Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

“ Truly, there are better things in life than fashionable hotels.
But the neighbourhood of Penzance is lovely. Shrubs and flowers such as one sees on the shores of the Mediterranean grew and flourished in cottage-gardens, and the forest trees we drove under, whole avenues of them, were very fine; gentlemen's seats appeared here and there, surrounded with the richest vegetation, and commanding lovely views. As the road gradually mounted upwards, we saw, clear as in a panorama, the whole coast from the Lizard Point to the Land's End,—which we should behold to-morrow. ”

“ All along the Cornish coast the bathing is delightful—when you can get it; but sometimes for miles and miles the cliffs rise in a huge impregnable wall, without a single break. Then perhaps there comes a sudden cleft in the rock, a green descent, possibly with a rivulet trickling through it, and leading to a sheltered cove or a sea-cave, accessible only at low water, but one of the most delicious little nooks that could be imagined. ”

“ Next morning we must climb Tintagel, for it would be our last day.
And what a heavenly day it was! How softly the waves crept in upon the beach—just as they might have done when they laid at Merlin's feet "the little naked child," disowned of man but dear to Heaven, who was to grow up into the "stainless king."
He and his knights—the "shadowy people of the realm of dream,"—were all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. ”

“ Practicality when weighed against Poetry is poor—Poetry always kicks the beam. We went to Bossinney.
Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything, ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down into, and yet delicious. ”

“ Should we use them? We might never be here again. And, I think, the looser grows one's grasp of life, the greater is one's longing to make the most of it, to see all we can see of this wonderful, beautiful world. So, after a hasty meal, we found ourselves once more down at Porth Hern, seeking a boat and man—alas! not John Curgenven—under whose guidance we might brave the stormy deep.
It was indeed stormy! No sooner had we rounded the rock, than the baby waves of the tiny bay grew into hills and valleys, among which our boat went dancing up and down like a sea-gull! ”

“ Not a cloud upon the sky, not a ripple upon the water, or it appeared so in the distance. Nearer, no doubt, there would have been that heavy ground-swell which is so long in subsiding, in fact is scarcely ever absent on this coast. The land, like the sea, was all one smile; the pasture fields shone in brilliant green, the cornfields gleaming yellow—at once a beauty and a thanksgiving.
It was the very perfection of an autumn morning. We would not lose an hour of it, but directly after breakfast started leisurely to find Housel Cove and try our first experiment of bathing in the wide Atlantic. ”

“ How the stars shone, without a mist or a cloud; how the Lizard Lights gleamed, even in spite of the moonlight, and how clear showed the black outline of Kynance Cove, from which came through the silence a dull murmur of waves! It was, as we declared, a sin and a shame to go to bed at all though we had been out the whole day, and hoped to be out the whole of to-morrow. Still, human nature could not keep awake for ever. ”

“ From the high ground we could see Falmouth with its sheltered bay and glittering sea beyond. Landward were the villages of Mabe and Constantine, with their great quarries of granite, and in the distance lay wide sweeps of undulating land, barren and treeless, but still beautiful—not with the rich pastoral beauty of our own Kent, yet having a charm of its own. And the air, so fresh and pure, yet soft and balmy, it felt to tender lungs like the difference between milk and cream. To breathe became a pleasure instead of a pain. ”

“ There was no time to lose; by noon our parlour floor—what a fairy floor it was! of the softest, most delicious sand—would be all covered with waves. And before then there was a deal to be seen and done, the Bellows, the Gull Rock, Asparagus Island—even if we left out the dangerous points with the ugly names that Curgenven had warned us against.
What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter? ”

“ It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks—of sailors huddled for hours on a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore from lost ships—Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars—many are still found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads." ”

“ When, half an hour afterwards, we saw a solitary figure moving on a distant ledge of rock, and a black dot, doubtless a human head, swimming or bobbing about in the sea beneath—maternal wisdom was reproached as arrant cowardice. But the sand was delicious, the sea-wind so fresh, and the sea so bright, that disappointment could not last. We made an encampment of our various impedimenta, stretched ourselves out, and began the search for shells, in which every arm's-length involved a mine of wealth and beauty. ”

“ The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down," rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly, and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by any company save the gulls and cormorants. ”

“ Yet we hardly wished to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all is—the coming home.
Walking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer, yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love between two old people, out of whom all passion has died—we remembered that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark and Tristram and Iseult. ”

“ There Nature beat Art decidedly.
What a world it was! Literally swimming in sunshine, from the sparkling sea in the distance, to the beds of marigolds close by—huge marigolds, double and single, mingled with carnations that filled the air with rich autumnal scent, all the more delicious because we feel it is autumnal, and therefore cannot last. It was a very simple garden, merely a square grass-plot with a walk and a border round it, and its only flowers were these marigolds, carnations, with quantities of mignonette, and bounded all round with a hedge of tamarisk ”

“ The line of railway which goes to the far west of England is one of the prettiest in the kingdom on a fine day, which we were again blessed with. It had been a wet summer, we heard, throughout Cornwall, but in all our journey, save that one wild storm at the Lizard, sunshine scarcely ever failed us. Now—whether catching glimpses of St. Ives Bay or sweeping through the mining district of Redruth, and the wooded country near Truro, Grampound, and St. Austell, till we again saw the glittering sea on the other side of Cornwall—all was brightness. ”

“ Every one has a mysterious charm of its own—just like that in every new human face. I have seen hundreds of sunsets in my time, and those I shall see are narrowing down now, but I think to the end of my life I shall always feel a day incomplete of which I did not see the sunset.
This one was splendid. The usual place where the sun dropped into the sea, just beyond the point of the Land's End, was all a golden mist. I hastened west, climbing one intervening cliff after the other, anxious not to miss the clear sight of him as he set his glowing feet, or rather his great round disc, on the sea. ”

“ Be that as it may, the fact remains, that throughout winter almost every week's chronicle at the Lizard is the same story—wild storms, or dense fogs, guns of distress heard, a hasty manning of the life-boat, dragged with difficulty down the steep cliff-road, a brief struggle with the awful sea, and then, even if a few lives are saved, with the ship herself all is over. ”

“ Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land, and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become sea-caves, Tintagel still remains—and one marvels that so much of it does still remain—a landmark of the cloudy time between legend and actual history. ”

“ THROUGH CORNWALL
FALMOUTH, FROM FLUSHING.
[Pg 1]
DAY THE FIRST
I believe in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to "do" and to see a country, in order that when they get home they may say they have done it, and seen it. Only to say;—as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest of travelling. ”

“ Our good horse, with the dogged persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul; then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed, picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples. ”

“ Then, greatest crisis of all, the sea will attack that magnificent castle and moat, which we grown-up babies have constructed with such pride. Well, have we not all built our sand-castles and seen them swept away? happy if by no unkinder force than the remorseless wave of Time, which will soon flow over us all.
But how foolish is moralising—making my narrative halt like that horse whom we amused ourselves with half the afternoon. He was tied by the leg, poor beast, the fore leg fastened to the hind one, as seemed to be the ordinary Cornish fashion with all animals—horses, cows, and sheep. ”

“ That in such a state of society there should ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur—not perhaps Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's, founded on mere tradition—is a remarkable thing. Clear through all the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage, honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men. ”

“ And, being rather a connoisseur in cows, I have often amused myself to notice how the kine of each country have their own predominant colour, which seems to harmonise with its special landscape. The curious yellow tint of Highland cattle, the red, white, or brown of those of the midland counties, and the delicate grey of Cornish cows, alike suit the scene around them, and belong to it as completely as the dainty little Swiss herds do to their Alpine pastures, or the large, mild, cream-coloured oxen to the Campagna at Rome. ”

“ You might almost have searched for the sea-maids' footsteps along the smooth surface where the long Atlantic waves crept harmlessly in, making a glittering curve, and falling with a gentle "thud"—the only sound in the solitary bay, until all at once we caught voices and laughter, and from among some rock, emerged a party of girls. ”

“ Between these apparently eternal powers of Nature, so strong, so fierce, so irresistible, against which man fought so magnificently with all his perfection of scientific knowledge and accuracy of handiwork—and this poor frail human life, which in a moment might be blown out like a candle, suddenly quenched in darkness, "there is no skill or knowledge in the grave whither thou goest"—what a contrast it was! ”

“ Oh, it is the thing at the Lizard. My boys—and girls too—consider it the best fun going. The launce is a sort of sand-eel peculiar to these coasts. It swims about all day, and at night burrows in the sand just above the waterline, where, when the moon shines on it, you can trace the silvery gleam of the creature. So you stand up to your ankles on wet sand, with a crooked iron spear which you dart in and hook him up, keeping your left hand free to seize him with. ”

“ The most exquisite little nook; where you could have imagined a mermaid came daily to comb her hair; one can easily believe in mermaids or anything else in Cornwall. What a charming dressing-room she would have, shut in on three sides by those great walls of serpentine, and in front the glittering sea, rolling in upon a floor of the loveliest silver sand. ”

“ So we could, a mysterious noise like that of a gigantic bumble-bee, coming across the water from that curious building, long and white, with its two towers and those great eyes in each of them, at either end.
"They're wonderful bright;" said John Curgenven; "many's the time I've sat and read my newspaper by them a quarter of a mile off. They're seen through the blackest night, the blacker the brighter, seen through everything—except fog. ”