The Sea Group: Somerset, Devon and Cornwall T By Katharine Lee Bates Professor of Literature in Wellesley College HE three south-western counties of England, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, reach out, like the hearts of their sons, into the wild Atlantic. Many a Westward Ho adventure was sped from Bristol, Bideford, Plymouth, Dartmouth, and even from Topsham, which long served as the port of Exeter. The far-sea Elizabethan sailors and their dauntless commanders, those "Admirals All" whose praises a living poet of these parts, Francis Newbolt, has sung, came largely from this corner of England. The father of Sir Francis Drake was a Tavistock tar. That dreamer of illimitable dreams, Sir Walter Raleigh, was born in the little village of East Budleigh. Another Devon village familiar to Raleigh's boyhood, Ottery St. Mary, is the native place of Coleridge, whose immortal sea-ballad came into being just over the Somerset border, in those radiant days when he and Wordsworth, two young poets in the ful *This is the last of a series entitled "A Reading Journey in English Counties" which appeared in THE CHAUTAUQUAN from December to May. The Journey began with the Border and Lake Country and concludes with Cornwall at the southwestern extremity of England. The articles which have previously appeared are "The Border" and "The Lake Country," December; "Lancashire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire," January; "The Heart of England: Warwickshire," February; "The Cotswolds," and "Oxford," March; "The Counties of the Severn Valley," April. ness of their friendship and the freshness of their inspiration would go wandering together, from their home in Nether Stowey, off on the Quantock Hills,-days commemorated by Wordsworth in "The Prelude:" "Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roved, My first view of the Quantocks was had, some years ago, from Exmoor. Coming through North Devon, we had been walking for hours, knee-deep in heather, over that high, rolling moorland where the red deer still run wild. The pollen rose in clouds about our heads. Blackfaced sheep and white-tailed rabbits and startled, flurrying heath-cocks shared, but did not break, the rapture of that solitude. Bell-heather and rose-heather and white heather mingled their hues, at a little distance, in a rippling sea of purple. We lay down in it, and the fragrant spray closed warm about us, while the soft sky seemed almost to touch our faces. We were supremely happy and we hoped that we were lost. We had long been out of sight of human habitation, but our compass served us better than we wished, and when, with a covert sense of disappointment, though the sun was red on the horizon, we came at last upon a woman and child gathering whortleberries in a dimple of the moor, we learned that we were, as we should have been, in the heart of the Lorna Doone country. All lovers of Blackmore's delectable romance remember that its modest hero, John Ridd, of the parish of Oare, was a Somerset man. "Zummerzett thou bee'st, Jan Ridd, and Zummerzett thou shalt be." But the Doone glen, which actually was, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the hold of a marauding band of outlaws, lies on Badgeworthy Water, a part of the Devon boundary. We ate our handful of whortleberries in Devon, but soon, following directions, found ourselves on the brow of a steep incline, peering over upon a farmhouse, known as Lorna's Bower, in the valley below. Scrambling down the declivity as best we might, we crossed he Badgeworthy by means of a log and a hand-rail, climbed a fence inhospitably placed at the end of this rude bridge, and thus made unceremonious entrance into Somerset. They were gruff of speech at Lorna's Bower, but kind of heart, and treated the belated wanderers well, feasting us on the inevitable ham and eggs, with a last taste of Devonshire cream, and giving us the warm corner of the settle by the great, peat-burning fireplace. A sheepskin waistcoat, with the wool yet on, lay across the rheumatic knees of our host, and hams and sides of bacon dangled from the rafters overhead. According to the saying, "It always rains on Exmoor," the next morning broke in storm, and we made slow progress under the rain and over the mud along the Badgeworthy. All our path was a Waterslide, yet we came at last to the Doone valley, where tumbled heaps of stone mark the site of the felons' houses. Foxglove and bracken and heather would have whispered us the gossip of the place, but a sudden spurt of especially violent rain drove us on to a shepherd's hut for refuge. Two sportsmen, booted and spurred, with their horses saddled in the shed, all ready to mount and ride if the Exmoor hunt should sweep that way, were there before us. One of them told us that his own house had the dints of the Doone's terrible blows on one of its oak doors. As the weather had gone from bad to worse, we abandoned our walking-trip, bestowed ourselves in a creakity cart, the only vehicle then and there obtainable, and drove past the little Oare church, where John and Lorna were so tragically wedded, over "Robber's Bridge," and on to the top of Oare Hill. Here we paused for a memorable view of the rain-silvered landscape, with Dunkery Beacon glimmering above. On through blurred pictures of beautiful scenery we went, into the village of Porlock, sweet with roses, and plunging down Porlock Hill, we held on our gusty way to Minehead. The hostelries of this favorite watering-place being full, we pushed on by evening train to Taunton, a fair town of heroic history. In the stormy times of Charles I, it was twice gallantly defended by Admiral Blake, himself a son of Somerset, against the cavalier forces. Forty years later, when the unpopular James II had succeeded to his brother's throne, Taunton frankly embraced the perilous cause of the Duke of Monmouth, welcoming him with joyous ceremonies. In Taunton marketplace he was proclaimed king, and from Taunton he issued his royal proclamations. The Duke was utterly defeated at Sedgemoor, three miles to the east of Bridgewater, in what Macaulay designates as "the last fight deserving the name of a battle that has been fought on English ground." The simple Somerset folk who had followed the banners of Monmouth were punished with pitiless severity. The brutal officers made a jest of the execution. A range of gibbets, with their ghastly burdens, crossed the moor, but Taunton was the especial victim of the royal vengeance. A hundred prisoners were put to death there by Kirke and his "lambs," and wellnigh another hundred hanged by such process of law as was embodied in Jeffrey's "Bloody Assize." But we would not linger in Taunton,—no, not even for the sake of its gentle Elizabethan poet, Samuel Daniel, nor would we stay our journey for trips to the places of varied interest on either side. A little to the southwest is Wellington, which gave the Iron Duke his title. Going north from there one would come soon to Milverton, the birthplace of Dr. Thomas Young, that ingenious linguist who first began to read the riddle of the Sphinx; for he had deciphered some half a dozen of the Egyptian hieroglyphics in advance of Champollion's great announcement. A few miles farther to the north is Combe Flory, the pleasant parsonage which Sydney Smith made so gay, even binding his books, and theological books at that, in brightest colors. To get a tropical effect, and to hoax his guests, he hung oranges from his garden shrubs, and to gratify a lady who hinted that deer would ornament the little park, he fitted out his |