_England's "observables"--Why I delayed visiting Cornwall--A vision
of the Land's End-Flight to St. Ives-Climate-The old town-The
fishermen-Their love of children-Drowned babes--The fishing fleet going
out at sunset-Old memories suggested-Jackdaws at St. Ives--Feeding the
birds--A greedy sheep-dog-Daws show their intelligence--Daws on the
roofs--Their morning pastime-Dialogue between two daws._
|KNOW," said wise old Fuller, "most of the rooms of thy native country
before thou goest over the threshold thereof. Especially seeing England
presents thee with so many observables." But if we were to follow this
advice there would be no getting out of the country at all. It is too
rich in its way: the rooms are too many and too well-furnished with
observables. Take my case. I have been going on rambles about the land
for a good many years, and though the West Country had the greatest
attraction for me, I never got over the Tamar, nor even so far as
Plymouth, simply because I had not the time, albeit my time was my own.
Or because there was enough and more than enough to satisfy me on this
side of the boundary. It is true that one desires to see and know all
places, but is in no hurry to go from a rich to a poor one. I was told
by every one of my friends that it was the most interesting county in
England, and doubtless it is so to them, but I knew it could not be so
to me because of the comparative poverty of the fauna, seeing that the
observables which chiefly draw me are the living creatures-the wild
life-and not hills and valleys and granite and serpentine cliffs and
seas of Mediterranean blue. These are but the setting of the shining
living gems, and we know the finest of these, which gave most lustre to
the scene, have been taken out and cast away.
Cornwall to me was just the Land's End-"dark Bolerium, seat of
storms"-that famous foreland of which a vast but misty picture formed in
childhood remains in the mind, and if I ever felt any strong desire
to visit Cornwall it was to look upon that scene. Then came a day in
November, 1905, when, having settled to go away somewhere for a season,
I all at once made up my mind to visit the unknown peninsula and to go
straight away to the very end. It almost astonished me when I alighted
from my train at St. Ives to think I had travelled three hundred and
twenty odd miles with less discomfort and weariness than I usually
experience on any journey of a hundred.
It is common, I think, for lovers of walking to dislike the railway. So
smoothly had I been carried in this flight to the furthest west that I
might have been sailing in a balloon; and as for the time occupied it
would surely be no bad progress for a migrating bird, travelling, let
us say, from Middlesex to Africa, to cover the distance I had come in a
little more than seven hours!
St. Ives is on the north side of the rounded western extremity of
Cornwall, and from the little green hill, called the "Island," which
rises above and partly shelters the town, you look out upon the wide
Atlantic, the sea that has always a trouble on it and that cannot be
quiet; and standing there with the great waves breaking on the black
granite rocks at your feet, they will tell you that there is no land
between you and America. Nevertheless, after London, I wanted no better
climate; for though it rained heavily on many days in December and the
wind blew with tremendous force, the temperature was singularly mild,
with an agreeable softness in the air and sunshine breaking out on
the cloudiest days. The weather could be described as "delicate" with
tempestuous intervals. On bright, windless days I saw the peacock
butterfly abroad and heard that idle song of the corn bunting,
associated in our minds with green or yellow fields and sultry weather.
I was still more surprised one day late in December at meeting with a
lively wheatear, flitting from stone to stone near the Land's End. This
one had discovered that it was not necessary to fly all the way to North
Africa to find a place to winter in. Early in February I found the adder
abroad.
[Illustration: 0020]
The town, viewed from the outside-the old fishing town, which does not
include the numerous villas, terraces, and other modern erections on the
neighbouring heights-appears very small indeed. It is small, for when
you once master its intricacies you can walk through from end to end in
about five or six minutes. But the houses are closely packed, or rather
jumbled together with the narrowest and crookedest streets and courts
in which to get about or up and down. They have a look of individuality,
like a crowd of big rough men pushing and elbowing one another for room,
and you can see how this haphazard condition has come about when you
stumble by chance on a huge mass of rock thrusting up out of the
earth among the houses. There was, in fact, just this little sheltered
depression in a stony place to build upon, and the first settlers, no
doubt, set their houses just where and how they could among the rocks,
and when more room was wanted more rocks were broken down and other
houses added until the town as we find it resulted. It is all rude and
irregular, as if produced by chance or nature, and altogether reminds
one of a rabbit warren or the interior of an ants' nest.
It cannot be nice to live in such a warren or rookery, except to those
who were born in it; nevertheless it is curiously attractive, and I,
although a disliker of towns or congeries of houses, found a novel
pleasure in poking about it, getting into doorways and chance openings
to be out of the way of a passing cart which as a rule would take up the
whole width of the street. Outside the houses hung the wet oilskins
and big sea-boots to dry, and at the doors women with shawls over their
heads stand gossiping. When the men are asleep or away and the children
at school these appear to be the only inhabitants, except the cats. You
find one at every few yards usually occupied with the head of a mackerel
or herring. The appearance was perhaps even better by night when the
narrow crooked ways are very dark except at some rare spot where a lamp
casts a mysterious light on some quaint old corner building and affords
a glimpse into a dimly-seen street beyond ending in deep gloom.
In this nest or hive are packed about eight hundred fishermen with their
wives and children, their old fathers and mothers, and other members
of the community who do not go in the boats. The fishermen are the most
interesting in appearance; it is a relief, a positive pleasure to see
in England a people clothed not in that ugly dress which is now so
universal, but in one suitable to their own life and work--their
ponderous sea-boots and short shirt-shaped oilies of many shades of
colour from dirty white and pale yellow to deep reds and maroons. In
speech and manners they are rough and brusque, and this, too, like
their dress and lurching gait, comes, as it were, by nature; for of all
occupations, this of wresting a poor and precarious livelihood from
the wind-vexed seas under the black night skies in their open boats is
assuredly the hardest and most trying to a man's temper. The navvy and
the quarryman, the labourer on the land, here where the land is half
rock, even the tin-miner deep down in the bowels of the earth, have a
less discomfortable and anxious life. That they are not satisfied with
it one soon discovers; Canada calls them, and Africa, and other distant
lands, and unhappily, as in most places, it is always the best men that
go. Possibly this accounts for the change for the worse in the people
which some have noted in recent years. Nevertheless they are a good
people still, righteous in their own peculiar way, and so independent
that in bad times, as when the fishing fails, hunger and cold are more
endurable to them than charity. They are a clannish people, and it is
consequently not to be wondered at that they have no subscription clubs
or friendly societies of any kind to aid them in times of want and
sickness such as are now almost universal among the working classes.
These benefits of our civilisation will doubtless come to them in time:
then their clannishness-the old "One and All" spirit of Cornishmen
generally-being no longer needed, will decay. It is after all but
another word for solidarity, the strong, natural, or family bond
which unites the members of a community which was once, in ruder ages,
everywhere, to make social life possible, and has survived here solely
because of Cornwall's isolated position. Unfortunately we cannot make
any advance-cannot gain anything anywhere without a corresponding loss
somewhere. Will it be better for this people when the change comes-when
the machine we call "civilisation" has taken the place of the spirit
of mutual help in the members of the community? 'Tis an idle question,
since we cannot have two systems of life. At present, in our "backward"
districts, we have two, but they are in perpetual conflict, and one must
overcome the other; and if there be any beautiful growths in the old and
unfit, which is passing away, they must undoubtedly perish with it.
One of the most pleasing traits of the Cornish people, which is but one
manifestation of the spirit I have been speaking about, is their love
for little children. Nowhere in the kingdom, town or country, do you see
a brighter, happier, better-dressed company of small children than here
in the narrow stony ways of the old fishing town. The rudest men exhibit
a strange tenderness towards their little ones; and not only their
own, since they regard all children with a kind of parental feeling. An
incident which occurred in the early part of December, and its effects
on the people, may be given here as an illustration. One morning when
the boats came in it was reported that one of the men had been lost.
"Poor fellow!" was all that was said about it. And that is how it is all
the world over among men who have dangerous occupations: the loss of a
comrade is a not uncommon experience, and the shock is very slight and
quickly vanishes. But there was no such indifference when, two or three
days later, one of the herring-boats brought in the corpse of a small
child which had been fished up in the Bay-a pretty little well-nourished
boy, decently dressed, aged about two years and a half. Where the child
belonged and how it came to be in the sea was not discovered until long
afterwards, but the intensity of the feeling displayed was a surprise to
me. For several days little else was talked of both in St. Ives and the
villages and farms in the neighbourhood, and they talked of it, both
men and women, with tears in their voices as though the death of this
unknown child had been a personal loss.
This incident served to recall others, of St. Ives children lost and
drowned in past years, especially this very pathetic one of three little
things who went out to pick flowers one afternoon and were lost.
[Illustration: 0025]
They were two sisters, aged eight and nine respectively, and their
little brother, about six or seven years old. They rambled along the
rough heath by Carbis Bay to the Towans, near Lelant, where, climbing
about among the sand-hills, they lost all sense of direction. There
meeting a man who spoke roughly to them and ordered them home they
became terrified and ran away to the sea-front, and, climbing down the
cliff, hid themselves in a cave they found there. By and by it began to
grow dark, and there were sounds above as of loud talking and shouts and
of a galloping horse, all which added to their fear and caused them to
go further into their dark wet house of refuge. They did not know, poor
children, that the cries were uttered by those who were seeking for
them! After dark the tide rose and covered the sandy floor of the cave,
and to escape it they climbed on to a rocky shelf where they could keep
dry, and there huddled together to keep warm, and being very tired, they
eventually fell asleep. In the morning when it grew light the sisters
woke, stiff and cold, to find that their poor little brother had fallen
from the ledge in his sleep and had been carried out by the sea. His
body was recovered later. The two survivors, now middle-aged women,
still live in the town.
The most interesting hour of the day at St. Ives was in the afternoon or
evening, the time depending on the tide, when the men issued from their
houses and came lurching down the little crooked stone streets and
courts to the cove or harbour to get the boats out for the night's
fishing. It is a very small harbour in the corner of the bay-a roughly
shaped half-moon with two little stone piers for horns, with just room
enough inside to accommodate the fleet of about 150 boats. The best
spectacle is when they are taken out at or near sunset in fair weather,
when the subdued light gives a touch of tenderness and mystery to sea
and sky, and the boats, singly, in twos and threes, and in groups
of half a dozen, drift out from the harbour and go away in a kind of
procession over the sea. The black forms on the moving darkening water
and the shapely deep-red sails glowing in the level light have then a
beauty, an _expression_, which comes as a surprise to one unaccustomed
to such a scene. The expression is due to association-to vague
suggestions of a resemblance in this to other scenes. We may be unable
to recall them; the feeling returns but without the mental image of the
scene which originally produced it. It was not until I had watched the
boats going out on two or three successive evenings that an ancient
memory returned to me.
Sitting or walking by the margin of some wide lake or marsh in a
distant land, I am watching a company of birds of some large majestic
kind-stork, wood-ibis, or flamingo-standing at rest in the shallow
water, which reflects their forms. By and by one of the birds steps out
of the crowd and moves leisurely away, then, slowly unfolding his broad
wings, launches himself on the air and goes off, flying very low over
the water. Another follows, then, after an interval, another, then
still others, in twos and threes and halfdozens, until the last bird
has opened his wings and the entire flock is seen moving away in a loose
procession over the lake.
Just in that way did the crowd of boats move by degrees from their
resting-place, shake out their wing-like sails, and stream away over the
sea.
That was one scene; there were faint suggestions of many others, only
a few of which I could recover; one was of large, dark red-winged
butterflies, seen at rest with closed wings, congregated on wind-swayed
reeds and other slender plants. It was the shape and deep red colour
of the sails and the way they hung from the masts and cordage which
restored this butterfly picture to my mind. And in every instance in
which a resemblance could be traced it turned out to be to some natural
and invariably to a beautiful object or scene. The spectacle had, in
fact, that charm, which is so rare in man's work, of something wholly
natural, which fits into the scene and is part and parcel with nature
itself.
In buildings we get a similar effect at the two extremes-in the humblest
and the highest work of man's hands; in the small old thatched
and rose-and creeper-covered cottage in perfect harmony with its
surroundings, and in ancient majestic castles and cathedrals, in which
the sharp lines and contours have been blurred by decay of the material
and the whole surface weathered and stained with lichen and alga and in
many cases partially draped with ivy.
It struck me before I had been long in St. Ives that, in spite of the
delightful mildness of the climate and the charm of the place, nobody
but myself was wintering there. The lodging-houses were quite empty; the
people were the natives or else the artists, who form a pretty numerous
colony. The few others to be seen were visitors for the day from
Penzance, Falmouth, or some other spot in the "Cornish Riviera."
This was not a cause of regret, seeing there were birds for society,
especially that old favourite, the jackdaw.
[Illustration: 0029]
Doubtless he is to be seen there all the year round as he is so common
a town bird all over the country, but at St. Ives many of the
cliffbreeding daws settle down regularly for the winter and exist very
comfortably on the fish and other refuse thrown into the streets. Very
soon I established a sort of friendship with a few of these birds; for
birds I must have, in town or country-free birds I mean, as the captive
bird only makes me melancholy--and in winter I feed them whether they
are in want or not. It is an old habit of mine, first practised in
early life in June and July, the cold winter months in the southern
hemisphere, in a land where the English sparrow was not. Now, unhappily,
he is there and a great deal too abundant. I fed a better sparrow in
those vanished days, smaller and more prettily shaped than our bird,
with a small crest on his head and a sweet delicate little song. But
in England one really gets far more pleasure from feeding the birds on
account of the number of different species which are willing to be our
pensioners. At St. Ives I first stayed at a house in The Terrace facing
the sea-front, and there were no gardens there, so that I had to feed
them out in the road. First there were only sparrows, then a pair of
jackdaws turned up, and soon others joined them until I had about a
score of them. By and by a very big shaggy sheep-dog, belonging to a
carter, discovered that there was food to be got at eight o'clock at
that spot in the road, and he too came very punctually every day and
thoughtlessly gobbled it all up himself. After two or three days of this
sort of thing, I felt that it ought not to be allowed to continue, and
as the daws were of the same mind and loyally seconded my efforts to
stop it we were soon successful. My plan was to go out and scatter the
scraps and crusts far and wide over the road, and while the greedy dog
galloped about from crust to crust the daws, hovering overhead, dropped
down and snatched them one by one away before he could reach them.
Later, when leaving St. Ives, I asked the landlady to explain to the
birds on the following morning the reason of there being nothing
for them, and to request them to go quietly away. They were very
intelligent, I said, and would understand; but on my return, a month
later, she said they had not understood the message, or had not believed
her, as they had continued to come for several mornings, and had seemed
very much put out. It was plain they had kept an eye on that house
during my absence, for on going out with scraps on the morning after my
return they promptly reappeared in full force on the scene.
There are few persons to feed the birds in those parts, and those few, I
fancy, are mostly visitors from other counties. It amused me to see how
the natives regarded my action; the passer-by would stop and examine the
scraps or crusts, then stare at me, and finally depart with a puzzled
expression on his countenance, or perhaps smiling at the ridiculous
thing he had witnessed.
The following winter (1906-7) I found a lodging in another part of the
town, in a terrace rather high up, where I could look from my window at
the Bay over the tiled roofs of the old town. Here I had a front garden
to feed the birds in, and, better still, the entire jackdaw population
of St. Ives, living on the roofs as is their custom, were under my eyes
and could be observed very comfortably. I discovered that they filled up
a good deal of their vacant time each morning in visiting the chimneys
from which smoke issued, just to inform themselves, as it seemed, what
was being cooked for breakfast. This was their pastime and watching them
was mine. Numbers of daws would be seen, singly, in pairs, and in groups
of three or four to half a dozen, sitting on the roofs all over the
place. As the morning progressed and more and more chimneys sent out
smoke, they would become active visiting the chimneys, where, perching
on the rims, they would put their heads down to get the smell rising
from the pot or frying-pan on the fire below. If a bird remained long
perched on a chimney-pot, his neighbours would quickly conclude that he
had come upon a particularly interesting smell and rush off to share
it with him. When the birds were too many there would be a struggle for
places, and occasionally it happened that a puff of dense black smoke
would drive them all off together.
A dozen incidents of this kind could be witnessed any morning, and I was
as much entertained as if I had been observing not birds but a lot of
lively, tricky little black men with grey pates inhabiting the roofs.
One morning when watching a pair perched facing each other on a
chimney-top their movements and gestures made me imagine that I knew
just what they were saying.
[Illustration: 0033]
First one leaning over the rim would thrust his head down into the smoke
and keep it there some time, the other would follow suit, then pulling
themselves up they would stare at each other for half a minute, then
poke their heads down again.
"A funny smell that!" one says. "I can't quite make it out, and yet I
seem to know what it is."
"Red herring," suggests the other.
"Nonsense! I know _that_ smell well enough. But I grant you it's just
a little like it, only-what shall I say?-this is a _thicker_ sort of
smell."
"I'll just have another good sniff," says the second bird. "H'm! I
wonder if it's some very old pilchards they've found stowed away in some
corner?"
"No," says the first bird, pulling his head out of the smoke and
blinking his wicked little grey eyes. "It isn't pilchards. Just one
more sniff. I've got it! A very old piece of dry salted conger they're
broiling on the coals."
"By Jove, you're right this time! It is a good thick smell! I only wish
I could drop down the flue, snatch up that bit of conger, and get clear
away with it."
"You'd soon have a jolly lot of jacks after you, I fancy. Hullo!
what are those fellows making such a to-do about--down there on that
chimney-pot? Let's go and find out."
And away they fly, to drop down and fight for places among the others.
[Illustration: 0035]