The Isles of Scilly lie twenty-seven miles off the mainland and forty miles from Penzance, the nearest harbour from which you can voyage to that fortunate archipelago. It is possible in these days to reach St. Mary's, the capital of Scilly, in a little over sixteen hours from London, doing it luxuriously, as far as the railway portion of the journey is concerned, by taking the 9.50 p.m. train from Paddington, which arrives at Penzance terminus at 7.30 the next morning, leaving two and a half hours' rest before the steamer Lyonesse leaves for the islands, a voyage of about four hours. But this is suspiciously like toiling to get your pleasure, for night travel, however well-appointed, is tiring, and then you miss the scenery on the way. Upon this writer at least, the delights of the country, as seen framed in the carriage-windows of the flying express, never pall, and he who forgoes the daylight journey by the Great Western Railway misses much. The best method of reaching Scilly is therefore by taking the 10.30 a.m. restaurant car train ex Paddington, which delivers you upon Penzance platform at 5.5 p.m.; a railway journey of 305-1/4 miles, performed at the rate of nearly fifty miles an hour throughout.
The Lyonesse leaves Penzance at 10 a.m. Over that voyage of forty miserable miles—miserable or magnificent according to whether you are what is called a "good sailor" or not—I would like to draw a veil. Once the steamer has passed the Rundlestone and left the lee of the land (with some even before) the woes of the "bad sailor" begin. Do I not know it, all too well? Alas! yes. But the potent charm of Scilly may well be deduced from the fact of such a voyager revisiting the islands, knowing full well that even a "good passage," which phrase in these rolling leagues seems like the ill-timed saturnine humour of a misanthrope—will prostrate him in the scuppers, or fling him athwart the bulwarks, yearning for peace and rest in the creaming billows that go dizzily seething past. Here let me not fail to add, for the comfort of those who would dare the deed, that "once pays for all," as the old proverb says. Your miseries, generally speaking, are confined to the outward voyage, and, although you may be thoughtful and perhaps apprehensive of the like disturbance in returning, Neptune generally refrains from exacting other tribute. You have paid your footing, if staggering along the heaving deck (ugh!) may so be called; and having paid your fare in money and in kind, are free of the ocean blue.
The Scillies rise slowly out of the waters as you approach. There is St. Mary's Island ahead, with St. Martin's on the extreme right, rising behind the numerous rocky islets known as the Eastern Islands, comprising Menewethan, Great and Little Inishvouls, Great and Little Arthur, Ragged Island, Hanjague, Nornor, Great and Little Ganilly, and Great and Little Ganinick. There are two means of approach to the pier at St. Mary's, to which the steamer comes: if it be high tide, by Crow Sound; if at ebb by the circuitous route of St. Mary's Sound. It is the last despairing misery of the sea-sick, who know nothing of the local conditions of navigation, to notice that the captain, apparently out of sheer wanton cruelty, is making a prolonged circuit of the island before coming to an anchor.
But these miseries are speedily forgotten when once you have set foot upon the quay at Hugh Town, St. Mary's; for you realise at once that you have come to a new and strange, and interesting, land.
The Isles of Scilly are the land of the narcissus and the daffodil, but not of those alone. Arum lilies, stocks, wallflowers, and crimson anemones are grown abundantly. There are in all 3,600 acres in the islands, and of these 2,000 are cultivated, chiefly nowadays in the flower-farming interest. It was in 1878, or thereabouts, that the first ideas of flower-farming took root in Scilly. There had always been, time beyond the memory of man, more or less wild narcissi growing on the isles. It was thought, without any evidence being available, that the old Benedictine monks of Tresco had introduced them. There were eight varieties known to botanists. Some time subsequently to 1834, Mr. Augustus Smith, the then Lord Proprietor of the islands, uncle of the present Mr. Dorrien-Smith, introduced many others to Tresco, and it is claimed for him that he was the first to see the possibilities of a London market for these delightful flowers, blossoming here so early, when London is still shivering in midwinter. According to this article of faith, he advised some of his tenants to grow them and send them up to Covent Garden for sale, himself sending the first lot, and realising £1 profit from the transaction. According to other versions, it was Mr. Trevellick, of Rocky Hill, St. Mary's, who made the first consignment; and there is a circumstantial story which tells us that he and a few pioneers, who despatched a few bunches in those early years, when fresh spring blossoms first took London with delight, realised thirty shillings a dozen bunches. A bunch in Scilly is a dozen blooms; and therefore those fortunate few took twopence-halfpenny apiece for narcissi. It seems almost too good to be true, and still the Scillonians (there are no "Scilly people," as Sir Walter Besant makes Armorel say, in his delightful "Armorel of Lyonesse") talk in reverential tones of those wonderful days.
At that time the islanders were making a moderate livelihood out of growing early potatoes; I have seen the quays of St. Mary's heaped high with boxes of them. But nowadays let those grow "new potatoes" who will. Scilly knows a more excellent way, and specialises in flowers so completely, that no one would be in the least surprised to hear of potatoes being imported, just as Scilly imports its cabbages and other vegetables, its butter, and most other things, from "England."
The growth of flower-farming in Scilly has been continuous, and is by no means restricted to St. Mary's: the "out-islands" take an active part. But it is not the easy business it was, for the increased output has naturally by degrees brought prices down, and a steady shilling a dozen bunches would now be considered good. The business increases so surely that this year's figures are out of date the next season. It was considered remarkable in 1893, when the shipments amounted to something over four hundred tons, but those of 1910 exceeded one thousand tons, valued at £40,000. Of this total, the sum of £25,000 is reckoned to be clear profit. So, although the flower-farmers have now to work for their increase, the results are not discouraging, and the Scillies still remain, and increasingly become, the Fortunate Isles. The climate is mild and equable, there are no poor; "penal" Budgets raise no alarms, for the isles are free from income-tax; and the wan, ragged, famished spectre of unemployment, or of the unemployable, is unknown. Scillonians read of it in the newspapers that occasionally come their way, and ask visitors what it is!
Every one works in Scilly. I have seen it stated that Scillonians never hurry. The person who made that statement can never have witnessed the desperate efforts often made to pack the flowers, and get them on to the quay at St. Mary's in time for the steamer, which, in winter, when the flower-harvest is at its height, sails only thrice a week. If the steamer is missed, that consignment is worth just nothing at all, for it has to be on sale in London the next morning.
Visitors to Scilly, who commonly travel in summer and autumn, see nothing of these activities. Then, if ever, the islanders who are flower-farmers take things easily, and the little fields where the daffodils and the narcissi grow are of comparatively small interest, being bare of leaves or blossoms.
The fields are all carefully hedged round with shrubs calculated to ward off the winds, which are the farmer's greatest enemy. They are hedges of tamarisk, of laurel, and of escallonia; but chiefly of escallonia, a small-leaved evergreen shrub with a close-growing habit. Strangers at the first sight of its small delicate pink, waxlike blossoms are taken with delight, but it is to the islanders a mere commonplace. Some fields are large, but most very small, giving less chance for the winds to come and play havoc, and the hedges grow to great heights. Picking the blossoms begins as early as Christmas and generally ends in March, when the season "in England" begins, and Scilly rests from its labours, happy in the knowledge that it has skimmed the cream of the trade.
Photographs of fields rich in daffodil and narcissus blossom are familiar, but not readily to be understood, unless on the assumption that they represent a glut in the market, rendering it not worth while to pick them; for the practice is so to arrange the crop that there is a succession of blossoms in the two months and a half, and always to pick them before they are actually opened in full. They are then taken to long glass sheds, and having been tied in bunches of a dozen, are placed in water. Packing then follows. In the height of the season the school-children have a month's holiday from school, especially to help in the work of picking and packing. There are about four dozen bunches to a box, and 240 boxes to a ton. Often the packing is continued all night and into the early hours of the morning. Steam-launches bring laden boats in from the out-islands by nine o'clock in the morning, and an hour later there are perhaps fifty tons of flowers aboard the steamer.
Such are now the chief activities of the Scilly Isles, and they, with fishing and piloting, make up the entire life of the archipelago. Formerly it was new potatoes, and before that a little kelp-burning, and before that a good deal of smuggling kept the islanders alive.
Whence the isles derive their name no man knows. They are first mentioned by Ausonius, who styles them Sillinæ Insulæ. Some declare them to be named from a branch of the ancient Silures; others consider "silya," a name for the conger, to be the origin; and yet others think "sulleh," the sun-rocks, to be the true derivation. There are now five inhabited islands. The largest of these, St. Mary's, contains 1,620 acres and a population of 1,200; Tresco has 700 acres; St. Martin's, 550 acres, St. Agnes, 350 acres, and Bryher, 300 acres. Samson, last inhabited in 1855, has 80 acres. The smaller and uninhabited islets are Annet, 40 acres, St. Helens, 40 acres: Teän and Great Ganniley, each 35 acres, Arthur, 30 acres, Great and Little Ganniornic, 10 acres, Northwithiel and Gweal, each 8 acres, and Little Ganniley, 5 acres. Besides these, there are some hundreds of rocky islets and rocks.
The Isles of Scilly have never been too remote for conquerors to descend upon and subdue them. Thus Athelstan not only subjugated Cornwall in the tenth century, but subdued Scilly as well; and they were fortified in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the still-existing Star Castle, overlooking St. Mary's, was built, as the initials, E. R. and the date 1593, remain to prove. Scilly was not a safe place of refuge for Prince Charles in 1645. He landed at St. Mary's from Falmouth on March 4th, but the fleets of the Parliament rendered it advisable for him to depart for Guernsey on April 17th. But the isles became, only four years later, the headquarters of a determined band of Royalists under Sir John Grenville, whose privateering exploits so dealt with the shipping trade that it was found necessary to fit out an expedition against him. He was reduced and forced to capitulate in June 1651.
From early times the greater part of the Islands belonged to Tavistock Abbey. In 1539, when the Abbey was suppressed, they reverted to the Crown. From the time of Queen Elizabeth, the Godolphin family and Dukes of Leeds held them on lease, and so continued, except during the Commonwealth period, until 1831. A lease from the Duchy of Cornwall was then taken up by Augustus Smith, a landowner from Hertfordshire, who thus became the first of the Smith and Smith-Dorrien "Lords Proprietors," whose rule, from their residence on Tresco, has been absolute.
Augustus Smith was an autocrat, but a benevolent one. He found the islanders a half-starved race of smugglers and kelp-burners, and by the time of his death, in 1872, left them a prosperous community.
St. Mary's Island is of irregular shape, and is nine miles in circumference. The one town of Scilly, "Hugh Town," stands on the low sandy isthmus of a rocky, almost islanded, peninsula, nearly awash at very high tides, and with two sea-fronts. Over it towers the hill called "The Garrison," crested by Star Castle, so called from its ground-plan of a seven-pointed star; or, some say from "Stella Maris," Star of the Sea; a somewhat unlikely Roman Catholic dedication, considering the Protestant times in which it was built. There has been no garrison here since 1863. A tall wind-gauge stands near by, on the hill-top.
From hence one best sees the island of Samson, two miles and a half distant, lying directly in front of the setting sun. Samson is an island of singular appearance, consisting of two hills joined by a low belt of land. Its name probably derives from that sainted sixth-century Bishop of Dôl, who has given his name to St. Sampson's (or Samson), Golant. There are some ruined houses on Samson, sole relics of the fifty people who once lived on it, and were deported to other islands by the autocratic Augustus Smith. And on Samson's northern hill are no fewer than eleven large sepulchral barrows. But if one wants to learn much about Samson and about the Isles of Scilly, glorified by romance, it is to the pleasant pages of Sir Walter Besant's novel, "Armorel of Lyonesse," one must go. There is no better book to read at Scilly. But Armorel's wonderful old home at Holy Hill is not in being, although photographs show the ruined walls of a house more or less identified with it. Besant no doubt took as his model the flower-farm at Holy Vale, in the centre of St. Mary's Island.
Standing on the Garrison at night, the lights of many lighthouses and lightships are visible. There, on the almost exactly hemispherical outline of Round Island, is the lighthouse that shows a red flash; the Seven Stones lightship is out far beyond; St. Agnes light flashes on its island, south-east; and behind it, four and a half miles away, is the lonely Bishop lighthouse, completed in 1858, and said by some to be exposed to worse weather and more terrific seas than any lighthouse in the world. The lighthouse on St. Agnes is one of the oldest, if not actually the oldest, in the service. It was built in 1680.
The wrecks upon Scilly have been innumerable, and the crowded churchyard overlooking Old Town Bay bears witness to the great loss of life incurred, even in modern times. Here rest one hundred and twenty of the three hundred lost in the wreck of the German mail steamship Schiller, which was on her way from New York to Plymouth. She struck on the Retarrier reef, close by the Bishop lighthouse, in a fog on the night of May 8th, 1875, and almost immediately sank. Only forty-five of the three hundred and fifty-four persons on board were saved.
The Scilly Islands are not less remarkable for rock-scenery than the mainland, and weirdly imitative piles of granite abound. There is a rock, or rather a heap of rocks, on Peninis Head, called the "Pulpit Rock," which at evening looks less like a pulpit than a naval gun; and elsewhere are the "Punch Bowl," on St. Mary's, the "Nag's Head," on St. Agnes, and many others. Not least among these is the Logan Rock, on Peninis Head, which weighs over three hundred tons, and "logs" in a most satisfactory manner, when once started. But it is a brace-breaking business, this starting of it, and you had better have a guide, for this particular rock is not easily to be distinguished from its fellows; and it is exhausting to attempt the moving of other, and immovable, rocks of three or four hundred tons, before you happen to hit upon the right one.
Round past Old Town is the rocky head of Giant's Castle, and then Porthellick.
Porthellick, the "Bay of Willows," is a flat, shallow strand, where the scant herbage at the foot of Sallakey Down dies gradually away upon the beach. At one extremity of the Bay is the curious pile of granite rocks resembling a loaded camel, kneeling, and at the other a rude fragment of granite has been set upon another, on the sand, to form a rough and ready monument, marking the spot where the body of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel was buried.
The story of the naval disaster in which the Admiral and nearly eighteen hundred men were lost is one of the most tragic associated with Scilly. A squadron consisting of the flagship Association, the Eagle, Phoenix, Lenox, Royal Anne, St. George, Romney, and Firebrand, returning from an expedition against Toulon, in October 1707, lost its course in foggy weather. On the 22nd the Association struck on the Bishop and Clerks rocks and immediately went down, with all on board; the Eagle and Romney were also lost, together with the Firebrand, but a few on board the last were saved. The other vessels miraculously escaped. A great deal of mystery was made respecting the disaster and the fate of the Admiral, and a legend, long implicitly believed, gained currency that the shipwrecks were entirely due to the savage obstinacy of the Admiral, who, it was stated, not only refused to listen to a sailor, a native of Scilly, on board, who warned him that he was steering too far northward, but actually had the man hanged from the yardarm for presuming to know better than his superiors. That such a story should ever have gained belief in itself shows us how undesirable service in the Royal Navy must then have been. The sailor, the story goes on to say, asked one favour before he was turned off—that he should be allowed to read a portion out of the Bible. It was granted, and he read the 109th Psalm, one of the cursing Psalms, with this salient passage: "Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.... Let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be clean put out. Because his mind was not to do good, but persecuted the poor, helpless man, that he might slay him that was vexed at the heart."
The whole story is a fabrication, simply elaborated out of the narrative told by George Lawrence, quartermaster of the Romney, to Edmund Herbert, Deputy Paymaster-General of Marines, and detailed in his report of 1709. Lawrence was the one man saved from the Romney, and he said that about one or two o'clock on the afternoon of October 22nd, the Admiral called a council of officers, to discover in what latitude they were. All agreed they were off Ushant, except the master of the Lenox, who said they were off Scilly. Then a lad also declared a light they presently made was Scilly light, whereupon all the ship's crew swore at him.
Among the many contradictory stories told of the finding of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's body on the sands of Porthellick, the most tragic version is probably the most truthful. It was at first given out that he was dead when found, and he certainly was buried here, where the rude stone monument now stands—a spot where, superstition says, grass will never grow. Four days later, the body was dug up, identified, and eventually given a State funeral in Westminster Abbey.
No one could tell what had become of a very valuable emerald ring the Admiral wore, and his widow offered rewards for it, in vain. But many years later, about 1734, a woman of St. Mary's, then lying at the point of death, made the terrible confession that the Admiral had been washed ashore, exhausted, but still living, and that she had choked him, to secure his clothes and jewellery. She produced the ring, which was sent to Lord Dursley, afterwards Earl of Berkeley. It has been set with diamonds in a locket, and in that form is still possessed by the Berkeley family.
Holy Vale, inland, is one of the few places on St. Mary's where trees grow. Whence arose the name is quite unknown, and there is nothing in the nature of any religious house here; but there is, if you like to look at it in that way, a holy calm in this sheltered spot, where the winds abate and groups of dracæna palms grow freely.
But Tresco is the show-place in Scilly for gardens. It is something under two miles to the island of Tresco, where the residence of the Lord Proprietor is situated. There is little left of the Abbey buildings, and the residence so called is quite modern. Beneath it is a rush-bordered freshwater lake, and all around are subtropical gardens, in which visitors are free to wander. Here is a large shed partly built from the timbers of wrecked vessels, whose figureheads form a melancholy row in front. The old iron cresset in which the coal-fires of St. Agnes lighthouse were burnt until 1790, stands close by.
Tresco is two miles long. Visitors rarely go beyond the Abbey gardens, but the walk along to the northern extremity of the island is interesting, commanding views on one side across the narrow channel of New Grimsby to the island of Bryher, and on the other across Old Grimsby to St. Helen's, Menavawr, Round Island, Teän, and St. Martin's. Here, in New Grimsby Harbour, are the ruins of "Cromwell's Castle," and out in the channel is Hangman's Island, where vague legends say he hanged his prisoners. Not far off are the ruins of Charles Castle. The shores are thickly grown to the water's edge with vivid-coloured mesembryanthemum, an alien plant, which looks better than its name. And in the cliffs on the headland is the dark cavern of "Piper's Hole," running a long way in, with a stygian lake in its midst and a boat to take you across to further exploration, which is weirdly done by the aid of torches.
The names of the Scilly rocks and islets are themselves a pure delight, compact of romantic suggestion. There, off Bryher, exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic, are the two grim rocks called Scilly, that confer a name upon the entire group; there is Maiden Bower, there are Mincarlo, Illiswilgie, Great and Little Minalto, Carntop, Nundeeps, the ominous Grim Rocks, Tearing Ledge, Crebawethan and his little brother, Rosevean, Rosevear, Daisy, Gorregan, Meledgan, Hellweathers, and I know not how many others. And weather permitting—a much more insistent condition here than elsewhere—you may, with the aid of experienced boatmen, come near them all, and experience wonderful fishing and see strange assemblages of solemn sea-birds grouped, fishing also, but with unerring beak, from lonely ledges.
Great families of cormorants, shags, and puffins inhabit these rocky places, subsisting upon fish. The fishing methods of these birds differ entirely from those of the gull, for they are clumsy in flight and are expert rather in diving from cliffs than soaring. It is not easy to frighten a cormorant, and it is quite impossible to satisfy his ravenous hunger, which has rendered the very name of "cormorant" a synonym for greed and rapacity. I have seen excursionists engage in the hopeless task of trying to "shoo" a solemn conclave of cormorants away by shouting, gesticulating, and throwing stones, but those wise birds, better able to judge distances in their native air than any holiday-making townsfolk, do not so much as deign to take notice of the disturbers, and witness stones falling a quarter of a mile or so short with all the contempt such marksmen deserve.
The shag is no doubt equally wise, but his is an even more contemplative and much less active wisdom than that of the cormorant. To see a row of still and solemn shags, all black and white, gazing into immensity from a shelf of rock is extraordinarily parsonic in effect: just as though one had come upon the Upper and Lower Houses of Convocation in full session. But there is humour among the clergy; no one has ever yet observed it in a shag. The shags, indeed, are extra-parsonic; more like fakirs in surplices. They take life seriously, and look with a calm but severe disapproval upon the laughter of strangers.
And strangers tend to increase in Scilly and its surrounding seas, in spite of the voyage from Penzance. The isles, truly the Fortunate Isles, where there is no income-tax and there are no motor-cars, and the post comes but once a day—and sometimes not even then—and the only police-force necessary is one officer, who combines all ranks, and even then has little to do, are further blest with a delightfully equable climate, and good hotel and other accommodation. They look with some pity upon the turmoils of the adjacent island of Great Britain.