ST. IVES.ST. IVES.
ST. IVES.
Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over the shop door, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this book, or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and upon whom he poured out an amount of local and personal facts, which we listened to—as a student of human nature is prone to do—with an amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend at St. Ives, with his prayer-meetings, his chapel-goings—I concluded he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall—his delight in his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well, leaving him to enjoy hisotium cum dignitate—no doubt a municipal dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.
By and by again he pulled out the turnip-like watch. "Just ten minutes to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success. Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had liked St. Ives—we had liked his company at any rate—and with a final pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.
I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and unlovely road—the good road—between here and Penzance. We had done our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that the man who was "goingto St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all those notable individuals.
Thelast thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St. Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard, if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years, the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day! Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so till the hand is dust.
It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out the truth of the case.
Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote us in driving through Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. Ishall never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island. The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three children trotting to school or church, with their books under their arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county; religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist sects, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church of England.
We passed St. Buryan's—a curious old church founded on the place where an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.
From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial, who can decide?
"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked properly since.
By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the Lizard, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards. Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of them in answer to a question.
And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand beenmuch readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself—a somewhat anxious-minded old hen—and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.
"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must honestly confessIcould not see it stir a single inch.
However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together. Also—delightful to my young folks!—they furnished the most adventurous scramble that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms broken.
The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas, Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.
"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."
"Oh!"
I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief exclamation.
"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more when we have ceased to be hungry."
The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour of the—let me give it its right name—First and Last Inn, of Great Britain.
"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here. "It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."
At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more our contrition passed into sovereign content.
We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of thehouse, and then we recognised where we were—standing at the extreme end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence, one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded, should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.
At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand lonely place—almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.
But this bliss could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh wind—there must be always wind—and the air felt sharper and more salt than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came forward—a regular man-of-war's-man he looked—we at once resolved to adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was accustomed to go."
"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is—the young ladies might go—but you—" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."
Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal yet. He laughed too.
"Oh, I've taken ladies much older than you. One the other day was nearly seventy. So we'll do our best, ma'am. Come along."
He offered a rugged, brown hand, as firm and steady as a mast, to hold by, and nothing could exceed the care and kindliness with which he guided every step of every one of us, along that perilous path, that is, perilous except for cautious feet and steady heads.
"Take care, young ladies. If you make one false step, you are done for," said our guide, composedly as he pointed to the boiling whirl of waters below.
THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.
THE LAND'S END AND THE LOGAN ROCK.
Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the exploit, though a little risky, was not fool-hardy. We should have been bitterly sorry not to have done it—not to have stood for one grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon thatmagnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.
There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to him, as people do speak, instinctively, when mutually watching such a scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of St. Sennen's.
The "parson" caught instantly at the name.
"Mr. ——? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from the north somewhere."
"Yes;" we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed; and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!
But time was passing—how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards, cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of our guide.
"Yes, ladies, that's the spot—you may see the hoof-mark—where General Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below there—just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen swimming about unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a curiosity."
And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.
"That's the Brisons. Thirty years ago a ship went to pieces there, and the captain and his wife managed to climb on to that rock. They held on there for two days and a night, before a boat could get at them. At last they were taken off one at a time, with rockets and a rope; the wife first. But the rope slipped and she fell into the water. She was pulled out ina minute or so, and rowed ashore, but they durst not tell her husband she was drowned. I was standing on the beach at Whitesand Bay when the boat came in. I was only a lad, but I remember it well, and her too lifted out all dripping and quite dead. She was such a fine woman."
"And the captain?"
"They went back for him, and got him off safe, telling him nothing. But when he found she was dead he went crazy-like—kept for ever saying, 'She saved my life, she saved my life,' till he was taken away by his friends. Look out, ma'am, mind your footing; just here a lady slipped and broke her leg a week ago. I had to carry her all the way to the hotel. I shouldn't like to carry you."
We all smiled at the comical candour of the honest sailor, who proceeded to give us bits of his autobiography. He was Cornish born, but had seen a deal of the world as an A.B. on board her Majesty's shipAgamemnon.
"Of course you have heard of theAgamemnon, ma'am. I was in her off Balaklava. You remember the Crimean war?"
Yes, I did. His eyes brightened as we discussed names and places once so familiar, belonging to that time, which now seems so far back as to be almost historical.
"Then you know what a winter we had, and what a summer afterwards. I came home invalided, and didn't attempt the service afterwards; but I never thought I should come home at all. Yes, it's a fine place the Land's End, though the air is so strong that it kills some folks right off. Once an invalid gentleman came, and he was dead in a fortnight. But I'm not dead yet, and I stop here mostly all the year round."
He sniffed the salt air and smiled all over his weather-beaten face—keen, bronzed, blue-eyed, like one of the old Vikings. He was a fine specimen of a true British tar. When, having seen all we could, we gave him his small honorarium, he accepted it gratefully, and insisted on our taking in return a memento of the place in the shape of a stone weighing about two pounds, glittering with ore, and doubtless valuable, but ponderous. Oh, the trouble it gave me to carry it home, and pack and unpack it among my small luggage! But I did bring it home, and I keep it still in remembrance of the Land's End, and of the honest sailor of H.M.S.Agamemnon.
So all was over. We could dream of an unknown Land's End no more. It became now a real place, of which the reality, though different from the imagination, was at least no disappointment. How few people in attaining a life-long desire can say as much!
Our only regret, an endurable one now, was that we had not carried out our original plan of staying some days there—tourist-haunted, troubled days they might have been, but the evenings and mornings would have been glorious. With somewhat heavy hearts we summoned Charles and the carriage, for already a misty drift of rain began sweeping over the sea.
"Still, we must see Whitesand Bay," said one of us, recalling a story a friend had once told how, staying at Land's End, she crossed the bay alone in a blinding storm, took refuge at the coastguard station, where she was hospitably received, and piloted back with most chivalric care by a coastguard, who did not tell her till their journey's end that he had left at home a wife, and a baby just an hour old.
No such romantic adventure befell us. We only caught a glimmer of the bay through drizzling rain, which by the time we reached Sennen village had become a regular downpour. Evidently, we could do no more that day, which was fast melting into night.
"We'll go home," was the sad resolve, glad nevertheless that we had a comfortable "home" to go to.
So closing the carriage and protecting ourselves as well as we could from the driving rain, we went forward, passing the Quakers' burial ground, where is said to be one of the finest views in Cornwall; the Nine Maidens, a circle of Druidical stones, and many other interesting things, without once looking at or thinking of them.
Half a mile from Marazion the rain ceased, and a light like that of the rising moon began to break through the clouds. What a night it might be, or might have been, could we have stayed at the Land's End!
That ghostly "might have been!" It is in great things as in small, the worry, the torment, the paralysing burden of life. Away with it! We have done our best to be happy, and we have been happy. We have seen the Land's End.
Mondaymorning. Black Monday we were half inclined to call it, knowing that by the week's end our travels must be over and done, and that if we wished still to see all we had planned, we must inevitably next morning return to civilisation and railways, a determination which involved taking this night "a long, a last farewell" of our comfortable carriage and our faithful Charles.
"But it needn't be until night," said he, evidently loth to part from his ladies. "If I get back to Falmouth by daylight to-morrow morning, master will be quite satisfied. I can take you wherever you like to-day."
"And the horse?"
"Oh, he shall get a good feed and a rest till the middle of the night, then he'll do well enough. We shall have the old moon after one o'clock to get home by. Between Penzance and Falmouth it's a good road, though rather lonely."
I should think it was, in the "wee hours" by the dim light of a waning moon. But Charles seemed to care nothing about it, so we said no more, but decided to take the drive—our last drive.
Our minds were perplexed between Botallack Mine, the Gurnard's Head, Lamorna Cove, and several other places, which we were told we must on no account miss seeing, the first especially. Some of us, blessed with scientific relatives, almost dreaded returning home without having seen a single Cornish mine; others, lovers of scenery, longed for more of that magnificent coast. But finally, a meek little voice carried the day.
SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.
SENNEN COVE. WAITING FOR THE BOATS.
"I was so disappointed—more than I liked to say—when it rained,and I couldn't get my shells for our bazaar. How shall I ever get them now? If it wouldn't trouble anybody very much, mightn't we go again to Whitesand Bay?"
A plan not wholly without charm. It was a heavenly day; to spend it in delicious idleness on that wide sweep of sunshiny sand would be a rest for the next day's fatigue. Besides, consolatory thought! there would be no temptation to put on miners' clothes, and go dangling in a basket down to the heart of the earth, as the Princess of Wales was reported to have done. The pursuit of knowledge may be delightful, but some of us owned to a secret preference forterra firmaand the upper air. We resolved to face opprobrium, and declare boldly we had "no time" (needless to add no inclination) to go and see Botallack Mine. The Gurnard's Head cost us a pang to miss; but then we should catch a second view of the Land's End. Yes, we would go to Whitesand Bay.
It was a far shorter journey in sunshine than in rain, even though we made various divergencies for blackberries and other pleasures. Never had the sky looked bluer or the sea brighter, and much we wished that we could have wandered on in dreamy peace, day after day, or even gone through England, gipsy-fashion, in a house upon wheels, which always seemed to me the very ideal of travelling.
We reached Sennen only too soon. Pretty little Sennen, with its ancient church and its new school house, where the civil schoolmaster gave me some ink to write a post-card for those to whom even the post-mark "Sennen" would have a touching interest, and where the boys and girls, released for dinner, were running about. Board school pupils, no doubt, weighted with an amount of learning which would have been appalling to their grandfathers and grandmothers, the simple parishioners of the "fine young fellow" half a century ago. As we passed through the village with its pretty cottages and "Lodgings to Let," we could not help thinking what a delightful holiday resort this would be for a large small family, who could be turned out as we were when the carriage could no farther go, on the wide sweep of green common, gradually melting into silvery sand, so fine and soft that it was almost a pleasure to tumble down the slopes, and get up again, shaking yourself like a dog, without any sense of dirt or discomfort. What a paradise for children, who might burrow like rabbits and wriggle about like sand-eels, and never come to any harm!
Without thought of any danger, we began selecting our bathing-place, shallow enough, with long strips of wet shimmering sand to be crossed before reaching even the tiniest waves; when one of us, the cautious one, appealed to an old woman, the only human being in sight.
"Bathe?" she said. "Folks ne'er bathe here. 'Tain't safe."
"Why not? Quicksands?"
She nodded her head. Whether she understood us or not, or whether we quite understood her, I am not sure, and should be sorry to libel such a splendid bathing ground—apparently. But maternal wisdom interposed, and the girls yielded. When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath—maternal wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious, the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty.
Never except at one place, on the estuary of the Mersey, have I seen a beach made up of shells so lovely in colour and shape; very minute; some being no bigger than a grain of rice or a pin's head. The collecting of them was a fascination. We forgot all the historical interests that ought to have moved us, saw neither Athelstan, King Stephen, King John, nor Perkin Warbeck, each of whom is said to have landed here—what were they to a tiny shell, like that moralised over by Tennyson in "Maud"—"small, but a work divine"? I think infinite greatness sometimes touches one less than infinite littleness—the exceeding tenderness of Nature, or the Spirit which is behind Nature, who can fashion with equal perfectness a starry hemisphere and a glow-worm; an ocean and a little pink shell. The only imperfection in creation seems—oh, strange mystery!—to be man. Why?
But away with moralising, or dreaming, though this was just a day for dreaming, clear, bright, warm, with not a sound except the murmur of the low waves, running in an enormous length—curling over and breaking on the soft sands. Everything was so heavenly calm, it seemed impossible to believe in that terrible scene when the captain and his wife were seen clinging to the Brisons rock, just ahead.
Doubtless our friend of theAgamemnonwas telling this and all his other stories to an admiring circle of tourists, for we saw the Land's End covered with a moving swarm like black flies. How thankful we felt that we had "done" it on a Sunday! Still, we were pleased to have another gaze at it, with its line of picturesque rocks, the Armed Knight and the Irish Lady—though, I confess, I never could make out which was the knight and which was the lady. Can it be that some fragment of the legend of Tristram and Iseult originated these names?
After several sweet lazy hours, we went through a "fish-cellar," a little group of cottages, and climbed a headland, to take our veritable farewell of the Land's End, and then decided to go home. We had rolled or thrown our provision basket, rugs, &c., down the sandy slope, but it was another thing to carry them up again. I went in quest of a small boy, and there presented himself a big man, coastguard, as the only unemployed hand in the place, who apologised with such a magnificent air for not having "cleaned" himself, that I almost blushed to ask him to do such a menial service as to carry a bundle of wraps. But he accepted it, conversing amiably as we went, and giving me a most graphic picture of life at Sennen during the winter. When he left me, making a short cut to our encampment—a black dot on the sands, with two moving black dots near it—a fisher wife joined me, and of her own accord began a conversation.
She and I fraternised at once, chiefly on the subject of children, a group of whom were descending the road from Sennen School. She told me how many of them were hers, and what prizes they had gained, and what hard work it was. She could neither read nor write, she said, but she liked her children to be good scholars, and they learnt a deal up at Sennen.
Apparently they did, and something else besides learning, for when I had parted from my loquacious friend, I came up to the group just in time to prevent a stand-up fight between two small mites, thecasus belliof which I could no more arrive at, than a great many wiser people can discover the origin of national wars. So I thought the strong hand of "intervention"—civilised intervention—was best, and put an end to it, administering first a good scolding, and then a coin. The division of this coin among the little party compelled an extempore sum in arithmetic, which I required them to do (for the excellent reason that I couldn't do it myself!)—andthey did it! Therefore I conclude that the heads of the Sennen school-children are as solid as their fists, and equally good for use.
ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.
ON THE ROAD TO ST. NIGHTON'S KEEVE.
Simple little community! which as the fisher wife told me, only goes to Penzance about once a year, and is, as yet, innocent of tourists, for the swarm at the Land's End seldom goes near Whitesand Bay. Existence here must be very much that of an oyster,—but perhaps oysters are happy.
By the time we reached Penzance the lovely day was dying into an equally lovely evening. St. Michael's Mount shone in the setting sun. It was high water, the bay was all alive with boats, and there was quite a little crowd of people gathered at the mild little station of Marazion. What could be happening?
A princess was expected, that young half-English, half-foreign princess, in whose romantic story the British public has taken such an interest, sympathising with the motherly kindness of our good Queen, with the wedding at Windsor, and the sad little infant funeral there, a year after. The Princess Frederica of Hanover, and the Baron Von Pawel-Rammingen, her father's secretary, who, like a stout mediæval knight, had loved, wooed, and married her, were coming to St. Michael's Mount on a visit to the St. Aubyns.
Marazion had evidently roused itself, and risen to the occasion. Half the town must have turned out to the beach, and the other half secured every available boat, in which it followed, at respectful distance, the two boats, one full of luggage, the other of human beings, which were supposed to be the royal party. People speculated with earnest curiosity, which was the princess, and which her husband, and what the St. Aubyns would do with them; whether they would be taken to see the Land's End, and whether they would go there as ordinary tourists, or in a grand visit of state. How hard it is that royal folk can never see anything except in state, or in a certain adventitious garb, beautiful, no doubt, but satisfactorily hiding the real thing. How they must long sometimes for a walk, after the fashion of Haroun Alraschid, up and down Regent Street and Oxford Street! or an incognito foreign tour, or even a solitary country walk, without a "lady-in-waiting."
We had no opera-glass to add to the many levelled at those two boats, so we went in—hoping host and guests would spend a pleasant evening in the lovely old rooms we knew. We spent ours in rest, and in arranging for to-morrow's flight. Also in consulting with our kindly landlady as to a possible house at Marazion for some friends whom the winter might drive southwards, like the swallows, to a climate which, in this one little bay shut out from east and north, is—they told us—during all the cruel months which to many of us means only enduring life, not living—as mild and equablealmost as the Mediterranean shores. And finally, we settled all with our faithful Charles, who looked quite mournful at parting with his ladies.
"Yes, it is rather a long drive, and pretty lonely," said he. "But I'll wait till the moons up, and that'll help us. We'll get into Falmouth by daylight. I've got to do the same thing often enough through the summer, so I don't mind it."
Thus said the good fellow, putting a cheery face on it, then with a hasty "Good-bye, ladies," he rushed away. But we had taken his address, not meaning to lose sight of him. (Nor have we done so up to this date of writing; and the fidelity has been equal on both sides.)
Then, in the midst of a peal of bells which was kept up unweariedly till 10P.M.—evidently Marazion is not blessed with the sight of a princess every day—we closed our eyes upon all outward things, and went away to the Land of Nod.
IntoKing Arthurs land—Tintagel his birth-place, and Camelford, where he fought his last battle—the legendary region of which one may believe as much or as little as one pleases—we were going to-day. With the good common sense which we flattered ourselves had accompanied every step of our unsentimental journey, we had arranged all before-hand, ordered a carriage to meet the mail train, and hoped to find at Tintagel—not King Uther Pendragon, King Arthur or King Mark, but a highly respectable landlord, who promised us a welcome at an inn—which we only trusted would be as warm and as kindly as that we left behind us at Marazion.
The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine scarcely ever failed us. Now—whether catching glimpses of St. Ives Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall—all was brightness. Then darting inland once more, our iron horse carried us past Lostwithiel, the little town which once boasted Joseph Addison, M.P., as its representative; gave us a fleeting vision of Ristormel, one of the ancient castles of Cornwall, and on through a leafy land, beginning to change from rich green to the still richer yellows and reds of autumn, till we stopped at Bodmin Road.
TINTAGEL.TINTAGEL.
TINTAGEL.
No difficulty in finding our carriage, for it was the only one there; ahuge vehicle, of ancient build, the horses to match, capable of accommodating a whole family and its luggage. We missed our compact little machine, and our brisk, kindly Charles, but soon settled ourselves in dignified, roomy state, for the twenty miles, or rather more, which lay between us and the coast.Our way ran along lonely quiet country roads and woods almost as green as when Queen Guinevere rode through them "a maying," before the dark days of her sin and King Arthur's death.
Here it occurs to me, as it did this day to a practical youthful mind, "What in the world do people know about King Arthur?"
Well, most people have read Tennyson, and a few are acquainted with the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. But, perhaps I had better briefly give the story, or as much of it as is necessary for the edification of outsiders.
Uther Pendragon, King of Britain, falling in love with Ygrayne, wife of the duke of Cornwall, besieged them in their twin castles of Tintagel and Terrabil, slew the husband, and the same day married the wife. Unto whom a boy was born, and by advice of the enchanter Merlin, carried away, from the sea-shore beneath Tintagel, and confided to a good knight, Sir Ector, to be brought up as his own son, and christened Arthur. On the death of the king, Merlin produced the youth, who was recognized by his mother Ygrayne, and proclaimed king in the stead of Uther Pendragon. He instituted the Order of Knights of the Round Table, who were to go everywhere, punishing vice and rescuing oppressed virtue, for the love of God and of some noble lady. He married Guinevere, daughter of King Leodegrance, who forsook him for the love of Sir Launcelot, his bravest knight and dearest friend. One by one, his best knights fell away into sin, and his nephew Mordred raised a rebellion, fought with him, and conquered him at Camelford. Seeing his end was near, Arthur bade his last faithful knight, Sir Bedevere, carry him to the shore of a mere (supposed to be Dozmare Pool) and throw in there his sword Excalibur; when appeared a boat with three queens, who lifted him in, mourning over him. With them he sailed away across the mere, to be healed of his grievous wound. Some say that he was afterwards buried in a chapel near, others declare that he lives still in fairy land, and will reappear in latter days, to reinstate the Order of Knights of the Round Table, and rule his beloved England, which will then be perfect as he once tried to make it, but in vain.
Camelford of to-day is certainly not the Camelot of King Arthur—but a very respectable, commonplace little town, much like other country towns; the same genteel linendrapers' and un-genteel ironmongers' shops; the same old-established commercial inn, and a few ugly, but solid-lookingprivate houses, with their faces to the street and their backs nestled in gardens and fields. Some of the inhabitants of these said houses were to be seen taking a quiet afternoon stroll. Doubtless they are eminently respectable and worthy folk, leading a mild provincial life like the people in Miss Martineau'sDeerbrook, or Miss Austen'sPride and Prejudice—of which latter quality they have probably a good share.
We let our horses rest, but we ourselves felt not the slightest wish to rest at Camelford, so walked leisurely on till we came to the little river Camel, and to Slaughter Bridge, said to be the point where King Arthur's army was routed and where he received his death-wound. A slab of stone, some little distance up the stream, is still called "King Arthur's Tomb." But as his coffin is preserved, as well as his Round Table, at Winchester; where, according to mediæval tradition, the bodies of both Arthur and Guinevere were found, and the head of Guinevere had yellow hair; also that near the little village of Davidstow, is a long barrow, having in the centre a mound, which is called "King Arthur's grave"—inquiring minds have plenty of "facts" to choose from. Possibly at last they had better resort to fiction, and believe in Arthur's disappearance, as Tennyson makes him say,
"To the island-valley of Avillion ...Where I may heal me of my grievous wound."
Dozmare Pool we found so far out of our route that we had to make a virtue of necessity, and imagine it all; the melancholy moorland lake, with the bleak hill above it, and stray glimpses of the sea beyond. A ghostly spot, and full of many ghostly stories besides the legend of Arthur. Here Tregeagle, the great demon of Cornwall, once had his dwelling, until, selling his soul to the devil, his home was sunk to the bottom of the mere, and himself is heard of stormy nights, wailing round it with other ghost-demons, in which the Cornish mind still lingeringly believes. Visionary packs of hounds; a shadowy coach and horses, which drives round and round the pool, and then drives into it; flitting lights, kindled by no human hand, in places where no human foot could go—all these tales are still told by the country folk, and we might have heard them all. Might also have seen, in fancy, the flash of the "brand Excalibur"; heard the wailing song of the three queens; and pictured the dying Arthur lying on the lap of his sister Morgane la Faye. But, I forgot, this is an un-sentimental journey.
The Delabole quarries are as un-sentimental a place as one could desire. It was very curious to come suddenly upon this world of slate, piled up in enormous masses on either side the road, and beyond them hills of debris, centuries old—for the mines have been worked ever since the time of Queen Elizabeth. Houses, walls, gates, fences, everything that can possibly be made of slate, is made. No green or other colour tempers the all-pervading shade of bluish-grey, for vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the quarries is abolished, the result of which would be rather dreary, save for the cheerful atmosphere of wholesome labour, the noise of waggons, horses, steam-engines—such a contrast to the silence of the deserted tin-mines.
But, these Delabole quarries passed, silence and solitude come back again. Even the yearly-increasing influx of tourists fails to make the little village of Trevena anything but a village, where the said tourists lounge about in the one street, if it can be called a street, between the two inns and the often-painted, picturesque old post-office. Everything looked so simple, so home-like, that we were amused to find we had to get ready for atable d'hôtedinner, in the only available eating room where the one indefatigable waitress, a comely Cornish girl, who seemed Argus and Briareus rolled into one, served us—a party small enough to make conversation general, and pleasant and intelligent enough to make it very agreeable, which does not always happen at an English hotel.
Then we sallied out to find the lane which leads to Tintagel Castle, or Castles—for one sits in the sea, the other on the opposite heights in the mainland, with power of communicating by the narrow causeway which now at least exists between the rock and the shore. This seems to confirm the legend, how the luckless husband of Ygrayne shut up himself and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.
Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk on the cliffs and the smooth green field which led thither. Leaning against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea, the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where sea ended andsky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures sitting at the stern.
"King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long black thing at the bow?"
"Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King Arthur's luggage."
Sentiment could survive no more. We fell into fits of laughter, and went home to tea and bed.
Andall Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all is—the coming home.
Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer, yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love between two old people, out of whom all passion has died—we remembered that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story to my girls in the briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine, her handmaiden, gave each a love-potion, which caused the usual fatal result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully, till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he implored to come to him. She came, and found him dead. A tale—of which the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern poets who have sung or travestied the wild, passionate, miserable, ugly story, have ever done full justice.
These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygrayne—what acurious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold! A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur—not perhaps Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's, founded on mere tradition—is a remarkable thing. Clear through all the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage, honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men. Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of woman—not women—which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings, all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes—things that must have existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them—we could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining down the dim vista of long-past centuries, is something to prove that goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from whom it comes.
We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go in the opposite direction to Bossinney Cove."
Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor—Poetry always kicks the beam. We went to Bossinney.
Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything, ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down into, and yet delicious.
So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach the shut-in cove; and we were interfered with considerably by—not tourists—but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the narrow cliff-path one by one—eleven in all—each with an empty sack over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand. One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted eachto his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half. I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.