The Cornwall Coast

by Arthur L. Salmon

When Defoe came to Penzance, he seems to have been surprised to find it so civilised and so comfortable, "being so remote from London, which is the centre of our wealth." That is the remark of a true Londoner, showing an attitude of mind towards the provincial that is not quite extinct. He says: "This town of Penzance is a place of good business, well built and populous, has a good trade, and a great many ships belonging to it, notwithstanding it is so remote. Here are also a great many good families of gentlemen, though in this utmost angle of the nation." It is clear he expected to find a village of savages. As a matter of fact Penzance now, with its admirable train service, seems nearer to Paddington than many places that are not half so far off; every express that comes westward brings a savour of the great city with it, just as each train that leaves Penzance carries material evidence of Cornwall's existence into the very heart of old London. All the flowers from Scilly go by this route, and the Penzance neighbourhood has many flowers, fruits, and early vegetables of its own to dispatch to Covent Garden, together with a considerable quantity of fish. The railway is carried by viaduct across Marazion sands; in 1869 a large portion was shattered by the sea, and the line had to be removed further back. Sea and winds remain as untamable as they were when men of the Stone Age broke each other's heads at Chysauster. In Alverton Street (retaining the name of the old Alwaretone estate, mentioned in Domesday) are the museums and buildings of the Natural History, Antiquarian, and Cornish Royal Geological Societies, with the Guildhall, and a public room for meetings; but the Penzance Library, containing about 25,000 volumes, many of great rarity, is kept at Morrab House. There are Schools of Art and of Mining—both subjects strongly to the front in Cornwall. Immediately below the domed market-house, once the Town Hall, is a statue of the town's most famous son, Sir Humphry Davy, born here in 1778, his father being a wood-carver. He was educated partly at Truro, and early evinced that taste for poetry and angling that never left him. After serving with a Penzance surgeon, he went to Dr. Beddoes at Clifton, where he met Coleridge and Southey, and discovered the curious effects of "laughing-gas." His further career does not belong to Cornwall, but he proved himself a true son of the Duchy by inventing the Davy safety-lamp for miners. Another great man in a different school of activity, Pellew, better known as Lord Exmouth, though born at Dover, spent much of his boyhood with his Cornish grandmother at Penzance. His gallant deeds against the enemies of his country form a stirring page in our national history, but Mr. Norway has told us of one occasion on which he ran away from a pursuer. He was a mischievous lad, and once, "having wandered with a friend up Castle Horneck Avenue, he was inspired to discharge a few shots through the latticed window of a cottage inhabited by two excellent old maiden ladies. The pellets were aimed at pewter plates, and struck those only, but the insult knocked at the heart of one of the old ladies, who seized the firehook, as the nearest weapon, kilted up her gown, and gave chase. Pellew's courage dissolved at the first sight of this gaunt apparition, running as he thought no lady of her age could run. He fled like a hare; she cast away her firehook and followed; he threw away his musket and gained some ground; she caught him up again, and in Madron church-town was almost on his back, when there came a kindly hill. The old lady's wind was gone, she could spurt no more; so while the culprit fled away in shameful rout without his arms, she retreated honourably, the one person (if she could have known it) who ever terrified Pellew."

Penzance has quite a commodious harbour, as it deserves, having spent at least £100,000 on it; there is a regular service to Scilly, a good deal of coasting, much fishing, and some ship-building. The west arm of the pier is built on a vein of felspar porphyry, visible at low water. Around the harbour cluster the narrow streets of the older town, with nothing particular to recommend them; beyond this is the town's one conventional feature, its promenade. A rather dreary and unkempt mile of road takes us to Newlyn; and in this part Penzance has certainly unduly emphasised its carelessness of appearance. It need not be quite so slovenly and slipshod. Newlyn, the paradise of artists, deserves a better approach, and Penzance itself merits a fairer exit.

But before passing on to Newlyn something must be said both of Gulval and of Madron. The tract of sheltered land in which Gulval lies, reaching from Mount's Bay to Ludgvan, is one of the most productive in Cornwall, being chiefly devoted to market-gardens and flowers; its rare mildness and productiveness is proved by the wealth of exotic vegetation around Gulval Church and Vicarage. In this respect the place actually rivals Tresco, and the fields of narcissi are as luxuriant as those of the Scillies. Much of this soil is worked by hand, in the good old-fashioned style, whose results always seem better than those of machinery. It is quite an idyllic corner of land, with a tangible outcome that goes to the markets in the shape of early vegetables and spring flowers. Below stretches the wide Bay, with its gem, the Mount, of which it is so glorious a setting. There is another gem close at hand, and that is Gulval Church itself, dedicated to a St. Gudval or Wolvele. The general character of the church is Early English, but there were two restorations in the past century, the last being in 1892, and a great deal of modern decoration has been added, largely in Derbyshire felspar, with excellent result. The church has been under the special care of the Bolitho family, whose monuments abound here, and it is a proof that old ecclesiastic buildings may be beautified by modern adornment, without the disastrous result that sometimes attends such attempts. Gulval holy well was one of the most famous in Cornwall, and there can be little doubt that the saint's early oratory was on the site of the church—a few traces, indeed, may remain in the walling, a successful blending of the very ancient and the recent. Even more famous was the well of St. Madron or Maddern, which was quite a Lourdes in its way. The church here, probably on an older site, dates from the time of Richard I., being built by one of the Pomeroys; but little remains of this earlier building except its very curious and apparently mutilated font. The present church is chiefly Perpendicular.

In the graveyard is the epitaph of George Daniell, the founder of Madron schools in days when men built schools instead of quarrelling about them:—

"Belgia me birth, Britaine me breeding gave;
Cornwall a wife, ten children, and a grave."

Madron Feast (Advent Sunday) was always an occasion of prolonged merrymakings and dissipation. It seems to have been in this district that the last bull-baiting took place in Cornwall. A witness states that it took place in Gulval parish, in the summer of 1814: "I remember the black bull being led by four men. The crowd was dispersed early in the morning by a severe thunderstorm, which much alarmed the people, who thought it (I was led to believe) a judgment from heaven." This proves that their minds were already uneasy. It is devoutly to be wished that all those whose so-called sports cause suffering to animals may be equally on the watch for judgments from heaven. The village of old Madron is very beautiful and interesting.

Newlyn, a long mile beyond Penzance, in spite of the painters who have carried its name far and wide, is still largely unspoiled. It must be said for painters that they do not spoil a place as other visitors so often do; in fact, all change—modernising, restoring, destroying—is opposed to their sense of fitness; they are champions of the picturesque and sworn foes of the jerry-builder. Newlyn remains quaint and fishy, though it has its little Art Gallery and its Rue des Beaux Arts. There are artistic industries also—copper repoussé and enamel jewellery; a new Renaissance has come to this Cornish fishing-village—its youths and maidens are learning mysteries of beautiful craft which may save them from the deadly inanities of the average British workman. When we speak of early Newlyn days, of course we mean the days of the first artistic settlement, some thirty years since; older Newlyn has little to tell, except that it was burnt by the Spanish, and that its life has always been bound up with the fortunes of the fishery. Mr. Stanhope Forbes has told us something of the place as he first knew it. "I had come from France, where I had been studying, and wandering down into Cornwall, came one spring morning along that dusty road by which Newlyn is approached from Penzance. Little did I think that the cluster of grey-roofed houses which I saw before me against the hillside would be my home for so many years." But he bewails that Newlyn is not what it was; there has been some spoliation, some pulling down of old cottages, some unsightly intrusion of the ugly and modern, though certainly less than might have been feared. It was here that Frank Bramley painted his "Hopeless Dawn" and "After Fifty Years"; here Walter Langley painted "Among the Missing," and Mr. Forbes "The Health of the Bride." It would be hopeless to attempt to name all the pictures that have carried different aspects of Newlyn life to the London exhibitions—the piers, the blue-guernseyed fishermen, the brown-sailed smacks (now partly giving place to steam-drifters), the rich-complexioned old men and women, the lovely bright-eyed children, the sturdy lads, the gulls, the wonderful bay. From the first there was an excellent understanding between the painters and the people; great tact was shown by the artists, and a mutual pride sprang up between them. What is true of Newlyn is true also of St. Ives and of all the haunts around Land's End where painters have established; rarely has there been any friction, even if the artists have sometimes been regarded as amiable madmen. It is true that John Brett, the marine painter, before Newlyn's most palmy days, managed to offend the natives by his too outspoken religious opinions and his habit of laying on colour with his palette-knife. "What can you expect," asked a fisherman, "of a man who says there's no God and paints his pictures with a knife?" It will be remembered that religious differences have been a cause of strife before now between Cornish fishermen and fishers who brought laxer views of Sunday fishing from the East Country. Such things have still a strong hold on those who "do business in great waters." But there are times when politics, blown to white-heat by the Bethels, will drive even religion from the minds of the fisher-folk, as we may judge by a story told by Mr. Hudson. It was after the visit of a lady missioner, who usually reaped a rich harvest of converts; some one asked the minister how many souls had been won on this occasion. "Not one this time," he answered; "we were too busy with the elections."

The Newlyn corner of Mount's Bay is named Gwavas Lake, and it is said that it once really was a lake. A little southward we get into the parish of Paul, whose name probably embodies no dedication to any St. Paul, but is a corruption of the Cornish pol—a pool or creek. Mousehole, one of the most delightful fishing-villages in England, is in this parish, far more unspoiled even than Newlyn. As has been already mentioned, Paul was burned by Spaniards, July 23, 1595, on which day, the parish register tells us, "the church, towre, bells, and all other things pertaining to the same, together with the houses and goods, was burn'd and spoil'd by the Spaniards in the said parish, being Wensdaie the daie aforsaid, in the 37th yeare of the Reigne of our Sovereigne Ladie Elizabeth, by the grace of God, of England, Fraunce, and Ireland, defender of the Faith." It seems, however, that the church was not so utterly destroyed as this might lead us to believe; much of the stonework survived, including the lofty granite tower. Most persons remember Paul as the burial-place of Dolly Pentreath, whose claim to be the last person speaking Cornish can hardly be maintained, though even she did not speak it habitually. Her married name appears to have been Jeffery, but that did not matter; when the wife was the better half her maiden name often prevailed over that of the husband, in later days than this. In 1768 Daines Barrington visited her, and was heartily abused by her in Cornish because he slyly suggested that she did not understand the tongue. He says: "She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English, being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it, or at least can converse in it. She is poor, and maintained partly by the parish and partly by fortune-telling and gabbling Cornish." The stone above her grave was erected in 1860 by "the Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, in union with the Rev. John Garrett, Vicar of St. Paul." Prince Lucien, nephew of the first Napoleon, was an eager student of philology. In 1854 George Borrow, then touring Cornwall (his father was a Cornishman), visited Paul Church, and noticed a Cornish epitaph on the walls—said to be the only inscription in the old vernacular surviving in this fashion. It may be given as a specimen of the extinct language:—

"Bounas heb dueth Eu poes Karens wei
tha Pobl Bohodzhak Paull han Egles nei";

which has been thus rendered:—