The North Devon Coast

by Charles G. Harper

IN THE HARBOUR, ILFRACOMBE.

Now let us turn to a consideration of Ilfracombe to-day. People with a passion for comparisons and parallels—dear, good people who would trace a family likeness between an elephant and a dromedary—seek in conversation to find points of resemblance between Ilfracombe and (say) Torquay, Hastings, Brighton; half-a-dozen other seaside resorts. They are mostly amateurs at the art of discovering likenesses where they do not exist, and may be excused. But there have been those who in cold print have instituted resemblances. For these there is no excuse, acceptance, or encouragement. Ilfracombe is—just Ilfracombe, and not only does Ilfracombe insist upon its own individuality and declares “I am I,” but every other among the half-dozen naturally demands the like justice.

The nearest parallel is, of course, to be found in this same county of Devon; but that is sufficiently remote, geographically, and in most other ways. A superficial likeness, in its hilly site, (and in its lack of sands) may be discovered to Torquay, but that is all. Torquay is in greater part residential and quietly aristocratic, with a tendency to pious works and clerical tea-fights: Ilfracombe is a “popular resort,” and becomes ever more so; with what it would be a mere inadequacy to term a “tendency” to open-air concerts and amusements for the crowd. We who stay, communing with nature, elegantly housed in the more refined hotels of Lynmouth, or the even yet primitive Clovelly, shudder at the August crowds at Ilfracombe, and recount across the dinner-tables, what time the tender evening closes in upon the quiet harbour, how we adventured there for half a day and watched the trippers at their strenuous tripping. Indeed, those who people Ilfracombe so numerously in the height of the season go there determined to have a “good time,” and expend a considerable amount of energy during the day in securing that desirable consummation; but when evening is come they unanimously clamour to be amused: hence the entertainments in the conservatory-like structure, known officially as the “Victoria Pavilion,” and unofficially and shamefully as the “Cucumber Frame”; and hence also the open-air concerts on the “Montebello Lawn,” and elsewhere: “Montebello” being a name, the most unprejudiced must agree, as little characteristic of Devon as are the “pierrots,” who make alleged fun for the aimless crowd. The days are indeed past when we were “insular.” We have, instead, become more than a thought too cosmopolitan. “Ods bodikins!” as Sir Richard Grenville might have said, “beshrew me, but these things like me not.”

[After W. Daniell, R.A.

LANTERN HILL, ILFRACOMBE.

The study of seaside “holiday amusements,” from the time when the sea and the countryside themselves palled, and the holiday-maker ceased to be able to amuse himself, might form an interesting theme for the social philosopher. Here we can but glance at the subject, and slightly trace the first footsteps of the nigger-minstrel and the barrel-organist, down to the German bands who extract unwilling tribute from a long-suffering public, and the piano-organ men, the immediate precursors of the “pierrots” aforesaid. It should not be difficult to become a “pierrot.” You procure a silly suit of white linen clothes, of no particular fit, that might have been made for a person four times your own size, whiten your silly face, place on your idiotic head a foolish sugar-loaf white felt hat, and, with a garnish of red or black balls, according to fancy, there you are, plus a little native impudence, fully equipped. I do not love the old burnt-cork nigger minstrel more, I only dislike him less than this ostensibly French importation that is already so hackneyed; but I declare I could welcome the return of even his extravagant figure, beery breath, and untutored banjo, by way of relief.

But these are, doubtless, the views of an unreasonable recluse. They are not shared by the holiday crowds, nor by the ruling powers that control the destinies of Ilfracombe. Entertainers fill a “felt want,” felt very acutely by the class of people who most resort to the town in these days, and the governing body of the town develops it along these lines of least resistance. Only, as I stand, when darkness has fallen over the summer evening, a little aloof, and look down from some convenient height upon the garish lights and the blatant merriment, the black hills seem, to this observer, to frown reproachfully upon the scene, and the twinkling stars seem like so many bright tear-drops for the folly of it all. In short, the romantic natural setting of Ilfracombe is utterly unsuited to this sort of thing. One may deplore, yet not resent, it at Yarmouth or at Blackpool, where Nature is at her tamest, but found amid the bold rocks and frowning cliffs of North Devon, one does both. Nor is there any easy escape anywhere within the town. The brilliantly-lighted Pavilion glitters across the lawns, under the Capstone Hill, and across the intervening space you dimly see, maybe, a jigging figure within, executing a clog-dance. You may even hear the clatter of his clogs, drowned at last in a very hurricane of applause.

If you remain, you must, perforce, listen to the celebration of mysterious sprees, in this wise: