There is a prized possession at the smithy, in the shape of an old bureau, which has been in the family for goodness knows how many generations, and the visitor will probably be invited to see the “sacred” drawer they discovered. Here, in the cold medium of print it is obvious enough that a “secret” drawer is meant, but I assure you it is by no means so immediately obvious on the spot, and you quite expect an introduction to some holy of holies.
Dawlish is shut in on the west by the great cliff of Lea Mount, which forms, both in colour and shape, an unforgettable feature.
Lea Mount owes its formal, straight-cut outline to the anxieties that followed the falling of a portion of the cliff on August 29th, 1885, when over fifty tons of rock buried a party of seven women and children, killing three of them. To prevent further accidents, all overhanging portions were cut away.
Through this vivid red mass plunges the main line of the Great Western Railway, in a series of five longer or shorter tunnels, emerging through Parson Tunnel upon the long sea wall that brings it into Teignmouth. From Dawlish sands the long and bold range of cliffs ending in Hole Head and the Parson and Clerk rocks is distinctly seen, but there has ever been some considerable doubt as to which of these rocks of Hole Head is the Clerk. Commonly the solitary wave-washed pillar standing out to sea has been given the name, but there are certainly the likenesses of two faces on the cliff itself, one immediately under the other; and there have always been those who have pointed them out as the unworthy pair.
From one of the little coves that notch the cliffs between Dawlish and Teignmouth, those giant profiles are seen with advantage. They are impressive at a distance and even in calm weather, but near at hand, and when the clouds lower and the screaming winds tear off the crests of the waves and dash them in clouds of flying spume over the hurrying trains, they are not a little awesome. The Parson, with round, bullet-like head, looks sternly out, with calm, inscrutable face, and all the dignity of a colossal Rameses, upon the whirl of wind and water. The Clerk, beneath him, a senile, doddering countenance, with wide-open mouth and thick, pendulous lips, seems to laugh and gibber maniacally at the racket of the elements, and is a little dreadful to behold.
There is no way round Hole Head to Teignmouth. Sheer walls of rock and a stark descent into the sea forbid; but some day, when local authorities take the hints that nature and latter-day circumstances have thrown out, a road will be made under those cliffs, and the sundered towns made neighbours.
Meanwhile, there are two prime ways of getting to Teignmouth: the one a threepenny journey by train from Dawlish station, the loveliest threepenny railway ride in the kingdom; the other a shockingly hilly climb up by the high road that goes over Lea Mount, and so, in a series of sharp rises and falls brings you, at one mile from Teignmouth, to a breakneck descent into the town, usually ending, for cyclists some few years ago, in a pantomime-trick disappearance through the window of the “Dawlish Inn” and a removal, as the case might be, to the hospital or the cemetery. But more scientific brakes have happily neutralised these dangers.