the further west you go, the more distinctly religious you find the people, and the stronger you find the hold of dissent upon them. religion is a very real thing in the west, and the more real it is, the weaker is the hold of the established church. peculiarly strong, among other forms of dissent, are the plymouth brethren in devonshire, and the bible christians in cornwall.
it should be said at once that “plymouth brethren” is only the name by which the world at large knows that body of christians, who, like the “friends,” whom the world styles “quakers,” do by no means label themselves with any specific title. they are among themselves just “brethren,” and their places of worship are merely the “brethren’s” meeting-rooms. the “plymouth brethren,” who more closely than any other sect resemble the quakers, follow the practice of the early christians, insomuch that all are brothers in christ; and no dogma made of man, nor any official hierarchy or pastorate, has yet been suffered to obscure that essential fraternity.
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the “plymouth brethren”—to speak of them by the style which the world has agreed to use—took their origin about 1827, in the workings of conscience of john nelson darby and a. n. groves, who, independently of one another, had arrived at the conclusion that no existing church was firmly based upon the gospel. darby, who was at that time twenty-seven years of age, had been educated for the law, but had entered the church, and was a curate in ireland when the light that came to him led to his resigning. he was brought into communication with groves, and in 1830 the first meeting of the “brethren” was opened, in dublin. that same year, on a visit to oxford, darby was asked to open a meeting at plymouth, whither he forthwith proceeded and took “providence chapel,” thus, with the spread of the movement from that town, unwittingly giving a topographical name to the new religious body.
the tenets of the “brethren” are simple. they rely upon the teaching and the promises of the gospel, and reject all ecclesiastical forms. like the quakers, they have no ministers and no prayer-books. prayer at meeting is extempore, and offered up when the spirit moves, by members of the meeting. it is thus, it will be seen, essentially a democratic body, but in practice those whose natural vocation is preaching, missioning and district-visiting become more prominent, and, if they feel they have a call, will obey that call by giving up all worldly occupations. those with a sufficiency of means of their own, will give themselves[101] and their wealth to the work of the master, and those others who have nothing will devote their lives to the work of spreading the gospel, visiting the sick, and in general performing the salaried work of a clergyman of the endowed church; all without stipend, without fee or reward asked, suggested, or hinted, except in secret to that one whose work they do. this it is to “live by faith,” as they term it. nor is that faith misplaced. shall i not, although a sinner, speak of that which i know, and testify to the miracles i have seen wrought in my own generation, by which i am assured of the love of the living god for his servants?
those who have once fallen under the spell of teignmouth are never likely to be freed from it.[102] you leave, after perhaps the fifth or sixth visit, declaring you have exhausted the place, but you inevitably return, if not next year, in the near future. there is, in fact, something in teignmouth to please all tastes, and custom never stales it. it enjoys that inestimable advantage in a seaside resort, a tidal estuary; and round by the sandspit, over against the bold red cliff of the ness, you come from the somewhat artificial front and its pier and its seats for visitors, to the harbour, where the teign flows out at the ebb and the sea comes swirling in at the flood, across the shifting sand-bar that from time immemorial has afforded a living for teignmouth pilots and tug-boats, bringing the craft of strange skippers, ignorant of the state of the channel, safely into the haven. there are no seats, or other such concessions to visitors, in the harbour, but there are boats innumerable for sailing or rowing upon the teign, and in the deep midstream anchorage to one side of the sandbank called “the salty,” there is generally a tier of foreign barques that have brought deals from norway, or are to take china-clay to the uttermost parts of the earth. and there are ropes and anchors and much waterside litter, and a fragrant scent of what the sailors call “stockhollum” tar about the harbour; and if the visitor does not promptly succeed in tripping over the ropes and chains and anchors, why then he is an exceptional visitor indeed. fragrant sail-lofts look down upon the water, and old superannuated buoys and other buoys that only want a lick of paint, are drawn up on the sand, and from the open windows of sailors’ homes come the voices of parrots, mingled not unmusically with a midstream yo-hoing.
the trade of teignmouth harbour, after a long period of decay, is in these times looking up, for the south devon trading company has built new quays and sheds, which, like all new things, do not add to the picturesqueness of the spot; but the casual lanes and odd slips remain, with the old quay, and that unconventional inn, “newbery’s old quay hotel,” that with every flood-tide dabbles its feet in the water, and with every ebb stands once more upon dry ground, much to the amazement and delight of children. did i not myself once think the “old quay” inn the most desirable of all possible homes!
there is a homeliness in the harbour that draws the visitor away from the exotic front, and it is to the harbour he first resorts when he revisits teignmouth, for it seems almost to welcome him back. there, up stream, is that hoary old landmark, the long bridge that spans the teign, which is 1,671 feet in length, and was built in 1827, and is the longest wooden bridge in england. “further on,” as the guide-book says, “are the gas-works.” it is only too true, and they might, with advantage to the scenery, be still further on; but in that case they would not get their coal barged cheaply up to the very walls, which everybody knows to be a greater consideration than the preservation of mere scenic amenities.
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away in the misty distance are the tors of dartmoor, prominent among them rippon tor and heytor rocks, grey-bearded—as you know when you have visited them—with sage-green lichen, and altogether very reverend and inscrutable. they seem with a grave benevolence to welcome you back.
above teignmouth is haldon, that vast expanse of tableland whose heights we first saw from exmouth, and whose range—marked on maps “great haldon” and “little”—extends across the whole of the back country between exe and teign. he who, in search of fresh air and vigour on some stewing day in the teign valley, essays to climb from teignmouth to little haldon, comes, very soon after he has set out, and very[105] long before he has arrived, to the conclusion that the “littleness” of little haldon is a misnomer; for the way is long and the road steep. but once there, you are in another and more bracing climate, where the air is keen and charged with the scent of the bracken and the heather that clothe the wild moorland. from haldon you look one way to the exe and the other to the teign, and, standing in one and the selfsame spot, can see both, for it is an exceeding high place. the solitude of it is perhaps intensified to some by the fact of teignmouth’s cemetery being here; but it is a large and a populous place, and to those of us who knew in life many who lie here, this is no solitude. god rest them. the summer sun that shines on haldon shines no more for them, nor winter storms blow.
although teignmouth has its literary and artistic associations, it does by no means obtrude them upon the stranger, who, indeed, only discovers them after some considerable pains, and is perhaps regarded as a little eccentric, for his trouble. two poets—winthrop mackworth praed, and john keats—have described the town, and although praed was not actually born here, the connection with the family was close, the bitton property belonging to his father, who lies in the churchyard of west teignmouth. bitton, in fact, only passed from the praeds in 1863. the poet was born in 1802 and died in 1839, when member of parliament for aylesbury.
there are reasons all-sufficient why teignmouth’s[106] poetic associations should not be flaunted. too great insistence upon praed would advertise more fully the brutal vandalism permitted of late years at bitton, when no finger was stirred to save that lovely wooded riverside park from being cut up and demolished, to build cheap houses upon. bitton was one of the loveliest places upon the teign. in the words of praed himself:
“there beamed upon the river side
a shady dwelling-place
most beautiful! upon that spot,
beside the echoing wave,
a fairy might have built her grot,
an anchorite his grave.
the river with its constant fall
came close up to the garden wall,
as if it longed, but thought it sin,
to look into the charms within.
behind majestic mountains frowned
and dark, rich groves were all around.”
the “dark, rich groves,” were no mere poetic imagery. they were largely ilex, or “evergreen oak,” for which streets of the flimsiest houses in close-packed ranks are the sorriest exchange.
keats, of course, no self-respecting devonian would mention. he came, himself consumptive, to teignmouth in 1818, to cheer the last hours of his brother tom, dying of that disease. here, lodging at no. 35, strand, he completed endymion and wrote isabella; but it was winter and spring at the time of his sojourn, and although spring[107] and winter in south devon are preferable to those seasons elsewhere, he found the moist humours of the rainy west anything but pleasant:
“you may say what you will of devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. the hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of ’em; the primroses are out, but you are in; the cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then the clouds are continually vieing with them. … the flowers here wait as naturally for the rain twice a day as mussels do for the tide. this devonshire is like lydia languish, very entertaining when it smiles, but cursedly subject to sympathetic moisture.”
but occasionally the weather was kinder. it does not rain all day and every day in devon, even in winter; and during these dry interludes[108] keats discovered some of those amazingly many villages that owe their name to the teign:
“there’s bishop’s teign,
and king’s teign,
and coombe at the clear teignhead—
where close by the stream
you may have your cream
all spread upon barley bread.
there is newton marsh,
with its spear-grass harsh,
a pleasant summer level
where the maidens sweet
of the market street
do meet in the dusk to revel.”
a poet en deshabille. reduced from poetry to the matter-of-fact nomenclature of the ordnance maps, those places are bishopsteignton, kingsteignton, and coombe-in-teignhead—the “cumeintinny” of local speech. the poet who might wish to know all the “teign” villages and hamlets, would need to make acquaintance with teignharvey and stokeinteignhead, on the salt estuary; and thence find his way inland, to the back of newton abbot, where, beside the freshwater stream that comes prattling down from dartmoor he shall find teigngrace, canonteign, and drewsteignton.
for six miles above teignmouth the teign runs up salt: a broad estuary at high water: above the bridge an oozy expanse of mingled sand and mud flats at low; and “newton marsh,” the water-logged meadows just below the market[109] town and important railway junction of newton abbot. midway is coombe cellars, a waterside offshoot of coombe-in-teignhead; a place, you perceive, even in keats’ time, it was the recognised thing to visit and—
“… have your cream
all spread upon barley bread.”
it was then a highly rustic spot; the oddest little promontory jutting out into the stream, and on it the “ferry boat” inn, built behind stout sea walls, and itself built of whitewashed cob, and heavily thatched. the “cellars” were fish cellars, and the place was, and is, oddly amphibious; the inn being half farmhouse and half fisherman’s tavern, the landlord himself a[110] farmer down to the waist, and a fisherman as to the legs and the sea-boots. at night you would find him out with the trawl-nets, to sea; at low tide in the morning cockling on the mud-flats off his inn; and in the afternoon milking the cows or urging the plough in his hillside fields. to take boat from teignmouth harbour, and row up on the flood to tea at coombe cellars, returning with the ebb, was once a delightful thing, and, with a difference, is so still; but you must not expect to be the only party there—no, not by a very long way, and you must by no means expect to get your tea, with or without devonshire junket, strawberries and cream, or cockles, in quite so rustic a fashion or at such moderate prices as once obtained. and, although the house remains very much the same as of yore, the thatch has given place to a something less rural.
