KEWSTOKE: THE MONK'S STEPS.
A grey November day, with sad-coloured clouds hanging low over a grey and sullen sea. At intervals there rolls across the water the dull boom of distant fog-guns, echoing like thunder under the heavy veil of mist. From the shore below comes the ceaseless fret of waves sweeping swiftly in across the sand. Along the edge of the tide and over the wide mud-flats are scattered the white figures of gulls; and at times there comes faintly up the low musical call of a whimbrel, or the plaintive wail of a curlew. At times, too, there rises in the air a great flock of sandpipers, like a thin smoke-cloud drifting down the shore, until, as they wheel, their snowy breasts and upturned wings gleam for a moment silver white on the grey sky behind them.
It is a grey world altogether; grey sea, grey shore, grey shingle. Grey, too, are the ragged sand hills, whose shifting ramparts the gales of many winters have piled so high over the old sea wall. Below this hollow—a narrow gorge worn deep into the hill—there lies a little hamlet, still half-hidden by the trees, thinned and tattered though they are, and nestling close under the shelter of the hill;—a score or so of white-walled houses, with roofs of red tiles weathered to soft shades of brown and russet, with plumes of blue smoke all trailing seawards, and with a fringe of orchards round it, where the mellow fruit is still glowing on the boughs. High over the roofs of the village rises the grey tower of the church, its turrets just clear above the clustering elms, in whose shadow lies the crowded graveyard,
"Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap."
A wide stretch of pasture-land divides the village from the sea. Yet, in old days—before the coming of the friars to the priory yonder, whose tower shows faintly against the low green hill that dies in a rocky headland by the sea, perhaps even before the legionaries stormed the great stronghold whose ruins crown this breezy hill-top—the little hamlet, now so far above the tide line, was, if antiquaries read its name aright, a place of boats. The fields about it are still below high-water mark. A high spring tide, before a gale from the westward, would even now reach right up to the village, were it not for the sea wall and the sand hills.
The sand hills are mere desert now. Yet they are pleasant enough in the summer time, when their short turf is bright with rest-harrow and crowfoot, when the great bells of the sea-convolvulus open wide on the hot sand, when tufts of pale thrift blossom in the shingle, and clumps of white campion, and frail flowers of yellow poppy. Pleasant then is the sweet breath of thyme and clover. Pleasanter still the smell of the sea, blown by soft summer airs over the wide mud-flats and the trampled sand.
The little hamlet, high and dry this many a day, is a port no longer. The only harvest of the sea that the villagers can glean in our time is that which wind and wave bring ashore upon this sandy beach. In the broken spars, the splintered timbers, the nameless waifs and strays of wreckage which the storm brings to their doors, the dwellers in the cottages that seem to crouch for shelter behind the old sea wall, find all their winter fuel.
There are traditions that many a cargo of spirits was run ashore here in smuggling days. Tales are still current of the hiding places where the goods were stored. It is said that even the church tower has in its time afforded sanctuary to bales of lace and kegs of liquor that never paid the King his due. This narrow pass may well have served the "free-traders" as a secret way into the hills.
But the long flight of rude stone steps that leads down it towards the village dates from an earlier time. To its use and history no clue remains. It is likely enough that it was the pathway to the camp from the long-vanished port below.
There is a legend in the country-side that it led up to the cell of an anchorite, a solitary who inhabited this ravine, and who, with his own hands, hewed and fitted the stones of the old stairway, now worn smooth by the feet of many centuries. Half-way up the pass, under the shelter of the limestone cliff, is his traditional dwelling place, a chamber hollowed in the living rock and roughly faced with masonry.
Who was he? A monk from the old priory yonder,—an outlaw with blood upon his soul?
"Had you, Father, hid away
In your heart, some load to bury,
That you chose so long to stay,
World-forgot and solitary?"
It is a quiet spot. The crumbling walls look down through the rocky gateway of the gorge to the village at its foot; over the grey curve of shingle to the wet sands that, as the cloud veil lifts and scatters, are beginning now to shine like silver in the sunlight; to the grey sea, with sails showing ghost-like here and there; to the far shore, whose rugged outline looms faintly through the haze.
The brown elms of the village redden in the sunshine. There is a flush of colour on the belfry walls, on the limestone battlements above the pass, on the worn steps of the old stairway winding downward to the sea.
Yes, a quiet spot. There is no sound but the slumbrous music of the waves, at times the bark of a sheep-dog, a cattle-call from distant meadows, or the chatter of linnets on the hill.
On such a scene the old monk looked down. Such sounds were in his ears. Such rest and calm brooded over his rude dwelling—beast and bird his sole companions, the busy world shut out.
Was he the Father of the village, summoned from his cell to shrieve the dying, bless the dead? Was he a surly recluse, fond of solitude and silence?
"Tell, when all the boughs were bare,
Did you dread each dreary waking?
Hewing out your stony stair,
Were you glad at thorn-buds breaking?
Did you mark the flashing white
On the breast of earliest swallows,
Or the wavering, yellow light
On the cowslips in the hollows?
As day grew 'twixt dawn and dark
Did the shy birds learn to love you?
Sang the silver-throated lark
Out of sight in skies above you?
When the burning noontide sun
Made the gorge grow hot and hazy
Did you wish your work were done?
Were you ever tired—or lazy?
When you sat beside your door
In the dusk, you ancient man, you,
Did the broad-leaved sycamore
Wave and rustle low to fan you?
Did you sometimes, in the night,
Rise and quit your quiet shieling,
Climbing up the grassy height
With a still, expectant feeling?
Where the wind went whispering by
Underneath pale stars that glisten,
From the open, upper sky
Did God speak, and did you listen?"
From the rocky brow above the hermit's chamber the eye looks out over a wider world. A world no longer cold and colourless. The clouds have lifted from the sea; the sky has cleared; a flood of sunshine covers the whole landscape. It kindles on the red roofs of the village, it gilds the sombre leafage of the elms, it brightens the green meadows, turning all their straight-cut waterways to lines of silver. A tall beech that lifts its stately head above its fellows in the wood yonder reddens in the sunset. And the bright foliage of a row of Spanish chestnuts along the path that winds upwards from the shore flames like a river of light among the quiet-coloured elms and larches. A passing sail gleams white upon an opal sea. Over the wide west is spread a soft and golden glow; while far hills, range beyond range, are wrought in amethyst upon the lighted sky.
BY COACH TO TINTAGEL.
The traveller from Clovelly, making his way by coach towards the northern coast of Cornwall, pays no slight penalty, in the early stages of his ride at any rate, for the ease and comfort of his journey. It is but a dull and featureless road that crosses the miles of windswept moorland which fill so wide a stretch of the Devonshire marches. We have to leave unseen some of the grandest coast scenery in the county. We miss altogether the pleasant Vale of Hartland and the precipitous rocks of Black Mouth; and, above all, we see nothing of the world-forgotten nook of Hartland Quay, nestling close under its mighty wall of cliff.
It is a pleasant mode of travelling. There is a much greater charm about the box-seat of a coach than there is in the cosiest corner of a railway carriage. There is the charm of freshness and the open air, of hills and meadows and deep country lanes. But a man on a coach is not entirely his own master. The coach-ride gives no opportunity for anything like a leisurely survey. There is little time for exploring church or manor-house or abbey ruin. The old encampment, the cluster of grave-mounds, or the ancient cross of which perhaps the traveller may have caught a glimpse in passing, appeals to him in vain.
Morwenstow is among the spots we have to pass unseen. Yet it is well worth a pilgrimage. No picture, either of pen or pencil, can give a fair idea of that grey old tower by the sea, among its gnarled and storm-beaten trees, and set round with old figure-heads,—the sorrowful memorials of lost ships and of drowned mariners. And as at Clovelly, Kingsley is the central figure of all legends, old or new, so Morwenstow is haunted by memories of Hawker, for forty years the Vicar of the parish. He left his mark there in many ways. He built the vicarage, and above the vicarage door he traced these lines:—
"A house, a glebe, a pound a day,
A pleasant place to watch and pray.
Be true to Church, be kind to poor
O minister for evermore."
Morwenstow we have to take on trust. But the coach goes through Kilkhampton, and here again it is the Church that is the centre of interest. Outside the old grey walls we are reminded of Hervey, sometime curate in Bideford, who in this quiet churchyard wrote his once famous Meditations. Within the building lie the ashes of a line of Grenvilles;—the greatest of them, indeed, rests not here, but somewhere in the Spanish Main. One monument is in memory of Sir Beville Grenville, who, after routing on Stamford Hill a Roundhead army twice as numerous as his own, was killed, a few weeks later, in the fight on Lansdowne. The field of battle is only four miles to the southward; and there, on the wall of the village inn, may still be seen this inscription, from the monument,—long since destroyed,—which was set up on the scene of conflict:—
"In this Place
Ye Army of ye Rebells under ye command of
ye Earl of Stamford
Received a signal Overthrow by the Valor
Of Sir Bevill Grenville and ye Cornish Army,
On Tuesday, ye 16th of May, 1643."
As we drove out of Kilkhampton a brilliant sunset was flaming in the west, and the shadow of the coast was strangely lengthened on the grassy fringes of the road. By the time we had entered on the last league of the journey, the air, that all day long had been sweetened by the breath of wide sheets of gorse and heather, was blowing cool across the moors. And as we slowly descended the long hill to Bude, darkness was fairly settling down over the landscape.
Morning broke almost without a cloud. It was still summer, but there was a sign of coming change in the great flights of swallows that had assembled in the village street, clustering in thousands on roofs and telegraph wires, as if pausing for rest, or waiting until some coming storm should be overpast.
The sea was in quiet mood as we stood on the grassy brow of the cliff that skirts the shore; and they were the very gentlest of waves that rolled lazily in across the shining sand. But on every side there were tokens, only too plain to read, that this is among the most perilous of shores. Here a party of men were breaking up the iron frame-work of a wreck. There the life-boat crew, cleaning and painting and overhauling, stood ready by their gear. In many of the gardens by the canal are the battered figure-heads of ships, half hidden among shrubs and flowers. And in the churchyard above the village the white effigy of a turbaned warrior that once looked proudly down from the bows of the Bencoolen, now guards the grave of thirteen of her crew, lost when she came ashore here on these smooth sands some five-and-thirty years ago. In one of the houses of the village are preserved some arms—cutlases and muskets—that have been recovered from the wreck, so corroded and so encrusted with sand that their original shapes are hardly recognizable.
The sun went down behind an ominous-looking bank of cloud. That night the wind roared in the chimneys of the inn, and clouds of driving sand rattled like shot against the windows. Next morning found the sea in another temper altogether. Great green rollers were thundering up the beach, and leaping over the break-water in sheets of spray. Heavy clouds were rolling up from the southward, and altogether it was sufficiently clear that the swallows were well advised to put in for calmer weather.
The day's ride began under no pleasant conditions. Cold squalls of pitiless rain drove fiercely in our faces as we sat huddled together on the coach, glad to make use of every wrap and rug we had, and forcibly reminded of the old fisherman, who surveying the prostrate forms of his party of holiday makers, lying helpless in the boat, overcome by dire extremity of sickness, muttered softly to himself: "And they calls this goin' a-pleasurin!"
But the sun came out again as we went down the long slope into Boscastle; and, at length, when we drew up before the inn, the sky was clear. But the wind was blowing harder than ever as we made our way along the strange little harbour; and by the look-out station on the cliff it was as much as we could do to hold our own against the gale. A tremendous sea was breaking on the reefs outside, and thundering against the rocky wall below. Before us, far as eye could reach, stretched away the sunlit levels of the Atlantic, touched with a thousand twinkling points of light, and shot with changing tones of green and blue and amethyst.
Boscastle Minster lies in an ideal setting in its quiet woodland valley. But some travellers, at any rate, will look with less interest on its massive walls, on the decorated timbers of its noble roof, or on the time-blackened carvings of its beautiful bench-ends, than on the other church of Boscastle, at Forrabury, a mile or so to the westward. For this is the Silent Tower of Bottreaux, whose bells lie at the bottom of the sea, just outside the harbour.
All the world knows the story. How, when the church was first built, the village folk petitioned the Lord of Bottreaux for a peal of bells to hang in the new tower. How the bells were cast, and were on their way by sea from London. How, as the ship drew near Boscastle harbour, the pilot, a Tintagel man, heard the chimes of his own village ringing, and thanked God for fine weather and a prosperous voyage. How the captain scoffed: "Thank your own skill," said he, "and our stout craft and able seamanship." How the words were hardly uttered, when a sudden storm caught the vessel and dashed her to pieces on the rocks. How only the pilot reached land alive. And how, on wild nights of winter, when a storm is coming up from the Atlantic, the fisherman on the shore still hears the muffled tones of the long-lost Bottreaux bells, as the unquiet surges swing them in their ocean rest.
But the glory of the whole coast is Tintagel,—the birth-place of Arthur, the palace of King Marc of Cornwall. Though the village of Tintagel is half a mile or more inland, the ruins of the ancient stronghold stand partly on the brink of a cliff that overhangs the sea, but mainly on a bold headland almost surrounded by the waves. Some of the masonry is older even than the days of the Round Table, for in St. Juliet's Chapel there are, it is said, traces of Roman workmanship. Tintagel was still inhabited, either as a fortress or a prison until early Tudor times; but Leland describes it as having wholly gone to ruin. "It hath bene," he says in his gossiping Itinerary, "a marvelus strong and notable forteres, and almost situ loci inexpugnabile, especially for the donjon that is on the great high terrible cragge. But the residue of the buildinges of the castel be sore wether-beten an yn mine."
Standing on the brink of the tremendous cliff, with the waves and the wave-girt rock before, with the wind-swept downs behind, where the lonely church seems to crouch upon the short turf like a storm-driven sea-bird, and with the whole air full of the fretful murmur of the sea, we look down upon a page of old romance.
His must be a dull soul who, when the stern lines of the headland are dark against the glowing west, cannot people the old halls with shadowy figures, with the shapes of Arthur and his Knights, who, more than all other heroes, have been so
"Magnified by the purple mist
The dusk of centuries and of song."
As we look over the perilous verge we have no eyes for the dark hues of the rock, for the whiteness of the leaping foam-cloud, or for the beauty of the blue levels of "the unquiet, bright Atlantic main." We have no ears for the croak of the raven, or the wail of the herring-gull, or even for the thunder of the sea. Our souls are with the past. As we climb the steep pathway to the summit of the headland, we think of Uther Pendragon and of Merlin. We see Sir Bedivere stooping beneath his burden. We hear the clink of
". . . harness in the icy caves
And barren chasms,"
when
". . . . . . all to left and right
The bare, black cliff clanged round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armèd heels."
We see in fancy the prostrate figure of the guilty queen. We see
"Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire."
We hear the shock of that last battle in the west when
". . . . friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle."
And when at length we stand within the windswept ruin we remember that it was here King Marc of Cornwall kept his court. It was to this sea-girt rock that Tristram of Lyonesse, the peerless hunter, harper, knight, brought home his master's bride, Iseult of Ireland. Within these very walls stood the two helpless, hapless lovers, caught all unaware in the fatal mesh of the enchanter. For among the treasures on board the ship that brought them to Tintagel was a golden cup, with a love-potion in it, prepared by the bride's mother, for Iseult and King Marc to drink upon their marriage day, "and for ever love each other."
But, alas, Iseult and Sir Tristram, in all innocence, drained the magic cup. The subtle potion fired their veins;
". . . . . their hands
Tremble, and their cheeks are flame
As they feel the fatal bands
Of a love they dare not name."
In fancy we see that other chamber, far off upon the coast of Brittany, where, after long years the Knight lay dying. We see him
". . . . . . . . . weak and pale,
Though the locks are yet brown on his noble head,
Propt on pillows on his bed,
Gazing sea-ward for the light
Of some ship that fights the gale
On this wild December night."
We see Iseult standing in the moonlight, the spray of the sea-voyage on her cloak and hair. We hear her singing, in sweet voice and low, the promised
". . . tales of true, long-parted lovers,
Joined at evening of their days again."
We catch the last low murmur of the dying Knight:—
"Now to sail the seas of Death I leave thee—
One last kiss upon the living shore."
Printed at the Office of the Publisher, St. Stephen Street, Bristol.
