Penzance is 279-1/2 miles from Hyde Park Corner, London, by road, and 305-1/4 miles by Great Western Railway. Until some ten years ago, when the Great Western adopted a shorter route, and cut off some of the generous curves with which Brunel had endowed the Cornish portion of the line, the mileage was 328. The name, originally spelled "Pen Sans," and still pronounced so, means Holy Head, or Headland, but there is some uncertainty as to the precise significance. A chapel dedicated to St. Anthony once stood on the bold bluff by the harbour, where the not very satisfactory church of St. Mary, built in 1834, is now situated; and it may have been from this sainted headland that the place-name derived. But for long centuries the Holy Head has been thought that of St. John the Baptist, and when in 1614 Penzance adopted a borough seal, it was the head of the Baptist on a charger they selected for the town's device. The old springtime festival, held from distant centuries in the streets of the town, takes place on the eve of St. John the Baptist, and on the eve of St. Peter.
Penzance is by no means a parasite seaside town, existing only for and on visitors. It is a busy market-town all the year round, with a considerable harbour. The long straight thoroughfare of Market Jew Street, rising steadily to the Market House, which is the centre of Penzance, is a street of shops. The Market House is a rather gloomy granite building, with a cupola that bulks out conspicuously in distant views and stands for Penzance. Indeed, in reminiscences of the place you do not so much as think of the sea-front as of this extraordinary municipal building, that shows the ideas of Ionic architecture prevailing in 1837, the time when it was built. The Market House is, in short, the quintessence of Penzance, and that is the reason why I have included an illustration of it. Be quite sure it is not for its beauty, or for the justness of its proportions, nor even for the white marble statue of Sir Humphry Davy that has stood since 1872 in front of it, on the site of the house in which he was born. He is Penzance's greatest son, and was born here in 1778. Philosopher and chemist, and inventor of the miner's safety-lamp, I dare to believe him a greater and a more practical man than Sir Isaac Newton. Davy died at Geneva in 1829, and was buried there.
Davy at any rate was a man far more practical than the wiseacres who built the Market House, blocking up the middle of the street just where it is at its busiest, and where traffic pours in from confluent thoroughfares.
The ancient market-cross stood until recently at its western end.
Penzance market-cross stood until 1829 in the Green Market, but was in that year removed to the corner of a house in North Street. When that house was demolished, in or about 1868, the cross was again moved on, finding a home, appropriately enough, in the west wall of the Market House. There it remained, its inscribed side hidden against the wall, for some thirty years. Loungers leaned lazy shoulders against it, butchers rested sides of meat on it, and it grew, about the head of it, a greasy object. And then some one, in July 1899, hit upon the brilliant idea of removing the cross and cleaning it, and placing it upon a nice new base in the Morrab Gardens, with a metal plate setting forth the year when these things were done. And there it is dripped upon by trees, and although granite is a hard and obstinate substance, yet we have it upon unimpeachable authority that "constant dropping will wear away a stone," and certainly the cross was better preserved by its greasy daily experiences at the back of the Market House than in its present dank situation.
Although it is in shape and size (5 feet 6 inches high), just a typical Cornish cross, it is one of the most interesting: the front of it curiously incised with little holes, while the back, hitherto hidden, bears an inscription, which has been read as "Hic procumbunt corpora Piorum."
Beyond this hub of Penzance is the more residential part, Alverton; and Alverton itself is of two quite distinct periods. Firstly, the delightfully quaint and cosy-looking Regency bay-fronted and plaster-faced villas by the Morrab Gardens, and then the modern stone-built residential suburb about Morrab Road.
The sea-front is quite casual. It boasts a hotel or two and some more early Regency cottages, and the broad asphalted parade, raised by a few feet above the narrow beach, commands widespread views over the shallow waters of Mount's Bay; but it is not thrust forward by Penzance as a great feature. It just happened, so to speak.
Almost coterminous with Penzance is Newlyn, on the west. The name of Newlyn does not indicate "new lake," or indeed, anything new, but derives, like that of Newlyn near Newquay, from St. Newlyna, or Neulwyn, a Breton maiden, who was murdered by a suitor whose love she did not requite. Pontivy Noyala, in Brittany, owes the second half of its name to her.
Newlyn is, of course, a busy fisher-village, and has now got a harbour of its own. They are wilful people at Newlyn, or were, as the following story will show.
Tithe of fish, as of other things, was claimed of old by, and paid to, the clergy, but that is now a thing of the past. The sturdy fisher-folk of Newlyn were among the earliest to resist it. They banded themselves together, painted "No Tithe" on a board which they nailed to a wall, to keep their determination hot, took especial care of their fish-offal, to the sorrow of the gulls, and waited. It was not long before the lawyer came to distrain for tithe. He got it, "in kind." The contents—extremely unsavoury—of various offal-tubs were poured over him.
About the year 1885 Newlyn began to be genuinely astonished. Now your true Cornishman—and they are all Cornishmen and true who live at Newlyn—is not easily astonished; that violent rippling of the mental surface is difficult to accomplish here. So the thing that thus surprised this fisher-town must have been, and was, remarkable. It was nothing less than the discovery of the artistic possibilities of the place. Every one who knew Newlyn knew well enough that it was picturesque: guide-books had told them so, and those who could not discover it for themselves, and knew only of the fishy smells that pervaded the seashore and the crooked alleys, would read to one another in those guide-books, "The village is picturesque," and then perceive that this was indeed the case. But although J. C. Hook had for many years painted Cornish seas, no one had yet painted the life of this place, or of St. Ives, or that of any other among the many characteristic villages of these coasts. Cornish landscapes and seascapes, yes; but the everyday existence of the folk who peopled them had not been revealed to art as a thing well worthy of treatment, alike for its drawing and colour, and for its mingled pathos, nobility, and the virtue of long endurance.
The Newlyners, be sure of that, did not suspect themselves out of the common. Visitors to Penzance discovered Newlyn as a curious place worth a morning or an afternoon's exploration, but not a place where the polite might stay. That is to say, here is no up-to-date hotel, and the folk are, or were, primitive. Their natural politeness cannot be in question.
Then Mr. Stanhope Forbes, who has since attained to the dignity of "R.A.," found Newlyn and perceived its artistic value. He and Frank Bramley were the founders of what has become famous as the "Newlyn School." They painted fish sales, domestic auctions, village weddings, Christmas-Eve in Penzance, "Hopeless Dawn" in a fisherman's cottage when the fishing-fleet has been storm-tossed, and many another episode in the life of the people, and quite early their success brought about the large artist colonies that have since settled, not only here, but at St. Ives, and Polperro, and many another old-world waterside village in Cornwall, their practice that of the pioneers of Newlyn; for although there are different "schools" of fish, pilchards, mackerel, and other, in Cornish seas, there is only one "school" artistic. Now it is a strange thing that although the Newlyn School is essentially English (or perhaps we should say Cornish) in its subjects, its methods are distinctly French in their origin.
It is nothing that the Newlyn School is that of open-air painting, for the Pre-Raphaelites began to discredit the mere studio-painter so far back as 1848; but the peculiarly broad, frank technique, honestly, and perhaps also ostentatiously, displaying the brush work by which its results are obtained, is a distinct importation from the French schools. It has certainly taken root and thrived well here. This purely technical innovation, owing something, but not much, to the impressionists, was applied to subjects that had rarely ever been selected before, and with equal frankness, just as they presented themselves; so that it became with some critics a reproach to the Newlyners that they had no selective qualities, and no power of composition, and merely rendered what they saw, as crudely as a photograph. To which these new men might have replied that a striving after mere prettiness was not their object, but that they did indeed endeavour to render those things they saw around them, just as they were.
That everyday working clothes and sea kit were worth painting was a surprise to the men of Newlyn, and the especial beauty of a weathered and well-worn dress was not easily revealed to the Newlyn women and girls. Many an artist, here and elsewhere, has been sadly put about by the fishermen who, having vanished for a while to "clean themselves and get a bit tidy-like" have come back in some go-to-meeting or other impossible garb; while legends that painters personally disliked cleanliness and order arose from the despair of some at the seeming impossibility of explaining that, artistically speaking, Sunday frocks, tidy hair, and clean pinners were not improvements upon the usual week-day dishevellment, and that to be bare-legged was sometimes better than to be wearing nice new boots. But to-day every one in Newlyn knows much better than that; all have got some idea of artistic terms and slang, and scarce a man among the blue-jerseyed lot who lean against the railings on the cliff-top between going out to the fishing-grounds and digging the potato-patch but has sat as a model or has watched the progress of a canvas.
In these latter days there is added to the traditional Newlyn industries a newer occupation, which also bids to become in course of time traditional. It is that of posing for artists. Be sure that if you loiter here with anything suspiciously like a sketch-book, and wear something of an artistic appearance, you will be hailed by expectant models.
"Would ye like me to sit for 'ee?"
"You're too tidy, I'm afraid," you perhaps say at a venture; but there is no use in that, for it is immediately met with: "All right, sir; I knows what 'ee want. I'll just goo inside an' put on me old hat an' coat."
He does so, and produces articles battered and covered with the dust and mellow tints of age, and hung, like bottles of old port, with cobwebs.
That part of Mount's Bay in which Newlyn is situated is known as Gwavas Lake. Many years ago, the enterprise and daring of the Cornish miners, who had located a vein of tin, caused the opening of a novel kind of mine at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the shore. The Werra Mine shaft was sunk in an iron caisson to a depth of a hundred feet, and tin to the value of £3,000 was dug out before the courage of the adventurers gave way and the speculation was abandoned.
High on the hillside above and beyond Newlyn stands Paul, less a village than a church presiding over a few farms: all very Irish-looking.
I do not think many people would spend much time in considering Paul as the site for a desirable residence. It stands in too lofty and exposed a situation for that: on an upland bracing enough in summer, but in winter a very playground of the winds. Few trees grow on those heights, and thus the tall tower of Paul church is not in the least hindered in its function of standing there as a landmark. From most points of view you perceive it, rising gauntly against the sky-line, in apparent solitude: the bulky tower of a church that must always have been larger than needful for its surroundings.
No one ever thinks of adding "Saint" to the name of Paul, although the place derives its name from a saint: not the apostle Paul, to whom the church was long ago re-dedicated, but to St. Pol de Leon, a distinguished sixth-century Welsh missionary, who settled at that place in Brittany. The church contains a monument to Sir William Godolphin, dated 1681, and hung with his helmet, breastplate, sword, and rapier; but Paul is famed for a much more humble person: the well-known Dolly Pentreath, who, according to the monument erected here to her in 1860, by Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, was the last person who spoke the Cornish language. The interest of this scion of the Bonapartes in Dolly Pentreath was that of a student of languages. Other Bonapartes might dream of glory and Empire; he was a philologist, and took a great deal more interest in the memory of this old fish-wife, who died in 1778 and spoke a dying tongue, than in marshals and generals. According to surviving tales of the old woman, she was a very unamiable, cross-grained old person; and it has been left to later investigators to throw doubt upon this accidental fame. No one, of course, speaks Cornish now, but phrases and odd words of that extinct tongue are still current. I have heard—it was twenty years ago, at Mousehole—a mother calling her child indoors at dusk, "or else the bukkha-dhu will have you"; and "bukkha-dhu," which means "black spirit," is both Cornish and superstition.
A specimen of Cornish on the monument to Dolly Pentreath renders the ordinary person quite reconciled to its being an extinct language. Here it is: the twentieth chapter of Exodus, twelfth verse:
"Gwra perthi de taz ha de mam: mal de dythiow bethenz hyr war an tyr neb an Arleth de Dew ryes Dees."
That is to say:
"Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."
No one knows how Mousehole, the fisher-village beyond Newlyn, got its name. It lies, it is true, in a hole, but so also do most of these villages; and there is also a cavern along the shore, beyond the little harbour, but it is not supposed that it originated the name. Mousehole is a smelly place, but its smells are neither so many nor so penetrating as they used to be. It is remarkable for the sturdy old granite manor-house of the Keigwin family in its very midst, with very boldly projecting porch. For many years past it has been the "Keigwin Arms" inn. Some history attaches to it, for it was here, in front of his own house, that Jenkin Keigwin was killed in 1595, struck down by a cannon-ball fired by the Spaniards in their raid of that year upon Penzance, Newlyn, and Mousehole.
St. Clement's Island, just off Mousehole, had once a chapel on its inhospitable rocks.
The cliff-paths from Mousehole for Lamorna Cove trend inland through the farm-place of Kemyll Wartha, and then descend steeply to the landward end of the deeply indented little bay, where the sea comes surging in amid great granite boulders, to the grassy and rushy fringe of a brook hurrying down from a valley dense with trees and undergrowth. Commercial activities, in the way of granite quarrying, are evident on the cliffs at Lamorna.
On the way inland from Lamorna Cove to Boleit, lying a little on the right hand in the picturesque valley, stands the deserted old manor-house of Trewoofe, once the seat of the Levelis family, extinct in 1671. The ruined rooms and the curiously and richly decorated doorway date from about a hundred and thirty years earlier, when it is quite evident that the Levelis family were alike prosperous and filled with the conviction that they would continue in the land for many more generations. They traced their descent from Norman times, and their doings are still the theme of many legends in Penwith. But nothing became that long-descended family more than the charming epitaph on the last of their race, written by some unknown hand, still to be read in the neighbouring great church of St. Buryan:
"Here lyes the Body of Arthur Leuelis, of Trewoof, in this Parish, Esq., who departed this life the 2th day of May, Anno Dom. 1671.
Half a mile from Trewoofe, crossing the Lamorna Brook and proceeding along the Trereen road, is the very small hamlet of Boleit, the "place of slaughter"; traditionally the place where Athelstan finally overthrew the Cornish, A.D. 936, in a great battle. Certainly the mounds and the standing-stones here and in the immediate vicinity make it quite evident that some great event has happened here. The nearest rude stone pillar bears the name "Goon Rith," which means the "Red Downs," and is really the name belonging to the surrounding hill-sides. A "fogou," or underground passage, a hiding-hole for prehistoric people, exists near at hand, in a very wilderness of undergrowth and brambles, and still justifies the forgotten builders of it by being extremely difficult to find. It is about thirty-five feet long, with another passage leading at right angles out of it. This retreat is formed of granite slabs inclining inward, and roofed by other slabs, covered with turf.
Two tall granite pillars stand to the right of the road at Boleit. They are known as "the Pipers," and are connected in legend with the prehistoric stone circle three hundred feet distant at Rosemoddress, known as the "Merry Maidens," or formerly the "Dawnz Maen," the "dancing stones." Another circle of "Merry Maidens" stands at Boscawen-Ûn, two miles distant, on the other side of St. Buryan. The legend attached to them says they were a party of girls turned to stone as a punishment for dancing on Sunday, together with the two pipers who played to them.
I well remember, a good many years ago, seeking this circle of nineteen stones, at the conclusion of a day spent at Land's End, and on the return to Penzance. I floundered into a boggy bottom at eventide, on the way to it, and emerged from the sloughs only by the directions of a farmer who happened to be working in his fields not far away. It was an eerie place to stumble into at the sunset hour, and it was a still more eerie experience amid these stones to meet a woman who might have been, from appearance and manner, one of the weird sisters in Macbeth. She mumbled incomprehensible things, and stared wildly, and seemed in every way a fitting inhabitant of that place at that hour. I found afterwards she was really a harmless madwoman of that neighbourhood, who wandered aimlessly about.
"Skeers some folk, she does," said a neighbouring farmer, "starring at 'n like a conger, and sayin' things nobody can't make out nohow."
The coast-path leads past Boscawen Point and then trends slightly inland, and descends to the charming little St. Loy's Cove, through some woods. In another mile the track opens out a view of the wooded valley ending in Penberth Cove, furnished with its stream as usual, and with two or three primitive cottages of picturesque build, occupied by fishermen. The shore at Penberth is paved with great blocks of granite; not naturally paved, but laid there at some period by human hands, with considerable pains, and for no apparent advantage.
The way round by the cliffs direct to the headland of Trereen Dinas, where the famous Logan Rock is situated, is scarcely to be ventured. The best way is up the delightful valley of Penberth, past the mill-house, and so round to the left by the "Logan Rock Inn," in the hamlet of Trereen.