The Cornish taste has not hitherto rioted in "graven images." Ancient
monuments were so plentiful that it may have been thought quite
unnecessary to add to the number in any shape or form, especially when
it was known that the finest monoliths were split up and carted away
for gate-posts for cattle to rub against; or, worse than all, be burnt
for lime. However, graven images are rare in the county. A good citizen
of Edinburgh or Glasgow would put all the statuary in the county in his
back garden. Sir Humphry Davy stands outside the market at Penzance,
and Richard Lander, the plucky African traveller, is skied on a Doric
column on the top of a hill in Truro. Foote, the comedian, Polwhele,
county historian, and Henry Martyn, the sainted missionary, over whose
barren love story and early death rivers of salt tears have flowed,
were all born in Truro; but we didn't see any graven images recording
the fact. Guy sought information from an intelligent policeman, who
said he knew Henry Martyn well, and a quiet man he was, when sober!
There are some capital sites in the city for a few statues to Cornish
worthies, and the effigy of the sainted Martyn would, at all events,
help to preserve his memory from sad imputations. There is a Cornish
flavour about the great Earl of Chatham, who should have been born at
the family mansion at Boconnoc instead of at Westminster, where his
mother happened to be; and a Cornish flavour, too, about the gifted
Lady Hester Stanhope, who did not forget to speak well of Cornish
miners, "on account of their race," in her Syrian home. Cousin Jack
might remember this, and shell out liberally, if the public fancy
runs one day towards statues. The Molesworths have a claim to be set
up in marble, and so has Richard Trevithick, the Camborne miner, and
so also John Couch Adams, the discoverer of the planet Neptune. These
are a few worthies to go on with, and by the time their statues are
unveiled some, now living, may be ripe for immortality in stone. The
few modern monuments are not remarkable, as such. The Gilbert monument,
at Bodmin, outgrew its strength, and is not likely to startle remote
posterity as a nineteenth-century antiquity. Once upon a time there was
a battle at Stamford Hill, not far from Bude, when Sir Bevill Grenvill
and his stalwarts gave the Roundheads a fair drubbing. Then a monument
was erected to record the historic event, and it tumbled down. Sir
Bevill Grenvill had a giant servant, named Anthony Payne, and the great
Kneller painted his portrait, and the canvas has a place of honour in
the museum of the Royal Institution. The Bookworm remarked that it was
not at all singular that the county had turned out no sculptors, when
public bodies did so little to encourage art, and that what they did
was done so badly.
Truro is not the capital of the county, though many people think it
ought to be. It has a cathedral now, which counts for something, and
is the home of the "classy" people, which counts for a great deal when
the question is one of capital with a big C. Every few years there is
a battle-royal over the capital question, and the archæologists and
the antiquarians dust each other with seals and charters, Domesday
Books and inquisitions, and all the rest of it. The grand tournament is
between Bodmin and Launceston, which latter possesses an old castle,
or what is left of one, and was anciently the place for the hanging
of criminals for capital offences. But as the judges were served with
small beer at dinner, and their beds were not properly aired, they
moved on to Bodmin, where the beer was stronger, and the bed-linen
better looked after. Besides, the tallow candles gave better light in
the Bodmin than in the Launceston lodgings, which was important to
judges on circuit, when they had to sit up late and read papers, and
"note up" evidence badly written with their own hand and bad pens.
The Launceston people didn't seem to care much about their privileges
at the time of losing them. In fact, they were just then feeling sore
at having lost one member of Parliament under the Reform Bill, and
the market was flat for honours which didn't mean cash in hand. Then
Bodmin took on the assizes, and the hangings, and became the capital
with a big C, and built a lunatic asylum and a jail, up to date. The
question now is whether our Gracious Lord the King would hold out a
little finger to the Mayor of Launceston or to the Mayor of Bodmin as
most truly representing the capital of Cornwall. The point has to be
settled. Then Truro comes in and laughs at both, and, pointing to its
cathedral, says, "If you want a capital with a big C, look here," which
pleases all the "classy" people, and sets the rest laughing, except the
ancient Britons of Penzance, who swagger about climate, also with a big
C. As climate and capital both begin with C, it is easy to argue that
they are very much alike. Bodmin and Launceston tilt in rusty armour,
and Truro and Penzance with bodkins, and no harm is done.
The Bookworm made a tour of the libraries and museums, and somewhere
met a "kindred soul," which so pleased him that he pronounced Truro the
literary town in the duchy. Certainly, the city has a professorial air,
which is native. If ever there is a Cornish university it will come to
Truro, if it walk upon crutches to get there. Caps and gowns taking
snuff and looking lexicons coming out of the shadow of Church Lane
would be as natural as life; and then the undergrads swelling Boscawen
Street in term! They are not there just now, but the place looks as
though cut out for academic maternity. The professorial air belonged
to the place before the cathedral was dreamt of--perhaps the cathedral
came because the place had the right sort of style about it. There is
a county look about the shops in Boscawen Street, which is all its
own. Some of the shops just put up wire blinds, with a legend painted
on them, discouraging to the vulgar looking for bargains and misfits.
"Nothing of the sort here; our customers write cheques, you know."
There are other shops with "discount for cash" writ large all over
them, but they seem out of place, somehow. There was always this sort
of county family style about the town and people, who were always
fond of sports, and had a cock-pit.
[Illustration: "TAKING SNUFF AND LOOKING LEXICONS."]
What strikes the stranger first is the inexhaustible water supply.
Miniature canals ripple along on both sides of the streets--clear,
bright, fresh water, which would be worth no end of money in a thirsty
land. Ripple, ripple, ripple, all day long, and all the year through,
never overflowing, never drying up, a thing of beauty and a joy for
ever. Hydrophobia is unknown amongst dogs, and is only observable
amongst the higher animals--generally on pay days and holidays. The
inhabitants, however, pay water taxes quite cheerfully, and are not
extravagant users in their houses. It is a reproach to Londoners, who
are so extravagant with water, to see how thrifty the people are. The
people of Helston are blessed with water running free in the same way.
Cornish people do not live much in towns; they seem to prefer living
amongst the rocks and trees, upon the downs, amongst the shadows of
they know not what, and sounds which are as echoes from long ago. A
very small town elsewhere fills the untravelled with amazement; and
stories are told of the cunning which was shown by an old man who
carried a piece of chalk in his pocket and placed a mark on the corner
of every street he turned, and so made his way plain when he wished
to return; but the poor fellow was sadly puzzled when a joker rubbed
out his marks and put facsimiles in wrong places. But, in truth,
Cornish towns are not very puzzling to an ordinary pavement trotter,
and the houses are not much to look at. Solid walls pierced with holes
and covered by a roof is a "house." There are whole streets like this
in all the towns, and most of the shops have the appearance of being
private houses "accommodated." In a land where the Phoenician and
Greek came, and the Roman dwelt; where Spaniard, Frenchman, and Fleming
settled, leaving their names and blood behind, one might expect to
find specimens of the architecture of many periods and countries; but
it is no use looking for what does not exist. The Cornish never seem
to have invited the envy and hatred of others by the outward beauty
of their dwellings. The Fore Street of a town, however ancient and
celebrated for riches and commerce, never gives one the idea that
merchant princes dwelt here, and loved to dwell in earthly tabernacles
with polished beams, and hanging galleries, and oriel windows, painted,
decorated, and varnished, as we see in many a High Street, in many
a town in the rest of England. The Cornish genius had no great turn
for architecture--its municipal buildings are plain and thrifty, like
the dwelling-houses. To be "wind and water tight" is the native idea
of comfort; and then plenty of whitewash and a little paint. There
must have been native artists in abundance during the centuries, but
they were seldom employed with chisel and brush in decorating private
dwellings or corporation buildings. The county turned out one little
painter who "mixed his colours with brains," and so became the rage
for a London season; but when you come to a town, don't inquire, "What
artist was born here?" The old people didn't throw away money on
decorative art. If there is a bit to be found anywhere, it is generally
in or about a church, and stranger fingers executed it.
On the moors, and on the coast, the idea of a dwelling is that of a
stone hut with window and chimney, not so very much in advance of the
dwellings of the Palæolithic Age, which shows how slow the evolution of
one idea may be whilst others are travelling at motor pace. Where stone
abounds the dwelling is a cave above the ground; where stone is scarce
the yellow earth is mixed with a little chopped straw, and makes a wall
as much like the neighbouring soil as peas in a pod. This is "cob"
wall, and, when covered with thatch and half hidden with flowering
creepers, cob-wall cottages are pleasant to look at. Specimens of
stone dwellings with thatched roofs abound in the Lizard district, and
cob-wall cottages, more or less in ruins, are almost everywhere. Men
and women are in the habit of leaving their boots and clogs outside
their dwellings, and when the doors are open there is a great display
of old crockery and china ornaments in stiff-looking cupboards with
glass doors. Very like a painting by a Dutch artist is the interior of
a Cornish cottage on a moor.
Old fishing towns which have not yet been too much "improved" show the
practical side of the Cornishman's mind in the matter of dwellings. The
idea of a street never occurred to him. What he wanted was a place on
shore in which to store his nets and fishing gear, sails and spars, and
over that a loft, which he divided into rooms fitted up with "lockers,"
like the cuddy of his boat, or the cabin of a ship, and that was his
castle. He reached the ground by means of stone or wooden steps, having
the appearance on land of steps let down from the gangway of a ship.
In fact, the idea of a dwelling was that of a ship in stone, and the
similarity was the greater when a "hatch" was lifted up in the kitchen
and descent made into the cellar below, just as one would descend into
the hold of a ship through the open hatchway. The Cornish fisher's idea
of comfort was snugness. His dwelling overlooked the harbour, and he
could see his boat lying to her moorings, and open his window and talk
to the men as they passed, and consult the sky and clouds. He could do
a lot from his window, his chin resting on his arms, with the least
possible trouble to himself. When a fisher cannot live so as to see the
harbour from his window, he lives as near the harbour as he can,
so as to be out of his boat and into his bed in the shortest time. He
detests walking one step further than he can help after he lands, so
the idea of regular streets never dawned upon the original builders of
Newlyn and St. Ives, Polperro and Looe, Fowey and Mevagissey. A street
is an accident, unless it is modern--the ancient builders of the old
towns deeming it sufficient to leave a gangway between the houses, as
at Polperro, where a man with broad shoulders can block up the whole
thoroughfare. In the villages and coves at the Lizard and the Land's
End, the fishers' dwellings have a physiognomy in common, and tell of
struggle and endurance; and in favoured places, jasmine and myrtle,
fuchsia, geranium, and roses step in and cover all the weather-beaten
stone and shabby lintels with glory and perfume.
[Illustration: THE PORCH, LAUNCESTON CHURCH.]
[Illustration: SMILER'S PIOUS CAT.]