Penzance is the most westerly town in England, and has given birth to Sir Humphrey Davy and Captain Pellew (Lord Exmouth). Liskeard, which returns a member to Parliament, is described correctly enough as a rather sleepy market-town; and, with the exception of St. Germans, which was once the cathedral city of Cornwall, there is little connected with our present subject in this county. This cannot, however, be said of Devonshire, which abounds with quaint old towns and pleasant homesteads. Here the artist goes for latticed cottage windows, gables, and trellissed porches covered with evergreens. The meadows are dotted with fine timber trees, and narrow shady lanes lie through rows of elms and beech trees, while nearly every variety of wild flower and fern adorn the hedges.
It is commonly said that Thackeray laid the scene of Pendennis’ early years in Devonshire. Clavering is supposed to be Ottery St. Mary’s, Exeter figures as Chatteris, and Baymouth of course is Exmouth. Certainly the description of the place where Costigan resided would seem to suit the Close of the ancient city. “The captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little street in Chatteris, which is called Prior’s Lane, which lies in the ecclesiastical quarter of the town, close by Dean’s Green and the canons’ houses, and is overlooked by the enormous towers of the cathedral; there the captain dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low gabled house, on the door of which was the brass-plate of “Creed, tailor and robemaker.”
His description of Clavering St. Mary is very beautiful; the river Brawl might be of course the “Otter,” if the generally received opinion that Devonshire is the scene of this delightful work is correct. “Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from the London Road, as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and shiny Brawl winding down from the town, and skirting the woods of Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and peaked roofs of the houses rising up among trees and old walls, behind which swells a fair background of sunshiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward towards the sea, the place looks so cheery and comfortable that many a traveller’s heart must have yearned toward it from the coach top, and he must have thought that it was in such a calm friendly nook he would like to shelter at the end of life’s struggle.”
His description later on in the work, of the inside of Clavering town, is marvellously graphic. “Clavering is rather prettier at a distance than it is on a closer acquaintance. The town, so cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks very blank and dreary. Except on market-days there is nobody in the streets. The clack of a pair of pattens rings through half the place, and you may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the Clavering Arms without being disturbed by any other noise. There has not been a ball at the assembly rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their colonel, old Sir Francis Clavering; the stables which once held a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless and empty, except on Thursdays when the farmers put up there, and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or on petty sessions when the magistrates attend in what used to be the old cardroom. On the south side of the market rises up the church with its great gray towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate carving, deepening the shadows of the huge buttresses, and gilding the glittering windows and flaming vanes.... The rectory is a stout broad-shouldered brick house of the reign of Anne. It communicates with the church and market by different gates, and stands at the opening of Yew Tree Lane,” etc. etc. These exquisite descriptions of old-fashioned English country town scenes are introduced as being among the most vivid in our language, and also as referring, it is supposed, to the places under consideration.
