Motor Tours in the West Country 8

Motor Tours in the West Country 8

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.

 

There was no very exciting rivalry, I suppose, between the castle of

Berry, even at its best, and the castle that stands only about two miles

away on the “high rokky hille” of Totnes; for the stronghold of Judhael

de Totnais and William de Braose, of Zouches and Edgecumbes, was the

citadel of a walled town. If we climb the rocky hill in question--through

the old east gate of the town, and past the fifteenth-century church and

the hidden guildhall that was once a priory--we may see for ourselves how

proudly the tower of Totnes once dominated the valley of the Dart. There

is only a fragment of the keep standing now, and even in Henry VIII.’s

time “the logginges of the castelle” were “clene in ruine.” The story of

their decline and fall seems to be unknown, but I think the place must

have been treated with some indifference by the Edgecumbes, who were,

unless I am mistaken, rebuilding their beautiful house at Cothele when

Totnes Castle came to them. If this were the case we could forgive them,

and indeed be grateful for their absorption in the lovely treasure-house

above the Tamar.

 

The various signs of age that make these steep streets so attractive must

not make us forget that the antiquity claimed by Totnes is a far more

venerable affair than any such thing of yesterday as a Norman castle. It

was on a certain stone in Fore Street that Brutus of Troy, father of all

Britons, first set his adventurous foot when he discovered this island.

So at least says Geoffrey of Monmouth in his brave, imperturbable way.

Brutus, we must suppose, sailed up the Dart; or perhaps at that early

date Totnes was on the coast. In any case it was the charms of these

woods and waters that attracted the voyagers to land in the new island,

and “made Brutus and his companions very desirous to fix their habitation

in it.” That is easily understood.

 

We too shall do well to come to Totnes by water. It is the best way, and

can be done by steamer from Dartmouth. As this, however, probably means

the neglect of Berry Pomeroy, which is far more serious than the missing

of Brixham, I advise every motorist whose car can travel without him to

drive from Paignton to Totnes, and to send the car by road to Dartmouth

while he himself goes thither by water. For the banks of the winding Dart

are, in their gentle way, incomparable, with their soft woods hanging

over the stream, and their cornfields streaked with scarlet, and the

little creeks where thatched cottages are clustered on the shore and

white-sailed boats flutter beside the tiny quay. And among the trees of

the left bank are Sandridge, the birthplace of John Davis, and Greenway,

the home of the Gilberts, where Sir Humphrey lived before his widowed

mother married Raleigh.

 

In the meantime those who drive their own cars must return to Paignton

by road, and follow the railway to Brixham past Goodrington sands,

where Charles Kingsley loved to spend the summer days searching for the

orange-mouthed Actinia and dreaming of the Spanish Armada. There is

not a spot upon this Devon coast but is the stuff that dreams are made

of! Dreams of gallantry and war, of conquest and deliverance and wide

adventure haunt us hour by hour as we pass from haven to haven, from

Torquay to Brixham, and from Brixham to Dartmouth, and from Dartmouth to

the climax of Plymouth Sound; with the great names of Drake and Gilbert

and Hawkins, of Raleigh and Grenville ringing in our hearts as we spin

across the soil that bred them, and, shining below us, the green sea that

carried them to their renown.

 

The sea was not green, but grey and misty, on the day that “the

Protestant wind” blew William the Deliverer into Torbay. The fleet, says

a letter written “on the first day of this instant December, 1688,” had

met with “horrid storms,” but “was not so damnified as was represented

by the vulgar.” It was here, in this harbour of Brixham--now hemmed in

by busy quays, and crowded with trawlers whose flaming sails might well

be meant to commemorate Orange William--it was here where the statue

stands that the prince first stepped ashore. On his flag, as on the

statue, was the motto of his family: _I will maintain_. The statue is not

flattering--or so, at least, we hope--but its presence, with its calm

promise of liberty, is not without dignity amid all the bustle of the

fishing-fleet. The scene was busy enough that day, when William stood

here with Burnet, and the guns roared, and the drums and hautboys made

music, and from every headland and housetop the people shouted their

welcome; and, as the fog lifted, the fleet, lying out there beyond the

breakwater, which was then unbuilt, “was a sight would have ravished the

most curious eyes of Europe.”

 

William, and gradually all his regiments of horse and foot, climbed these

narrow streets to the top of the hill. Though we take another road than

theirs we by no means escape the climbing. Two slow miles, on gradients

varying from one in twelve to one in ten, lead us to the point where we

immediately begin to descend, on a rough steep road of sharp turns, which

runs down to the shore of Dartmouth Harbour and the slip of Kingswear

Ferry.

 

These are classic waters that lap upon the clumsy sides of the

ferry-boat. We move slowly, and that is well, for there is much to see:

much beauty of wooded headlands, of old streets drawing nearer, of boats

and ships upon a blue-green sea. To the left are the two points that

shelter the harbour, and on each its ruined tower, the guardians that did

their work so long and well, and perished in the doing of it: to the

right the river winds away into the land and the old _Britannia_ lies at

rest, and the great buildings of the Naval College crown the hill. It was

from this harbour, more than three hundred years ago, that the _Sunshine_

and _Moonshine_ sailed away to the North West Passage with John Davis and

his “company of goodlie seamen, not easily turned from any good purpose;”

and it was between those two green headlands that Francie Drake came home

from “singeing the King of Spain’s beard” at Cadiz, with the _San Philip_

and all her spoils behind him. Historic fleets have ridden at anchor in

the shelter of these hills: ships for Cœur-de-Lion’s crusade; and for

Edward III.’s siege of Calais no fewer than thirty-one, all furnished by

Dartmouth; and on one grim occasion, at least, an unwelcome fleet from

France, which left the town a ruin. Many years later another French ship

came sailing in unsuspiciously with letters from the Queen, a few days

after Dartmouth Castle had surrendered to Fairfax. The captain, when

he heard the news, flung the precious packet into the sea; “but God

provided a Wave,” says the historian, “to bring it to the Boat that went