Clovelly

Most villages, like their human occupants, have their best side. But at least one exception is to be found in the fascinating little Devonshire hamlet of Clovelly. Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, whose facile touch makes the whole seem live before us, describes in her "Romance of Clovelly" the impressions of a party of travelers who undertook to enter the village from its landward side.

"We did not approach Clovelly through the beautiful Hobby drive, laid out in former years by one of the Hamlyn ladies of Clovelly Court, but by the turnpike road which, however, was not uninteresting. The roadway was prettily bordered with broom, wild honeysuckle, foxglove and single roses, and we passed a charming postoffice called The Fairy Cross in a garden of blooming fuchsias. All at once our driver checked his horses on the brink of a hill apparently leading nowhere in particular. 'What is it?' asked Mrs. A., who is always expecting accidents. 'Clovelly mum.' 'Clovelly?' we repeated automatically, gazing about us on every side for a roof, a chimney, or a sign of habitation. 'You'll find it, mum, as you walk down along.' 'How charming,' cried E., who loves the unexpected. 'Towns are generally so obtrusive; isn't it nice to know that Clovelly is here and that all we have to do is to walk down along" and find it?' We soon discovered by more questioning that one cannot drive into Clovelly; that although an American president or an English Chancellor might as a great favor be escorted down on a donkey's back, or carried down in a sedan chair, if he chanced to have one about his person, the ordinary mortal must walk to the door of the New Inn, his luggage being dragged 'down along on sledges and being brought 'up along on donkeys. In a word, Clovelly is not built like unto other towns: it seems to have been flung up from the sea into a narrow rift between wooded hills and to have clung there these eight hundred years of its existence. It has held fast but it has not expanded, for the very good reason that it completely fills the hollow in the cliffs, the houses clinging like limpets to the rocks on either side. We picked out our way 'down along' until we caught our first glimpse of white-washed cottages covered with creepers, their doors hospitably open, their windows filled with blooming geraniums and fuchsias. All at once we began to descend the winding, rocky pathway, we saw that it pitched headlong into the bluest sea in the world. No wonder the painters have loved it. Shall we ever forget that first vision!!"

Many years earlier Dickens also was captivated by the little town and wrote the following description in his "Message by the Sea :"

"And a mighty singular place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life,' said Captain Jordan looking up at it. Captain Jordan had to look high to look up at it, for the village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea beach to the cliff top, two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp, irregular stones. The old pack saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished here, intact. Strings of pack horses and pack donkeys, toiled slowly up the staves of the ladders bearing fish and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancing fleet of village boats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke that they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surface again far off, high above the others. No two houses in the village are alike in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything. The sides of the ladders were musical with water running clear and bright. The staves were musical with clattering feet of donkeys and the voices of the fishermen's wives and children. The pier was musical with the wash of the sea, the creaking of capstans and windlasses and the airy fluttering of little vanes and sails. The rough sea-bleached boulders of which the pier was made, the white boulders of the shore, were brown with drying nets. The village was so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses giving on the pier, to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's nesting and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber."

The Battle of Sedgemoor

The battle of Sedgemoor fought in 1685 by the Duke of Monmouth's troops and the forces of King James, came very near to resulting in a victory for the pretender. He himself was incompetent and cowardly and some of his officers appear to have been treacherous, but the west-country peasants who constituted the greater part of his troops fought with much bravery and determination.

The victory fell to the government forces rather through good fortune than through generalship. Monmouth's troops made a night attack and were successful in surprising the enemy; but an unexpected obstacle, a deep ditch, prevented the attacking forces from getting to close quarters and following up the early advantage. Even then the battle might have been won by the peasant troops but for the defection of the cavalry upon whose faithful

support the army was dependent. The infantry, unprotected upon the flank and rear were cut to pieces by the king's dragoons, and hopelessly routed. Thereupon ensued a merciless pursuit in which many of the rebels were captured and hanged. Foremost in this cruel work were Kirke's "Lambs," a regiment which had seen service in Tangiers and had become hardened to all the barbarities of warfare.

Not satisfied with this punishment King James sent Judge Jeffreys to the west country, there to conduct the celebrated and heartless "bloody assize." Hundreds of ignorant rustics were hanged or sent to the plantations after a trial which was notoriously unfair.

An interesting account of Monmouth's rebellion is to be found in Conan Doyle's stirring romance, "Micah Clarke," and the battle of Sedgemoor is lightly touched upon in Blackmore's celebrated "Lorna Doone." The following extracts are from the historical documents upon which Conan Doyle based his account, and from Blackmore's description.

"Now besides these two troops, whose officers though they had no great skill yet had courage enough to have done something honorably, had they not for want of a guide met with the aforesaid obstruction, there was no one of all the rest of our troops that ever advanced to charge or approached as near to the enemy as to give or receive a wound. Mr. Hacker, one of our captains, came no sooner within view of their camp than he villainously fired a pistol to give them notice of our approach, and then forsook his charge and rode off with all the speed he could, to take the benefit of a proclamation emitted by the king, offering pardon to all such as should return home within such a time. And this he pleaded at his tryal, but was answered by Jeffreys 'that he above all other men deserved to be hanged, and that for his treachery to Monmouth as well as his treason to the king.' And though no other of our officers acted so villainously, yet they were useless and unserviceable, as never once attempting to charge, nor so much as keeping their men in a body. And I dare affirm that if our horse had never fired a pistol, but only stood in a posture to have given jealousy and apprehension to the enemy, our foot alone would have carried the day and been triumphant. But our horse standing scattered and disunited, and flying upon every approach of a squadron of theirs, commanded by Oglethorpe, gave that body of their cavalry an advantage, after they had hovered up and down in the field without thinking it necessary to attack those whom their own fears had dispersed, to fall in at last in the rear of our battalions, and to wrest that victory out of their hands which they were grasping at, and stood almost possessed of. Nor was that party of their horse above three hundred at most, whereas we had more than enough had they had any courage, and been commanded by a gallant man, to have attacked them with ease both in front and flank. These things I can declare with more certainty, because I was a doleful spectator of them; for having contrary to my cus tom left attending upon the duke, who advanced with the foot, I betook myself to the horse because the first of that morning's action was expected from them, which was to break in and disorder the enemy's camp. Against the time that our battalions should come up, I endeavored whatsoever I was capable of performing,

fitly come later, but that in the case of the young children, the most important influence upon them in their school life is the personality of their teacher. Where this personality is great and noble and chivalrous, the character of the children will be influenced in similar directions, and will be further developed by wise religious training suited to the age of the children, and without appeal to questions of dogma which are the subject of sectarian contention.

The importance of organized play for the children of the elementary schools is also being recognized. As is well known the value of games to the great public boarding schools of England has long been recognized. Games have been one of their chief glories and have been a great factor in character building. In the elementary schools, until quite recent years, organized games have been in many cases quite unknown. The teacher's influence over the children has been confined to the hours spent in the schoolroom. The out-of-school life of the children has not been organized. The causes of this were various. The teachers were engaged only for the school hours. The elementary schools were frequently and necessarily built in crowded districts and adequate playing space very rarely existed. The value of organized play for the children of these schools was not sufficiently urged. Now, these conditions are being changed, and the latest code which has been issued by the Government Education department allows organized games to take place during school hours. As a result children from schools in crowded parts of London are now taken regularly to the public parks, or other suitable places, for the playing of games under the supervision, and with the coöperation of their teachers. The movement is only in its infancy but the physical and moral advantages of organized play for all the children of our schools are realized by all serious educationalists and without doubt the movement will steadily develop.

We must not end this paper without speaking of the growing realization of the country that to many of the chil

dren in the elementary schools the State has a parental duty. Attendance at the schools is compulsory and many of the children come from extremely poor homes and from parents having low ideals of responsibility. In such cases the schools have to take the place of the parents and as far as possible to take charge of the whole life of the child. The attempt to carry out this policy is seen in the measure which has already been referred to for the feeding of underfed children. The attempt to organize the outdoor life of the children is another expression of this sense of the nation's responsibility. In the near future we shall probably see powers obtained for the systematic medical inspection of the whole of the children in the elementary schools. Such inspections have already been partially carried out through private enterprise in several parts of the country. The results show how urgently necessary such inspections are and what great good may result therefrom. Another movement is in the direction of teaching a higher standard of personal cleanliness. Much has been done in this connection already, but it is hoped that before long no school will be built in a city which is not fitted with adequate washing baths, where all the children will regularly bathe as a matter of course, and where instruction in the details of personal hygiene will be given.

It has been urged that the assumption of these various duties by the nation must lead to a great weakening of the sense of parental responsibility. The reply of the present writer to that objection is that in many thousands of homes in England the sense of responsibility does not exist, and our problem therefore is so to train the children of the nation, physically, morally, and intellectually, that the parents of the future will be a greater and nobler race. We seek by wiser care of our children to eliminate the criminal the drunkard, the unemployable. We seek to replace them by men and women, capable of living happy and healthy lives in a country whose future must depend upon the nobility not of any one class within it, but of its people as a whole.