This morn we breakfasted betimes, settled our modest score, and trudged away, up steep hillsides and across meadows, to Lansallos, and from Lansallos to Lanteglos-juxta-Fowey. We came to Lanteglos before (according to the map) we had any right so to do, going to it through steep hillside fields. I don’t think there is any village to speak of, but there is a fine church, picturesquely out of plumb, with a four-staged tower, strong and plain, without buttresses, standing, with its churchyard, beside a “farm-place,” as the Cornish folk sometimes call their farm-yards, filled with great stacks of corn, stilted on long rows of stone staddles. There stands beside the church porch one of the finest crosses to be found in Cornwall, of fifteenth-century date, with head elaborately sculptured into tabernacles, containing representations of the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and two figures of saints. This cross was discovered some years ago, buried in the churchyard, and was set up by the then vicar in its present position, with a millstone by way of pedestal. The guide-books tell of great store of brasses within the church; but the building was locked, the keys were at a cottage far down the valley, the sun was hot, and, lastly but not least, we were lazy; so we only stayed and sketched the exterior, and peered through the windows at the whitewashed LANTEGLOS-JUXTA-FOWEY. From Lanteglos good but steep roads lead down to Polruan, a manner of over-the-water suburb of Fowey, set picturesquely on the west shore of Fowey River. As we went down the steep street, children were singing the ribald song which pervaded London, and the country generally, all last year. I am not going to name it here; let it die, and be deservedly forgotten. But, par parenthÈse, I will put a question here to philosophers. We know at what rate light travels, and sound too, but at what rate of speed does the comic song fare on its baleful course? Who, again, shall estimate how rapidly the contagion spreads of those now happily defunct songs of an appalling sentimentality—“See-Saw,” “The Maid of the Mill,” or, to sound deeper depths, “Annie Rooney,” and “White Wings”? A ferry runs between Polruan and Fowey, the latter a town that has grown from its former estate of slumberous seaport into a “resort” of quite a fashionable and exclusive flavour. It is “still growing”—worse luck. The visitor may easily recognise Fowey as the original of “Troy Town,” by “Q.,” whose initial, being interpreted, stands for Mr. A.T. Quiller-Couch, himself a Cornishman. The salient features of Fowey to the eye, the nose, the ear, and the mind are sea- and land-scapes of wondrous beauty, fish odours, the clangour of a disreputable brass band, and historical legends of a peculiarly romantic character. A wonderful old church of a peculiar dedication—Saint There are many Treffrys and Rashleighs buried within Saint Finbar’s—two families with which the history of Fowey is interwoven. One John Treffry, buried here, seems to have been something of an eccentric, for he had his grave dug during his lifetime, and lay down and swore in it, “to shew the sexton a novelty.” His epitaph is a curious jingle—the work of the man himself, one would say. Here it is— “Here in this Chancell do I ly Known by the name of John Treffry Being made & born for to dye So must thou friend as well as I Therefore Good works be Sure to try But chiefly love and charity And still on them with faith rely So be happy eternally.” This epitaph to Mary Courtney is not without a certain sweetness of conceit:— “In Memory of Mary ye daughter of Sir Peter Courtney of Trethurffe: who dyed the 14th day of June, in the year of our Lord 1655. Neer this a rare Jewell’s Sa’t, Clos’d uppe in a cabinet: Let no sacrilegious hand Breake through: ’tis ye Strickt Comaund of the Jeweller: who hath Sayd (And ’tis fit he be obayd) He require it Safe, and Sound, Both aboue and under Ground: This Mary was Grandafter to Jonathan Raishleighe of Menebilly Esqr.” Choir practice ended, the church was closed, and we were cast forth upon the streets with the tail end of the evening before us. Fowey is a seaside town, singular in having no sands and no recognised public promenade; there was nothing to do then but to spend the evening at our hotel over our maps and notes. We had by this time collected an intolerable quantity of the tourists’ usual lumber. Fossils, lumps of tin and copper ore, and fragments of granite would drop from our knapsacks upon the least provocation, or upon no provocation whatever. We amalgamated our hoards, threw away a goodly percentage, and sent the remainder of the relics up to London. I don’t like to think about the cost of their carriage. It was, like the relics, collectively, and in detail, heavy. Of what use are the things after all? You shall hear. But, sooth to say, they, with the tin ore and the lumps of granite, have become almost expended by now, and generally for the prompt dispersal of the nomadic cats, in full voice, who haunt the areas of our street. These spoils of our touring were handier after all than coals, which blacken the hands, or soap, for which the morning finds a use; but I sometimes wonder who finds them, the very aristocracy of missiles, hurtled through midnight air from lofty eyrie upon pavements deserted by all save the slow-pacing policeman and those aforementioned disturbers of the peace. |