s
when people wore bonnets), was soon a familiar enough figure, to be
seen scrambling over the rocks of the bay which is haunted by the
spirit of Tracy, or looking for seaweed and anemones in the clear
rock-pools at low-tide. Ilfracombe then, in the middle of the last
century, kept much of its original character as a seaport of
importance, which in its day had sent representatives to a shipping
council in the fourteenth century, had contributed six ships towards
the Siege of Calais--at a time when Liverpool was only of sufficient
size to send one--and had had enough strategical value to be the scene
of a projected French invasion under Napoleon. Already Ilfracombe was
beginning to be, however, what it now is pre-eminently, a "holiday
resort." It was patronized by royalty, and, following royalty, by "the
aristocracy and military," who came to enjoy the "overwhelming charms"
Nature poured forth here "with a tremendous and prolific grandeur which
we shall not pretend to describe," as Mr. Cornish mellifluously
exclaims in his "Rise and Progress of the Towns in North Devon." In
the seventies the present German Emperor, then Prince William of
Prussia, was sent here with his tutors; and there is a story, preserved
with great pride, of a fight on the beach between him and a
bathing-machine boy, at whose father's property the Prince was throwing
stones. An account of this historic battle is preserved in a doggerel
ballad, printed and sold locally, and composed Heaven knows where,
which is called "Tapping the War-Lord's Claret: Why Kaiser Bill hates
England."

"When Kaiser Will'um was a y'uth
He com'd t' Combe one day,
And at the big hotel out there
He stopped on holiday. . . ."

He went bathing in Rapparee Cove, and when his tutors were out of sight
began blazing at the numbers on the boxes, though warned by "young
Alfie Price" not to; and after a wordy altercation the Kaiser knocked
down Alfie, who got up and went for him "just like a Devon bull."

"He knacked the Kaiser on the nose,
And tapped the ry'al blid. . . ."

The tutors came up and intervened, and Alf was given thirty shillings
to keep the matter quiet; but Kaiser Bill swore implacable hate of the
English, because of the affront, built his Dreadnoughts and drilled his
army to avenge the insult of Rapparee Cove upon the English nation.

Local publications are always, I think, of some interest, even when
they are as rough and simple a doggere