twilight a yacht put out to sea over the bar of Salcombe Harbour, while
the sound of the evening bell came clearly across the water. Up the
estuary the lights were beginning to shine out one by one through the
dusk, and in the dark shadow of the headland the full tide silently
“turned again home.” Lord Tennyson, who was on board the _Sunbeam_ that
night, has made Salcombe Bar dear to many who have never crossed it.
He had been staying at the pretty house that stands on its own little
promontory, hidden by trees, between the town and the bar. Here for some
years lived Froude the historian among the orange-trees and tamarisks,
and it was here he died.
This peaceful anchorage was very useful to pirates in the good old
days. They hid safely behind Bolt Head and, when any unwary ship passed
by, dashed out and plundered her. Henry VIII., though not above piracy
himself, built a little castle for their undoing, upon a small precarious
rock nearly circled by the sea. Here are its fragments still. Sir Edmund
Fortescue strengthened it and called it Fort Charles, and held it very
valiantly for Charles I.: so valiantly that it withstood Fairfax, and
when it surrendered at last Fortescue was allowed to take the key with
him.
[Illustration: FORT CHARLES AND BOLT HEAD.]
To nearly every motorist, as he sits beside his tea-cup on the terrace
of the Marine Hotel, or leans against the wall that keeps the sea out of
the garden, it will occur at once that this harbour is an ideal place for
motor-boating. This is truer than he knows. For these waters that ripple
round the garden-walls of Salcombe pass on their way inland in various
directions: up South Pool Creek to the thatched farmstead that has its
feet nearly in the water at high tide; past Goodshelter to the old mill
at Waterhead, and to Kingsbridge four miles away. And beyond the bar are
all the little coves and bays of a lovely coast: Hope, where the high
rocks entrap the sunshine and keep out the winds: Thurlestone, whose
worldly ambitions are greater and whose charms are less: Bantham, between
a curve of the Avon estuary and the sea, where the breezes are sweet with
the scent of gorse, and worldly ambition seems altogether dormant. Even
without a motor-boat we may see these little bays, each at the end of its
own little lane; but only such motorists as are staying close at hand
will care to explore lanes so narrow and winding and steep.
On our way back to Kingsbridge, however, to take the road to Plymouth,
we shall see a narrow turn to the left, near West Alvington, which is a
perfectly practicable means of cutting off a mile or two of dull country
and avoiding a bad hill in Kingsbridge. As a whole the main road from
this point to Plymouth is one of the best in South Devon, though there
is a long and very steep descent at Aveton Giffard that is not marked
on Bartholomew’s map, and a sharp rise in Modbury that is considerably
steeper than the contour-book estimates. There is no very striking beauty
of a large sort, but a great deal of the restful, wayside charm that
makes Devonshire so comforting. There is no need to loiter on the road,
for though it played its part in the Civil War--and indeed possibly on
that account--there are few relics of its history to be seen. The bridge
that crosses the sedges of the Avon at Aveton Giffard was once important
enough to have a fort built on the hill for its defence; but none the
less it was taken by the extremely irregular troops whose clubs and
pickaxes and saws were wielded here for the Parliament. Champernowne
of Modbury was one of the builders of the fort, and one of the greatest
sufferers from the “clubmen,” for his house, which stood on the top of
Modbury Hill, was fortified and occupied by the royalists. “This Party
of ours wᶜʰ was at Modbury,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife,
“indur’d a cruell assault for 12 howers against many thousand men.” One
result of this cruel assault, which could have but one end, is that only
a very small fragment of Court House is still standing.
We go on our way through Yealmpton and Brixton, on a surface that
gradually becomes very rough, and cross the toll-bridge into Plymouth.
This is a name that stirs the blood of every true child of Britain. In
the days of Elizabeth’s great sailors it was from Plymouth that Britannia
ruled the waves. And to-day there is no end to the interest that this
place holds for those who love the navy and the sea as is the wont of
Englishmen; no end to the modern interests of port and harbour, of
dockyard and battleship, nor to the crowding memories on Plymouth Hoe.
[Illustration: DRAKE’S ISLAND, FROM THE HOE.]
Here on the Hoe, with Drake’s statue beside us, and his island below us,
and behind it those fair woods of Mount Edgecumbe on which Medina Sidonia
cast a covetous eye, we are looking down at the channel through which
all the gallant adventurers of the sixteenth century sailed out to their
distant goals. This statue is the symbol of them.[5] “He was of stature
low,” says John Prince of Francis Drake, “but set and strong grown; a
very religious man towards God and his houses, generally sparing churches
wherever he came; chaste in his life, just in his dealings, true of his
word, merciful to those that were under him, and hating nothing so much
as idleness.” The words fit the statue well. It was here where we are
standing that he and the other captains played their memorable game of
bowls, while the Armada called Invincible swept nearer and nearer. His
ship and her half-fed crew lay down there in the Sound, under the lee of
the island that has borne his name ever since that day, and the flagship,
further out, “danced lustily as the gallantest dancer at Court.” Through
that channel he and the rest sailed out into the gale when their game
was done, to do their thorough work. Many times he had sailed through it
already on various quests of war and adventure--and, it must be owned, of
pillage: and it was from this harbour, afterwards, that he went on the
voyage that “was marred before it was begun, so great preparations being
too big for a cover,” the voyage to Nombre de Dios Bay, where he lies
“dreaming all the time of Plymouth Hoe.”
Very long and very stirring is the visionary pageant that rises before
us here: the Black Prince, triumphant, sailing in with his prisoner, the
King of France; poor Katherine of Aragon, landing here in an outburst
of welcome; John Hawkins, setting forth on those dubious but gallant
undertakings that the Queen called “private enterprise” and Hawkins
called “the Queen’s business.” His son Sir Richard long remembered a
scene that took place when he was a boy, under that green hill that faces
us. A fleet of Spaniards, bound for Flanders to fetch a new bride for
Philip II., dared to sail between the island and the mainland “without
vayling their top-sayles, or taking in of their flags; which my father
Sir John Hawkins perceiving, commanded his gunner to shoot at the flag
of the admiral, that they might thereby see their error.” They saw it
quickly, and the matter ended with feasting.
Sir Richard’s own ship, too, takes part in the ghostly pageant, sailing
close to the land to bid goodbye, for many more years than he suspected,
to the throng that stood here on the Hoe to do him honour. Amid blowing
of trumpets, and music of bands, and roaring of guns he left the harbour,
with his thoughts full of the lady who took pleasure in red carpets. And
it was there, below us, that the brave heart of Blake gave its last throb
as he entered English waters--the heart that is buried, they say, in St.
Andrew’s Church.
The long procession of adventurous ships winds endlessly on, past the
island, and out of the harbour, and away into the world of the past. The
ships of Frobisher and Gilbert, of Grenville and of Raleigh are there,
and the _Mayflower_ with the Pilgrim Fathers, and the ship of Captain
Cook. And at the last I see a little ship sail in alone, and on her deck
a disappointed, disillusioned woman; the woman whom the French have never
forgiven because, when they broke her heart, she omitted to repay them
with smiles--the daughter of Marie Antoinette. The Duchesse d’Angoulême
came hither from Bordeaux, in exile for the second, but not for the last
time, with the marshals’ vows of fidelity and the news of their joining
Napoleon still ringing in her ears together.
SOUTH CORNWALL
SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH CORNWALL
DISTANCES.
Plymouth
Looe, viâ Horningtops 23 miles
Polperro 5 ”
Lostwithiel 12 ”
Fowey 7 ”
Truro 22 ”
Falmouth 11 ”
Lizard 19 ”
Penzance 28 ”
Land’s End, viâ St. Buryan 12 ”
---------
Total 139 miles
ROADS.
Hills steep and very frequent.
Surface: on main roads good. By-roads often very narrow and rather rough.
IV
SOUTH CORNWALL
One approaches Cornwall diffidently: one leaves it with a sense of
profound ignorance. There is no county, of course, of which any true
knowledge can be gained in one visit, whether the visitor be a motorist,
or a bicyclist, or that very superior person the pedestrian; but perhaps
this is truer of the Duchy than of any other part of England. The
knowledge of Cornwall is a special study with many branches, familiar
only to Cornwall’s devoted sons. It is easy to love her beautiful face at
first sight, and easy to learn the part of her history that is also the
history of England, but behind and within these superficial things is the
vast hoard of her local legends and traditions, and the bewildering story
of her unnumbered saints. A slight knowledge of tin-mining, too, were
not amiss. One can only admit ignorance, and drive on happily.
Those who elect to approach the coast of Cornwall from Tavistock, through
Callington and Liskeard, will travel on a fine road, which four times
dips down to streams and forthwith climbs up again. On so hilly a road as
this, one may depend on finding beautiful scenery. After passing through
Liskeard the better road to take is the upper one by Morval, as it is
less rough than the road that follows the Looe.
[Illustration: LOOE RIVER.]
On the whole, however, I think the most satisfactory way to enter
Cornwall is by Plymouth and Torpoint Ferry. Indeed, I would even suggest
that those who have crossed the Moor to Tavistock should choose this
route; for the road from Tavistock to Plymouth is magnificent in itself,
and overlooks some of the finest views in Devon. And moreover the park
of Mount Edgecumbe[6] is but a little way from Torpoint. It is true
that beautiful Cothele is but a little way from the Callington road;
but Cothele is not open to the public, though by the kindness of Lord
Mount Edgecumbe its granite walls and historic furniture may sometimes
be seen. But Mount Edgecumbe, says John Prince, is “the most beauteous
gentile seat in all those western parts.” The commander-in-chief of the
Armada, looking at it from the sea, “was so affected with the sight
thereof” that he determined to keep it for his share “in the partage
of this kingdom.” His taste was better than his seamanship. The house
that stands in this lovely park was built by the grandson of the builder
of Cothele--a gentleman, according to Carew, “in whom mildness and
stoutness, diffidence and wisdom, deliberateness of undertaking and
sufficiency of effecting, made a more commendable than blazing mixture of
virtue.” However commendable, he was less attractive, I think, than his
grandsire, whom deliberateness of undertaking would not have saved when
he was pursued by his enemies among the woods of Cothele. He pushed a
large stone into the Tamar, and flinging his cap after it, hid among the
trees. Richard III.’s messengers of death, hearing the splash and seeing
the floating cap, thought he was drowned and went away. “He afterwards
builded in the place of his lurking a chapel.”
The road from Torpoint to Polbathick is excellent, and where it winds
round the creeks of the Lynher estuary there are woods on the river’s
very verge, as is the lovely custom beside these West Country waters.
Across the valley is St. German’s, wherein are some of Cornwall’s most
venerable memories and the home of the famous Eliot who died nobly in the
Tower. At the fork just beyond Polbathick it is advisable to take the
road to the right, for though it is a good deal the longer it is also a
good deal the smoother, and avoids a pair of steep hills at Hessenford.
The direct road is quite practicable, however, and those who choose it
may take the opportunity of running down the wooded valley of the Seaton
to the shore. On the other hand, if we go by the longer road we shall see
more of the Looe estuary, which is far more beautiful.
[Illustration: LOOE HARBOUR.]
To it the Liskeard road runs suddenly down; then turns and follows it
very closely to the sea. Even closer to the water is the little railway,
which clings to the bank under the hanging trees, and at one point
actually goes on its adventurous way in mid-stream. The water, gorgeous
as a peacock’s breast, flows evenly between thickly wooded hills, and as
the valley widens the town appears at the end of it, climbing its steep
sides.
As one approaches a place that is a byword for beauty there is always
a lurking fear of disappointment. But the fishing-towns of Devon and
Cornwall are so disarming, so personal in their charm, that they never
disappoint. Indeed, the trouble is rather that they win the heart too
quickly. Each one in turn appears the ideal spot in which to settle for
life. So is it here. As we cross the bridge that joins East Looe to
West, and look down at the green timbers of the little quays and at the
countless boats, or up at the many-coloured gardens above the road; as
we drive round the point, and find the open sea rippling in upon a rocky
shore, it seems obvious that this, and no other, is the place to live
in. The conviction lasts until we reach Polperro.
This we cannot do by way of the wide road that runs round Hannafore
Point, for this ends abruptly opposite Looe Island. We must return to the
bridge, and without crossing it take the road that rises on the left. As
we mount the steep hill we see below us the meeting of the two rivers and
their two wooded valleys, and behind us among the trees the scattered
houses of the town. At a point about two miles from Looe we turn to the
left, and run down a long and winding hill into a tiny green gorge, with
steep sides rising almost from the roadway. It ends in the narrow street
of Polperro. Here, at the beginning of the street, is the stable-yard
of a little hotel, where standing-room may be found for the car. Beyond
this point it is practically impossible for a large car to turn, for the
twisted alleys of this cramped and cabined village are hardly more than
paths, and owing to their contortions on the hillside are often broken by
steps.
[Illustration: STREET OF POLPERRO.]
Why anyone should want to turn I cannot imagine; for this is certainly
the place to live in! We knew all about it, of course, before we came
here: a thousand artists have painted it. Large numbers are painting
it at this moment; a group at every corner. Since there are so many of
them it is fortunate that artists--even amateurs--are among the few
human beings who are not blots upon a landscape. They may give us lovely
pictures of this place: of the headlands that clip the huddled houses so
closely between them; and the stream that rushes under weed-grown walls
to the sea; and the landlocked harbour with its crowd of little boats;
and the cobbled lanes and whitewashed cottages and flights of footworn
steps; and the flowers that brighten every narrow alley; and, best of
all, the outer haven with its warm red rocks, and white sails reflected
in the sea, and the stately outspread wings of innumerable gulls. Yet
none but a magic picture could give us the magic of Polperro. For no one
could paint this sea but a wizard whose medium was molten jewels, and
no one can feel the spell of the place without the pathetic, haunting,
insistent sound of the seabirds’ cry. Indeed, it is this sound that gives
reality to Polperro. If it were not for this one might think it had been
designed and built for the use of artists. The fisher-folk who live here
could tell a different tale; and the wild cry of the gulls reminds us of
a sea that is not always green and glassy. Moreover, there was once a
time, I believe, when it seemed as though Polperro had been designed and
built for the use of smugglers.
[Illustration: POLPERRO.]
Very reluctantly we climb out of the gorge and take our way to
Lostwithiel by Pelynt and Lanreath, on a road of variable surface and
everlasting hills. In Pelynt church is the restored crozier of Bishop
Trelawny, whose threatened death, as we all know, determined twenty
thousand Cornishmen to “know the reason why.” There are various monuments
here too, some beautiful and all interesting, of Trelawnys and Bullers;
and at Lanreath a lovely screen and a carved wood cover to a Norman font,
and on the south wall a painted copy of Charles I.’s letter of thanks to
the men of Cornwall. From the top of the first steep hill beyond Lanreath
we see the rounded outlines of Braddock Downs before us, and at their
feet the woods of Boconnoc. Over those grassy hills the soldiers of
the Parliament were pursued by the royalists. “They were possest of a
pretty rising ground,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife upon the
day of the fight, “… and we planted ourselves upon such another against
them within muskett shott; and we saluted each other with bulletts
about two hours or more.… We chast them diverse miles … and we lost not
a man. So I rest yours ever.” A year later these slopes were stained
again--but not so darkly as the royalist honour--when the infantry of the
Parliament, having surrendered, were shot down as they passed the King’s
army unarmed, and were robbed of clothes and horses. The King himself at
that time was staying at Lord Mohun’s place down there among the trees.
We pass one of the gates presently, and skirt the park where Bevill
Grenville’s men, “upon my lord Mohun’s kind motion,” were quartered by
good fires under the hedge.
This park that we see over the fence has been owned by Mortains and
Courtenays, Mohuns and Pitts. The last Lord Mohun did not, I fancy, spend
much of his time under these trees--preferring those of the Mall and of
Richmond Park. When, after surviving three trials for murder, he died
at last in his famous duel with the Duke of Hamilton, his widow sold
Boconnoc to Thomas Pitt for half the sum, it is said, that he received
from the Regent Orléans for the Pitt Diamond. It was here that the great
Lord Chatham was born.
We run down a long hill into Lostwithiel. This is a place that has seen
better days; for Henry III.’s brother, the Earl of Cornwall and King of
the Romans, made it his headquarters in the rare moments when he was not
trying to make up the quarrels of others nor fighting in his own, and
even in the sixteenth century it was the “shyre towne.” Of the “ruines of
auncyent buyldinges” that Leland saw there are only slight traces; but,
if we cross the pretty old bridge that spans the Fowey and turn to the
right at once, we may see “the little rownd castel of Restormel.” It is
reached by a steep lane, and there is no turning-room at the top except
in a private field.
[Illustration: RESTORMEL CASTLE.]
“Only there remaineth,” says Carew, “an utter defacement.” But indeed
there is something more. This straight avenue of pine-trees with its
carpet of turf, the double entrance across the moat, the heavy, gloomy
ivy, give to Restormel that air of mystery and romance that seizes the
imagination. Like its founder--the prince whose strange exotic name
haunts Cornwall far more persistently than he ever did himself--like
Richard, King of the Romans, this castle was more warlike than domestic.
Only the “fair large dungeon,” or keep, and the “onrofid” chapel are left
standing now on the mound that overlooks the valley so commandingly.
It is a fine position; yet, though it was hastily strengthened for the
Parliament, Sir Richard Grenville[7] took it for the King.
The road from Lostwithiel to Fowey is for the most part winding and
stony, and extremely narrow. In places it is also very steep; and the
hedges are high and comparatively uninteresting. But a road that leads
ultimately to Fowey is entitled to do as it pleases on the way. The last
part of it is quite good.
On a very steep hill we creep slowly into “Troy Town.” We look out, over
the sloping streets and the roofs of the houses and the church, at the
blue harbour and the hill beyond it and all the busy traffic of the port.
Over this hill, hundreds of years ago, the men of Normandy crept into
Fowey in the night and fell to fighting in the streets, with a whole
century of wrongs to avenge--a century of raids and robberies on the part
of the truculent Gallants of Fowey. The spoils of French harbours had
made the townsmen here “unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous.” So
the Frenchmen came to Fowey “without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice,”
and killed everyone they met, and burnt the town. Thomas Treffry--Hals
calls him John--gathered some of the “stoutest men” round him in his new
house of Place, and defended it; while his wife Elizabeth, like a true
help-meet, mounted to the roof and poured molten lead upon the besiegers,
with excellent effect. Place stands there still, below us on the left;
yet not the same that was besieged, since the tall tower is plainly of
Victorian date, and the very beautiful bays that appear above the wall
are Tudor. It was after this exciting experience that Thomas Treffry--or
John--“builded a right fair and stronge embatelid towr in his house: and
embateling al the waulles of the house in a maner made it a castelle: and
onto this day”--and unto this--“it is the glorie of the town building in
Faweye.”
If we stand close below the church tower, and look carefully at the
stones above us, we shall see the familiar badge of the ragged staff, the
cognisance of the Kingmaker. The Foyens, when Warwick allowed them to go
on with their piracies, naïvely put his badge upon their new church in
acknowledgment of his kindness, and persevered in their filibustering
ways. Edward IV., however, subdued them by a most unkingly trick. His
first messenger they returned to him shorn of his ears, “at which affront
the King was so distasted” that he sent a body of men to Lostwithiel,
the shire town, ostensibly to enlist volunteers. The Gallants, who
never asked for anything better than to fight the French, trooped to
Lostwithiel at the summons of their King. They were all arrested; and the
chain that guarded their harbour was given to Dartmouth. I believe there
are two links of the chain still to be seen at Menabilly, behind the hill.
From the windows of the Fowey Hotel we can see, at Polruan, one of
the square grey forts to which the ends of this chain were fastened.
The ruins of the other are opposite to it. These valiant little forts
have seen a good deal of service, and defended their port long after
their chain was forfeited. There was a Dutch ship that came to this
harbour-mouth one day in pursuit of an English fleet, and defied the
forts in the insolence of her seventy guns--“to the great hurt,” says
Hals, “of the Dutch ship … and the no small credit and reputation of
Foy’s little castles.”
[Illustration: BODINNICK FERRY.]
Fowey’s fighting reputation has always been great, since the day when
she owned “sixty tall ships” and sent forty-seven of them to the siege
of Calais. To see the harbour that has done so much for England we
must loiter in a boat beside the jetties and among the creeks; we must
pass the dripping walls of gardens, and the flights of steps where the
seaweed clings, and the houses whose back-doors open on the water; we
must watch the lading of the ships with china-clay--ships from Sweden
and Russia and France--and pause before the picture that Bodinnick makes
on the hillside. It was to this hillside, says the story, that Sir
Reynold de Mohun came to fetch his hawk, when it killed its quarry in the
Fitzwilliams’ garden up there at Hall. Walking in the garden was the fair
Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, and on the moment he lost his heart to her, and as
she thought him “a very handsome personable young gentleman,” they became
the first Mohuns of Hall. Whether they were really introduced by the hawk
is doubtful, but they were certainly married--and that not merely once
but twice: for the bishop divorced them against their will, and it was
only by appealing to the Pope that they won leave to live happily ever
after.[8]