Then we went out in the darkness of the lanes to see how Polperro showed at night. To walk along those lanes was an experience analogous to getting one’s sea-legs on an ocean-going sailing craft. The night was so dark, and the cobble-stone pavements so uneven, that the taking of each step was a problem of moment.
AN OLD SHOP, POLPERRO.
This was a Saturday night, and much business (for Polperro) was being transacted. Little shops shed glow-worm lights across the roadways, and on to rugged walls, which acted in some sort the part of the sheet in magic-lantern entertainments; that is to say, the little patches of comparative brilliancy exhibited exaggerated replicas of the window’s contents. Loaves of bread on the baker’s shelves assumed, in this sordid magic, the gigantic size of the free loaf in old-time Anti Corn-Law demonstrations; the sweetstuff bottles in the windows of the general shops argued, not ounces, but pounds of stickinesses; and the wavering shadows of customers’ and shopkeepers’ figures seemed like the forms of giants, alternately squat and long-drawn, contending for these gargantuan delicacies. I burned to picture these things, not in words, but by other methods. My companion hungered still, and truth to tell, so did I; and so we bought some biscuits and munched them as we went. We eventually returned to the “Three Pilchards” and went to bed, escorted by the landlord with a dip stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. I must say, though, that we were given candlesticks.
The next morning, being Sunday, the landlord had “cleaned” himself with more than usual care, and appeared resplendently arrayed in a suit of glossy black cloth, of the kind which I believe is called “doe-skin.” He shut us in the sitting-room to breakfast, which was waiting, and, before disappearing, repeated his usual formula.
After breakfast, we covenanted to return at one o’clock for dinner, and went out upon the headlands that guard with jagged rocks the narrow gut of Polperro. It was the quietest of days; even the screaming sea-gulls’ cries were less persistent than on week-days; and the male population of the place lay idly on the rocks, or lounged, gossiping, at sunny corners of the lanes, while the mid-day meal cooked within doors. But above all the grateful kitchen odours rose the scent of the fish offal that, with the ebbing of the tide, lay stranded in the ooze of the harbour, and bubbled and fermented in the heat of the sun, vindicating the country folk, who call the place Polstink.
Down in the lanes, as we returned, the wafts of the fish-cellars filled the air. One hundred and twenty-four years ago—on Friday, September the sixteenth, 1760, to be particular—the Rev. John Wesley “rode through heavy rain to Paulperow,” as he tells us in his “Journal.” “Here,” says he, “the room over which we were to lodge, being filled with pilchards and conger-eels, the perfume was too potent for me, so that I was not sorry when one of our friends invited me to lodge at her house.” But, indeed, Polperro did not show its best face to Wesley at any time, for, of his first visit here, which happened six years before this, he says, “Came about two to Poleperrow, a little village, four hours’ ride from Plymouth Passage, surrounded with huge mountains. However, abundance of people had found their way thither. And so had Satan too: for an old, grey-headed sinner was bitterly cursing all the Methodists just as we came into the town.”
To pass a Sunday at Polperro is to experience how empty and miserable a day of rest may become. We dined off the homely fare offered us at the “Three Pilchards,” and sighed for tea-time, and at tea-time sighed for bed. Arrived between the sheets, we fell asleep, longing for the morrow, when the hum of this work-a-day world would recommence.