SUMMARY OF RUN THROUGH SOUTH CORNWALL

Distances.

Roads.

Hills steep and very frequent.

Surface: on main roads good. By-roads often very narrow and rather rough.

IV
SOUTH CORNWALL

One approaches Cornwall diffidently: one leaves it with a sense of profound ignorance. There is no county, of course, of which any true knowledge can be gained in one visit, whether the visitor be a motorist, or a bicyclist, or that very superior person the pedestrian; but perhaps this is truer of the Duchy than of any other part of England. The knowledge of Cornwall is a special study with many branches, familiar only to Cornwall’s devoted sons. It is easy to love her beautiful face at first sight, and easy to learn the part of her history that is also the history of England, but behind and within these superficial things is the vast hoard of her local legends and traditions, and the bewildering story of her unnumbered saints. A slight knowledge of tin-mining, too, were not amiss. One can only admit ignorance, and drive on happily.

Those who elect to approach the coast of Cornwall from Tavistock, through Callington and Liskeard, will travel on a fine road, which four times dips down to streams and forthwith climbs up again. On so hilly a road as this, one may depend on finding beautiful scenery. After passing through Liskeard the better road to take is the upper one by Morval, as it is less rough than the road that follows the Looe.

On the whole, however, I think the most satisfactory way to enter Cornwall is by Plymouth and Torpoint Ferry. Indeed, I would even suggest that those who have crossed the Moor to Tavistock should choose this route; for the road from Tavistock to Plymouth is magnificent in itself, and overlooks some of the finest views in Devon. And moreover the park of Mount Edgecumbe[6] is but a little way from Torpoint. It is true that beautiful Cothele is but a little way from the Callington road; but Cothele is not open to the public, though by the kindness of Lord Mount Edgecumbe its granite walls and historic furniture may sometimes be seen. But Mount Edgecumbe, says John Prince, is “the most beauteous gentile seat in all those western parts.” The commander-in-chief of the Armada, looking at it from the sea, “was so affected with the sight thereof” that he determined to keep it for his share “in the partage of this kingdom.” His taste was better than his seamanship. The house that stands in this lovely park was built by the grandson of the builder of Cothele—a gentleman, according to Carew, “in whom mildness and stoutness, diffidence and wisdom, deliberateness of undertaking and sufficiency of effecting, made a more commendable than blazing mixture of virtue.” However commendable, he was less attractive, I think, than his grandsire, whom deliberateness of undertaking would not have saved when he was pursued by his enemies among the woods of Cothele. He pushed a large stone into the Tamar, and flinging his cap after it, hid among the trees. Richard III.’s messengers of death, hearing the splash and seeing the floating cap, thought he was drowned and went away. “He afterwards builded in the place of his lurking a chapel.”

The road from Torpoint to Polbathick is excellent, and where it winds round the creeks of the Lynher estuary there are woods on the river’s very verge, as is the lovely custom beside these West Country waters. Across the valley is St. German’s, wherein are some of Cornwall’s most venerable memories and the home of the famous Eliot who died nobly in the Tower. At the fork just beyond Polbathick it is advisable to take the road to the right, for though it is a good deal the longer it is also a good deal the smoother, and avoids a pair of steep hills at Hessenford. The direct road is quite practicable, however, and those who choose it may take the opportunity of running down the wooded valley of the Seaton to the shore. On the other hand, if we go by the longer road we shall see more of the Looe estuary, which is far more beautiful.

To it the Liskeard road runs suddenly down; then turns and follows it very closely to the sea. Even closer to the water is the little railway, which clings to the bank under the hanging trees, and at one point actually goes on its adventurous way in mid-stream. The water, gorgeous as a peacock’s breast, flows evenly between thickly wooded hills, and as the valley widens the town appears at the end of it, climbing its steep sides.

As one approaches a place that is a byword for beauty there is always a lurking fear of disappointment. But the fishing-towns of Devon and Cornwall are so disarming, so personal in their charm, that they never disappoint. Indeed, the trouble is rather that they win the heart too quickly. Each one in turn appears the ideal spot in which to settle for life. So is it here. As we cross the bridge that joins East Looe to West, and look down at the green timbers of the little quays and at the countless boats, or up at the many-coloured gardens above the road; as we drive round the point, and find the open sea rippling in upon a rocky shore, it seems obvious that this, and no other, is the place to live in. The conviction lasts until we reach Polperro.

This we cannot do by way of the wide road that runs round Hannafore Point, for this ends abruptly opposite Looe Island. We must return to the bridge, and without crossing it take the road that rises on the left. As we mount the steep hill we see below us the meeting of the two rivers and their two wooded valleys, and behind us among the trees the scattered houses of the town. At a point about two miles from Looe we turn to the left, and run down a long and winding hill into a tiny green gorge, with steep sides rising almost from the roadway. It ends in the narrow street of Polperro. Here, at the beginning of the street, is the stable-yard of a little hotel, where standing-room may be found for the car. Beyond this point it is practically impossible for a large car to turn, for the twisted alleys of this cramped and cabined village are hardly more than paths, and owing to their contortions on the hillside are often broken by steps.

Why anyone should want to turn I cannot imagine; for this is certainly the place to live in! We knew all about it, of course, before we came here: a thousand artists have painted it. Large numbers are painting it at this moment; a group at every corner. Since there are so many of them it is fortunate that artists—even amateurs—are among the few human beings who are not blots upon a landscape. They may give us lovely pictures of this place: of the headlands that clip the huddled houses so closely between them; and the stream that rushes under weed-grown walls to the sea; and the landlocked harbour with its crowd of little boats; and the cobbled lanes and whitewashed cottages and flights of footworn steps; and the flowers that brighten every narrow alley; and, best of all, the outer haven with its warm red rocks, and white sails reflected in the sea, and the stately outspread wings of innumerable gulls. Yet none but a magic picture could give us the magic of Polperro. For no one could paint this sea but a wizard whose medium was molten jewels, and no one can feel the spell of the place without the pathetic, haunting, insistent sound of the seabirds’ cry. Indeed, it is this sound that gives reality to Polperro. If it were not for this one might think it had been designed and built for the use of artists. The fisher-folk who live here could tell a different tale; and the wild cry of the gulls reminds us of a sea that is not always green and glassy. Moreover, there was once a time, I believe, when it seemed as though Polperro had been designed and built for the use of smugglers.

Very reluctantly we climb out of the gorge and take our way to Lostwithiel by Pelynt and Lanreath, on a road of variable surface and everlasting hills. In Pelynt church is the restored crozier of Bishop Trelawny, whose threatened death, as we all know, determined twenty thousand Cornishmen to “know the reason why.” There are various monuments here too, some beautiful and all interesting, of Trelawnys and Bullers; and at Lanreath a lovely screen and a carved wood cover to a Norman font, and on the south wall a painted copy of Charles I.’s letter of thanks to the men of Cornwall. From the top of the first steep hill beyond Lanreath we see the rounded outlines of Braddock Downs before us, and at their feet the woods of Boconnoc. Over those grassy hills the soldiers of the Parliament were pursued by the royalists. “They were possest of a pretty rising ground,” wrote Sir Bevill Grenville to his wife upon the day of the fight, “… and we planted ourselves upon such another against them within muskett shott; and we saluted each other with bulletts about two hours or more.… We chast them diverse miles … and we lost not a man. So I rest yours ever.” A year later these slopes were stained again—but not so darkly as the royalist honour—when the infantry of the Parliament, having surrendered, were shot down as they passed the King’s army unarmed, and were robbed of clothes and horses. The King himself at that time was staying at Lord Mohun’s place down there among the trees. We pass one of the gates presently, and skirt the park where Bevill Grenville’s men, “upon my lord Mohun’s kind motion,” were quartered by good fires under the hedge.

This park that we see over the fence has been owned by Mortains and Courtenays, Mohuns and Pitts. The last Lord Mohun did not, I fancy, spend much of his time under these trees—preferring those of the Mall and of Richmond Park. When, after surviving three trials for murder, he died at last in his famous duel with the Duke of Hamilton, his widow sold Boconnoc to Thomas Pitt for half the sum, it is said, that he received from the Regent OrlÉans for the Pitt Diamond. It was here that the great Lord Chatham was born.

We run down a long hill into Lostwithiel. This is a place that has seen better days; for Henry III.’s brother, the Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, made it his headquarters in the rare moments when he was not trying to make up the quarrels of others nor fighting in his own, and even in the sixteenth century it was the “shyre towne.” Of the “ruines of auncyent buyldinges” that Leland saw there are only slight traces; but, if we cross the pretty old bridge that spans the Fowey and turn to the right at once, we may see “the little rownd castel of Restormel.” It is reached by a steep lane, and there is no turning-room at the top except in a private field.

“Only there remaineth,” says Carew, “an utter defacement.” But indeed there is something more. This straight avenue of pine-trees with its carpet of turf, the double entrance across the moat, the heavy, gloomy ivy, give to Restormel that air of mystery and romance that seizes the imagination. Like its founder—the prince whose strange exotic name haunts Cornwall far more persistently than he ever did himself—like Richard, King of the Romans, this castle was more warlike than domestic. Only the “fair large dungeon,” or keep, and the “onrofid” chapel are left standing now on the mound that overlooks the valley so commandingly. It is a fine position; yet, though it was hastily strengthened for the Parliament, Sir Richard Grenville[7] took it for the King.

The road from Lostwithiel to Fowey is for the most part winding and stony, and extremely narrow. In places it is also very steep; and the hedges are high and comparatively uninteresting. But a road that leads ultimately to Fowey is entitled to do as it pleases on the way. The last part of it is quite good.

On a very steep hill we creep slowly into “Troy Town.” We look out, over the sloping streets and the roofs of the houses and the church, at the blue harbour and the hill beyond it and all the busy traffic of the port. Over this hill, hundreds of years ago, the men of Normandy crept into Fowey in the night and fell to fighting in the streets, with a whole century of wrongs to avenge—a century of raids and robberies on the part of the truculent Gallants of Fowey. The spoils of French harbours had made the townsmen here “unspeakably rich and proud and mischievous.” So the Frenchmen came to Fowey “without the Foymen’s knowledge or notice,” and killed everyone they met, and burnt the town. Thomas Treffry—Hals calls him John—gathered some of the “stoutest men” round him in his new house of Place, and defended it; while his wife Elizabeth, like a true help-meet, mounted to the roof and poured molten lead upon the besiegers, with excellent effect. Place stands there still, below us on the left; yet not the same that was besieged, since the tall tower is plainly of Victorian date, and the very beautiful bays that appear above the wall are Tudor. It was after this exciting experience that Thomas Treffry—or John—“builded a right fair and stronge embatelid towr in his house: and embateling al the waulles of the house in a maner made it a castelle: and onto this day”—and unto this—“it is the glorie of the town building in Faweye.”

If we stand close below the church tower, and look carefully at the stones above us, we shall see the familiar badge of the ragged staff, the cognisance of the Kingmaker. The Foyens, when Warwick allowed them to go on with their piracies, naÏvely put his badge upon their new church in acknowledgment of his kindness, and persevered in their filibustering ways. Edward IV., however, subdued them by a most unkingly trick. His first messenger they returned to him shorn of his ears, “at which affront the King was so distasted” that he sent a body of men to Lostwithiel, the shire town, ostensibly to enlist volunteers. The Gallants, who never asked for anything better than to fight the French, trooped to Lostwithiel at the summons of their King. They were all arrested; and the chain that guarded their harbour was given to Dartmouth. I believe there are two links of the chain still to be seen at Menabilly, behind the hill.

From the windows of the Fowey Hotel we can see, at Polruan, one of the square grey forts to which the ends of this chain were fastened. The ruins of the other are opposite to it. These valiant little forts have seen a good deal of service, and defended their port long after their chain was forfeited. There was a Dutch ship that came to this harbour-mouth one day in pursuit of an English fleet, and defied the forts in the insolence of her seventy guns—“to the great hurt,” says Hals, “of the Dutch ship … and the no small credit and reputation of Foy’s little castles.”

Fowey’s fighting reputation has always been great, since the day when she owned “sixty tall ships” and sent forty-seven of them to the siege of Calais. To see the harbour that has done so much for England we must loiter in a boat beside the jetties and among the creeks; we must pass the dripping walls of gardens, and the flights of steps where the seaweed clings, and the houses whose back-doors open on the water; we must watch the lading of the ships with china-clay—ships from Sweden and Russia and France—and pause before the picture that Bodinnick makes on the hillside. It was to this hillside, says the story, that Sir Reynold de Mohun came to fetch his hawk, when it killed its quarry in the Fitzwilliams’ garden up there at Hall. Walking in the garden was the fair Elizabeth Fitzwilliam, and on the moment he lost his heart to her, and as she thought him “a very handsome personable young gentleman,” they became the first Mohuns of Hall. Whether they were really introduced by the hawk is doubtful, but they were certainly married—and that not merely once but twice: for the bishop divorced them against their will, and it was only by appealing to the Pope that they won leave to live happily ever after.[8]

Even if we cannot see all the bends and creeks of the river from Fowey to Lostwithiel, we must at least take our boat between the woods and slopes of Pont Pill, where it is only at the water’s very edge that the ferns and heather yield to rocks and crimson weed. Landing at Pont, we may climb the steep hillside to Lanteglos Church among the orchards, and see the old stone cross beside the porch, and the wonderful bench-ends within, and the elaborately painted shields that bear so many famous arms. On this little lonely church, buried among the trees, things of beauty have been lavished, not only long ago but lately; carvings both old and new, and magnificent embroideries, and pavings of marble. There is no other church like this, I think: none, so small and simple and lonely, that has been so generously treated.

Fowey town is a maze of little streets; but when we have climbed out of them—with heavier hearts than seems reasonable—we drive away past the lodge of Menabilly on a very fair road. It will add little to the journey if we go round by Tywardraeth and see the old church, and the tombstone of the prior whose monastery has so strangely vanished. A few carved stones in the churchyard are all that remains of the priory that was founded by William de Mortain, “a person of a malicious and arrogant spirit from his childhood.” It was well named Tywardraeth, the house on the sand, for great was the fall thereof; but why it has disappeared so utterly, and how, is curiously obscure. Gilbert tells the story of the last prior’s resignation—an edifying tale. Thomas Cromwell wrote to him a letter full of compliments, praising his virtues as a man and a prior, and telling him how deeply the King appreciated his services. These had been so unremitting, added Cromwell, that his Grace, being mindful of his age, would allow him to resign his post. To this Prior Collyns answered briskly that he was most grateful for the King’s kind thought, but as a matter of fact his health was excellent. So my Lord Privy Seal tried again. This time the astonished prior was informed that “the savour of his sins, crimes, and iniquities had ascended before the Lord, and that unless he immediately relinquished an office he had most grossly abused a commission would inquire into his misdeeds and punish him accordingly.” This, Collyns understood. Here is his gravestone in the church, in the wall of the north transept; a slab of slate with a cross incised on it. Some old bench-ends have been made into a pulpit, and others inserted in new seats of pitch-pine; but these are not relics of the priory.

Leaving St. Blazey on the right, we run on through some lovely scenery to St. Austell, where a church-tower of wonderful splendour and richness rises from the dull streets of stuccoed and slated houses. Our road to Truro is wide and has an excellent surface, but one hill succeeds another with exasperating regularity and promptitude. The scenery varies from dulness to beauty: the villages seem, to eyes that have lately looked upon those of Devon, a little uninteresting, for we are in the land of the Celt. Thatched cottages are rare, but in Probus there are several of them clustered round the churchyard very prettily. This tower of Probus is the highest in Cornwall, and very rich in sculptured stones: within the building are the granite pillars that are common to nearly all Cornish churches, and a screen whose Latin legend alludes to the two patron-saints St. Probus and St. Grace.

It is only a little way beyond Probus that we cross the head of the Falmouth estuary. By the rushy banks of this calm stream a little band of horsemen once settled weighty matters; for it was here, at Tresilian Bridge, that the royalist general, driven into a cul-de-sac by Fairfax, made his final surrender by the mouth of his commissioners. They met Ireton and Lambert at this spot, and the end of their meeting was the disbandment of the royal troops. The generals of the Parliament rode back to Fairfax by this road of ours, beside the banks of grass and rushes, and the mud-flats and the woods, and down the hill to Truro.

Except the cathedral there is little to see in Truro, and even the cathedral lacks the glamour of age, for, of the masonry, only the south aisle is part of the old church of St. Mary: the rest is new. The general effect of the inside of the building is fine, if a little severe. There is, however, a very gorgeous baptistery in the south transept, whose coloured pavements and crimson font are in rather startling contrast to the prevailing austerity. The roof, I believe, came from the old church, with a few of the monuments. The tomb on which John Robarts and his wife are lying in such obvious discomfort must be the one, I think, that was repaired in the eighteenth century by a mason whose bill included these items: “To putting one new foot to Mr. John Robarts, mending the other, putting seven new buttons to his coat, and a new string to his breeches knees. To two new feet to his wife Phillipa, and mending her eyes.”

Those of us who are intending presently to drive through the country of the Grenvilles may be glad, when they come to Stratton and Kilkhampton, to have seen Kneller’s picture of Anthony Payne. It is here in Truro, on the staircase of the museum in Pydar Street: a burly figure in scarlet, with a face that tries to be fierce but cannot hide its tenderness and humour. This is Sir Bevill Grenville’s giant henchman, who fought at his master’s side at Stratton and Lansdowne, and taught the children to ride and shoot.

A fine road leads from Truro to Falmouth, through hilly but beautiful country; by pine-woods, and distant views, and the green flats of the estuary, and a valley full of trees. Near pretty Perranarworthal we see, crossing a little gorge upon our right, one of the old wooden viaducts that have so nearly disappeared. In Penryn we cling closely to the estuary, following it to Falmouth Harbour. A hundred years ago the main road to Falmouth from London, as it passed through Penryn, “ran up and then down through streets so steep and narrow,” says a writer of that time, “as to make the safe passage of the mail-coach a wonder.” To-day, however, Penryn is one of the few towns in the West Country out of which we can drive on level ground.

When Sir Walter Raleigh came to stay with the Killigrews in their fine new house at Arwenack, he suggested to his host that he should make a town here, on the shore of this splendid harbour. The Killigrews were men of action, and the town was built; to the acute annoyance of Penryn, which petitioned in vain against its upstart rival. We make our slow way through the narrow, crowded streets of the Killigrews’ town, and find the last remaining fragment of their house still “standing on the brimme within Falemuth Haven.” Only a crumbling wall is there, and a window, and on the hill the avenue by which the vanished Killigrews went in and out; nothing to show that Arwenack was the very source of Falmouth’s existence and the very core of her history. For with every concern of Smith-ike and Pen-y-cwm-wick and Falmouth a Killigrew was connected, from the day when they settled here in the fourteenth century till the day when the last of the name set up this pyramid that is beside us—not with the justifiable object of honouring the Killigrews, but for the astonishing reason that he thought it beautiful. He called it a darling thing. “Hoping it may remain,” he wrote, “a beautiful Imbellishment to the Harbour, Long, Long, after my desireing to be forgott.”[9]

No Killigrew is likely to be forgot. It was a Killigrew who gave the land on which Henry VIII.’s castle of Pendennis still stands out there upon the point; a Killigrew who helped to build it and became its first governor; a Killigrew who made Falmouth and fostered it; and the eagle of the Killigrews is borne to this day on the shield of the town. The Killigrews are not forgotten.

It was the round tower of Pendennis that brought Arwenack low. It is used as barracks now, and to see the old building we must have an order; but from the pretty shaded road that circles it we can see nearly all there is to be seen with the bodily eye. Yet if we pass through the grey stone gateway there are other things that we may see, perhaps: Henrietta Maria carried in upon her litter, “the most worne and weak pitifull creature in ye world,” seeking a boat to take her to France; her son a year later coming on the same errand: the Duke of Hamilton brought hither “to prevent his doing further mischief,” by order of the King for whom he lost his head a little later: Fairfax’s messenger summoning Sir John Arundel to surrender his castle. “Having taken less than two minutes’ resolution,” answered old John-for-the-King, “I resolve that I will here bury myself before I deliver up this castle to such as fight against his Majesty, and that nothing you can threaten is formidable to me in respect of the loss of loyalty and conscience.”[10] Five months the garrison held out; and when at last the remnant of them filed through the gate—a pathetic procession of sick and starving men tottering out with flying colours and beating drums—they left no food behind them but one pickled horse.

The belief that the little room above the gate was used by Henrietta Maria is probably due to what might be called the law of local tradition; the law that masonry attracts picturesque associations in direct proportion to its own picturesqueness, and in inverse proportion to the quantity of building that survives. If one room only of an old castle remains, it is that room, according to local tradition, that was the scene of every event that ever took place in the castle. A gatehouse is an improbable shelter for a queen in time of war. As for Prince Charles, there was once a tiny room in which he was reputed to have hidden. Here we have another invariable rule. Charles II. never occupied any place larger than a cupboard; and even in a fortress garrisoned by royalists he systematically “hid.” In this case even his reputed hiding-place is gone, and the legend has not as yet been transferred to the gatehouse; but if we enter the fort itself beneath the sculptured arms of Henry VIII., and mount the long staircase to the leads, we shall see below us on the shore the little blockhouse from which he escaped to France. On our left lies the crowded harbour with St. Mawe’s beyond it, and the round grey tower that was built at the same time as Pendennis: on our right is the bay of Gyllyng Vase, named William’s Grave in memory of the prince who was drowned in the White Ship. Headland stretches beyond headland; and far away on the horizon the Manacles show their cruel teeth.

During the siege John-for-the-King set fire to Arwenack lest the Parliament-men should make a battery of it. It is a common saying that the Killigrews, in their loyalty, put a light to it themselves. But strangely enough the owner at this time was “ye infamous Lady Jane,” who had been divorced by Sir John Killigrew but kept possession of his house for her life—a curious state of things that definitely settles the question of the firing of Arwenack. It was this Lady Jane who gave the famous chalice to the town of Penryn, “when they received mee that was in great miserie.” It was not this lady, however—as is often said—but Dame Mary of Elizabethan days, who boarded the Spanish ship in a true Elizabethan spirit and took her cargo home to Arwenack.[11]

KING HARRY’S FERRY.