Part 13

It was quite dark when we at length sounded the depths of this narrow valley, and so into the miserable streets of Polperro. We turned to the left, and came upon the harbour. “No inn to be seen,” said I, as we climbed some rock stairs, and presently came out of the farther end of Polperro, upon the cliffs. So we turned back, and after groping on to an approximate level, came in a little while within sight and hearing of the sign of the “Three Pilchards,” swinging noisily overhead, and saw the little window of the inn, not yet shuttered, giving glances into the cavernous interior.

We adventured into the murk of the place, and our boots scratched gratingly upon the sanded-stone floor. A bulky form came noisily, with the clumping of sea-boots, along the passage, from regions of which the darkness gave no hint.

“Can we put up here for the night?” quoth I somewhat dubiously of this dimly seen figure, capped, blue jerseyed, and trousered in soiled ducks, that confronted us.

“Sure-ly,” said he, and disappeared to trim and light a lamp. This was evidently the landlord.

“And tea?” chorussed the Wreck.

“Yes, sir,” replied the landlord’s voice, apparently from the remote recesses of some distant cupboard.

So we sat down in the combination of bar-kitchen-parlour and living-room, and studied the beer-rings on the table in the gloaming of the window, until, under favour of Providence, our host should return. This he did eventually, bearing a lighted lamp, which he proceeded to hang from the ceiling. Then came another journey, and a return with sticks, paper, and matches, when he lighted the fire and put the water on to boil, blowing up the sticks and coals with bellows of a prodigious bigness. There was something diverting in the spectacle of this rough, grizzled, seafaring innkeeper making up the fire for tea like any housewife.

Meanwhile we sat and waited and chatted with our host until the water boiled, when, after much preparation, we were ushered into a room on the other side of the entrance passage, and left to tea and ourselves. “If you want anything more, please to ask for it,” said the landlord as he shut the door.

Ye gods! the chilling dampness of that room, and the fustiness of it, with ancient reeks of the sea! It was whitewashed, and hung with brightly coloured almanacs from the grocer’s, and here and there, startlingly black and white, appeared framed memorial-cards commemorating domestic losses. We required no skeleton at the feast after this, but sat down to tea, sufficiently damped by the dismal light of--yes--a long-wicked dip in a brass candlestick!

“Hang it,” remarked the Wreck, observing no teapot, “where’s the tea?” and just then his eye lighted on what should have been the hot-water jug. _There_ was the tea, sure enough, in the jug! But not the most diligent search could discover any milk, so I put my head out o’ door and asked for some. The landlord was doubtful of procuring any in Polperro that night, but would send his boy out on the chance, unless, indeed, we would like condensed milk.

But our souls sickened at the thought of it, and fortunately some decent milk was had at last. Said the landlord again, as he closed the door, “If you want anything more, please to ask for it.” It occurred to us, however, that we had better make content with what we had, for by the time our very ordinary wants had been satisfied, the night would have been far spent indeed.

There was a nasty indescribable tang about that tea, and even the bread and butter was horrid. We were very hungry, and so made shift to eat a little bread and butter, but the tea we poured out of window.

Then we went out in the darkness of the lanes to see how Polperro showed at night. To walk along those lanes was an experience analogous to getting one’s sea-legs on an ocean-going sailing craft. The night was so dark, and the cobble-stone pavements so uneven, that the taking of each step was a problem of moment.

This was a Saturday night, and much business (for Polperro) was being transacted. Little shops shed glow-worm lights across the roadways, and on to rugged walls, which acted in some sort the part of the sheet in magic-lantern entertainments; that is to say, the little patches of comparative brilliancy exhibited exaggerated replicas of the window’s contents. Loaves of bread on the baker’s shelves assumed, in this sordid magic, the gigantic size of the free loaf in old-time Anti Corn-Law demonstrations; the sweetstuff bottles in the windows of the general shops argued, not ounces, but pounds of stickinesses; and the wavering shadows of customers’ and shopkeepers’ figures seemed like the forms of giants, alternately squat and long-drawn, contending for these gargantuan delicacies. I burned to picture these things, not in words, but by other methods. My companion hungered still, and truth to tell, so did I; and so we bought some biscuits and munched them as we went. We eventually returned to the “Three Pilchards” and went to bed, escorted by the landlord with a dip stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. I _must_ say, though, that _we_ were given candlesticks.

The next morning, being Sunday, the landlord had “cleaned” himself with more than usual care, and appeared resplendently arrayed in a suit of glossy black cloth, of the kind which I believe is called “doe-skin.” He shut us in the sitting-room to breakfast, which was waiting, and, before disappearing, repeated his usual formula.

After breakfast, we covenanted to return at one o’clock for dinner, and went out upon the headlands that guard with jagged rocks the narrow gut of Polperro. It was the quietest of days; even the screaming sea-gulls’ cries were less persistent than on week-days; and the male population of the place lay idly on the rocks, or lounged, gossiping, at sunny corners of the lanes, while the mid-day meal cooked within doors. But above all the grateful kitchen odours rose the scent of the fish offal that, with the ebbing of the tide, lay stranded in the ooze of the harbour, and bubbled and fermented in the heat of the sun, vindicating the country folk, who call the place Polstink.

Down in the lanes, as we returned, the wafts of the fish-cellars filled the air. One hundred and twenty-four years ago--on Friday, September the sixteenth, 1760, to be particular--the Rev. John Wesley “rode through heavy rain to Paulperow,” as he tells us in his “Journal.” “Here,” says he, “the room over which we were to lodge, being filled with pilchards and conger-eels, the perfume was too potent for me, so that I was not sorry when one of our friends invited me to lodge at her house.” But, indeed, Polperro did not show its best face to Wesley at any time, for, of his first visit here, which happened six years before this, he says, “Came about two to Poleperrow, a little village, four hours’ ride from Plymouth Passage, surrounded with huge mountains. However, abundance of people had found their way thither. And so had Satan too: for an old, grey-headed sinner was bitterly cursing all the Methodists just as we came into the town.”

To pass a Sunday at Polperro is to experience how empty and miserable a day of rest may become. We dined off the homely fare offered us at the “Three Pilchards,” and sighed for tea-time, and at tea-time sighed for bed. Arrived between the sheets, we fell asleep, longing for the morrow, when the hum of this work-a-day world would recommence.

LVI.

This morn we breakfasted betimes, settled our modest score, and trudged away, up steep hillsides and across meadows, to Lansallos, and from Lansallos to Lanteglos-juxta-Fowey.

We came to Lanteglos before (according to the map) we had any right so to do, going to it through steep hillside fields. I don’t think there is any village to speak of, but there is a fine church, picturesquely out of plumb, with a four-staged tower, strong and plain, without buttresses, standing, with its churchyard, beside a “farm-place,” as the Cornish folk sometimes call their farm-yards, filled with great stacks of corn, stilted on long rows of stone staddles.

There stands beside the church porch one of the finest crosses to be found in Cornwall, of fifteenth-century date, with head elaborately sculptured into tabernacles, containing representations of the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and two figures of saints. This cross was discovered some years ago, buried in the churchyard, and was set up by the then vicar in its present position, with a millstone by way of pedestal.

The guide-books tell of great store of brasses within the church; but the building was locked, the keys were at a cottage far down the valley, the sun was hot, and, lastly but not least, we were lazy; so we only stayed and sketched the exterior, and peered through the windows at the whitewashed walls and old-fashioned pews, and presently went away.

From Lanteglos good but steep roads lead down to Polruan, a manner of over-the-water suburb of Fowey, set picturesquely on the west shore of Fowey River. As we went down the steep street, children were singing the ribald song which pervaded London, and the country generally, all last year. I am not going to name it here; let it die, and be deservedly forgotten. But, _par parenthèse_, I will put a question here to philosophers. We know at what rate light travels, and sound too, but at what rate of speed does the comic song fare on its baleful course? Who, again, shall estimate how rapidly the contagion spreads of those now happily defunct songs of an appalling sentimentality--“See-Saw,” “The Maid of the Mill,” or, to sound deeper depths, “Annie Rooney,” and “White Wings”?

A ferry runs between Polruan and Fowey, the latter a town that has grown from its former estate of slumberous seaport into a “resort” of quite a fashionable and exclusive flavour. It is “still growing”--worse luck. The visitor may easily recognise Fowey as the original of “Troy Town,” by “Q.,” whose initial, being interpreted, stands for Mr. A. T. Quiller-Couch, himself a Cornishman. The salient features of Fowey to the eye, the nose, the ear, and the mind are sea- and land-scapes of wondrous beauty, fish odours, the clangour of a disreputable brass band, and historical legends of a peculiarly romantic character.

A wonderful old church of a peculiar dedication--Saint Finbarrus--stands in midst of Fowey town. We explored its interior on the evening of our stay at Fowey, attracted by its lighted windows and the weekly practising of the choir then going forward. The chancel was lit up, and the church itself lay either in deep shadow or in mysterious half-lighting. The choir and the choirmaster, standing in the gas-lit circle, with the broad pointed arches of the nave arcade yawning around them, and the queer memorials of centuries ago, with their figures of dames and knights, touched to uncanny resemblances by the incidence of the shadows, made an extremely delightful picture, and one eminently paintable.

There are many Treffrys and Rashleighs buried within Saint Finbar’s--two families with which the history of Fowey is interwoven. One John Treffry, buried here, seems to have been something of an eccentric, for he had his grave dug during his lifetime, and lay down and swore in it, “to shew the sexton a novelty.” His epitaph is a curious jingle--the work of the man himself, one would say. Here it is--

“Here in this Chancell do I ly Known by the name of John Treffry Being made & born for to dye So must thou friend as well as I Therefore Good works be Sure to try But chiefly love and charity And still on them with faith rely So be happy eternally.”

This epitaph to Mary Courtney is not without a certain sweetness of conceit:--

“In Memory of Mary y^e daughter of Sir Peter Courtney of Trethurffe: who dyed the 14^{th} day of June, in the year of our Lord 1655.

Neer this a rare Jewell’s Sa’t, Clos’d uppe in a cabinet: Let no sacrilegious hand Breake through: ’tis y^e Strickt Comaund of the Jeweller: who hath Sayd (And ’tis fit he be obayd) He require it Safe, and Sound, Both aboue and under Ground: This Mary was Grandafter to Jonathan Raishleighe of Menebilly Esq^r.”

Choir practice ended, the church was closed, and we were cast forth upon the streets with the tail end of the evening before us. Fowey is a seaside town, singular in having no sands and no recognised public promenade; there was nothing to do then but to spend the evening at our hotel over our maps and notes. We had by this time collected an intolerable quantity of the tourists’ usual lumber. Fossils, lumps of tin and copper ore, and fragments of granite would drop from our knapsacks upon the least provocation, or upon no provocation whatever. We amalgamated our hoards, threw away a goodly percentage, and sent the remainder of the relics up to London.

I don’t like to think about the cost of their carriage. It was, like the relics, collectively, and in detail, heavy. Of what use are the things after all? You shall hear.

At this moment of writing up the journal of our tour it is Christmas time, and waits are lingering in the street below me, howling dismally. I have noiselessly opened the window, and thrown an ammonite at them from the vantage-point of the second floor. It is to be hoped that one or other of them was as much struck by it as I was (but in a different sense) when I found it in Cornwall. But that ammonite was as large as a saucer, and, considering that costly freight from the west, somewhat expensive ammunition. Coals would have been cheaper, less compromising, and quite as effective. I say less compromising, because, if any one is severely hurt, ammonites are not so common in London but what their possession might readily be traced.

But, sooth to say, they, with the tin ore and the lumps of granite, have become almost expended by now, and generally for the prompt dispersal of the nomadic cats, in full voice, who haunt the areas of our street.

These spoils of our touring were handier after all than coals, which blacken the hands, or soap, for which the morning finds a use; but I sometimes wonder who finds them, the very aristocracy of missiles, hurtled through midnight air from lofty eyrie upon pavements deserted by all save the slow-pacing policeman and those aforementioned disturbers of the peace.

LVII.

We discharged a heavy bill this morning on leaving our hotel, but consoled ourselves with thinking upon the law of averages, by which our next account should be proportionably light. The morning was dull, and mists occasionally dispersed, apparently only to let some drenching showers through to fall upon us; and when we reached Par, we heard the birds chirping in the trees between the showers, in that way which (experience told us) betokened more rain.

Par is a little seaport, with a station on the Great Western Railway, which is also the junction for the North Cornwall lines and for the short branch to Fowey. Imagine a small, accurately semicircular bay, with a sparse fringe of mean whitewashed cottages abutting upon sands, partly overgrown with bents, the sea-poppy, and coarse grass. Add to these a long jetty, a thick cluster of small brigs, a smelting works, with monumentally tall chimney-stack, and in the background, the railway and green hillsides, and you have Par. For the life of the place, add some rumbling carts and waggons, filled with china-clay, rattling their way down to the jetty with their drivers; some three or four whitewashed-looking men, lounging and drinking at the “Welcome Home” Inn; the whistle and noise of an occasional train; a housewife hanging clothes out to dry in a garden, and there you have the full tide of existence at this Cornish seaport toward mid-day. To these incidents were added, when we passed by, a diverting contest in the roadway between a cat and a valorous rooster, their bone of contention, a bone, literally as well as metaphorically. But the cat, having seized the prize at last, vanished with it round a corner, like a streak of lightning, the cockerel after him, and all was quiet again. It will show the quietness of Par when I say that no one but ourselves was attracted by this singular tourney.

The tide was out when we reached Par, and we saw how, when the ebb is at its lowest here, the flat sands stretch an unconscionable distance. The derelict seaweed, wetted by the rain and drying in the moist heat of the day, gave out a very full-flavoured, maritime odour, and “smelt so Par,” if one may be allowed to thus irreverently parody the Prince of Denmark’s disgust with Yorick’s skull. It is confidently believed that the present writer is the first to discover this Shakespearian interest connected with Par.

LVIII.

Close by, at Castledour, corrupted to Castle Door in these days, stands a tall granite post, inscribed with some half-obliterated Roman inscription. An old Cornish historian tells, in quaint language, of an adventure which befell here.

“In a high way neere this toune (says Carew) there lieth a big and long moore stone, containing the remainder of certaine ingraued letters, purporting some memorable antiquity, as it should seeme, but past ability of reading.

“Not many yeres sithence, a Gentleman, dwelling not farre off, was perswaded, by some information, or imagination, that treasure lay hidden vnder this stone: wherefore, in a faire Moone-shine night, thither with certaine good fellowes hee hyeth to dig it vp: a working they fall, their labour shortneth, their hope increaseth, a pot of Gold is the least of their expectation. But see the chance. In midst of their toyling, the skie gathereth clouds, the Moone-light is ouer-cast with darkenesse, doune fals a mightie showre, vp riseth a blustering tempest, the thunder cracketh, the lightning flasheth: in conclusion, our money-seekers washed, instead of loden; or loden with water, in steade of yellow earth, and more afraid then hurt, are forced to abandon their enterprise, and seeke shelter of the next house they could get into. Whether this proceedeth from a naturall accident, or a working of the diuell, I will not,” says our historian, “vndertake to define. It may bee, God giueth him such power ouer those, who begin a matter, vpon covetousnesse to game by extra-ordinarie meanes, and prosecute it with a wrong, in entring and breaking another mans land, without his leaue, and direct the end thereof, to the princes defrauding, whose prerogatiue challengeth these casualties.”

In a wild moorland district like this, the devil, you will see, was likely to have the credit of anything that might happen. Even to-day, the countryside round about Par and Saint Austell is hardly less rugged and lonely than it was in the seventeenth century. Still, we are much more materialistic nowadays, and such happenings as that just quoted could scarcely fail of classification under the head of “natural accidents.”

But the great mining-field of Saint Austell (“Storsel,” in the local pronunciation), which begins here, almost deserted to-day, its engine-houses wrecked, its great heaps of mine refuse bare and gaunt, has taken on an air of desolation more favourable to uncanny beings than ever. It is not because the tin and copper have “petered out” that this once busy stretch of country now wears the air of some long-deserted mushroom-field of mining industry, sprung up suddenly, and untimely withered, like the Californian goldfields of pioneer times. No, the metals are still there, but at such depths and held in such iron grip of hard-hearted granite, that it would not pay to win the ore with the machinery available at this time. Meanwhile, the Cornish miners have mostly emigrated. To-day, if you would see the Cornishman in full work on his congenial and hereditary employments of tin and copper mining, you should go either to the Straits Settlements or to Australia, whence comes the greater part of those metals in these times.

There, in some Wooloomooloo, or other place of name infinitely repetitive, you shall, who seek, find him; but in Cornwall his kind tends to decrease continually.

But round about Par and Saint Austell enough metal remains to keep some few important mines at work; china-clay, too, is an increasingly important article of commerce. The streams and rivulets that hereabouts run down into Saint Austell or Tywardreath Bay are the very tricolours of water-courses--rust-red with pumpings from the mines, milk-white from the washings of china-clay, and, unpolluted, reflecting the heavenly blue of sunny skies.

A long and grimy road leads past Holmbush and Mount Charles to Saint Austell, all the way rutted with the wheels of heavy waggons, and muddy from the rains.

I remember that, when we were dining at Fowey, we were told by a Cornishman with whom we talked that Saint Austell was the richest town in Cornwall. I do not wish to dispute that statement, for, with that town’s busy neighbourhood of mines, and, more particularly, china-clay works, it would seem to be in receipt of a very great deal of commerce. Waggons, piled up with great lumps of china-clay, are continually lumbering through its narrow and crooked streets; its shops are many and well appointed; and, earnest of enterprise and prosperity, Saint Austell is lighted by electricity, in the streets, and for domestic use; it was, in fact, a pioneer in the movement for the lighting of towns by electricity. But, with all these signs of wealth, the town is not attractive. Saint Austell remains a market-town of gloomy architecture and cramped thoroughfares, whose foot-pavements, of meagre proportions, would not suffice for the accommodation of a village. Yet the people who are seen in these streets are smartly dressed, and altogether un-provincial in appearance. We saw costumes, not few nor far between, that rivalled Bond Street or Piccadilly.

I remarked upon this to the Wreck, who, having had his full share of Saint Austell’s muddy streets, was sarcastically inclined, and observed that, if it was a swell town in one particular, it was a pity that particularity did not extend to its pavements, which had, apparently, shrunk.

We lunched at as well-appointed a restaurant as might have been found at the West End of London, and then looked through the very fine church that stands in midst of the town. It contains a very early font, sculptured in granite, the bowl of it covered with the Early Norman ideas of owls and griffins, and fearful things that surely never flew in air, or walked the earth, or swam the sea. The church of Saint Austell has one of the finest of Cornish church-towers, lofty and pinnacled, and covered, over the upper stages of it, with much panelled work, and about the body of it with sculptured emblems of the Passion and Crucifixion. The hammer and nails, the crown of thorns, the ladder, are sculptured in groups, together with pierced hands and feet; and so greatly has the significance of these emblems been lost, that many of them are popularly supposed to represent miners’ tools.

LIX.