III
THE SOUTH COAST OF DEVON
If our object in choosing to cross Devon by the coast road were simply to cling to the shore as closely as possible we should, of course, drive to Torquay by way of Dawlish and Teignmouth. But in that case we should miss the beautiful views of Exeter and the Moor from the slopes of Great Haldon, and the gorse and pines on the summit of Telegraph Hill, which most of us will think more desirable things than the beaches and lodging-houses of popular watering-places. It is true that no esplanade nor row of bathing-boxes can altogether spoil a Devon sea. It is also true that the last words of Endymion were written at Teignmouth; but as Keats, being unfortunate in the matter of weather, disliked the place very heartily, we shall be following in his footsteps most truly if we are faithful to “Nature’s holy face.” Her face is very beautiful on the summit of Great Haldon.
We glide easily down the wooded slopes, with the wild outline of Dartmoor against the sky before us and the green valley of the Teign below us, and after an almost continuous descent of seven miles run into the uninspiring streets of Newton Abbot. Let us pause for a few minutes in Wolborough Street, and picture the scene that brought this little town for a moment into English history: the throng of troops; the crowding onlookers, half curious, half afraid; in the midst of them the keen face of the foreigner who had come to be their king; the prince’s chaplain, here where the stone is set, proclaiming William III.; and over all the pouring, drenching rain. At the outskirts of the town we may see the house that sheltered William from the weather that night, and has at various times sheltered many incongruous guests of note—Charles I. and “Steenie,” Oliver Cromwell and Fairfax. William was at Ford House without a host, or the Courtenay who owned it at that time doomed it wiser to be absent; but when Charles I. was there Sir Richard Reynell’s hospitality was such that a hundred turkeys figured in a single menu.
Only five or six miles of a comparatively level road lie between Newton Abbot and Torquay. The valley through which we drive bears a familiar name, for it is in this Vale of Aller that the well-known pottery is not only made, but designed, in vast quantities. I think it must have been along this road that part, at least, of William’s wet and motley army marched through the mud from Brixham. As for the prince himself, his course must have been truly erratic if he slept at all the places in this neighbourhood that claim to have sheltered him.
Torquay is one of those rare watering-places that upset all one’s prejudices. Its houses are many and modern, its streets are populous; but the harbour under the hill is so snug, the sea so blue and bright, the boats so gay, the buildings so softly framed in trees and flowers, that the most churlish heart must be won. And near at hand the little sheltered coves, and wild paths above the cliffs, and woods almost dipping into the sea are quite as peaceful as though there were no crowded little harbour on the other side of the hill. This harbour was not here, nor any town at all, when the Spanish Armada, as Kingsley says, “ventured slowly past Berry Head, with Elizabeth’s gallant pack of Devon captains following fast in its wake.” Only a few fishermen’s cottages were on the shore, and the empty walls of William Bruere’s abbey, and below the abbey “a peere and socour for fisshar bootes.” Indeed, even when the Bellerophon and the Northumberland rode on the blue waters of this bay together, and Napoleon sailed away to St. Helena, there were more trees here than houses.
To-day there are so many houses on this shore that there is hardly a gap between Torquay and Paignton. There is nothing to keep us in Paignton, for though it has an old church, and a tower that is called the Bible Tower out of compliment to Miles Coverdale, it has none of the charm of Torquay. Only a few miles away, however, is a place of very definite charm. There is a better way than this, certainly, of seeing Totnes, but this hilly and not always very good road has the advantage of passing near the castle of Berry Pomeroy, one of the few ruins in Devonshire.
The peculiar spell of Berry Pomeroy lies, not in splendour of masonry nor grandeur of outline, but in the silence and romance of the deep woods in which the castle rock is closely wrapped. From the old church where Pomeroys and Seymours lie in their graves we run down noiselessly through the green shadows into a strange and dusky world of legend and far-off history. Through the towered gateway that fronts us generations of Pomeroys have ridden forth to defend or flout their various kings; and many a Seymour, coming homeward by this path, has lifted his proud eyes to the house his fathers built within the Norman wall. For when the last Pomeroy had “consumed his estate and decayed his howse,” he sold it to the Protector Somerset; and the Seymours who came after him raised the dwelling that is now a shell and was never altogether finished, though very magnificent, according to John Prince, with curiously carved freestone, and stately pillars of great dimensions, and statues of alabaster, and rooms “well adorned with mouldings,” and a “chimney-piece of polished marble, curiously engraven, of great cost and value.” These splendid Seymours were descended from the Protector’s eldest son. “I believe,” said William III. to the last of them, “you are of the Duke of Somerset’s family.” Sir Edward bowed. “The Duke of Somerset, sir,” he said, “is of my family.”
It was to this very gate, I believe, after Henry de Pomeroy had taken up arms for Prince John, that Cœur-de-Lion’s sergeant-at-arms came on his sinister errand. Out of the gate, however, he never rode. He “received kind entertaynment for certaine days together,” says the historian, “and at his departure was gratified with a liberal reward; in counterchange whereof he then, and no sooner, revealing his long-concealed errand, flatly arrested his hoaste … which unexpected and ill-carryed message the gent took in such despite as with his dagger he stabbed the messenger to the heart.” One cannot honestly regret it.
This is the kind of place where legend grows round history as naturally and quickly as the ivy grows over the stones. The walls themselves, it is easy to see, were raised by a magician; for the castle, seen from one side, is standing high upon a rock, while from the other it seems to be deep in a wooded valley. This is plainly due to a spell, and prepares the mind for tales of imprisoned ladies, and of wild horsemen leaping desperately into the chasm when they could no longer defend their castle from an angry king. It is only on emerging from the dim and haunted wood that one remembers regretfully how the last of the Pomeroys “decayed his howse”—so far was he from defending it—and sold it quite peacefully to the Duke of Somerset.