the little headland enclosing the western side of hope cove forms the eastern horn of thurlestone bay, and as you rise the neck of land dividing the two, you see the strange rock with the hole through it—the thurlestone—which gives a name, not only to the sandy bay, but to the village of thurlestone, which stands with its ancient church on the bare hillsides beyond. the thurlestone, is a mass of red conglomerate, oddly isolated amid the neighbouring slate, standing in deep water, surrounded by a group of small satellite rocks and reefs, and derives its name from the anglo-saxon, “thyrlian,” to pierce. it is thus “the drilled,”[238] or pierced stone, and claims philological kin with “nostril,” or nose-hole, and “thrall,” a slave whose ear has been pierced. that standby of topographers, the domesday book, calls the village “torlestan,” which is as near as the norman-french scribe could arrive at the sound of the saxon word. my own respect for the thurlestone is considerably heightened by this evidence of its having worn, a thousand years ago, very much the same appearance it does now. curiously enough, there is a thirlestane castle in scotland.
when the south-westerly winds bring great seas raging into the bay, with towering white combers dashing in upon the sands, the thurlestone finds a voice and calls with a sound of roaring, all over this countryside. the rustics say that at such times you shall hear the bellowing of the thurlestone ten miles distant.
for myself, i have come to thurlestone at a time when there are no voices, save the cat-like screaming of the gulls and the horrible squawking noises of the cruiser setting out to sea from hope cove, and bidding a series of half-suffocated good-byes with her steam-whistles, dreadfully like some one being very offensively sick. noises are not common on thurlestone strand, and i would even say it was lonely, save that the millions of sand-fleas inhabiting the shore forbid the thought.
i have bought a piece of dutch cheese and some biscuits, and disregarding the inmates of[239] the one hideously plastered boarding-house recently built here, take off shoes and stockings, and sitting on a convenient rock sliding down into deep water, come into intimate touch with the infinities, and make these notes. two pennyworth of dutch cheese, with biscuits to match, a comfortable seat on a rocky ledge, your feet dabbling in the clear water, and sunshine over all, will bring you into close relation with the infinite. here i hew off in the rough a slab of the simple life, and enjoy it hugely. it is, i suppose, the sunshine and the solitude in collaboration. at any rate, it is obviously enough not the white ale.
there are cornelians and lovely pebbles on this lonely strand, and sea-anemones, to the eye appetisingly like fruit-jellies, on the rocks. alas! they are not good to eat, and as fairy gold, we all know, turns to sere leaves, so the translucent pebbles of the wet sea-shore become the commonplace opaque stones that the next day we turn disgustedly out of our pockets. in short, it is life in little you find reflected here, and reduces the heady optimism of a summer noon to something like tears. i don’t expect, or hope, every one who comes to this salt margin of devon will feel thus. this it is to be cursed with temperament, to be, against your will, a snivelling sentimentalist, whom the lowing of the cattle at eventide, the distant tinkling of the sheep-bells, or the very beauty of day or place will suffice to reduce to a chastened melancholy.
[240]
thurlestone church is neighboured on the hillside in these expansive times by a golf club, which, in the interest of golf-balls, has actually had the impudence to spread wire-netting over the charming little rustic stream that here flows to the sea; and near by are the ornate brand-new villas built and furnished by speculators with an eye on the possible huge profits to be earned from letting them for the summer season, in these times of a revived appreciation of the countryside. it is with a malignant joy that the wayfarer perceives the speculators to have overreached themselves, and the villas—“white elephants” says the ferryman at bantham—to be unlet. how, indeed, should thurlestone become a place of resort? it is remote, and its sands, unstable and shelving steeply to the sea, are extremely dangerous.
the dark, stern, upstanding perpendicular tower of the old church looks down grimly upon these white and red and yellow upstarts. it is a fine, large church, the successor of an earlier, as the great norman bowl-font of red sandstone would seem to prove, and the designers of it designed in a fine, large, broad style, suited to the coarse-grained granite and limestone of their building-materials. that rev. mr. john snell, chaplain to charles i., who was with the royalist garrison in salcombe castle, was rector here, and although one of the articles of surrender declared that he was not to be disturbed in his living, he was plundered of his goods, and his farm-stock[241] was twice carried off by the puritans, so that he found it prudent to leave. unlike so many others, he lived to return to his parish, and, i have no doubt, rendered things in his turn, extremely uncomfortable for some. one little natural human touch of him remains, in the entry in the register under his hand, against the years covered by the commonwealth:—
“monstrum horrendum informe,”
horrible and shapeless monster.
“this is youre houre and ye power of darkness.”
the iron had evidently entered into his soul.
the interior of the church has of late been exquisitely decorated and repaired: we will not say “restored,” for that word is rightly of ill-savour in these times. in place of the almost inevitable pitch-pine pews, or the commonplace chairs, there are green-stained, rush-bottomed chairs, with woodwork of the same hue: all very artistic and delightful, and sufficing to show that the more usual order of things is less inevitable than might be supposed, and only so common because taste is a quality of the rarest. only, i would that these things did not so commonly go with that new reforming zeal which is sending the church of england romewards, so fast as its clergy dare. here a faculty has been obtained for a rood-screen, and in general things are developing at a rate dangerous to that new movement itself and bringing that counter-reformation which is presently to repeat history.[242] history, it is true, does repeat itself, but not on precisely identical lines, and the newer reformation will be the disestablishment and disendowment of an unworthy church, and free-trade in religion.
there are weird rocks out beyond thurlestone, on the coastwise route round to the avon estuary; one of them—it may be glimpsed in the background of the thurlestone illustration—resembling some monstrous growth of the mushroom kind. the direct way to the crossing of the avon is through thurlestone street, and thence by the hillside village of buckland, and by bantham, a hamlet nestling under the lee of the ham, a great sandy elbow thrown up, ages ago, by the sea and the winds, in vain efforts to fling back the avon upon itself. that river is no rushing torrent, but just a softly gliding stream; and the sand dunes have not sufficed to imprison it. all they have done is to turn its course aside, due west instead of south, and there, denied a direct access to the sea, it has eaten away the cliffs in a great semicircular mouthful, and goes gliding out to the channel through a waste of flat sands.
it was here in 1772 that the chanteloupe, homeward-bound from the west indies, was totally wrecked, and of all those on board only one person saved. those were the times when the fisherfolk and shore-dwellers generally prayed for wrecks, and if none was forthcoming, helped providence to produce them by exhibiting false lights on shore, to lure vessels to their doom. they[243] thought no shame of asking, “o lord, give us a good wreck,” and were perhaps very little more civilised than the savages of strange lands, who, thinking shipwrecked sailors, to have been shipwrecked at all, must be under the high displeasure of the gods, murder them out of hand, and consider themselves, in so doing, the vicars of those affronted deities.
“a good wreck,” especially if there were no survivors left to tell the tale, or to claim anything, would keep the seaboard of half a county in luxury of sorts for quite a considerable time, and as survivors were such detrimentals, they were, in those “good old times,” very quickly made not to survive. it was a rude, but practical application of that socialistic doctrine of collectivism, of which we hear so much nowadays, “the greatest good to the greatest number.”
the story of the chanteloupe is a dark and repellent instance of those practices. it narrates how a lady named burke, familiar with the evil reputation of these people, and fearful of being murdered, put on all her jewellery when the ship struck, and was flung ashore glittering with precious stones. if she had thought to purchase life with that display, she made the most fatal of errors, for the sight only served to arouse the worst passions of those beach-combers, who slaughtered the unfortunate woman for the sake of her rings and other trinkets. when enquiries were set afoot, her body was discovered in the sands, bloodstained, with fingers cut off and ears[244] mutilated; but it does not appear that the guilt was brought home to any one. the fisherfolk, doubtless, all hung together, lest they should hang separately.
two years earlier a local quaker, one henry hingeston, had published a pamphlet denouncing the wrecking propensities of this coast:
“i have been deeply affected,” said he, “to see and feel how sweet the report of a shipwreck is to the inhabitants of this country, as well professors as prophane, and what running there is on such occasions, all other business thrown aside, and away to wreck. … i am verily persuaded that it hath been more sweet to hear that all the men are drowned, and so a ‘proper wreck,’ than that any are saved, and by that means hinder their more public appearance on that stage for getting money. o! the cruelty that hath been acted by many. my heart hath been often heavy to consider it, insomuch that i think multitudes of heathen are nothing near so bad. remember the broadcloth slupe, stranded in bigbury bay, richly laden. o! for shame, for shame, i am really vext that ever my countrymen should be guilty of such devilish actions.”
but the estimable hingeston might just as effectively have preached to the gulls and the cormorants on the iniquity of catching fish, as to have denounced wrecking. ’twas in the blood, and that is all there is to it.
these old tales of long-vanished days seem very remote and indistinct, but they came very[245] near and vivid when a few years ago some children digging in the sand of the ham, turned up a skull, pronounced to be that of a negro. it was considered, together with heaps of bones afterwards discovered, to be a relic of the tragedy of the chanteloupe.
the devonshire folk—the rustic sort, at any rate—generally call their avon the “aune,” and a little hamlet not far from this same bantham is “aunemouth;” while the village of aveton gifford, standing up-river, where the salt estuary becomes a freshwater stream, is impartially “aveyton,” or “auton,” “jifford.”
at bantham ferry the boatman puts you across for twopence, or however much or little he thinks you will stand—and it is only the matter of a dozen strokes at low water. and then you have the sands, the loose stones, and the rustling bennets and the sedges all to yourself; a kind of seashore sahara. then you round a rocky point; and there before you is burr island, a majestic reek of acetylene, or other gas, and people. wide stretch the sands at ebb, but they are not so wide but that the prints of footsteps have disfigured them pretty thoroughly; for where the land slopes down to the shore in grassy fields, the plymouth people have built bungalows, and are building more. burr, or borough, island is tethered to the mainland at ebb by this nexus of sand. it is in this circumstance a kind of minor st. michael’s mount, and like it again in that it once owned a chapel dedicated to st. michael.[246] the chapel disappeared in the lang syne, and when the solitary public-house—whose deserted roof-tree may still be seen—ceased business, civilisation and borough island wholly parted company.
beyond this point is the little sand-smothered bight of challaborough, with a coastguard station, where this explorer, at least, met coastguards of exceptional stupidity and astonishing ignorance of the coast beyond their own insignificant nook. why, they could not even spell or pronounce the name of their own station properly, and made it “shellaborough.” “erme mouth?” they had never heard of it, nor of the erme river, but dimly conceived “muddycombe,” to be meant. and as for the coast, they spoke of it in such awestruck terms that (it shall be confessed) the time drawing on towards evening, i made inland, and so do not know’ what manner of dragons and chimeras those are, which no doubt inhabit the three miles and a half of a not very rugged shore, awaiting the advent of a fine juicy tourist.
primitive, indeed, are those villages that lie away back from the sea in these parts. first comes kingmore, where the rock outcrops from the macadam in the main road, where the cottages are half-smothered in flowers, and where the domestic fowls that squatter and plunge in dust-baths in the middle of the street are the only signs of life. reminiscences of the old window-tax are called up by a house with a walled-up window, carefully painted with a pretence of being a genuine one of panes and sashes. even the[247] brass catch has not been forgotten by the artist in illusion, whose treatment is so literal, he must have been the forerunner of the newlyn school. the brass catch is rendered more than a thought too brassy, and the unfortunately painted panes are by no means convincing. but the deception although so grotesquely obvious, could not, under such opaque circumstances, be called transparent, could it?
like the reverend mr. snell of thurlestone, william lane, rector of ringmore, was a militant royalist. he raised and trained a company of men and, laying hands upon some cannon, opened out a battery against the parliamentary forces on their way to the leaguer of salcombe. his exploit made him a marked man, and he was considered sufficiently important for an expedition to be sent against him by sea from the parliamentary stronghold of plymouth. the orders given the commander of this force were to capture and shoot the combatant cleric; but mr. lane, advised of what was afoot, took refuge in the tower of his church, where the secret room, provided with a fireplace, in which he hid is still to be seen. here he lay three months, fed by his faithful parishioners, but was at last obliged to escape to france. at last, venturing to return, he worked for awhile as a labourer in the limestone quarries near torquay, until his little dwelling was pillaged by a french privateer. he died at last when on his return from london, whither he had journeyed on foot to ventilate his grievances.
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the ancient church of ringmore contains a relic of more recent strife, in the shape of an icon from sebastopol.
at kingston, on the way across to the river erme, there is but one inn. the “sloop” is the name of it, and there, if you wait half-an-hour, while the cocks and hens run in and out of the rooms and passages, they will get you tea. there is very little of a lyons’ or other tea-shop about the “sloop.” and kingston village is to match; primitive devonian in style, which is a style partaking of all the characteristics belonging to the untamed villages of cornwall, ireland, and the highlands of scotland. there are very few of the type left now, which is a cause for thankfulness, or regret, as you will, and they ought to be preserved on ice and kept for the admiration, or otherwise, of posterity.
out of kingston the road runs deep down below the level of the fields, in true devonshire sort, with high banks and tall hedges on either side, so that no view is possible. nor would it have mattered had it been otherwise when this stanley of these remote parts passed this way, for the whole face of the land and sea and the blue of the sky was blotted out on this warm and close evening of a hot summer’s day by a white pillowy fog, which, the nearer the shore, grew more dense.
after long tramping comes a left-hand turn, with a signpost inscribed “mothecombe.” the name suggests some moth-eaten hamlet that[249] would be all the better for plenty of camphor and a good airing; but presently one realises that this is the place called by the coastguards “muddycombe,” and more usually, in local speech, “muthycombe.”
it is a solitary road that leads down from this signpost, and the fog discloses only one person on the way: a boy, driving a cow. “coom oop, primrose,” says he, and that mild-featured dame and he turn into a field, the whiteness engulfs them at once, and the wayfarer is alone in the world.
suddenly the road ends, upon a sandflat. this is really the mouth of the erme, the estuary where it slides out to sea, but it is infinitely mysterious in this smother of fog and woolly silence. the stranger, of course, assumes a village from the direction of that curt, staccato signpost up the road, but devil a house can he find here; only a something looming out from under low cliffs, which at first he takes to be an inn, and then a blockhouse fort, resolving itself finally into the inhospitable likeness of a ruined limekiln.
the distant rustle and whispering of waves on the sea-shore comes fitfully through the fog, which breaks mysteriously and shows the river, with occasional glimpses of the woody banks opposite. for the rest, all is silence, save for an odd continuous buzzing or sizzling undertone, like bacon-frying, piano. it is marvellously like, and only the smell is wanting to complete the illusion, which is produced by the billions of[250] sand-fleas living their little crowded hour in the sands and among the drying seaweed. every time you kick over a tuft of weed you disturb a little world, and rouse that frying-bacon sound, as though a rasher had been turned in the frying-pan.
meanwhile, the way is obviously across that river, but how to win to that other side? no one, nor any house, is in sight, but here, by fortunate chance, is a fisherman’s boat, and i up-anchor, cast off, and row myself to the opposite shore, expectant all the while of an angry shout from somewhere. but anything, rather than stay the night over yonder with the sand-fleas. no one, however, witnessed that little act of piracy, and i walked up out of that steamy laundry-like hollow, where one is reduced to the limpness of washing hung over a clothes-line, and wondered what yon fisherman said and thought when he found himself on the one side of the river and his boat on the other. i hope it is not many miles round to the first bridge, or ford.
