Part 4

It is no hardship to travel twice upon this road. The run from east to west, from Moreton to Tavistock, is one to repeat as often as may be, and to remember whenever life seems dull. It is a glorious run. The road is hardly ever level, of course, but the surface for the most part is fairly good, and the hills, if steep, are straight. And from our feet a wide sea of fern rolls away on every side, billow beyond billow, till its waves break at last upon the rocks of a hundred tors. There are certain scenes that remain with one, a possession for ever. One of them is on the hill where Grimspound lies. A little by-road takes us quickly to the wild spot where neolithic man built himself this dwelling, with the object, doubtless, of keeping an eye upon his neighbours rather than that of enjoying the view. Whatever his motive he chose well. He saw this splendid panorama--a pageant of green and purple and indescribable blue. One thing only he did not see: the tragic thing that gleams so suddenly and whitely in the far distance, when a sunbeam chances to fall upon it--Dartmoor Prison.

When we have passed the stony stream and pack-horse bridge of Postbridge the scenery is less interesting for a mile or two, for this is the more civilised part of the Moor--a fact that has a brighter side in a comfortable luncheon at Two Bridges. Unless we change our minds and take the beautiful road to Plymouth, we turn to the right here after crossing the stream, and leave Princetown and all its heavy hearts behind us on the left. When the highest point of this road is passed and the long descent begun, the scenery is again of that well-wearing kind that can be stored and put away for the winter. And if I pay scant attention to the vast host of most venerable relics with which Dartmoor is dotted--I had almost said _crowded_--this is not because neolithic man seems to me a person of little account, but because the study of his life and times is not one that can be taken up suddenly on a motor-tour. For one wayfarer who takes heed of the menhir, and the stone-row, and the pound near Merivale Bridge, there will always be a hundred to gaze eagerly from the hilltop at the long line of dark and rugged tors that stretches across the immense landscape, and at the gleaming Hamoaze on the left, and at the clear outline of Brent Tor Chapel on its rock, and above all at blue Cornwall meeting the blue sky. In the middle of this picture Tavistock lies, and we run down into it on a splendid road.

The abbey that once gave renown to Tavistock has nearly vanished, but even its fragments--an archway and an ivy-covered tower--are enough to bring beauty and distinction into these pleasant streets. Ordgar, the man who founded it, was the father of Elfrida, the wicked Queen who gave her stepson a stirrup-cup, and had him stabbed while he was drinking it. It was in Tavistock or near it that she spent her childhood, and to Tavistock that Ethelwold was sent by the King, to see if her beauty deserved a crown. Ethelwold, seeing her, forgot all else and married her himself. “She is in noe wise for feature fitt for a king,” he told King Edgar. Then the King, whom men did not lightly deceive, came hither to Tavistock to judge for himself, and Ethelwold at bay told the truth to his wife, begging her--poor ignorant man!--“to cloath herself in such attire as might least set forth her lustre.” Elfrida smiled; and when her lord was gone arrayed herself in all she had that was most rich and beautiful, so that “the sparkle of her fair look” made the King mad for love of her. The next day he took Ethelwold out upon the Moor to hunt, and left him there with an arrow through his heart; and after all Elfrida became a queen.

The abbey her father founded was famous, not only for its splendour, but also for its learning. Though nearly all its stones are gone there are still some of its documents to be seen in the church, and certain ancient books which were printed, I believe, in the printing-press of these progressive monks.

It was in the year after the monks were driven from their abbey that Francis Drake was born to bring fresh glory to Tavistock. At the end of a long, wide street his statue stands--the familiar figure by Boehm, all fire and energy, the “Francie Drake” we know. His ardent face is turned towards the town whose pride he must ever be; behind him is the ivy-covered gateway of Fitzford House. Through that embattled archway Sir Richard Grenville--“Skellum Grenville” as he was called--came home with his bride to her own house; the house in which he afterwards shut her up, and “excluded her from governing the affaires within dore,” and even, it is reported, gave her a black eye. This was the Richard Grenville who was the King’s General in the West, and was described by the Parliament as “a villain and skellum.”[3] He raised an army in Cornwall “with most extrem and industrious cruelty” and brought it to this place; and I believe it was here that young Prince Charles stayed when he came to Tavistock and complained so bitterly of the weather. The soldiers of the Parliament afterwards sacked the house, of which nothing is now left but this gateway.

There may be some who have been led to think that they have but to drive a few miles from Tavistock to see the house that belonged to the earlier, and far greater, Sir Richard Grenville, the house of which an old writer says: “The abbey scite and demesnes was purchased by Sir Richard Grenvill, whereon hee bwilt a fayre newe howse, and afterward sold it unto Sir Francis Drake, that famous travailer, wᶜʰ made it his dwellinge-plaice.” These I must sorrowfully inform that Buckland Abbey is no longer open to the public.

From the statue of that “famous travailer” we turn to the right upon a fine road, and presently, crossing the Tamar by a beautiful bridge, climb into Cornwall on a gradient of one in seven.

THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH-DEVON

DISTANCES.

Exeter Newton Abbot 16 miles Torquay 7 ” Totnes 9 ” Dartmouth, viâ Brixham 16 ” Kingsbridge 15 ” Salcombe and back 13 ” Plymouth 20 ” --------- Total 96 miles

ROADS.

Hills steep and frequent.

Surface poor, except from Kingsbridge to the outskirts of Plymouth.

III

THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON

If our object in choosing to cross Devon by the coast road were simply to cling to the shore as closely as possible we should, of course, drive to Torquay by way of Dawlish and Teignmouth. But in that case we should miss the beautiful views of Exeter and the Moor from the slopes of Great Haldon, and the gorse and pines on the summit of Telegraph Hill, which most of us will think more desirable things than the beaches and lodging-houses of popular watering-places. It is true that no esplanade nor row of bathing-boxes can altogether spoil a Devon sea. It is also true that the last words of _Endymion_ were written at Teignmouth; but as Keats, being unfortunate in the matter of weather, disliked the place very heartily, we shall be following in his footsteps most truly if we are faithful to “Nature’s holy face.” Her face is very beautiful on the summit of Great Haldon.

We glide easily down the wooded slopes, with the wild outline of Dartmoor against the sky before us and the green valley of the Teign below us, and after an almost continuous descent of seven miles run into the uninspiring streets of Newton Abbot. Let us pause for a few minutes in Wolborough Street, and picture the scene that brought this little town for a moment into English history: the throng of troops; the crowding onlookers, half curious, half afraid; in the midst of them the keen face of the foreigner who had come to be their king; the prince’s chaplain, here where the stone is set, proclaiming William III.; and over all the pouring, drenching rain. At the outskirts of the town we may see the house that sheltered William from the weather that night, and has at various times sheltered many incongruous guests of note--Charles I. and “Steenie,” Oliver Cromwell and Fairfax. William was at Ford House without a host, or the Courtenay who owned it at that time doomed it wiser to be absent; but when Charles I. was there Sir Richard Reynell’s hospitality was such that a hundred turkeys figured in a single _menu_.

Only five or six miles of a comparatively level road lie between Newton Abbot and Torquay. The valley through which we drive bears a familiar name, for it is in this Vale of Aller that the well-known pottery is not only made, but designed, in vast quantities. I think it must have been along this road that part, at least, of William’s wet and motley army marched through the mud from Brixham. As for the prince himself, his course must have been truly erratic if he slept at all the places in this neighbourhood that claim to have sheltered him.

Torquay is one of those rare watering-places that upset all one’s prejudices. Its houses are many and modern, its streets are populous; but the harbour under the hill is so snug, the sea so blue and bright, the boats so gay, the buildings so softly framed in trees and flowers, that the most churlish heart must be won. And near at hand the little sheltered coves, and wild paths above the cliffs, and woods almost dipping into the sea are quite as peaceful as though there were no crowded little harbour on the other side of the hill. This harbour was not here, nor any town at all, when the Spanish Armada, as Kingsley says, “ventured slowly past Berry Head, with Elizabeth’s gallant pack of Devon captains following fast in its wake.” Only a few fishermen’s cottages were on the shore, and the empty walls of William Bruere’s abbey, and below the abbey “a peere and socour for fisshar bootes.” Indeed, even when the _Bellerophon_ and the _Northumberland_ rode on the blue waters of this bay together, and Napoleon sailed away to St. Helena, there were more trees here than houses.

To-day there are so many houses on this shore that there is hardly a gap between Torquay and Paignton. There is nothing to keep us in Paignton, for though it has an old church, and a tower that is called the Bible Tower out of compliment to Miles Coverdale, it has none of the charm of Torquay. Only a few miles away, however, is a place of very definite charm. There is a better way than this, certainly, of seeing Totnes, but this hilly and not always very good road has the advantage of passing near the castle of Berry Pomeroy, one of the few ruins in Devonshire.

The peculiar spell of Berry Pomeroy lies, not in splendour of masonry nor grandeur of outline, but in the silence and romance of the deep woods in which the castle rock is closely wrapped. From the old church where Pomeroys and Seymours lie in their graves we run down noiselessly through the green shadows into a strange and dusky world of legend and far-off history. Through the towered gateway that fronts us generations of Pomeroys have ridden forth to defend or flout their various kings; and many a Seymour, coming homeward by this path, has lifted his proud eyes to the house his fathers built within the Norman wall. For when the last Pomeroy had “consumed his estate and decayed his howse,” he sold it to the Protector Somerset; and the Seymours who came after him raised the dwelling that is now a shell and was never altogether finished, though very magnificent, according to John Prince, with curiously carved freestone, and stately pillars of great dimensions, and statues of alabaster, and rooms “well adorned with mouldings,” and a “chimney-piece of polished marble, curiously engraven, of great cost and value.” These splendid Seymours were descended from the Protector’s eldest son. “I believe,” said William III. to the last of them, “you are of the Duke of Somerset’s family.” Sir Edward bowed. “The Duke of Somerset, sir,” he said, “is of my family.”

It was to this very gate, I believe, after Henry de Pomeroy had taken up arms for Prince John, that Cœur-de-Lion’s sergeant-at-arms came on his sinister errand. Out of the gate, however, he never rode. He “received kind entertaynment for certaine days together,” says the historian, “and at his departure was gratified with a liberal reward; in counterchange whereof he then, and no sooner, revealing his long-concealed errand, flatly arrested his hoaste … which unexpected and ill-carryed message the gent took in such despite as with his dagger he stabbed the messenger to the heart.” One cannot honestly regret it.

This is the kind of place where legend grows round history as naturally and quickly as the ivy grows over the stones. The walls themselves, it is easy to see, were raised by a magician; for the castle, seen from one side, is standing high upon a rock, while from the other it seems to be deep in a wooded valley. This is plainly due to a spell, and prepares the mind for tales of imprisoned ladies, and of wild horsemen leaping desperately into the chasm when they could no longer defend their castle from an angry king. It is only on emerging from the dim and haunted wood that one remembers regretfully how the last of the Pomeroys “decayed his howse”--so far was he from defending it--and sold it quite peacefully to the Duke of Somerset.

There was no very exciting rivalry, I suppose, between the castle of Berry, even at its best, and the castle that stands only about two miles away on the “high rokky hille” of Totnes; for the stronghold of Judhael de Totnais and William de Braose, of Zouches and Edgecumbes, was the citadel of a walled town. If we climb the rocky hill in question--through the old east gate of the town, and past the fifteenth-century church and the hidden guildhall that was once a priory--we may see for ourselves how proudly the tower of Totnes once dominated the valley of the Dart. There is only a fragment of the keep standing now, and even in Henry VIII.’s time “the logginges of the castelle” were “clene in ruine.” The story of their decline and fall seems to be unknown, but I think the place must have been treated with some indifference by the Edgecumbes, who were, unless I am mistaken, rebuilding their beautiful house at Cothele when Totnes Castle came to them. If this were the case we could forgive them, and indeed be grateful for their absorption in the lovely treasure-house above the Tamar.

The various signs of age that make these steep streets so attractive must not make us forget that the antiquity claimed by Totnes is a far more venerable affair than any such thing of yesterday as a Norman castle. It was on a certain stone in Fore Street that Brutus of Troy, father of all Britons, first set his adventurous foot when he discovered this island. So at least says Geoffrey of Monmouth in his brave, imperturbable way. Brutus, we must suppose, sailed up the Dart; or perhaps at that early date Totnes was on the coast. In any case it was the charms of these woods and waters that attracted the voyagers to land in the new island, and “made Brutus and his companions very desirous to fix their habitation in it.” That is easily understood.

We too shall do well to come to Totnes by water. It is the best way, and can be done by steamer from Dartmouth. As this, however, probably means the neglect of Berry Pomeroy, which is far more serious than the missing of Brixham, I advise every motorist whose car can travel without him to drive from Paignton to Totnes, and to send the car by road to Dartmouth while he himself goes thither by water. For the banks of the winding Dart are, in their gentle way, incomparable, with their soft woods hanging over the stream, and their cornfields streaked with scarlet, and the little creeks where thatched cottages are clustered on the shore and white-sailed boats flutter beside the tiny quay. And among the trees of the left bank are Sandridge, the birthplace of John Davis, and Greenway, the home of the Gilberts, where Sir Humphrey lived before his widowed mother married Raleigh.

In the meantime those who drive their own cars must return to Paignton by road, and follow the railway to Brixham past Goodrington sands, where Charles Kingsley loved to spend the summer days searching for the orange-mouthed Actinia and dreaming of the Spanish Armada. There is not a spot upon this Devon coast but is the stuff that dreams are made of! Dreams of gallantry and war, of conquest and deliverance and wide adventure haunt us hour by hour as we pass from haven to haven, from Torquay to Brixham, and from Brixham to Dartmouth, and from Dartmouth to the climax of Plymouth Sound; with the great names of Drake and Gilbert and Hawkins, of Raleigh and Grenville ringing in our hearts as we spin across the soil that bred them, and, shining below us, the green sea that carried them to their renown.

The sea was not green, but grey and misty, on the day that “the Protestant wind” blew William the Deliverer into Torbay. The fleet, says a letter written “on the first day of this instant December, 1688,” had met with “horrid storms,” but “was not so damnified as was represented by the vulgar.” It was here, in this harbour of Brixham--now hemmed in by busy quays, and crowded with trawlers whose flaming sails might well be meant to commemorate Orange William--it was here where the statue stands that the prince first stepped ashore. On his flag, as on the statue, was the motto of his family: _I will maintain_. The statue is not flattering--or so, at least, we hope--but its presence, with its calm promise of liberty, is not without dignity amid all the bustle of the fishing-fleet. The scene was busy enough that day, when William stood here with Burnet, and the guns roared, and the drums and hautboys made music, and from every headland and housetop the people shouted their welcome; and, as the fog lifted, the fleet, lying out there beyond the breakwater, which was then unbuilt, “was a sight would have ravished the most curious eyes of Europe.”

William, and gradually all his regiments of horse and foot, climbed these narrow streets to the top of the hill. Though we take another road than theirs we by no means escape the climbing. Two slow miles, on gradients varying from one in twelve to one in ten, lead us to the point where we immediately begin to descend, on a rough steep road of sharp turns, which runs down to the shore of Dartmouth Harbour and the slip of Kingswear Ferry.

These are classic waters that lap upon the clumsy sides of the ferry-boat. We move slowly, and that is well, for there is much to see: much beauty of wooded headlands, of old streets drawing nearer, of boats and ships upon a blue-green sea. To the left are the two points that shelter the harbour, and on each its ruined tower, the guardians that did their work so long and well, and perished in the doing of it: to the right the river winds away into the land and the old _Britannia_ lies at rest, and the great buildings of the Naval College crown the hill. It was from this harbour, more than three hundred years ago, that the _Sunshine_ and _Moonshine_ sailed away to the North West Passage with John Davis and his “company of goodlie seamen, not easily turned from any good purpose;” and it was between those two green headlands that Francie Drake came home from “singeing the King of Spain’s beard” at Cadiz, with the _San Philip_ and all her spoils behind him. Historic fleets have ridden at anchor in the shelter of these hills: ships for Cœur-de-Lion’s crusade; and for Edward III.’s siege of Calais no fewer than thirty-one, all furnished by Dartmouth; and on one grim occasion, at least, an unwelcome fleet from France, which left the town a ruin. Many years later another French ship came sailing in unsuspiciously with letters from the Queen, a few days after Dartmouth Castle had surrendered to Fairfax. The captain, when he heard the news, flung the precious packet into the sea; “but God provided a Wave,” says the historian, “to bring it to the Boat that went out to seek it, and so it was brought unto His Excellency.”

Round the quays on the Dartmouth side of the harbour the queer old houses are huddled into streets that climb and twist and turn in bewildering irregularity. Crooked gables and overhanging eaves nod at one another across the way: the carved beams and corbels of the wider streets rouse memories of departed merchant princes: rows of young trees are planted by the waterside: and always, behind the trees, behind the gables, is a glimpse of the turquoise sea. Everywhere are signs of the splendid past: in the fourteenth-century church, with its magnificent screen and pulpit, and the tomb of John Hawley, “a riche marchant and noble warrior again the French men”: in the houses of the Butterwalk, with their heraldic beasts and granite pillars and mullioned windows, their moulded ceilings and carved chimney-pieces. It is worth while to climb a rickety staircase, if only for the sake of hearing the Merry Monarch numbered among the saints.

A narrow shady lane near the shore of the harbour leads to the castle and the old church of St. Petrock. The oldest part of the fort, the round tower whence the chain passed across the mouth of the harbour to Kingswear Castle, is said to date from the time of Henry VII. There must have been some kind of fort here earlier than that, I suppose, for when the lively men of Fowey forfeited their chain of defence, we are told, Edward IV. presented it to Dartmouth. This castle changed hands twice during the Civil War. Prince Maurice took it and strengthened it, but could not save it from Fairfax. “Being Master of all but the Castle,” wrote the general, “I summoned that. The Governour was willing to listen unto me.… I can say I find it to be in the hearts of all here, in all integrity to serve you.”

The road from Dartmouth to Slapton Sands is almost entirely composed of astonishing hills. Only in Devon could hills so many and so fierce be compressed within so small a space. But only in Devon, surely, is the coast at the same time so wild and so luxuriant, so stern and yet so tender; only in Devon can we look down from the clifftop through so soft a veil of trees, and see far below us sands so yellow and rocks so red, and the ripples of so very, very green a sea. This road that rises steeply out of Dartmouth is characteristically deep in the shade of rocky banks, and walls built of thin mossy stones. Long hart’s-tongues hang in clusters by the wayside, and every cranny of the walls is filled with tiny ferns. Having climbed to Stoke Fleming by a variety of steep gradients we promptly descend, by two miles of gradients nearly as steep, to the idyllic cove of Blackpool, whose golden sands once flowed with the blood of four hundred Frenchmen. They, and many more, had landed here; but the men of Dartmouth, who had not forgotten the sacking of their town, came swarming down these cliffs upon them, so that the survivors were glad to put to sea again. Another steep climb takes us up to Strete, and another steep descent to Slapton Sands.

Here is a dramatically sudden contrast! From the very foot of the hill the road runs, for two miles and more, over what is probably the most level strip of land in Devon. It is no more than a strip. Close beside it on the left runs the long strip of the sands, and close beside it on the right an equally long strip of water, the reedy mere called Slapton Ley. “There is but a barre of sand,” says Leland, “betwixt the se and this poole. The waite of the fresch water and rage of the se brekith sumtime this sandy bank.” It is along this bar of sand and shingle that our road runs. If we turn away from it for a few minutes, on the by-road that crosses the pool near the hotel, we shall see Slapton itself.