prominent feature in the place, and at first sight is generally taken to be the impudent advertisement of some new quack electuary, tooth-paste, hair-wash, or what not? “Use Moridunum,” you unconsciously say, “and be sure you get it”; or “Moridunum for the hair,” “Moridunum: won’t wash clothes,” and so forth. Seaton claims—and, it is evident, claims it boldly—to be the Moridunum of Roman Britain; but is it? In short, seeking it here, have you got it?

SEATON: MOUTH OF THE AXE

That is a question which various warring schools of antiquaries would dearly like settled. The Roman grip upon Britain weakened greatly as it came westward, and Roman roads in Devon are few and uncertain. The famous Antonine Itinerary—that most classic of all road-books—gives but one station between Durnovaria, Dorchester, and Isca Damnoniorum, Exeter. That is Moridunum, this ancient and well-gnawed bone of contention. The name was a Roman adaptation, either of the British Mor-y-dun or sea-town, or Mawr-y-dun, “great hill-fort”; which, it is impossible to say. All depends upon which of two routes was selected to Exeter. If it was the inland route, the likelihood rests with the great hill-top Roman camp at Hembury, near Honiton; while if it was the way by Axminster and Sidmouth, then Seaton or High Peak, Sidmouth, is the site.

Whatever may some day prove to be the solution of the mystery, it is certain, from remains of Roman villas discovered near Seaton, that it was a favourite place of residence; and therefore it is not so new as it looks. Indeed, in days long gone by, before the mouth of the River Axe had been well-nigh choked with shingle, Seaton and the now tiny village of Axmouth, a mile up-stream, were ports. “Ther hath beene,” said Leland, writing in the reign of Henry the Eighth, “a very notable haven at Seton. But now ther lyith between the two pointes of the old haven a mighty rigge and barre of pible stones in the very mouth of it.”

The mighty ridge is still here, and has acquired so permanent a character that part of modern Seaton is built on it, while cattle graze on the pastures that grow where the ships used to ride at anchor.

The place was become in Leland’s time a “mene fisschar town.” “It hath,” he continued, “beene far larger when the haven was good;” and so, looking at the ancient church, away back from the sea, it would seem.

Many attempts were made to cut a passage through the shingle, but what the labourers removed, the sea replaced with other. The last attempt was about 1830, when John Hallett of Stedcombe dug a channel and built a quay at the very mouth of the river, under the towering mass of Haven Cliff. Modern Seaton should gratefully erect a statue to this endeavourer, for thus he kept the tiny port going, and the coals and timber that would have then been so costly by land carriage came cheaply to his quays. Then, after a while, came the railway, and his wharves were deserted. There, under the cliff, they remain to this day, and the little custom-house has been converted into a kind of seashore bathing-place and belvedere, attached to the beautiful residence of Stedcombe, nestling on the bosom of the down.

When a branch railway was opened to Seaton, in 1868, the town began to grow. A very slow growth at first, but in the last few years it has expanded suddenly into a thriving town, and the astonished visitor in these latter days perceives such amazing developments as a giant hotel and a theatre; and if he be a visitor over Sunday, will observe the might and majesty of railways exercised in the bringing down from London of day trippers, who set out from Waterloo at an unimaginably early hour and are dumped down upon Seaton beach at midday. He will witness scrambling hordes, indecently thirsty, besieging the refreshment-places of the town, and if he be a Superior Person, will, with tumultuous feelings of relief, see the crowded train-load depart as the summer evening draws in and the church-bells begin to chime. The sheer Average Man, however, who witnesses this Sunday irruption, will merely wonder how any one can find it worth while to expend six shillings on an excursion ticket, entitling him to make a double journey of three hundred and four miles and fourteen hours, solely for the fleeting pleasure of five hours on a shingly beach.

What renders that excursion so popular? Well, partly a love of nature, and very greatly that love of a bargain which makes many keen people purchase what they do not want. It is quite conceivable that there are many people who would want to be paid a great deal more than six shillings for the discomfort of fourteen hours railway travel on a Sunday.

The dominant note of Seaton is its apparent newness. From the golf links and the club-house on the down by Haven Cliff on the east, to Seaton Hole on the west, it looks a creation of yesterday, and the casual visitor is incredulous when told of a fourteenth-century parish church. But such a building exists, nearly a mile inland, with a hoary tower and curious monuments; among them one to “Abraham Sydenham, Salt Officer for 40 years”: an inscription reminiscent of the old salt-pans industry in the levels by the Axe, and of the long-forgotten salt-tax. That most famous smuggler of the West of England, Jack Rattenbury, lies in Seaton churchyard, but no stone marks the spot.

Seaton Hole, just mentioned, is the innermost nook of Seaton Bay, just under the great mass of White Cliff; called white only relatively to the surrounding cliffs, which are red. White Cliff, in fact, is rather light browns and greys, with masses of green vegetation, and incidental whitish streaks. Here is the exclusive part of Seaton, with a fine bathing-beach, and numbers of very fine new residences—not merely houses, mark you—cresting the best view-points. And up-along and over the hill, ever so steeply, and then down, still more steeply, and you are at Beer.

WHITE CLIFF, SEATON HOLE.

CHAPTER IV
JACK RATTENBURY, SMUGGLER—BEER

The name of Beer is famous in smuggling annals, for it was in the then rather desperate little fisher-village that Jack Rattenbury, smuggler, who lies in Seaton churchyard was born, in 1778. Smugglers and highwaymen in general are figures that loom dimly in the pages of history, and, like figures seen in a fog, bulk a good deal larger than they ought. But the famous Jack Rattenbury is an exception. He does not, when we come to close quarters with him, diminish into an undersized, overrated breaker of laws. Instead, he grows bigger, the more you learn: and a great deal may be learned of him, for he printed and published the story of his life in 1837.

It seems that he was the son of a Beer shoemaker, who, by going for a sailor and never being heard of again, vindicated the wisdom of that proverb which advises the cobbler to stick to his last. Young Jack Rattenbury never knew his father. He began his adventures at nine years of age, as boy on a fishing-smack, and then became one of the crew of a privateer which set out from Brixham during the war with France and Spain, to prey upon the enemy: meeting instead, at the very outset, with a French frigate, with the unexpected result that privateer and crew were speedily taken, as prize and prisoners, to Bordeaux. Escaping on an American ship, he at last reached home again, and engaged for a time in fishing. But fishing was poor employment for an adventurous spirit, and Rattenbury soon found his way into smuggling. He first took part in the exploits of a Lyme Regis boat, trading in that illegitimate way to the Channel Islands, and then found more lawful employment on a brig called The Friends, of Beer and Seaton. But the very first trip was disastrous. Sailing from Bridport to Tenby, for culm, he again experienced capture: by a French privateer on this occasion. The privateer put a prize-crew of four men on the brig, with orders to take her to the nearest French port. “Then,” says Rattenbury, “when the privateer was gone, the prize-master ordered me to go aloft and loose the main-topgallant sail. When I came down, I perceived that he was steering very wildly, through ignorance of the coast, and I offered to take the helm, to which he consented, and directed me to steer south-east by north. He then went below, and was engaged in drinking and carousing with his companions. They likewise sent me up a glass of grog occasionally, which animated my spirits, and I began to conceive a hope, not only of escaping, but also of being revenged on the enemy.”

The artful Rattenbury then steered up to Portland, and when the master asked what land it was, replied “Alderney.” Presently they came off St. Aldhelm’s Head, and were distinctly suspicious when told it was Cape La Hogue.

“We were now within a league of Swanage, and I persuaded them to go on shore to get a pilot. They then hoisted out a boat, into which I got with three of them. We now came so near shore that people hailed us. My companions began to swear, and said the people spoke English. This I denied, and urged them to hail again; but as they were rising to do so, I plunged overboard, and came up the other side of the boat. They then struck at me with their oars, and snapped a pistol at me, but it missed fire. The boat in which they were now took water, and finding they were engaged in a vain pursuit, they rowed away as fast as possible, to regain the vessel.”

Rattenbury swam ashore and sent messengers, with the result that the Nancy, revenue cutter, went in pursuit of the brig and, recapturing her, brought her into Cowes the same night.

He was then forcibly enlisted in the Navy by the Press Gang, and, escaping from His Majesty’s service, went cod-fishing off Newfoundland. Returning, the ship he was on was captured by a Spanish privateer and taken into Vigo. Escaping with his usual dexterity, he reached home and added another thrilling item to his hazardous career by getting married, April 17th, 1801. After a quiet interval of piloting, he resumed smuggling, in earnest; with the usual ups and downs of fortune incidental to that shy trade.

Having made several successful voyages, and feeling pretty confident, he went ashore to carouse with some friends in one of the old taverns of Beer. In the same room were a sergeant and several privates of the South Devon Militia, among others. “After drinking two or three pots of beer,” he says, “the sergeant, whose name was Hill, having heard my name mentioned by some of my companions, went out with his men, and soon they returned again, having armed themselves with swords and muskets. The sergeant then advanced towards me and said, ‘You are my prisoner. You are a deserter, and must go along with me.’ For a moment I was much terrified, knowing that if I was taken I should, in all probability, be obliged to go aboard the fleet; and this wrought up my mind to a pitch of desperation. I endeavoured, however, to keep as cool as possible, and in answer to his charge, I said, ‘Sergeant, you are surely labouring under an error; I have done nothing that can authorise you in taking me up or detaining me. You must certainly have mistaken me for some other person.’”

This shows us, pretty clearly, that some one must have written Rattenbury’s reminiscences for him. He probably was incapable of such book-English, and certainly would not have spoken anything else than the broadest of Devonshire speech. However, he describes how he drew the sergeant into a parley and how, while it was going on, he jumped through a trap-door into the cellar. “I then threw off my jacket and shirt, to prevent any one from holding me, and having armed myself with a reaping-hook and a knife, which I had in my pocket, I threw myself into an attitude of defence at the entrance, which was a half-hatch door, the lower part of which I shut, and then declared that I would kill the first man that came near me, and that I would not be taken from the spot alive. At this the sergeant was evidently terrified; but he said to his men, ‘Soldiers, do your duty; advance and seize him.’ To which they replied, ‘Sergeant, you proposed it; take the lead and set us an example, and we will follow.’ No one offered to advance, and I remained in the position I have described for four hours, holding them at bay.”

The sergeant sent for aid, but before that arrived the women of Beer rushed in with an artful story of shipwreck, attracting the soldiers’ attention. Rattenbury, seizing the opportunity, dashed among them, half-naked, and escaped to the beach, where he hastily took boat and went off to his own vessel, and safety.

In 1806 he, his crew, and his cargo of spirit-tubs were captured by the Duke of York cutter, when returning from Alderney. He was fined £100, and with his companions was sentenced to the alternative of imprisonment or service on board a man-o’-war. They chose the sea, and were accordingly shipped aboard the brig Kate, in the Downs; but soon, while the officers were all more or less drunk, he found an opportunity of escaping, and was presently home again.

The smuggling exploits of this master of the art were endless. Perhaps the most amusing—to the reader, at any rate—is that incident at Seaton Hole, where, one dark night, going up the cliff with a keg on his back, one of a cargo he had just landed, he was so unfortunate as to stumble over a donkey, which began to bray so horribly that, what with his trumpeting and the noise of the smuggler’s fall, a Revenue officer, sleeping at the post of duty, was aroused, and seized forty kegs, nearly the whole of that run.

After serving three terms of imprisonment for smuggling, and for being unable to pay a fine of £4,500, Rattenbury’s many adventures came to an end in 1833. His later years were devoted to fishing and piloting, and between whiles, to composing his reminiscences. In those pages you read this rather pitiful little note: “The smuggler gratefully acknowledges the kindness of the Right Honourable Lord Rolle, who now allows him one shilling per week for life.” What lavish generosity!

That was a picturesque village in which this Old Master and prime exponent of smuggling lived. The one street led steeply down to the sea, with a clear rivulet purling along the gutter, with quaint pumps at intervals and bordered by cob cottages. The peasant women sat at the doors making the pillow-lace of Devonshire, and the children, for lack of better toys, played the great game of “shop” with the fish-offal in the kennel.

BEER.

But the old Beer of this picture has vanished, and a new and smart village has arisen in its stead, with just two or three of these characteristic survivals, to make us the more bitterly regret that which we have lost. The place that was so inspiring for the artist has become an impossibility for him, except, at the cost of veracity, he dodges the Philistine surroundings of those surviving “bits.” One little circumstance shall show you how artificial this sometime unconventional and simple village has become. When it was the haunt of painters, there was none who loved Beer so much as, or visited it more constantly than, Hamilton Macallum, who died here, aged fifty-five, in 1896. He had endeared himself to the people, and they and some of his brother artists combined to set up the bronze tablet to his memory that stands in the tiny pleasure-ground or public garden in the village street. And here is the sorry humour of it, that shows the damnable artificiality of the times, which has spoiled so much of Old England. The “public garden” is kept locked through the winter and the spring, lest the children go in and spoil it; and only thrown open when the brief visitors’ season begins. There could be no more bitter indictment.

There was once a humble little church in this same street of Beer. A very humble church, but in keeping with the place. And now? Why a large and highly ornate building, infinitely pretentious and big enough for a cathedral, has arisen on the site of it. It is, however, still in keeping with Beer, for as deep calls unto deep, so across this narrow street pretentiousness bids “how d’ye do” to pretence.

There are polished marble pillars in this new church of Beer, where there should be rough-axed masonry, and a suburban high finish in place of a rustic rudeness; and the sole relics of what had once been are the two memorial tablets, themselves sufficiently rural. One is to “John, the fifth sonn of William Starr of Bere, Gent., and Dorothy his wife, which died in the plauge was here Bvried 1646.” John Starr was one of a family which, about a century earlier, had become owners of a moiety of the manor. The house he built in Beer street bears on one chimney the initials “J. S.” and on another a star, in punning allusion to his name.

The other memorial in the church is to “Edward Good, late an Industrious fisherman, who left to the Vicar and Churchwardens for the time being and their successors for ever TWENTY POUNDS in TRUST for the Poor of this Parish. The interest to be Distributed at Christmas in the proportion of two thirds at Beer and one at Seaton. He died November 7, 1804, in sixty-seventh year of his Age.”

Of the four industries of Beer—stone-quarrying smuggling, fishing, and lace-making—the shy business of smuggling has alone disappeared. Those who do not carry their explorations beyond the village street will see nothing of the stone-getting, for the quarries lie away off the road between Beer and Branscombe, where, in a cliff-like scar in the hillside they are still busily being worked.

It must be close upon two thousand years since building-stone was first won from this hillside, for the quarries originated in Roman times. Since then they have been more or less continually worked, and although the ancient caves formed by the old quarrymen in their industry have long been abandoned for the open working, they exist, dark and damp, and not altogether safe for a stranger, running hundreds of yards in labyrinthine passages into the earth. It is of Beer stone that the vaulting and the arches of the nave in Exeter Cathedral were built, 600 years ago; it was used, even earlier in the crypt of St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster; in Winchester Cathedral, and many other places; and to-day is as well appreciated as ever, huge eight and ten-ton blocks being a feature in the trucks on the railway sidings down at Seaton. It greatly resembles Bath stone in its fine texture, but is of a more creamy colour and, while softer and more easily worked when newly quarried, dries harder.

In ancient times the stone was shipped from the little cove of Beer, which was thus no inconsiderable place. To improve it, in the words of Leland: “Ther was begon a fair pere for socour of shippelettes, but ther cam such a tempest a three years sins as never in mynd of man had before bene seene in that shore”; and so the pier was washed away, and the fragments of it are all that is to be seen in the unsheltered cove at this day.

The fishermen of Beer are a swarthy race, descended, according to tradition, from the crew of a shipwrecked Spanish vessel, who found the place almost depopulated by that plague of which John Starr was a victim. They and their trawlers, which you see laboriously hauled up on the beach, are in the jurisdiction of the port of Exeter.

Here, in the semicircular cove, the summer sea laps softly among the white pebbles, as innocently as though it had never drowned a poor fisherman; and the white of the chalk cliffs, the equal whiteness of the sea-floor and the clearness of the water itself give deep glimpses down to where the seaweed unfurls its banners from rock and cranny, where the crabs are seen walking about, hesitatingly, like octogenarians, and jelly-fish float midway, lumps of transparency, like marine ghosts. The sea is green here: a light translucent ghostly green, very beautiful and at the same time, back of one’s consciousness—if you examine your feelings—a little mysterious and repellent, suggesting not merely crabs and jelly-fish, but inimical unknown things and infinite perils of the deep, sly, malignant, patiently biding their time. The green sea has not the bluff heartiness of the joyous blue.

The little cove, enclosed as it is by steep cliffs, looks for all the world like a little scene in a little theatre. You almost expect a chorus of fishermen to enter and hold forth musically on the delights of seine-fishing, but they only suggest to the contemplative stranger that it is “a fine day for a row,” and ask, in their rich Devonian tones, if you want a “bwoat.”

The white cliffs of Beer are crannied with honeycombings and fissures, banded with black flints, and here and there patterned with ochreous pockets of earth, where the wild flowers grow as though Dame Nature had been making the workaday place gay with bedding-out plants for the delight of the summer visitors. The visitors are just that second string to their old one-stringed bow of fishing the deep blue sea, which the fishermen sorely need to carry them through the twelve months that—although most things that existed in the nineteenth century have been changed—still make a year; and the visitors who are taken out boating beyond the cove to see the smugglers’ caves are never tired of hearing of Jack Rattenbury, whose tale I have already told.

CHAPTER V
BRANSCOMBE

It is, of course, up-hill out of Beer. One has not been long, or far, in Devonshire before recognising that almost immutable law of the West, by which you descend steeply into every town or village and climb laboriously out. Here it is Beer Head to which you ascend. Beer Head is white, so exceptionally and isolatedly white on this red coast that when, far westward, down Teignmouth and Brixham way, you look back and see along the vaguely defined shore a misty whiteness, you will know it for none other than this headland.

Beyond it and its chalky spires and pinnacles the coast becomes a mere traveller’s bag of samples for awhile; finally, coming to the opening of Branscombe, deciding upon “a good line” of red sandstone, mixed with red marl.

A very serious drawback incidental to the exploration of districts that grow increasingly beautiful as you proceed is that all the available stock of admiratory adjectives is likely to be expended long before the journey’s end. They must be carefully husbanded, or you come at last to a nonplus. Therefore, please at this point to assume beauties that—in the Early Victorian phrasing—can be “more easily imagined than described.” For the rest, conceive a wedge-like opening in the cliffs, cleft to permit the egress to the sea of a little stream, at all times too tiny for such a magnificent portal, and often in summer altogether dried up. On the western side plant a coastguard station, built like a fort and walled like a defensive stockade; and there you have the seaward aspect of Branscombe.

The landward look of it is entirely different. Looking from the sea, and walking away from it, three valleys converging seaward are discovered; each one profound, each richly wooded and fertile, and in each little instalments of Branscombe village, dropped casually, as it were, here and there. I had at first assumed the name “Branscombe” (which is pronounced with a broad “a,” like “ar”) to be derived in part from the British brân, a crow, and “Crowcombe” it might well be; but it seems, by the dedication of the church to SS. Winifred and Bradwalladr, that it is really St. Brannoc’s Combe, for “Brannoc” is an alias of Bradwalladr.

Away up the valley road are little groups of the quaintest cottages, with tiny strips of gardens scarce more than two feet wide, forming, as it were, a fringe or hem to the walls, and merging directly, without fence, into the roadway. But no gardens anywhere can show greater fertility or a more pleasing variety of flowers. Among them are to be seen spoils of the neighbouring cliffs, in the shape of petrified vegetation from the coast between Branscombe and Weston Mouth.

BRANSCOMBE.

Where the roadway climbs round the most impressive bend, and the great wooded hills look down on the other side of the valley, with almost equidistant notches in their skyline, like the embrasures of cyclopean fortifications, stands the ancient church of Branscombe. It is oddly placed, considerably below the level of the road, and is so old and rugged, and has been so long untouched, that it looks more like some silver-grey and lichened rocky outcrop, rudely fashioned in the form of a church, than the work of builder and architect. And it is in such entire accord with the rocks and trees, the ferns and grasses, the spouting rivulets and moist skies of this secluded valley, that the dedication of it should more appropriately be to the sylvan gods of the classic age. There have been those scribbling tourists who, passing by and looking upon the time-worn building, have acted the part of agent provocateur to “restoring” zealots by dwelling upon the dampness of it, and the “meanness” of the box-like deal pews of the interior; but not yet have their instigations to crime against the picturesque been acted upon, and the ferns and mosses still sprout from the time-worn tower and the interior is still, in its whitewash, its pews, and its wooden pulpit, an example of the simple sway of the churchwarden and the village carpenter of a simpler age.

One highly elaborate monument redeems the church from a charge of emptiness. It is the interesting memorial of Joan Tregarthin, her husbands, John Kellaway and John Wadham, and her twenty children; all of them duly sculptured in effigy. The Wadhams were the great landowners of Branscombe, away back to the fourteenth century. Among those twenty children is Nicholas Wadham, the last of his race, who died in 1609, and with his wife Dorothy founded Wadham College, Oxford.

The churchyard of Branscombe is a well-stored repository of unusual epitaphs, ranging from the sentimental to the unconsciously humorous and the terrifying. Of the last sort the following is a good example:

“Stay, passenger, a while and read

Your doome I am

You must bee dead.”

The uncertainty as to what this malignant gentleman really intends to convey does by no means lessen his impressiveness.

The lengthiest of them all is the following, on a time-worn altar-tomb outside the porch:

“Pro. x. 7. The memory of the ivst is blessed.

“An epitaph on William Lee, the Father, and Robert Lee, the son: both buryed together in one grave. October the 2: 1658.

“Reader aske not who lyes here

Vnlesse thou meanst to drop a tear.

Father and son heere joyntly have

One life, one death, one tombe, one grave.

Impartial hand that durst to slay

The root and branch both in a day.

Our comfort in there death is this,

That both are gonne to joy and bliss;

The wine that in these earthen vessels lay

The hand of death hath lately drawn away,

And, as a present, served it up on high,

Whilst heere the vessels with the lees doe lye.”

Another records the end of a labourer accidentally shot on his returning home from work, and yet another is to an exciseman, “who fell from the cliff between Beer and Seaton, as he was extinguishing a fire which was a signal to a smuggling boat.” The verse on Joseph Braddick, a farmer, who died suddenly at sheep-shearing, hesitates between flippancy and exhortation:

“Strong and at labour suddenly he reels,

Death came behind him and struck up his heels,

Such sudden strokes, surviving mortals, bid ye

Stand on your watch, and to be allso ready.”

This collection is ended with the touching record of a French sailor-lad:

Sacred to the Memory of
Jean Jacques Wattez, Mariner,
of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Drowned at Torbay, 29th March, 1897.
Buried here 30th June, 1897.
Aged 17 years.

“The only son of his mother, and she a widow.”

St. Luke vii. 12.

There is fine, rough walking up over the cliffs past the coastguard station of Branscombe, or down by the sandy shingle to Littlecombe Shoot and Weston Mouth, where the landsprings well out of the marly cliff-sides and petrify everything within reach. At the cost of scaling some of the buttery slides of red mud, and becoming more or less smothered with an ochreous mess resembling anchovy paste, it is possible to find most interesting examples of petrified moss and blackberry brambles; but the weaker brethren and those “righteous men” (as defined by Mrs. Poyser), who are “keerful of their clothes,” purchase such specimens as they may at Branscombe, and on their return home, yarn about the Alpine difficulties of discovering them.

On the summit to the western side of Weston Mouth, away back from the beetling edge of Dunscombe Cliff, 350 feet above the sea, stands the picturesque group of Dunscombe Farm and the ruined, ivy-mantled walls of what seems to have been an old manor-house. To this succeeds the valley of Salcombe, with the village of Salcombe Regis, away a mile inland.

It is a long, long way into Sidmouth, through Salcombe Regis, whose “Regis” was added so long ago as the time of Athelstan, who owned the manor and the salt-pans down in the combe by the sea. When you have come to the houses and think this is Sidmouth, it is only Landpart, and there is very near another mile to go; which, if you have acquired what the Devon people call a “kibbed”—that is to say a rubbed—heel by dint of much walking, is a distressing thing.

CHAPTER VI
SIDMOUTH

Coming into Sidmouth, you see at once that you are arrived in a Superior Place, and, before you are perceived, make haste to brush the dust off your boots, put your headgear straight, and, in general making yourself look as respectable as may be possible to a rambler in the byways, step forth with a jaunty air; just as the postboys in the old days, driving my lord home, although their horses might be exhausted, always “kept a gallop for the avenue.”

Sidmouth was the first of Devonshire seaside resorts, and had arrived at that condition long before Thackeray wrote of it as “Baymouth,” in Pendennis. Do you remember how “Pen flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on”? It seems hardly worth while to have said as much, but having been said, let it be put on record that it has lost none of its ancient courage in the meanwhile, and in spite of every intimidation, will still “come on” if you follow Pen’s example; unless, indeed, you choose the ebb, when, strange to say, it will retreat. It is believed that this odd phenomenon has been observed elsewhere.

Before Torquay, Teignmouth, Exmouth, and other places had begun to develop, Sidmouth was a place of fashion, and the signs of that early favour are still abundantly evident in the town, which is largely a place of those prim-frontaged, white-faced houses we associate with the early years of the nineteenth century. It belongs, in fact, to the next period following that of Lyme Regis, and has just reached the point of being very quaint and old-world and interesting, as we and ours will have become in the course of another century. The stucco of Sidmouth is not as the plaster of Torquay, any more than that of Park Lane is like the plaster of Notting Hill. It is of the more suave, kid-glove texture we associate with Park Lane, is white-painted, and is only a distant cousin of the later plaster of Notting Hill and Torquay, which is grey, and painted in wholly immoral shades of drab and dun, green, pink, and red; in anything, indeed, but the virginal white of Sidmouth.

And now, in this town which ought to be jealously preserved as a precious specimen of what the watering place of close upon a century ago was like, the restless evidences of our own time are becoming plentiful; older houses giving way to new, of the pretentious character so well suited to the age, and in red brick and terra-cotta; the inevitable architectural reach-me-downs that have obtained ever since Bedford Park set the vogue.

Why, confound the purblind, batlike stupidity of it! red brick is not wanted at Sidmouth, where the cliffs are the very reddest of all Devon. We need not give the old builders of white-faced Sidmouth any credit for artistic perceptions, for they could not choose but build in the fashion of their age, and everywhere alike, after our own use and wont; but, by chance, they did exactly the right thing here, and in midst of this richest red of the cliffs, this emerald green of the exquisite foliage, this yellow of the beach, deep blue of the sea, and cerulean blue above, planted their terraces and isolated squares of cool, contrasting whiteness. It was a white period, if you come to consider it, a time of book-muslin and simplicity, both natural and affected, and although Sidmouth was fashionable it was not flamboyant.

To this place, for health and quiet, on account of their embarrassed finances, and for the sake of their infant daughter, the Princess Victoria, then only a few months old, the Duke and Duchess of Kent came in the autumn of 1819, and took up their residence at the pretty cottage in Woolacombe Glen, still standing at the western extremity of the town. Here, quite unexpectedly, for he was a robust man, and but fifty-three years of age, the Duke died, January 23rd, 1820, from inflammation of the lungs, the result of a chill. Croker wrote of the event: “You will be surprised at the Duke of Kent’s death. He was the strongest of the strong. Never before ill in all his life, and now to die of a cold when half the kingdom have colds with impunity. It was very bad luck indeed. It reminds me of Æsop’s fable of the oak and the reed.”

Sidmouth continued to grow in favour for years afterwards, and only began to experience neglect when the opening of the railways to the West discovered other beautiful spots in Devonshire. Next to the Royal association already recounted, Sidmouth most prides itself on the fact that in 1831 the Grand Duchess Helene of Russia for three months resided at Fortfield Terrace. Without recourse to a book of reference I do not quite know who exactly was this Grand Duchess, and am not so impressed as I doubtless ought to be. Nor do I think any one else is impressed; but the local historian will never forget the circumstance, and indeed it is devoutly kept in remembrance by the black effigy of a double-headed eagle on the frontage of the terrace.

The railway that took away the prosperity of Sidmouth is now instrumental in keeping it prosperously select, for it is something of a business to arrive in Sidmouth by train, and a great deterrent to trippers to have to change at Sidmouth Junction and, journeying by a branch line, to be deposited on the platform of Sidmouth station, one mile from the town.

Sidmouth is in these days recovering something of its own. Not perhaps precisely in the same way, for the days of early nineteenth-century aristocratic fashion can never again be repeated on this earth. But a new vogue has come to it, and it is as exclusive in its new way as it was in the old; if not, indeed, more exclusive. More exclusive, more moneyed, not at all well-born, jewelled up to the eyes, and only wanting the final touch of being ringed through the nose. Oddly enough, it is a world quite apart from the little town; hidden from it, for the most part, in the hotels of the place. Most gorgeous and expensive hotels, standing in extensive grounds of their own, and all linked together in a business amalgamation, with the object of keeping up prices and shutting out competition.

It is not easy to see for what purpose the patrons of these places come to Sidmouth, unless to come down to breakfast dressed as though one were going to a ball, and dressing thrice a day and sitting in the grounds all day long be objects sufficient. From this point of view, Sidmouth town is a kind of dependence to the hotels, an accidental, little known, unessential hem or fringe, where one cannot wear ball-dresses and tiaras without exciting unpleasant criticism.

Bullion without birth, money without manners are in process of revolutionising some aspects of Sidmouth, and it is quite in accord with the general trend of things that the newest, the largest, the reddest, and the most insistent of the hotels should have shoved a great hulking shoulder up against the pretty, rambling, white-faced cottage in Woolacombe Glen, where some earliest infant months of Queen Victoria were passed, and that it should have exploited the association by calling itself the “Victoria.”

There is no river mouth at all at Sidmouth, and the Sid, which so plentifully christens places on its banks, has not water enough to force its way to sea, as a river should. Instead, it abjectly crawls through the pebbles of the beach, as though wishful of escaping observation; but when storms heap up sand and shingle and the Sid is denied even this humble outlet, then it becomes an urgent matter to hire labour for the speedy digging out a passage, lest the low-lying town should be flooded.

WOOLACOMBE GLEN.

The sea-front of Sidmouth is, indeed, yet an unsolved problem. Many centuries ago, there seems to have been a harbour where the beach and the walk of the Esplanade now stand, the constant easterly drift of shingle being kept well out to sea by a cliff projecting from the Western end of the town, where its last remains, the Chit Rock, stood until 1824. But that protecting headland was gradually worn away and by sure degrees the river mouth was choked with shingle. It is much the same story as that which belongs to the Axe and to other rivers and obliterated harbours of South Devon.

Many projects have from time to time been set afoot to remedy this state of affairs, but without success. A plan to excavate the river mouth and form a harbour was mooted in 1811, and another in 1825. Again, in 1836, an attempt was made to construct a harbour pier on the site of the Chit Rock, but was soon abandoned. Even the more modest attempt made in 1876, to build a pier on either side of the river mouth—or rather, where the river mouth should be—failed; and it seems as though what was long ago written of Sidmouth will long continue to be true of it: “In times past a port of some account, now choaked with chisel and sands by the vicissitudes of the tides.”

At present, Sidmouth beach is open and exposed, like that of Seaton, but even when Turner made his drawing for the projected work on the “Harbours of England,” although there was certainly nothing even remotely like a harbour here, the Chit Rock remained, to afford some slight protection.

But the Chit Rock itself has disappeared. It vanished in that terrible November storm of 1824, of whose traces there seems to be no end on the southern coasts. With the rock went a number of cottages, and with the cottages almost went the inhabitants, among them the real original Dame Partington, who was rash enough to attempt to mop up the waves.

“THE OLD CHANCEL.”

Mrs. Partington might never have attained immortality, had it not been for Sydney Smith, who in 1831 compared the House of Lords, rejecting the Reform Bill, with her. Reform, he said, would come. The Lords were like Dame Partington at Sidmouth, who attempted to keep out the Atlantic with a mop, and failed. “She was excellent at a slop or puddle, but should never have meddled with a tempest.”

The old parish church was rebuilt, except the tower, in 1859. It was a rather wanton work, and to some minds the purely secular use made of a portion of its stones may be shocking. Those of the most sacred part of the building, the chancel, were sold and used in the erection of a singular-looking villa close at hand, named from this circumstance, “The Old Chancel.”

There can be few more charming nooks than that of Woolacombe Glen, where the cottage of Princess Victoria’s early infancy still stands; a white-fronted, long, low, rambling building set in midst of the most cool and delightful lawns and overhung by trees. But, charming though it be, the Glen is not what it was at that time, for the broad road leading down to the Esplanade is a modern innovation constructed on the site of other lawns, through which a little stream flowed to the sea. Alas! for that clear-running Woolabrook. It has been compelled into an underground pipe. And—a last little irritating pin-prick—the “Woolacombe” in the name of the glen is now shorn of the peculiarly Devonian connecting and softening a between the syllables, and has become merely “Woolcombe.” How horrid the deed, and how excruciating the thought that, if the same amputating process were extended throughout the county, we should exchange Babbacombe for “Babbcombe,” Lannacombe for “Lanncombe,” Ellacombe for “Ellcombe,” and the less lovely like of them!

High Peak, the tremendous hill and cliff that shuts in Sidmouth on the west, is well named. The road up to the top of it is a mile of exhausting gradients, with fortunately a little grassy ledge on the way, whence you look down on to a distant beach and along the pebbly coast to Ladram Bay and Otterton Point. Ladram Bay is reached either by cliff-top or along that tiring beach; or, greatly to be recommended above all other courses, by boat from Sidmouth, one of whose boatmen, with the pachydermatous hands that would scarce feel any effect from rowing fifty miles, will take you there if you give him a chance.

LADRAM BAY.

Ladram Bay was undoubtedly made expressly for picnics. There cannot be the least question of it. Geologists write profound things about the raised beach and the pebbles—Triassic, Silurian, or what not jargon—that compose it, but Nature most certainly in prophetic mood designed beach, natural arch, and caves for lunch and laughter, and as a romantic background for flirtations.

CHAPTER VII
OTTERTON—EAST BUDLEIGH—SIR WALTER RALEIGH

At the summit of High Peak is the common of Muttersmoor, whence the way goes steeply down into the valley of the River Otter, at length reaching the village of Otterton, down the sides of whose one quaint street, of a rustic, straw-littered, farm-like untidiness, flow streamlets bridged by little brick and timber spans.

Otterton is thoroughly Devonian. What it is to be so will, perhaps, not be understood by those unfamiliar with rustic Devon; but here is the recipe for such a characteristic place. Take an Irish, a Welsh, a Highland, and a Breton village, stir them up well in a fine, confused Celtic medley, add abundance of flowers, wild and cultivated, and then leave in the sun.

On a rise, above the river and the village street, stands the “fayre howse” built by Richard Duke, who in 1539 bought the Otterton property of Sion Abbey, and set up for lord of the manor. His shield-of-arms, sculptured over the door, is still visible, but his fair house has come down in the world, and the line of Duke of Otterton ended in 1775, when the Rolles acquired their belongings. The traveller in South East Devon very soon has a surfeit of Rolles, who seem to be pervading the land and rebuilding the interesting churches, and generally occulting everything. Here again the old church has been replaced by a new.

Below church and manor-house runs the lovely Otter to the sea. The Otter is twin brother to the Axe, and the Exe is the big brother of both. The strath—that is to say the verdant, low-lying meadowland—of the Otter is of that quiet, wooded, pastoral beauty which makes the nearness of the sea seem strange. But the speciality of the Otter seems to be its pebbles, or “popples,” as the name is, locally. There are more pebbles on the Chesil Beach; but then, that is one of the two greatest repositories for them in the world, and the popples of the Otter and of the seashore at Budleigh Salterton, where they are not only numerous, but very fine and large as well, are a class to themselves. Little beaches of them skirt the course of the river, and the matter of two and a half miles up-stream from Otterton is a village, as one may say, dedicated to them, in its name of Newton Poppleford; and there the popples muster as strongly as ever by the ford, which is now superseded by a bridge.

But now, crossing the Otter, we come to East Budleigh, by threading the mazes of two or three byways.

East Budleigh is a pretty village, with a little stream, clear-running, down one side of its street and a great church on the rise at the end; but, for all that, I should not have come out of the way to see it, were it not that a landmark of more than common interest lies half a mile on the other side. That landmark is Hayes Barton, the still extant farmstead that was the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh.

EAST BUDLEIGH.

The first part of the name of Hayes Barton derives from the Anglo-Saxon haga, a hedge, or cultivated enclosure from surrounding wastes, and there are, to this day, “hayes,” and “hays,” in abundance in this shire of Devon. Even in the urban circumstances of Exeter we find them, in the enclosed public pleasure-ground of Northernhay, and the square of Southernhay. “Barton” has a variety of meanings, from granary, rickyard, farmyard, and cattle-shed, to a large farm; a small farm being generally, in Devon, styled a “living.” In the time of Sir Walter Raleigh’s father, Hayes Barton was sold to the Duke family, of Otterton, and from its old name of Poerhayes, or Power’s Heys, it became known as Dukesheyes. In the eighteenth century, as we have already seen, it passed to the Rolles, whose paws have comprehended so much of the land between Seaton and Exmouth.

The old farm-house, smartened up with a facing of that stucco which is so beloved by Devon folk that it is almost a wonder they don’t make it an article of diet, stands now as ever in a hollow of the hills, remote; for although Budleigh Salterton has expanded into a townlet, I do not suppose the village of East Budleigh has grown appreciably in all these centuries. Bating that stucco, and the sixty-year-old brick outhouses, the farm must be much the same, and you may still see the old woodwork and the old stone flags of the lower rooms, and may even, by courtesy, peep into the bedroom—that is the window of it, the upper window in the left-hand gable—where that gallant soul first saw the light of day.

Here, in this modest farmstead, that great Elizabethan was born, in 1552, son of Walter Raleigh and his wife Katherine, who came of that old Devon family, the Champernownes of Modbury. She had first married Otto Gilbert, who died leaving her with two sons, themselves to grow up explorers and colonists. She would seem, therefore, to have been a woman of remarkable character.

HAYES BARTON: BIRTHPLACE OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

The Raleighs seem to have been gentlefolk of long descent, of many relationships among the storied names of Devon—the Carews, the Grenvilles, Gilberts, and others—but of only modest worldly possessions. The Raleigh genealogy is fragmentary, and the early history of the family vague, but that they had once been locally rich and powerful, before the famous Sir Walter’s day, seems evident enough in the names of the two neighbouring parishes of Withycombe Raleigh and Colaton Raleigh, which show that in more prosperous times his forbears had been lords of those manors. In common with many of their contemporaries, the Raleighs seem to have spelt their name according to individual taste and fancy; nor even did the same individual always select, and adhere to, one method. Thus we find the father of the greatest of all Raleighs signing himself “Ralegh,” his eldest son, Carew, affecting “Rawlegh,” and the future Sir Walter, in his first known signature, writing “Rauleygh,” and afterwards adopting “Ralegh,” and the form “Raleigh,” which posterity has finally decided to accept. Queen Elizabeth herself spelled the name “Rawley.”

Sentimentalists have united to draw a wholly imaginary picture of the boy, Walter Raleigh, ranging from the inland valley in which his birthplace stands, climbing the intermediate woody hill, and straying down to the margin of the sea at Budleigh Saltern, as Budleigh Salterton was then styled. They have drawn fanciful pictures of him among the amazing pebbles of that beach, listening wide-eyed, to the yarns of sailor-folk telling of strange histories from the Spanish Main; and they have pictured him exploring away down to Exmouth, which was in those times a port of considerable commerce. I have no doubt he did all these things, and for my part can readily envisage them; can see, too, the little, crisp-haired, ruddy-cheeked Walter, in russet doublet and stockings of the same, being taken to church on Sundays at East Budleigh, half a mile away, where you may still see the family pew with the heraldic “fusils” of Raleigh impaling the “rests” of Grenville, boldly sculptured in heart of oak on a massive bench-end.

But while we can picture all these things, with sufficient readiness, it yet remains certain that we know nothing of the hero’s earlier years, and but vaguely gather that from Oxford, whither he was sent, he went to the wars on the Continent, between the Protestants and the Catholics, and then, by some occult family influence, became attached to the brilliant Court of our own astounding virginal Gloriana. They were a coruscating Renaissance group, who circled round Elizabeth, and were gifted in a singular variety of ways. They were noblemen and gentlemen who could, and did, turn their hands to anything, from captaining some desperate enterprise, negotiating treaties, steering frail flotillas through unknown seas into unheard-of lands, buccaneering, and filibustering, down to duelling, intriguing and backbiting among each other; practising literature and the liberal art of sonneteering, and dallying in the dangerous pastime of flirting with that too towardly Queen herself. One thing only they could not do; they could not be commonplace. None may say how much of truth, or how much legend there may be in the famous story of how Raleigh first attracted the Queen’s notice by flinging down his velvet cloak over a muddy place, so that she might pass, clean-footed; but the story was current, in the time of those contemporary with both, and being possible at all, shows us the spirit of the time and of the Queen’s surroundings.

Raleigh’s excellent early services in Ireland, where he broke down the rebellion in the south, recommended him to the Queen, his youthfulness interested her middle-aged sentimentalism, and his dark, florid manhood enslaved her. For this was a very hero in look, as in deed; standing six feet high, with black hair, full-bearded, ruddy-cheeked, like the apples of his native shire; and Elizabeth loaded him with gifts and grants. Meanwhile he had begun the colonising schemes and the exploratory enterprises by which his name is largely known. He equipped, and was at the cost of, the expedition which in 1584 discovered that shore of North America he christened, in honour of the “Eternal Maiden Queen,” “Virginia.” At the close of that year a knighthood rewarded his flattery.

Already he was become a man of vast wealth, the holder of highly remunerative grants and monopolies, and was keenly desirous of refounding the house of Raleigh in visible form in Devon. To this end he wrote in July, 1584, to Mr. Duke of Otterton, into whose possession this farm of Hayes Barton had by some unexplained means come, desiring to repurchase it. The letter is still in existence, and runs:

“Mr. Duke,

“I wrote to Mr. Prideux to move yow for the purchase of hayes a farme som tyme in my fathers prossession. I will most willingly give yow what so: ever in your conscience yow shall deeme it worthe, and if yow shall att any tyme have occasion to vse mee yow Shall find mee a thanckfull frind to yow and youres. I have dealt wᵗʰ Mʳ. Sprint for suche things as he hathe att colliton and ther abouts and he hath pmised mee to dept wᵗʰ ye moety of otertowne vnto yow in consideration of hayes accordinge to ye valew and yow shall not find mee an ill neighbore vnto yow here after. I am resolved if I cannot intreat yow to build at colliton but for the naturall dispositio’ I have to that place being borne in that howse I had rather seat my sealf ther than any wher els this leving the mattr att large vnto Mr. Sprint I take my leve resting redy to countervaile all your courteses to ye uttermost of my power.

“Court the xxvj of July 1584

“Your very willing frinde

“in all I shall be able”

“W. Ralegh.”

It is surely no unamiable trait in a man, that he should wish to purchase the house in which he was born; but Mr. Duke, “from that jealous disposition which can bear no brother near the throne,” did not choose to sell or to have so great a man for so near a neighbour, and so the Raleighs never again entered into possession of Hayes Barton.

CHAPTER VIII
BUDLEIGH SALTERTON—LITTLEHAM—EXMOUTH—TOPSHAM—ESTUARY OF THE AXE

Budleigh Salterton lies at the foot of a steep descent. Only within quite recent years has it been connected by railway with the outer world, and so has not yet quite woke up and found itself, and become self-conscious; although there are plenteous evidences that attempts will be made to convert it into a small modern watering-place, pitifully emulative of its betters. It is not fulsome to say that up to the present it has had no betters, for it has been an individual place, without its fellow anywhere. Conceive a brook running in a deep bed down one side of a village street, and bridged at close upon half a hundred intervals with brick and plank footbridges, leading across into cottages and cottage-gardens; and conceive those cottages, partly the humble homes of fishermen, and partly the simple villas of an Early Victorian, or even a Regency, seaside, and midway down the street imagine that stream crossing under the road, taking the little beach diagonally, and there percolating through the giant “popples.” That is Budleigh Salterton.

The Otter flows out to sea farther to the east, along that beach, obscurely, but still one speculates idly—no help for it but to do anything “idly” in South Devon—by what strange and exceptional chance Budleigh Salterton is not “Ottermouth” in this county of Axmouth, Sidmouth, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and other places which own rivers as their godfathers and godmothers. Yet one is not too idle to discover that East Budleigh and this Budleigh “Saltern,” as it was originally named, do, after all, in a way, follow the general rule, for they are named after the contributory streamlet, the Buddle, on which they stand and the “leas,” or meadows, that border it.

It is the same old story, with regard to the haven at the mouth of the Otter, that has already been told of other places. Leland, writing close upon four hundred years ago, tells us that: “Less than an hunderith yeres sins shippes usid this haven, but it is now clean barred,” and so it remains. Salterton and its neighbourhood are therefore without the convenience of a port.

The front of the townlet is, as an Irishman might say, at the back, for in times before the invention of the seaside as a place of holiday, the inhabitants seem to have had a surfeit of the sea by which they got their living, and built their houses on the low crumbly cliff, not only with the faces turned away from it, but in many cases with high dead walls, enclosing back-gardens, entirely excluding any sight of the water. And so the “front” remains; nor is it clear how, without a wholesale rebuilding, it will ever be otherwise. It is a curious spot for a seaside resort, and in places more resembles an allotment-garden, or the side of one of those railway embankments, where frugal porters and platelayers cultivate vegetables; for between the pathway and the sea, on the fringe of that beach where the gigantic popples lie, ranging in size from a soup-plate down to a saucer, and forming the raw material of the local paving, there are rows of potatoes, cabbages, peas, and scarlet runners! The effect is a good deal more funny than the humour of a professional humourist, for it has that essential ingredient of real humour, unexpectedness; and he who does not laugh at first sight of the peas among those amazing popples, and the boats amid the beans, must be a dull dog.

The explorer who does not wish to martyr himself on the way from Salterton to Exmouth may be recommended to take steamer, for it is six miles of anti-climax by shore and cliff, and four by uninteresting hard high road, passing the wickednesses of suburban expansion at Littleham, in whose churchyard is the neglected grave of Frances, Viscountess Nelson, who died in 1831, the deeply wronged wife of the naval hero.

A marble monument to her in the church does, however, make some amends for the neglect outside. There, in that interior, are memorials to Peels, relatives of the statesman, and others to those ubiquitous Drakes who, like the Courtenays and recurring decimals, repeat themselves indefinitely.

Leaving Littleham behind, there presently begins the long-drawn approach to Exmouth itself, looking as though all Ladbroke Grove and Putney Hill had moved down, en bloc, for a sea-change. And, oh, how blue and refreshing and lovely looks that peep of the sea over towards Dawlish that you get at the end of this long, hot and dry perspective!

And as you think thus, you remember the pungent saying of Dr. Temple, who once, while still Bishop of Exeter, stood upon the steps of the vicarage of Exmouth and remarked that “Exmouth was a good place to look—from.”

He was absolutely correct, for Exmouth, facing directly into the west, is especially famed for its sunsets. To peruse the local guide-books one might even think Exmouth had entered into arrangements with the solar system for a supply of the best displays.

But there was, as you have already suspected, a sting behind the bishop’s remark. What a waspishness beyond the ordinary these high-placed clerics do develop! The beauties of Exmouth are external, extrinsic, a minus quantity; but it is placed in the loveliest situation at the seaward end of the long and beautiful estuary of the Exe. The beauty of the views across sea and river are unspeakable. To me it is an Avalon, a Gilead, where the balm is; a country in the likeness of the Land of the Blest, you see over there, where the red cliffs dip down in fantastic shapes to the sea, and where the heights of Great Haldon and Mamhead, clothed with clumps of trees of a richness only Devon can show, rise to the glowing sky. I yearn ever to be over yonder in that Land of Heart’s Desire, as the good Christian should yearn for Paradise; and the little hamlets dwarfed by the two miles of water, and even the little trains that seem to go so slowly, trailing their long trails of steam, are things of poetry and romance.

If I were to say that Exmouth was the Margate of Devonshire, I should please neither Exmouth nor Margate; for all Devon does not contain a purely seaside resort of the size of that favourite place in Kent. But it is, like Margate, popular with trippers; it has sands; and is, in short a place where the crowd spends a happy day: the crowd in this instance hailing, as a rule, from no further than Exeter.

Exeter is an interesting city, and its citizens, in their own streets and in their everyday garb are sufficiently amiable, but when Exmouth on Sundays and other holiday-times is overrun with Exeter’s young men, tradesmen’s assistants, clad in the impossible clothes pictured on provincial advertisement boardings, laughing horse-laughs, singing London’s last season’s comic songs, wearing flashy jewellery, and smoking bad cigars, Exeter’s reputation, and Exmouth’s suffer alike. If you can imagine such a curious hybrid as a provincial cockney—the type really exists, although it has not yet been noticed by men of science—you may picture something of Exmouth’s week-end patrons. The provincial cockney, poor thing, imagines himself in the forefront of style, but he is merely a caricature of the London cockney plus his own accent, which, wedded to cockney slang, is peculiarly offensive.

But Exmouth, when its week-end patrons are behind their counters, in their aprons, is a vastly-different place. It is cheap, and has always been, and always will be, but it is at last sloughing off that air of impending bankruptcy that once sat so dolefully upon the scene; and the shops that were once mere apologies are now for the most part real shops, and stocked with articles less than ten years old. Moreover, the tennis lawns and gardens have grown by lapse of time into things of beauty: the lawns becoming something else than bald patches of red earth, and the gardens luxuriant indeed. But cheap railway trips from Exeter, only ten miles distant, by South Western Railway, have determined the character of Exmouth for ever, and grey stucco, only on the outskirts occasionally varied with red brick, or rough-cast, has clothed it in a sad shabbiness until its ninety-nine years building-leases shall have lapsed.

Modern times, however, are making themselves felt in other directions. In early days, when the town of Exmouth was merely a longshore settlement called “Pratteshythe,” situated where the docks now are, the mouth of the river was largely obstructed by an immense sandbank stretching from this shore. At some unnamed period this geographical feature of the place changed sides, and has for centuries past been that delightfully wild, nearly two-miles long wilderness, “the Warren,” which extends a sandy arm from Langston Cliff; leaving something less than half-a-mile of fairway at the mouth of Exe. Until quite recently the Warren has remained the haunt of the wild-fowler and the naturalist, but now the red roofs of bungalows are beginning to plentifully dot the wastes; and to play at Robinson Crusoe, with twentieth-century embellishments and more or less luxurious fringes, has become a favourite summer pastime on this once solitary haunt of the heron, the wild duck, and the sea-mew.

The salt estuary of the Exe runs up boldly from Exmouth, a mile broad, past Lympstone; and then, suddenly contracting, reaches Topsham, which was in other days a place of considerable importance, where ships were built and a great deal done in the Newfoundland trade; and in the smuggling trade too. Now the old shipyards are forgotten, and Topsham, which, among other things, was formerly the port of Exeter, is merely a relic, in course of being submerged by Exeter’s suburbs. Yet still odd nooks may be found, with that curious alien air belonging to all such out-of-date seaports, and in shy old houses Topsham is peculiarly rich in old blue-and-white Dutch tiles.

Topsham ceased from being a port when the present Exe Canal was made, in 1827, from Turf up to the very streets of the city: the first ship canal that ever was. It is five miles in length, and thirty feet wide, and it cost £125,000. Anciently, however, the tide flowed the whole way to Exeter, until, in the old high-handed mediæval days, the imperious Isabella de Redvers wrought her vengeance against the city by causing the stream to be dammed with felled trees, thus obstructing the navigation. Doubtless, in their turn, the citizens damned the countess, so far as they safely could, but there the obstruction remained, and thus the still-existing “Countess Weir” came into being.

TOPSHAM.

The enterprising citizens of Exeter cut a small canal, so early as 1554. This was afterwards enlarged, and the present undertaking is the still more enlarged successor of those early waterways. It is a pleasant and clear canal, with none of those evil associations the word “canal” generally implies, and the walk along the broad towing-paths into Exeter yields one of the most striking views of that picturesque city.

EXETER, FROM THE SHIP CANAL.

CHAPTER IX
POWDERHAM AND THE COURTENAYS—STARCROSS

But the coast really does not reach to Exeter. Let us take boat across from the picturesque waterside of Topsham, and then follow the western bank of Exe down to the sea. It is by far the prettier and more rural side, but, perversely enough, all the eastern shore, including Lympstone and Exmouth, looks in the distance exceptionally beautiful; and no one who only knows the west is content until he has crossed and explored the east. But it is the better part to remain so far untravelled, and to keep the illusion.

The South Western Railway has exploited the eastern shore of Exe, and the Great Western runs its main line along the west, and each is characteristic: the South Western peculiarly suburban, bustling and commonplace, the Great Western sweeping on in noble curves, with a wayside station, at which trains rarely halt, planted here and there. It skirts the water on one hand, and Powderham Park, seat of the Earls of Devon, on the other.

Romance, as well as beauty, belongs to Powderham, for it has been for over five hundred years the seat of the Courtenays, a younger branch of the family which was settled at Courtenay, fifty-six miles south of Paris, in the ninth century. They married into the royal family of France, and three in succession were Emperors of Constantinople in the last days of Christian rule there. It seems a proud thing to have numbered emperors among one’s ancestors, but those imperial Courtenays of old Byzantium were, it must be owned, put to many indignities and miserable shifts, and the imperial purple was more than a thought moth-eaten. They were reduced to selling and mortgaging their property, to scouring half Europe for alms, and in the end the Turks captured their sorry empire. Then the elder Courtenays returned to the rank of French nobles, and although they had an admixture of royal blood, sank gradually throughout the centuries until at length they became simple peasants. The last of them died towards the middle of the eighteenth century.

The English Courtenays appear to derive from Reginald de Courtenay, who relinquished his French nationality and properties, and in the reign of Henry the Second came to England. He acquired honours and manors, and was the ancestor of Hugh de Courtenay, Baron of Okehampton, created Earl of Devon as heir in right of his mother, to the lands and titles of the De Redvers family, who had previously held the earldom. Powderham came to the Courtenays with the second earl, to whom it was brought by his wife, Margaret, daughter of the Earl of Hereford. He gave it to his sixth son, Philip, who was the builder of the castle. Here his descendants, members of the younger of the branches into which the English Courtenays spread, have ever since resided, and might have been merely squires or knights yet, but for the misfortunes that befell the members of the elder branch, who in the wars of rival York and Lancaster took the losing side, with the result that three brothers in succession, the sixth, seventh and eighth earls, sealed with their blood, on scaffold or in stricken field, their devotion to the Red Rose. With those gallant, but ill-fated partisans of a just cause the elder line became extinct, and when the family honours were revived under the Lancastrian Henry the Seventh, they went to the next branch in order of seniority, represented by Sir Edward Courtenay of Haccombe, the first earl of a new creation. To him succeeded his grandson, son of Sir William Courtenay and the Lady Katherine Plantagenet daughter of Edward the Fourth; second earl, and later advanced to be Marquis of Exeter. The fortunes of the Courtenays now seemed to be again improving, but those were the times of Henry the Eighth, when quick changes and dramatic reverses of fortune were the rule. The same king who had created the earl a marquis later capriciously sent him to the block, confiscated his property, and annulled the family honours. A strange romance sheds a mysterious glamour over the story of his son Edward, who is said to have been loved by Queen Mary and slighted by him for her sister, Elizabeth. The queen made him earl of yet another new creation, but later threw him into prison on an absurd charge of aiding the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, which he had really been largely instrumental in quelling. It was ill consorting with the Tudors, or even living in their times, for they were tigerish alike in their affections and their hatreds. This ill-used young earl—“this beautiful youth,” Gibbon calls him—was released, but died mysteriously, it is supposed of poison—at Padua, in 1556. With him that branch of the Courtenays, and it was long supposed the title also, became extinct.

Meanwhile the junior branch, the Courtenays of Powderham, continued unmolested. “He that is low need fear no foe,” says the old proverb; and those plain knights and, later, baronets excited the jealousy of no one. So they continued until the era of beheadings and forfeitures ended, when Sir William Courtenay was created Viscount Courtenay in 1762. And viscounts they might be yet, only in 1851 an accomplished genealogist, looking over the patent of nobility granted by Queen Mary, discovered the all-important fact that the usual words “de corpore,” limiting the title to direct descendants, were not included. The succession was thus extended to collaterals, and the curious fact was revealed that for two hundred and seventy-five years the Courtenays of Powderham had been earls unknown to themselves, and had gratefully accepted inferior honours while legally possessed of greater.

The claim being proved before the House of Lords, the third viscount in this manner, became the tenth earl. It was he who, regaining the title, plunged the Courtenays again into embarrassments and alienated much of the family property, and it was Viscount Courtenay, son of the venerable eleventh earl, who still further wrecked their fortunes by his losses upon the Turf, which were partly liquidated during his short tenure of the title. The thirteenth earl, who died in 1904, ninety-three years of age, was uncle of the twelfth, and rector of Powderham. He resided at the rectory; for, of the 50,000 acres and the yearly rent-roll of £40,000, mentioned in the New Domesday Book, only an inconsiderable residue is left. Gibbon says of the French Courtenays and their old home: “The Castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner,” and here we see the strange spectacle of the seat of the English Courtenays being let to a stranger, and the titled owner of it, a clergyman, living obscurely on the fringe of his own encumbered domain. The reverses of fortune experienced by this ancient race may well seem to render their old motto, adopted in the sixteenth century, still applicable: Ubi lapsus? Quid feci? = “Where have I fallen? What have I done?” It is, at any rate, better than their sentiment of later years: Quod verum tutum = “What is true is safe.” That is indeed a hard saying.

There is no other family so constantly met with in Devon. Villages—like Sampford Courtenay—bear their name: their monuments are in Exeter Cathedral, and in many a town and village church, and in the majority of ancient Devon churches you will at least see their easily distinguished arms sculptured somewhere—the three golden torteaux, roundels, or bezants, supposed by some to have originated in the family association with the Byzantine crown, or flippantly thought by others to typify their last three sovereigns.

The old church of Powderham, built of the rich, red sandstone, stands quite close to the railway, amid the trees of the noble deer-haunted park. The railway then, following the shore along a low sea-wall, comes to the wooden station of Starcross, through which most of the trains rush without stopping. From its crazy timber platforms, standing with their feet in the water, you look across nearly two miles of salt water to Exmouth, transfigured by distance; its dreadful make-believe Gothic church, built in the architectural dark ages of the opening years of the nineteenth century, bulking like a cathedral. A steam launch plies between Starcross and Exmouth in these days, instead of the row-boat that once gave such tremendous rowing to get across; so the sundered shores of Exe are become less foreign and speculative to one another than they were of old. But, as the reader will have already perceived, these increased facilities have destroyed illusions. Exmouth we have already revealed for what it is, rather than what it seems, across the shining water, and Lympstone, yonder, looks better from Starcross than close at hand:

To those given to grotesque phonetic affinities, Lympstone suggests cripples; for myself, looking here across the pale blue and opalesque estuary, where the seagulls ride the still waters, waiting for the tide to ebb and the small sprats and the cockles to become revealed as meals, Lympstone suggests a limpid stream and refreshing breezes. There it nestles; a little strand with little houses and a little church, set down in the opening between two little cliffs of red, red sandstone; but when you arrive there Lympstone is modern, the church has been rebuilt, with the exception of the tower, and an ornate clock-tower, Jubilee or other, flaunts it insolently.

Starcross itself has been described as “a melancholy attempt at a watering-place,”—probably by some person who regards Exmouth as a cheerful and successful effort in that direction; but “There’s no accounting for tastes,” as the old woman said when she kissed her cow. As sheer matter of fact, Starcross never attempted anything in that way, but just—like Topsy—“grew,” and so became what it is; a large village of one long, single-sided street, looking once uninterruptedly upon the shore and the water, but since the railway came, commanding first-class views of expresses, locals, and goods-trains; and more or less identified by strangers with a singular Italianate tall red tower, sole relic of the atmospheric system with which the then South Devon Railway was opened in 1846. This survival of one of the old engine-houses completes a conspicuously beautiful view along the Exe, raised thereby to the likeness of an Italian lake. The one other remarkable feature of Starcross is the curious little steamship, modelled like a swan, that for some fifty or more years past has been moored off Starcross jetty; to the huge amazement of travellers coming this way for the first time.

For the rest, Starcross is merely a more or less modern development of a very ancient little fisher hamlet of the inland parish of Kenton, close upon two miles inland, and is said to have been originally “Stair-cross”; a crossing, or passage, to Exmouth. Maps, showing how the road from Exeter only approaches the coast at this point and then immediately turns away again, support this view.

The high road, leaving Starcross, winds around Cockwood Creek, and passing for a while over level ground ascends, steep and narrow and between high banks, past the old-time smugglers’ haunt, “Mount Pleasant Inn,” and so over the cliff top to Dawlish. Hut the coastwise path by the Warren, and so over the railway to Langston Cliff and the sea-wall, is the only way for beauty. Over the cliffs, by the high road, you come dispirited into Dawlish, with the latest greedy proceedings of speculative builders very much in evidence before the town itself is seen. Such a manner of approach is highly injurious. It is as though a guest bidden to a country house were admitted through the back door. One had rather enter Dawlish by train, for the railway runs along a sea-wall under the cliffs, and the station is built on the edge of the sands.

CHAPTER X
DAWLISH—ASHCOMBE—THE PARSON AND CLERK

Dawlish looks its very best from the railway station; not the least doubt of it, and looks best of all to passengers bound elsewhere. From the train you have on one side the blue sea, the red rocks, the yellow-brown sands; and on the other the lovely lawns and gardens in midst of the town, with the little stream called “Dawlish Water,” tamed and trimmed, and made to tumble over half a hundred little cascades, in between. In short, like any tradesman, Dawlish displays its best goods—nay, more, its entire stock-in-trade—in the shop window.

The name of Dawlish is rather by way of being a calamity. Antiquaries declare it derives from the Celtic dol isc; that is to say, “the meadow by the water”—and as we have seen, the stream and the gardens are the chief feature of the place—but the modern form of the name is fatally attractive for cheap wits. Even great minds have declined to the remark that “Dawlish is dawlicious”; and as the excursion trains in summer draw up to the platform and strangers step out from the carriages, to stretch their legs for a moment before going on, the idiot jape trips off a hundred tongues.

At Dawlish, however, the traveller first realises himself fully in the West. The view, the colour, the speech, all proclaim it.

Ah! the old familiar cries of the West, they warm the heart with the fires of remembrance. As the traveller comes down the line, so insensibly he comes into the districts where the soft slurring burr of the West of England prevails. You first notice it, if you are travelling by a stopping train, at Swindon, on whose platforms the newspapers—in the speech of the bookstall imps—become “Londun pay-purr”; and when the train draws up to the seaside platforms of Dawlish, the shibboleth has become “Lundee pay.” Long, too, may the fishwives of Teignmouth continue their rounds, with their endearing “Any nice fresh whiting to-day, my dear?” to old and young, gentle or simple.

There are wild and beautiful valleys away behind Dawlish; in especial that vale down whose leafy gullies flows the clear stream of Dawlish Water, which, rising out of the green bosom of Great Haldon, up Harcombe way, comes down by Ashcombe and, reaching Dawlish, is made to perform quite a number of parlour tricks before it is allowed to straggle out over the sands and pebbles of the beach, and find a well-earned rest in the sea.

There are folk of primitive ways of thought and rugged speech up the valley of Dawlish Water, and their characteristics are those of old Devon, of whose peasantry it has been truly said: “They work hard, live hard, hold hard, and die hard.”

“My tongue has two sides to et, like a bull’s; a rough an’ a smuthe,” said a sharp-spoken woman up at Harcombe—or I should say, “up tu Harcume”—and up tu Ashcombe they talk in a way that no mortal man coming fresh to Devon can understand. There is a picturesque rustic church high up on a knoll in the dwindling village of Ashcombe, and there is a quaint old smithy with an equally quaint old couple of bachelor brothers, the smiths of it, who have the simplicity of children, the richest brogue in all Devon, and the unaffected courtesy we associate with great nobles. “We’m plazed tu zee ’ee, ye knaw, ye bain’t a stranger tu Ashcume, they tell me”; while their housekeeper says, “Zittee down, do ’ee,” and with her apron vigorously dusts a chair which, like all else in this spotless interior, is absolutely innocent of dust. It is the rustic way of showing politeness.

As for their speech, all Devonians have that characteristic rich twist of the tongue which one cannot well convey in all its richness in paper and print, and for “stranger” say “strangurr.” Similarly, when, during a conversation with them, an insect of sorts bites you painfully, they inform you it is a “hoss-stingurr.”

DAWLISH.