Part 5

The village has no very striking beauty; but its steep little streets, its thatch and whitewash and flowers, its air of remoteness, its maidens with their pretty blue pinners and prettier faces, make it a very attractive place. Nor is it without distinction. Not only is it dignified by a thirteenth-century spire of extreme austerity, but it also has the remains of a collegiate chantry. The chapel tower, with its graceful arch and fragment of groining, rises alone among the flowers of a lovely garden, where wild olive and camphor grow as serenely as the Devon apples that hang above them. It is a private garden, but as it skirts the road we may drive almost into the shadow of the tower. For several centuries, from the days of Henry II. to those of Henry IV., this generous soil belonged to a Guy de Brian. It was Joan Pole, the wife of the Guy de Brian of Henry III.’s time, who founded Pole Priory upon this spot: we have it on the word of a Pole. The later Brian who made it a college was one of the original Knights of the Garter, and a very versatile person, being Edward III.’s standard-bearer in “that notable fight he had with the French at Calais,” as well as an ambassador and an admiral-of-the-fleet. In the reign of Henry IV. this manor of Slapton became the property of Harry Hotspur’s crafty father; but to many of us the most stirring memory in this place is that of Sir Richard Hawkins, the third great sailor of his name. He bought Pole Priory--now corrupted into Poole--before he set sail on that adventurous voyage that lasted so much longer than he expected. During the ten years of his absence, years of imprisonment in the South Seas and elsewhere, this was the home of his “dearest friend, his second self,” Judith, Lady Hawkins. For some reason--whether to impress the neighbours or because she suffered from rheumatism I do not know--this lady was in the habit of walking to church on three quarters of a mile of red velvet carpet. Possibly life was not very gay at Slapton at the end of the sixteenth century, and this mild ceremonial may have been a comfort to her. The time came when she sought another kind of consolation in her loneliness. The story goes[4] that when Sir Richard came home at last to Slapton he found a strange air of festivity astir in these precipitous streets. The red carpet was laid, we may be sure, from Pole Priory to the church, for when he asked what matter was afoot he found it was his Judith’s wedding-day. It was fortunate he came in time, for one cannot quite see Richard Hawkins in the part of Enoch Arden.

The main road to Kingsbridge pursues its level way between salt water and fresh till it reaches Torcross, a most desolate-looking village with a reputation for fishing. Here, sad to say, we must turn inland. The scenery between this point and Kingsbridge is no great matter, but there are some pretty villages, and Stokenham Church has a good screen. The road is fair, and the hills less formidable than usual.

There is no means of seeing, as a whole, this beautiful coast between Torcross and Plymouth, except on foot or from the sea; but most happily it is possible for motorists of inquisitive habits to find their way, here and there, to various little havens of the greatest charm. These, however, are all beyond Kingsbridge. Kingsbridge itself is a place of no particular attraction nor interest. It has a few picturesque corners and old houses, but its real claim on our affections is that the only way to Salcombe lies through it. Now a road that leads to Salcombe is something to be grateful for.

To those who do not know Salcombe, the six miles that lie between it and Kingsbridge may be a little depressing. The road leads to no other place, and is preposterously hilly: the country is treeless and discouraging. To the uninitiated it may well seem, as they drive between the imprisoning hedges, that no compensation is likely to be forthcoming. But some of us know better. We reach the edge of the hill, and suddenly the sea, brilliant and soft--a sea of liquid jewels--is shining below us, lapping upon the sands of the little creeks; wooded slopes drop steeply to the rocks that fringe the shore; red and white sails flit about the harbour, dapper yachts lie at anchor in the shelter of the hill, wave-worn barges move heavily towards the land; Salcombe lies at our feet, clinging to the hillside, a tiny town of steep streets and shipwrights’ yards and little quays; and Bolt Head stretches out a long arm to protect it.

There was an evening, not very many years ago, when at the hour of twilight a yacht put out to sea over the bar of Salcombe Harbour, while the sound of the evening bell came clearly across the water. Up the estuary the lights were beginning to shine out one by one through the dusk, and in the dark shadow of the headland the full tide silently “turned again home.” Lord Tennyson, who was on board the _Sunbeam_ that night, has made Salcombe Bar dear to many who have never crossed it. He had been staying at the pretty house that stands on its own little promontory, hidden by trees, between the town and the bar. Here for some years lived Froude the historian among the orange-trees and tamarisks, and it was here he died.

This peaceful anchorage was very useful to pirates in the good old days. They hid safely behind Bolt Head and, when any unwary ship passed by, dashed out and plundered her. Henry VIII., though not above piracy himself, built a little castle for their undoing, upon a small precarious rock nearly circled by the sea. Here are its fragments still. Sir Edmund Fortescue strengthened it and called it Fort Charles, and held it very valiantly for Charles I.: so valiantly that it withstood Fairfax, and when it surrendered at last Fortescue was allowed to take the key with him.

To nearly every motorist, as he sits beside his tea-cup on the terrace of the Marine Hotel, or leans against the wall that keeps the sea out of the garden, it will occur at once that this harbour is an ideal place for motor-boating. This is truer than he knows. For these waters that ripple round the garden-walls of Salcombe pass on their way inland in various directions: up South Pool Creek to the thatched farmstead that has its feet nearly in the water at high tide; past Goodshelter to the old mill at Waterhead, and to Kingsbridge four miles away. And beyond the bar are all the little coves and bays of a lovely coast: Hope, where the high rocks entrap the sunshine and keep out the winds: Thurlestone, whose worldly ambitions are greater and whose charms are less: Bantham, between a curve of the Avon estuary and the sea, where the breezes are sweet with the scent of gorse, and worldly ambition seems altogether dormant. Even without a motor-boat we may see these little bays, each at the end of its own little lane; but only such motorists as are staying close at hand will care to explore lanes so narrow and winding and steep.

On our way back to Kingsbridge, however, to take the road to Plymouth, we shall see a narrow turn to the left, near West Alvington, which is a perfectly practicable means of cutting off a mile or two of dull country and avoiding a bad hill in Kingsbridge. As a whole the main road from this point to Plymouth is one of the best in South Devon, though there is a long and very steep descent at Aveton Giffard that is not marked on Bartholomew’s map, and a sharp rise in Modbury that is considerably steeper than the contour-book estimates. There is no very striking beauty of a large sort, but a great deal of the restful, wayside charm that makes Devonshire so comforting. There is no need to loiter on the road, for though it played its part in the Civil War--and indeed possibly on that account--there are few relics of its history to be seen. The bridge that crosses the sedges of the Avon at Aveton Giffard was once important enough to have a fort built on the hill for its defence; but none the less it was taken by the extremely irregular troops whose clubs and pickaxes and saws were wielded here for the Parliament. Champernowne of Modbury was one of the builders of the fort, and one of the greatest sufferers from the “clubmen,” for his house, which stood on the top of Modbury Hill, was fortified and occupied by the royalists. “This Party of ours wᶜʰ was at Modbury,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife, “indur’d a cruell assault for 12 howers against many thousand men.” One result of this cruel assault, which could have but one end, is that only a very small fragment of Court House is still standing.

We go on our way through Yealmpton and Brixton, on a surface that gradually becomes very rough, and cross the toll-bridge into Plymouth.

This is a name that stirs the blood of every true child of Britain. In the days of Elizabeth’s great sailors it was from Plymouth that Britannia ruled the waves. And to-day there is no end to the interest that this place holds for those who love the navy and the sea as is the wont of Englishmen; no end to the modern interests of port and harbour, of dockyard and battleship, nor to the crowding memories on Plymouth Hoe.

Here on the Hoe, with Drake’s statue beside us, and his island below us, and behind it those fair woods of Mount Edgecumbe on which Medina Sidonia cast a covetous eye, we are looking down at the channel through which all the gallant adventurers of the sixteenth century sailed out to their distant goals. This statue is the symbol of them.[5] “He was of stature low,” says John Prince of Francis Drake, “but set and strong grown; a very religious man towards God and his houses, generally sparing churches wherever he came; chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of his word, merciful to those that were under him, and hating nothing so much as idleness.” The words fit the statue well. It was here where we are standing that he and the other captains played their memorable game of bowls, while the Armada called Invincible swept nearer and nearer. His ship and her half-fed crew lay down there in the Sound, under the lee of the island that has borne his name ever since that day, and the flagship, further out, “danced lustily as the gallantest dancer at Court.” Through that channel he and the rest sailed out into the gale when their game was done, to do their thorough work. Many times he had sailed through it already on various quests of war and adventure--and, it must be owned, of pillage: and it was from this harbour, afterwards, that he went on the voyage that “was marred before it was begun, so great preparations being too big for a cover,” the voyage to Nombre de Dios Bay, where he lies “dreaming all the time of Plymouth Hoe.”

Very long and very stirring is the visionary pageant that rises before us here: the Black Prince, triumphant, sailing in with his prisoner, the King of France; poor Katherine of Aragon, landing here in an outburst of welcome; John Hawkins, setting forth on those dubious but gallant undertakings that the Queen called “private enterprise” and Hawkins called “the Queen’s business.” His son Sir Richard long remembered a scene that took place when he was a boy, under that green hill that faces us. A fleet of Spaniards, bound for Flanders to fetch a new bride for Philip II., dared to sail between the island and the mainland “without vayling their top-sayles, or taking in of their flags; which my father Sir John Hawkins perceiving, commanded his gunner to shoot at the flag of the admiral, that they might thereby see their error.” They saw it quickly, and the matter ended with feasting.

Sir Richard’s own ship, too, takes part in the ghostly pageant, sailing close to the land to bid goodbye, for many more years than he suspected, to the throng that stood here on the Hoe to do him honour. Amid blowing of trumpets, and music of bands, and roaring of guns he left the harbour, with his thoughts full of the lady who took pleasure in red carpets. And it was there, below us, that the brave heart of Blake gave its last throb as he entered English waters--the heart that is buried, they say, in St. Andrew’s Church.

The long procession of adventurous ships winds endlessly on, past the island, and out of the harbour, and away into the world of the past. The ships of Frobisher and Gilbert, of Grenville and of Raleigh are there, and the _Mayflower_ with the Pilgrim Fathers, and the ship of Captain Cook. And at the last I see a little ship sail in alone, and on her deck a disappointed, disillusioned woman; the woman whom the French have never forgiven because, when they broke her heart, she omitted to repay them with smiles--the daughter of Marie Antoinette. The Duchesse d’Angoulême came hither from Bordeaux, in exile for the second, but not for the last time, with the marshals’ vows of fidelity and the news of their joining Napoleon still ringing in her ears together.

SOUTH CORNWALL

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH CORNWALL

DISTANCES.

Plymouth Looe, viâ Horningtops 23 miles Polperro 5 ” Lostwithiel 12 ” Fowey 7 ” Truro 22 ” Falmouth 11 ” Lizard 19 ” Penzance 28 ” Land’s End, viâ St. Buryan 12 ” --------- Total 139 miles

ROADS.

Hills steep and very frequent.

Surface: on main roads good. By-roads often very narrow and rather rough.

IV

SOUTH CORNWALL

One approaches Cornwall diffidently: one leaves it with a sense of profound ignorance. There is no county, of course, of which any true knowledge can be gained in one visit, whether the visitor be a motorist, or a bicyclist, or that very superior person the pedestrian; but perhaps this is truer of the Duchy than of any other part of England. The knowledge of Cornwall is a special study with many branches, familiar only to Cornwall’s devoted sons. It is easy to love her beautiful face at first sight, and easy to learn the part of her history that is also the history of England, but behind and within these superficial things is the vast hoard of her local legends and traditions, and the bewildering story of her unnumbered saints. A slight knowledge of tin-mining, too, were not amiss. One can only admit ignorance, and drive on happily.

Those who elect to approach the coast of Cornwall from Tavistock, through Callington and Liskeard, will travel on a fine road, which four times dips down to streams and forthwith climbs up again. On so hilly a road as this, one may depend on finding beautiful scenery. After passing through Liskeard the better road to take is the upper one by Morval, as it is less rough than the road that follows the Looe.

On the whole, however, I think the most satisfactory way to enter Cornwall is by Plymouth and Torpoint Ferry. Indeed, I would even suggest that those who have crossed the Moor to Tavistock should choose this route; for the road from Tavistock to Plymouth is magnificent in itself, and overlooks some of the finest views in Devon. And moreover the park of Mount Edgecumbe[6] is but a little way from Torpoint. It is true that beautiful Cothele is but a little way from the Callington road; but Cothele is not open to the public, though by the kindness of Lord Mount Edgecumbe its granite walls and historic furniture may sometimes be seen. But Mount Edgecumbe, says John Prince, is “the most beauteous gentile seat in all those western parts.” The commander-in-chief of the Armada, looking at it from the sea, “was so affected with the sight thereof” that he determined to keep it for his share “in the partage of this kingdom.” His taste was better than his seamanship. The house that stands in this lovely park was built by the grandson of the builder of Cothele--a gentleman, according to Carew, “in whom mildness and stoutness, diffidence and wisdom, deliberateness of undertaking and sufficiency of effecting, made a more commendable than blazing mixture of virtue.” However commendable, he was less attractive, I think, than his grandsire, whom deliberateness of undertaking would not have saved when he was pursued by his enemies among the woods of Cothele. He pushed a large stone into the Tamar, and flinging his cap after it, hid among the trees. Richard III.’s messengers of death, hearing the splash and seeing the floating cap, thought he was drowned and went away. “He afterwards builded in the place of his lurking a chapel.”

The road from Torpoint to Polbathick is excellent, and where it winds round the creeks of the Lynher estuary there are woods on the river’s very verge, as is the lovely custom beside these West Country waters. Across the valley is St. German’s, wherein are some of Cornwall’s most venerable memories and the home of the famous Eliot who died nobly in the Tower. At the fork just beyond Polbathick it is advisable to take the road to the right, for though it is a good deal the longer it is also a good deal the smoother, and avoids a pair of steep hills at Hessenford. The direct road is quite practicable, however, and those who choose it may take the opportunity of running down the wooded valley of the Seaton to the shore. On the other hand, if we go by the longer road we shall see more of the Looe estuary, which is far more beautiful.

To it the Liskeard road runs suddenly down; then turns and follows it very closely to the sea. Even closer to the water is the little railway, which clings to the bank under the hanging trees, and at one point actually goes on its adventurous way in mid-stream. The water, gorgeous as a peacock’s breast, flows evenly between thickly wooded hills, and as the valley widens the town appears at the end of it, climbing its steep sides.

As one approaches a place that is a byword for beauty there is always a lurking fear of disappointment. But the fishing-towns of Devon and Cornwall are so disarming, so personal in their charm, that they never disappoint. Indeed, the trouble is rather that they win the heart too quickly. Each one in turn appears the ideal spot in which to settle for life. So is it here. As we cross the bridge that joins East Looe to West, and look down at the green timbers of the little quays and at the countless boats, or up at the many-coloured gardens above the road; as we drive round the point, and find the open sea rippling in upon a rocky shore, it seems obvious that this, and no other, is the place to live in. The conviction lasts until we reach Polperro.

This we cannot do by way of the wide road that runs round Hannafore Point, for this ends abruptly opposite Looe Island. We must return to the bridge, and without crossing it take the road that rises on the left. As we mount the steep hill we see below us the meeting of the two rivers and their two wooded valleys, and behind us among the trees the scattered houses of the town. At a point about two miles from Looe we turn to the left, and run down a long and winding hill into a tiny green gorge, with steep sides rising almost from the roadway. It ends in the narrow street of Polperro. Here, at the beginning of the street, is the stable-yard of a little hotel, where standing-room may be found for the car. Beyond this point it is practically impossible for a large car to turn, for the twisted alleys of this cramped and cabined village are hardly more than paths, and owing to their contortions on the hillside are often broken by steps.

Why anyone should want to turn I cannot imagine; for this is certainly the place to live in! We knew all about it, of course, before we came here: a thousand artists have painted it. Large numbers are painting it at this moment; a group at every corner. Since there are so many of them it is fortunate that artists--even amateurs--are among the few human beings who are not blots upon a landscape. They may give us lovely pictures of this place: of the headlands that clip the huddled houses so closely between them; and the stream that rushes under weed-grown walls to the sea; and the landlocked harbour with its crowd of little boats; and the cobbled lanes and whitewashed cottages and flights of footworn steps; and the flowers that brighten every narrow alley; and, best of all, the outer haven with its warm red rocks, and white sails reflected in the sea, and the stately outspread wings of innumerable gulls. Yet none but a magic picture could give us the magic of Polperro. For no one could paint this sea but a wizard whose medium was molten jewels, and no one can feel the spell of the place without the pathetic, haunting, insistent sound of the seabirds’ cry. Indeed, it is this sound that gives reality to Polperro. If it were not for this one might think it had been designed and built for the use of artists. The fisher-folk who live here could tell a different tale; and the wild cry of the gulls reminds us of a sea that is not always green and glassy. Moreover, there was once a time, I believe, when it seemed as though Polperro had been designed and built for the use of smugglers.

Very reluctantly we climb out of the gorge and take our way to Lostwithiel by Pelynt and Lanreath, on a road of variable surface and everlasting hills. In Pelynt church is the restored crozier of Bishop Trelawny, whose threatened death, as we all know, determined twenty thousand Cornishmen to “know the reason why.” There are various monuments here too, some beautiful and all interesting, of Trelawnys and Bullers; and at Lanreath a lovely screen and a carved wood cover to a Norman font, and on the south wall a painted copy of Charles I.’s letter of thanks to the men of Cornwall. From the top of the first steep hill beyond Lanreath we see the rounded outlines of Braddock Downs before us, and at their feet the woods of Boconnoc. Over those grassy hills the soldiers of the Parliament were pursued by the royalists. “They were possest of a pretty rising ground,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife upon the day of the fight, “… and we planted ourselves upon such another against them within muskett shott; and we saluted each other with bulletts about two hours or more.… We chast them diverse miles … and we lost not a man. So I rest yours ever.” A year later these slopes were stained again--but not so darkly as the royalist honour--when the infantry of the Parliament, having surrendered, were shot down as they passed the King’s army unarmed, and were robbed of clothes and horses. The King himself at that time was staying at Lord Mohun’s place down there among the trees. We pass one of the gates presently, and skirt the park where Bevill Grenville’s men, “upon my lord Mohun’s kind motion,” were quartered by good fires under the hedge.

This park that we see over the fence has been owned by Mortains and Courtenays, Mohuns and Pitts. The last Lord Mohun did not, I fancy, spend much of his time under these trees--preferring those of the Mall and of Richmond Park. When, after surviving three trials for murder, he died at last in his famous duel with the Duke of Hamilton, his widow sold Boconnoc to Thomas Pitt for half the sum, it is said, that he received from the Regent Orléans for the Pitt Diamond. It was here that the great Lord Chatham was born.