pulses thrill, ’tis Plymouth. The majesty of England is no mere phrase
to them that have seen the clanging dockyards, the arsenals, the
floating strongholds, the encircling chain of forts that render the
three towns of Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse a microcosm of the
empire’s strength. Military--the red coats, the tunics black and green
of rifle regiments, the sound of the bugle, instant and commanding,
are everywhere. Naval--no more slacks-hitching, timber-shivering towns
exist than these.
[Illustration: DRAKE’S STATUE.]
We conceived the idea of making Saltash our headquarters for a few
days, and of making daily excursions from it to explore Plymouth. So,
when we had made this preliminary survey, we reclaimed our knapsacks
and made our way through Plymouth and Stonehouse, on top of a jingling
tramcar, to North Corner, Devonport, whence small steam-launches ply
every hour for Saltash.
The estuary of the Tamar runs here, deep and broad, dividing the
counties of Devon and Cornwall. From here to Saltash (three miles) it
is known as the Hamoaze.
It was getting dusky before our launch appeared, and the Cornish shore,
where lay the modern town of Torpoint, was become a great grey bank,
featureless in the twilight. Great ships lay anchored in the fairway:
the transports _Hindostan_ and _Himalaya_, white painted and beautiful,
and several hideous battle-ships, of the latest type, black, and lying
low in the water. We could hear the ships’ bells strike the hour in
that curious nautical fashion which I, for one, do not understand. To a
landsman it was seven o’clock; on board it was “six bells.” Presently
lights were hung out aloft, and the ports began to throw gleams upon
the hurrying tide. Sheer hulks, lying up river at their last moorings,
cast no responsive ray, but, wrapped in darkness, fretted at their
buoys and chains, as they have done for long, with every tide. Some one
afloat sang the “Larboard Watch,” ashore a bugle sounded; night fell,
the stars came out; the name of England, her might and majesty, the
glory and the terror of her, filled our hearts too full for words.
Presently the launch came alongside the landing-stage and we went
aboard. The voyage was chill with evening winds blowing down the
valley of the Tamar. We passed a silent fleet of Tartarean looking
torpedo-boats, moored, silent and deserted, in a long line, with great
white numbers painted on their bows, and towering war-ships, with
tall masts and heavy spars, and armoured sides--a type just becoming
obsolete, or already become so, we move so fast nowadays.
We ran past hulks, scarlet painted, with stores of gunpowder and
gun-cotton aboard; past the Government powder wharf; then to the
landing at Bull Point, and soon to Saltash pontoon. We came off the
steamer into Saltash streets. Giant piers of Saltash Bridge loomed
impressively overhead, and cottages beneath crouched humbly in crowded
ways. A piano-organ was discussing interminable strings of curly chords
and flourishes, to whose din children were dancing by the light of a
waterside public. The sights and sounds effectually vulgarised time and
place. We thought, as we toiled up the steep street, that Saltash was
an abominable hole, and wished ourselves anywhere else.
Calling at the post-office for letters lying there for us, we chanced
to hear of good rooms; so, with only the trouble of walking to the
last house but one in the town, we were speedily suited with a
resting-place.
XLIX.
Now were we in Cornwall, the land of fairies and piskies, and
of prodigious saints and devils; the land of “once upon a
time”--delightful period of twilight vagueness. According to John
Taylor, who wrote in 1649--
“_Cornewall_ is the _Cornucopia_, the compleate and repleate
Horne of Abundance for high churlish Hills, and affable courteous
people; they are loving to requite a kindnesse, placable to remit
a wrong, and hardy to retort injuries; the Countrey hath its share
of huge stones, mighty Rocks, noble, free, Gentlemen, bountifull
housekeepers, strong, and stout men, handsome, beautifull women,
and (for any that I know) there is not one _Cornish_ Cuckold to be
found in the whole County. In briefe they are in most plentifull
manner happy in the abundance of right and left hand blessings.”
We supped, and read our correspondence, and despatched replies, and so
to rest in the sweetest smelling of sheets and the downiest of beds, in
bedrooms overlooking at a distance the Three Towns, the walls covered
with texts and coloured prints representative of the domestic virtues.
In the morning Saltash wore another aspect, and we rather congratulated
ourselves upon our choice. From our windows we saw the Hamoaze, the
twin-towers of Keyham Yard, and the ships of the navy at anchor,
among them the _Gorgon_, which the irreverent in these parts call the
_Gorgonzola_, one of those turreted battle-ships whose shape and form
can be closely imitated by taking a canoe and placing a portmanteau
amidships of it, with a drain-pipe at top of that, and a walking-stick
by way of mast--an unlovely type of vessel.
We were attracted, in the first instance, this morning, to Saint
Budeaux, across the river from Saltash; but its singularity of
nomenclature proved to be its only striking feature. The place is
now becoming a Plymouth suburb, of healthy condition and prosaic
appearance, encircled by military roads and forts, with scarps and
counterscarps, ravelins and guns, and ↑ War Office marks everywhere.
Sir Francis Drake was married in its church, and that, I think, is
Saint Budeaux’s only noteworthy incident.
We walked into Plymouth from here, and were thoroughly tired before
we reached its streets: distances round Plymouth are deceptive to
strangers.
At every turn on the way there were evidences of the sea, either
in creeks, where the salt mud lay drying until the next tide, or
in distant masts and rigging seen over the house-tops of the town.
Town, did I say? Nay, not one, but three towns, for are not Plymouth,
Devonport, and Stonehouse coterminous, and famed in song and story as
the “Three Towns” in all the distinction that comes of capital letters?
Yet why not four towns? Why should not Stoke Damerel--that name
with the look and sound of some new and dreadful composite form of
swearing--why should not Stoke Damerel, of ancient name, be accounted
a fourth town? It is big enough, and certainly respectable enough,
despite its name, which, locally, is Stoke, _tout court_.
But in the growth of new districts here, how comes it that Ford is
not a fifth town, nor Morice Town a sixth? These things are not for
solution. Let us hie upon the Hoe again, and, by that disestablished
tower of Smeaton’s, strain our eyes toward the newer lighthouse
anchored on its reef far out to sea.
It is needful to get all the breeze you can before setting out upon
any pilgrimage through the Three Towns; for, truly, slums are not
peculiar to London. Coming westward, over Laira Bridge, and so through
to Torpoint Ferry, they are plenty and noisome; explore the Citadel and
the scaly, fishy purlieus of the Barbican; but leave, oh! leave those
slums to stew undisturbed.
[Illustration: SALTASH STATION.]
Better is it to voyage across the Sound to the loveliness and fresh
air and altogether sub-tropical domain of Mount Edgcumbe, whence
this trinity of towns may be seen stretched out like a plan, with
the Hamoaze, the many creeks and pools and inlets running in every
direction.
The beauty of Plymouth’s site is, indeed, undeniable, whosoever may
disparage it; nor may the splendour of its admirably centralised
public buildings be gainsaid. Plymouth Guildhall is one of the most
magnificent of modern buildings in the west--Gothic, good in design
and execution; its windows, filled with stained glass, representing
celebrated scenes in local history, from ancient days until that year
in the ’70’s, when the Prince of Wales opened this building. This
last event is duly shown in gorgeously tinted glass, but the Prince’s
frock-coat is scarcely beautiful nor his silk hat an ideally fit
subject for treatment in a stained-glass window. Let us laugh!
L.
This morning we rambled down to Antony Passage, on the Lynher River,
and hailed the ferryman to put us across to Antony Park, on the
opposite shore. The Norman keep of Trematon Castle looks down from the
Saltash side on to a mud-creek spanned at its junction with the broad
Lynher by one of Brunel’s old wooden railway viaducts, its sturdy
timbers stalking across the ooze with curious effect.
Landed on the opposite shore, we walked through the beautifully wooded
park, passing Antony House, the seat of the Carews since the fifteenth
century. The house was rebuilt in 1721, but contains a fine collection
of old masters, among them a portrait of Richard Carew, who died in
1620.
Richard Carew, of Antony, was the author of the well-known “Survey of
Cornwall,” published in 1602. In the original edition the work is one
of great charm of manner, and the interspersed songs by the author are
instinct with grace and nicety of epithet. In a very much later edition
the editor has taken upon himself to modernise Carew’s orthography with
sorry results to his engaging style.
Not readily could one gather verses of such delightful conceits as
these, upon the Lynher River:--
_ITEM._
“When Sunne the earth least shadow spares,
And highest stalles in heauen his seat,
Then _Lyners_ peeble bones he bares,
Who like a lambe, doth lowly bleat,
And faintly sliding euery rock,
Plucks from his foamy fleece a lock.
“Before, a riuer, now a rill,
Before, a fence, now scarce a bound:
Children him ouer-leape at will,
Small beasts, his deepest bottome sound.
The heauens with brasse enarch his head,
And earth, of yron makes his bed.
“But when the milder-mooded skie,
His face in mourning weedes doth wrap,
For absence of his clearest die,
And drops teares in his Centers lap,
_Lyner_ gynnes Lyonlike to roare,
And scornes old bankes should bound him more.
“Then, Second Sea, he rolles, and bear’s,
Rockes in his wombe, rickes on his backe,
Downe-borne bridges, vptorne wear’s,
Witnesse, and wayle, his force, their wracke,
Into mens houses fierce he breakes,
And on each stop, his rage he wreakes.
“Shepheard adiew’s his swymming flocke,
The Hinde his whelmed haruest hope,
The strongest rampire fear’s his shocke,
Plaines scarce can serue to giue him scope,
Nor hils a barre; whereso he stray’th,
Ensue, losse, terrour, ruine, death.”
And these verses show us the manner of the man:--
“I Wayt not at the Lawyers gates,
Ne shoulder clymers downe the stayres;
I vaunt not manhood by debates,
I enuy not the miser’s feares;
But meane in state, and calme in sprite,
My fishfull pond is my delight.
“Where equall distant Hand viewes
His forced banks, and Otters cage:
Where salt and fresh the poole renues,
As spring and drowth encrease or swage:
Where boat presents his seruice prest,
And well becomes the fishes nest;
“There sucking Millet, swallowing Basse,
Side-walking Crab, wry-mouthed Flooke,
And slip-fist Eele, as euenings passe,
For safe bayt at due place doe looke:
Bold to approche, quick to espy,
Greedy to catch, ready to fly.
“In heat the top, in cold the deepe,
In springe the mouth, the mids in neap;
With changelesse change by shoales they keepe,
Fat, fruitfull, ready, but not cheap;
Thus meane in state, and calme in sprite,
My fishfull pond is my delight.”
Antony village is considerably more than a mile distant from the park.
It stands picturesquely on the road to Liskeard, on rising ground,
entered past a communal tree, encircled with seats, after a good old
fashion that seems nowadays but rarely perpetuated.
In the little street of Antony is a library of the most rudimentary
type, a little reading-room supported by small subscriptions, and
supplied with a few weekly and daily newspapers. We turned the
door-handle and walked into this room of 10 × 7 feet; but, alas! there
instantly came across the road a woman in whom (evidently) was invested
the care of the place, who informed us that this was not a public
reading-room, and who held the door open in the most suggestive way. We
went.
“I’m sorry,” observed the Wreck upon going, “that we have intruded: I
hope we have not injured your shanty.”
“No harm done,” replied the janitress, who was plainly acting upon a
painful sense of duty. We adjourned to the church, and after ascending
the many steps leading to it, sat down to argue the matter in the porch.
“See,” said the Wreck bitterly, “how despitefully one is used when
tramping about on a walking-tour and carrying these abominable things,”
and he unstrapped his knapsack with a vicious tug. “That woman ... took
us for tramps, and that sort of thing hurts one’s _amour propre_.”
“Very correct estimate, too,” said I, flicking the dust off my
boots with my handkerchief, “and one unlikely to tax her powers of
discernment to an inconvenient extent.”
“’Been swallowing a dictionary lately?” inquired the Wreck with biting
sarcasm.
“No, Ollendorff, that is not my method.” And then relations became
strained.
LI.
So it fell out that I explored Antony church alone. A fair specimen
this of Perpendicular architecture, crowded with monuments to the
Carews of Antony, among them, one to the memory of the author of the
“Survey of Cornwall.” Part of the inscription in Latin is by his friend
Camden; the English verses are his own.
“The verses following were written by Richard Carew of Antony Esq.
immediately before his death (which happened the Sixth of November
1620) as he was at his private prayers in his Study (his daily
practice) at fower in the afternoon and being found in his Pocket
were presented by his Grandsonne S^r Alexander Carew, according to
whose desire they are here set up.
In Memory of him.
“Full thirteen fiues of years I toyling haue o’repast
And in the fowerteenth weary, entred am at last
While Rocks, Sands, Stormes & leaks, to take my bark away
By greif, troubles, sorrows, sickness, did essay
And yet arriv’d I am not at the port of death,
The port to euerlasting Life that openeth,
My time uncertain Lord, long certain cannot be
What’s best, to mee’s unknown; & only known to thee.
O by repentance & amendment grant that I
May still liue in thy fear & in thy favour dye.”
There remains in the chancel a handsome perpendicular brass for the
foundress of this church:
“Margeria Arundell quonda dna de Est
Anton filia Warini Erchedeken militis.”
A tablet on the wall of the south aisle, to Admiral Thomas Graves, of
Thanckes, and his wife, recites the lady’s relationship of first cousin
to “Mr. Addison.” It is quite refreshing to find the connection with
literature so proudly displayed: I don’t know, though, how much of this
recognition is due to the fame of Addison’s matrimonial alliance with
the Countess of Warwick. This thought, my literary friends, should give
us pause.
On the high ground near Antony are two huge modern forts, one
commanding the Lynher River, the other, looking over to seaward,
defending the western approaches to Plymouth Sound. Screasdon and
Tregantle Forts mount between them over 200 guns.
We reached the sea again at Downderry, passing to it through a
dishevelled village called Crafthole, where we saw our first Cornish
cross. Downderry is a small and very modern settlement of seaside
lodging-houses, set down amidst wild and lonely scenery beside the
treacherous sands of Whitesand Bay, in which many bathers have been
engulfed.
To come suddenly upon the lath-and-plaster crudities of Downderry in
midst of such scenery as this is to experience a cruel shock.
Downderry need detain no one.
From here it is a long, rough, and lonely walk to Looe, beside the sea;
now upon lofty cliffs, and again in deep valleys opening direct from
the water, with sandy shores and rocky rivulets running down from the
moorlands with laughing ripples and gushing cascades, all solitary and
peaceful. We halted in one of these remotenesses.
LII.
It was a beautiful valley. A little stream came tinkling down it from
the impressive moors beyond, and its course was made romantic by many
and huge and lichen-stained rocks; and a grey mill stood by it, with a
great wheel slowly turning, and covered with aqueous growths, hanging
and green, and bulged out dropsically, from whose pendant ends dropped
continually crystal-clear beads of water.
We unstrapped our knapsacks, and sat down upon the grass, and basked in
the sun a while. Then we essayed to cross the stepping-stones with the
knapsacks in our hands; but, finding this something of an undertaking,
we pitched them gently on the opposite bank.
But that bank was sloping, covered with short smooth grass, and
treacherous, so that both those knapsacks rolled back, and plunged into
the water and sank, sending up a succession of air-bubbles.
I am a truthful historian (between _these_ two covers, at any rate),
and write nothing but the truth; but I do not conceive myself to be
under the painful necessity of setting down the whole of it here,
therefore I refrain from printing the remarks with which we greeted
this disaster. In the language of the lady-novelist--“suffice it to
say” that those remarks were equal to such an occasion.
The salvage of those knapsacks was a matter of little difficulty; not
so the drying of their contents. We unpacked them, and spread them out
in the sunshine, and anchored the linen to the grass with big stones,
and chased the vagrant handkerchiefs, blown down the valley by the
wind. Then, when all things were securely laid out to dry, and the
neighbourhood began to look like a suburban garden on washing-day, we
began to find time hang heavily.
So--let me confess the childishness of it--we began the building of
a dam across the stream, with rocks for foundation, then a layer of
turves, then smaller pieces of granite, and, on top of these, bracken,
more turf, and rocks again. Once or twice, when the water on the upper
side of the dam had swelled, great breaches were made in it; but
at last we completed a wall so thick, substantial, and impervious,
contrived with such cunning alternations of material, that it afforded
quite a substantial foothold to us builders, and on its lower side the
bed of the stream became quite dry.
And ever, as the water from above rose and began to tip this creation
of ours, we added more courses to it, so that the reservoir above
became deep indeed, and the water began to invade the upper banks of
the stream.
I cannot hope to communicate to you the peculiar pleasure we took
in this, nor to give you an idea of the frantic haste with which
we grubbed up more turf and piled on more boulders. We achieved an
extraordinary enthusiasm in doing these things.
But time wore on: the Wreck was bending over our joint architecture,
putting (I think) an ornamental cornice on it by way of finishing
touch, when he fell off with a great splash and a shower of stones into
about three and a half feet of water, and lay grovelling there, full
length, while the dam burst apart like the opening of folding-doors,
and left him, in quicker time than I can write it, stranded,
but--no!--not dry.
Rarely have I laughed so long and so helplessly.
We reached Looe toward tea-time, as the melodious crash and tinkle of
tea “things” from the open doors of outlying cottages informed us.
Looe lay below us, precipitous, lovely, in a golden haze. Looe was
welcome, for the rocky walking of the afternoon had developed blisters.
Below, directly in our path, lay an inn with a sign bespeaking “warmest
welcome,” to quote from Shenstone. It was the “Salutation.” But the
reception, though polite enough, belied the sign. The “missis” was out,
said the landlord; he could not get us tea.
Then we had to seek elsewhere, finally to find tea and a haven for the
night at the “Ship.”
LIII.
Looe is a little place, yet it hums with life quite as loudly, in
proportion, as any hive. Carts, all innocent of springs, rattle
thunderously up and down its steep and narrow streets and lanes; the
voices of them that cry pilchards are heard continually; the noise
of the quays and the roar of the waves, the chiming of the Guildhall
clock, and the blundering of sea-boots upon cobble-stones, help to
swell the noise of as noisy a town for its size as you shall find.
There is always, too, the shouting and yeo-ho-ing of the seamen in
the harbour, and the tinkle of windlasses echoes all day across Looe
River, mingled with the screaming of the sea-gulls in the bay.
As Looe River runs toward the sea, the valley narrows until, in its
last hundred yards, it becomes a narrow gorge, with rugged rocks and
precipitous hills on either side, and as you stand facing the sea,
but a few yards from the diminutive beach, you are in receipt of an
effect theatrical in its romantic exaggeration, and instantly your
mind is filled with vague visions of the highly coloured nautical
scenes long peculiar to the Transpontine Drama, now sacred to the
memory of G. P. R. James and T. P. Cooke. The proper complement of this
stage-like piece of foreshore would be, you feel certain, a row of
footlights, and the eye wanders right and left for the wings, whence
should come the virtuous sailor, the Dick Dauntless of the piece, with
his Union Jack, pigtail, quid, and hornpipe, all complete; with straw
hat, blue jacket, brass-buttoned, and trousers of spotless white; his
whiskers curled in ringlets, and his mouth full of plug tobacco and
sentiments of the most courageous virtue. He should come on, furiously
hitching his slacks as he rolls, rather than walks, upon the boards,
waving his Union Jack and brandishing a cutlass--though, how he is to
do all this at once with only two hands is more than I can tell you.
[Illustration: _Detail of balusters._
GUILDHALL, EAST LOOE, AND BOROUGH SEAL.]
You scan the offing for the piratical-looking craft, which, to be in
keeping, _should_ be tacking outside the harbour--but isn’t--murmuring
to yourself softly the while, “once aboard the lugger;” and your
reflections are brought back smartly to everyday matters by the
suggestion of a (comparatively) prosaic fisherman that it is a “fine
day for a sail.” You look upon the rolling deep, and with misgivings
turn sadly away in the direction of the Ship Hotel.
[Illustration: “COMPARATIVELY PROSAIC FISHERMAN.”]
At the “Ship” were many visitors, so for one night we had to lodge
out, at the house of a dour, dreary-looking bootmaker. We breakfasted,
though, at the hotel, and arrived there in time to find one of the
guests conning the sketch-book I had left by misadventure in the
coffee-room overnight. The man was all apology and nervousness,
and upset a cup of tea over sketch-book and table-cloth. Then he
retired confusedly to a couch at the other end of the room, where he
immediately sat down on my hat. After this he went out, and probably
did some more damage on the cumulative principle.
There are several morals to this pathetic episode, of which undoubtedly
the most striking is, “Don’t leave your hat on the sofa.”
They have a visitors’ book at the “Ship,” from which I have culled some
examples. The visitors’ book at an hotel is ever my first quest. Its
contents, though, are mostly sorry stuff: praises of food supplied, and
the moderation of the charges--forms of eulogy particularly distasteful
to myself. But let us to our Looe versicles:--
“Dear Friend, be warned ere first you visit Looe;
Its charms are many and its drawbacks few,
Lest home and duties all alike forsook,
You fall beneath the charms of Host and Hostess Cook;
The fare is sweet, the charges just and low
(I’ve travelled much, so surely ought to know,
’Neath Syren’s rocks I’ve heard the eddying Rhine,
In Bingen’s bowers drunk the native wine,
On Baltic’s wave have watched the setting sun,
In France’s fields have met the peaceful nun,
In Wales have wandered by the trout-streamed hill,
On Scotland’s highlands paid the longest bill)
Our host is not a lawyer, yet his conveyance cheap
Will bear you to Polperro, from thence to Fowey steep,
From threatening Cheesewing gaze on oceans twain,
At night at billiards try a _coup de main_,[8]
But yet, I’m sure, as day still follows day
’Twill find you anxious more and more to stay,
Delighted, charmed, with lotus-eating mind,
List! Menheniot’s horn and you are left behind!”
Another:--
“At East Looe, R.S.O., you’ll find
A ‘Ship’ in which you’ll make your home;
’Tis safely anchor’d near the shore
Above the angry billows’ foam.
* * * * *