The great harbour of Falmouth and the many creeks of the estuary of the Fal, running far inland to Truro and Tresilian Bridge, rival the Hamoaze and the estuary of the Tamar in size, and more than rival them in beauty. Or perhaps, instead of setting them in competition with one another, it may be said that their beauty is of different character. Along the shores of Hamoaze and Tamar, the great commercial and naval and warlike interests of Plymouth and Devonport form striking features, and you can by no means lose sight of them until Saltash is passed. In Falmouth Harbour and along the broad estuary of the Fal, past Carrick Roads and so on to Malpas, towns, commerce, and shipping are only incidental and remote. If you want Falmouth, you must go seek it; if you would seek its smaller brother, St. Mawes, on the hither side, you must almost make diligent quest; and as for the villages of St. Just-in-Roseland, Mylor, St. Feock, Lamorran, Ruan Lanihorne, and others, why, they are all tucked away in creeks, in a kind of Robinson Crusoe reclusion. To say that the creeks of Falmouth Harbour and the estuary of the Fal resemble a hand with spreading fingers is a ready and irresistible figure of speech, but it is a hand with at least nine fingers, of very varying size. They are St. Mawes, or Porthcueil Creek; St. Just Creek; Ruan Creek; Tresilian Creek; Truro River; Roundwood Creek; Restronguet Creek, Mylor Creek, and Penryn Creek. It is about nine miles, measured direct on the map, from the entrance to Falmouth Harbour, between Pendennis and St. Anthony's lighthouse, to Truro, and a little longer to Tresilian Bridge, but the course is anything but straight, and therein—in the winding wooded shores, with inviting channels opening out on either side—lies much of the charm of these waterways.
The district on this, the eastern, side of Falmouth Harbour, is Roseland, not by any means so named from roses, but rather from "rhos," meaning "moorland." It does not nowadays seem a good description. You figure a moor as a ghastly inhospitable upland, where it always rains or snows, and where the bleak winds beat upon the traveller on its unsheltered wilds. Now the Cornish "Roseland" is, in fact, a good deal nearer a land of roses than a terrible district of savage moors; and although part of it is undoubtedly high and exposed, it is not by any means an unfertile spot, and it abounds in the most delightful valleys, deep down, where the last salt ripples of the creeks lap lazily to the roots of oak-woods, and where the airs are warm and steamy; where not merely roses will grow, but sub-tropical plants flourish, and the fuchsia and the geranium come to amazingly vigorous developments. Such is Roseland.
St. Mawes, and Falmouth too, and indeed most of the places beside these waters, wear a very foreign look. The warm, languorous climate, inducing luxuriant and exotic growths and unusual ways of building, is largely responsible for this. St. Mawes, too, is built up-along from the waterside, on the face of a hill almost cliff-like. It owes its name to an Irish saint, who is variously styled St. Machutus, or Mauduit. He is the St. Malo after whom the well-known port in Brittany is christened. It is an ill-sounding name for a saint, whether we call him "Mauduit" or "Malo," reminding one of the rhyme in Valpy's "Latin Delectus":
St. Mawes Castle shares with Pendennis, on the opposite headland, the duty of defending the entrance to Falmouth Harbour from the open sea; but the saints—St. Mawes and others—preserve us from reliance upon such defenders! They may have been formidable castles of the battery kind when originally built by Henry the Eighth, who, apart from his strange matrimonial experiments, is a very much misunderstood monarch, but they could not nowadays give an enemy the slightest hesitation. All the same, elaborate pretences are maintained, and Pendennis and St. Mawes are girdled about with War Office prohibitions; just as though they were not shams that fail to deceive any one.
Historians, too busy with the domestic affairs of Henry the Eighth, and too interested in the great religious cataclysm of his reign, do not award him the title of "patriot king" that is really his due. He was a mighty builder of coastwise batteries against possible invasion; not only ordaining the building of them, but travelling much to see that they were built upon the most effective situations. From the coast of Kent to the Isles of Scilly his pot-bellied batteries are to be found: formidable in their day and still often occupied by details of Garrison Artillery playing a great game of make-believe, in which neither the foreigner nor the Englishman has any faith. Latin inscriptions carved on the exterior walls of St. Mawes Castle give Henry his due, and, he at last being dead, piously hope Edward the Sixth will resemble him. Here is the English of them:
"Henry, thy honour and praises shall always remain."
"May happy Cornwall now rejoice, Edward being chief."
"May Edward be like his father in deeds and reputation."
I think the person who composed that last line and also the other person who cut it in the stone must have smiled at it, just as every one has done in all the three and a half centuries since.
Half-way across the entrance to the Harbour is the Black Rock, visible at low water, but covered at the flood. It is the subject of a story which tells how a Trefusis of Trefusis, not living on altogether satisfactory terms with his wife, determined to be rid of her in an ingenious way. "Shall we, my dear," said he, "sail down the harbour and land at Black Rock?" "Agreed," she replied, unsuspecting; and so they proceeded to the spot. He handed her ashore, and then jumped again into the boat and made off, leaving her, as he supposed, to drown. But unfortunately, from his point of view, some fishermen later on brought her off and home. The lady bade them wait, and her husband would suitably reward them. "To the Devil with you!" he exclaimed, in a fury; "you have played me a sorry trick indeed, and so you'll get nothing. You might have earned gold by leaving her there!"
There is ample opportunity in crossing from St. Mawes to Falmouth by steamer to perceive the truth of Carew's remark, that a hundred sail of vessels might anchor in Falmouth Harbour and not one see the mast of another. In these latter days this magnificent haven is not put to much use, and Falmouth has since 1850 ceased to be the West Indian mail-packet station. In that year its long and honourable connection with the Admiralty and the Post Office, which had been continuous since 1688, ended in favour of Southampton.
The town of Falmouth is seen hiding snugly away at the opening of Penryn Creek, on the inner side of the low-lying isthmus connecting the headland of Pendennis with the mainland. It is not an ancient place, and did not, in fact, come officially into existence until 1660, although some few years earlier the custom-house had been removed from Penryn and a market had been established in 1652. On August 20th, 1660, a proclamation was issued by the King, in answer to a petition by Sir Peter Killigrew, commanding that "Smithike, alias Penny-come-Quick, shall for ever after this day be called, named, and known by the name of Falmouth."
This was a great triumph for the Killigrew family, who had for half a century been endeavouring to found a town on this site, two miles nearer the sea than the old corporate town and port of Penryn. At that period the Killigrews were seated at the mansion of Arwenack, of which some few portions remain near Falmouth railway-station, and they foresaw great profits accruing to them on a town being built upon their land. Penryn had been built in its more inland situation at a remote period when, by reason of raids and invasions, it was dangerous to be seated near the sea, and the position of Arwenack was certainly better for shipping. But the vested interests of Penryn were endangered by the Killigrew proposal, and Penryn, and Truro, and Helston as well, long bitterly opposed it, foreseeing much injury to themselves in a rival springing up. The site of Falmouth was at that time occupied only by two clusters of cottages that could scarce even be termed hamlets. They were named Penny-come-Quick and Smithike, or Smithick. The first of these places took its singular name from the old Cornish "Pen-y-cwm," that is to say, "Head of the vale," to which the Anglo-Saxon "wick"—i.e., "village"—had afterwards accrued. "Smithick" was probably the site of a wayside smithy.
Falmouth town is practically one long, very narrow, and not very clean waterside street of closely packed houses and shops, which shut out all except occasional glimpses of the beautiful harbour, seen from a quay here and there, or framed in by narrow alleys giving upon steps going down to the water. There is much of the nautical Dibdin and Wapping Old Stairs feeling about this long, long street of Market Strand, with the strong sea air blowing in upon the otherwise stuffy thoroughfare through these dark-browed openings. Suggestions, too, of old smuggling days are found in queer sail-lofts overhanging the water; suggestions not without plentiful warranty in old records, for we know that smuggling proceeded impudently and openly at Falmouth in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The sheer matter-of-course of it raises a smile. Men spoke of being—as of in the army or the navy—in the smuggling "service"; which at once shows how widespread and highly organised the operations were. Captain Pellew, brother of Lord Exmouth, sent to Falmouth to put down smuggling, actually found some of his own officers running contraband cargoes of wine, in open port and in broad daylight.
As you go seaward, past the railway station, the almost island promontory of Pendennis rises up, and stretches a much greater distance out to sea than the explorer who seeks to round the point at first supposes. A fine, broad carriage-road describes a loop round this headland. "Pendinas," "the headland castle"—for that was the original form of the name—has been, as the name itself implies, from the earliest times a place of defence, but the only known event of any moment that is remembered in connection with it is the stand here made for the King by Sir John Arundell of Trerice, then in his eighty-seventh year, and known in all these parts as "Jack-for-the-King." It was one of the most memorable deeds done in those troublous, long-drawn contentions between King and Parliament. With the exception of Raglan Castle, in Monmouthshire, which held out to the last for King Charles, and only surrendered on August 19th, 1646, Pendennis Castle was the last stronghold to fly the Royal Standard. It capitulated on August 16th, only three days earlier, after a vigorous six months' siege, and when hunger, rather than any quality of the enemy, had brought the garrison low. Hence the Queen had embarked for France two years earlier, and the Prince of Wales departed for Scilly in February 1646.
The stranger is more likely to be impressed by the ugly lines of sharp-pointed pike railings that surround the precincts of Pendennis Castle, and have been richly tarred, lest by any chance the spikes are not sufficiently formidable, than by any appearance either of strength or picturesqueness that belongs to the place. The military genius that finds a first line of defence in the messy horrors of tar, seems something not much better than the old practice in the Chinese Army, of making horrible grimaces, wherewith to strike terror into the enemy.
You see, on returning to Falmouth from Pendennis, how entirely land-locked the harbour appears to be. Not the slightest indication points to which way the Channel lies. Yet this enclosed water has been ruffled by great and disastrous storms, and in one of them, off Trefusis Point, directly opposite the town, the transport Queen was lost, in January 1814.
The climate of Falmouth is tearful. I may be unlucky in the matter of weather here, but I have never yet been at Falmouth when it did not rain. But it is also phenomenally warm. St. Gluvias, by Penryn, is said to be the warmest place in England. The Sailors' Home, on the quay by Arwenack, gives earnest of these warm conditions. It is a great, grim, eighteenth-century mansion of red brick, but made beautiful, almost transfigured indeed, by a wonderful fuchsia, covering the whole of the frontage up to the first-floor windows.
In the humblest cottage-gardens grows the fuchsia. It flourishes even in the merest cobble-stoned backyards, enclosed within white-washed walls, and neighboured by the washing-stool and tub, and the clothes hung out to dry; and it is amidst such apparently unsuitable surroundings, rather than in the most carefully tended gardens, that this gorgeous alien seems most to prosper. For the fuchsia is an alien, brought into Europe in 1703, from the Pacific coast of South America, and named after an old-time German botanist of the sixteenth century; one Leonard Fuchs. All through the West of England the fuchsia has become—not common; we must not use that word, lest by any chance we should seem to slight so exquisite a plant—but usual, and especially it flourishes along the coasts, and thrives so greatly that it grows in the open all the year round, and frequently attains such dimensions that the stems of old-established plants are not uncommonly nearly as thick as a man's arm.
Yet in 1788 there was but one fuchsia in England, and that was in Kew Gardens. Soon after that date an enterprising nurseryman of Hammersmith, one Lee by name, had secured cuttings, and was selling plants at one guinea each. Thenceforward the spread of the fuchsia was rapid.
The variety seen in Devon and Cornwall is nearly always that with abundance of small blossoms: scarlet petals, and blue or purple sepals.
The parish church of Falmouth is almost the oldest building in the town, but it is hardly venerable. It is galleried within and hangs gloomily upon the narrow street, squalidly mingled with a cab-rank. It was built in 1663, and has the peculiarity of being dedicated to Charles the First, King and Martyr; a distinction it shares with three other churches in England and one in Wales; i.e. those of Tunbridge Wells, Charles Church, Plymouth, Peak Forest, Derbyshire, and Newtown, Montgomeryshire. A further peculiarity is that its tower is not square on plan.
There are many other public buildings in the town, none of much interest; but it is interesting to know that there was once a Mayor of Falmouth who thanked God when the gaol was enlarged. He, or his remark, is quite famous, but I have no record of the period in which this worthy, so thanksgiving for benefits received, flourished. There is, however, no doubt at all that, if it was in the sixteenth century, when such doings as those of the piratical Lady Killigrew (of whom we shall hear at Penryn) were possible, not only the enlargement of a gaol was required, but a special assize as well.
I believe the most interesting place in Falmouth is, after all, not the famous harbour, nor Pendennis Castle, but Burton's Old Curiosity Shop. It is a quite famous institution, and no one who has ever been to Falmouth, and has not explored this home of curios, can really be said to know Falmouth as intimately as he should. This sounds like an advertisement, but Burton's is as superior to puffery as a museum would be; and indeed it is not remotely unlike a museum. True, the exhibits are for sale, but such a large proportion are so eminently undesirable for the private purchaser that they assume the character of museum exhibits unlikely ever to find another home. Such, for example, is the skeleton of a whale washed up some years ago between Cadgwith and Porthoustock. The imagination boggles at any private person buying that. It would seem, indeed, that Burton (who is now deceased, and his son reigns in his stead) had a flair for curiosities and antiques of all kinds, quite irrespective of commerce. He could resist nothing, and was a fine miscellaneous feeder in this sort. But at the same time an excellent man of business, keen on odd and striking advertisement; as when he offered to purchase for £500 Smeaton's old Eddystone lighthouse tower, demolished by the Trinity House in 1882. He proposed to re-erect it on the site of his shop and store it with his curios, but the old tower found a home on Plymouth Hoe instead. One may visit the Old Curiosity Shop and wander at will, unattended, through its many rooms, and never be solicited to buy; and great is the number of those who use this privilege.
Among the oddest of these collections is a strange assemblage of inn and trade signboards, mostly of Cornish origin, most of them so fantastically grotesque in spelling and unconsciously humorous in phrasing, that they would almost appear to be inventions, produced to astonish and to raise a laugh, were it not that they are obviously old, and that the proprietor keeps a register of their place of origin. Thus runs the signboard of Ellen Tone's "Tempurence Hottell," from Herodsfoot, near Liskeard:
The signboard of one Roger Giles easily bears away the bell. It has been printed before now, but is too good, whether genuine or not, to be passed over:
ROGER GILES,
Surgin, Parish Clark and Sculemaster, Groser & Hundertaker
Respectably informs ladys and gentlemans that he drors teef without waiting a minit, applies laches every hour, blisters on the lowest tarms, and vizicks for a penny a peace. He sells Godsfathers kordales, kuts korns, bunyons docters hosses, clips donkies wance a munth, and undertakes to look after everybodys nayls by the ear. Joesharps, penny wissels, brass kanelsticks, fryin pans, and other moosical hinstruments hat greatly reydooced figers. Young ladies and gentlemen larnes their grammur, and langeudge in the purtiest mannar, also grate care taken off their morrels and spelling. Also zarm singing, tayching base vial, and all other sorts of fancy work, squadrils, pokers, weazels, and all country dances tort at home and abroad, at perfeksun. Perfumery and snuff in all its branches. As times is cruel bad I beg to tell ee that i has just beginned to sell all sorts of stashonery, ware, cox, hens, vouls, pigs, and all other kind of poultry, blackin-brishes, herrins, coles, scrubbin-brishes, traykel, and godley bukes and bibles, mise-traps, brick-dist, whisker seeds, morrel pokkerankechers, and all zorts of swatemaits including taters, sassages, and other garden stuff, bakky, zizars, lamp oyle, tay kittles, and other intoxzikating likkers, a dale of fruit, hats, zongs, hair oyle, pattins, bukkits grindin stones and other aitables, korne and bunyon zalve, and all hardware, I as laid in a large assortment of trype, dogs mate, lolipops, ginger beer, matches, and other pikkles, such as hepson salts, hoysters, Winsre sope, anzetrar—Old rags bort and sold here and nowhere else, new laid eggs by me Roger Giles; zinging burdes keeped, such as howles, donkies, paykox, lobsters, crickets, also a stock of celebrated brayder.
P.S.—I tayches geography, ritmitmetic, cowsticks, jimnastics, and other chynees tricks.