Devon

“ Sing of Devon who will, but can Devon shew such cottage gardens, can she shew anything to compare with yonder glorious range of downs? Green downs on which the passing clouds cast moving shadows of purple and blue, and here and there a gleam of purest white, where the sunlight strikes on to the bare white chalk of some cliff or cutting. Where in all the world grows turf so dense, so fine, so short and sweet and perfect as here upon these rolling hills of chalk. ”

“ And far be thou distant, thou reptile, that seizes
⁠The verdure and pride of the garden and lawn!
Let Bourbon exult in her gay gilded lilies,
⁠And England triumphant display her proud rose;
A fairer than either adorns the green valleys,
⁠Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows. ”

“ This is the weather in which Devon looks its best. This is spring, almost visibly flushing into summer. The constant alternation of light and shade brings out the varied tints of the foliage and the splendour of the wild flowers to perfection, while the sun is not too hot to rob you of their enjoyment. ”

“ Every mile of Devonshire has its charm, not to be mapped out in advance, but freshly discovered by each new lover of the moorland and the sea, of soft air and the play of shadows, of folklore and tradition, of the memory of heroes. Those who cannot know fair Devon in actual presence may find her at her best in the romances of Kingsley and Blackmore and Phillpotts. The shire abounds in sea-magic. The south coast, with its wealth of sheltered bays and tempting inlets, has so mild and equable a climate that its dreamy windings have become dotted with winter resorts as well as watering-places. ”

“ It contradicts, too, a view rather generally held, that the spirit of restless daring and love of adventure that have distinguished innumerable men of Devon belonged solely to Elizabethan days—a view that has, no doubt, sprung up because the great lights that shone in that glorious reign have eclipsed all lesser ones. ”

“ This part of Cornwall shares much of the peculiar and exquisite beauty which every Englishman knows adorns "the sweet shire of Devon." The hedges near Treby, like those round Dawlish and Torquay, are redolent with a thousand flowers; the neighbouring fields are pranked with all the colours of Flora—its soft air—the picturesque bay in which it stood, as it were, enshrined—its red cliff's, and verdure reaching to the very verge of the tide—all breathe the same festive and genial atmosphere. ”

“ But while two branches of the race grew, flourished, and fell, a third division rose to rank and fortune in this island, becoming closely allied by links of property and title with Devon, the fairest shire in the English land—links which the space of 750 years has strengthened, the glamour of an historic name, the charm of many a noble nature, have rendered unbreakable. ”

“ If our object in choosing to cross Devon by the coast road were simply to cling to the shore as closely as possible we should, of course, drive to Torquay by way of Dawlish and Teignmouth. But in that case we should miss the beautiful views of Exeter and the Moor from the slopes of Great Haldon, and the gorse and pines on the summit of Telegraph Hill, which most of us will think more desirable things than the beaches and lodging-houses of popular watering-places. It is true that no esplanade nor row of bathing-boxes can altogether spoil a Devon sea. ”

“ It is, indeed, not often that a day in Devon is entirely hopeless, for132 clouds disperse frequently as quickly as they come. It is to this moist climate that softly beautiful Devonshire owes its fair name. ”

“ Half-way down the cleft in the cliff, which is Clovelly's one street, we stopped at a house where a faint light burned sleepily. It was the New Inn, and when Sir Lionel knocked loudly, I was doubtful as to the reception we were likely to have at such an hour. But I needn't have worried—in Devon! Even if you wake people out of pleasant dreams to disagreeable realities, and demand coffee, and trail wet marks over their clean floors, they are kind and friendly. A delightful man let us in, and instead of scolding, pitied us—a great deal more than I, at any rate, needed to be pitied. ”

“ But many of us will dream rather of chalk-streams in Devon, of the rippling amber-yellow flood of Derwent in the Peakland valleys, of Tweed and Teviot, of slow streams among woods and bright rivers going like cold flame through wide straths and lowlands: of small narrow waters whose very names are wedded to beauty and to ‘old, unhappy, far-off things,’ Otterbourne, the Water of Urr, the Water of Quair, Allan Water. Above all will some of us think of those peat-stained bracken-dyed burns, that leap and dance and sing down the steep ways of rock and heather in the Scotland of our love. ”

“ The scene where this rivulet, arriving abruptly at the cliff’s edge, falls sheer over it, in a long spout of about a hundred feet, is the most dramatic thing on the coast of North Devon. Imagine the lonely valley, not in itself very remarkable, suddenly shorn off in a clean cut, disclosing a smooth face of rock as black as coal, ending in a little beach—and there you have Speke’s Mouth, as it is called. ”

“ Such was the general configuration of the little town of Ottermouth in South Devon, for no fault of its own not quite a first-class seaside resort as yet, but slowly and surely worming its way into the affections of those who had discovered it. There was no pier, and therefore there were but few "trippers." But in the curious blend of brand-new brick villas and old-world houses of "cob" there dwelt men of varying fortunes, who in their time had helped to make history, and who had chosen this peaceful spot on the Devon coast as the one in which to end their strenuous days. ”

“ It is true Devon country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes dipping down into the earth or going up like the sides of houses, coppices, cornfields, and little streams wherever there's a place for one; but the downs along the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild. The combe ends in a sandy cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs away to the headland on the other, and a coastguard station. Just now, with the harvest coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples ripening, the trees almost too green. It's very hot, still weather; the country and the sea seem to sleep in the sun. ”

“ In one way and another, the South Devon Coast, tracing the creeks and the coastguard-paths, is not less than one hundred and eighty-nine miles in length.
It is a historic coast, and plentifully marked with towns and villages; with this result, that it is by no means to be treated of shortly. Devon has produced fully her share of great men, and many of them have been born within sight and sound of the sea; while the mere mention of Torquay, Brixham, Dartmouth, and Plymouth, recalls, not merely local annals, but prominent events in the history of England. ”

“ There can be little doubt that the foremost man in the whole history of Devon is Sir Francis Drake, the greatest of Elizabethan seamen, the first English circumnavigator of the globe, the terror of every Spanish ship, and the most conspicuous figure in the defeat of the Armada. ”

“ Along the little churchyard, packed full with women, streams all the gentle blood of North Devon,—tall and stately men, and fair ladies, worthy of the days when the gentry of England were by due right the leaders of the people, by personal prowess and beauty, as well as by intellect and education. And first, there is my lady Countess of Bath, whom Sir Richard Grenville is escorting, cap in hand (for her good Earl Bourchier is in London with the queen) ”

“ Another characteristic of the people has always been their loyalty to their sovereign, to their county, and to each other. Devon is proverbial, like Cornwall and Yorkshire, for the clannishness of its inhabitants. It is a land, too, where superstition dies hard. Belief in pixies—fairies, as they are called elsewhere—in witches and witch-craft, in whisht-hounds and other weird and uncanny creatures, and in portents and omens, still lingers, especially on Dartmoor. ”

“ The fact that I have been able to take only a small handful from the vast hoard that constitutes the history of Devon will explain, I hope, the many omissions that must strike every reader who has any knowledge of the county—omissions of which no one can be more conscious than myself. ”

“ Between this emporium
and the sea, the roads—parish roads—lie over wild moors or creep between high hedges of earth on which the traveller can step along when the lane below is converted into the bed of a stream, also on which the wary smuggler could stride, and keep a look-out whilst his laden mules and asses stumbled forward in the concealment of the deep-set lane. A very noticeable feature of the Devon and Cornwall coasts is the trenched and banked-up paths from the little coves. By these paths the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night. ”

“ But even in North Devon, where time goes something slowly, life is not long enough to always pronounce the word as spelt of old, and certainly the arm of no signpost is long enough to contain the whole of it; and so the district has cast away, like so much useless lumber, half its length.
Down on the right hand goes the road, staggeringly steep, to Buck’s Mill, a little cranny in the towering wooded cliffs, where a huge limekiln and a few white cottages hang crazily over the water. ”

“ I cannot conscientiously recommend Devon as a motoring field for those who find great speed essential to their happiness, for to them the alternate use of the gear lever and the brake is apt to be exasperating. But to many of us the reduction of our average mileage is a small matter in comparison with certain important things; such as scarlet poppies in the corn, and high banks fringed with ferns, and cottages smothered in flowers, and wide purple moors, and the rippling of emerald seas, and the complete serenity that fills the heart in Devon. ”

“ Hill and dell, heights and hollows, pasture slopes and rugged hillocks, succeed each other with a delicious harmony we have rarely seen elsewhere. On one side of the bay are the three busy towns, active with energetic life; on another are the cultivated hill-sides of productive Devon; on another is the open sea, with the two objects we have noted—the Breakwater and the marvellous Eddystone. Everywhere Nature has had its own sweet will; even the laurel hedges have risen thirty feet in height; the lime trees grow as if they had never been trimmed ”

“ The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest, most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in England, is that bit of country between the Exe and the Axe which is watered by the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any one of a dozen villages found beside these pretty little rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the good fortune which first led him into such a garden. ”

“ In 926, as we learn from William of Malmesbury, Athelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter, and, constituting the Tamar the limit of his jurisdiction, converted Devon into a purely Saxon province. The immense preponderance of Saxon names in all parts of the county proves how thoroughly this expropriation of the Kelts was carried into effect. The 4theory held by Sir Francis Palgrave, amongst others, that the conquest of Devon was accomplished by halves, the Exe being for some time the boundary, rests upon no adequate grounds, neither evidence nor probability supporting it. ”

“ Nowhere, perhaps, save in the west of England (I do not speak only of Devon, for I know of little valleys in Cornwall which are as fertile as the Garden of Eden, held in the rocky jaws of some bleak cliff) , but in what we call "the West," is there such peculiar beauty of contrast, bold outlines of cliff and cove, great stretches of moor lying open to the sky, and wooded combe and valley or small green sheltered hollow of such blossoming fertility. ”

“ The neighbourhood of these exploited seaside towns are, however, not the places, as a general rule, in which to look for such fine survivals [122] of old Devon talk. The villages and the hamlets are the last homes of it, and, generally speaking, the only times when an indweller hears the Doric is when a servant, fresh-caught from “Dartymoor” or other remote district, comes into residence. Then, indeed, one hears strange phrases. Then you learn, if you did not know it before, that in Devon all girls are “maads” and all boys “byes,” large or small ”

“ There are folk of primitive ways of thought and rugged speech up the valley of Dawlish Water, [82] and their characteristics are those of old Devon, of whose peasantry it has been truly said: “They work hard, live hard, hold hard, and die hard.” ”

“ Besides the trip up the Tamar, there are other rivers in South Devon whose charms are of a totally different, but perhaps even more exquisitely beautiful character. Thus the Dart, the Lynher, the Plym, the Yealm, the Erme, and the Tavy, all present attractions to the tourist.
It cannot fail to augment the enjoyment of those who visit this beautiful county—the fairest, the brightest, and the “greenest” of all our English shires—to recall the many “worthies” to whom Devonshire and Cornwall have [77] given birth ”

“ Lord Devon was for many years the most influential man in his county, and was generally known as 'the good earl.' For fifty-two years he presided at quarter sessions, and he was at first director and then chairman of the Bristol and Exeter Railway. ”