When Coleridge came to Clevedon with his bride, and “only such furniture as became a philosopher,” there was no more than a village here. There was no esplanade, nor pier, nor bandstand to try his philosophy, when he took the one-storied cottage with the jasmine-covered porch and the tall rose that peeped in at the window, and settled there with the woman whom he loved “best of all created things” and by whom he was bored at the end of two months. Except in the matter of the jasmine on the porch, and the garden that contains—in the words of the sarcastic Cottle—“several pretty flowers,” there is little likeness between the Coleridge Cottage in the Old Church Road and the poet’s “Valley of Seclusion.” Local tradition would have us believe, however, that this red-tiled cottage with the two sentinel trees is the very one that “possessed everything that heart could desire”—for two months; the one that was supplied at the philosopher’s request with a dustpan and a small tin kettle, a Bible and a keg of porter; the one in which poor Sara sat so often by herself, uncheered even by Mr. Cottle’s gift of “several pieces of sprightly wall-paper.”
In those days Clevedon Court, which we passed as we drove into the town, was really in the country, no doubt. It is still shaded and sheltered by trees, and its mellow walls, its stately arches and mullions and terraces, contrive to keep an air of academic calm in defiance of the highway that passes near them, and of the neat little villas that make modern Clevedon look so tidy. If we should chance to be here on Thursday we may see the gardens. The rare beauty of this ancient house is inevitably tinged with sadness now; but it was not sad, we may be sure, when boyish Brookfield did his wooing here, and Thackeray paced these paths, as novelists use, with the visionary Henry Esmond at his elbow, and Tennyson walked with Arthur Hallam among the flowers, and there was as yet no tablet “glimmering to the dawn” in the dark church on the cliff.
Quite solitary still, and undisturbed by any sound but the faint murmur of the sea, is the grey church “by the broad water of the west” where Arthur Hallam lies. It must always have been a desolate, haunting spot, even before the song of the sea became a dirge and the old walls were consecrated anew to the memory of a poet’s sorrow. In those days, doubtless, the fragments of Saxon work and the moulding of the chancel-arch received more attention than now, when every eye wanders instantly to the white tablet on the wall of the south transept, and every foot is fain to stand where Tennyson stood with his bride, above the grave of Arthur Hallam and his father.
From Clevedon, turning inland to Wells, we cross a level land of orchards and meadows on a very poor surface, through Yatton with its curious church-tower, and Congresbury with its old cross-steps, and Churchill with its historic name. Before us is the long shoulder of the Mendips, changing from blue to green as we pass Churchill and climb, on a road that suddenly becomes good, through a gap in the hills. There are fine views from these uplands, and here and there a glimpse, far behind us, of the Severn estuary. Very slowly we drive through the narrow, winding streets of Axbridge, shadowed by overhanging eaves and gables of every height and angle; and quickly through the level strawberry fields beyond, to Cheddar under the hills.
CHEDDAR GORGE.
Cheddar Gorge is a surprising—almost a startling—place, and we must leave our highway for a little time to see it. From the village at the foot of the Mendips a road—and a very good road it is—climbs to the table-land above through a natural cleft between two mighty cliffs, which rise sheer from the roadway and stand out against the sky in a mass of towers and pinnacles. And all this sternness is softened and made beautiful by hanging draperies of green. Masses of ivy trail from crag to crag; high overhead the little birch-trees find a precarious footing on invisible ledges; every tiny cleft and ridge holds a line of grass and wildflowers across the grey face of the cliff. Gradually, as the road sweeps higher, the towering sides of the gorge change into steep slopes of grass and fern, strewn with boulders and broken here and there by clumps of firs. The slopes become lower and lower, more and more open, till at last the landscape widens into undulating fields. Then we turn, and glide down again round curve after curve, while the grandeur grows, as the huge walls of the gorge close in upon us and reach their climax in the Pinnacle Rocks.
And deep in the heart of these wild cliffs is a strange, uncanny world. Surely in these caverns the gnomes ran riot till they were frightened away by an elaborate system of electric lighting and an exuberance of advertisement. It is plain that they have left Gough’s Cave, for it is more than a little artificial; but none the less there is an ethereal beauty in the myriad stalactites and stalagmites through which the light gleams so softly on roof and floor. As for the poor prehistoric man who guards the entrance of the cave that has served him for dwelling-house and tomb, it is an indignity for him, I think, after his seventy thousand years or so of rest in the heart of the earth, to be set up thus in a glass case to grin at tourists.
Between Cheddar and Wells a pretty, winding, undulating road dips in and out of several red-roofed villages shaded by trees. In the distance the unmistakable outline of Glastonbury Tor is dark against the sky.
This is not the best way into Wells, for the cathedral is hidden. It is from the Shepton Mallet road that we may see “the toune of Wells,” as John Leland saw it nearly four hundred years ago, “sette yn the rootes of Mendepe hille in a stony soile and ful of springes.” It has not changed very much: the clergy here being secular, the Dissolution did not affect them, and Wells has never greatly concerned itself with worldly matters and has been all the more peaceful on that account. There have been disturbing moments, of course; as when Perkin Warbeck set up his claim, so confusing to the minds of quiet folk; and when the Parliament-men made havoc in the cathedral; and when Prince Maurice and his troops were billeted on the town, to its great impoverishment; and when King Monmouth passed this way. But on the whole Wells has suffered little. Leland, when he visited the cathedral, entered the close by one of these gates that are standing to-day: came through the Chain Gate, under the gallery and past the great clock that was made by a monk of Glastonbury, or through Browne’s Gate from Sadler Street, or on foot through Penniless Porch in the corner, once the haunt of beggars; and saw Jocelin’s famous west front rising above the greensward, with the embattled deanery hard by; and passed from the market-place to the moated palace under the archway of Beckington’s “right goodly gatehouse,” the Bishop’s Eye. This fifteenth-century Bishop Beckington did much for the beauty and benefit of Wells; built, not only three gateways, but also “xij right exceding fair houses al uniforme of stone, high and fair windoid,” in the market-place, and set a conduit there, “for the which the burgeses ons a yere solemply visite his tumbe, and pray for hys sowle.”