We who were left behind discovered by more questioning that one cannot drive into Clovelly; that although an American president or an English chancellor might, as a great favour, be escorted down on a donkey’s back, or carried down in a sedan chair if he chanced to have one about his person, the ordinary mortal must walk to the door of the New Inn, his luggage being dragged “down-along” on sledges and brought “up-along” on donkeys. In a word, Clovelly is not built like unto other towns; it seems to have been flung up from the sea into a narrow rift between wooded hills, and to have clung there these eight hundred years of its existence. It has held fast, but it has not expanded, for the very good reason that it completely fills the hollow in the cliffs, the houses clinging like limpets to the rocks on either side, so that it would be a costly and difficult piece of engineering indeed to build any extensions or additions.
We picked our way “down-along” until we caught the first glimpse of white-washed cottages covered with creepers, their doors hospitably open, their windows filled with blooming geraniums and fuchsias. All at once, as we began to descend the winding, rocky pathway, we saw that it pitched headlong into the bluest sea in the world. No wonder the painters have loved it! Shall we ever forget that first vision! There were a couple of donkeys coming “up-along” laden, one with coals, the other with bread-baskets; a fisherman was mending his nets in front of his door; others were lounging “down to quay pool” to prepare for their evening drift-fishing. A little further on, at a certain abrupt turning called the “lookout,” where visitors stop to breathe and villagers to gossip, one could catch a glimpse of the beach and “Crazed Kate’s Cottage,” the drying-ground for nets, the lifeboat house, the pier, and the breakwater.
We were all enchanted when we arrived at the door of the inn.
“Devonshire for me! I shall live here!” cried Mrs. Jack. “I said that a few times in Wales, but I retract it. You had better live here, too, Atlas; there aren’t any problems in Clovelly.”
“I am sure of that,” he assented smilingly. “I noticed dozens of live snails in the rocks of the street as we came down; snails cannot live in combination with problems.”
“Then I am a snail,” answered Mrs. Jack cheerfully; “for that is exactly my temperament.”
We found that we could not get room enough for all at the tiny inn, but this only exhilarated Egeria and Tommy. They disappeared and came back triumphant ten minutes later.
“We got lodgings without any difficulty,” said Egeria. “Tommy’s isn’t half bad; we saw a small boy who had been taking a box ‘down-along’ on a sledge, and he referred us to a nice place where they took Tommy in; but you should see my lodging—it is ideal. I noticed the prettiest yellow-haired girl knitting in a doorway. ‘There isn’t room for me at the inn,’ I said; ‘could you let me sleep here?’ She asked her mother, and her mother said ‘Yes,’ and there was never anything so romantic as my vine-embowered window. Juliet would have jumped at it.”
“She would have jumped out of it, if Romeo had been below,” said Mrs. Jack, “but there are no Romeos nowadays; they are all busy settling the relations of labour and capital.”
The New Inn proved some years ago to be too small for its would-be visitors. An addition couldn’t be built because there wasn’t any room; but the landlady succeeded in getting a house across the way. Here there are bedrooms, a sort of quiet tap-room of very great respectability, and the kitchens. As the dining-room is in house number one, the matter of serving dinner might seem to be attended with difficulty, but it is not apparent. The maids run across the narrow street with platters and dishes surmounted by great Britannia covers, and in rainy weather they give the soup or joint the additional protection of a large cotton umbrella. The walls of every room in the inn are covered with old china, much of it pretty, and some of it valuable, though the finest pieces are not hung, but are placed in glass cabinets. One cannot see an inch of wall space anywhere in bedrooms, dining- or sitting-rooms for the huge delft platters, whole sets of the old green dragon pattern, quaint perforated baskets, pitchers and mugs of British lustre, with queer dogs, and cats, and peacocks, and clocks of china. The massing of colour is picturesque and brilliant, and the whole effect decidedly unique. The landlady’s father and grandfather had been Bideford sea-captains and had brought here these and other treasures from foreign parts. As Clovelly is a village of seafolk and fisher-folk, the houses are full of curiosities, mostly from the Mediterranean. Egeria had no china in her room, but she had huge branches of coral, shells of all sizes and hues, and an immense coloured print of the bay of Naples. Tommy’s landlady was volcanic in her tastes, and his walls were lined with pictures of Vesuvius in all stages of eruption. My room, a wee, triangular box of a thing, was on the first floor of the inn. It opened hospitably on a bit of garden and street by a large glass door that wouldn’t shut, so that a cat or a dog spent the night by my bed-side now and then, and many a donkey tried to do the same, but was evicted.