I suppose no one will deny Polperro the dignity of being the most picturesque village on the south coast of Cornwall. The place-name means "Peter's Pool," and the sea does indeed exactly form a pool in the little harbour at high water, retreating entirely from it at the ebb. The entrance from the open sea is a narrow passage between headlands of dark slate, whose characteristic stratification produces weird spiny outlines and needle-like points, inclined at an angle to the horizon. On the western of these two headlands formerly stood a chapel dedicated to St. Peter, the peculiar patron of fishermen. Instead of anything in that sort, the cliffs now exhibit a monster black and white lattice hoarding, as though a mad Napoleon of advertising had proposed to celebrate some one's pills and soap, and had been hauled off to a lunatic asylum before he could complete his project. A similarly hideous affair infests the cliffs by Talland, a mile away. They are, however, not advertising freaks, but structures placed by the Admiralty to mark a measured mile for the steam-trials of new vessels. The artist-colony at Polperro, a large community, is rightly indignant at this uglification, but fortunately it is not seen all over Polperro.
The little town is in every way a surprise and a curiosity, and in most ways a delight. The stone piers that project from either side of the entrance to the harbour leave a space for entrance so narrow that it is commonly closed in stormy weather by dropping stout baulks of timber into grooves let into the pier-heads. The chief industries of Polperro are the pilchard-fishery and the painting of pictures, and it is because of the commercial, as well as the æsthetic, interest of the artistic community, in preserving the old-world picturesqueness of Polperro, that the wonderful old place remains so wonderful and retains its appearance of age. The rough cobble-stones that have mostly disappeared from other fisher villages are left in their wonted places, and when the local authority a little while ago removed some, in the innovating way that local authorities have, the loud cries of protest that were made speedily caused the replacement of them. I do not think there is any other place, even in Cornwall, which is situated in so sudden and cup-like a hollow as Polperro, and with houses so closely packed together and staged so astonishingly above one another. Port Loe nearly approaches it, but that place is much smaller.
OLD BRIDGE, POLPERRO.
The time for sketching and seeing Polperro at its best is in the sweet of the morning, before the tender light of the sun's uprising has given place to the fierce sunshine of the advancing forenoon. A pearly opalescent haze then pervades the scene, in which the shadows are luminous. Then the smoke from the clustered chimneys of Polperro ascends lazily from the sheltered hollow: breakfast is preparing. Polperro is unquestionably in many ways old England of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, surviving vigorously into the twentieth. The artist, sketching here, is startled at frequent intervals by glissades of slops, flung by housewives, adopting the "line of least resistance," over the rocks into the harbour. It is a custom that makes him nervous at first, but he gets used to it. At Polperro, it is always well, in seeking a picturesque corner, say half-way down, below any houses, to make quite sure (if in any way possible to make sure), that one is not in the line of discharge of any liquids or solids that in more conventional places are deposited in the ash-bin or thrown into the sink.
Many odd old cottages remain here, some of them with outside staircases, and most roughly built of granite and slate, and whitewashed. The chief industry of Polperro is evident, not only in the fishy smells, or in the fishing-boats and the appearance of the people; but its specialised character is hinted at by the sign of the humble "Three Pilchards" inn on the quay, near the old weigh-beam. Good catches of pilchards or bad make all the difference here, where these peculiarly Cornish fish are largely prepared and packed for export to Italy. An Italian packing-house has indeed an establishment on the quay. The salted pilchards, long since known among the Cornish as "Fair maids" from the Italian "fumadoes"—the original method of preserving them having been by drying in smoke—are the chief source of the Polperro fishermen's livelihood. Thus the time-honoured toast of these otherwise sturdy Protestants:
"Here's a health to the Pope; may he never know sorrow,
With pilchards to-day and pilchards to-morrow.
Good luck to His Holiness; may he repent,
And add just six months to the length of his Lent;