[Chapter X]
The Cornish taste has not hitherto rioted in "graven images." Ancient monuments were so plentiful that it may have been thought quite unnecessary to add to the number in any shape or form, especially when it was known that the finest monoliths were split up and carted away for gate-posts for cattle to rub against; or, worse than all, be burnt for lime. However, graven images are rare in the county. A good citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow would put all the statuary in the county in his back garden. Sir Humphry Davy stands outside the market at Penzance, and Richard Lander, the plucky African traveller, is skied on a Doric column on the top of a hill in Truro. Foote, the comedian, Polwhele, county historian, and Henry Martyn, the sainted missionary, over whose barren love story and early death rivers of salt tears have flowed, were all born in Truro; but we didn't see any graven images recording the fact. Guy sought information from an intelligent policeman, who said he knew Henry Martyn well, and a quiet man he was, when sober! There are some capital sites in the city for a few statues to Cornish worthies, and the effigy of the sainted Martyn would, at all events, help to preserve his memory from sad imputations. There is a Cornish flavour about the great Earl of Chatham, who should have been born at the family mansion at Boconnoc instead of at Westminster, where his mother happened to be; and a Cornish flavour, too, about the gifted Lady Hester Stanhope, who did not forget to speak well of Cornish miners, "on account of their race," in her Syrian home. Cousin Jack might remember this, and shell out liberally, if the public fancy runs one day towards statues. The Molesworths have a claim to be set up in marble, and so has Richard Trevithick, the Camborne miner, and so also John Couch Adams, the discoverer of the planet Neptune. These are a few worthies to go on with, and by the time their statues are unveiled some, now living, may be ripe for immortality in stone. The few modern monuments are not remarkable, as such. The Gilbert monument, at Bodmin, outgrew its strength, and is not likely to startle remote posterity as a nineteenth-century antiquity. Once upon a time there was a battle at Stamford Hill, not far from Bude, when Sir Bevill Grenvill and his stalwarts gave the Roundheads a fair drubbing. Then a monument was erected to record the historic event, and it tumbled down. Sir Bevill Grenvill had a giant servant, named Anthony Payne, and the great Kneller painted his portrait, and the canvas has a place of honour in the museum of the Royal Institution. The Bookworm remarked that it was not at all singular that the county had turned out no sculptors, when public bodies did so little to encourage art, and that what they did was done so badly.
Truro is not the capital of the county, though many people think it ought to be. It has a cathedral now, which counts for something, and is the home of the "classy" people, which counts for a great deal when the question is one of capital with a big C. Every few years there is a battle-royal over the capital question, and the archæologists and the antiquarians dust each other with seals and charters, Domesday Books and inquisitions, and all the rest of it. The grand tournament is between Bodmin and Launceston, which latter possesses an old castle, or what is left of one, and was anciently the place for the hanging of criminals for capital offences. But as the judges were served with small beer at dinner, and their beds were not properly aired, they moved on to Bodmin, where the beer was stronger, and the bed-linen better looked after. Besides, the tallow candles gave better light in the Bodmin than in the Launceston lodgings, which was important to judges on circuit, when they had to sit up late and read papers, and "note up" evidence badly written with their own hand and bad pens. The Launceston people didn't seem to care much about their privileges at the time of losing them. In fact, they were just then feeling sore at having lost one member of Parliament under the Reform Bill, and the market was flat for honours which didn't mean cash in hand. Then Bodmin took on the assizes, and the hangings, and became the capital with a big C, and built a lunatic asylum and a jail, up to date. The question now is whether our Gracious Lord the King would hold out a little finger to the Mayor of Launceston or to the Mayor of Bodmin as most truly representing the capital of Cornwall. The point has to be settled. Then Truro comes in and laughs at both, and, pointing to its cathedral, says, "If you want a capital with a big C, look here," which pleases all the "classy" people, and sets the rest laughing, except the ancient Britons of Penzance, who swagger about climate, also with a big C. As climate and capital both begin with C, it is easy to argue that they are very much alike. Bodmin and Launceston tilt in rusty armour, and Truro and Penzance with bodkins, and no harm is done.
The Bookworm made a tour of the libraries and museums, and somewhere met a "kindred soul," which so pleased him that he pronounced Truro the literary town in the duchy. Certainly, the city has a professorial air, which is native. If ever there is a Cornish university it will come to Truro, if it walk upon crutches to get there. Caps and gowns taking snuff and looking lexicons coming out of the shadow of Church Lane would be as natural as life; and then the undergrads swelling Boscawen Street in term! They are not there just now, but the place looks as though cut out for academic maternity. The professorial air belonged to the place before the cathedral was dreamt of—perhaps the cathedral came because the place had the right sort of style about it. There is a county look about the shops in Boscawen Street, which is all its own. Some of the shops just put up wire blinds, with a legend painted on them, discouraging to the vulgar looking for bargains and misfits. "Nothing of the sort here; our customers write cheques, you know." There are other shops with "discount for cash" writ large all over them, but they seem out of place, somehow. There was always this sort of county family style about the town and people, who were always fond of sports, and had a cock-pit.