Few seaside towns of the size of Torquay we imagine have been the temporary home of so many poets, or have been so “sung” of in what formerly was called “tuneful numbers.”
One of the earliest to describe the town’s beauties in verse was probably the once well-known Dr Booker, who in the year of Waterloo published a poetic effusion entitled Torquay, which was of a flattering prophetic nature, if somewhat commonplace in expression. He was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Reeve; Edmund Carrington, the author of a rhymed account of the small talk and scandal of the town in the early forties, which (probably because of the latter feature) had a marked success; Matthew Bridges, whose poetic work was of a considerably higher order than that we have already named; John A. Blackie, whose work gained the commendation of some distinguished critics; and of later poets mention must be made of F. B. Doveton, who has written many verses of local significance.
Torquay has especial interest for admirers of Charles Kingsley, as it was here that he came in 1855 to live in a cottage at Livermead, overlooking the Bay. As the author of Yeast and Alton Locke, he appears to have become anathema to the orthodox inhabitants of the then rising watering place, an attitude which was fostered and encouraged by the then Bishop of Exeter, who seems to have regarded Kingsley as a particularly dangerous and outrageous heretic. The local clergy followed the Bishop’s lead, with the result that not only were all the churches of the neighbourhood closed to Kingsley so far as his preaching or officiating in them was concerned, but he was completely boycotted.
His biographer states that it was the magnificent view of Torbay which was spread out before him from his cottage windows that led him to meditate upon the historic scenes which had been enacted on the face of those ever-changing waters, and ultimately gave him the germ idea for his famous romance Westward Ho!
Of the many other famous poets and authors who have been dwellers in the beautiful town may be mentioned Tennyson, who came in 1840; Lord Lytton, who took a villa on the hillside above Rock Walk in 1856, and spent every winter in it till his death in 1873; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who before her marriage lived several years in the town; James Anthony Froude; Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, who came here to visit an old widow lady (who eventually left him her fortune) many times in the fifties and early sixties; Robert Louis Stevenson; Henry James; John Ruskin, and many others.
It is with real regret that most yachtsmen leave Torquay and the beautiful bay which lies between Hope’s Nose to the north and Berry Head to the south. A bay whose magnificent anchorage would have merited, one would think, the founding upon its shores of a city like Plymouth or Portsmouth, given over to naval construction and service of the State. But strangely enough, with the exception of the holiday resorts of Torquay and quaint Paignton, and the little fishing port of Brixham, it embraces no large town or port. This circumstance must be a matter for wonderment, as one either gazes out over the beautiful expanse of water from the heights of Warberry Hill, or crosses it when bound further westward.
The reason, however, is not far to seek, when one considers the former conditions of life and property upon the coast. The ports, which far back in the centuries had sprung into gradual existence, had now to serve more than the purpose of affording a safe anchorage in “dirty” weather. Those were the days of that predatory naval warfare, which proved so great a scourge to commerce in the Channel, when the sister counties of Devon and Cornwall, and even that of Dorset to a less degree, were ever at issue with the Breton sea rovers. It was, therefore, essential that a great port should form a defence against the attacks of men as well as a protection from the elements. Thus it happened that whilst Falmouth, Dartmouth, Fowey, and Plymouth grew into flourishing shipping centres, Torbay (in which a fleet of battleships could ride secure in most winds), with its widely opened mouth, did not offer the double security that the troublous times demanded.
Hither, in the early centuries of the Christian era, came, doubtless, Roman and Danish galleys, devastating the coast; and in later times the daring pirates and privateers out of St Malo, Morlaix, Brest, and other French ports, “who lay in wait like sea spiders under the safe anchorage of Berry head, for merchantmen bound up Channel, or making for Dartmouth.”
De Tourville’s fleet itself, before detaching vessels for the attack upon and destruction of Teignmouth, lay here in full sight of the terrified inhabitants, who fled inland in fear of capture and confinement in French prisons or the galleys. In later years the bay and neighbourhood, with its coves and creeks, provided just the kind of retirement and shelter beloved of the smugglers, whose daring exploits made the Devon and Cornish coasts famous at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
It was in Torbay, too, that the Bellerophon, commanded by Captain Maitland, with the captive Napoleon aboard, anchored in August of 1815 to permit the prisoner’s transfer to the Northumberland, commanded by Admiral Sir George Cockburn. It will, therefore, be seen that the bay has played its part in the drama of history, even though it has missed its destiny as the centre or base of extensive commerce, or naval activity and life.