Detail of balusters.
GUILDHALL, EAST LOOE, AND BOROUGH SEAL.
You scan the offing for the piratical-looking craft, which, to be in keeping, should be tacking outside the harbour—but isn’t—murmuring to yourself softly the while, “once aboard the lugger;” and your reflections are brought back smartly to everyday matters by the suggestion of a (comparatively) prosaic fisherman that it is a “fine day for a sail.” You look upon the rolling deep, and with misgivings turn sadly away in the direction of the Ship Hotel.
“COMPARATIVELY PROSAIC FISHERMAN.”
At the “Ship” were many visitors, so for one night we had to lodge out, at the house of a dour, dreary-looking bootmaker. We breakfasted, though, at the hotel, and arrived there in time to find one of the guests conning the sketch-book I had left by misadventure in the coffee-room overnight. The man was all apology and nervousness, and upset a cup of tea over sketch-book and table-cloth. Then he retired confusedly to a couch at the other end of the room, where he immediately sat down on my hat. After this he went out, and probably did some more damage on the cumulative principle.
There are several morals to this pathetic episode, of which undoubtedly the most striking is, “Don’t leave your hat on the sofa.”
They have a visitors’ book at the “Ship,” from which I have culled some examples. The visitors’ book at an hotel is ever my first quest. Its contents, though, are mostly sorry stuff: praises of food supplied, and the moderation of the charges—forms of eulogy particularly distasteful to myself. But let us to our Looe versicles:—
“Dear Friend, be warned ere first you visit Looe;
Its charms are many and its drawbacks few,
Lest home and duties all alike forsook,
You fall beneath the charms of Host and Hostess Cook;
The fare is sweet, the charges just and low
(I’ve travelled much, so surely ought to know,
’Neath Syren’s rocks I’ve heard the eddying Rhine,
In Bingen’s bowers drunk the native wine,
On Baltic’s wave have watched the setting sun,
In France’s fields have met the peaceful nun,
In Wales have wandered by the trout-streamed hill,
On Scotland’s highlands paid the longest bill)
Our host is not a lawyer, yet his conveyance cheap
Will bear you to Polperro, from thence to Fowey steep,
From threatening Cheesewing gaze on oceans twain,
At night at billiards try a coup de main,[8]
But yet, I’m sure, as day still follows day
’Twill find you anxious more and more to stay,
Delighted, charmed, with lotus-eating mind,
List! Menheniot’s horn and you are left behind!”