It is a darksome climb to the battlements of the old tower of the castle, so high above the world. Penzance and Newlyn lie below in the distance, and their white walls flash upon the grey of granite and the dull green of the moors beyond. Presently, as you gaze, comes a trail of smoke from eastward, and the “down” train glides into the wayside station of Marazion Road, bringing its complement of holiday-makers, who will swarm up the Logan Rock, sail to Lamorna, adventure (if they be hardy pedestrians) to Porthgwarra or Saint Levan (whence Sir John Saint Aubyn’s jubilee peerage), or Cape Cornwall; but those spots are innumerable where the tourist loves to dwell. Above all places he goes to Land’s End, but never or rarely does he hie him eastward, to Perranuthno, to Cuddan Point, or to Pengersick. Civilisation goes ever westward, and, as the tourist is its peculiar product, ’tis only fitting he should follow its march.
I recollect another day, when we went to Land’s End, along ten miles of ofttimes rough and heavy walking, through Alverton’s lanes, along the short stretch of dusty road that passes by the wrecked sea-wall, designed to join those near neighbours of Penzance and Newlyn, but demolished by the first storm that rolled in from the south-west.
We sat upon the tumbled blocks of granite, and captured this view of the town, and then came upon Newlyn and its decaying school of artists. What has become of the Newlyn School, so-called, that ephemeral blossom? Are we to assume that, its leading exponent having won to academic honours, its mission is fulfilled?
Penzance.
They were only a dilettante set we saw at Newlyn, painting the ramshackle old bridges and their loungers. Artists have painted these old bridges over and over again, have composed groups of bronzed, blue-jerseyed fishermen leaning over their parapets and gossiping, and have given, with the convincing surety of the Newlyn touch, the laughing, tinkling stream that flows beneath the arches, presently to lose itself in the shallow waters of the bay. The amateur photographer, too, is never weary of well “doing” the place. I prefer the paintings to the photos, because, although I have a happy liking for realism and truth, I draw the line at the camera’s uncompromising rendition of battered tin cans, broken crockery, fish offal, old boots, and other unpicturesque and sordid objects that lazy housewives cast out of window into the water.
LUDGVAN LEAZE.
Sad, indeed, is the state of the picturesque stream or romantic glen that borders upon a camp of civilisation, for abundance of old boots and sardine tins are the reward of the diligent botanist or natural historian in these gates; bracken grows not more profusely than are strewn the shards and potsherds of the neighbouring town. But no matter how frequent and plentiful the wreck and refuse in the matter of bottomless kettles, superannuated umbrellas, and broken dishes, the Old Boot is the commonest object of the seashore, highway, by-way, lane, or ditch—no mountain too high, no valley too deep for it to be found. The angler lands it with language and dashed expectations from the trout stream; the trawler finds it unaccountably in his trawl-net when he returns from the bay; the ploughman disinters it from the field; and children dig it up from the sands: everywhere is the Old Boot. I have communed with Nature, and rambled amid the wildest and loneliest of scenes, when my meditations have been arrested by old boots, and at once the poetry and romance of the scene have flown away. Truly, there is nothing like leather.