CHAPTER XIII
PRUSSIA COVE AND ITS SMUGGLERS—PERRANUTHNOE—ST. HILARY—MARAZION—ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT—LUDGVAN—GULVAL
I had for long years wished to come to Prussia Cove, but for one reason and another had always fallen short of it. If you are staying, for example, at Penzance, Prussia Cove is a little beyond your ken; and if Lizard Town or Mullion is your headquarters, then again the place is remote. Therein you perceive at once a survival of its ancient solitary and out-of-the-way situation, which made the place an ideal smugglers' resort. For Prussia Cove is famous above all other places in Cornwall in smuggling annals. Not, mark you, the mere legendary smuggling tales, but sheer matter-of-fact details about the shy industry: details that are so hard to come by; facts for which the historian of smuggling cries aloud, and rarely gets. There are two coves: Prussia Cove, originally named Porth Leah, and Bessie's Cove, separated from one another only by a projecting reef. Bessie, who gave her name to the westerly of the two inlets, was one Bessie Burrow, who kept an inn called the "Kidleywink," on the cliff-top. "Kidleywink" was not precisely the sign of the house: it appears to have been an old slang Cornish term for a public-house.
The "King of Prussia" who imposed that title upon the erstwhile Porth Leah was not in the first instance Frederick the Great, but John Carter, the eldest of a family of that name who were settled here in the eighteenth century. Among the eight Carter brothers and two sisters, children of one Francis Carter, miner and small farmer, who died in 1784, we hear in detail only of the three brothers, John, Henry, and Charles. Ostensibly all small farmers and fisherfolk, they were really smugglers on an extensive scale; "free-traders" in a bold and open way, greatly respected round about by all the squires and considerable people who knew them. They had, each one of them, the reputation of being honest men who would touch nothing that was not their own, and sold excellent cognac, hollands, and other articles at fair prices. Very well thought-of men, I assure you, with whom some "great men," darkly hinted at, did not disdain to enter into partnership.
John Carter took his nickname of "King of Prussia" from the boyish games of "King of the Castle" in which he and his brothers used to fleet their youth away, and the name stuck to him in after life, as often is the way with great and celebrated personages. Even so, Dickens, the "Boses" (for Moses) of his and his brothers' games, became "Boz"; and Louisa de la Ramée, who as a baby lisped her name, "Ouida," became in after years famous in that signature. So the "King of Prussia," i.e. John Carter, is in good company. In 1770 he built a substantial stone house on the cliffs, and appears to have used it in part as a residence, partly as a store for smuggled goods, and in some degree as an inn (I fear quite unlicensed) known as the "King of Prussia." There he lived until 1806, and from a small battery he had constructed he had the impudence to fire on one occasion upon the Fairy revenue sloop, which had chased a smuggling craft into the cove and had sent in a boat-party. The boat retreated, and notice being given to the collector of customs at Penzance, a military force was despatched to reduce his fort, by taking it in the rear. The smugglers retreated to the "Kidleywink" and the soldiers then left for Penzance, perhaps having demolished Carter's emplacements.
Elsewhere than in Cornwall all these things would have produced bloodshed; but nothing more seems to have been said about the affair, which is delightfully, entirely, and characteristically Cornish; own cousin to Irish escapades, just as the Cornish might, if they cared to do so, even call cousins with the Irish themselves.
Of Charles Carter we hear little, but of Henry—"Captain Harry"—a good deal. He had many adventures; was "wanted" by the excise and fled to America; returned and recommenced adventurous smuggling voyages to Roscoff in Brittany; was made prisoner of war in France, and then settled as agent for his brothers in Roscoff. He had all his life been troubled by the qualms of religious fear, and had in 1789 become converted. In after years he retired and lived in a small way as a farmer in the neighbouring hamlet of Rinsey, where he died in 1829. He wrote his Autobiography, a human document of singular interest, and preached fervently while still actively a smuggler, doubling the parts of saint and sinner in the most extraordinary way; entirely without suspicion of false dealing. He feared God and failed to honour the King, in the important respect of chousing him out of his inland revenue as far as it was possible for him to do. He lived respected and died lamented. I have had occasion to refer to him at length elsewhere[B] and I have no doubt that, according to his lights, he was an entirely honest man.
Prussia Cove at the present time of writing is a place wholly uninteresting. The "King of Prussia's" house was pulled down in 1906, and a new road is on the site of it. Caverns, said, of course, to have been the Carters' storehouses, yawn darkly in the low cliffs, above high-water mark. A barbed-wire squalor abounds along the winding road, and through the garden of an uninviting residence you come down to Bessie's Cove and the dark rocks going sheer into the water; always with "Trespassers will be Prosecuted" staring you in the face from makeshift posts and notice-boards.
Going up out of the region of these singular developments, I met a man raking over some stones recently placed in the road: a good-looking man, with a beard and an indefinable air of being a retired officer of the Royal Navy. He asked what I wanted there, a question I thought impudent; but giving the inoffensive answer that I had been seeking Prussia Cove, the scene of Carter, the smuggler's activities, and could not find Carter's house, he replied that he thought people coming to see the place for that reason was sheer morbidness.
"How so?" I asked.
"Oh!" said he, "all that kind of thing is past and done away with; and besides, I've had the house pulled down; and this is a private road."