Dartmouth

“ Dartmouth! congratulates thy blissful sway;
Elate with hope, her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold. ”

“ It will be enough to say that the mouth of the Dart is worthy of the river’s deserved reputation; a fine deep, winding harbour, channelled between lofty hills and embellished at its narrow mouth with the keep of an ancient castle. Dartmouth town is, in its different way, as picturesque as Totnes, and if it were not, its great memories would hallow the homeliest walls. But in treating of Devonshire villages and country houses one has hardly in mind the abodes of sea-goers and fishermen. They belong to another type altogether, and one regards them with different eyes. ”

“ Dartmouth first—cradle of the British seafarer from time immemorial—and it was an æsthetic luxury indeed to potter about that old, old church in its old, old graveyard, between which and the houses snuggled up to it a narrow, deep-sunken, paved passage gave right of way to living neighbours, case-hardened against the toxic microbe in all its forms, one must suppose. ”

“ This road that rises steeply out of Dartmouth is characteristically deep in the shade of rocky banks, and walls built of thin mossy stones. Long hart’s-tongues hang in clusters by the wayside, and every cranny of the walls is filled with tiny ferns. Having climbed to Stoke Fleming by a variety of steep gradients we promptly descend, by two miles of gradients nearly as steep, to the idyllic cove of Blackpool, whose golden sands once flowed with the blood of four hundred Frenchmen. ”

“ DARTMOUTH CASTLE—BLACKPOOL—SLAPTON SANDS—TORCROSS—BEESANDS—HALL SANDS
The little coach that runs daily from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge has a steep climb up out of Dartmouth. Here the pedestrian certainly has the advantage, for, tracing his coastwise way round through the woods of Warfleet creek, where a disused limekiln by the waterside looks very like an ancient defensible tower, he comes at last upon the strangely grouped church of St. Petrox, the Castle, and the abandoned modern battery, all standing in a position of romantic beauty, where the sea dashes in violence upon the dark rocks. ”

“ The situation of Dartmouth is eminently characteristic of the seaport towns of South Devon and Cornwall. It lies, like so many of them, at the mouth of a little river, which, running almost due south for an inconsiderable number of miles, widens at last into an estuary that gives on the sea through a narrow opening between tall cliffs. ”

“ As one nears Dartmouth the spirit of British seamanship, ancient and modern, dominates everything and seizes the imagination. The old Britannia, lying where she has lain ever since we can remember, and the new naval college standing out upon the hillside above, speak loudly enough of the present, while the home of Hawkins, whose brave parting words as his ship foundered off the coast of Newfoundland are historic, greets us from the opposing heights. ”

“ Dartmouth (6579) , a market-town, and favourite resort of yachtsmen, and formerly a port of great importance, at the narrow entrance of the Dart estuary, is a place of exceptional beauty and of great historic interest, built in terraces on a steep, wooded hill. In the old town along the quay and in the Butter-Walk are fine old Elizabethan houses. St Saviour's, one of its four churches, dates from 1372, and has a splendid rood-screen and a very fine pulpit. The land-locked harbour was guarded by two castles. ”

“ Kingsley: Dartside.
Of all the rivers of Devonshire, the Dart claims the first place, both for beauty and for interesting associations; and between the lonely wastes about its source on Dartmoor, and the calm, broad reaches above Dartmouth, the scenery is not only always beautiful, but adds the great charm of being beautiful in quite different ways. ”

“ A charming walk may—no, must, be taken from Dartmouth to the sea; the street, very narrow, runs between houses for a long way, giving glimpses of the water, of old bastions and towers, of gardens hanging on the steep slopes, of fuchsias and pelargoniums running riot in the warm, damp air, of red rock and green foliage, jumbled together in the wildest picturesqueness, of the blue, still water below, with gulls, living foam-flakes swaying, chattering over the surface. ”

“ Directly opposite Halifax on the Dartmouth side is a mammoth sugar refinery, successor to one established in 1883. The Nova Scotia Asylum for the Insane occupies a fine position on the ridge. A mile or so from the heart of Dartmouth is the first of a series of fresh water lakes which in both winter and summer are the centre of lively pastimes. Dartmouth is the gate-way to popular Cow Bay, Cole Harbour and Lawrencetown, all of which afford, within pleasant driving distance, superior sea bathing. ”

“ Dartmouth Castle, in part of Tudor date, commands the river a little below the town. Portions of the cottage of Thomas Newcomen, one of the inventors of the steam-engine, are preserved. Dartmouth is a favourite yachting centre, and shipbuilding, brewing, engineering and paint-making are carried on. Coal is imported, and resold to ships calling at the harbour. ”

“ A good picturesque modern house has been erected at a point commanding Dartmouth, on the opposite side at Maypool (F. C. Simpson, Esq.) , that is a real feature of beauty in the landscape. At Stoke Fleming is a fine brass. The time when Dartmouth may be seen to advantage—I am not speaking now of the river—is at the autumn regatta. Then the quaint old place is en fête. The little square that opens on to the quay is devoted to dancing. ”

“ He was still young at the time of his inauguration—not more than thirty-one—and he had passed those few years, after having been for three of them a tutor in Dartmouth College, in the care of a parish in North Yarmouth, in Maine; but he had already, in an extraordinary degree, dignity of person and sentiment; rare beauty,—almost youthful beauty, of countenance; a sweet, deep, commanding tone of voice; a grave but graceful and attractive demeanor—all the traits and all the qualities, completely ripe, which make up and express weight of character ”

“ When this has been passed, and, alas! a very ugly modern house that disfigures one of the loveliest scenes in South Devon, a head-land is reached by a walk under trees, and all at once a corner is turned, and a venerable church and a castle are revealed, occupying the rocky points that command the entrance of Dartmouth Harbour. ”

“ The town of to-day is in some respects not unlike Dartmouth. It is more open, one must admit, but there is the same close clinging of the houses to the hillside, the narrow entrance, and the river flowing down from Lostwithiel as does the Dart from Totnes. The streets are not less picturesque than that of what may not improperly be considered as the rival town, nor are they less steeply inclined; and there is just the same air of peaceful antiquity in many of its winding alleys. ”

“ Certainly, the men of Dartmouth earned their money cheaply, for "the myghtye tower" is a very small affair.
For their own interest one would have supposed they would have erected a greater fortress, as Dartmouth suffered severely at times from pirates and French fleets. In 1377 it was plundered by the French, who in the same year swept our shores from Rye to Plymouth. ”

“ Dartmouth church is closely girdled with old houses and steep streets, paved with painful but romantic-looking cobbles, and the churchyard rears itself high above the heads of wayfarers in the narrow lanes. ”

“ The town of Dartmouth was a quaint old place and one of the oldest boroughs in England. It contained, both in its main street and the narrow passages leading out of it, many old houses with projecting wooden beams ornamented with grotesque gargoyles and many other exquisite carvings in a good state of preservation. Like Totnes, the town possessed a "Butter Walk," built early in the seventeenth century, where houses supported by granite pillars overhung the pavement. ”

“ There is, indeed, much of interest for the artist and antiquarian in Dartmouth streets and by-ways, just as at almost every turn ashore and on the surface of the beautiful land-locked harbour there is something to arrest the attention of the casual observer. ”

“ Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once among the most important harbours in England, on a projecting angle of land which runs out into the river at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches, there has stood for some centuries the Manor House of Greenaway. The water runs deep all the way to it from the sea, and the largest vessels may ride with safety within a stone's throw of the windows. ”

“ Dartmouth harbour was the natural entrance. To guard it there were built, in ancient times, the twin-towers of Dartmouth and Kingswear Castles, facing one another, across the water, and between them was stretched an iron chain, drawn taut by windlasses in time of peril, which effectually prevented the entrance of hostile ships. Kingswear Castle is comparatively insignificant, but Dartmouth Castle, viewed from the Kingswear side, forms, with the adjoining church of Saint Petrox, a striking group, backed by the lofty tree-clad hills of Gallants’ Bower. ”

“ Then came a time of comparative rest for the beautiful little port on the Dart, which, however, as we have before stated, saw some of the storm and stress of the Civil War. With the bold and successful enterprises of Dartmouth privateers during the long war with Napoleon, or with those of equally daring smugglers at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, there is no space to deal in detail. ”

“ We commend the cause of our beloved country to all the Alumni of this Institution; and we invoke from them, and pledge our own most efficient and cordial support, and that of Dartmouth College, to the Government, which is the only power by which the rebellion can be subdued. We hail with joy and with grateful acknowledgments to the God of our fathers, the cheering hope that the dark cloud which has heretofore obscured the vision and depressed the hearts of patriots and statesmen, in all attempts to scan the future, may in time disappear entirely from our horizon ”

“ No aggregation of volumes would adequately portray the whole work of Dartmouth's alumni. In quiet places, the great majority, day by day, and year by year, have performed their allotted tasks. In such places all over America, and in other lands, they have built their most enduring monuments. The calm lustre of their lives is almost as widely diffused as the morning light.
Eleazer Wheelock founded the college, in faith and hope, for the enlightenment and evangelization of future generations in that mighty storehouse of thought and action, central New England. ”

“ Dartmouth—Kingsbridge—Plymouth and the Sound Past Berry Head, with its crown of golden gorse, its cave known as Ash Hole, supposed to have been the burial place of soldiers of Cæsar’s legions, and the house upon its lower slopes which, during the great French Wars with Napoleon, was used as a hospital, and was afterwards given to the poet Lyte by King William IV, one is soon in sight of the rugged pinnacle rock or islet known as the Mewstone, which stands like a sentinel on guard, just outside the entrance to the Dart. ”

“ The Legges rose to be Earls of Dartmouth.—The first who was raised to the peerage was that loyal and gallant naval officer, George Legge, created Baron of Dartmouth in 1682. He was descended from an ancestor who filled the Pretorian Chair of London in the years 1347 and 1354, having by his industry in the trade of a skinner, attained great wealth.
Sir Geoffrey Bullen, Lord Mayor in 1458, was grandfather of Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire, father of Anna Bullen, and grandfather of queen Elizabeth, the highest genealogical honour the city of London ever possessed. ”

“ Benjamin Franklin says Dartmouth 'is a truly good man, and wishes sincerely a good understanding with the colonies, but does not seem to have strength equal to his wishes' (ib. ii. 154) . In March 1775 Dartmouth recommended Lord North's conciliatory propositions to the governors of the American colonies, 'in language of much force and evident sincerity' (Lecky, Hist. of England, 1882, iii.424-5) . ”

“ And she looker like she have the fire ouside and the ice in."
"Oh, she's not so bad," said the Englishman, loyally. "She has some admirable traits, and she's deuced clever, but she has an ill-regulated sort of a nature, and is awfully obstinate and prejudiced. It's a sort of vanity. She worries Dartmouth a good deal. He's a born poet, if ever a man was, and she wants him to go into politics. Wants a salon and all that sort of thing. She ought to have it, too. Political intrigue would just suit her; she's diplomatic and secretive. But Dartmouth prefers his study." ”

“ The Castle was built in the time of Henry VII, on the site of an older one; for when Edward IV reigned, the men of Dartmouth built themselves a castle at the desire of the King, who promised that if they would by this means protect the town—and, further, would guard the harbour by putting a chain across the mouth—they should have £30 yearly from the customs of Dartmouth and Exeter. The chain stretched across to Kingswear, and a hollow in the rock by the ruins of an old guard-house shows where it once passed. ”

“ As we approached the town, the road continually grew worse until it was little better than the average unimproved country highway in America, and the sharp loose stones everywhere were ruinous on tires. It finally plunged sharply down to a steamboat ferry, over which we crossed the Dart and landed directly in the town. There are few towns in England more charmingly located than old Dartmouth, and a hundred years ago it was an important seaport, dividing honors about equally with Plymouth. ”