which is also the junction for the North Cornwall lines and for the
short branch to Fowey. Imagine a small, accurately semicircular bay,
with a sparse fringe of mean whitewashed cottages abutting upon sands,
partly overgrown with bents, the sea-poppy, and coarse grass. Add to
these a long jetty, a thick cluster of small brigs, a smelting works,
with monumentally tall chimney-stack, and in the background, the
railway and green hillsides, and you have Par. For the life of the
place, add some rumbling carts and waggons, filled with china-clay,
rattling their way down to the jetty with their drivers; some three or
four whitewashed-looking men, lounging and drinking at the “Welcome
Home” Inn; the whistle and noise of an occasional train; a housewife
hanging clothes out to dry in a garden, and there you have the full
tide of existence at this Cornish seaport toward mid-day. To these
incidents were added, when we passed by, a diverting contest in the
roadway between a cat and a valorous rooster, their bone of contention,
a bone, literally as well as metaphorically. But the cat, having seized
the prize at last, vanished with it round a corner, like a streak of
lightning, the cockerel after him, and all was quiet again. It will
show the quietness of Par when I say that no one but ourselves was
attracted by this singular tourney.
The tide was out when we reached Par, and we saw how, when the ebb is
at its lowest here, the flat sands stretch an unconscionable distance.
The derelict seaweed, wetted by the rain and drying in the moist heat
of the day, gave out a very full-flavoured, maritime odour, and “smelt
so Par,” if one may be allowed to thus irreverently parody the Prince
of Denmark’s disgust with Yorick’s skull. It is confidently believed
that the present writer is the first to discover this Shakespearian
interest connected with Par.
LVIII.
Close by, at Castledour, corrupted to Castle Door in these days,
stands a tall granite post, inscribed with some half-obliterated Roman
inscription. An old Cornish historian tells, in quaint language, of an
adventure which befell here.
“In a high way neere this toune (says Carew) there lieth a big and
long moore stone, containing the remainder of certaine ingraued
letters, purporting some memorable antiquity, as it should seeme,
but past ability of reading.
“Not many yeres sithence, a Gentleman, dwelling not farre off,
was perswaded, by some information, or imagination, that treasure
lay hidden vnder this stone: wherefore, in a faire Moone-shine
night, thither with certaine good fellowes hee hyeth to dig it vp:
a working they fall, their labour shortneth, their hope increaseth,
a pot of Gold is the least of their expectation. But see the
chance. In midst of their toyling, the skie gathereth clouds, the
Moone-light is ouer-cast with darkenesse, doune fals a mightie
showre, vp riseth a blustering tempest, the thunder cracketh,
the lightning flasheth: in conclusion, our money-seekers washed,
instead of loden; or loden with water, in steade of yellow earth,
and more afraid then hurt, are forced to abandon their enterprise,
and seeke shelter of the next house they could get into. Whether
this proceedeth from a naturall accident, or a working of the
diuell, I will not,” says our historian, “vndertake to define. It
may bee, God giueth him such power ouer those, who begin a matter,
vpon covetousnesse to game by extra-ordinarie meanes, and prosecute
it with a wrong, in entring and breaking another mans land, without
his leaue, and direct the end thereof, to the princes defrauding,
whose prerogatiue challengeth these casualties.”
In a wild moorland district like this, the devil, you will see, was
likely to have the credit of anything that might happen. Even to-day,
the countryside round about Par and Saint Austell is hardly less rugged
and lonely than it was in the seventeenth century. Still, we are much
more materialistic nowadays, and such happenings as that just quoted
could scarcely fail of classification under the head of “natural
accidents.”
[Illustration: A CORNISH MOOR.]
But the great mining-field of Saint Austell (“Storsel,” in the local
pronunciation), which begins here, almost deserted to-day, its
engine-houses wrecked, its great heaps of mine refuse bare and gaunt,
has taken on an air of desolation more favourable to uncanny beings
than ever. It is not because the tin and copper have “petered out”
that this once busy stretch of country now wears the air of some
long-deserted mushroom-field of mining industry, sprung up suddenly,
and untimely withered, like the Californian goldfields of pioneer
times. No, the metals are still there, but at such depths and held
in such iron grip of hard-hearted granite, that it would not pay to
win the ore with the machinery available at this time. Meanwhile, the
Cornish miners have mostly emigrated. To-day, if you would see the
Cornishman in full work on his congenial and hereditary employments of
tin and copper mining, you should go either to the Straits Settlements
or to Australia, whence comes the greater part of those metals in these
times.
There, in some Wooloomooloo, or other place of name infinitely
repetitive, you shall, who seek, find him; but in Cornwall his kind
tends to decrease continually.
But round about Par and Saint Austell enough metal remains to keep
some few important mines at work; china-clay, too, is an increasingly
important article of commerce. The streams and rivulets that hereabouts
run down into Saint Austell or Tywardreath Bay are the very tricolours
of water-courses--rust-red with pumpings from the mines, milk-white
from the washings of china-clay, and, unpolluted, reflecting the
heavenly blue of sunny skies.
A long and grimy road leads past Holmbush and Mount Charles to Saint
Austell, all the way rutted with the wheels of heavy waggons, and muddy
from the rains.
I remember that, when we were dining at Fowey, we were told by a
Cornishman with whom we talked that Saint Austell was the richest town
in Cornwall. I do not wish to dispute that statement, for, with that
town’s busy neighbourhood of mines, and, more particularly, china-clay
works, it would seem to be in receipt of a very great deal of commerce.
Waggons, piled up with great lumps of china-clay, are continually
lumbering through its narrow and crooked streets; its shops are many
and well appointed; and, earnest of enterprise and prosperity, Saint
Austell is lighted by electricity, in the streets, and for domestic
use; it was, in fact, a pioneer in the movement for the lighting of
towns by electricity. But, with all these signs of wealth, the town
is not attractive. Saint Austell remains a market-town of gloomy
architecture and cramped thoroughfares, whose foot-pavements, of meagre
proportions, would not suffice for the accommodation of a village.
Yet the people who are seen in these streets are smartly dressed, and
altogether un-provincial in appearance. We saw costumes, not few nor
far between, that rivalled Bond Street or Piccadilly.
I remarked upon this to the Wreck, who, having had his full share of
Saint Austell’s muddy streets, was sarcastically inclined, and observed
that, if it was a swell town in one particular, it was a pity that
particularity did not extend to its pavements, which had, apparently,
shrunk.
[Illustration: Font. Saint Austell.]
We lunched at as well-appointed a restaurant as might have been found
at the West End of London, and then looked through the very fine church
that stands in midst of the town. It contains a very early font,
sculptured in granite, the bowl of it covered with the Early Norman
ideas of owls and griffins, and fearful things that surely never flew
in air, or walked the earth, or swam the sea. The church of Saint
Austell has one of the finest of Cornish church-towers, lofty and
pinnacled, and covered, over the upper stages of it, with much panelled
work, and about the body of it with sculptured emblems of the Passion
and Crucifixion. The hammer and nails, the crown of thorns, the ladder,
are sculptured in groups, together with pierced hands and feet; and so
greatly has the significance of these emblems been lost, that many of
them are popularly supposed to represent miners’ tools.
LIX.
And now it came on to rain with a deadly persistence that would have
daunted us from setting out for Mevagissey had not letters been
awaiting us at the post-office there. We set out at five o’clock in the
afternoon, conveyed by the damp and undignified medium of a carrier’s
cart without a tilt, crowded with country women returning from market,
whose umbrellas sent trickling streams down our necks. Great pools
of rain-water collected in the depressions of the tarpaulin that
covered our knees, and washed furiously about as we were driven along
the steep roads to the coast, so that we mentally prayed either for
shine or Mevagissey. Just as we reached that odorous port, the rain
ceased. We alighted (disembarked, I was about to say) “dem’d moist
unpleasant bodies,” and asked the carrier as to the hotel. He said the
“Ship” was the first hotel in the place, and to that sign we went. The
“hotel” proved to be an inn, and the landlord of it wore an absurd
air of astonishment when we proposed to stay there: he recommended us
to private lodgings. This was scarcely a promising introduction to
Mevagissey. It remotely resembled the reception accorded John Taylor,
the “Water Poet,” on his travels in 1649.
He “trauelled twelue miles to a fisher Towne called _Mevageasie_;
that Towne hath in it two Tauernes, and six Ale-houses, to euery
one of which I went for lodging, and not anyone would harbour me,
then I fought for a Constable to helpe me, but no Constable was
to be found;[11] the people all wondring at me, as if I had been
some strange Beast, or Monster brought out of _Affrica_; at which
most incivill and barbarous useage, I began to be angry, and I
perceiving that no body cared for my anger, I discreetely went
into the house where I first demanded lodging; where the Hoste
being very willing to give me the courteous entertainement of _Iack
Drum_ commanded me very kindely to get me out of dores, for there
was no roome for me to lodge in. I told her that I would honestly
pay for what I tooke, and that if I could not haue a bed, yet I
was sure of a house over my head, and that I would not out till
the morning: with that a young saucy knave told me that if I would
not go out, he would throw me out, at which words my choller grew
high, my indignation hot, and my fury fiery, so that I arose from
a bench, went to my youth, and dared to the combate: whereat the
Hostesse (with feare and trembling) desired me to be quiet, and I
should haue a bed, at which words my wrath was appeased, and my ire
asswaged.
“But straite wayes another storme seemed to appeare for an ancient
Gentleman came suddenly out of another Roome (who had heard all
the former friendly passages,) and hee told mee that I should not
lodge there, for though I had sought and not found a Constable, yet
I should know that I had found a Justice of Peace before I sought
him; and that he would see me safely lodged: I was somewhat amazed
at his words, and answered him, Let him doe his pleasure, for I
submitted my selfe to his disposall.
“To which he replyde, That I should go but halfe a mile with him
to his house, which I did, and there his good Wife and he did
entertayne me courteously, with such fare and lodging as might have
accommodated any Gentleman of more worth and better quality then
one that had been ten times in degree before me: There I stayd
the Saturday, and all the Sunday, where I found more Protestant
Religion in 2 dayes, then I had in 5 yeers before. The Gentlemans
name is Mr. _Iohn Carew_, a Gentleman of noble and ancient descent,
and a worthy Iustice of the Peace in those parts.”
We eventually found very comfortable rooms at a delightful villa-like
house, looking directly on to the sea, beating in upon a rocky shore.
This was the second place in which we touched the fringe of the titled
aristocracy. Our landlady, upon our arrival, proudly showed us the
fragments of an envelope addressed with the name of a Viscount who had
been staying in the house. Eventually we paid a heavier bill than we
should otherwise have done had none but miserable plebeians lodged here
aforetime. We will, in future, be careful to select only the haunts of
the Third Estate.
We don’t (strange to say) seem to hanker after titled folk of any
sort--a curious trait in Britons, who, proverbially, are said to
love lords. Perhaps we are among the proverbial exceptions, and help
thereby to prove the rule. For myself, I hope (and think, indeed) I am
a loyal subject of Her Majesty’s (Hats off, please!); I know, also,
that I have Conservative ideas of an old, not to say a mediæval, type;
but I would not go round the next street corner to catch a glimpse of
the Sovereign, nor any of the Royal Family, for that matter, if they
chanced to be there.
As for other titled personages, from Dukes to Knights Bachelors, down
to that no-account thing, a German prince, with more quarterings to
his “old coat” than square miles of territory to his name, I would
not, for the sake of their titles, take any pleasure in their society.
Can I explain these contradictory things? No, I can’t. I will say,
merely, that no man’s views are indisputably logical, while, as for
women’s--well, there! Once I kept watch, as some social Lubbock, upon
the thoughts and sayings and actions of a Radical by conviction, yet
not by practice, for he owned ground-rents and lent money on mortgages,
and ground the faces of the poor horribly when he had the chance. He
took the _Gutter Percher_ every evening, which proved his Radical bias;
but he would go unconscionable distances under discouraging conditions
to catch a fleeting glimpse of Royal personages. No man so proud as he
when he returned one day, with stuck-out chin and air of importance,
after having his hat-lifting salutation acknowledged in the Park by
a very Great Personage indeed; none so constant in christening his
numerous progeny after members of the Royal Family.
LX.
Mevagissey bears a great resemblance to Polperro. It stands at the
bottom of a deep valley leading out into the sea, and has a little
harbour, built in much the same fashion. When the tide is out and the
harbour dry, the reek of fish-offal is just like that of Polperro, but
(if possible) a trifle stronger and more essential. When the cholera
visited Mevagissey in 1849, the inhabitants fled the place, and
encamped on the hill-tops, the fishermen lying on board their smacks in
Fowey Haven. One wonders how the Fowey folk liked it. Some few years
ago a new granite pier was completed to form a southern arm to the
harbour at Mevagissey. It cost £25,000, and the next storm punched a
great hole in the middle of it, carrying away about half of the entire
structure, and rendering the remainder not only useless but dangerous.
It will cost £30,000 to set all right again.
[Illustration: A NOTE AT GORRAN.]
At mid-day we set off by the coast, making for Veryan. We passed
Porthmellin, a lonely cove, and then the road lay inland to a village
with the Irish-like name of Gorran, a diminutive outlandish place,
with an immense church, and a churchyard where whole generations of
villagers are buried by families, each family to its own particular
plot of ground, as it seemed. Half a mile to the south, in a rocky
bay of the smallest dimensions, is the picturesque and delightful
village of Gorran Haven, a feast of colour, even for Cornwall, so rich
in sapphire seas, golden sands, and brilliantly lichened rocks. The
sands were littered with lobster-pots, and a long row of bronzed and
blue-jerseyed fishermen sat on an interminable bench, and blinked in
the late afternoon sun. We stayed awhile and talked with them. Before
we set off again for Veryan, we asked a fisherman how far it was, for
we had given up all our faith in distances, as measured on our Reduced
Ordnance Map. “Seven mile,” said he, “but you’re not going to walk
there to-night?”
We assured him that such was our intention, and stepped out briskly
along a road that wound in and out, and narrowed and broadened again in
a curious manner, passing lonely little chapels set in the wildest of
wildernesses.
As we came in view of St. Michael Caerhayes, seen afar off from high
ground, we had before us the loveliest of evening effects. The colour
of the sky ranged from deepest blue, through scarlets and flaming
yellows, to a delicate puce. Great and heavy masses of woodland lay
below at the rear of a castellated mansion, whose park-like lands
stretched down to the very verge of a miniature bay, guarded by
headlands of a diminutive cragginess. Between them lay a view of the
open Channel, with the coast-line terminating in the abrupt wall of
Deadman’s Head, and the sunlight struck full upon the water with a
dazzle as of molten gold. We decided that Saint Michael Caerhayes was
decidedly _the_ place for a night’s rest. But when we had descended
into the valley, and thence up the road on the other side, and found
no village, we began to have misgivings. A belated countryman whom we
passed as the sun went down informed us that Saint Michael Caerhayes
was half a mile farther on, and so we were reassured. We walked half a
mile, and passed, perhaps, six cottages, but never an inn. Something
tall and black loomed up in the now darkened sky. It was the church
tower, and again we felt that our day’s journey was nearly done,
for it is generally found that church and village inn are very near
neighbours. But here the church stood solitary; not a house of any kind
near it, and beyond it mere vagueness. We retraced our steps, and asked
a contemplative youth, who sat astride a gate, where the village inn
was. There was none! We had passed all there was of the village! Now
our courage oozed away, and all pride with it. Could he (we asked) tell
us where we might chance to get a night’s lodging? He would inquire,
he said, and we followed him meekly. Inquiries were fruitless here; we
were sent away with scant ceremony. At the lodge gates of the lordly
mansion we had seen earlier we halted on our weary way, and asked if
possibly we could be recommended to some resting-place. We had some
faint hopes that they would take compassion upon us here, but the
lodge-keeper, who pondered her head vainly to answer our question
satisfactorily, made no offer. There was nothing for it, then, but to
walk on to Veryan.
Night shut down impenetrable on the moorlands, and darkness brushed
our faces as we plunged into the unknown from the inhospitable hamlet
of Saint Michael Caerhayes. Civilisation became an unmeaning term,
or if aught of significance the word yet retained, it left in the
chambers of the mind a satiric tang; for the steep paths, rocky,
winding, and altogether insignificant, upon which we presently fared to
the seaboard, seemed rather fortuitous than planned, and an emphatic
comment upon primary conditions, rather than a subdual of them.
It was the booming of the surf hundreds of feet below us that advised
our coming upon the sea, and cottage windows, two or three, shining in
glow-worm fashion, showed us where lay Port Holland, deep-set at the
seaward end of a valley, where the unseen waves spent their force amid
sands and stones, with a long-drawn sighing a-h-h-h, a-h-h-h.
To Port Holland instantly succeeded Saint Lo, in another bight--both
wild, lonely, and (for us tourists, at least) shelterless. We spoke
with two formless concentrations of blackness, who knew naught of
accommodation for strangers, and readily (nay, with alacrity) gave
us good night. Then we, with what cheer we might, to climb the road
that now ascended inland the western side of a valley, moist and
teeming with nocturnal life, that rustled and ran among the brake and
underwood, and chirped and squeaked as our straying feet sent fragments
of stone and rock rolling into its ferny lairs.
And now, on this solitary road, we lost our way at an occult forking
of the path, uncharted by any finger-post. We felt assured of it as
we walked on for miles, and the road wound round and about with never
another sign of the sea, which should have been within hearing. At
length the road forked again, with a sign-post set in a hedge at the
angle. We had no matches; the hedge forbade any near approach to the
finger-board.
For all the use it was, the sign-post need not have existed. After we
had taken what looked the most likely road, and after another mile had
been tramped, we came to another and more promising affair, which, we
found, directed us, in the way we were going, to Grampound, a place we
had not the remotest idea of visiting. There was nothing for it but to
turn about and retrace our steps. This we did, and presently met some
country folk. We could have embraced them, so long was it since we had
seen any fellow-creatures, but we refrained, and merely asked the road
and the distance to Veryan. Four and a half miles farther, it seemed.
With what haste and with how many more wrong turnings we pursued our
way I will not speak.
We reached that village eventually, and only just before closing time.
The windows of the one inn that Veryan possesses streamed brightly
into the road as we fearfully crossed the threshold, and doubtfully
begged (that is the word) a lodging for the night, and a meal to go to
bed upon. I cannot call to mind the sign of that inn, but I have not
forgotten the name of Mrs. Mason, our hostess. That were inexcusable,
for surely no one could have been kinder to wearied wayfarers than
she. We had tea (a high tea, to be sure) at that hour of night, and
tea that night seemed ambrosia fit for gods. What a delightful tea
that was! Cornish cream, new bread, apricot jam, and a mysteriously
delicious preserve, whose name we never knew, but whose savour remains
a fond and fast memory. And while tea progressed, we had music from the
bar-parlour on the other side of the passage. Some one played upon a
violin, and the airs he played were old sea-songs, that were new when
Dibdin wrote, and popular when British sailors wore pig-tails, and
fought the Frenchman and the Spaniard from youth to age; times when
every man had his fill of fighting, and the stomach for it, too. So it
befell that, even with that crazy fiddle and that unfinished performer,
the songs he played were melodies that went straight to the heart,
even as they originally came from that seat of a throbbing patriotism;
tunes that made the pulses dance, the eyes to sparkle, and the cheek
to flush. We have no need for such songs now, for we meet no foreign
foe to-day. No storms rend the branches of the oak: the tree, alas! is
rotting at the heart. Ah! the pity, the misery of it.
LXI.
Judge of our surprise when we found this morning that Veryan was not
upon the sea, but over a mile removed from it. We had carelessly noted
Veryan Bay marked on the map, and thus concluded that of course the
village of the same name was seated beside the sea. We left our inn
and Veryan with our pockets filled with the apples our kindly hostess
pressed upon us at parting. My hostess, I salute you!