He drew a picture of Carlyle which hero-worshippers have bitterly resented, but a picture that shows the man, alike in his strength and his weakness; that makes him just human, instead of the infallible philosopher, superior to all littlenesses and prejudices, of a growing tradition.
SALCOMBE CASTLE.
Salcombe Castle, or Fort Charles, situated on a rocky islet off South Sands, was a ruinous mediæval tower in the time of the Cromwellian wars, but the perfervid loyalty of the West repaired it and fortified the place with cannon, throwing in an armed garrison, fully provisioned, at a cost, as the surviving accounts state, of £3,196 14s. 6d. During a four months’ bombardment in 1646, in which the gunners were such extravagantly bad marksmen that only one person on each side was killed, Sir Edmund Fortescue held the fort, and then, only through some doubts of the loyalty of members of his garrison, capitulated and marched out, with guns firing, drums beating, and colours flying, to the seclusion of his own mansion at Fallapit. The bravado of this capitulation was more fatal than the siege, for three persons were accidentally shot.
If the landowners of Salcombe had their way it is little of the coast scenery hereabouts the public would see. Of late years the grassy summit of the cliffs looking upon Salcombe Castle has been enclosed and planted, and now, passing the inlet of South Sands, and coming to Splatt’s Cove, a notice-board beside the path announces that “by the order of Ford’s Trustees” there is no right of way. My own advice to those who are confronted with notices such as this is, enter if you wish; and in this instance the Salcombe Urban District Council have given the lie direct to the impudent contention of the Trustees, and have erected a prominent notice of their own, side by side with the other, stating that, notwithstanding this warning, a right of way does exist.
Changeful has been the policy here. A former Earl of Devon, resident at the Moult, caused the Courtenay Walk to be cut midway up the once-inaccessible face of the cliffs round to Bolt Head, or, to speak by the card, “The Bolt.” And now, passing the mutually destructive notices above Splatt’s Cove, and under a recently built hotel, we find the entrance to that walk flanked with offensively worded injunctions to keep to the path; by which it is abundantly evident that the present owner would dearly like to close it altogether. Here stands, or clings, a modern villa, on the edge of the sloping cliff, with a little terrace down below, like a tiny gun-platform.
The Walk begins by burrowing through a stunted wood, that looks romantic enough to be pixie-haunted. And, by the same token, the foxglove grows abundantly in its shade, so the pixies must needs foregather here; for the foxglove provides gloves for the little “folk” and has nothing at all to do with foxes. They are the splendidest gloves you ever saw, much superior to the best gants de suéde that ever were, and neither Fownes nor Dent and Allcroft have ever made anything like them. That is quite certain. And if you come here at midnight and turn round three times and say “willie-willie wiskins,” you will see—what you will see. I can say no more than that, because whoso gives away the secrets of the little folk is lost.
