Meanwhile, the citizens of that Republic who find their way here are delightful, inasmuch as they themselves are so frankly delighted. England is such a new experience to most of them, and, whether it be a New England schoolmarm from Pottsville, or a pork-packing multi-millionaire from Chicago, you can clearly see that he and she are as pleased as children. Some of them, too, are naïvely ignorant of quite the most commonplace things. It was on North Hill, and an old fisherman was talking to me and hoeing his garden the while. A very charming girl came along and, looking over the garden wall, said, in the American language, “My! what curious flowers those are. What are they?”
“Them’s tetties, miss,” replied the old man.
She looked puzzled. “Potatoes,” I translated.
And so they were; potatoes in flower. And it was from America that Raleigh introduced the vegetable, over three hundred years ago!
Those transatlantic cousins in summer pervade Clovelly. Everywhere you hear it to be “purrfectly lovely,” or “real ullegant,” or may catch some one “allowing” it to be “vurry pretty,” or even a “cunning little place.” Sometimes they rhapsodise; and when they write down their names in the “New Inn” visitors’ book, they write much else in the appreciative sort. I wish my own countrymen were in general as appreciative of the good things in scenery and antiquities as the generality of our American visitors—and yet, on second thoughts, I don’t; because we who do love them would be lost in the sudden overwhelming swirl of humanity, and the things delightful would be finally spoiled, beyond recall.
SIGN OF THE “NEW INN,” CLOVELLY.
To examine an accumulated pile of those books is to note that at least three-quarters of those who stay here are Americans. “If it were not for them,” they say at the inn in particular, and in the village in general, “we could not go on.” A traveller from the United States, with his womenkind, is generally in a hurry, but if he visits Clovelly at all, he is, at any rate, almost certain to stay overnight. Often he comes with a motor-car, left at the stables far above. English holiday-makers, on the other hand, are most largely made up of steamboat excursionists, come for an hour or two. You may see them landing in row-boats, and coming straggling up-along, gazing in wonderment this way and that, and then going off again, quite content with this hurried impression. Not theirs the wish to know what Clovelly is like in early morning, or to witness daylight fade away in that unique street, and the lights of the cottages come out, above and below. I need not add that they certainly do not know Clovelly with a full knowledge.
Of those who record their stay in the visitors’ book at the “New Inn,” a large proportion add remarks, and some even indite verse. It is not great verse, as witness the following:
Clovelly