There are winding walks as I have said, down to Babbacombe, but for all their circumbendability (what a lovely word that is!) they are so steep that by far the easiest way to descend would be to get down on to your hinder parts, and slide. To those who are not so young as they were, the view down upon the beach of Babbacombe, and upon the roof-tops of its few houses is the better part, for the walking down jolts the internal machinery most confoundedly. Why, there are few more pitiful sights on this earth—which we know, on eminent authority, to be a “wale”—than that of a middle-aged and stout gentleman gingerly descending these walks, and sighing with envy as a troop of children dash, whooping, past him. Their actions have not yet begun to be regulated by their digestive apparatus! But for all that indiarubber-like infantile irrepressibility, I have seen a little childish disaster here. It was a fall and a bruise and a scratched face that meant little, after all; but the howls of that child were worthy of an occasion infinitely BABBACOMBE. With so much sympathy on tap, my young martyr began to pity himself infinitely, and sobbed the more. “Did ’ur, then?” said that kindly comforter: “puir liddle bye, puir liddle bleed. You ’m proper ’urted yo’self, have ’ee. Where’s his mammy, then? Where do ’ee live tu? Coom ’ee up-along an’ zittee on this zeat,” and much else. The neighbourhood of these exploited seaside towns are, however, not the places, as a general rule, in which to look for such fine survivals Anything very large is thus said to be “proper gert”; a difficult task is still a “proper chore”; and—although to one not used to the West the propriety of it is not evident—a person helplessly intoxicated is “proper drunk,” or “durnk” may even be said; for (as in “gert” for “great”) your true West countryman will always, whenever humanly possible, depose the letter “r” from its proper place. He will overcome majestic difficulties in this linguistic way, and will even “urn” instead of “run.” A Devonian never lives “at” a place, only “tu” it; baskets to him are either “flaskets” or “maunds”; he has a staggering way of saying “Well done!” as an exclamation of surprise, Babbacombe—the real Babbacombe of the beach, not the strange new thing on the cliff-top—is the tiniest of places, with the “Cary Arms” inn, a little stone fishing-pier, a few boats, a fortuitous concourse of lobster-pots, a windlass or two, and a general air of being a natural growth, as indeed it is. It seems remote from the evil passions of the world, but for all that seeming, it was the scene of a dreadful tragedy in 1884, when Miss Keyse, an elderly lady who lived in a picturesquely thatched cottage on the very margin of the beach, was murdered by John Lee, her manservant. He was a young footman, a native of Kingskerswell. The motive was said to have been revenge for the reduction of his wages by sixpence a week. The whole thing is sordid, and one had rather not mention it at all; only the notoriety of the case compels. Lee saturated the rooms with petroleum and set fire to the house, in the hope of concealing the evidence of his crime, but fortunately the fire was extinguished before it had made sufficient progress, and the marks on the body were discovered and Lee arrested. He was tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, and actually brought to the scaffold at Exeter Gaol; but there the strange and unparalleled circumstances occurred which saved These are supposed to be materialistic times, when everything is held to have some discoverable natural cause, and the failure of the trap is explained by the wood of it being swollen, and jamming every time a weight was placed upon it. But the affair was so remarkable, that very naturally the whole country was deeply stirred. Those who were present never lightly dismissed the subject, and for one’s self, it seems very like God’s protest against man’s injustice. But we, who were not present and are not thrown off our balance by the dreadful experience, must consider that in the long history of the world many innocent persons have been hanged, and Providence stirred no finger on their behalf, while many assassins have escaped the Avenger of Blood. It should be said that local opinion has always been strong in the belief of Lee’s guilt. The house, one is glad to say, exists no longer. Only an outhouse which belonged to it remains, One of the most famous spots on this coast is that to which we now come. Anstey’s Cove has been described and pictured times innumerable, and I—ah! me—am going to do it again. The way to the Cove lies in between the inevitable dead walls of the district: these the high and solid ones built by Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter some fifty years since, to enclose the grounds of his villa of “Bishopstowe” and keep the public out of all possible glimpses of this paradise: highly characteristic of a bishop. These walls must have been extremely ugly when newly built, but nature, more kindly than the dignified clergy, has toned down the rawness, assuaged the harsh lines and set a green mantle over the bishop’s walls, so that they are now stony cliffs, lichened and moss-grown, rich in tiny ferns, and overhung by tall trees. The bishop was, like many of the cloth, a man of sarcastic wit; for when a lady, visiting him at Bishopstowe, gushingly exclaimed how like Torquay was to Switzerland, he retorted very neatly with, “Yes, only there you have mountains and no sea, and here we have sea and no mountains.” Anstey’s Cove is the same as ever: one of the few places that have not changed of late years. Still the path leads down ruggedly to the little ANSTEY’S COVE. “Picnics supplied with hot water and tea At a nice little house down by the sea; Fresh Crabs and Lobsters every day, Salmon Peel sometimes, Red Mullet and Grey; The neatest of pleasure-boats let out on hire; Fishing Tackle as good as you can desire; Bathing Machines for Ladies are kept, With Towels and Gowns, all quite correct. Thomas is the man who provides everything: And also teaches Young People to swim.” Some enthusiastic scholar has even done this into Latin, and the result is seen on the wooden walls of the shanty. White limestone pinnacles shut in the eastern side of the Cove, and shade off into pink and red and grey. On the western side a cliff path goes winding round the headland of Hope’s Nose and Daddy Hole Plain. The Hole there is a rift in the plateau, and “Daddy,” the affectionate name bestowed upon the Devil by local folk, who perhaps did not stop to consider when they did it that they thus proclaimed themselves children of Satan. On the inland road to Torquay is that famous place, Kent’s Cavern, whose prehistoric contents led men of science to wholly revise their ideas of the world’s history. The situation of Kent’s Cavern, although only a mile from the centre of Torquay and in the Wellswood suburb, is still semi-rural. A limestone bluff, shaggy with bushes, trees and ivy, rises abruptly to the right of the road, and in the side of it is a locked wooden door, upon which you bang and kick for the guide, who is guide, proprietor, and explorer in one. When he is not guiding, he is engaged in digging and turning over the wet red ANSTEY’S COVE. No one really knows who was that Kent whose name the cavern bears. The popular notion that the place was only discovered in modern times is an error, for evidences exist of its being known It remained for modern times to thoroughly explore this natural rift in the limestone. There were several very potent reasons why this should not have been done before. Perhaps a little dread of the unknown was partly the cause; geological science was in its infancy, and in this then solitary neighbourhood there was no one leisured enough, or sufficiently interested, to investigate. It was in 1824 Mr. Northmoore first broke into the stalagmite floor which to a depth of three inches formed a continuous covering, like concrete, to the red clay and its deposits of flint implements, charred bones, and relics of the hyÆna, mammoth, reindeer, bison, bear, wild cat, and a host of other animals utterly extinct. Above these relics of an almost incredible antiquity was a layer of black earth containing remains of the British and Roman periods, odds and Northmoore’s discoveries, however, were few in comparison with those of the Rev. J. MacEnery, who, as Roman Catholic chaplain at Tor Abbey, had abundant leisure, and devoted three years, from 1825, to explorations here. He saw a sight that would have doubtless roused a dentist to wildest enthusiasm. Nothing less than “the finest fossil teeth I had ever seen.” He was followed by Pengelly, and by the long series of researches by the British Association, extending from 1864 to 1880, which resulted in the almost complete stripping of the cavern; so that we who explore Kent’s Cavern, the home of Prehistoric Man, to-day are very much in the position of visitors to a house that has had the brokers in, or a museum whose exhibits have been nearly all removed. But there are still remains discovered which recall Pengelly’s description of the cave being tenanted at the same period both by men and wild animals; the cave-men going forth to fish or hunt and the hyÆnas looking in during their absence for anything worth picking up. And there are things And here, at our elbow all the while, is the guide, complacently pointing to all these things; lighting flares which disclose the roof, and playing scales with sticks on metallic-sounding stalactites that have been forming with incredible slowness, perhaps an inch in a thousand years, just to be made a show of. The best of all the stalactites is broken. It began to be formed when the world was young. It grew and grew with the drops of water, charged with lime, percolating from the roof, and being met by its fellow stalagmite with equal slowness rising from the floor. And stalactite and stalagmite had nearly met, and only wanted another three or four centuries to bridge the remaining interval of an eighth of an inch, when a visitor, falling accidentally against them, broke them off! “What did you say?” one, with pardonable curiosity, asks the guide, and “What could you say?” says he; and when you consider it, what is there that would be equal to that tremendous occasion? The South Devon Coast Torquay to Plymouth and the Tamar |