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.
THE TEIGN.
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.
TEIGNMOUTH HARBOUR.