"Taking snuff and looking lexicons."
What strikes the stranger first is the inexhaustible water supply. Miniature canals ripple along on both sides of the streets—clear, bright, fresh water, which would be worth no end of money in a thirsty land. Ripple, ripple, ripple, all day long, and all the year through, never overflowing, never drying up, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Hydrophobia is unknown amongst dogs, and is only observable amongst the higher animals—generally on pay days and holidays. The inhabitants, however, pay water taxes quite cheerfully, and are not extravagant users in their houses. It is a reproach to Londoners, who are so extravagant with water, to see how thrifty the people are. The people of Helston are blessed with water running free in the same way.
Cornish people do not live much in towns; they seem to prefer living amongst the rocks and trees, upon the downs, amongst the shadows of they know not what, and sounds which are as echoes from long ago. A very small town elsewhere fills the untravelled with amazement; and stories are told of the cunning which was shown by an old man who carried a piece of chalk in his pocket and placed a mark on the corner of every street he turned, and so made his way plain when he wished to return; but the poor fellow was sadly puzzled when a joker rubbed out his marks and put facsimiles in wrong places. But, in truth, Cornish towns are not very puzzling to an ordinary pavement trotter, and the houses are not much to look at. Solid walls pierced with holes and covered by a roof is a "house." There are whole streets like this in all the towns, and most of the shops have the appearance of being private houses "accommodated." In a land where the Phœnician and Greek came, and the Roman dwelt; where Spaniard, Frenchman, and Fleming settled, leaving their names and blood behind, one might expect to find specimens of the architecture of many periods and countries; but it is no use looking for what does not exist. The Cornish never seem to have invited the envy and hatred of others by the outward beauty of their dwellings. The Fore Street of a town, however ancient and celebrated for riches and commerce, never gives one the idea that merchant princes dwelt here, and loved to dwell in earthly tabernacles with polished beams, and hanging galleries, and oriel windows, painted, decorated, and varnished, as we see in many a High Street, in many a town in the rest of England. The Cornish genius had no great turn for architecture—its municipal buildings are plain and thrifty, like the dwelling-houses. To be "wind and water tight" is the native idea of comfort; and then plenty of whitewash and a little paint. There must have been native artists in abundance during the centuries, but they were seldom employed with chisel and brush in decorating private dwellings or corporation buildings. The county turned out one little painter who "mixed his colours with brains," and so became the rage for a London season; but when you come to a town, don't inquire, "What artist was born here?" The old people didn't throw away money on decorative art. If there is a bit to be found anywhere, it is generally in or about a church, and stranger fingers executed it.
On the moors, and on the coast, the idea of a dwelling is that of a stone hut with window and chimney, not so very much in advance of the dwellings of the Palæolithic Age, which shows how slow the evolution of one idea may be whilst others are travelling at motor pace. Where stone abounds the dwelling is a cave above the ground; where stone is scarce the yellow earth is mixed with a little chopped straw, and makes a wall as much like the neighbouring soil as peas in a pod. This is "cob" wall, and, when covered with thatch and half hidden with flowering creepers, cob-wall cottages are pleasant to look at. Specimens of stone dwellings with thatched roofs abound in the Lizard district, and cob-wall cottages, more or less in ruins, are almost everywhere. Men and women are in the habit of leaving their boots and clogs outside their dwellings, and when the doors are open there is a great display of old crockery and china ornaments in stiff-looking cupboards with glass doors. Very like a painting by a Dutch artist is the interior of a Cornish cottage on a moor.
Old fishing towns which have not yet been too much "improved" show the practical side of the Cornishman's mind in the matter of dwellings. The idea of a street never occurred to him. What he wanted was a place on shore in which to store his nets and fishing gear, sails and spars, and over that a loft, which he divided into rooms fitted up with "lockers," like the cuddy of his boat, or the cabin of a ship, and that was his castle. He reached the ground by means of stone or wooden steps, having the appearance on land of steps let down from the gangway of a ship. In fact, the idea of a dwelling was that of a ship in stone, and the similarity was the greater when a "hatch" was lifted up in the kitchen and descent made into the cellar below, just as one would descend into the hold of a ship through the open hatchway. The Cornish fisher's idea of comfort was snugness. His dwelling overlooked the harbour, and he could see his boat lying to her moorings, and open his window and talk to the men as they passed, and consult the sky and clouds. He could do a lot from his window, his chin resting on his arms, with the least possible trouble to himself. When a fisher cannot live so as to see the harbour from his window, he lives as near the harbour as he can, so as to be out of his boat and into his bed in the shortest time. He detests walking one step further than he can help after he lands, so the idea of regular streets never dawned upon the original builders of Newlyn and St. Ives, Polperro and Looe, Fowey and Mevagissey. A street is an accident, unless it is modern—the ancient builders of the old towns deeming it sufficient to leave a gangway between the houses, as at Polperro, where a man with broad shoulders can block up the whole thoroughfare. In the villages and coves at the Lizard and the Land's End, the fishers' dwellings have a physiognomy in common, and tell of struggle and endurance; and in favoured places, jasmine and myrtle, fuchsia, geranium, and roses step in and cover all the weather-beaten stone and shabby lintels with glory and perfume.
THE PORCH, LAUNCESTON CHURCH.