Now we were housed at Alverton, which, you should know, is the Kensington of Penzance, a suburb of the old town, which has gradually become absorbed, a place of many villas, where the visitor generally finds his rest, where gardens meet the eye at every turn, where fuchsias, geraniums, and myrtles grow to astonishing sizes.

Our windows looked down upon the sunlit waves of Mount’s Bay, while through the open casements came the rich odours of these flowers, but above all the piercing scent of the clove-carnation. Among the brave show of blossoms were the peculiar waxy flowers of the Escallonia shrub, brilliantly red.

From adown the street, sloping toward the shore, came every morning the high-pitched cry of “Pilchers, fine fresh pilchers,” for there were fine catches of pilchards overnight; and at a soothing distance, a more or less German band generally murdered current comic operas.

Pirates there are not at Penzance, and nothing approaching them, unless we except these German band-itti; but they are, indeed, or were, when last I heard them, desperate characters, who would think nothing of murdering “The Mikado” or “The Gondoliers.” Indeed, they have done so many times, and will again, unless some action is taken in the matter. I shudder to think how many fine and robust comic operas have been done to death on moonlit nights upon the esplanade in front of the Queen’s Hotel, or in the gloomy by-ways of the Morrab Road. I have seen these bravos standing in a circle round their helpless victim, and noted the brazen flash of their deadly weapons, and heard the agonising demi-semi-quavers of his dying notes as the remorseless band blew out his bars. Ah! sometimes, when they little thought their criminal deeds were overheard, I have listened a while to them making shameful overtures to their captives, and have presently hurried away, fingers to ears, to shut out the fearful shrieks which such deeds have produced. What class of people is it that supports these hired assassins? Alas! I know not, but that they are supported is a solemn fact. So callous are some of these folk that—I assure you it is so—I have actually seen them place bribes in the hand of the chief miscreant, and have observed them loitering by, with heartless smiles of approval, until the deed was done. What harmony, what tender chords can exist in a town where such doings fall flat upon accustomed ears?

And yet the place looks so fresh, so fair, so happy. It is ten miles from the Land’s End; the wail of the Cockney concertina is never heard within these gates; and Plymouth, the nearest large town, is eighty-one miles away. Penzance knows nothing of London. Visitors come from the Metropolis to the shores of Mount’s Bay; but although they are—in instances—known to his from London town, that place is the merest geographical expression in Penwith. We don’t read London papers at Penzance (unless we are—for our sins—authors, when our friends kindly post us those copies containing slashing reviews, obligingly blue-pencilled); we read few papers of any sort, and those are printed at Plymouth. Visitors do not get through much reading at Penzance. They have breakfast, and disappear for the day, to return only at night, tired and hungry, from strenuous excursions to all sorts of wild and impossible places, with names that only a Celt can properly get his tongue round. A stranger coming into Penzance upon a mid-day of its season would opine from the evidence of his eyes that the town had lost its favour, but nothing would be farther from the truth. Half the visitors are at Land’s End or the Logan Rock; some at Saint Ives; many at the Mount, or Newlyn, or Mousehole; a few have gone to Truro or the Lizard.

Penzance is a harmony in grey and blue, looking seaward; in grey and green to the inward glance. Its chief street, Market-jew Street, climbing up to the centre of the town, has at its summit the somewhat gloomy granite building of the Market House—severely classic—fronted with a statue in white marble of Sir Humphry Davy, a native of Ludgvan village near by. Over a doorway of the building you may see, carved in the granite, the arms of Penzance, i.e., the Head of Saint John Baptist (I disclaim at once all responsibility for the apparent Irishry of the arms of the town being a head), with the legend “Pen Sans, 1614.” At the Alverton end of the town you may still see an old, heavily thatched cottage, where was born that doughty hero, Edward Pellew, who afterwards rose through his prowess to the title of Viscount Exmouth, a title more hardly earned than some parallel patents of nobility in this little day.

’Tis a languorous air, of Mount’s Bay; thus it fell that the morning was usually well advanced before we happened in the street or by the harbour. Here, on certain week-days, is great bustle, when the mail steamer is preparing to cast off for the voyage across to Scilly. The passengers, like the poet’s “little victims,” laugh and are merry, “all unconscious of their doom.” For, of a truth, ’tis a rolling sea, and, as the humorist might say, the sick (!) transit takes away the gloria mundi.

But we leave these, and embark upon that little voyage of three miles to “the Mount,” as you come to abbreviate Saint Michael’s crags, across the shallow waters of the tumbling bay.

In less than half an hour our little launch runs alongside the massive stone walls of the tiny haven, at the foot of the historic Mount, and we presently disport ourselves upon its delightful slopes, whose history, with that of the grey castle above, goes back to very dim antiquity: a history of sieges, surprises, and fierce fights among the rocks, and on the sands below. The Mount is now the property and the residence of Lord Saint Levan, the present head of the Saint Aubyns, whose name one constantly meets throughout Cornwall. The loyal Saint Aubyns have zealously recorded the Royal visit to the Mount in 1846, when her Majesty landed at the stairs of the haven; for there has been let into the rugged granite a brass-plate, inscribed with a “V.R.,” and fashioned to represent the Royal boot-sole, by which you gather that the Queen wore most uncommonly square-toed shoes in those days.

I warn strangers that, before visiting the Mount, it were well to dismiss from the mind all recollections of it as done into paint and water-colour, for artists have all tacitly agreed to exaggerate its height and steepness. Thus, Turner’s grand painting, and Clarkson Stanfield’s huge achievement in water-colour, would be introductions by which a subsequent acquaintance with the place would only disappoint. But then, to expect topographical accuracy in these things (and especially in Turner’s later work) were indeed vain. The best point of view for an idea of the Mount is that half-way up to the left hand, whence this drawing was taken; for here you have bulk and composition without the need for exaggeration.

The castle, crowning the heights, has still much of interest to show, though modern additions are everywhere about. Thus, the Chevy Chase Hall, anciently the refectory of the religious house that once held sway here, is worthy attention. Its name is derived from the decorative frieze that runs round its walls, a representation of old-time hunting scenes. The Royal Arms above, are, of course, a very modern addition, and the spears and other weapons seen on the walls are, for the most part, spoils of the Soudan campaigns, brought from Egypt by Lord Saint Levan’s son, who went through those expeditions.

The chapel, too, though now bare enough, is of Perpendicular date. A horrid oubliette is shown beneath the stalls, a small chamber, without light or air or any outlet when the paving-stone above is lowered to its place in the floor. Some years since, when this dismal living tomb was accidentally discovered, the skeleton of a man of extraordinary stature was found within. Who he had been must ever remain matter for conjecture—poor wretch, left here to be forgotten.

It is a darksome climb to the battlements of the old tower of the castle, so high above the world. Penzance and Newlyn lie below in the distance, and their white walls flash upon the grey of granite and the dull green of the moors beyond. Presently, as you gaze, comes a trail of smoke from eastward, and the “down” train glides into the wayside station of Marazion Road, bringing its complement of holiday-makers, who will swarm up the Logan Rock, sail to Lamorna, adventure (if they be hardy pedestrians) to Porthgwarra or Saint Levan (whence Sir John Saint Aubyn’s jubilee peerage), or Cape Cornwall; but those spots are innumerable where the tourist loves to dwell. Above all places he goes to Land’s End, but never or rarely does he hie him eastward, to Perranuthno, to Cuddan Point, or to Pengersick. Civilisation goes ever westward, and, as the tourist is its peculiar product, ’tis only fitting he should follow its march.

I recollect another day, when we went to Land’s End, along ten miles of ofttimes rough and heavy walking, through Alverton’s lanes, along the short stretch of dusty road that passes by the wrecked sea-wall, designed to join those near neighbours of Penzance and Newlyn, but demolished by the first storm that rolled in from the south-west.

We sat upon the tumbled blocks of granite, and captured this view of the town, and then came upon Newlyn and its decaying school of artists. What has become of the Newlyn School, so-called, that ephemeral blossom? Are we to assume that, its leading exponent having won to academic honours, its mission is fulfilled?

They were only a dilettante set we saw at Newlyn, painting the ramshackle old bridges and their loungers. Artists have painted these old bridges over and over again, have composed groups of bronzed, blue-jerseyed fishermen leaning over their parapets and gossiping, and have given, with the convincing surety of the Newlyn touch, the laughing, tinkling stream that flows beneath the arches, presently to lose itself in the shallow waters of the bay. The amateur photographer, too, is never weary of well “doing” the place. I prefer the paintings to the photos, because, although I have a happy liking for realism and truth, I draw the line at the camera’s uncompromising rendition of battered tin cans, broken crockery, fish offal, old boots, and other unpicturesque and sordid objects that lazy housewives cast out of window into the water.

Sad, indeed, is the state of the picturesque stream or romantic glen that borders upon a camp of civilisation, for abundance of old boots and sardine tins are the reward of the diligent botanist or natural historian in these gates; bracken grows not more profusely than are strewn the shards and potsherds of the neighbouring town. But no matter how frequent and plentiful the wreck and refuse in the matter of bottomless kettles, superannuated umbrellas, and broken dishes, the Old Boot is the commonest object of the seashore, highway, by-way, lane, or ditch—no mountain too high, no valley too deep for it to be found. The angler lands it with language and dashed expectations from the trout stream; the trawler finds it unaccountably in his trawl-net when he returns from the bay; the ploughman disinters it from the field; and children dig it up from the sands: everywhere is the Old Boot. I have communed with Nature, and rambled amid the wildest and loneliest of scenes, when my meditations have been arrested by old boots, and at once the poetry and romance of the scene have flown away. Truly, there is nothing like leather.