But the house is not sought out only for its antiquity, or for the beauty of its situation, or even for its Thackeray associations. After all, does any considerable section of the public really care for Thackeray landmarks? Writers of literary gossip, of prefaces to new editions, may affect to think so, but, in fact, Thackeray does not command that intimate sympathy which Dickens enjoys. Sentiment does not attach itself to the satirist, who, in the odd moments when he, too, sentimentalises, is apt to be suspected, quite wrongly, of insincerity. It is for its Tennyson associations that Clevedon Court is sought by most tourists. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI YATTON—CONGRESBURY—WICK ST. LAWRENCE THE main road from Clevedon to Kingston Seymour trends sharply inland, passing the little village of Kenn. Seaward the flat and featureless lands spread to an oozy shore; Kenn itself, an insignificant village, standing beside a sluggish runnel of the same name. From this place sprang the Ken family, which numbered among its members the celebrated Bishop of Bath and Wells, who owed his preferment from a subordinate position at Winchester to his having, while there, refused to give up his house for the accommodation of Nell Gwynne. Charles the Second was a true sportsman. He respected those who were true to themselves, whether it were an unrepentant highwayman, whom he could pardon and fit out with a telling nickname; or a Church dignitary whose conscience forbade him to curry favour by housing a King’s mistress. So, in 1684, when a choice was to be made of a new Bishop of Bath and Wells, the King declared that no one should have it but “the little black fellow that refused his lodging to poor Nelly.” The Ken family finally died out in the seventeenth century, after having been settled here over four hundred years. A small mural monument to Christopher Ken and his family, 1593, remains in the little church, rebuilt in 1861 and uninteresting; but with a pretty feature in the unusual design of the pyramidal stone roof of its small tower. Beyond Kenn, in a lonely situation midway between Yatton and the coast at the point where the waters of the Yeo estuary glide and creep, rather than fall, into the sea, stands the village of Kingston Seymour. The country all round about is more remarkable for the rich feeding its flat pastures afford the cows than for its scenic beauties. If it were not for the luxuriant hedgerows and the fine hedgerow trees, it would be possible to say, with the utmost sincerity, that this corner of Somerset was tame and dull. But the dairy-farmers who occupy it so largely draw great prosperity from these flat meadows. [Illustration: KINGSTON SEYMOUR.]