A seaside hotel with literary and natural history links

I left Paignton, my home town, for university in 1965 and, more permanently, in 1968, after my father died and our house was sold. I made few return visits to Torbay until 2008, when I was gathering information for a book on the famous marine natural historian Philip Henry Gosse, and his son Edmund, who lived in St Marychurch, Torquay: I needed to make visits to his old home, to Torquay Museum, and to places along the coast where he had collected. 

Since then, nostalgia for my childhood haunts took hold and I try and make an annual visit, although COVID-19 put paid to that for a while. It means that I have sampled a number of hotels in Torquay: The Imperial (that was not particularly impressive); The Livermead Cliff (that has a wonderful location as its best feature); and the Premier Inn (that I knew from childhood as the Belgrave Hotel, and which I now prefer, as it offers a very good standard package, being part of a large group). Unfortunately, none compare with some of the hotels that I have stayed in elsewhere.

During the years I spent researching the book, I stayed at the Livermead House Hotel and enjoyed its retro style – what I have called 1950s seaside chic – complete with Mr Rew, and his deputy, appearing in full “white-tie and tails” evening dress. Breakfast was accompanied by a selection of Everly Brothers hits and dinner by a pianist who played various showtime hits, etc. During the times when I was there, most of my fellow residents were from coach parties and they were given a guard of honour by staff as they left the hotel to board their coach for the journey home. I also remember visiting the Livermead House Hotel at the time boisterous Young Farmers were holding their annual conference in Torquay, with some young farmers staying with us. All these memories were triggered as I was completing a jigsaw puzzle by Susan Holbeche, where the Livermead House Hotel is seen on the left [1].

It wasn’t the 1950s ambience that drew me to the hotel, it was its association with Charles Kingsley and Henry Gosse, and I have written about their friendship [2], and the connection of the former with the original Livermead House (a picture of which is given on the hotel website [3]). Although the hotel bears a blue plaque to celebrate Kingsley’s stay, few people probably know of how he came to be there and the significance of his friendship with Henry Gosse. It’s a story worth telling.

[1] https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=28acb15f861b

[2] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2016/05/charles-kingsley-creation-and-evolution.html

[3] https://www.livermead.com/torbay-hotel/about-us

 

Charles Kingsley and Henry Gosse go dredging in Torbay

During the Nineteenth Century explosion of interest in the Natural History of shores, there was also much to discover about animal life in shallow coastal waters and this tempted naturalists like Edward Forbes to use dredges to bring animals to the surface, where they could be examined more closely.

In his biography of his father, Edmund Gosse describes a dredging trip that Philip Henry Gosse made with his good friend Charles Kingsley in Torbay. Although Kingsley is best known as the author of The Water Babies, Hereward the Wake and Westward Ho!, like many other Victorians he had a passion for Natural History and wrote Glaucus to summarise his knowledge and to inspire others [1]. The book contains many glowing references to Henry Gosse, and Kingsley was clearly a great admirer. This is what Edmund wrote [2]:

Charles Kingsley was several times our companion. The naturalists would hire a small trawler, and work up and down, generally in the southern part of the bay, just outside a line drawn north and south, between Hope’s Nose and Berry Head. I think that Kingsley was a good sailor; my father was a very indifferent one, and so was I; but when the trawl came up, and the multitudinous population of the bottom of the bay was tossed in confusion before our eyes, we forgot our qualms in our excitement. I still see the hawk’s eyes of Kingsley peering into the trawl on one side, my father’s wide face and long set mouth bent upon the other. I well recollect the occasion (my father’s diary gives me the date, August 11, 1858) when, in about 20 fathoms outside Berry Head, we hauled up the first specimen ever observed of that exquisite creature, the diadem anemone, Bunodes coronata; its orange-scarlet body clasping the whorls of a living Turritella shell, while it held in the air its purple parapet crowned with snow-white spiky tentacles.

Was this the specimen that Henry used in making the illustration for his important work Actinologia Britannica (shown below)? This is how Henry describes his discovery of these sea anemones (since re-named Hormathia coronata [3]) [4]:

This fine species first occurred to myself when dredging off Berry Head [seen in the far distance in the photograph below], in about 20 fathoms, in August 1858. Three or four specimens came up in about the same number of hauls. In every case the animal was adherent to the shell of the living Turritella terebra, a mollusk which is so abundant there that the dredge comes up half filled with it. The base of the Bunodes clasps the long turreted shell, nearly enveloping it when adult, only the apex and the mouth of the shell being exposed.

It is not unusual for sea anemones of some species to associate with the shells of living snails and the relationship appears to be mutualistic – the anemone being moved around and the mollusc gaining protection. No doubt, Charles and Henry were thrilled not only with the capture of Bunodes, but with the abundance of Turritella.

Perhaps you don’t have the same level of enthusiasm for sea anemones and snails, but can appreciate the enthusiasm of others at a time when there were many discoveries to be made? Although not a good sailor, Henry made trips by boat because he was very curious about all marine creatures not just those of the shore, which was his usual haunt and where he collected many specimens to be returned to his aquarium tanks in Sandhurst, his home in St Marychurch, Torquay. Edmund describes his appearance when out collecting [2] and I used this quote in an earlier blog post, in which I contrasted the decorum, and modesty of dress, required by women collectors [5]:

Even as a little child I was conscious that my father’s appearance on these excursions was eccentric. He had a penchant for an enormous felt hat, which had once been black, but was now grey and rusty with age and salt. For some reason or other, he seldom could be persuaded to wear clothes of such a light colour and material as other sportsmen affect. Black broadcloth, reduced to an extreme seediness, and cut in ancient forms, was the favourite attire for the shore, and after being soaked many times, and dried in the sun on his somewhat portly person, it grew to look as if it might have been bequeathed to him by some ancient missionary long marooned, with no other garments, upon a coral island. His ample boots, reaching to mid-thigh, completed his professional garb, and when he was seen, in full sunlight, skimming the rising tide upon the sands, he might have been easily mistaken for a superannuated working shrimper.

What a lovely description – and how nice to have it to complement the image of formal photographs (see below, for example). I can easily visualise Henry busying himself around the coast, completely absorbed in his work and caring little about appearances. Maybe that’s why he is a hero of mine, just as he was for Charles Kingsley?

[1] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2016/05/charles-kingsley-creation-and-evolution.html

[2] Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[3] https://www.marlin.ac.uk/species/detail/1826

[4] Philip Henry Gosse (1860) Actinologia Britannica: A history of the British sea-anemones and madrepores. London, John Van Voorst.

[5] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-to-wear-on-shore.html

"The human side of science"

In Glaucus, his book about the sea shore, Charles Kingsley writes [1]:

 ..few or no writers on Natural History, save Mr. Gosse, Mr. G. H. Lewes, and poor Mr. E. Forbes [who had died in 1854, at the age of 39], have had the power of bringing out the human side of science, and giving to seemingly dry disquisitions and animals of the lowest type, by little touches of pathos and humour, that living and personal interest to bestow which is generally the special function of the poet..

Certainly, both Gosse and Lewes were respected for their detailed, objective observations that we still value today, but, as Kingsley and many others discovered, they were also able to convey their enthusiasm for what they saw. However, they were not always in agreement. While recognising the importance of Gosse in popularising Natural History, Lewes challenged him over an observation on the defence mechanism of some sea anemones, to which Gosse responded (without mention of Lewes' criticism).

The events were these.

George Henry Lewes (above, upper) is less well known than his partner George Eliot (Marian Evans), justly famous as one of the finest novelists in the English language. She was encouraged in her writing by Lewes who was a polymath and, before Marian's success, was himself recognised as a scholar and biographer. Although fascinated by Natural History and Marine Biology, he was accused by T. H. Huxley of being a "book scientist" [2] and this spurred Lewes, accompanied by Marian, to collect, and observe, sea-shore life at Ilfracombe, Tenby, The Scilly Isles and Jersey. He wrote up his findings in Blackwood's Magazine in 1856 and 1857 and these accounts were then re-written, with additions, in his book Sea-side Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, The Scilly Isles, & Jersey, also published by Blackwood [3]. The choice of the first locations must have been influenced by Philip Henry Gosse (above, lower) who gave detailed descriptions of both Ilfracombe and Tenby in two of his earlier books [4,5].

Lewes makes reference to the work of Gosse throughout Sea-side Studies and acknowledges the usefulness of his scientific works and the importance of his more general, descriptive books in Marine Biology and microscopy [3]. However, Lewes takes Gosse to task on one point: the role of acontia. These are threads found in some sea anemones and they can be projected through the mouth and from pores in the body (see images below - courtesy of www.aphotomarine.com). This is what Lewes wrote [3]:

Mr Gosse proposes to establish a new genus, named Sagartia.. ..including in it all those Anemones which.. ..possess an abundance of peculiar white filaments, visible to the naked eye, which are protruded from the pores of the body and the mouth, when the animal is roughly handled. These filaments are seen, on examination to be chiefly composed of "urticating [stinging] cells."..

..[Gosse] relates that he once saw a small fish in the convulsions of agony, with one of these filaments in its mouth; it shortly expired. It is a matter of surprise and regret that Mr Gosse, having once made such an observation, did not feel the imperative necessity of repeating and varying it, so as to be sure that death was not a mere coincidence. If the filament had the power which this single observation fairly seemed to suggest, nothing could be easier than to establish the fact by experiment. But, I repeat, no one has seen the necessity for the verification of an hypothesis so plausible; and Mr Gosse, like all his predecessors, was content with recording his observation, as if it carried the point. Not being so content, I tested it thus: After irritating a Dianthus till it sent out a great many filaments, I dropped a very tiny Annelid among them, and entangled it completely in their meshes. Yet lo! these filaments, which are said to possess so powerful a faculty of urtication that even vertebrate animals are killed by them, had no other effect upon a soft Annelid than that of detaining it in their meshes, from which it shortly freed itself and wriggled away unhurt.

Lewes was right to criticise if a general conclusion was being made from a single observation, although his manner of expression is a little blunt. Gosse must have read this and he describes his own experiments on acontia in Actinologia Britannica [6]:

With a razor I took shavings of the cuticle, from the callous part of my own foot, as from the ball of the toe, and from the heel.. ..I then irritated a S. parasitica till it ejected an acontium and taking up with pliers [a] shaving of the cuticle, allowed it to touch the acontium, which instantly adhered across its surface. I now drew away the cuticle gently, so as not to rupture the acontium, and examining it.. ..immediately saw dense groups of cnidæ [stinging threads], standing endwise on the surface,.. ..all discharged and inserted into the substance..

..As to the injection of a poison, it is indubitable that pain, and in some cases death, ensues even to vertebrate animals from momentary contact with the capsuliferous organs of the ZOOPHYTA.

Gosse then refers to the observation criticised by Lewes:

I have elsewhere recorded [in The Aquarium [7]] an instance, in which a little fish, swimming about in health and vigour, died in a few minutes with great agony, through the momentary contact of its lip with one of the emitted acontia of Sagartia parasitica. It is worthy of observation, that, in this case, the fish carried away a portion of the acontium sticking to its lip; the force with which it adhered being so great, that the integrity of the tissues yielded first.

..in the experiments which I have detailed above, we have seen that this adhesion is effected by a multitude of [stinging threads], whose barbs resist withdrawal. So.. ..we can with certainty associate the sudden and violent death of the little fish with the intromission of barbed [stinging threads].

There it rests. What both Lewes and Gosse describe is a fascinating defence mechanism rather than a means of obtaining food. It is something that makes one wonder and to ask "How did that evolve?". Gosse, however, would explain it as an example of God's extraordinary Creation. In contrast, Lewes was an agnostic, so the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 will have set his mind on trying to answer the impossible, yet fascinating, questions that we face today. There were many similarities between Lewes and Gosse, but clearly some important differences, and I'm not sure that they would have enjoyed each other's company, especially after the tone of Lewes' criticism. Perhaps I'm wrong?

[1] Charles Kingsley (1855) Glaucus; or, The Wonders of the Shore. London, Macmillan and Co.

[2] Ann Thwaite (2002) Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888. London, Faber and Faber.

[3] George Henry Lewes (1858) Sea-side Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, The Scilly Isles & Jersey. Edinburgh, William Blackwood and Sons.

[4] Philip Henry Gosse (1853) A Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast. London, John van Voorst.

[5] Philip Henry Gosse (1856) Tenby: a sea-side holiday. London, John van Voorst.

[6] Philip Henry Gosse (1860) Actinologia Britannica. A history of the British sea-anemones and corals. London, John van Voorst.

[7] Philip Henry Gosse (1854) The Aquarium: an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea. London, John van Voorst.

Macho Natural History

I was brought up in Torbay and enjoyed walking along the (then) quiet lanes of South Devon, often venturing up on to Dartmoor. Holne, near Buckfastleigh, was on one of my routes and I didn't know at the time that Charles Kingsley had lived there for the first few weeks of his life.

Charles Kingsley's father, also called Charles, inherited money as a young man and set himself up as a country gentleman in Hampshire, spending his time hunting and shooting. Unfortunately, the money didn't last long and Kingsley Senior then had to find a job, choosing to become a curate in the Church of England. It was while he held a position at Holne that Charles was born and the child was destined to develop an interest in Natural History, especially under the influence of his mother. Susan Chitty describes her love of the countryside [1]:

..So great was Mrs Kingsley's passion for the Devonshire landscape, that she walked about it constantly during her pregnancy, hoping to communicate her love to her unborn child.

Charles did not have strong religious beliefs as a youth and, while an undergraduate at Cambridge, enjoyed rowing, smoking, and all aspects of what he referred to as "manliness"; including shooting and riding to hounds, passions that were so important to his father. This liking for the macho stayed with him and he was openly passionate for most of his life, both in public and private.

While visiting his father at the Rectory in Checkenden, Oxfordshire, Charles met Frances Grenfell, one of four daughters of the late Pascoe Grenfell, who lived in a large house nearby. Frances, known as Fanny, was to become the love of his life, although members of her family were not impressed with him. It was through Fanny that he developed his religious faith and, with her support, he determined to become a priest. After they married, Charles was appointed the Rector of Eversley in Hampshire, a living that he held for decades.

Throughout their lives, Charles and Fanny suffered various illnesses that required periods of convalescence, this being especially so for Fanny who, in 1854, stayed in Torquay for months. Charles joined her there, leaving Eversley in the hands of others, and it was while on this visit that he collected the marine specimens described in his book Glaucus [2] that also contains his views on Natural Historians:

..there are those who regard it [Natural History] as a mere amusement, and that as a somewhat effeminate one; and think that it can at best help to while away a leisure hour harmlessly, and perhaps usefully, as a substitute for coarser sports, or for the reading of novels. Those, however, who have followed it out, especially on the sea-shore, know better. They can tell from experience, that over and above its accessory charms of pure sea-breezes, and wild rambles by cliff and loch, the study itself has had a weighty effect upon their hearts and spirits..

..Let no one think that.. ..Natural History is a pursuit fitted only for effeminate and pedantic men. I should say, rather, that the qualifications required for a perfect naturalist are as many and as lofty as were required.. ..for the perfect knight-errant of the Middle Ages: for (to sketch an ideal, of which I am happy to say our race now affords many a fair realization) our perfect naturalist should be strong in body; able to haul a dredge, climb a rock, turn a boulder, walk all day, uncertain where he shall eat or rest; ready to face sun and rain, wind and frost, and to eat or drink thankfully anything, however coarse or meagre; he should know how to swim for his life, to pull an oar, sail a boat, and ride the first horse which comes to hand; and, finally, he should be a thoroughly good shot, and a skilful fisherman; and if he go far abroad, be able on occasion to fight for his life..

..he must be of a reverent turn of mind also; not rashly discrediting any reports, however vague and fragmentary; giving man credit always for some germ of truth, and giving Nature credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety; which will keep him his life long always reverent, yet never superstitious; wondering at the commonest, but not surprised by the most strange; free from the idols of size and sensuous loveliness; able to see grandeur in the minutest objects, beauty, in the most ungainly; estimating each thing not carnally, as the vulgar do, by its size or its pleasantness to the senses, but spiritually, by the amount of Divine thought revealed to Man therein..

..And last, but not least, the perfect naturalist should have in him the very essence of true chivalry, namely, self-devotion; the desire to advance, not himself and his own fame or wealth, but knowledge and mankind. He should have this great virtue; and in spite of many shortcomings (for what man is there who liveth and sinneth not?), naturalists as a class have it to a degree which makes them stand out most honourably in the midst of a self-seeking and mammonite generation, inclined to value everything by its money price, its private utility..

..men for the most part of manful heads, and yet of childlike hearts..

As a contemporary Natural Historian, how do I match up to Kingsley's ideal? I cannot agree with his view that "manliness" is required and, interestingly, collecting on the shore (his main focus in Glaucus) was a hobby shared by both men and women in the Nineteenth Century [3]. His macho approach extended to the "Muscular Christianity" that he espoused during his early adult years, raising awareness of the suffering of those in poor areas of cities, and his vigorous campaigning for the less fortunate tailed off after he became an Establishment figure [1]. Maybe his interest in Natural History became more reflective as he grew older? Perhaps he favoured the macho stance when younger, as he felt he had to prove himself, not least to members of the Grenfell family? Or was it to overcome feelings of inadequacy brought on by his pronounced stutter?

What else of the description in Glaucus? Certainly, Natural History inspires awe and I join Kingsley in that, although his explanations of the wonders of the natural world centred on God's design, whereas mine are based on the combination of time and mutation. We know that Kingsley supported Darwin's ideas [4], but he still believed the evolution of species to be part of God's plan, rather than the result of an extraordinary number of chance events.

Of the rest, there is no doubt that Natural History brings an awareness that there is so much that we do not understand. This results in a childlike curiosity, and critical questioning of everything around us, that counters the "mammonite" approach that dominates many people's thinking today, just as it did in the Nineteenth Century. Natural Historians are likely to take a less anthropocentric, and less materialistic, view than most and this informs their decisions. Were he alive today, the young Kingsley would have been a campaigner on environmental matters and I'm sure that he would be a force for good; as long as he constrained his macho approach and didn't again become absorbed by the Establishment.

[1] Susan Chitty (1974) The Beast and the Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley. London, Hodder and Stoughton.

[2] Charles Kingsley (1855) Glaucus; or, The Wonders Of The Shore. Cambridge, Macmillan & Co.

[3] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2013/12/women-on-shore.html

[4] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2016/05/charles-kingsley-creation-and-evolution.html