In 1835 Frederick von Raumer pontificated in a book about England, as if he would rather like its inhabitants to become Prussians, that: ‘The spirit of resistance to power, which grows with rank luxuriance on the rough uncultured soil of the people, has a native life which, when trained and pruned, bears the noblest fruit, such, for instance, as heroic devotion to country.’
We will now lure our intrepid foreigner into terra incognita, to those parts of Great Britain beyond London with which many natives even today are so little familiar that it might be as well to quote Thomas Fuller on the matter: ‘Know most of the rooms of thy native country before thou goest over the threshold thereof, especially seeing England presents thee with so many observables.’
Going by the Great Western Railway, with Murray’s handbook for Wiltshire, Dorset & Somerset, 1859, and the current ABC Railway Guide, we soon reach Swindon, ‘the great central establishment of the company, the engine depot capable of accommodating 100 engines. A number of mechanics are here employed, and of their skill a curious specimen was exhibited in Hyde Park, 1851; it was a working model of a pair of non-condensing steam-engines, which stood within the compass of a shilling, and weighed three drachms.’ Murray also reminds us that the church gives character to the town, ‘and shows that this great railway company is not wholly absorbed in the worship of Mammon’.
Should the traveller break his journey and visit Laycock, he will read how the Talbots established their inheritance of the abbey. ‘The young daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Sherrington, being in love with John Talbot, contrary to her father’s wishes, and discoursing one night with him from the battlements of the abbey church, said she, “I will leap down to you.” Her sweetheart replied he would catch her then: but he did not believe she would have done it. She leapt down, and the wind, which was then high, came under her coates, and did something break the fall. Mr. Talbot caught her in his arms, but she struck him dead; she cried for help, and he was with great difficulty brought to life again. Her father thereon told her that since she had made such a leap she would e’en marrie him.’
Going down to the Dorset coast, an interest in penal establishments will take us to Portland: ‘Convict prison, erected in 1848 (but to which strangers are admitted only at the dinner-hour, 11 A.M.). It is a model building of the kind consisting of 8 wings, besides a hospital, chapel, barracks, and cottages for the warders. It accommodates a governor, deputy-governor, chaplain, 2 schoolmasters, and other officers, and about 1500 convicts, of whom the greater number are employed in quarrying stone for the breakwater. The arrangements are very perfect, the building is lighted with gas from its own gasometer, and abundantly supplied with both fresh and salt water, which are pumped into it by a steam-engine from reservoirs on the shore.’
Baddeley’s guidebook of 1914 gives the number of inmates as seven hundred. ‘The charitable address, and always used by officials, is “The Grove, Portland”.’ If we take a steep path we reach the plateau, ‘and are amidst the quarries. Away to the left is the Prison, which is best left alone; in fact, the sight of a horde of excursionists deeming it the correct thing to stand gazing and making remarks on the gangs of those who have been “found out” as they return from the Government quarries to dinner is unseemly and unkind.’
Murray, in his guide of 1887, says that Devonshire ‘has something to present to the curiosity of the traveller besides mere beauty and grandeur of scenery. It contains the greatest Naval and Military Arsenal combined, in the British Empire, planted on the shores of a harbour not to be surpassed for spaciousness, security, and scenic beauty. The sight of its docks, fitting yards, Steam factories, workshops, its palatial Barracks, gigantic Forts and Lines, gun wharfs bristling with rows of cannon, and, above all, the floating Armaments of iron and wooden war ships floating peacefully on the bosom of Hamoaze, combine to display to the fullest the power of Great Britain, and present alone a spectacle worth coming far to see.’
This refers, of course, to Plymouth and Devonport, and some indication is given of the hours of work: ‘The Dockyard (hours of admittance are the working hours of the yard: observing that the yard is closed from 12 to 1 in winter, and from 12 to ½ past 1 in summer, except on Saturdays, when the workmen remain at their work during the usual dinner-hour, and leave the yard at 3 P.M. It is then closed altogether).’
The traveller in search of tranquillity may visit Widecombe in the Moor, but ‘the only resting place is a very poor village Inn. The place is interesting, however, because: ‘In Oct. 1638, during divine service, a terrible storm burst over the village, and, after some flashes of uncommon brilliancy, a ball of fire dashed through a window of the church into the midst of the congregation. At once the pews were overturned, 4 persons were lulled and 62 wounded, many by a pinnacle of the tower which tumbled through the roof, while “the stones,” says Prince, “were thrown down from the steeple as fast as if it had been by 100 men.” The country people accounted for this awful destruction by a wild tale that “the devil, dressed in black, and mounted on a black horse, inquired his way to the church of a woman who kept a little public-house on the moor. He offered her money to become his guide, but she distrusted him on remarking that the liquor went hissing down his throat, and finally had her suspicions confirmed by the glimpse of a cloven foot which he could not conceal by his boot.”’
Crossing Dartmoor, we are told that the annual cost of maintaining each inmate in the famous prison was nearly thirty-six pounds — something like two thousand pounds in today’s money. A free man might try better accommodation at Clovelly, where the small inn will entertain him ‘with great hospitality (Inquiry as to rooms may be made by telegraph from Bideford). If it happens to be the autumn, he may regale at breakfast upon herrings which have been captured over night; for Clovelly is famed for its fishery.’ Another place at which the traveller might put up, especially if he is a writer, is Babbacombe: ‘A few years ago this pretty village was one of those romantic seclusions which have rendered the coast of Devon such a favourite with the novelist.’
Proceeding still further west, and carrying in his pocket Baddeley’s Thorough Guide to Devon and Cornwall, our traveller will no doubt take a look at the Scilly Isles, passing between the mainland and St Mary’s (the legendary Land of Lyonnesse). When he gets there: ‘The men who pester tourists on their arrival at the new quay with cards, are quite capable. But among them are some more qualified than others, and some are merely boatmen in the intervals of cobbling or gardening.’
Should fog or a storm keep the traveller in the inn he can read of how an English fleet was wrecked on the rocks of the main island in 1701. S. Baring-Gould gives a good account in his book on Cornwall but, for the sake of brevity, I will refer to Baddeley.
When Admiral Shovel was sailing across the main on his way back to England, there was on board his ship a common seaman who kept for himself a reckoning of the vessel’s course. This in itself was an unusual proceeding, very few sailors in those days possessing the necessary knowledge. The man declared that the ship’s course would take her upon the rocks of Scilly, and this conclusion was brought to the knowledge of the officers. The unfortunate man was court-martialled on a charge of inciting to mutiny, and then and there convicted and sentenced to be hanged at the yard-arm. Before execution he asked, and got leave, to read aloud a portion of the Holy Scripture. The portion he chose was the 109th Psalm. It spoke of him who ‘remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.’ It invoked upon him, among many other woes, fewness of days, fatherless children, and a posterity cut off. In a few hours the reckoning of the unhappy man was proved to be correct: the vessel struck upon the Gilstone Rock, and was lost. The body of the admiral, still alive (it was whispered that he was murdered for the sake of a ring he wore by the tenant of Sallakey farm), was carried by the sea to Porthellick, and for a while rested on the spot of ground marked by that strip of sand, and ever since that time the grass has refused to grow there!