From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

Years ago as a child I used to devour in that wonderful book Good Words for the Young, the Lilliput Levee and Lilliput Lyrics of the late William Brighty Rands: and among Rands' lyrics was one upon "The Girl that Garibaldi kissed." Of late years Rands has been coming to something like his own. His verses have been republished, and that excellent artist Mr. Charles Robinson has illustrated them. But I must tell Mr. Robinson that his portrait of the Girl that Garibaldi kissed does not in the least resemble her. I speak with knowledge—I the child who have lived to meet and know the child whom Garibaldi kissed and blessed as the sailors were weighing anchor to carry him out of this harbour and away from England. Wild horses shall not drag from me the name of that young person; because it happened—well, at an easily discoverable date—and she may not care for me to proclaim her age (as certainly she does not look it).

"He bowed to my own daughter,
And Polly is her name;
She wore a shirt of slaughter,
Of Garibaldi flame—
"Of course I mean of scarlet;
But the girl he kissed—who knows?—
May be named Selina Charlotte,
And dressed in yellow clothes!"

But she isn't; and she wasn't; for she wore a scarlet pelisse as they handed her up the yacht's side, and the hero took her in his arms.

"It would be a happy plan
For everything that's human,
If the pet of such a man
Should grow to such a woman!
"If she does as much in her way
As he has done in his—
Turns bad things topsy-turvy,
And sad things into bliss—
"O we shall not need a survey
To find that little miss,
Grown to a woman worthy
Of Garibaldi's kiss!"

Doggrel? Yes, doggrel no doubt! Let us pass on.

In the early numbers of our Cornish Magazine a host of contributors (some of them highly distinguished) discussed the question, 'How to develop Cornwall as a holiday resort.' 'How to bedevil it' was, I fear, our name in the editorial office for this correspondence. More and more as the debate went on I found myself out of sympathy with it, and more and more in sympathy with a lady who raised an indignant protest—

"Unless Cornishmen look to it, their country will be spoilt before they know it. Already there are signs of it—pitiable signs; Not many months ago I visited Tintagel, which is justly one of the prides of the Duchy. The 'swinging seas' are breaking against the great cliffs as they broke there centuries ago when Arthur and Launcelot and the Knights of the Round Table peopled the place. The castle is mostly crumbled away now, but some fraction of its old strength still stands to face the Atlantic gales, and to show us how walls were built in the grand old days. In the valley the grass is green and the gorse is yellow, and overhead the skies are blue and delightful: but facing Arthur's Castle—grinning down, as it were, in derision—there is being erected a modern hotel—'built in imitation of Arthur's Castle,' as one is told!… There is not yet a rubbish shoot over the edge of the cliff, but I do not think I am wrong in stating that the drainage is brought down into that cove where long ago (the story runs) the naked baby Arthur came ashore on the great wave!"