| “Great Ships Lay Anchored” | [Frontispiece] |
| Vignette | [Title-page] |
| Page | |
| Decoration | [v] |
| Preface Heading | [vii] |
| Decoration | [xi] |
| List of Illustrations | [xxi] |
| The Wreck | [1] |
| Richmond Lock Works | [5] |
| Richmond Bridge | [6] |
| New Inn, Ham | [11] |
| Ham House | [14] |
| Below Kingston | [15] |
| “Her Henry” | [18] |
| “W. E. Gladstone” | [19] |
| Staircase in Eton College | [20] |
| Windsor: Early Morning | [20] |
| Clieveden | [22] |
| Dove Cote, Hurley | [25] |
| Above Hurley | [26] |
| Medmenham Abbey | [27] |
| Poignant Individual | [29] |
| Evening at Henley | [33] |
| Sonning Bridge | [34] |
| Inscription: Sherborne Saint John | [36] |
| Holy Ghost Chapel, Basingstoke | [37] |
| Entrance to the Close, Winchester | [43] |
| Winchester Cathedral | [45] |
| St. Swithun and the Indignant Tourist | [47] |
| The Deanery, Winchester | [50] |
| Bishop Morley’s Palace | [52] |
| High Street, Winchester | [52] |
| A Peep over Roof-tops, Winchester | [54] |
| Saint Catherine’s Hill from Itchen Meads | [55] |
| “Ad Portas,” Winchester College | [56] |
| Brass, Weeke | [58] |
| Interior, Sparsholt Church | [59] |
| Romsey Abbey | [66] |
| Lyndhurst | [71] |
| A Ford in the New Forest | [73] |
| “Flashed Past” | [75] |
| Corfe Castle | [86] |
| “Politics and Agriculture” | [89] |
| “Gazed after us” | [90] |
| “Extremely Amusing, I do assure you” | [92] |
| “Humorous Wheelman, Garbed Fearfully” | [101] |
| Axmouth, from Seaton | [105] |
| Seaton Bridge | [106] |
| “Loathly Worm” | [107] |
| Exeter Cathedral: West Front | [110] |
| Saint Thomas | [112] |
| Exeter, from the Dunsford Road | [112] |
| Alphington | [113] |
| An Exminster Monument | [115] |
| Exminster Saint | [116] |
| Turf | [119] |
| Starcross | [120] |
| Langstone Point | [122] |
| Mount Pleasant | [123] |
| Lee Mount, Dawlish | [124] |
| Sea Wall, Teignmouth | [126] |
| Railway and Sea-wall, Night | [128] |
| Railway and Sea-wall, from East Cliff, Teignmouth | [128] |
| The Teign | [130] |
| Teignmouth Harbour | [131] |
| Maidencombe | [138] |
| Berry Pomeroy Castle | [147] |
| From a Monument, Berry | [149] |
| Eastgate, Totnes | [151] |
| Dartmouth Castle | [156] |
| Ancient Ironwork, South Door of Saint Saviour’s Church, Dartmouth | [158] |
| Arms of Dartmouth on the Old Gaol | [159] |
| Fore Street, Kingsbridge | [166] |
| Headmaster’s Desk, Kingsbridge | [170] |
| Kingsbridge Quay: Evening | [172] |
| Bolt Head | [178] |
| Drake’s Statue | [181] |
| Saltash Station | [186] |
| Guildhall, East Looe, and Borough Seal | [197] |
| “Comparatively Prosaic Fisherman” | [198] |
| The “Jolly Sailor” | [200] |
| Seal of West Looe | [201] |
| Talland Cherubs | [203] |
| An Old Shop, Polperro | [211] |
| Lanteglos-juxta-Fowey | [214] |
| A Cornish Moor | [220] |
| Font, Saint Austell | [224] |
| A Note at Gorran | [229] |
| Roseland Inn, Philleigh | [236] |
| Lander | [237] |
| Carn Brea | [246] |
| Druidical Altar, Carn Brea | [248] |
| Saint Michael’s Mount | [253] |
| Penzance, from above Gulval | [254] |
| Saint Michael’s Mount: Entrance to the Castle | [256] |
| Penzance Harbour: Night | [256] |
| Chevy Chase Hall | [259] |
| Penzance | [260] |
| Ludgvan Leaze | [261] |
| Saint Buryan | [262] |
| Saint Germoe | [263] |
| The Longships Lighthouse | [264] |
| Carn Kenidjack | [266] |
| Saint Levan | [267] |
| Saint Germoe’s Chair | [268] |
From Paddington to Penzance
I.
There were two of us: myself, the narrator, the artist-journalist of these truthful pages, and my sole companion, the Wreck. Why I call him by this unlovely title is our own private business, our exclusive bone of contention; not for untold gold would I disclose the identity of that man, the irresponsible, the nerveless, mute, inglorious fellow-wayfarer in this record of a summer’s tour. Let him, nameless save by epithet, go down with this book to a more or less extended posterity. But I give you some slight portraiture of him, so that you shall see he was not so very ill-favoured a Wreck, at any rate.
THE WRECK.
This man, willing to be convinced of the pleasure and the healthful profit of touring afoot, yet loth to try so grand a specific for varied ills, delayed long and faltered much between yea and nay ere he was finally pledged to the trip; but a time for decision comes at last, even to the most vacillating, and at length we set out together on this leisured tour.
It was time. When we left London the spirit of the silly season roamed abroad, and made men mad: the novelists were explaining diffusely in the columns of the public press why they wrote no plays; the playwrights were giving the retort discourteous (coram publico) to the effect that the novelists had all the will but didn’t know how, and the factions between them made any amount of copy for the enterprising editor who looked on and, so to speak, winked the other eye while the combatants contended. Unsuccessful Parliamentary candidates were counting the cost of their electoral struggles, and muttering melodramatic prophecies of “a time will come”; the eager journalist wandered about Fleet Street, seeking news and finding none, for the Building Societies had not yet begun to collapse; and the chiefest streets of town were “up.”
Those happy men, the layers of wood-paving, had created a delightful Rus in Urbe of their own in Piccadilly, and enjoyed a prolonged sojourn amid such piney odours as Bournemouth itself never knew: here was health-giving balsam for them that had no cash to spend in holiday-making! But indeed almost every one had left town; only an unimportant residuum of some four millions remained, and wide-eyed emaciated cats howled dismally in deserted areas of the West End, while evening breezes blew stuffily across the Parks and set the Londoner sighing for purer air where blacks were not, nor the shouting of the streets annoyed the ear.