Part 7

There were few passengers for Abbotsbury, and none but ourselves were visitors. At our hotel our hearts sank when we saw, framed and glazed, in the passage, a year-old telegram from the Duke of Edinburgh to the proprietor, asking him to get lunch and beds for a party. It was not only the snobbery of it, but the thought that all subsequent visitors would have to pay for that Royal visit (ourselves included) that made us quail. And, true enough, a massive bill awaited our departure the next morning.

XXV.

Abbotsbury is a place of very great interest. It lies within half a mile of the sea, near by the Fleet Water and the Chesil Beach, and was at one time the site (as its name implies) of a very extensive and powerful abbey. The Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the appropriation of their funds, put an end to this religious house, among others, and very few remains of it are to be seen to-day. The Abbey Farm, a delightful old house, is built of its stones, and portions of the Gatehouse remain, with vestiges of the fish-ponds, here as elsewhere a great feature of the monastic settlement. All else is gone, even the great mansion built by Sir Giles Strangways upon the abbey lands that had been granted to him, and with the stones of its ruinated buildings, has disappeared. But the great tithe-barn of the monks still remains--a building of noble proportions, some 300 feet in length, built with sturdy buttresses and neatly-joined ashlar, with a great porch and a roof held up by massive timbers, every detail fashioned with exquisite taste, and over all a decided ecclesiastical feeling. Few modern churches are built so substantially, and fewer so tastefully, as Abbotsbury tithe-barn. Half of its length is roofless; the moiety of it suffices for the secular farmer who uses it to-day for the same purposes for which it was built many centuries ago: if it was not too large when built, how immense the products of these tithes must have been!

The parish church still exhibits some good architectural details, particularly on the exterior of the north aisle, which shows some excellent Perpendicular windows, surmounted by a string-course and battlements. Pinnacles are corbelled out at intervals from the string-course, and have a very pleasing effect.

Crowning the seaward hill of Saint Catherine, that rises in terraced slopes populous with rabbits, is an ancient chapel, small but immensely strong, built to withstand the winds that blow with tremendous violence from the sea. It commands wide-spreading views, to Portland on the one hand, to Lyme Regis and the Cliffs of Beer on the other, and inland stretch the rolling hills and wide downs of this impressive county.

How to seize the characteristics of Dorsetshire when you have fared from end to end of the county only along the bold and cliff-girt scenery of its seaward side, from Purbeck Hills, by the Abbotsbury uplands, to the impressive heights of Golden-cap and Stonebarrow? How to pluck out the heart of its mystery and weird beauty when its heaths and inland vales are matters of reading only? Yet it should seem that Dorset is a Hampshire purged of mere pensiveness, more varied, more dramatic than its eastern neighbour, with a drama that rises to moving tragedies--fit scenes for that blood-drowned rebellion that began upon the beach at Lyme, and so surged through pastoral Somerset to be finally quelled by Monmouth’s capture in the vicinity of Wimborne. But a mile or so apart from those trim modern excrescences of the sea-board, the “watering-places,” risen and rising, the stolid county folk (Teutons chiefly) lead lives little touched with modernism in the fat valleys folded between the swelling shoulders of camp-crowned hills, whereon the Romans and the Britons, the Celt, the Saxon, and the Dane, have waged wars of extermination. Here, in that dim Wessex, were fought many battles in hand-to-hand fashion, and the sublimated memory of them, blurred and fantastic, lingers yet in traditions, even in turns of speech and place-names. The Dorset folk have a name for the rich red bloom of the wallflower that seems significant. They call them “bloody warriors.”

Before we left Abbotsbury we visited the Swannery, where many hundreds of swans, the property of the Earl of Ilchester, are kept. There has been a swannery here for over eight hundred years, and, in addition, a decoy for wild duck.

It is a fine breezy walk, but rough and tiring, from here to Burton Bradstock, along the coast--eight miles of a ribbon-like path, that winds along the landward side of the Chesil Beach. By the time we reached that village we had had more than enough of it, and crossed the little river Bredy into the highroad. At the end of another mile and a half that road runs steeply down into West Bay, the port and harbour of Bridport, a desolate place of infinite sand, where the sea comes banging in furiously upon the wooden jetties at the harbour mouth. Up the marshy valley can just be seen the roof-tops of Bridport, and at the back of them hills, with hills again to right and left. Indeed, this is a stretch of country calculated to make sad within him the heart of the cyclist, for hills abound, and however fair the country-side may be to an unprejudiced observer, ’tis little short of a wonder when a land of hills and dales is other than a howling wilderness to the perspiring wheelman, bent over his handles in an agony of pedalling. Such an one we met fighting against the inevitable when last we journeyed this way. The inevitable, it should be said in this connection, resolved itself into a dismount, and a moist and gasping halt by the dusty hedgerow. Well, we left the poor soul, and encumbered only with our knapsacks, breasted the steep down that forms a short cut to Chideock. Here cycles may not go by any manner of means.

The village of Chideock lay in a valley at some distance, a village of the kind that lines the highroad, with one long street, rising from the hollow, half-way to the brow of the succeeding hill. All around lay the huge hills of this hilly land, with Golden Cap, truncated, like another Table Mountain, seaward.

XXVI.

Chideock was named from a once powerful family that bore this singular name, but now long since extinct. They had their castle here, of which no sign now remains, saving only in the name of the Chideock Castle Inn, where we stayed the night. It was a night close and intolerably warm, and I could not sleep. All through the night and the earliest morning hours the place within and the countryside without were quiet to a degree. Only once was the stillness of the country road broken--toward the stroke of one--by the old clock on the stairway. Then some one who rode horseback went past at a trot, and the clatter of hoofs rang out clearly in the stillness of the air for some minutes. I lay and wondered whom he could be who was called abroad at this hour, and so, weaving little romances around that unconscious rider, presently fell asleep.

In these remote country places every footfall in the night seems to carry an especial significance, and each infrequent sound creates a little eddy of thought in the receptive mind. I accompanied that rider in my dreams, which wove an extraordinary tangle of fact and fancy together. The horse became winged Pegasus, the rider an editor, to whose skirts I was clinging in an agony of desperation, and we were going like the wind. We rose above such sordid things as earthly roads, and soared into the empyrean. Presently we were talking to a lady of classic features and manner of dress. The editor, in an aside to me, said her name was Clio, and he had called to see her with reference to a weekly fashion column which she had promised to contribute to the ----. I had never respected women journalists so much as now. The editor concluded his interview and mounted his horse. “Jump up,” said he, and, so saying, caught me by the arm.

“No hurry,” said I. “Your horse is a good one to go.”

“What the deuce are you talking about?” said he.

I rubbed my eyes and stared at him, and, lo! it was the Wreck, half-dressed and smoking a cigarette, who had waked me.

“I’ve been awake all night,” he said; “it has been too warm for sleeping. It’s five o’clock now, and a lovely morning. Better put on your things, and we’ll go out for an early morning walk.”

We dressed and let ourselves quietly out of the house.

Next the inn was the church, which was locked of course at this early hour. In the churchyard was a thing that spoke of Chideock Castle, the tomb of Thomas Daniell, who, as a brass plate informed us, was “Steward of the Manor and Lordship of Chideock, who, loyal to his king, and true to his master, gallantly defended the Castle of Chideock.” The inscription ends with the quotation from Holy Writ--

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant: Enter thou into the joy of thy lord,”

which reads somewhat humorously, for surely never before has any one so finely confused secular loyalty with religious constancy, and never was blasphemy so unconscious as this.

XXVII.

We returned later to breakfast, and astonished the good folk of the Chideock Castle, who had not heard our early morning exit, and thought us still asleep.

It was, by reason of this early rising, yet cool and pleasant when we had left Chideock, and come by way of Morecombelake into Charmouth.

Charmouth, on this summer’s day, was wonderfully pleasant--everything, sea and shore and sky, pervaded by a golden haze. But what this settlement-like place must be like on a wet day of incessant drizzle, is an image dreadful to contemplate.

A rainy day at the seaside, unless, indeed, it be at some huge wen like Brighton or Scarborough, is enough to give even a Mark Tapley thoughts of committing _hari kari_. The only local optimists then are the boatmen, and they beat every possible Tapley into fits; with them it is always a fine day--for a sail. Nothing is to do on a seaside wet day. Nothing to read at the circulating library: the old maids have borrowed all the spicy novels, and left nothing on the shelves but such enthralling devotional works as “Skates and Shin-plasters for Backsliders” for the appeasement of your literary hunger. The local news-room on such depressing occasions contains a parish magazine, the last number of Blowhard’s “Sermons,” Sharpshin’s “Local Gazetteer and Directory,” last week’s London papers, and half-a-hundredweight of “Bits” prints. With even all this wealth of literature you are not happy, but long, like Wellington at Waterloo, for night and--oblivion.

Charmouth was the scene of a thrilling incident in the hunted wanderings of Charles II., for it was here that he sought to have his horse’s cast shoe replaced, and was imperilled by the blacksmith’s discovery that the shoes were of a make unknown in that part of the country.

We had of late experienced a sufficiency of rough walking, and so struck inland to avoid Lyme Regis and the seaward cliffs. In another three miles we had reached the Devon border, where the highway, running on a lofty ridgway, is carried through a spur of the hills in tunnel. For rather more than a mile the road forms the boundary line between the counties of Devon and Dorset, right and left. Then came, at the end of a long rising vista, bordered by murmuring pines, the welcome sign of Hunter’s Lodge Inn, where we celebrated our entrance upon Devon soil by draughts of cider. Here was a humorous wheelman, garbed fearfully in white flannel breeches and black jacket, who retailed his experiences of rural inns on Dartmoor, experiences in a minor key, for he told us in happy epigram that, in Devon at least, innkeepers divided creation into an unholy Trinity of man, beast, and cyclist, and that, of the three, the cyclist was the lowest order.

Two miles and a half further on, and we came to the dull little market-town of Axminster, beside the clear-running Axe.

XXVIII.

Axminster, for all its quietude and respectable insipidity, has had its stirring times. In the immediate neighbourhood was fought the battle of Brunenburgh, between a huge army of invading Danes and the Saxon forces of Athelstan. To quote the curious phrasing of an old chart of Henry VIII.’s time, “There entrid at Seton dywse strange nacions, who were slayne at Axmyster to the number of v Kings, viij erles, a busshoppe, and ix score thousand in the hole, as a boke old written doth testyfye.” To this day the level lands of the Axe valley and the lush meadows that border the river bear names that perpetuate those bloody onsets of upon a thousand years ago: Warlake, Kingsfield, Battleford recall the day of that great Saxon victory.

In the time of the great Civil War the country round about was harassed with the varying fortunes of Cavaliers and Roundheads, who, making sorties from their respective strongholds of Exeter and Lyme Regis, laid waste this unfortunate debatable ground. But it was during the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, and after the failure of that desperate emprise, that a peculiarly lurid light is shed upon this town in common with all these counties of Dorset, Devon, and Somersetshire. There is a manuscript book of the time, still preserved in Axminster Independent Chapel, written by the minister, called “Ecclesiastica, or a Book of Remembrance,” which sets forth the doings of the period, and the persecutions to which the Dissenters were subjected. “Now” (the writer says) “the Lord stirred vp James, Duke of Monmouth (reputed son of the former king C. II.), who had bin in an exile state for some time, and on the 11th day of the 4th moneth of this year, 1685,[2] he safely and peaceably landed at the hauen belonging to Lyme Regis with a small number of men, about eighty, hauing their ship laden with armour and ammunition, who, immediately vpon his landing, gaue forth his declarations to restore liberty to the people of God for the worship of God, to preserue the rights and priueledges of the nation, &c. Tydings of his landing were spread abroad far and near very speedily, and divers persons from severall quarters hasted to resort to him. Now were the hearts of the people of God gladded, and their hopes and expectations raised, that this man might be a deliuerer for the nation and the interest of Christ in it, who had bin euen harrous’d out with trouble and persecution, and euen broken with the weight of oppression vnder which they had long groaned.” So presently Monmouth’s army “jncreased to seuerall thousands,” and on the 15th of June they began their march from Lyme, “with much dread and terrour, to the amazement and wonder of many what the Lord had wrought. The first day of their march they came into the town of Axminster,” and there they lay some five days. Marching out towards Taunton, several skirmishes occurred, with loss on both sides, and “one Henry Noon, a pious and liuely Christian, a vsefull member related to this body, was also slain. And this church began to be diminished.” Then came the catastrophe of Sedgemoor, and a dreadful orgie of hangings and quarterings in this West of England. Axminster, however, witnessed only one execution, that of Mr. Rose, one of Monmouth’s gunners. As the rebellion was not merely a political movement, but also in some sort religious--a Protestant rising against Roman Catholicism--it followed that its failure was the beginning of bitter persecutions against Protestants--Churchmen and Dissenters alike. It must not be supposed, however, that Protestantism has a monopoly of martyrs. When that original form of dissent obtained the upper hand, there generally followed an equally bad time for members of the older Church, which then had the peculiar honour of furnishing victims for stake or gibbet. Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs” only shows us one side of religious persecution; the other side, were it equally well compiled, would be as lurid, as merciless: religious bigots seem to have been sadly deficient in humour.

Axminster has given an undying name to a particular make of carpet that is no longer manufactured here, but at Wilton, in Wiltshire. The Axminster factory was finally closed in 1835, having been in work for eighty years.

XXIX.

Two miles south of Axminster, on our way to Seaton, we came upon the farmhouse of Ashe, at one time the mansion of the Drakes. Here was born, on May 24, 1650, John Churchill, the future Duke of Marlborough. Here, too, in the private chapel of the house, now used as a cider cellar, was married Lord North, one of that tactless ministry who lost us the New England States. In 1782, the last of the Ashe Drakes died, and five years later the greater portion of the house was destroyed by fire.

In Musbury church, a mile farther down the road, are monuments to Drakes of Ashe. Amongst those commemorated is that Sir Bernard Drake who disputed so hotly with his kinsman the great Sir Francis, most renowned of all Drakes, the question of armorial bearings. When Elizabeth granted the latter a new coat-of-arms, Sir Bernard replied that “though her Majesty could give him a nobler, yet she could not give him an antienter coat than his,” and with that flattering unction, self-administered, he was fain to be content.

To Ashe presently succeeds the straggling village of Axmouth, whence the sea is visible at the farther end of the marshy lands where the Axe struggles out into the Channel over a bed of shingle. Just above Haven Cliff the highroad is carried over the river by a bridge of three arches that gives access to Seaton.

Seaton is in process of rising, and to all who have witnessed the evolution of a seaside town from fishing village to “resort”--that is sufficient to say _Verb. sap. sat._ It possesses a terminal railway station on a branch line, and is the scene of Sunday “there and back” excursions from London in the summer season. On those occasions the place is crowded for a brief three hours or so, when trippers snatch a fearful joy. At other times Seaton is sluggish and dull, and really the bourgeois plastered buildings of the little town are an insult to the magnificent scenery on either hand.

Visitors there were a few on the beach--quiet folk mostly, and provincial of aspect, save indeed a loathly Cockney worm who had by some mischance missed his Margate, who leaned against a seaworn capstan, the sole representative of his particular stratum of civilisation--lonely, ineffable.

When the rain came down that had been impending all the forenoon, Seaton became doleful. There was nothing to do but take the next train to Exeter in search of a waterproof civilisation.

XXX.

Preconceived ideas are, when not realised, apt to disturb one’s peace of mind, and so it happened that we, who had conjured up a mental picture of Exeter, had indeed imagined a vain thing: the reality came upon us with something of a rude shock. Used to the more familiar type of cathedral city, dreamy old places where the atmosphere of the Minster is all-pervading, and where the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and their doings hold the foremost rank in men’s minds and talk, we were not prepared to come upon so busy a place as Exeter, where the ecclesiastical element is only one among many and is not pre-eminent.

There is, indeed, no holy calm in the “Queen City of the West:” the tramway bell is familiar in its streets, and from end to end of the main thoroughfares tall telegraph poles lend an American air to the view.

But Exeter, although entirely different from one’s dreams, is extremely interesting and picturesque: its slums are the dirtiest, and their smells the vilest of any out of London, and the ancient rotten tenements the most tottering of any I have seen.

Yet there be those who like not mention of the place. These are evil-doers, for whose benefit the Assizes are holden at the picturesque fifteenth century Guildhall, so conspicuous an object in the busy High Street. There is a fine old highly coloured character in English history, Richard III. to wit (who, if history speaks truly, fully deserved a place amongst the malefactors of his age), who had, according to Shakespeare, no occasion to love Exeter. The incident may be read in Richard III., Act iv., Scene 2:--

“Richmond!--when last I was at Exeter, The mayor in courtesy show’d me the castle, And call’d it--Rouge-mont: at which name I started, Because a bard of Ireland told me once, I should not live long after I saw Richmond.”

No man who writes upon Exeter, even if he only writes as superficially as I do here, can be expected to forego this quotation--the expectation would be too much for endurance: indeed, there are virtues of omission in this book which might gain me the tolerance of that chivalric myth, the “gentle reader,” for this one small sin of hackneying the hackneyed once more. I take it, for instance, as a generous forbearance on my part, that I did not quote at Winchester that oft-quoted epitaph on Izaak Walton, although I hold it charming.

Among the first things we did at Exeter was to inquire (for we know our Shakespeare well) for Rougemont Castle. But, as the first passer-by whom we button-holed declared, with a glorious west-country confusion of pronouns, that he “had never heard of he,” so also did every other person at whom we directed our inquiries protest his or her ignorance of such a place, saving, indeed, one who directed us to what proved to be the Rougemont Hotel, “a large red building” indeed, but not the one we wished.

Others had all the same tale to tell, ancient inhabitants equally with the “strangers in these parts,” so we wavered between a consciousness of absurdity and a feeling of indignation against the unlettered strata into which we had penetrated, until, by good fortune, we encountered a bookish “commercial,” to whom the place was known under its old-time name equally well with its modern appellation of Northernhay.

Northernhay is a public garden, set about with statues of local celebrities, and with one whose original was of imperial fame--Sir Stafford Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh. It was the site of that stronghold, Rougemont Castle, whose poor remains are now enclosed in private grounds. The gardens stand on a considerable height, and overlook, through the trees, the Queen Street Station of the South-Western Railway. All day long, and all the night, the snorting of engines and their shrill whistles, the metallic crash of carriage buffers, and the thunderous impacts of railway trucks are heard. Behind the station the eye rests upon the county gaol and the military barracks. Exeter has all the appliances of civilisation, I promise you.

It is a relief to turn from here and from the thronging streets to the quietude of the Cathedral precincts, shadowed by tall trees and green with lawns.

Externally, the Cathedral is of the grimiest and sootiest aspect--black but comely. Not even the blackest corners of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London show a deeper hue than the west front of St. Peter’s at Exeter. The battered, time-worn army of effigies--kings, saints, crusaders, bishops--that range along the screen in mutilated array under the great west window of Bishop Grandison’s, are black too, and so are the obscene gargoyles that gibber and glare with stony eyes down upon you from the ridges and string-courses of the transepts, where they abide ever in an enduring crepuscule. The sonorous note of the Great Peter bell, sounding from the south transept tower, is in admirable keeping with the black-browed gravity of the close.