From a Cornish Window / A New Edition

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

BEATUS POSSIDENS.

I can't afford a mile of sward,
Parterres and peacocks gay;
For velvet lawns and marble fauns
Mere authors cannot pay.
And so I went and pitched my tent
Above a harbour fair,
Where vessels picturesquely rigg'd
Obligingly repair.
The harbour is not mine at all:
I make it so—what odds?
And gulls unwitting on my wall
Serve me for garden-gods.
By ships that ride below kaleid-
oscopically changed,
Unto my mind each day I find
My garden rearranged.
These, madam, are my daffodils,
My pinks, my hollyhocks,
My herds upon a hundred hills,
My phloxes and my flocks.
And when some day you deign to pay
The call that's overdue,
I'll wave a landlord's easy hand
And say, "Admire my view!"

Now I do not deny that a part of the content expressed in these lines may come of resignation. In some moods, were I to indulge them, it were pleasant to fancy myself owner of a vast estate, champaign and woodland; able to ride from sea to sea without stepping off my own acres, with villeins and bondmen, privileges of sak and soke, infangthef, outfangthef, rents, tolls, dues, royalties, and a private gallows for autograph-hunters. These things, however, did not come to me by inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment. Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics—all that men and women are saying and doing. Only the centre of gravity has shifted, so to speak.

I dare say, then, that resignation may have some share in this content; but if so 'tis an unconscious and happy one. A man who has been writing novels for a good part of his life should at least be able to sympathise with various kinds of men; and, for an example or two, I can understand—

1. Why Alexander cried (if he ever did) because he had no second world to conquer.
2. Why Shakespeare, as an Englishman, wanted a coat of arms and a respectable estate in his own native country town.
3. What and how deep are the feelings beneath that cri du cœur of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's 'Old Squire:'—
"I like the hunting of the hare
Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
And the crowing of the cocks.
"I covet not a wider range
Than these dear manors give;
I take my pleasures without change,
And as I lived I live.
"Nor has the world a better thing,
Though one should search it round,
Than thus to live one's own sole king
Upon one's own sole ground.
"I like the hunting of the hare;
It brings me day by day
The memory of old days as fair,
With dead men past away.
"To these as homeward still I ply,
And pass the churchyard gate,
Where all are laid as I must lie,
I stop and raise my hat.
"I like the hunting of the hare:
New sports I hold in scorn.
I like to be as my fathers were
In the days ere I was born."
4. What—to start another hare—were Goldsmith's feelings when he wrote—
"And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return—and die at home at last."
5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to tilt at sheep and windmills, and again with what heart in that saddest of all last chapters he bade his friends look not for this year's birds in last year's nests.
6. Why the young man went away sadly, because he had great possessions and could not see his way to bestowing them all on the poor; why, on the contrary, St. Paulinus of Nola and St. Francis of Assisi joyfully renounced their wealth; what Prudhon meant by saying that 'property is theft'; and what a poor Welsh clergyman of the seventeenth century by proclaiming in verse and prose that he was heir of all the world, and properties, hedges, boundaries, landmarks meant nothing to him, since all was his that his soul enjoyed; yes, and even what inspired him to pen this golden sentence—
"You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars."

1. Why Alexander cried (if he ever did) because he had no second world to conquer.
2. Why Shakespeare, as an Englishman, wanted a coat of arms and a respectable estate in his own native country town.
3. What and how deep are the feelings beneath that cri du cœur of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's 'Old Squire:'—
"I like the hunting of the hare
Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
And the crowing of the cocks.
"I covet not a wider range
Than these dear manors give;
I take my pleasures without change,
And as I lived I live.
"Nor has the world a better thing,
Though one should search it round,
Than thus to live one's own sole king
Upon one's own sole ground.
"I like the hunting of the hare;
It brings me day by day
The memory of old days as fair,
With dead men past away.
"To these as homeward still I ply,
And pass the churchyard gate,
Where all are laid as I must lie,
I stop and raise my hat.
"I like the hunting of the hare:
New sports I hold in scorn.
I like to be as my fathers were
In the days ere I was born."
4. What—to start another hare—were Goldsmith's feelings when he wrote—
"And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return—and die at home at last."
5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to tilt at sheep and windmills, and again with what heart in that saddest of all last chapters he bade his friends look not for this year's birds in last year's nests.
6. Why the young man went away sadly, because he had great possessions and could not see his way to bestowing them all on the poor; why, on the contrary, St. Paulinus of Nola and St. Francis of Assisi joyfully renounced their wealth; what Prudhon meant by saying that 'property is theft'; and what a poor Welsh clergyman of the seventeenth century by proclaiming in verse and prose that he was heir of all the world, and properties, hedges, boundaries, landmarks meant nothing to him, since all was his that his soul enjoyed; yes, and even what inspired him to pen this golden sentence—
"You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars."

My window, then, looks out from a small library upon a small harbour frequented by ships of all nations—British, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, French, German, Italian, with now and then an American or a Greek—and upon a shore which I love because it is my native country. Of all views I reckon that of a harbour the most fascinating and the most easeful, for it combines perpetual change with perpetual repose. It amuses like a panorama and soothes like an opiate, and when you have realised this you will understand why so many thousands of men around this island appear to spend all their time in watching tidal water. Lest you should suspect me of taking a merely dilettante interest in the view, I must add that I am a Harbour Commissioner.

As for the house, it is a plain one; indeed, very like the house a child draws on a slate, and therefore pleasing even externally to me, who prefer the classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why so many strangers mistake it with its modest dimensions for a hotel, I cannot tell you. I found one in the pantry the other day searching for a brandy-and-soda; another rang the dining-room bell and dumbfoundered the maid by asking what we had for lunch; and a third (a lady) cried when I broke to her that I had no sitting-room to let. We make it a rule to send out a chair whenever some unknown invader walks into the garden and prepares to make a water-colour sketch of the view.

There are some, too, whose behaviour cannot be reconciled with the hallucination of a hotel, and they must take the house for a public institution of some kind, though of what kind I cannot guess. There was an extremely bashful youth, for instance, who roamed the garden for a while on the day after the late Duke of Cambridge's funeral, and, suddenly dashing in by the back door, wanted to know why our flag was not at half-mast. There was also a lady who called on the excuse that she had made a life-study of the Brontës, and after opining (in a guarded manner) that they came, originally, from somewhere in Yorkshire, desired to be informed how many servants we kept. I have sometimes thought of rechristening our house The Hotel of the Four Seasons, and thereby releasing its true name (The Haven) to a friend who covets it for his own.

On the whole, however, these visitors disturb the house and the view from my window very little. The upper halves of them, as they pass up and down the road, appear above my garden wall much as the shadows that passed in Plato's cave. They come, enjoy their holiday, and go, leaving the window intent upon the harbour, its own folk and its own business.

And now for the book, which is really not a book at all, but a chapter of one.