When first I saw Torquay and Torbay (I am afraid to think how many years ago), and the long line of curving coast stretching away past parvenu Paignton to Berry Head, I thought that here was a veritable fairyland amongst seaside resorts. Many things have happened since then: the South Devon coast, once so solitary, so quiet, has everywhere its fringe of trim-built villas; the lonely coombes, once the home of rabbits and some few fishermen, echoing only with the querulous cries of sea-gulls, are now filled, or are filling, with bungalows, as quick-multiplying as were those ousted rabbits, and the brazen clang of German bands makes miserable the soul of man. These are the defects that make this fairyland of other years something less gracious and more prosaic than before; but bungalows and bands, and other kindred afflictions of a popular populous watering-place, have power only to discount, not altogether to bankrupt, its charm.

And charming is still the epithet for Torquay, seated majestically on its many hills. So charming is it, that the witchery of the place gets into the head of the average young man o’ nights, like so much champagne, and sitting by one of the many hillside winding walks overlooking the bay, you may hear him declare to his inamorata that he loves her with a love transcending all other affections, past, present, or to come. And so these silly folk become engaged, and, one of these fateful days, they marry and go a-honeymooning in the Isle of Wight (an isle ordained by the Creator for such functions), presently to discover that life is not made up altogether of summer nights at Torquay, nor at Shanklin neither; also that, however warmly one may love, still number one remains, after all, when the flush of romance has worn off, the object of the most jealous and enduring affection. You see, Torquay is responsible for a great deal of match-making. Young folks have in after years much reason to cur—well, er, that is, to bless, the place.

How many declarations have I heard while lounging at twilight on the Cliff Walk! How many gay and giddy flirtations at Anstey’s Cove or Berry Pomeroy! Ah! delusive coast of Devon, inciting to the rashest of all conceivable rashnesses, you have proved the undoing of many a butterfly bachelor.

I have said enough to convince you, I think, that Torquay is a dangerous place. It is all the more so, in that, being essentially modern, there is nothing in the way of antiquities to explore in the town itself. This fact, together with that other of a warm and languorous climate, that invites to rest rather than to recreative efforts, to whispered confidences, to tentative kissing and waist-clasping on the sheltered Rock Walk above the Torbay road, shapes softly the social features of Torquay and the plastic destinies of youth.

To leave these features and come to consideration of scenic charms, there can be no higher praise than to say that at night Torquay picturesqueness reaches the acme of theatric scene-painting. To return, when the moon is shining, to Torquay from Paignton, is to experience a thrill of decorative pleasure that few other places can confer. A great bar of silver moonlight, all alive with ripples, mingles with terrestrial illuminations of villas and climbing hillside roads, garish yellow by comparison. Below, in the harbour, red and green and yellow lights of smacks and vessels of many builds dance in streaky minuets upon lazy tides, while on the horizon the mast-head lanterns of Brixham boats rise and fall giddily from crest to trough of Channel waves.

Torquay has many climates, from the warm and dense atmosphere of Fleet Street and Union Street to the mellow lapping of Torbay air by the rise of Park Hill, or the robustious breezes of Warberry Hill, farther inland. And thus Torquay pleases every variety of the querulous invalid: these feeble folk lie here in strata, elevated or depressed, as best befits their individual complaints.

Since Dutch William landed at Brixham, and so marched through Torquay to Newton Abbot with his heavy crew of Hollanders, the place has had no history save only the smooth and simple annals of what auctioneers and land-agents call a “rising watering-place.” And Torquay has been rising any time these hundred years, until it has at length been blessed with the left-handed blessings of a Mayor and Corporation. These be weighty matters, and Torquay celebrated its Charter Day last year with all the becoming pomp of so great and glorious an occasion. Minor happenings there have been that remain tinged with the bitter irony of circumstance, as when Napoleon, a captive on board the Bellerophon (the “Billy Ruffian” of an untutored crew reckless of the classics) was brought into Torbay, within sight of the diminutive Torquay of that time. The conquered conqueror was reduced to the status of a Richardson’s show, to be peeped at by that “nation of shopkeepers” which he had so gratuitously despised.3 That nation, or rather, this southern coast portion of it, had been not a little uneasy at Napoleon’s preparations for invasion, and had been strenuously devising defences, with quaking hearts; while the populace sang, to keep its pecker up, such reassuring songs about the improbable, as that of which the following stanza is a specimen:—

After which followed the rousing chorus—

And these matters are Torquay’s sole concern with political history. Happy town, say I.

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