Part 8

But within the Cathedral it is quite another matter. Few of our great minsters are so graceful, so airy and well lighted, as the interior of Exeter Cathedral. The great windows of the aisles shed a flood of light upon the clustered columns of warm-coloured stone that bear aloft the elaborately carved vaulting of the nave, and the clerestory windows, high up in the walls, illuminate the springing of the arches and the carven corbels of the vaulting shafts. Exeter Cathedral windows are the triumph of Geometrical Decorated work. North and south, those windows run the length of the building in pairs, each pair of different design.

One of the quaintest of Exeter’s many churches is that of Saint Mary Steps, by the site of the old West Gate, with its clock face and three ancient figures nodding the hours and striking the quarters upon bells. The central figure represents Henry VIII., but is traditionally known as Matty the Miller.

“Every hour on Westgate tower Matty still nods his head.”

XXXI.

We passed down the steep High Street of Exeter, crowded with ruddy-towered churches, and bordered, as to its farther end, with the low-lying slums of Exe Island. Across Exe Bridge is the suburb of St. Thomas, and we explored its one long street to its end, where it joins the Dunsford Road, from whose rise this prospect of Exeter is taken. Then we retraced our steps some distance, and set out for Teignmouth, coming in rather over a mile to Alphington, a pretty village, with tall and slim church tower looking straight down the road, making, with its red sandstone, a striking contrast with the vivid green of the rich foliage around, and the dazzling whiteness of the “cob” cottages, whose whitewash seems ever fresh. We glanced inside the church, but a christening was in progress, and we fled, pursued by the ear-piercing yells of the unhappy infant.

With Alphington were passed Exeter’s latest encroachments upon the country in this direction, and the road presently became perfectly rural. To the left was the rich level through which the Exe flows, now restrained by cunningly constructed canals, weirs, banks, and sluices from flooding the pastures, in some instances below its level, and intersected by little dykes for their better irrigation.

The road shortly descended into a pretty valley, where were some cottages beneath a peculiar isolated hill, crowned with a windy coppice; below were pools of water that reflected hurrying clouds. At the extremity of the valley the road was bordered by evergreen shrubs, firs, and larches, and a dense undergrowth of brambles and wild-flowers harmonised with the rich colour of a disused quarry, from whose red ledges dripped drops of water with hollow sound.

Then, past the huge building of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum, we came into Exminster, standing on somewhat high ground. For sketching purposes it does not group well: there are, though, some points of interest within the church, among them a recessed portrait effigy of Grace Tothill.

“GRACE, wife of William Tothill of the Middle Temple, Died 1623, æt. 18.”

“If grace could lengthe of dayes thee give, or vertue coulde haue made thee live If goodnesse could thee heere have kept or teares of frindes which for thee wept Then hadst thou liv’d Amongst us heere to whom thy vertues made thee deer But thou a Sainte didst Heaven aspire whiles heere on Earth wee thee admire Then rest deere corps in mantle claye Till Christ thee raise the latter daye.

Thy yeres were fewe thy glasse beinge runn Where death did ende thy lyfe begunn.”

But the most interesting feature of Exminster church is the series of saints on the ceiling at the east end of the south aisle. The aisle has the “wagon” roof, so frequently met with in Devon, and it is divided into square panels by old carved woodwork. The panels are filled with plaster, on which are executed a series of saints and prophets, in low relief, conceived and wrought in the most grotesque vein. The ceiling, woodwork, and all, has been treated to a liberal coat of whitewash.

This figure, representing St. James the Less, takes the palm for eccentricity of appearance, though the others are not far short of his somewhat ungainly prominence. He is apparently in a great hurry, intent on some hot-gospelling expedition, but he has a wicked eye that ill beseems his errand, and a cudgel that seems out of keeping with the book.

XXXII.

I think him a very charming saint indeed, with a happy lack of anything like a priggish austerity: one might be happy in the society of such a saint as this--if only he wore boots. Pity is that the average run of saints one hears or reads of are very gorgons for grimness: they look not upon the wine when it is red (nor white, either, for that matter). They are not like this old fellow, who is my _beau idéal_ of the jovial anchorite. The first editor of my acquaintance (he was the editor of a pseudo-religious magazine--it is solemn food for reflection that nearly all young fellows of literary-artistical tastes start with magazines of this stamp), my first editor, I was saying, would not, some years syne, print this, my pet saint, “for,” said he, “he is irreverent, and”--with a fine disregard of grammar--“the proprietors would not like it.”

I argued that he might tickle the readers’ fancy; but the proprietors came between the readers and myself, and the article went to press without St. James the Less.

“I assure you,” said the editor, defending himself from the charge of “unco’ guidness,” “I would not object to him in the least, but” (sighing) “you don’t know our proprietors.”

I murmured gently that I had no wish to make their acquaintance.

“Do you know,” resumed the editor, “that I am not allowed to mention the name of Shakespeare in our pages?”

“Great Bacon!” quoth I, astonished; “why not?”

“Well,” said he, “you may laugh at the idea; but our people consider him immoral. If we find any particularly devout sentiment that makes an apt quotation, we may use it, but must, under no circumstances, ascribe it to Shakespeare.”

(I may remark, _en parenthèse_, that the magazine in question is defunct: it was too pure for this wicked world.)

For such good folk, prone to see evil in everything, pruriently pure, even to the wrappaging of piano-legs, even the name of the Andaman Islands must have a suspicious sound; and the Teutonic “Twilight of the Gods,” unenglished, would savour of the rankest blasphemy.

XXXIII.

Exminster lies close to the river, and from its church-tower there is a magnificent view down as far as Exmouth, and then out to sea. The scenery is very beautiful: the Exe broadens into an estuary, and at low tide the smell of the seaweed and the mud-flats comes across the low-lying fields between the river and the highway with a refreshing breeze, doubly welcome after a hot and dusty walk. There is a walk beside the estuary atop of the banks that restrict the waters to their proper channel--a walk that affords delightful views. It leads past the lock of the Exe Navigable Canal at Turf, whose buildings form a charming composition, with foreground of tall grasses, and a glimpse of the twin towers of Exeter Cathedral, distinct, though nearly seven miles away. We came to Powderham this way, and crossed the railway to Powderham church, that stands beside the road within the bounds of Powderham Park. Park and castle have been for centuries the home of the Courtenays, earls of Devon, whose family history goes back to a very remote and misty antiquity. Many Courtenays have been laid to rest in the church, and in a chapel of it is a beautiful altar-tomb, with recumbent portrait-effigy of the eleventh earl’s countess. From here was a glorious view of park and castle, with herds of deer trooping down to the waterside to drink. The light was waning, and the salt breeze blew chill after the hot and scorching day. The light from the western sky shone redly upon the windows of the castle, which, save for this, lay dark and half-defined amid the groves and alleys of forest foliage.

We turned and gazed upon the broad and placid Exe. Lights were beginning to twinkle from the opposite shore, where lay Exmouth, the commonplace, two miles away, across channels, shoals, and sandbanks, whose treacherous surface the rising tide was swiftly covering. Gulls were screaming over their evening feast of sprats and pilchards, their harsh cries breaking the stillness of departing day.

Signal-lamps on the railway shone green and red and white, where Starcross Station lay ahead, making, with the curve of river mouth, ships at anchor behind the Bar, and the soaring tower of the old Atmospheric Railway, a natural composition which no artist could possibly resist noting. So I sat on a wall and sketched in the gathering gloom, while the Wreck (who, I fear, has no soul for these things) went on in advance to negotiate for high tea and quarters for the night.

XXXIV.

I left off somewhat abruptly last night, you may say, but indeed I think there is nothing which it would be profitable to set down in this place of what befell at Starcross. Referring to my diary, I find a mention of cockles (upon which Starcross prides itself), which some kindly stranger invited us to partake of as we were having tea, all three of us, in the hotel coffee-room. But cockles (if you will excuse the Irishry) are very small beer, so I do not propose to trouble you with an account of them. I will merely say that we had tea and went to bed, and rose and breakfasted in the morning, and presently set out for Teignmouth.

Starcross has aspirations. It is a little village, whose fishers, in a whimsical manner of shorthand, paint their boats *+ by way of informing the world at large whence they hail. It fancies itself a watering-place, but it is just a quiet settlement, with a ferry to Exmouth, and a fishing jetty by the station, and, riding out at anchor in the Exe, a curious pleasure-boat, fashioned in the shape of a huge swan. This little town was, and possibly remains, dependent upon the Courtenays. The chief of the two hotels, the Courtenay Arms, exhibits the heraldic devices of that ancient family and its mournful motto--_Quid feci? ubi lapsus_.

The railway here runs beside the road, and presently crosses Cockwood Creek on a wooden viaduct. Then came a notice, warning all and sundry of what dreadful things should be done to all them that trespassed upon the line. We therefore crossed over here, and on the other side found ourselves on the Warren, a broad expanse of sand, partly covered at high water. Above high-water mark the sand is held together by rank grasses and tufts of furze; and beneath are the thickly populated burrows of innumerable rabbits. In shallow pools herons were patiently waiting; while, as we walked along, we disturbed plovers, which rose up and flew away with whirring wings. Wild ducks and sea-gulls were plenty.

At the western end of the Warren we came upon Langstone Point, the eastward boundary of the port of Teignmouth. At top of it is a trim coastguard station, and across the line rise the red cliffs of Mount Pleasant, fronted with a chalêt-like inn. Then we came upon the sea-wall that leads into Dawlish.

When the excursionist from London sees the yellow sands and rippling sea, the red rocks, the green lawns, and the sliding rivulets and miniature cascades of Dawlish from the railway platform, he is unhappy, because the place looks so charming, and he is going to leave it for places he knows not, but which (he thinks) cannot begin to compare with this fairyland. But Dawlish is seen at its best from the railway station and under such hurried circumstances. The place affords little satisfaction when one comes to the exploration of it. The town is bright and lively, and the sands crowded in summer, and the sea-wall well frequented, but Dawlish lives only for and on the visitor; when its short season is done and the visitors have departed, there is (consequently) no business of any kind. It is just a little town, bandbox neat, called into existence by these touring times, and in the spring, autumn, and winter it is as deserted and woebegone as any dead city of the plains. For here is no port, nor river, nor any anchorage, and, for all that is doing in winter months, the inhabitants might hibernate like the dormouse and not miss anything.

Dawlish Station is built on the sands, and the Great Western Railway runs along under the cliffs, on a sea-wall of solid masonry, from Langstone Point, through the five tunnels of Lee Mount and Hole Head, to Teignmouth.

Dawlish did not detain us long. We dusty pilgrims shunned the spick-and-span society of summer frocks and immaculate blazers, and fared forth up the steep paths of Lee Mount on to the highroad for the distance of a mile, when we walked down Smugglers’ Lane to the sea again, where the Parson and Clerk stand at the extremity of a precipitous headland--the Parson on the face of the cliff, the Clerk cooling his heels in the water. For the recognition of the faces supposed to be seen on the sandstone rock, the Eye of Faith is imperative: but many folk possess that.

XXXV.

There is a legend accounting for this petrified couple. It seems that the vicar of a neighbouring parish had business with his bishop at the Palace of Exeter. He set out late in the afternoon, on horseback, for the city, accompanied by the parish clerk, and, a storm coming on, they promptly lost their way in the mist and rain; the incessant flashes of lightning, brilliant as they were, would not have sufficed for them to regain their road, even had their horses been less terrified. The vicar was speedily drenched to the skin. “Damme,” says he, “there’s not a soul at hand of whom to inquire our way in this misbegotten wilderness. I’d take the devil himself for a guide if he were here.”

No sooner had the vicar uttered this profane sentiment, than they heard, above the howling of the storm, the clattering sound of a horse’s hoofs, and a prolonged flash of lightning showed them an old gentleman, clad in sombre garments, cantering past on his mare. The clerk hailed him, and he drew rein.

“I suspect, sir,” said he, addressing himself to the vicar, “you have lost your way. Can I be of any service to you? If so, pray command me, for it is ill wandering abroad on such a wild night.”

“Sir,” said the vicar, who was, indeed, no mealy-mouthed man, for all his holy office, “we have lost our road, and are wet through,” adding, “this is the most damnable night that ever I have had the ill fortune to travel in.”

“You may well say that,” rejoined the old gentleman briskly, with a complacent smile; “but allow me to put you in the right way.”

In scarcely five minutes from their encounter, the party drew rein before a cosy inn. The vicar, the clerk, and their guide dismounted, and sending their riding cloaks to the kitchen fire to dry, sat down to a bowl of punch. They caroused until a late hour, while the storm raged unceasingly without.

At length the vicar rose, saying, “Storm or no storm, he must be going, for he had important business that demanded his presence at Exeter early the following morning.”

“Well,” said the old gentleman, “if you are so resolved, I will accompany you, for I make no doubt that without my company you would soon go astray again. Fortunately my way runs with your own.”

The three set out again, and rode some distance, until they heard the roar of the sea even above the shrieking of the gale, and felt the flecks of sea-foam upon their cheeks.

“Man,” said the vicar, in a rage, as a more than usually vivid flash of lightning showed them to be upon the verge of a tall cliff, “do you know what you are doing--bringing us to these fearful rocks?”

“Yes,” replied the stranger, “this is my road,” and he laid his hand upon the vicar’s shoulder.

“Take your hand off,” yelled the vicar, “it’s devilish hot,” as indeed it must have been, for where the old man’s hand had been placed there rose up a thin curl of smoke from scorched cloth.

“Hot is it?” inquired the old gentleman mildly, “perhaps I am slightly feverish.”

But the vicar had perceived into what terrible company he had fallen, and shouting to the clerk, he lashed his horse furiously. But, no matter how hard he or the clerk plied their whips, not an inch would the horses budge. The winds changed into demoniacal shouts; troops of fiends, warlocks, and witches gathered round, shrieking, as the pair sank down into the face of the cliff, and a horrid peal of mocking laughter was the last thing they heard on earth.

The next morning, when the farmer’s men came down to the sands with their carts for the seaweed thrown up by the storm over night, they were astonished at beholding a face in the cliff’s overhead, and, standing out in the sea, crowned with screaming cormorants, and buffeted by the heavy waves, a tall pillar of rock which had not been there before.

I take this moving story as a warning to parish clubs to be careful in the selection of their vicars.

XXXVI.

From here it is a two miles’ walk along the sea-wall into Teignmouth. Time and again, in winter storms, hundreds of feet of massive masonry have been torn down, and often carried away bodily, by the sea, and on two or three occasions great landslips have occurred from the soaring red-sandstone cliffs overlooking the railway. Railway engineering here is no play.

“Teignmouth” (says my Bædeker) “is a large watering-place, prettily situated at the mouth of the Teign.” Thus far the guide-book. It is a peculiar feature of this class of literature that information is hurled at one’s head in stodgy lumps, in which are embedded measurements and statistics, enclosed in brackets sprinkled over the pages, like--like currants in a penny bun. Yet there are misguided folk who read guide-books continuously: these are people with an insatiable rage for general information, who spout dates at every turn.

But Teignmouth may well be termed a watering-place, if one may take the fact of its being partly surrounded by water as a valid claim to that obscure appellation, although I wot of places bearing it which are like unto the great Sahara for dryness.

The town, which ranks next after Torquay in size, is continually growing, and climbing up the hillsides. They have built in every direction; the tunnels that were used to render its railway station even as the stations of the Metropolitan Railway for gloom have been opened out; the pier has burst into a dreadful variegated rash of advertisements, and the bathing-machines are blatant with the name of a certain Pill.

But with the growth of the town, the local rates, say the ratepayers, with doleful intonation, keep pace, and the ambition of the local governing body accompanies the onward march, and tends to o’erleap itself in matters of public improvements.

There is the market-house for the pointing of an example. I well remember the cavernous ramshackle old place that stood here years ago, a dim and dismal hole, where the blinking, owl-like stall-holders sold beans by the hundred and (so say the malicious) peas by the dozen. The Local Board pulled it down, which was, by itself, a well-advised action; but when there presently arose on its site another building devoted to the same purpose, wiseacres shook their heads and prophesied evil things.

When Teignmouth sages foretold these things, they displayed a foresight that would not have disgraced the Delphic Oracle; for, although the new market was in every way adapted to modern needs, yet in a short while its complete failure, commercially, was sufficiently demonstrated, and, to this day, he who would be alone and shun his fellow-men, betakes himself to the market, and broods there undisturbed. You may wander in the by-lanes of the countryside, or sit upon the hardly accessible rocks beyond the Ness, but, even then, you shall not be so secure from human gaze or so unutterably lonely as in the “market.” Yet the business of the town has not decayed; neither, I suspect, are the tradesfolk less prosperous than of yore: the market simply was not wanted.

When we were at Teignmouth we became of a mildly inquiring turn of mind, and wandered along the sands to where the Teign flows out, across the sandy shifting bar, into the sea. Across the wide estuary is the fishing-village of Shaldon, now growing out of all knowledge, and the bold red front of the Ness, crowned with firs, confronting the waves.

Round here by the sand spit, past the battery _pour rire_, is the little lighthouse, and behind it the lifeboat-house, with its window illuminated at night, where the barometer and weather-chart are anxiously scanned in the summer months by eager visitors. For the proverbial inconstancy of the weather is very marked here. One may stand looking up the Teign in fine weather, to where the Dartmoor hills loom grey in the distance, and presently see the rain-clouds gather and sweep swiftly down the valley, blotting out the landscape with driving mist; and yet, in a little while, it shall be all bright again with sunshine. It is, indeed, not often that a day in Devon is entirely hopeless, for clouds disperse frequently as quickly as they come. It is to this moist climate that softly beautiful Devonshire owes its fair name.

Behind the lifeboat-house is the harbour, where is to be found the real life of the place, as distinguished from that entirely different existence lived in summer months on the sands, the pier, or the Den, that wide lawn fronting the sea.

Teignmouth, in fact, is not merely a summer resort. It has a select and proper society, which is nothing if not dignified and stately, Teignmouth society being composed of retired half-pay officers and their families, with slim purses and inflated pride--a curious and exceptional combination. The attitude of this circle is one prolonged sniff.

A small shipping trade, and a fairly commodious harbour to accommodate it, together with quays and queer waterside inns and storehouses and a custom-house, are livelier attributes of the town. Also, there are sail-lofts and seafaring smells, and a shipbuilding yard, where I remember, years ago, to have seen a vessel built. Boats there are, and a yacht or two anchored out in the channel, a cluster of ships buoyed out in deep water, and at ebb tide, two or three big vessels heeled over in the ooze. There is a very nautical flavour, figurative and realistic, about the harbour, and an ancient and fish-like smell about the jetty where the fisher-boats land their catches. Hereabouts, in the sunshine, sit rows of amphibious loungers, who smoke, chew tobacco, and curse the livelong day--such of them as have not been converted at the Gospel Hall yonder.

Up the river, beyond the harbour and the clustering masts, is the bridge. A remarkable bridge this, built of wood in the first years of the present century, with thirty-four arches, and (to descend to the particularity of the guide-book) a total length of 1670 feet.

Shaldon is reached by it, and the Torquay road. The ferry-boats from the harbour take passengers across for the same toll of a penny either way. We went across by boat, and instead of taking the highroad for Torquay, climbed round under the Ness, among the fallen rocks and seaweed-slippery boulders by the sea.

XXXVII.