“A heaven on earth,
A haven for the weary,
Where Nature’s glory hath no dearth,
Where life may not be dreary.”
A caustic comment upon this by a later traveller shows that not even Clovelly may please all tastes. “My life”—so carps the abandoned wretch—“would be very dreary if I staid here long.”
The soldier and sailor who occupy the projecting signpost of the “New Inn,” and whose arms, revolving in the breeze like windmills, are finished off like cricket-bats, have been there just a hundred years, as you may perhaps see from their costumes. They are now held together chiefly by dint of many successive coats of paint.
Beneath, coming up or going down, clatter the donkeys with their laden crooks—the last survivals of the pack-horse era—for wheels are unknown at Clovelly, and whether it be luggage, or coals, or sand, or vegetables to be conveyed, it is some patient, sure-footed “Neddy” that does the carrying, on his long-suffering back. On the way they brush past the artists, who are generally to be found calmly seated at their easels in the middle of the thoroughfare; for artists are privileged persons here, and so plentiful that no one takes the least notice of them, and no curiosity is ever shown as to whether they be painting well or ill. And every visitor who is not an artist, has a photographic camera of sorts; so that, in one way or another, a good many incorrect representations of Clovelly are taken away in the course of the year.
A CLOVELLY DONKEY.
Halfway down to the sea, between this steeply descending line of white houses—every one of them old, except that modern annexe of the “New Inn”—is the sharp turn where a breast-high rough stone wall, commanding view’s over the sea, is known as “the Look Out.” Immediately below, the road runs under one of the old houses, called “Temple Bar,” and thereafter goes zigzagging “down tu Kaay.”
“TEMPLE BAR.”
The Quay and the Quay pool compose the most miniature of harbours: the quay itself being a small but massive masonry pier, with a lower walk, an upper walk, and a breast-wall, curving out from a narrow strand. At high tide the water off this pier looks so deep, and the waves rage with such fury, that it is with something the effect of a dramatic revelation you find the ebb capable of receding so far as to leave pier and pool alike quite dry, and the boats all canted at absurd helpless angles.