The wind was fair, the ocean calm:--
And ‘Captain Cook,’ he knows his book,
His wife’s and sister’s hearts are warm.”
[Illustration: THE “JOLLY SAILOR.”]
But “Captain” Cook did not know his book sufficiently well to know that
he had entertained a minor poet unawares. In the Visitors’ Book is the
signature of Mr. Edmund Gosse, and the landlord had no recollection of
him, although his visit had been, as another poet (_minimis!_) sings,
“only a year ago.”
“The ‘Captain’s’ wife and sister too
Will do their best to make your lip
So much enjoy your food[9] that you
Again will take another trip
In that most comfortable ‘Ship.’”
Fragment:--
“At Looe again: This makes my Trinity
Of visits here; that is, they number Three.
Despite storms, wrecks, and stress of life
I anchor here, away from strife
For briefest stay.”...
LIV.
We left Looe in the late afternoon, and toiled up the steep and
stony hill that begins to ascend directly after the “Jolly Sailor”
is passed. Atop of this hill we immediately and perversely lost our
way, and the remainder of the afternoon was spent in plunging through
“town-places”[10] and fields, and climbing over Cornish hedges, until
we reached the church of Talland, nestling under the lee of the hills
that run down precipitously to Talland Bay. Talland Church is peculiar
in having its tower set apart from the main building, and connected
with it only by an archway. But its peculiarities do not end here, for
the place is very much of a museum of antiquities, and epitaphs of an
absurdly quaint character abound. I am afraid Talland Church echoed
with our laughter, more than was seemly, on this diverting afternoon.
Here is an example:--
“In Memory of
HUGH FOWLER Who Departed this
Life the 10^{th} day of August.
In y^e year 1771. Aged 50 years Old.
Afflictions Sore Long time I’ve Bore
Physitions ware in Vain
Till God was Pleased Death should me seise
And Ease me of my Pain
Welcome Sweet Day of Rest
I am Content to ‘Die
My Soul forsakes her vain Delight
And bids the World farewel;
Mourn not for me my Wife an Child so Dear
I am not Dead but sleeping hear,
Farewel Vain world Ive seen Enough of thee
And now I am carles what thou says of me
Thy smiles I Court not nor thy frowns I fear
My Glass is Run my Head Lays kuiet here
What Faults you seen in me take care to shun
And Luck at home Enough there’s to be don.
_Also_ with thin lie the remains
of Elizabeth his Wife who Died
the 6 day of April 1789 Aged 69
Years.”
[Illustration: SEAL OF WEST LOOE.]
Pursy cherubs of oleaginous appearance, and middle-aged double-chinned
angels wearing pyjamas, decorate, with weirdly humorous aspect, the
ledger-stone on which this crazy-patchwork epitaph is engraved, and
grin upon you from the pavement with the half-obliterated grins of a
century and more. One of them is pointing with his claw to an object
somewhat resembling a crumpled dress-tie, set up on end, probably
intended for an hour-glass. Here are some of these devices, reproduced
exactly, neither extenuated nor with aught of exaggeration.
[Illustration: Talland Cherubs]
The low and roomy building, in places green with damp, is paved with
mutilated ledger-stones, whose fragments have long ago suffered what
seems to be an abiding divorce, so that disjointed invocations, and
sacred names, and gruesome injunctions to “Prepare for Death,” start
into being as you pace the floor. Here, too, more than in any other
place, do people seem moved to verse in commemorating their departed
friends, not infrequently casting their elegies in the first person,
so that the dead of Talland appear to a casual observer to be the most
conceited and egotistical of corpses. Of this type, the following
epitaph is perhaps the most striking:--
“ERECTED
to the memory of
ROBERT MARK;
late of Polperro, who Unfortunately
was _shot at Sea_ the 24^{th} day of Jan^y
in the Year of our LORD GOD
1802, in the 40^{th} Year of His AGE.
In prime of Life most suddenly,
Sad tidings to relate;
Here view My utter destiny,
And pity My sad state:
I by a shot, which Rapid flew,
Was instantly struck dead;
LORD pardon the Offender who,
My precious blood did shed.
Grant Him to rest and forgive Me,
All I have done amiss;
And that I may Rewarded be,
With Euerlasting Bliss.”
Now, this Robert Mark was a smuggler. He was at the helm of a boat
which had been obliged to run before a revenue cutter, and the boat was
at the point of escaping when the cutters crew opened fire, killing him
on the spot.
But the most curious of all the epitaphs within the church of Talland
is that engraved on the monument to “John Bevyll of Kyllygath.” The
monument is an imposing edifice of slate, in the south aisle, with a
figure of John Bevyll, habited in a curious Elizabethan costume, carved
in somewhat high relief on top. The verses are the more curious, in
that they employ archaic heraldic terms, now little known. They set out
by describing the Bevyll arms, “A Rubye Bull in Perle Filde”--that is
to say, in modern heraldry, a _Bull gules in a field argent_:--
“A Rubye Bull in Perle Filde;
doth shewe by strength & hew
A youth full wight yet chast & cleane
to wedded feere moste trew.
From diamonde Beare in Perle plot
aleevinge he achived
By stronge and stedfast constancy
in chastnes still conciued.
To make all vp a mach he made
with natiue Millets plaste
In natiue seate, so nature hath
the former vertues graste
His Prince he serud in good regard
twyce Shereeve and so iust
That iustlye still on Justice seate
Three princes him did trust.
Suche was his lyfe and suche his death,
whos corps full low doth lye.
Whilste Soule by Christe to happy state
with hym doth rest on hye.
Learne by his life suche life to leade,
his death let platform bee.
In life to shun the caufe of death,
that Christe maye leeve in thee.”
“John Bevyll lyued yeares threscore three & then did yealde to dye
He dyd bequeath his soule to God, his corps herein to lye.”
Below are very circumstantial accounts of the marriages and
intermarryings of the Bevyll family, and on the old bench ends of the
church their arms are displayed with countless quarterings.
The growing dimness in the church warned us of departing day, and so
we went out into the churchyard, glancing as we passed at the many
mournful inscriptions to sailors and fishermen drowned at sea.
Among the old stones the following epitaph attracted our attention; it
is a gem of grotesqueness.
“Lament not for we our Mother So Dear no more in Vain
If you have Lost ’tis we have Gain, we are gone to See----
Our Deariest Friends that Dweell Above them will we go an see
And all our Friends that Dweell in Christ below
Will soon Come after we.”
Talland is a wild and lonely spot even in these crowded days: a hundred
years ago, it was a place to be shunned by reason of devils, wraiths,
and fearful apparitions, that (according to the country folk) haunted
the neighbourhood. But these tricksy sprites found their match in
the vicar of Talland for the time being, a noted devil-queller, and
layer of gnomes, known far and wide as Parson Dodge, a cleric who
never failed to exorcise the most malignant of demons; a clergyman
before whom Satanus himself, to say nothing of his troops of fearful
wild-fowl, was popularly believed to tremble and flee discomfited. Not
only did Parson Dodge attend to the evil spirits of his own parish,
he was constantly in requisition throughout the county, and, so
workmanlike were his methods, I don’t believe there is an active devil
of any importance in Cornwall at this day.
The vicarage was a spot to be approached with fear o’ nights, for it
was reputed to be the resort of the parson’s familiars, who assembled
there to do his bidding, and the place to which came baffled and
unwilling imps to be finally exorcised. Whatever truth there may have
been in these things, there can be little doubt, I fear, that Talland
was the scene of many successful “runs” by smugglers, in which Parson
Dodge took no inactive part. Supernatural spirits, it may shrewdly be
surmised, were not the only ones in which that redoubtable minister was
interested.
LV.
Our map made the road from here to Polperro look like two miles;
imagine our joy therefore when, after climbing the steepest hill we
have seen in these parts, and after walking about a mile, we became
aware of the imminence of that fishing village (or, as Jonathan Couch
would have said--town) by seeing the blue smoke from its unseen houses
rising in a clearly defined bank from an abyssmal ravine into the
calmness of the evening air. “This,” said the Wreck, “must be--the
devil.” This emphatic and earnest ending to his sentence had no
reference to Polperro, I hasten to add, except in so far as it was
occasioned by Polperro stones, one of which had turned my luckless
companion’s ankle almost to spraining point. After this we proceeded
cautiously, for not only were stones large and loose withal, but they
were plentiful as well, and the descending lane was of a preposterous
steepness.
Country folks gave us good night as we passed them, and several
women-artists we overtook, going home after the day’s daubing; then we
ended our descent.
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.
[Illustration: AN OLD SHOP, POLPERRO.]
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.
[Illustration: LANTEGLOS-JUXTA-FOWEY.]
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.