Part 7

From Kenneggy Downs we may turn aside on a very bad lane to see the curving sands of Prah and the grey tower of Pengerswick, the hiding-place, in Henry VIII.’s time, of a certain homicidal Mr. Milliton. Some say he built it, but this seems an improbably risky thing to do. It is more likely that he occupied his enforced leisure in painting the elaborate pictures and moral verses that are now defaced. Few travellers will turn away from the fine high-road across Kenneggy Downs to attempt the deciphering of Mr. Milliton’s reflections; but it will not delay us to remember that John Wesley, exasperated by the “huge approbation and absolute unconcern” of the people in these parts, preached a sermon on the Downs, with a rare touch of humour, on the resurrection of the dry bones. In a few minutes we run into Marazion, and from the top of the hill first see, through a gap in the hedge, “the great vision of the guarded Mount.”

In starting forth upon a tour in Cornwall there are two things, I think, that one especially sets out to see; and in looking back it is the same two things that one especially remembers to have seen. One is Tintagel; but the spell of Tintagel is largely a matter of the imagination. The other is St. Michael’s Mount; and here, though the imagination has much to feed upon in calmer moments, it is chiefly as a delight to the eye that it appeals to one in those first moments that are so far from calm. Little we care for Edward the Confessor and his monastery, or for any tale of battle and conspiracy, or for any legend of archangels, while the Mount shows as a blur of blue upon the pale, hot sky and in the mirror of the wet sands, and Penzance is veiled in a cloud of gold-dust save for the tall church-tower that rises from the mist, and the hills beyond the bay melt one into the other, and the rocks lie in a long red line across the foreground with a streak of piercing green at their feet. Yet it is hard to choose a moment and a point of view, and say, “This is the best.” At high tide or at low, in sunshine or at dusk, from near or far, from Marazion or from Newlyn, or framed between the red stems of the pines upon the hill, the Mount is always stately, mysterious, strong--always the Mount of the Archangel.

It is reached from Marazion by boat at high-water, or on foot by the causeway when the tide is low. From the little harbour we climb, on a winding cobbled path among the trees and hydrangeas, the steep hill that so many have climbed on sterner errands: Henry de la Pomeroi, serving Prince John while the Lion was still safely caged; Lord Oxford and his men, disguised as pilgrims, entering the monastery with the help of pious words and seizing it with the swords they wore under their habits; the angry adherents of the Old Faith, charging up the hill with great trusses of hay borne before them, “to blench the defendants’ sight and deaden their shot.” Unfortunately there have been modern visitors nearly as turbulent as these; for which reason there is not much that we are allowed to see here to-day. We may go into the chapel where the monks once worshipped, and we may stand on the little paved terrace and look out over the parapet towards the shore, thinking of Lady Katherine Gordon, who surely stood here sometimes while her husband Perkin Warbeck was on his mad adventure. What were her thoughts of him as she stood here? Did she know him to be an impostor? Did she think he was the King? Or did she only dream, and dream again, of that quick wooing up in Scotland by the boy of “visage beautiful”? “Lady,” he had said, “… what I am now you see, and there is no boasting in distress; what I may be, I must put it to the trial.… If you dare now adventure on the adversity I swear to make you partaker of the prosperity; yea, lay my crown at your feet.” To which the lady had made answer: “My Lord, … I think you, for your gentleness and fair demeanour, worthy of any creature or thing you could desire.… Therefore, noble Sir, repair, I say, to the master of the family.”

It was here at St. Michael’s Mount that they found her, when Perkin’s little fight was over and her own little bubble had burst.

A wide and level road takes us round the bay into Penzance, and up the hill whence Sir Humphry Davy looks down upon the street where he was born, and past the spot--now covered by the market-house--where Sir Francis Godolphin once tried in vain to make a stand against the Spaniards, and on, beside the sea, to Newlyn. This is a name that is known wherever pictures are painted or beloved; and no wonder, for there is nothing in this harbour that an artist might not turn to good account. Here are fishing-boats reflected in the ripples, and piers hung with dripping seaweed, and lobster-creels and nets upon the shore; and beyond them is the high sea-wall with flowers in every cranny, and the steep street curving round the harbour, and the people whom so many painters have taught us to know. For all its charm and fame it has changed little since the sixteenth century. It is still a place with a business in life; still, as then, mainly a “fischar towne,” with “a key for shippes and bootes.”

Rejoining the main road to Land’s End, we pass through some pretty but very hilly country to Lower Hendra. Those who wish to see the Logan Rock must turn to the left here, and run down to the sea through St. Buryan, and finally walk for some distance across fields. Most people, I think, will keep to the high-road; but lovers of old churches will wish to turn aside to the sanctuary of that “holy woman of Irelond,” St. Buriana. From this high ground, where the tall tower stands as a landmark visible for many miles, King Athelstane saw the distant Scilly Isles, and here he vowed to build a college if he should return safely after making the islands his own. This Perpendicular building dates, of course, from a far later century than his; but it was the church of the college he founded, and there were parts of the college itself still standing in Cromwell’s day.

St. Buryan is only four miles from Land’s End. They are rather dreary miles, by undulating fields and stone walls and the intensely melancholy little town of Sennan; but they end, all the more dramatically for their dulness, in the granite walls that guard our utmost shore. There is no dulness here.

Here there is no carpet of sea-pinks, nor splash of flaming lichen as at the Lizard, nor rocks fretted into fantastic shapes by the sea; but an imperturbable front of iron, an unyielding bulwark, a stern England that rules the waves. This is a fitting climax to our coast. On each side of us cliff curves beyond cliff, and headland stretches beyond headland. To the right are the blue waters of Whitesand Bay, where Athelstane landed from the conquered Scilly Isles and John from unconquered Ireland, and far away Cape Cornwall bounds the view. With swelling hearts we stand on the cliff and look out over the buried land of Lyonesse, and beyond the Longships Lighthouse, to the wide seas on which Drake and Raleigh sailed away to the Spanish Main, and Rodney to victory, and Grenville to the death that made him deathless, and Blake to Teneriffe, and Nelson to Trafalgar. The salt wind blows in across those seas and sings in our ears:

“When shall the watchful Sun, England, my England, Match the master work you’ve done, England, my own? When shall he rejoice agen Such a breed of mighty men As come forward, one to ten, To the song on your bugles blown, England-- Down the years on your bugles blown?”

NORTH CORNWALL

SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH NORTH CORNWALL

DISTANCES.

Land’s End St. Ives 19 miles Newquay 33 ” St. Columb Major 7 ” (Bedruthan Steps and back 14 ”) Bodmin 15 ” Liskeard 14 ” Launceston 20 ” Back to Bodmin 22 ” Wadebridge 7 ” Tintagel 17 ” Bude 19 ” Morwenstow 11 ” --------- Total 198 miles

ROADS.

Some very steep gradients, but hills on the whole less constant.

Surface: main roads mostly good; lanes rough.

V

NORTH CORNWALL

“I believe I may venture to aver,” wrote Tonkin of Cornwall two hundred years ago, “that there are not any roads in the whole kingdom worse kept than ours.” This is not the case now. The main roads of Cornwall are excellent, and are far better kept than the average road of Somerset, for instance. No doubt the quickest way from Sennan to St. Ives is by Penzance and St. Erth Station; for this road, which is in the direct route from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s, leaves little to be desired. But the more interesting way is through St. Just, and Morvah, and Zennor. We cannot expect so good a surface here, yet from Sennan to Morvah, where the country is so much disfigured by mines that we are glad to hurry, the road is capital; and it is only as the scenery becomes beautiful that the surface grows rough. There is a very steep descent beyond St. Just, followed at once by a climb of which the stiffest gradient is about one in five and a half.

It is in St. Just that we pass--on our left as we drive through the Bank Square--the ancient amphitheatre known as the Plân-an-Guare. Here, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, miracle-plays were acted on the level space in the centre, while the six tiers of seats that are replaced by the grassy bank were crowded with country-folk and miners. The plays were very popular, says Carew, “for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well the eye as the ear.”

There are none of these bizarre attractions, nor indeed anything else, to delight our eyes till we have passed Morvah. But from Morvah to St. Ives we have a lovely drive through a country of hills and heather, of bracken slopes and tors of granite--a little pattern cut from Dartmoor. At Trereen it will be well to leave the car and walk across several fields to Gurnard’s Head, whence there is a fine view of the jagged coast. The massive granite steps that here serve the purpose of stiles are luxurious beyond the dreams of laziness.

The last part of this road is bad, but the wild green slopes remind us still of Dartmoor till we run down the long, steep hill into the town of St. Ives. This is quite as good a centre as Penzance from which to see the western end of Cornwall, for the Tregenna Castle Hotel, with its park and walled garden and its lovely outlook over the sea, is one of the most charming in the Duchy; and the place itself is unspoilt. Indeed, these little fishing towns of Cornwall seem to understand very well that their face is their fortune, so to speak; that their welfare depends, not on bandstands and esplanades, but on the beauty of their harbours and fishing boats and narrow streets. Here at St. Ives are the simple charms of Newlyn and the rest: the same little piers and clustered masts, the same contorted streets and the same artists.

It is well that Mr. Knill, when he set up his crooked pyramid, did not place it too near the town. If we look back as we drive away we shall see, upon the skyline, the empty mausoleum of this unconventional mayor, who built his own tomb and arranged to be mourned with music and dancing at its base, but omitted to be buried in it. Some say he did not mean it for a tomb at all, but for a landmark to smugglers. This may be so, since at one time he certainly indulged in privateering--an enterprise into which, he explained, “he was hurried by the force of circumstances.” Perhaps the same explanation applies to his burial in London.

We drive on through the pretty, straggling village of Lelant to the port of Hayle. The rich colouring of the harbour and river here, the red and green flats, the brown and yellow sands, the crooked posts reflected in the water, and the flocks of gulls, are the last pleasing sights that we shall see for many miles; for the country through which we have to pass cannot have been beautiful in its best days, and is now made hideous by pit-heads and chimneys. Camborne is big and ugly, with trams: Redruth is big and ugly, without trams: there is no other visible difference, nor any gap between them. But the compensation that motorists so often find in dull country is ours: this is the splendid highway that leads to John o’ Groat’s. We leave it when it turns towards Truro, but by that time our surroundings are less depressing. Above Zelah Hill we take the road that crosses Newlyn Downs, where the close carpet of heather somewhat restores our spirits, though nowhere till we reach Newquay is there any hint of the beautiful things that lie hidden in this neighbourhood. After crossing the railway we should not take the first turn to Newquay, but should wait for the second, where the signpost stands. We shall thus avoid two bad hills.

Newquay must have been a glorious place before its shores were black with people, and its steep red cliffs crowded with lodging-houses, and its jutting promontory crowned with a huge hotel. Even now, in spite of these things, its wears something of a queenly air. We have left behind us the slow ripples of the southern sea: the fierce blue waves sweep in upon this grand coast with quite a different kind of dignity. But Newquay is too world-ridden to be really lovable. “How beautiful she must have been!” is a sad saying, whether applied to town or woman.

In its neighbourhood, however, are several noteworthy things. We have only a few miles to drive, by leafy lanes and frequent splashes, to a spot that the world has left untouched and that time has only made more beautiful, the house of the Arundels. The best way to Trerice is the lane by Kestle Mill. John Arundel of Trerice is a proud name that becomes monotonous in the annals of Cornwall, and is not unknown in those of England. It was here they lived, those warlike Arundels--old Jack of Tilbury the Admiral, and John-for-the-King, who made so gallant a fight at Pendennis. Though the Arundels owned Trerice even in Edward III.’s time, I do not think Old Tilbury ever saw this Elizabethan building, for he was an old man in the days of Henry VIII. It was probably his son who built this lovely house at the foot of the hill, with the huge mullioned window and the moulded ceilings, and the oriel that overlooks the walled garden and its yew hedges. But John-for-the-King, we may suppose, has warmed himself before these splendid fireplaces, and has looked out through these windows at the flowers and pines, and has eaten his dinner at the great oak table now in the drawing-room. Some say he was a hard man. Possibly: for he lived in hard times. Yet one who knew him well called him “equally stout and kind.” “Of his enemies,” says Carew, “he would take no wrong nor on them any revenge. Those who for many years waited in nearest place about him learned to hate untruth.”

There was another branch of the family who, for their greater possessions, were known as “the great Arundels.” We may see their house at St. Mawgan. When approaching, from St. Columb Minor, the deep wooded hollow in which Lanherne stands close beside the church of St. Mawgan, one should take the most easterly of the two by-roads that lead to it. This hill, it is true, is steep enough; but the other is steeper--one in five. Those who are going on to Bedruthan Steps or elsewhere will do wisely to climb out of the hollow on this same road, and go round by St. Columb Major, for the hill on the further side of St. Mawgan is the steepest of all!

Here in this seclusion, guarded by a triple defence of hills as well as by the dark woods and by their own high wall, live the nuns of Lanherne in the house of warriors. Not much of their dwelling is visible, of course, but the chapel may be seen, and one wing of the old house looks down, with many mullioned windows, on a gay little garden that all may enjoy. Below Lanherne is the church, with turreted tower and painted screen, and brasses and bench-ends, and shields of the Arundels.

As I said before, the shortest way to Bedruthan Steps is the longest way round--the way, namely, by St. Columb Major. The road by Mawgan Porth has an alluring look upon the map, but as a matter of fact comes to a sudden end in the sands; and I have heard a tragic tale of a car that stuck fast there, and endured the humiliation of being dragged out by horses. At the junction of roads between the two St. Columbs is a gate into the woods of Lanherne, of whose loveliness this is the only glimpse we may have, since motors are not admitted to them. We turn to the left in St. Columb Major, past the grey church of St. Columba, a maiden who was, says Hals, “comparatively starved to death” in Gaul. Her church has had a chequered career. One of the pinnacles of the tower was again and again destroyed by lightning and rebuilt in vain, till the builders carved on it the words: “God bless and preserve this work.” I do not know if it escaped in the seventeenth century, when three schoolboys, by setting fire to some gunpowder, “made a direful concussion;” but only a few years later the steeple was again struck by lightning “and the iron bars therein wreathed and wrested asunder as threads.”

On a by-road that is of course hilly, but by no means bad, we rise on to Denzell Downs, with a wide view to the left and a glimpse of Mawgan Porth in the distance. When, having left St. Eval on the right, we come to an isolated cottage, we must take the track that goes straight on; for the one that turns to the right has an endless number of gates, some steep hills, and a very rough surface, and is much the longer of the two. Even on the track we take there are gates enough to try the temper, but it soon leads to a field where we may leave the car. We walk down across the heather to the cliffs. These have not the iron severity of the Land’s End: the shale they are made of is friable, and has been carved into a thousand shapes--including a ridiculously life-like figure of Queen Bess--by the waves that fret and foam even on the stillest day. The wide bay lies below us with all its decorative arches and pinnacles and turrets, bounded by Park Head, long and grey; and in the distance Trevose Head makes the skyline. Two flights of steps are cut in the cliffs: one leading to the shore and the other to a cave.

And now, after all this pottering in the narrow lanes about Newquay, there are many who will be craving for a comfortable run on an open road. These I advise to join the Truro and Bodmin road near St. Columb Road Station, and drive over a series of breezy heaths, on a good surface with no serious hills, to Bodmin: thence to follow the Fowey to Liskeard and run up to Launceston: and from Launceston to return to Bodmin across the moors. This is a fine run and a real refreshment.

There is no lack of history in Bodmin, the “dwelling-place of monks,” the burial-place of St. Petrock, once a cathedral city, and more than once the headquarters of rebellion. Yet, save the great church, there is little here to see. Very near Bodmin, however, though not on our direct road, there is a place of wonderful beauty, Lanhydrock. This park is rich in splendid trees, carpeted with fern, irregular and wild and lovely beyond the common lot of parks. As we sweep round a curve the gatehouse comes in view, with its arch and octagonal towers and pinnacles; behind it is the stately house, the mullioned windows and the battlements; and between house and gateway, enclosed within a parapeted wall, lies the formal garden, the rows of tapering cypresses, and urns of flowers, and blossoming yuccas. When Essex stayed here with Lord Robarts, at the time that Charles I. was at Boconnoc, the gatehouse was not yet built; but he saw the north wing of the house as it now stands. After his desertion of his troops at Fowey, Lanhydrock fell into royalist hands, and for a short time was owned by Sir Richard Grenville, “the Skellum.”

We drive away by a magnificent double avenue of beeches and sycamores, and through a shady lane join the main road from Bodmin to Liskeard. This narrow valley of the Fowey is one of the loveliest strips of inland scenery in Cornwall. On every side of us are trees, close by the wayside, and hanging overhead, and clothing the high hills; and all the time, sometimes to left of us and sometimes to right, the brown stream hurries past us through the bracken. After we have crossed it for the second time the valley narrows and the woods close in, before we finally run out into open country. Between Liskeard and Callington, as we have seen before, there are some fine views, but the hilly road is rather badly kept; and the same may be said of the country beyond Callington, which has the same variable scenery, and the same wide but bumpy road. A long rise takes us into Launceston through the square tower of the south gate.

Age after age this hill has had a fortress on it. First the Celt and then the Saxon made a stronghold of it, and finally, when William the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother, Robert de Mortain, there arose the Norman castle that was called Terrible. Of its terror little is left now, for one of its three defending walls is gone, and the ruined keep is so unsteady that no one is allowed to climb its stairs. Yet this tower among the blazing geraniums has not altogether lost its romance, as is the fate of most ruins that stand in public gardens; and the Tudor gateway of the outer ward, with its portcullis-groove and prison-cell, is picturesque enough. If we peer through these bars we shall see a tiny cell with mossy floor and weed-grown walls--the “noisesome den” that George Fox the Quaker named _Doomsdale_, the prison in which he lay for months. “The commune gayle for all Cornwayle is yn this castel,” says Leland; and many distinguished prisoners have been here, though not all in this dark dungeon. Among these was Skellum Grenville, whose imprisonment had far-reaching results; for the men of Cornwall, as in the case of Trelawny, resolved “to know the reason why.” This was not because they liked him, but simply because he was a Cornishman. And a very good reason too.

In spite of all its strength Castle Terrible was several times taken in the Civil War. Finally it was seized by Fairfax, and kept. He came to Launceston at midnight, and many of the enemy escaped “by the darknesse of the night, and narrownesse and steepnesse of the wayes.” Those who were taken were amazed in the morning, when they were brought before the general, and “had twelve pence apeece given them, and passes to goe to their homes.”

When the Skellum’s brother Sir Bevill was here his troops were quartered in the church that is a few minutes’ walk from the castle, the church that is surely unique in its effect of richness. For every one of its granite stones bears a device, sacred or profane, and round the base is a course of shields, with letters carved upon them to form an inscription. Over the south door are St. George and the Dragon, and St. Martin and the Beggar; and at the east end is a prostrate figure of the Magdalen, at which, by a curious disregard of a certain great saying, it is considered lucky to throw stones. Within the church is a sixteenth-century pulpit, a Norman font, and a good deal of modern carving. Of the priory that Bishop Warelwast founded at Launceston hardly anything remains, except the Norman arch that has been set in the doorway of the “White Hart.”