CHAPTER VI
PORLOCK AND EXMOOR
The road now lies in Somerset; we pass Glenthorne, lying five hundred feet below, among its beautiful green woods and stretches of vivid green turf, and separated by some five miles of barren brown moors from the village of Porlock. The road that leads from Exmoor down to Porlock is incredibly steep, the steepest coach-road in England. It twists dangerously in sharp right-angle turns, the surface is loose and stony, worn by the dragging of brakes and the scouring of winter rains, and on a summer afternoon it is so hot, so dusty and glaring, and so steep, that it seems impossible for man or beast to climb. As soon as you are at the top, however, the fresh air of Exmoor fills your lungs and freshens your face, so let nobody be dissuaded from it.
Porlock itself was a port in Saxon times and in the reign of William the Conqueror (I have told elsewhere how not only the Danes, but Saxon Earl Harold, drove his ships into the harbour on a fierce raiding expedition), but it is now an inland village, and between it and the sea lie two miles of flat land of the most wonderful luxuriance. De gustibus indeed, and to me Porlock is one of the most beautiful spots in all England. It lies in a green bay—what was a bay eight centuries ago—between two towering headlands. On three sides of it rise the heights of Exmoor, barren, beautiful, and windswept; before it stretch the lands over which the Danes sailed, running out to a thin strip of marshland, and then a silvery flat beach, and then the tremulous silver curve of the sea, not like the line of wave that breaks at the foot of cliffs, but a true marshland sea, seeming to come from nowhere, infinitely smooth and faint and distant from the level shore to the dim horizon.
There are many kinds of beauty in the world: beauty of hot suns and delicate mists, of sea and shore, mountain and lake and city; there is the beauty of barren moors and of green orchards, and of flat fertile marshlands where streams run amid a luxuriance of tangled growth, kingcups and meadowsweet and loose-strife and forget-me-nots, and feathery willows and rushes where the reed-warblers sing. And at Porlock there is such a gathering up of these different beauties that it is difficult to describe the pleasure that one has in it. I have told you how it is fenced by Exmoor, and lies within sight of Dunkery Beacon, the highest point of the moors; but it is impossible to convey adequately the peculiar beauty of those great smooth dipping curves, the satisfying breadth and harmony of their line, the way the sunlight lies upon them, and the rich deep shadows that slide into their folds. And below, round Porlock, lie the orchards. I came there once in the spring, and as we turned the last angle of the stony road I saw before me such a sweep of blossom, such a foam of cherry and pear, white above the luxuriant grass, and of that delicate flushed rose of the apple-blossom, so exquisite a range of green, the hazy green of willows and the bright clear green of hawthorn, that it seemed impossible it should lie just under those miles on miles of moor where nothing bloomed but furze and heather.
The green fields that stretched away to the sea were just such fields as in the "Romaunt of the Rose" or the poems of the troubadours, fields verdantly green, and starred with daisies and golden with buttercups—the "enamelled meads" of Chaucer and the little illumined pictures of the fourteenth-century manuscripts; and the hedges were just such hedges, incredibly green, with here and there a break for the misty silver of the blackthorn. Wherever flowers could bloom they bloomed, in the gardens, in the hedges, by the roadside, in the crannies of the walls.
Porlock village itself is a quiet, charming spot which, in spite of the temptation of visitors who come here in considerable numbers in the autumn, when stag-hunting on Exmoor is in season, keeps most of its old-world simplicity, and has not much "modernized" itself. It is rambling, calm, and whitewashed; the bank itself is a long, low, cream building with a thatched roof, and a lovely note of colour from a climbing japonica. The Ship Inn also is a pleasant old building, with a dark, cool coffee-room and heavy, timbered roof. "Southey's corner," where he is said to have written his poem, "Porlock, thy verdant vale …," on being detained at the Ship by the heavy moorland rain, is by an old open fireplace, and has been cut off from a larger room by thin partitioning walls. It is a pleasant homely place, with its sound of horses from the stable-yard, and the clink of its old pewter pots from the bar, with its low raftered ceiling and brick floor, and the sunlight seen from its open doors.
Porlock Church has a square tower, with a heavy, octagonal, truncated spire, which gives the little church an over-weighted appearance, but very distinctive in this country, of tall Perpendicular towers. It is dedicated to St. Dubricius, who is a Celtic saint of the sixth century, who crowned and anointed Arthur of the Round Table; in the twelfth century he became a very famous saint once more, after having been nearly forgotten for several hundred years. Many miracles were worked at his tomb, and churches were dedicated to him. The present church at Porlock was built about the thirteenth century by Sir Simon Fitz-Roges, who was a crusader, but I am inclined to think that the dedication to St. Dubric belonged to the early simple church (probably a thatched and whitewashed barn) which was there at the time of the Conquest, and which, like the neighbouring churches of St. Culbone and St. Brendon, harks back to Celtic Christianity of pre-Saxon times. The church was altered in the fifteenth century, and the Harington Chantry, which now contains the tomb of Baron Harington and his wife, was added, and the present spire, in place of the old one, which was blown down in a gale. It is a little, quiet, grey English church, set peacefully in its green churchyard, shaded by a huge ancient yew, perhaps as old as itself. In the winter rain and wind beat round its solid grey walls, in spring the daffodils bloom in the churchyard, and on summer days the bees are busy among the clover and daisies over the graves. There are thousands of such small, sober, beautiful churches in England; they are the monument on which a fragment of the history of the race is inscribed; they are the nucleus of the village life; the beginning and the end of its activities have their sanction within its walls; they are rich with the continued service of men's lives, generation from generation taking up the duty and its privilege; they rise above the clustering roofs of the village, tower or spire, as the visible landmark of faith—not of a creed that can change and ebb and flow, but of a faith in the spiritual core that lies at the heart of material life, like the village church among the homes of its village.
We who pass casually, and pause, and step in and look, with a curious and antiquarian eye, for a bit of old brasswork or carved screen, miss the intimate beauty of these churches as much, perhaps, as if we read them in a catalogue: "St. Dubric; 12th cent.; fine marble monument of 15th cent.…, and so on." The plainest and simplest holds within its whitewashed walls the beauty of continuous tradition; you must see it in all its aspects of daylight and evening light, summer and winter, the rainy, tumultuous November afternoons and the long, golden, mellow evenings of June, to realize what it offers, of peace and order, tenderness and calm.
Inside Porlock Church, which is light and white and simple, there is a beautiful canopied tomb of the fifteenth century, with the recumbent figures of Baron Harington and his wife Elizabeth Courteny, carved in alabaster. Whoever made these marble figures was an artist; not only is the detail of the dress intricately and beautifully carved, the foliated wreath of his helmet, the elaborate decoration of her girdle, and the curved "horns" of her head-dress rolled either side of her face, but the whole pose and outline of the figures is firm and gracious.