To leave these features and come to consideration of scenic charms, there can be no higher praise than to say that at night Torquay picturesqueness reaches the acme of theatric scene-painting. To return, when the moon is shining, to Torquay from Paignton, is to experience a thrill of decorative pleasure that few other places can confer. A great bar of silver moonlight, all alive with ripples, mingles with terrestrial illuminations of villas and climbing hillside roads, garish yellow by comparison. Below, in the harbour, red and green and yellow lights of smacks and vessels of many builds dance in streaky minuets upon lazy tides, while on the horizon the mast-head lanterns of Brixham boats rise and fall giddily from crest to trough of Channel waves.
Torquay has many climates, from the warm and dense atmosphere of Fleet Street and Union Street to the mellow lapping of Torbay air by the rise of Park Hill, or the robustious breezes of Warberry Hill, farther inland. And thus Torquay pleases every variety of the querulous invalid: these feeble folk lie here in strata, elevated or depressed, as best befits their individual complaints.
Since Dutch William landed at Brixham, and so marched through Torquay to Newton Abbot with his heavy crew of Hollanders, the place has had no history save only the smooth and simple annals of what auctioneers and land-agents call a “rising watering-place.” And Torquay has been rising any time these hundred years, until it has at length been blessed with the left-handed blessings of a Mayor and Corporation. These be weighty matters, and Torquay celebrated its Charter Day last year with all the becoming pomp of so great and glorious an occasion. Minor happenings there have been that remain tinged with the bitter irony of circumstance, as when Napoleon, a captive on board the Bellerophon (the “Billy Ruffian” of an untutored crew reckless of the classics) was brought into Torbay, within sight of the diminutive Torquay of that time. The conquered conqueror was reduced to the status of a Richardson’s show, to be peeped at by that “nation of shopkeepers” which he had so gratuitously despised.[3] That nation, or rather, this southern coast portion of it, had been not a little uneasy at Napoleon’s preparations for invasion, and had been strenuously devising defences, with quaking hearts; while the populace sang, to keep its pecker up, such reassuring songs about the improbable, as that of which the following stanza is a specimen:—
“When husbands with their wives agree,
And maids won’t wed from modesty,
Then little Bony he’ll pounce down,
And march his men on London town.”
After which followed the rousing chorus—
“Rollickum rorum, tol-lol lorum,
Rollickum rorum, tol-lol lay.”
And these matters are Torquay’s sole concern with political history. Happy town, say I.
XL.
Three miles of a delightfully undulating road that leads close by the shores of the bay, and at length we reached Paignton about nine o’clock. Paignton lives on the leavings of Torquay, and a decent subsistence they seem to afford. It is unromantically celebrated for its cabbages, and peculiar for the German nomenclature of its hotels. The whole place is singularly and indecently Teutonic, a sort of Pumpernickel, and its chief street might appropriately be termed the Donnerwetterplatz, from the epithets called from us by its promiscuous stones. One anachronism there is in this Germanic town—German bands are plenty. We know, do we not, that these pests are found everywhere but in the land of their birth. But, come to think of it, where does the German band practise? The flippant will say that to assume any practice on their part would be an assumption of wildest extravagance; but, seriously, they must practise sometimes and somewhere; but where and when? Did you ever hear them at it? Did you ever see a dead donkey? Never! I have heard volunteer bands practise and have survived—chastened ’tis true. They have their drill-halls in which to harmonise in some sort; but (fearful thought) German bands must practise in their lodgings. I can think of few things more dreadful than to be their ill-fated neighbour.