lynmouth would have pleased dr. johnson, who held the opinion that the most beautiful landscape was capable of improvement by the addition of a good inn in the foreground. we have grown in these days beyond mere inns, which are places the more luxurious persons admire from the outside, for their picturesque qualities—and pass on. dr. johnson’s ideal has been transcended here, and hotels, in the foreground, in the middle distance, above, below, and on the sky-line, should serve to render it, from this standpoint, the most picturesque place in this country. one odd result of this complexion of affairs is that when a lynmouth hotel proprietor issues booklets of tariffs, including photographic views of the place, he finds that all his choice pictures contain representations of other people’s hotels. this is sorrow’s crown of sorrow, the acme of agony, the ne plus ultra of disgust. resting on the commanding terrace of the tors hotel, seated amidst its wooded grounds like some highland shooting-box, i can see perhaps eight others; and down in the village a house that is not either a hotel, an inn, or a boarding-house,10 or that does not let apartments, is a shop. and i don’t think there is a shop that does not sell picture-postcards! there are some few very fine villas, situated in their own grounds, on the hillsides, but whenever any one of these comes into the market, it also becomes a hotel.
and yet, with it all, there is a holy calm at lynmouth. save for the murmur of the lyn, the breaking of the waves upon the pebbly shore, or the occasional bell of the crier, nothing disturbs the quiet. as there are no advertisement-hoardings, so also there are no town or other bands, minstrels, piano-organs, or public entertainers. rows of automatic penny-in-the-slot machines are conspicuously not here. there is not a railway station. nor is there anything in the likeness of a conventional sea-front. the age of advertisement is, in short, discouraged, and i am not sure that the ruling powers of the place have not something in the way of stripes and dungeon-cells awaiting would-be public entertainers.
but, lest it might be supposed that the advantages of lynmouth end with these negative qualities, let something now be said of its own positive charms. it is daintiness itself, to begin with, and so small and neat, yet so rugged and unexpected, that it is sometimes difficult to believe in the bona fides of its picturesqueness, which looks almost as if it had been created to order. yet the evidence of old prints proves, if proof were wanting, that lynmouth—what there was then of it—was as romantic a hundred years ago as it is to-day.11 indeed, an inspection of old prints leads one to believe that, though there are more houses now, the enclosing hills are more abundantly and softly wooded than then. and, with the exception of the rhenish tower built on the stone pier, everything has been added legitimately, without any idea of being picturesque.
that quaint tower, a deliberate copy of one on the drachenfels, owes its being to general rawdon, who resided here from about 1840, and, finding his ?sthetic taste outraged by a naked iron water-tank erected on posts, built this pleasing feature to harmonise with the scenery. an iron basket, still remaining, was provided to serve for a beacon, and now that lynmouth is lighted by an installation of electric glow-lamps, a light is shown from it every night.
but let us halt awhile to learn something of the rise of lynmouth, as a seaside resort. at the close of the eighteenth century, the place was a little hamlet, dependent partly on a precarious fishing industry, and partly on the spinning of woollen yarn. but presently, fishing and spinning were at once and together in a bad way, and mr. william litson, the largest employer of the spinners, found himself and his people out of work. it chanced at this time that the new-born delight in picturesque scenery, that had already set the literary men of the age scribbling, had brought some few travellers even into the wilds of north devon. they fell into raptures over lynton and lynmouth: raptures rather dashed by the discovery12 that there was no sufficient accommodation for them. litson, pondering upon these things, and with wits sharpened by threatened adversity, took opportunity by the hand, and in 1800, opening what is now the “globe” inn as a hotel of sorts, and furnishing the cottages on either side for the reception of visitors, became the pioneer of what is now the great hotel-keeping interest of the two towns. litson prospered in an amazing degree. early among his patrons were robert coutts, famous in those days as a banker, and the marchioness of bute; and the stream of visitors grew so rapidly that by 1807 he was able to open the original “valley of rocks” hotel, up at lynton. the adjoining “castle” hotel soon followed.
about the time when lynmouth and lynton were thus first rising into favour, the poet southey came this way, and wrote a description that has ever since been most abundantly quoted. but it is impossible not to quote it again, even though the comparison with places in portugal is uncalled for, absurd, and entirely beside the mark.
thus, southey: “my walk to ilfracombe led me through lynmouth, the finest spot, except cintra and arrabida, which i have ever seen. two rivers join at lynmouth; each of these flows down a combe, rolling over huge stones, like a long waterfall. immediately at their junction they enter the sea, and the rivers and the sea make but one uproar. of these combes, the one is richly wooded, the other runs between two high, bare, stony hills, wooded at the base. from the13 summerhouse hill between the two is a prospect most magnificent—on either hand combes and the river; before, the beautiful little village, which, i am assured by one who is familiar with switzerland, resembles a swiss village.”
lynmouth and the tors, from the beach.
and so with a host of others, to whom the hills “beetle,” the rocks “frown savagely,” the sea “roars like a devouring monster.” and all the while, you know, they don’t do anything of the kind. instead, the hills slant away beautifully up skyward, the rocks, draped with ivy and moss and studded with ferns, look benignant, and the sea and the lyn together still the senses with their combined drowsy murmur, as you sit looking alternately down upon the harbour or up at the wooded heights from that finest of vantage points, the “tors” terrace, after dinner, when the lights in the village and those of the hillside villas twinkle in the twilight, like jewels. the poetry of the scene appeals to all, except perhaps miss marie corelli, who, in the “mighty atom,” does not appear to approve of it. this, of course, is very discouraging, but the inhabitants are endeavouring to bear up; apparently with a considerable measure of success.
“how soothing the sound of rushing water,” observed a charming young lady, impressed with the scene. i agreed, but could not help remarking that there were exceptions. “my dear young lady,” said i, noticing the incredulous lift of her eyebrow’s, “you do not know the feelings of a householder whose water-pipes have burst in a14 rapid thaw. rushing water, as it pours out of the bath-room, down the front stairs, does not soothe him.”
the voice of the lyn has, however, suggested less prosaic thoughts, and has set many a minor poet, and many minimus poets, scribbling in the hotel “visitors’” books. nay, no less a person than the reverend william henry havergal, staying at the lyndale hotel, in september 1849, waking in the night and listening to that voice, harmonised it in the following chant which he inscribed in the book then kept at that establishment:—
bars of music
it is a beautiful anthem-like fragment, “like the sound of a great ‘amen,’” and brings thoughts of cathedral choirs and deep-toned organs. havergal, of course, as a writer of devotional music, had a mind by long use attuned to finding such a motive; but i am not sure that another composer, with a bent towards secular music of a sprightly, light-opera kind, might not, lying wakeful here, find a suggestion for his own art in these untutored sharps and trebles.
the lyn in its final series of falls in the semi-private15 grounds of glen lyn, at the rear of the lyndale hotel, sounds a deeper note, and comes splashing down with a roar by fern-clad rocky walls and between a scatter of great boulders. a rustic bridge looks down upon the foaming water, flecked with sunlight coming in patches of gold through the overarching foliage.
no description of lynmouth that has ever been penned gives even a remote idea of what the place is really like. i care nothing for southey and his comparison with cintra and arrabida, for i have not been to those places, and don’t want to go: resembling, i suspect, in that disability, and in the disinclination to remedy it, most other visitors, to whom that parallel has no meaning. lynmouth is really comparable with no other place. it is essentially individual and like nothing but itself; or, at any rate, like nothing else in nature. what it does really resemble is some romantic theatrical set scene, preferably in comic opera: the extraordinary picturesqueness of it seeming too impossible to be a part of real life. there is the quaint tower at the end of the tiny stone jetty, there are the bold, scrub-covered hills, with rocks jutting out from them, as they rarely do except in the imagination of a scene-painter, and here are the grouped little houses and cottages, mostly with the roses, the jessamine, and the clematis that are indispensable to rural cottages—on the stage. even the very fishermen seem unreal. i don’t believe—or at least find some difficulty in believing—that they, really and truly, are fishermen,16 and almost imagine they must be paid to lounge out from the wings on to the stage—i mean the sea-front—in order to give an air of verisimilitude. they ask you, occasionally, it is true, if you want a boat, but with the air of playing a part that does not particularly interest them, and every moment you expect them to break into song, after the manner of the chorus in comic-opera, expressive of the delights of a life on the ocean wave, and the joys of sea-fishing.
or, to adopt the conventions of melodrama, as formerly practised at the adelphi, and still at drury lane; here you expect almost to see the villain smoking his inevitable villainous cigarette (an infallible stage symbol of viciousness), and, possibly in evening dress, that ultimate stage symbol of depravity, shooting his cuffs by the bridge that spans the lyn; and on summer evenings the lighted hotels down in the huddled little street look for all the world like stage-hotels—abodes of splendour and gilded vice, whence presently there should issue some splendid creature of infamy, to plot with another villain, already waiting in his trysting-place, the destruction of hero and heroine. but, lest i be misunderstood, i hasten to add that all these expectations are vain things, and that villains really require a much faster place than lynmouth.
i have spoken already about the “fishermen” of lynmouth, but, truth to tell, that is but a conventional term, for sea-fishing here is not the industry it is on most coasts, and the jerseyed17 persons who loll about the harbour are more used to taking out and landing steamboat excursionists, or accompanying amateur fishermen with lines on pleasant days, than to enduring the rigours the trawler knows. rock whiting, bass, and grey mullet give the chief sport in the sea, and in the lyn are salmon, salmon-peel, and trout, as you may readily believe by examining the trophies of sport with rod and line treasured by mr. cecil bevan, of the lyn valley hotel.
lyndale bridge.
there was formerly, indeed, a herring fishery at lynmouth. westcote speaks of it as existing in the time of queen elizabeth. “god,” says he, “hath plentifully stored with herrings, the king of fishes, which shunning their ancient places of repair in ireland, come hither abundantly in shoals,18 offering themselves, as i may say, to the fishers’ nets, who soon resorted hither with divers merchants, and so for five or six years continued, to the great benefit and good of the country, until the parson vexed the poor fishermen for extraordinary unusual tithes, and then, as the inhabitants report, the fish suddenly clean left the coast.” they were not friends of the establishment. but after a while some returned, and from 1787 to 1797 there was such an extraordinary abundance that the greater part of the catch could not be disposed of, and vast quantities were put upon the land for manure. then they totally deserted the channel for a number of years; a fact at that time regarded by many as a divine judgment for thus wasting the food sent. on christmas day 1811 a remarkable shoal appeared and choked the harbour, and in 1823 another shoal paid a visit; but since then, the herrings have given lynmouth a wide berth.
lynmouth, from the tors hotel.
i have visited lynmouth in haste and at leisure. to arrive hurriedly and dustily, and to make a quick survey, and so hasten off, is unsatisfactory. under such circumstances you feel a pariah among a leisured community who are cool and not dusty; and you do not assimilate the spirit of the place. the utmost satisfaction in the way of lazy enjoyment (it has been conceded by philosophers) is to watch other people at work. that is why, to some minds, bank holidays, when the entire population makes merry, are so unsatisfactory; there is no toil to form the shadow in your bright picture of dolce far niente. now there is a rustic gallery,19 with a pavilion, where you can take tea and be consummately idle, built out from the sloping wooded grounds of the tors hotel, and thence you may, if so minded, spend the livelong day watching the people immediately below, in the central pool of lynmouth’s life. overhanging the road, you watch the holiday folk who are taking it easy, and those others who are making such hard work of it, rushing from place to place. and i, even i, looking down upon perspiring dust-covered cyclists arriving, thank providence that i am not such as them: conveniently forgetting for the while that i have been and shall be once more!
the “north” in north devon raises ideas, if not of a cold climate, at least of bracing air; but really, with the always up and always down of the scenery, the rather more bracing atmosphere than that of south devon is forgotten, in the heated exertions of getting about.
why do people so largely select torrid july and august for holidays? for the most part it is a matter of convention, but in part because by the end of july the schools have broken up. there remain, however, large numbers of holiday-makers who are unaffected by school-terms and would resent being thought slaves to convention. they can go a-pleasuring when they please, yet they wait until the dog-days. now lynmouth, in particular, and the north devon coast, in general, are exceptionally delightful in may and june. the early dews of morning, the cool, fragrant thymy airs, that in july and august are dispelled20 long before midday and give place to brilliant sunshine and a great heat, which are in themselves enjoyable enough, but forbid much joy in considerable exercise, remain more or less throughout the day in those earlier months. september, too, when the fervency of summer mellows into an autumnal glow, has its own particular charm.
