of which we gathered, not handfuls but armfuls. When we reached
it, what a picture of an English farm-yard it was! With a regular
old-fashioned English milk-maid--such as Izaak Walton would have loved
to describe--sitting amidst her shining pails, her cows standing round
her, meekly waiting their turn. Sleek, calm creatures they were,
Juno-eyed and soft-skinned--of that peculiar shade of grey which I
have seen only in Cornwall. And, being rather a connoisseur in cows,
I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country
have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its
special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red,
white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate
grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to
it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine
pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at
Rome.
But we had to tear ourselves away from this Arcadia, for in the midst
of the farm-yard appeared the carriage and Charles. So we jolted
back--it seemed as if Cornish carriages and horses could go anywhere
and over everything--to the Old Inn and Mary Mundy.
She _had_ come home, and everything was right. As we soon found,
everything and everybody was accustomed to be put to rights by Miss
Mary Mundy.
She stood at the door to greet us--a bright, brown-faced little
woman with the reddest of cheeks and the blackest of eyes; I have no
hesitation in painting her portrait here, as she is, so to speak,
public property, known and respected far and wide.
[Illustration: A CRABBER'S HOLE, GERRAN'S BAY.]
"Delighted to see you, ladies; delighted to see any friends of the
Professor's; and I hope you enjoyed the Cove, and that you're all
hungry, and will find your tea to your liking. It's the best we can do;
we're very homely folk here, but we try to make people comfortable,"
and so on and so on, a regular stream of chatty conversation, given in
the strongest Cornish, with the kindliest of Cornish hearts, as she
ushered us into a neat little parlour at the back of the inn.
There lay spread, not one of your dainty afternoon teas, with two or
three wafery slices of bread and butter, but a regular substantial
meal. Cheerful candles--of course in serpentine candlesticks--were
already lit, and showed us the bright teapot full of that welcome drink
to weary travellers, hot, strong and harmless; the gigantic home-baked
loaf, which it seemed sacrilegious to have turned into toast; the rich,
yellow butter--I am sure those lovely cows had something to do with
it, and also with the cream, so thick that the spoon could almost have
stood upright in it. Besides, there was a quantity of that delicious
clotted cream, which here accompanies every meal and of which I had
vainly tried to get the receipt, but was answered with polite scorn,
"Oh, ma'am, it would be of no use to _you_: Cornish cream can only be
made from Cornish cows!"
Whether this remarkable fact in natural history be true or not, let me
record the perfection of Mary Mundy's cream, which, together with her
jam and her marmalade, was a refection worthy of the gods.
She pressed us again and again to "have some more," and her charge for
our magnificent meal was as small as her gratitude was great for the
slight addition we made to it.
"No, I'll not say no, ma'am, it'll come in handy; us has got a young
niece to bring up--my brother and me--please'm. Yes, I'm glad you came,
and I hope you'll come again, please'm. And if you see the Professor,
you'll tell him he's not forgotten, please'm."
This garniture of "please'm" at the end of every sentence reminded
us of the Venetian "probbedirla," _per ubbedirla_, with which our
gondolier Giovanna used to amuse us, often dragging it in in the oddest
way. "Yes, the Signora will get a beautiful day, probbedirla," or "My
wife has just lost her baby, probbedirla." Mary Mundy's "please'm"
often came in with equal incongruity, and her voluble tongue ran on
nineteen to the dozen; but her talk was so shrewd and her looks so
pleasant--once, no doubt, actually pretty, and still comely enough for
a middle-aged woman--that we departed, fully agreeing with her admiring
Professor that
"The brightest thing on Cornish land
Is the face of Miss Mary Mundy."
Recrossing Pradenack down in the dim light of a newly-risen moon,
everything looked so solitary and ghostly that we started to see moving
from behind a furz-bush, a mysterious figure, which crossed the road
slowly, and stood waiting for us. Was it man or ghost, or--
Only a donkey! A ridiculous grey donkey. It might have been Tregeagle
himself--Tregeagle, the grim mad-demon of Cornish tradition, once a
dishonest steward, who sold his soul to the devil, and is doomed to
keep on emptying Dozmare Pool, near St. Neots (the same mere wherein
Excalibur was thrown), with a limpet-shell; and to spend his nights in
other secluded places balancing interminable accounts, which are always
just sixpence wrong.
Poor Tregeagle! I fear some of us, weak in arithmetic, had a secret
sympathy for him! But we never met him--nor anything worse than that
spectral donkey, looming large and placid against the level horizon.
Soon, "the stars came out by twos and threes,"--promising a fine night
and finer morning, during which, while we were comfortably asleep,
our good horse and man would be driving across this lonely region to
Falmouth, in time to take the good people to church on Sunday morning.
"And we'll do it, too--don't you be anxious about us, ladies," insisted
Charles. "I'll feed him well, and groom him well. I likes to take care
of a good horse, and you'll see, he'll take no harm. I'll be back when
you want me, at the week's end, or perhaps before then, with some party
or other--we're always coming to the Lizard--and I'll just look in and
see how you're getting on, and how you liked Kynance. But take care of
the tide."
We thanked our kindly charioteer, bade him and his horse good-bye,
wished him a pleasant journey through the moonlight, which was every
minute growing more beautiful, then went indoors to supper--no! supper
would have been an insult to Mary Mundy's tea--to bed.
DAY THE FOURTH
Sunday, September 4th--and we had started on September 1st; was it
possible we had only been travelling four days?
It felt like fourteen at least. We had seen so much, taken in so many
new interests--nay, made several new friends. Already we began to plan
another meeting with John Curgenven, who we found was a relation of
our landlady, or of our bright-faced serving maiden, Esther--I forget
which. But everybody seemed connected with everybody at the Lizard,
and everybody took a friendly interest in everybody. The arrival of
new lodgers in the "genteel" parlour which we had not appreciated
was important information, and we were glad to hear that Charles had
started about four in the morning quite cheery.
And what a morning it was!--a typical Sabbath, a day of rest, a day
to rejoice in. Strolling round the garden at eight o'clock, while the
dew still lay thick on the grass, and glittered like diamonds on the
autumnal spider-webs, even the flowers seemed to know it was Sunday,
the mignonette bed to smell sweeter, the marigolds--yes! æsthetic
fashion is right in its love for marigolds--burnt in a perfect blaze
of golden colour and aromatic scent. The air was so mild that we could
imagine summer was still with us: and the great wide circle of sea
gleamed in the sunshine as if there never had been, never could be,
such a thing as cloud or storm.
Having ascertained that there was no service nearer than Grade, some
miles off, until the afternoon, we "went to church" on the cliffs, in
Pistol Meadow, beside the green mounds where the two hundred drowned
sailors sleep in peace.
[Illustration: STEAM SEINE BOATS GOING OUT.]
And such a peaceful place! Absolutely solitary: not a living creature,
not even a sheep came near me the whole morning:--and in the silence
I could hear almost every word said by my young folks, searching for
sea-treasures among the rocks and little pools far below. Westwards
towards Kynance, and eastwards towards Landewednack--the church we were
to go to in the afternoon--the cliff path was smooth and green, the
short grass full of those curious dainty flowers, some of which were
new to our eager eyes. At other times the road was so precipitous that
we did not wonder at those carefully white-washed stones every few
yards, which are the sole guide to the coastguard men of dark nights.
Even in daylight, if the wind were high, or the footing slippery with
rain, the cliff-walk from the Lizard to Kynance would be no joke to
uninitiated feet.
Now, all was so still that the wind never once fluttered the letter I
was writing, and so warm that we were glad to escape the white glare of
the wall of the Lizard Lights and sit in a cool hollow, watching sky
and ocean, with now and then a sea-bird floating lazily between, a dark
speck on the perpetual blue.
"If it will only keep like this all week!" And, as we sat, we planned
out each day, so as to miss nothing, and lose nothing--either of time
or strength: doing enough, but never too much--as is often the fatal
mistake of tourists. And then, following the grand law of travelling,
to have one's "meals reg'lar"--we went indoors and dined. Afterwards in
honour of the day
"that comes between
The Saturday and Monday,"
we dressed ourselves in all our best--very humble best it was!--to join
the good people going to church at Landewednack.
This, which in ancient Cornish means "the white-roofed church of St.
Wednack"--hagiologists must decide who that individual was!--is the
name of the parish to which the comparatively modern Lizard Town
belongs. The church is in a very picturesque corner, close to the sea,
though both it and the rectory are protected by a sudden dip in the
ground, so that you see neither till you are close upon them. A fine
Norman doorway, a curious hagioscope, and other points, interesting to
archaeologists--also the neatest and prettiest of churchyards--make
note-worthy this, the most southerly church in England. A fine old
building, not spoiled though "restored." The modern open pews, and a
modern memorial pulpit of serpentine, jarred less than might have been
expected with the carefully-preserved remains of the past.
In Landewednack church is said to have been preached the last sermon in
Cornish. This was in 1678. Since, the ancient tongue has completely
died out, and the people of King Arthur's country have become wholly
English.
Still, they are not the English of the midland and northern districts,
but of a very different type and race. I have heard it said that a
seaboard population, accustomed to wrestle with the dangers of the
coast, to move about from place to place, see foreign countries, and
carry on its business in the deep waters, is always more capable, more
intelligent, as a whole, than an inland people, whether agricultural
or manufacturing. It may be so: but certainly the aborigines of
Lizard Town, who could easily be distinguished from the visitors--of
whom there was yet a tolerable sprinkling--made a very interesting
congregation; orderly, respectable, reverent; simple in dress and
manner, yet many of them, both the men and women, exceedingly
picturesque. That is, the old men and the old women: the younger ones
aped modern fashion even here, in this out-of-the-way corner, and
consequently did not look half so well as their seniors.
I must name one more member of the congregation--a large black dog,
who walked in and settled himself in the pew behind, where he behaved
during half the service in an exemplary manner, worthy of the Highland
shepherds' dogs, who always come to church with their masters, and
conduct themselves with equal decorum.
There is always a certain pathos in going in to worship in a strange
church, with a strange congregation, of whom you are as ignorant as
they of you. In the intervals of kneeling with them as "miserable
sinners," one finds oneself speculating upon them, their possible
faults and virtues, joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, watching the
unknown faces, and trying to read thereon the records of a common
humanity. A silent homily, better perhaps than most sermons.
Not that there was aught to complain of in the sermon, and the singing
was especially good. Many a London choir might have taken a lesson from
this village church at the far end of Cornwall. When service was over,
we lingered in the pretty and carefully tended churchyard, where the
evening light fell softly upon many curious gravestones, of seafaring
men, and a few of wrecked sailors--only a few, since it is but within
a generation that bodies washed ashore from the deep were allowed to
be buried in consecrated ground; most of them, like the two hundred in
Pistol Meadow, being interred as near as convenient to where they were
found, without any burial rites. Still, in all the churchyards along
this coast are graves with a story. A little corner railed off has an
old and sad one. There lie buried the victims of the plague, which in
1645 devastated the village. No one since has ever ventured to disturb
their resting-place.
Very green and peaceful the churchyard looked: the beautiful day was
dying, beautiful to the last. We stood and watched the congregation
melt slowly away, disappearing down the lane, and then, attracted by
the sound of music, we re-entered the church. There we sat and listened
for another half-hour to the practising of an anthem ready for the
harvest festival, which had been announced for the following Tuesday;
exceedingly well done too, the rector's voice leading it all, with an
energy and enthusiasm that at once accounted for the capital condition
of the choir.
"If this weather will only last!" was our earnest sigh as we walked
home; and anxious not to lose a minute of it, we gave ourselves the
briefest rest, and turned out again, I to watch the sunset from the
cliffs, while the others descended once more to their beloved sea-pools.
"Such anemones, such sea-weed! and scrambling is so delicious! Besides,
sunsets are all alike," added the youthful, practical, and slightly
unpoetical mind.
No, they are not alike. Every one has a mysterious charm of its
own--just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of
sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but
I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of
which I did not see the sunset.
This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the
sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist.
I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other,
anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing
feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. At last I found a
"comfortable" stone, sheltered from the wind, which blew tolerably
fresh, and utterly solitary (as I thought), the intense silence
being such that one could almost hear the cropping of three placid
sheep--evidently well accustomed to sunsets, and thinking them of
little consequence.
There I sat until the last red spark had gone out, quenched in the
Atlantic waters, and from behind the vanished sun sprung a gleam of
absolutely green light, "like a firework out of a rocket," the young
people said; such as I had never seen before, though we saw it once
afterwards. Nature's fireworks they were; and I could see even the two
little black figures moving along the rocks below stand still to watch
them. I watched too, with that sort of lonely delight--the one shadow
upon it being that it is so lonely--with which all one's life one is
accustomed to watch beautiful and vanishing things. Then seeing how
fast the colours were fading and the sky darkening, I rose; but just
took a step or two farther to look over the edge of my stone into the
next dip of the cliff, and there I saw--
[Illustration: HAULING IN THE BOATS--EVENING.]
Actually, two human beings! Lovers, of course. Nothing else would have
sat so long and so silently, for I had been within three yards of them
all the time, and had never discovered them, nor they me. Poor young
things! they did not discover me even yet. They sat, quite absorbed in
one another, hand in hand, looking quietly seaward, their faces bathed
in the rosy sunset--which to them was a sunrise, the sort of sun which
never rises twice in a life-time.
I left them to it. Evidently they did not see me, in fact I just
peered over the rock's edge and drew back again; any slight sound they
probably attributed to the harmless sheep. Well, it was but an equally
harmless old woman, who did not laugh at them, as some might have done,
but smiled and wished them well, as she left them to their sunset, and
turned to face the darkening east, where the sun would rise to-morrow.
The moon was rising there now, and it was a picture to behold. Indeed,
all these Cornish days seemed so full of moonrises and sunsets--and
sunrises too--that it was really inconvenient. Going to bed seemed
almost a sin--as on this night, when, opening our parlour door, which
looked right on to the garden, we saw the whole world lying in a flood
of moonlight peace, the marigolds and carnations leaning cheek to
cheek, as motionless as the two young lovers on the cliff. Who, alas!
must long ago have had their dream broken, for five minutes afterwards
I had met a most respectable fat couple from Lizard Town taking their
Sunday evening stroll, in all their Sunday best, along those very
cliffs. Most painful interruption! But perhaps, the good folks had once
been lovers too.
What a night it was! fit night to such a perfect day. How the stars
shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even
in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of
Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of
waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all
though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of
to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. We passed
from the poetical to the practical, and decided to lay us down and
sleep.
But, in the middle of the night I woke, rose, and looked out of the
window.
What a change! Sea and sky were one blackness, literally as "black as
ink," and melting into one another so that both were undistinguishable.
As for the moon and stars--heaven knows where they had gone to, for
they seemed utterly blotted out. The only light visible was the ghostly
gleam of those two great eyes, the Lizard Lights, stretching far out
into the intense darkness. I never saw such darkness--unbroken even by
the white crest of a wave. And the stillness was like the stillness of
death, with a heavy weight in the air which made me involuntarily go
to sleep again, though with an awed impression of "something going to
happen."
And sure enough in another hour something did happen. I started awake,
feeling as if a volley of artillery had been poured in at my window.
It was the wildest deluge of rain, beating against the panes, and with
it came a wind that howled and shrieked round the house as if all the
demons in Cornwall, Tregeagle himself included, were let loose at once.
Now we understood what a Lizard storm could be. I have seen
Mediterranean storms, sweeping across the Campagna like armed
battalions of avenging angels, pouring out their vials of wrath--rain,
hail, thunder, and lightning--unceasingly for two whole days. I have
been in Highland storms, so furious that one had to sit down in the
middle of the road with one's plaid over one's head, till the worst of
their rage was spent. But I never saw or heard anything more awful than
this Lizard storm, to which I lay and listened till the day began to
dawn.
Then the wind lulled a little, but the rain still fell in torrents,
and the sky and sea were as black as ever. The weather had evidently
broken for good--that is, for evil. Alas! the harvest, and the harvest
festival! And alas--of minor importance, but still some, to us at
least--alas for our holiday in Cornwall! Only four days, and--this!
It was with a heavy heart that, feeling there was not the slightest use
in getting up, I turned round and took another sleep.
DAY THE FIFTH
"Hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst," had been the motto
of our journey. So when we rose to one of the wettest mornings that
ever came out of the sky, there was a certain satisfaction in being
prepared for it.
"We must have a fire, that is certain," was our first decision. This
entailed the abolition of our beautiful decorations--our sea-holly
and ferns; also some anxious looks from our handmaiden. Apparently no
fire, had been lit in this rather despised room for many months--years
perhaps--and the chimney rather resented being used. A few agonised
down-puffs greatly interfered with the comfort of the breakfast table,
and an insane attempt to open the windows made matters worse.
Which was most preferable--to be stifled or deluged? We were just
considering the question, when the chimney took a new and kinder
thought, or the wind took a turn--it seemed to blow alternately from
every quarter, and then from all quarters at once--the smoke went up
straight, the room grew warm and bright, with the cosy peace of the
first fire of the season. Existence became once more endurable, nay,
pleasant.
"We shall survive, spite of the rain!" And we began to laugh over our
lost day which we had meant to begin by bathing in Housel Cove; truly,
just to stand outside the door would give an admirable douche bath in
three minutes. "But how nice it is to be inside, with a roof over our
heads, and no necessity for travelling. Fancy the unfortunate tourists
who have fixed on to-day for visiting the Lizard!" (Charles had told us
that Monday was a favourite day for excursions.) "Fancy anybody being
obliged to go out such weather as this!"
And in our deep pity for our fellow-creatures we forgot to pity
ourselves.
Nor was there much pity needed; we had provided against emergencies,
with a good store of needlework and knitting, anything that would
pack in small compass, also a stock of unquestionably "light"
literature--paper-covered, double-columned, sixpenny volumes, inclosing
an amount of enjoyment which those only can understand who are true
lovers of Walter Scott. We had enough of him to last for a week of wet
days. And we had a one-volume Tennyson, all complete, and a "Morte
d'Arthur"--Sir Thomas Malory's. On this literary provender we felt that
as yet we should not starve.
Also, some little fingers having a trifling turn for art, brought out
triumphantly a colour-box, pencils, and pictures. And the wall-paper
being one of the very ugliest that ever eye beheld, we sought and
obtained permission to adorn it with these, our _chefs-d'[oe]uvre_,
pasted at regular intervals. Where we hope they still remain, for the
edification of succeeding lodgers.
We read the "Idylls of the King" all through, finishing with "The
Passing of Arthur," where the "bold Sir Bedivere" threw Excalibur into
the mere--which is supposed to be Dozmare Pool. Here King Arthur's
faithful lover was so melted--for the hundredth time--by the pathos
of the story, and by many old associations, that the younger and
more practical minds grew scornful, and declared that probably King
Arthur had never existed at all--or if he had, was nothing but a rough
barbarian, unlike even the hero of Sir Thomas Malory, and far more
unlike the noble modern gentleman of Tennyson's verse. Maybe: and yet,
seeing that
"'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all,"
may it not be better to have believed in an impossible ideal man, than
to accept contentedly a low ideal, and worship blindly the worldly, the
mean, or the base?
This topic furnished matter for so much hot argument, that, besides
doing a quantity of needlework, we succeeded in making our one wet day
by no means the least amusing of our seventeen days in Cornwall.
[Illustration: HAULING IN THE LINES.]
Hour after hour we watched the rain--an even down-pour. In the midst
of it we heard a rumour that Charles had been seen about the town, and
soon after he appeared at the door, hat in hand, soaked but smiling,
to inquire for and sympathise with his ladies. Yes, he _had_ brought a
party to the Lizard that day!--unfortunate souls (or bodies), for there
could not have been a dry thread left on them! We gathered closer round
our cosy fire; ate our simple dinner with keen enjoyment, and agreed
that after all we had much to be thankful for.