Peculiarly beautiful though the Quantock scenery is, it is probable that the especially delicate beauty of it would never have attracted outside attention, had it not been for the association during a brief space at Nether Stowey of Coleridge and his friends. We will spare some time to visit Nether Stowey, and see what manner of setting was that in which the “Ancient Mariner” and other of Coleridge’s poetry was wrought.
The entrance to Stowey from the direction of Bridgwater is particularly imposing. You come downhill, and then sharply round a bend to the right, where a group of Scotch firs introduces Stowey Court and the adjoining parish church: the view up the road towards the village made majestic and old-world by another grouping of firs beyond the curious early eighteenth-century gazebo that looks out in stately fashion from the garden wall of the Court. From this, and from similar summerhouse-like buildings, our great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers glanced from their walled gardens upon the coaches and the road-traffic of a bygone age. The roofs and gables, and the uppermost mullioned windows of the Court are glimpsed over the tall walls.
Although Stowey Court dated originally from the fifteenth century, when it was built by Touchet, Lord Audley, and although it formed an outpost of the Royalists during the struggles of Charles the First with his Parliament, the building is not nowadays of much interest, and the church is of less, having been rebuilt in 1851, with the exception of the tower.
The romantic promise of this prelude to Stowey is scarcely supported by the appearance of the village street. It is a long street of houses for the most part of suburban appearance, running along the main road, with a fork at the further end, along the road to Taunton, where stands a modern Jubilee clock-tower beside the old village lock-up. The clock-tower seems to most people a poor exchange for the small but picturesque old market-house that until comparatively recent years stood in the middle of the street, with a streamlet running by.
To Leland, writing in the reign of Henry the Eighth, Stowey was “a poore village. It stondith yn a Botom emong Hilles.” The situation is correctly described, and no doubt the condition of Stowey was all that Leland says of it, but no one could nowadays describe it truthfully as “poor,” although it would be altogether correct to write it down as desperately commonplace. There is nothing poetic about the village at this time o’ day, and its position on a much-travelled main road has brought a constant stream of fast-travelling motor-cars and waggons, together with a frequent service of Great Western Railway motor-omnibuses, with the result that a loathsome mingled odour of petrol and fried lubricating oil and a choking dust pervade the long street all the summer. The local hatred of motor-cars—a deep-seated and intense detestation of them and those who drive them and travel in them—is, perhaps, surprising to a mere passer-by, who may just mention the subject to a villager; but it is only necessary to stay a day and a night in Stowey, and then enough will be seen and heard and smelt to convert the most mild-mannered person to an equal hatred.
They are naturally tolerant people at Stowey, and not disposed to be censorious. If you do not interfere with their comfort and well-being, you are welcome to exist on the face of the earth, as far as they are concerned, and joy go with you. They even tolerate the notorious Agapemoneites of Spaxton, two miles away, the dwellers in the Abode of Love; and are prepared, without active resentment, to allow the Rev. Hugh Smyth-Pigott to style himself Jesus Christ and to cohabit with any lady—or any number of ladies—he pleases, and to style the resultant offspring Power, or Glory, or Catawampus, or Fried Fish, or anything that may seem good to him, with no more than a little mild amusement. “They doan’ intervere wi’ we, and us woan’ intervere wi’ they,” is the village consensus of expressed opinion, greatly to the wrath of certain good Bridgwater folk, who come around, raving that the Agapemoneites ought to be swept off the fair land of the Quantocks, and when none will take on the office of broom, denounce all as Laodiceans, neither hot nor cold, and so fit only to be spewed out. But it surely rests rather with Spaxton and Charlinch to perform the suggested expulsion; and even then, anything of the kind would be distinctly illegal, for it is part of the law of this free and enlightened and Christian country that any man may, if it pleases him to do so (and he can find others of the opposite sex to join him), set up a harem, and even proclaim himself the Messiah, without let or hindrance. The law no more regards him as a fit target for soot, flour, or antique eggs, or even for tar and feathers, than a respectable person.
The “Abode of Love,” founded in 1845 by the notorious “Brother Prince,” a scoundrelly clergyman who appears never to have been unfrocked, is a mansion maintained in the most luxurious style, but completely secluded from the highway, upon which it fronts, by substantial walls. In the time of “Brother Prince,” the flagstaff surmounting the strong, iron-studded gateway, and supported by the effigy of a rampant lion, was made to fly a flag bearing the Holy Lamb, but this practice appears to be now discontinued.
Many inquisitive people nowadays visit Spaxton to view the exterior of the place where these notorious blasphemers live. None find entrance, for recent happenings have made the inmates extremely shy of strangers. It is notorious that a raid was made upon the place one night towards the close of 1908, and that Pigott, the successor of Brother Prince, narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered by some adventurous spirits, who came down from London and, chartering a motor-car, drove up from Bridgwater to the Abode. Climbing the walls, they “bonneted,” with a policeman’s helmet filled with tarred feathers, the first man they met. This, however, proved to be only an elderly disciple, and not Pigott himself; and the intruders found themselves presently in custody, and were next day brought before the magistrates at Bridgwater, and both fined and severely reprimanded. The magistrates were bound to observe the law and to punish an assault; but the attempted tarring and feathering aroused a great deal of enthusiasm at Bridgwater, where the only regret expressed was that it had not been successful.
No one can complain that clerical opinion in that town is not freely ventilated. Here is an extract from a sermon preached by the vicar of St. Mary’s:
“Near to our town for some years past, alas, has sprung up one of the most unhappy and miserable heresies that the world can show. Of course there have been heresies very brilliant and very beautiful. But here is a heresy foul, horrible, and bad, and a heresy with not one single redeeming point in it. A few years ago the head of this movement, now living in the little village under the shelter of the beautiful Quantocks, made public proclamation in London that he was the very Lord Jesus Christ, and that he should judge the world. This man escaped at the risk of his neck—for however lethargic some people might be, these Londoners were not—to the quiet of the country. Here the old heresy, with a new name and with new horrible details, came into prominence again. It had quietly settled down, and men hoped that it would have died out, but the events of the past six months have revived it all again. None can pretend to be ignorant of what has happened, and none could pretend to be ignorant of the awful and blasphemous claims that have been made in the name of a wretched child born into a wretched world.”