ROSELAND--ST. MAWES--FALMOUTH
The great harbour of Falmouth and the many creeks of the estuary of
the Fal, running far inland to Truro and Tresilian Bridge, rival the
Hamoaze and the estuary of the Tamar in size, and more than rival
them in beauty. Or perhaps, instead of setting them in competition
with one another, it may be said that their beauty is of different
character. Along the shores of Hamoaze and Tamar, the great commercial
and naval and warlike interests of Plymouth and Devonport form striking
features, and you can by no means lose sight of them until Saltash is
passed. In Falmouth Harbour and along the broad estuary of the Fal,
past Carrick Roads and so on to Malpas, towns, commerce, and shipping
are only incidental and remote. If you want Falmouth, you must go seek
it; if you would seek its smaller brother, St. Mawes, on the hither
side, you must almost make diligent quest; and as for the villages of
St. Just-in-Roseland, Mylor, St. Feock, Lamorran, Ruan Lanihorne, and
others, why, they are all tucked away in creeks, in a kind of Robinson
Crusoe reclusion. To say that the creeks of Falmouth Harbour and the
estuary of the Fal resemble a hand with spreading fingers is a ready
and irresistible figure of speech, but it is a hand with at least nine
fingers, of very varying size. They are St. Mawes, or Porthcueil Creek;
St. Just Creek; Ruan Creek; Tresilian Creek; Truro River; Roundwood
Creek; Restronguet Creek, Mylor Creek, and Penryn Creek. It is about
nine miles, measured direct on the map, from the entrance to Falmouth
Harbour, between Pendennis and St. Anthony's lighthouse, to Truro, and
a little longer to Tresilian Bridge, but the course is anything but
straight, and therein--in the winding wooded shores, with inviting
channels opening out on either side--lies much of the charm of these
waterways.
[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S LIGHTHOUSE.]
The district on this, the eastern, side of Falmouth Harbour, is
Roseland, not by any means so named from roses, but rather from
"rhos," meaning "moorland." It does not nowadays seem a good
description. You figure a moor as a ghastly inhospitable upland, where
it always rains or snows, and where the bleak winds beat upon the
traveller on its unsheltered wilds. Now the Cornish "Roseland" is, in
fact, a good deal nearer a land of roses than a terrible district of
savage moors; and although part of it is undoubtedly high and exposed,
it is not by any means an unfertile spot, and it abounds in the most
delightful valleys, deep down, where the last salt ripples of the
creeks lap lazily to the roots of oak-woods, and where the airs are
warm and steamy; where not merely roses will grow, but sub-tropical
plants flourish, and the fuchsia and the geranium come to amazingly
vigorous developments. Such is Roseland.
St. Mawes, and Falmouth too, and indeed most of the places beside
these waters, wear a very foreign look. The warm, languorous climate,
inducing luxuriant and exotic growths and unusual ways of building,
is largely responsible for this. St. Mawes, too, is built up-along
from the waterside, on the face of a hill almost cliff-like. It owes
its name to an Irish saint, who is variously styled St. Machutus, or
Mauduit. He is the St. Malo after whom the well-known port in Brittany
is christened. It is an ill-sounding name for a saint, whether we call
him "Mauduit" or "Malo," reminding one of the rhyme in Valpy's "Latin
Delectus":
"'Malo,' I would rather be,
'Malo,' up an apple-tree,
'Malo quam,' rather than
'Malo,' with a wicked man."
[Illustration: ST. MAWES CASTLE.]
St. Mawes Castle shares with Pendennis, on the opposite headland, the
duty of defending the entrance to Falmouth Harbour from the open sea;
but the saints--St. Mawes and others--preserve us from reliance upon
such defenders! They may have been formidable castles of the battery
kind when originally built by Henry the Eighth, who, apart from his
strange matrimonial experiments, is a very much misunderstood monarch,
but they could not nowadays give an enemy the slightest hesitation. All
the same, elaborate pretences are maintained, and Pendennis and St.
Mawes are girdled about with War Office prohibitions; just as though
they were not shams that fail to deceive any one.
Historians, too busy with the domestic affairs of Henry the Eighth, and
too interested in the great religious cataclysm of his reign, do not
award him the title of "patriot king" that is really his due. He was a
mighty builder of coastwise batteries against possible invasion; not
only ordaining the building of them, but travelling much to see that
they were built upon the most effective situations. From the coast of
Kent to the Isles of Scilly his pot-bellied batteries are to be found:
formidable in their day and still often occupied by details of Garrison
Artillery playing a great game of make-believe, in which neither the
foreigner nor the Englishman has any faith. Latin inscriptions carved
on the exterior walls of St. Mawes Castle give Henry his due, and, he
at last being dead, piously hope Edward the Sixth will resemble him.
Here is the English of them:
"Henry, thy honour and praises shall always remain."
"May happy Cornwall now rejoice, Edward being chief."
"May Edward be like his father in deeds and reputation."
I think the person who composed that last line and also the other
person who cut it in the stone must have smiled at it, just as every
one has done in all the three and a half centuries since.
Half-way across the entrance to the Harbour is the Black Rock, visible
at low water, but covered at the flood. It is the subject of a story
which tells how a Trefusis of Trefusis, not living on altogether
satisfactory terms with his wife, determined to be rid of her in an
ingenious way. "Shall we, my dear," said he, "sail down the harbour
and land at Black Rock?" "Agreed," she replied, unsuspecting; and so
they proceeded to the spot. He handed her ashore, and then jumped again
into the boat and made off, leaving her, as he supposed, to drown. But
unfortunately, from his point of view, some fishermen later on brought
her off and home. The lady bade them wait, and her husband would
suitably reward them. "To the Devil with you!" he exclaimed, in a fury;
"you have played me a sorry trick indeed, and so you'll get nothing.
You might have earned gold by leaving her there!"
There is ample opportunity in crossing from St. Mawes to Falmouth by
steamer to perceive the truth of Carew's remark, that a hundred sail
of vessels might anchor in Falmouth Harbour and not one see the mast
of another. In these latter days this magnificent haven is not put to
much use, and Falmouth has since 1850 ceased to be the West Indian
mail-packet station. In that year its long and honourable connection
with the Admiralty and the Post Office, which had been continuous since
1688, ended in favour of Southampton.
The town of Falmouth is seen hiding snugly away at the opening of
Penryn Creek, on the inner side of the low-lying isthmus connecting
the headland of Pendennis with the mainland. It is not an ancient
place, and did not, in fact, come officially into existence until 1660,
although some few years earlier the custom-house had been removed from
Penryn and a market had been established in 1652. On August 20th, 1660,
a proclamation was issued by the King, in answer to a petition by Sir
Peter Killigrew, commanding that "Smithike, _alias_ Penny-come-Quick,
shall for ever after this day be called, named, and known by the name
of Falmouth."
This was a great triumph for the Killigrew family, who had for half
a century been endeavouring to found a town on this site, two miles
nearer the sea than the old corporate town and port of Penryn. At
that period the Killigrews were seated at the mansion of Arwenack,
of which some few portions remain near Falmouth railway-station, and
they foresaw great profits accruing to them on a town being built
upon their land. Penryn had been built in its more inland situation
at a remote period when, by reason of raids and invasions, it was
dangerous to be seated near the sea, and the position of Arwenack was
certainly better for shipping. But the vested interests of Penryn
were endangered by the Killigrew proposal, and Penryn, and Truro, and
Helston as well, long bitterly opposed it, foreseeing much injury to
themselves in a rival springing up. The site of Falmouth was at that
time occupied only by two clusters of cottages that could scarce even
be termed hamlets. They were named Penny-come-Quick and Smithike, or
Smithick. The first of these places took its singular name from the
old Cornish "Pen-y-cwm," that is to say, "Head of the vale," to which
the Anglo-Saxon "wick"--_i.e._, "village"--had afterwards accrued.
"Smithick" was probably the site of a wayside smithy.
Falmouth town is practically one long, very narrow, and not very clean
waterside street of closely packed houses and shops, which shut out
all except occasional glimpses of the beautiful harbour, seen from a
quay here and there, or framed in by narrow alleys giving upon steps
going down to the water. There is much of the nautical Dibdin and
Wapping Old Stairs feeling about this long, long street of Market
Strand, with the strong sea air blowing in upon the otherwise stuffy
thoroughfare through these dark-browed openings. Suggestions, too, of
old smuggling days are found in queer sail-lofts overhanging the water;
suggestions not without plentiful warranty in old records, for we know
that smuggling proceeded impudently and openly at Falmouth in the last
quarter of the eighteenth century. The sheer matter-of-course of it
raises a smile. Men spoke of being--as of in the army or the navy--in
the smuggling "service"; which at once shows how widespread and highly
organised the operations were. Captain Pellew, brother of Lord Exmouth,
sent to Falmouth to put down smuggling, actually found some of his own
officers running contraband cargoes of wine, in open port and in broad
daylight.
As you go seaward, past the railway station, the almost island
promontory of Pendennis rises up, and stretches a much greater
distance out to sea than the explorer who seeks to round the point
at first supposes. A fine, broad carriage-road describes a loop
round this headland. "Pendinas," "the headland castle"--for that
was the original form of the name--has been, as the name itself
implies, from the earliest times a place of defence, but the only
known event of any moment that is remembered in connection with it
is the stand here made for the King by Sir John Arundell of Trerice,
then in his eighty-seventh year, and known in all these parts as
"Jack-for-the-King." It was one of the most memorable deeds done in
those troublous, long-drawn contentions between King and Parliament.
With the exception of Raglan Castle, in Monmouthshire, which held
out to the last for King Charles, and only surrendered on August
19th, 1646, Pendennis Castle was the last stronghold to fly the Royal
Standard. It capitulated on August 16th, only three days earlier,
after a vigorous six months' siege, and when hunger, rather than any
quality of the enemy, had brought the garrison low. Hence the Queen had
embarked for France two years earlier, and the Prince of Wales departed
for Scilly in February 1646.
The stranger is more likely to be impressed by the ugly lines of
sharp-pointed pike railings that surround the precincts of Pendennis
Castle, and have been richly tarred, lest by any chance the spikes are
not sufficiently formidable, than by any appearance either of strength
or picturesqueness that belongs to the place. The military genius
that finds a first line of defence in the messy horrors of tar, seems
something not much better than the old practice in the Chinese Army, of
making horrible grimaces, wherewith to strike terror into the enemy.
You see, on returning to Falmouth from Pendennis, how entirely
land-locked the harbour appears to be. Not the slightest indication
points to which way the Channel lies. Yet this enclosed water has
been ruffled by great and disastrous storms, and in one of them, off
Trefusis Point, directly opposite the town, the transport _Queen_ was
lost, in January 1814.
The climate of Falmouth is tearful. I may be unlucky in the matter of
weather here, but I have never yet been at Falmouth when it did not
rain. But it is also phenomenally warm. St. Gluvias, by Penryn, is said
to be the warmest place in England. The Sailors' Home, on the quay by
Arwenack, gives earnest of these warm conditions. It is a great, grim,
eighteenth-century mansion of red brick, but made beautiful, almost
transfigured indeed, by a wonderful fuchsia, covering the whole of the
frontage up to the first-floor windows.
In the humblest cottage-gardens grows the fuchsia. It flourishes even
in the merest cobble-stoned backyards, enclosed within white-washed
walls, and neighboured by the washing-stool and tub, and the clothes
hung out to dry; and it is amidst such apparently unsuitable
surroundings, rather than in the most carefully tended gardens, that
this gorgeous alien seems most to prosper. For the fuchsia is an alien,
brought into Europe in 1703, from the Pacific coast of South America,
and named after an old-time German botanist of the sixteenth century;
one Leonard Fuchs. All through the West of England the fuchsia has
become--not common; we must not use that word, lest by any chance we
should seem to slight so exquisite a plant--but usual, and especially
it flourishes along the coasts, and thrives so greatly that it grows
in the open all the year round, and frequently attains such dimensions
that the stems of old-established plants are not uncommonly nearly as
thick as a man's arm.
Yet in 1788 there was but one fuchsia in England, and that was in
Kew Gardens. Soon after that date an enterprising nurseryman of
Hammersmith, one Lee by name, had secured cuttings, and was selling
plants at one guinea each. Thenceforward the spread of the fuchsia was
rapid.
The variety seen in Devon and Cornwall is nearly always that with
abundance of small blossoms: scarlet petals, and blue or purple sepals.
The parish church of Falmouth is almost the oldest building in the
town, but it is hardly venerable. It is galleried within and hangs
gloomily upon the narrow street, squalidly mingled with a cab-rank.
It was built in 1663, and has the peculiarity of being dedicated to
Charles the First, King and Martyr; a distinction it shares with three
other churches in England and one in Wales; _i.e._ those of Tunbridge
Wells, Charles Church, Plymouth, Peak Forest, Derbyshire, and Newtown,
Montgomeryshire. A further peculiarity is that its tower is not square
on plan.
[Illustration: CHARLES CHURCH.]
There are many other public buildings in the town, none of much
interest; but it is interesting to know that there was once a Mayor of
Falmouth who thanked God when the gaol was enlarged. He, or his remark,
is quite famous, but I have no record of the period in which this
worthy, so thanksgiving for benefits received, flourished. There is,
however, no doubt at all that, if it was in the sixteenth century, when
such doings as those of the piratical Lady Killigrew (of whom we shall
hear at Penryn) were possible, not only the enlargement of a gaol was
required, but a special assize as well.
I believe the most interesting place in Falmouth is, after all, not
the famous harbour, nor Pendennis Castle, but Burton's Old Curiosity
Shop. It is a quite famous institution, and no one who has ever been
to Falmouth, and has not explored this home of curios, can really be
said to know Falmouth as intimately as he should. This sounds like
an advertisement, but Burton's is as superior to puffery as a museum
would be; and indeed it is not remotely unlike a museum. True, the
exhibits are for sale, but such a large proportion are so eminently
undesirable for the private purchaser that they assume the character of
museum exhibits unlikely ever to find another home. Such, for example,
is the skeleton of a whale washed up some years ago between Cadgwith
and Porthoustock. The imagination boggles at any private person buying
that. It would seem, indeed, that Burton (who is now deceased, and his
son reigns in his stead) had a _flair_ for curiosities and antiques of
all kinds, quite irrespective of commerce. He could resist nothing, and
was a fine miscellaneous feeder in this sort. But at the same time an
excellent man of business, keen on odd and striking advertisement; as
when he offered to purchase for £500 Smeaton's old Eddystone lighthouse
tower, demolished by the Trinity House in 1882. He proposed to re-erect
it on the site of his shop and store it with his curios, but the old
tower found a home on Plymouth Hoe instead. One may visit the Old
Curiosity Shop and wander at will, unattended, through its many rooms,
and never be solicited to buy; and great is the number of those who use
this privilege.
Among the oddest of these collections is a strange assemblage of
inn and trade signboards, mostly of Cornish origin, most of them so
fantastically grotesque in spelling and unconsciously humorous in
phrasing, that they would almost appear to be inventions, produced to
astonish and to raise a laugh, were it not that they are obviously old,
and that the proprietor keeps a register of their place of origin.
Thus runs the signboard of Ellen Tone's "Tempurence Hottell," from
Herodsfoot, near Liskeard:
"ELLEN TONE, sells here
Lemanade and Gingur Beer,
Cow hels and tripe every fridey
Sekond hand cloes to make ee tidy,
Crox and Kittles, pans and all
And Godly bukes to save yer sole,
Man-Traps, gins, and pattens likewise
And on Saturday nights Hot Mutton Pies."
The signboard of one Roger Giles easily bears away the bell. It has
been printed before now, but is too good, whether genuine or not, to be
passed over:
=ROGER GILES,=
=Surgin, Parish Clark and Sculemaster, Groser & Hundertaker=
RESPECTABLY informs ladys and gentlemans that he drors teef without
waiting a minit, applies laches every hour, blisters on the lowest
tarms, and vizicks for a penny a peace. He sells Godsfathers
kordales, kuts korns, bunyons docters hosses, clips donkies wance
a munth, and undertakes to look after everybodys nayls by the ear.
Joesharps, penny wissels, brass kanelsticks, fryin pans, and other
moosical hinstruments hat greatly reydooced figers. Young ladies
and gentlemen larnes their grammur, and langeudge in the purtiest
mannar, also grate care taken off their morrels and spelling. Also
zarm singing, tayching base vial, and all other sorts of fancy work,
squadrils, pokers, weazels, and all country dances tort at home and
abroad, at perfeksun. Perfumery and snuff in all its branches. As
times is cruel bad I beg to tell ee that i has just beginned to sell
all sorts of stashonery, ware, cox, hens, vouls, pigs, and all other
kind of poultry, blackin-brishes, herrins, coles, scrubbin-brishes,
traykel, and godley bukes and bibles, mise-traps, brick-dist, whisker
seeds, morrel pokkerankechers, and all zorts of swatemaits including
taters, sassages, and other garden stuff, bakky, zizars, lamp oyle,
tay kittles, and other intoxzikating likkers, a dale of fruit,
hats, zongs, hair oyle, pattins, bukkits grindin stones and other
aitables, korne and bunyon zalve, and all hardware, I as laid in a
large assortment of trype, dogs mate, lolipops, ginger beer, matches,
and other pikkles, such as hepson salts, hoysters, Winsre sope,
anzetrar--Old rags bort and sold here and nowhere else, new laid eggs
by me Roger Giles; zinging burdes keeped, such as howles, donkies,
paykox, lobsters, crickets, also a stock of celebrated brayder.
P.S.--I tayches geography, ritmitmetic, cowsticks, jimnastics, and
other chynees tricks.