Everyman's England

by Victor Canning

  I like Bideford. I liked it the moment I stepped from the train on to the railway platform, for the platform is one of the best introductions to Bideford. The station stands on a slight elevation on the east side of the river Torridge, which comes rolling down from Dartmoor to meet its sister, the Taw, below Appledore, there to join hands and venture out across the Bar to find the long Atlantic surges. Across the Torridge runs Bideford bridge, the main approach to the town, and rising up the steep bank that fronts the river is Bideford, row after row of houses, dotted with inns, shops and churches, and atop the hill stand clumps of dark elms making distant silhouettes against the sky. Kingsley called it ‘the little white town of Bideford.’ In places the cream-washed walls of the houses try to live up to his description, but mostly the buildings are grey and red-bricked, a pleasing jumble of colours.

  Bideford reminded me of the plump, busy women who sit in its own market minding their baskets of eggs and bowls of rich cream. It is just like a countrywoman, kindly, but ready to take affront at the slightest sign of condescension, healthy, and proud of nothing so much as its children. And Bideford has a lot of children to clack about, not all of them good, some of them a little mad and one or two no more than dream figures. It takes time to decide which were real and which only fiction. Charles Kingsley, whose statue stands at the end of the quay, has so peopled the town with characters from Westward Ho! that nowadays it is difficult, I found, not to imagine that once Salvation Yeo did stand on the quayside showing his wonderful horn and telling his fantastic tales of sea adventure to a crowd of gaping yokels and seamen, while the young Amyas Leigh listened, wide-eyed, from the fringe of the crowd. And poor Rose Salterne, the victim of the stupidness which seems to be accounted a virtue in the heroines of romances, was she never more than fiction and never did actually live in Bridgeland Street?

  If Rose did not exist, it was in Bridgeland Street that one of Bideford’s mad children lived and died. He was Thomas Stucley, the son of Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain, whose brain was turned with overstudy and of whom it was said that ‘When the Duke of Marlborough laid siege to any town in Flanders, Mr Stucley would draw a plan of the place upon his kitchen floor, which, according to the Devonshire custom, was made of lime and ashes; and by the intelligence of the newspapers he would work at the plan with a pickaxe, so that every conquest cost him a new floor.’ Still, Mr Stucley and no doubt the Duke of Marlborough, too, had he known, would regard the cost of a new floor as a small price to pay for the glory of a victory.

  I walked from the station across the bridge to the town. Bideford, the town by the ford, is now the town by the bridge. Today the bridge is a wide, well-paved thoroughfare, lighted by gas lamps that at night cast little flares of light upon the dark waters of the tide that flows between the irregularly spaced arches. The arches are of different spans because, so it is said, when the original structure was thrown across the river in the fourteenth century, some spans were endowed by rich folk and some by the poor, and the bigger the span the richer the endowment. The truth, I feel, is likely to be that the placing of the spans was dictated by the formation of the bed of the river and the need to build on solid rock.

  It was hard to imagine as I watched the stream of cars and omnibuses going over the bridge, that at one time it had been so narrow that pedestrians had been forced to step back into little recesses placed over each pillar to make way for the strings of pack-horses with their swaying panniers full of merchandise, for the bridge was an important link in the great pack-road that came up from Cornwall, through Devon and Somerset towards London. The maintenance of the bridge was of supreme importance and the bridge trustees grew to be the wealthiest body in Bideford, and they did not confine their activities to looking after the bridge. They endowed charities, scholarships, and laid down the finest cellar of wines in all Devon to grace the board at the famous Bridge dinners.

  The dinners and the cellar have gone now, and with them a great deal of Bideford’s commercial importance. As a port Bideford once ranked as the third in the kingdom; now its glory lies in the past, a distinction it shares with towns of more modern birth.

  To anyone who enjoys smoking, Bideford should have an affectionate appeal, for it was in one of its warehouses that the first consignment of tobacco to England lay. I wonder that some enterprising manufacturer of tobacco has not had the sound commercial instinct to take advantage of the advertising possibilities of this fact and name a brand of tobacco after Bideford. As I walked up to my hotel I occupied myself with inventing the name of the brand. The best I could manage was Bideford Bridge Brand, with Bideford Mixture, and the slogan – The Tobacco that kept Raleigh Cool – as a runner-up. Through dinner I was working on the wrapper. It was to be simple and effective, a picture of Bideford quay with the town and bridge in a fading perspective, while the heroic figure of Raleigh, in slashed doublet, a sword cocked from his side, smoking a long clay pipe, should stand in the foreground surrounded by a crowd of wondering little boys. So engrossed was I with my scheme that I scarcely noticed that I was being served with the usual unimaginative dinner in which English hotels excel.

  The next morning, on my way to the parish church, I called in at a tobacconists for some tobacco and before I could check myself had said:

  ‘Two ounces of the Bideford Bridge Brand, please.’

  The shopman looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Bideford—’

  ‘The Tobacco that kept Raleigh Cool,’ I said, wondering at his stupidity, and then recoiling at my own.

  ‘Don’t keep that kind, sir.’

  I asked for my usual make and fled from the shop.

  The parish church is full of the memories of the Grenville family. There seems to be a certain amount of controversy as to the correct spelling of the name. The greatest of the Grenvilles was Sir Richard, a Bideford man, and it was from the town that he went to die, as every schoolboy knows, near ‘Flores in the Azores.’ The story of the Revenge is as moving as anything in Homer. I found the brass in the church which had been erected by a descendant to commemorate Sir Richard’s death. Few people could read the last words of that courtly Elizabethan seaman and not respond to their noble simplicity.

  ‘Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind…’ How many of us, when the time comes, will be ready to go with a joyful and quiet mind? They were a rough crew, the Elizabethan seamen, barbarous at times, but there is no disputing their valour and dignity in the face of death. They were used to danger, they had faced death close enough more than once while their ships tossed in the great troughs of the ocean; they had stood with only cold steel and the strength of their sails and ropes between them and oblivion too many times to shirk the final combat when it came. They were seldom careless of their lives, yet they never let the fear of death stand between them and what they considered their duty. It is easy to call them pirates, ruffians. They were also men of principle. They lived in an age when force was the wisest law, and if they fought with a wild joy, at least they fought to gain possession of new lands, not from some obscure quarrel of politicians.

  For a long time most of the trade with the Americas, Holland, France and Spain came up the silver estuary of the Torridge. It was during the eighteenth century that Bideford’s trade declined, slowly losing its importance because of the deprivations of the privateers who harried the shipping in Bideford’s Golden Bay, making their headquarters on Lundy Island. The oak screen of the tower in the church is proof of this trade. It is made from the ends of old pews and benches from the church, and the carvings which decorated the seats of the wealthy merchants of the time symbolise the sea and the distant lands that brought them wealth.

  I stood before it looking at the carvings. There were grotesque dolphins, sea serpents, feathered Indians, seamen hauling on ropes, strange fruit, flying fish and here and there the arms of the Grenville family. While I was standing there, the church caretaker, who had been polishing the pews, came up to me and asked me if I would like to
see the fine silver chalice and communion tankard which had been with the church since the seventeenth century. He took me into the vestry and let me see them. His face was as red and round as a pippin and it shone with pleasure as he saw me admiring the silver work.

  ‘Here’s something else that might interest ’ee, zur.’ He pulled from a cupboard an old church register and showed me the actual entries, in the curious Elizabethan script, of the baptism in 1588 and the death, a year later, of one Rawley, a Winganditoian. This Rawley (the spelling of Raleigh has even more variations than Grenville) was a North American Indian, brought back to England by Sir Richard Grenville as his servant. He must have caused a stir among the women of the town, though the men were probably used to his kind from their voyages. Rawley did not survive long in the boisterous climate of Devon.

  ‘Poor li’l chap,’ said the caretaker. ‘’E didn’t last long. Reckon he must have died of homesickness.’

  I wonder whether it was homesickness or the climate.

  I walked about the streets after I left the church and I noticed that in almost every shop which sold foodstuffs there were large bowls of what looked like cooked spinach, of a black and shiny texture. My curiosity got the better of me and I went into a shop and enquired what the stuff was.

  ‘Laver,’ came the answer.

  Laver, I was told, is a species of seaweed which is collected locally and is fried or made into cakes. In Bideford it has some popularity, but I cannot say that it looked appetising to me. I was asked to try some. I refused with haste and afterwards regretted my cowardice, until I read in a guidebook that it is a food ‘which some people profess to like.’ I fancied there was an ominous intent in that phrase and congratulated myself upon my conservatism.

  The train that took me away from Bideford passed along the river towards Barnstaple (a town which, while you are in Bideford, it is not wise to praise, for there is a great rivalry between the two). It was a sad stretch of river. The gallant ships of the seafaring Elizabethans have gone, their timbers mouldered into dust, or overgrown with seaweed on hidden reefs, and now the great ships which bore England’s cargoes about the seas before and during the last war are coming home to these quiet estuaries and rivers to end their days, quietly rusting, their decks alive only with the cry of seabirds and the flap of washing hung out by caretakers who inhabit the great corpses like beetles. It was a sad sight, the ships which are wanted no more because there are not enough cargoes to fill their holds, come back to Bideford, the home of so much of England’s shipping wealth and commercial greatness, to finish their days by the river down which once swept the vessels of Grenville to find the far Americas and spread the glory of the Virgin Queen across every ocean.

  CHAPTER 19

  SOMEWHERE IN

  CORNWALL

  On the Cornish coast, somewhere between Fowey and Falmouth, there is a certain fishing village. It is not well known. It has attracted no colony of artists to disturb the rightful atmosphere of the village inn, nor does it have many visitors during the summer. I am not going to give its name, for that would undoubtedly incense the few foreigners, as the village folk term those who spend their holidays there, who treasure its secret. Besides, it would detract from its pleasure to make it easy to find. The joys which are hard to come by are the sweetest.

  On the other hand, I do not wish to be accused of being a curmudgeon, selfish in my pleasure, so I will give enough clues to enable the diligent seeker to identify the village.

  If you are looking for the ideal fishing village where you can spend your summer holiday, forgetting your worries by bathing in tiny coves with only the gulls and the cliffs for company, and by wandering along brackened headlands where thyme and gorse fill the air with their scent, then this is the village for you.

  There are scores of villages in Cornwall which are just as pleasant and in looking for this one you may discover the charm of a dozen other places, for the Cornish coast is lavish in its beauty and its villages have a character which no other coastal villages in England can rival; which is a pathetic admission from a Devon man, but nevertheless the truth.

  I have spent several holidays in this village, during the high summer, when the days were drowsy with heat and there was always the pleasing rattle of mowing-machines filling the scented air. It was lovely then. How much lovelier, I used to think, would it be in the spring. I always longed to see it in the spring and at last my desire drew me there when I had no excuse for going, and every reason for remaining where I was, which was far enough from Cornwall to make the thought of the village a tantalising prospect of joy.

  The village lies at the narrow mouth of a short, steep valley. A tiny freshet runs through the valley, hardly enough to fill a duck pond and almost hidden by a waving mass of garlic-mustard and tall cow parsley.

  It was raining as I walked down the steep, high-hedged lane that leads from the top of the hill to the narrow-mouthed cove around which are grouped the grey-slated houses and cottages of the villagers. I did not mind the rain. It was a gentle, caressing drizzle that soaked into the eager ground and filled the runnels at the lane’s side with a brown-tinged torrent that sang over the worn outcrops of slate. Hart’s tongue ferns dripped water on me from the high banks, and from a farm gate a sheepdog puppy came out and sniffed at my legs. A jackdaw balancing on top of a telegraph pole muttered something rude as I passed and, feeling happy, I returned the compliment. The jackdaw flew away, disgusted.

  There were violets still in the bankside, not easily seen against the flaring pads of primroses. I came to the first houses and saw fuchsias blooming in pots behind the windows, and I wondered how long it would be before they were blooming in the hedges of the gardens which were now full of spring colours. A wave of heavy scent made me aware of a clump of wallflowers rooted in the sparse soil between the roof slates of a shed, their crimson heads held stiffly against the gentle wind.

  I turned a corner and immediately the roar and call of the sea was all around me. The wind was suddenly stronger, full of salt. It drummed against my face, and my ears were filled with the clamour of gulls circling over the tiny harbour. Nothing had changed since my last visit. Grey and white cottages lined the roadway and crab nets were stretched over the wall which separated the road from the beach. High on the other side of the cove stood the white clump of coastguard buildings and the slender flagpole from which I have never seen a flag flown. Beyond the blunt nose of the headland which projected halfway across the harbour mouth the open sea tossed and heaved under the low pall of a rainy sky.

  I passed by the general store, its window crammed to bursting point with an indiscrimination of wares arranged in a way which would have given a professional window-dresser apoplexy. A line of washing straggled up the far cliff slope with, I fancy, the same blue shirt and pants that used to grace it during the summer of my last visit. I could have sworn to the shirt. The pants I was doubtful about.

  The first persons I saw were three men mending lobster pots in a fishing store at the head of the beach. The door was open and they were laughing at some joke, while ten yards away the full tide spouted over the rocks, tossing its fringe of bladder wrack and refuse. They were bareheaded, dark haired, and dressed in blue jerseys. They nodded to me politely and then went on with their work, joking as though I were not still leaning against the doorpost watching them.

  If I had started a conversation they would have replied and been affable. By themselves they were diffident of strangers and never eager, more from shyness than want of matters to talk about, to take the lead in a conversation. The noise of a heavy breakwater growling over loose shingle made me look up. They made no movement, but I knew that they had heard the sea. Never did they forget the sea. It had become part of their lives so that even now, as they plied hazel boughs into the plinth of their lobster pots, they knew which rocks the tide had still to cover, and how the wind and currents were setting. The changing face of the sky and the quick lift and fall of the soft Cornish mist and rain
were things which had been with them since birth and which they had come to know with a precision that was now more an instinct than conscious knowledge.

  I went down on to the beach, past the little white post office. The only concessions to the conventional furnishings of a seaside resort were a weighing machine standing against the side of the building used as a sort of club for the fishermen, and the display of postcards in the post office window. The weighing machine, filmed with a dew of rain, was crowned by a villainous looking herring gull which stared at me with its lustreless yellow eyes and then launched itself into the air to join its fellows crying along the cliffs. It was a handsome, cold-minded bird, graceful in the air, revelling in its powers of flight, and like all its kind, a most rapacious thief, ready to steal from or murder any living thing too weak to resist its ugly curved beak.

  Drawn up on the beach, out of reach of the tide, were the motor boats used in the lobster and crab fishing which provides the men of the village with a living. The motors and screws of some boats were carefully covered. On the bottom boards of one or two were broken pieces of starfish and the white fans of coral brought up in the pots, and in a heap on the beach were some spider-crabs, useless, grotesque, like fantastic spiders from the cave of some lurid story for boys. F.H. 9, F.H. 14… all the boats had registration numbers and some bore names, painted in unsteady characters, across the bows and gunwales.

  I ate my bread and cheese lunch with the landlord of the Ship Inn for company. He is a tall, boyish-faced man, with a happy habit of finishing his remarks, whether humorous or not, with a gurgling laugh. He takes life merrily and I found it disconcerting for a while to hear him chuckling as he told me, with a wealth of detail conned from his morning paper, how an American gangster was at that moment being executed in Chicago.