LYNMOUTH, FROM THE TORS HOTEL.
I have visited Lynmouth in haste and at leisure. To arrive hurriedly and dustily, and to make a quick survey, and so hasten off, is unsatisfactory. Under such circumstances you feel a pariah among a leisured community who are cool and not dusty; and you do not assimilate the spirit of the place. The utmost satisfaction in the way of lazy enjoyment (it has been conceded by philosophers) is to watch other people at work. That is why, to some minds, Bank Holidays, when the entire population makes merry, are so unsatisfactory; there is no toil to form the shadow in your bright picture of dolce far niente. Now there is a rustic gallery, with a pavilion, where you can take tea and be consummately idle, built out from the sloping wooded grounds of the Tors Hotel, and thence you may, if so minded, spend the livelong day watching the people immediately below, in the central pool of Lynmouth’s life. Overhanging the road, you watch the holiday folk who are taking it easy, and those others who are making such hard work of it, rushing from place to place. And I, even I, looking down upon perspiring dust-covered cyclists arriving, thank Providence that I am not such as them: conveniently forgetting for the while that I have been and shall be once more!
The “North” in North Devon raises ideas, if not of a cold climate, at least of bracing air; but really, with the always up and always down of the scenery, the rather more bracing atmosphere than that of South Devon is forgotten, in the heated exertions of getting about.
Why do people so largely select torrid July and August for holidays? For the most part it is a matter of convention, but in part because by the end of July the schools have broken up. There remain, however, large numbers of holiday-makers who are unaffected by school-terms and would resent being thought slaves to convention. They can go a-pleasuring when they please, yet they wait until the dog-days. Now Lynmouth, in particular, and the North Devon coast, in general, are exceptionally delightful in May and June. The early dews of morning, the cool, fragrant thymy airs, that in July and August are dispelled long before midday and give place to brilliant sunshine and a great heat, which are in themselves enjoyable enough, but forbid much joy in considerable exercise, remain more or less throughout the day in those earlier months. September, too, when the fervency of summer mellows into an autumnal glow, has its own particular charm.
CHAPTER III
LYNTON—THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY, IN FICTION AND IN FACT
There is more difference between Lynmouth and Lynton than is found in the mere geographical fact that the one is situated over four hundred and twenty feet below the other; a certain jealousy on the one side and a little-veiled contempt on the other exist. Lynmouth people do not speak in terms of affection of Lynton. “Suburban,” they say, and certainly Lynton is overbuilt. Moreover, at Lynton, although it is on a height, you stew in the sun. It is cooler down below, at Lynmouth, rejoicing in the refreshing breezes blowing off the sea.
And there is no doubt that Lynmouth prides itself on being exclusive. As already shown, it does not cater for the crowd. Up at Lynton you are in the world and of the world, and find something of all sorts. Lynmouth’s idea of Lynton is instructive. It is that of a place where the gnomes work, who labour for the convenience and enjoyment of the village down by the sea: only here you have the paradox that the underworld of these labouring sprites is above, and that the socially superior place is the, geographically, nether world. It is only fair to remark that Lynton does by no means agree with these estimates of itself, and is indeed, a bright, clean, pretty little town, with its own individuality, and an amazing number of hotels, boarding-houses, and lodgings, the houses mostly built in excellent taste; and I assure you I have seen no such thing as a gnome there. You do not, generally, on the North Devon coast, as so often in South Devon, find the scenery outraged by a terrible lack of taste, displayed in a plenitude of plaster.
When Mr. Louis Jennings passed this way, about 1890, the Cliff Railway, or lift, was newly opened, but the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway was not yet in being. Lynton, nevertheless, was in the throes of expansion, and he found “the hand of man doing its usual fatal work on one of the loveliest spots our country has to boast of. Flaring notices everywhere proclaim the fact that building sites are procurable through the usual channels; this estate and the other has been ‘laid out’; the lady reduced in circumstances, and with spare rooms on her hands, watches you from behind the window-blinds; red cards are stuck in windows denoting that anything and everything is to be sold or let. A long and grievous gash has been torn in the side of the beautiful hill opposite Lynmouth—a gash which must leave behind it a broad scar never to be healed.
“‘Who has done this?’ I sorrowfully asked the waiter at the hotel.