A longer run than either of these is through Bovey Tracey and Ashburton, and across the Moor to Two Bridges by a road whose hills are grimly described in the contour-book as “all highly dangerous.” The description is justified, and it cannot even be pleaded that the surface is good; but the sweeping moorland, and the woods that veil the hurrying Dart near Charles Kingsley’s birthplace at Holne, and the valley at Dartmeet, will compensate for much. From Two Bridges the road to Moreton is the same by which we must cross the Moor on our way to Tavistock.
HOLNE BRIDGE.
It is no hardship to travel twice upon this road. The run from east to west, from Moreton to Tavistock, is one to repeat as often as may be, and to remember whenever life seems dull. It is a glorious run. The road is hardly ever level, of course, but the surface for the most part is fairly good, and the hills, if steep, are straight. And from our feet a wide sea of fern rolls away on every side, billow beyond billow, till its waves break at last upon the rocks of a hundred tors. There are certain scenes that remain with one, a possession for ever. One of them is on the hill where Grimspound lies. A little by-road takes us quickly to the wild spot where neolithic man built himself this dwelling, with the object, doubtless, of keeping an eye upon his neighbours rather than that of enjoying the view. Whatever his motive he chose well. He saw this splendid panorama—a pageant of green and purple and indescribable blue. One thing only he did not see: the tragic thing that gleams so suddenly and whitely in the far distance, when a sunbeam chances to fall upon it—Dartmoor Prison.
When we have passed the stony stream and pack-horse bridge of Postbridge the scenery is less interesting for a mile or two, for this is the more civilised part of the Moor—a fact that has a brighter side in a comfortable luncheon at Two Bridges. Unless we change our minds and take the beautiful road to Plymouth, we turn to the right here after crossing the stream, and leave Princetown and all its heavy hearts behind us on the left. When the highest point of this road is passed and the long descent begun, the scenery is again of that well-wearing kind that can be stored and put away for the winter. And if I pay scant attention to the vast host of most venerable relics with which Dartmoor is dotted—I had almost said crowded—this is not because neolithic man seems to me a person of little account, but because the study of his life and times is not one that can be taken up suddenly on a motor-tour. For one wayfarer who takes heed of the menhir, and the stone-row, and the pound near Merivale Bridge, there will always be a hundred to gaze eagerly from the hilltop at the long line of dark and rugged tors that stretches across the immense landscape, and at the gleaming Hamoaze on the left, and at the clear outline of Brent Tor Chapel on its rock, and above all at blue Cornwall meeting the blue sky. In the middle of this picture Tavistock lies, and we run down into it on a splendid road.
The abbey that once gave renown to Tavistock has nearly vanished, but even its fragments—an archway and an ivy-covered tower—are enough to bring beauty and distinction into these pleasant streets. Ordgar, the man who founded it, was the father of Elfrida, the wicked Queen who gave her stepson a stirrup-cup, and had him stabbed while he was drinking it. It was in Tavistock or near it that she spent her childhood, and to Tavistock that Ethelwold was sent by the King, to see if her beauty deserved a crown. Ethelwold, seeing her, forgot all else and married her himself. “She is in noe wise for feature fitt for a king,” he told King Edgar. Then the King, whom men did not lightly deceive, came hither to Tavistock to judge for himself, and Ethelwold at bay told the truth to his wife, begging her—poor ignorant man!—“to cloath herself in such attire as might least set forth her lustre.” Elfrida smiled; and when her lord was gone arrayed herself in all she had that was most rich and beautiful, so that “the sparkle of her fair look” made the King mad for love of her. The next day he took Ethelwold out upon the Moor to hunt, and left him there with an arrow through his heart; and after all Elfrida became a queen.
The abbey her father founded was famous, not only for its splendour, but also for its learning. Though nearly all its stones are gone there are still some of its documents to be seen in the church, and certain ancient books which were printed, I believe, in the printing-press of these progressive monks.
It was in the year after the monks were driven from their abbey that Francis Drake was born to bring fresh glory to Tavistock. At the end of a long, wide street his statue stands—the familiar figure by Boehm, all fire and energy, the “Francie Drake” we know. His ardent face is turned towards the town whose pride he must ever be; behind him is the ivy-covered gateway of Fitzford House. Through that embattled archway Sir Richard Grenville—“Skellum Grenville” as he was called—came home with his bride to her own house; the house in which he afterwards shut her up, and “excluded her from governing the affaires within dore,” and even, it is reported, gave her a black eye. This was the Richard Grenville who was the King’s General in the West, and was described by the Parliament as “a villain and skellum.”[3] He raised an army in Cornwall “with most extrem and industrious cruelty” and brought it to this place; and I believe it was here that young Prince Charles stayed when he came to Tavistock and complained so bitterly of the weather. The soldiers of the Parliament afterwards sacked the house, of which nothing is now left but this gateway.
There may be some who have been led to think that they have but to drive a few miles from Tavistock to see the house that belonged to the earlier, and far greater, Sir Richard Grenville, the house of which an old writer says: “The abbey scite and demesnes was purchased by Sir Richard Grenvill, whereon hee bwilt a fayre newe howse, and afterward sold it unto Sir Francis Drake, that famous travailer, wᶜʰ made it his dwellinge-plaice.” These I must sorrowfully inform that Buckland Abbey is no longer open to the public.
From the statue of that “famous travailer” we turn to the right upon a fine road, and presently, crossing the Tamar by a beautiful bridge, climb into Cornwall on a gradient of one in seven.