Corniche

“ Pamela had entered the cottage bent with a single mind upon her purpose--to avert a catastrophe at the little restaurant on the Corniche road. But M. Giraud was before her, face to face with her, as she was face to face with him. She saw him clearly in the light as he saw her; and she was shocked. The curé had prepared her for a change in her old comrade, but not for so complete a disfigurement. The wineshop had written its sordid story too legibly upon his features. ”

“ On a fine morning in June, when one is young and in love, it is a delicious intoxication to tear behind four horses over the white Corniche road. To the left, a hundred feet below, the sea sparkling with foam, from the rounded rocks of the shore to those vapoury distances where the blue of the waves and of the heavens mingle; red or white sails are scattered over it like wings, steamers leaving behind them their trail of smoke; and on the sands, fishermen no larger than birds, in their anchored boats like nests. ”

“ We took the Corniche trip toward evening for the sake of the sunset. The tram starts at the rue de Rome and winds through the city first, across shaded courts, along streets of varying widths (some of them so old and ever so foreign, but always clean) , past beautiful public buildings always with deep open spaces or broad streets in front of them, for the French do not hide their fine public architectures and monuments, but plant them as a landscape gardener plants [Pg 10] his trellises and trees. ”

“ But one afternoon he had been taking a long walk alone, as was his custom every day. Coming down from a Ligurian fort, by an old mule track that ended on the upper Corniche road, he saw an automobile which had stopped at the foot of the path. A girl in a rose-red motor-bonnet and a moleskin coat was standing up in the car, her eyes raised, her chin lifted like a flower tilted in its stem, intent on something which Vanno could not see. The girl was Miss Grant, and Vanno's heart gave a bound, then seemed to contract at sight of her, so near him and alone. ”

“ High aloft, towering above Monaco, 1,270 feet from the sea-level, accessible by a cog-railway, is La Turbie, the point where the old Roman Via Aurelia and the modern Corniche Road cross a neck that is the natural division between France and Italy; the point where, in Roman times before the Empire, Gaul ended, and Italy began.
La Turbie is a corruption of Tropaïa—the Trophy, for here stood the monument erected by Augustus about the year B.C. 13, commemorative of his victories over the Ligurian natives of the coast. For some seventeen years the empire had existed. ”

“ Selden was conscious that Madame Ghita and her companion had turned at the other end of the terrace and were coming back, but he kept his attention riveted on his companion—even, to his own ironic amusement, simulated an ardour he did not feel, and which caused her to rest curious eyes upon him.
“Splendid!” he cried. “Then here is the programme: we will go up to La Turbie, have lunch, walk along the Grande Corniche to Eze—do you know Eze?”
“No; is it a town?” ”

“ Below, along the seashore, is the town of hotels and foreigners, while above, and inaccessible to wheeled vehicles, is that of the native Mentonese, with steep, narrow and dark streets, clinging to the mountain side around the strong castle which was once its protection against pirates. In the old town is the church of St Michel, rebuilt in great part since an earthquake in 1887, while below, in the principal street, the Corniche road, is the monument set up in 1896 to commemorate the union (in 1860) of Mentone with France. ”

“ It is no uncommon thing for a Cornishman to build his own house, make his own shoes, be both fisherman and miner, and, possibly, small shop-keeper besides; and wherever the Cornish miner emigrates, he is pretty sure to take the lead in enterprise and danger.
Wilkie Collins says: "As a body of men they are industrious, intelligent, sober, and orderly, neither soured by hard work, nor depressed by harsher privations"; and the old poet Taylor, in 1649, writes: "Cornwall is the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, for high, churlish hills and affable, courteous people. ”

“ On this subject I do not venture to speak of the Cornish people generally. There may be important differences. I have been told that in the more easterly parts, particularly in mining districts, the people are not of so lively, friendly and communicative a disposition as in West Cornwall; but I assume that here, in Bolerium, we get the least mixed, the truer, Cornishman. Here it seemed to me that not only with regard to the æsthetic faculties, but in various other ways too, in mind and disposition, they are like children of a larger growth. ”

“ Cornish said feebly: "Oh, well...."
Before she willed it, she was telling him:
"He didn't. He didn't leave me," she cried with passion. "He had another wife." Incredibly it was as if she were defending both him and herself.
"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.
She poured it out, in her passion to tell some one, to share her news of her state where there would be neither hardness nor censure.
"We were in Savannah, Georgia," she said. "We were going to leave for Oregon—going to go through California. We were in the hotel, and he was going out to get the tickets. He started to go. Then he came back. ”

“ You are looking fifty years older than when I saw you last, and I know too well that fate has treated me no better!'
'Ah, do not say that,' replied Cornichon, clasping her hand, 'You are different, it is true; but every age has its graces, and surely no woman of sixty was ever handsomer than you! If your eyes had been as bright as of yore they would have matched badly with your faded skin. The wrinkles which I notice on your forehead explain the increased fulness of your cheeks, and your throat in withering is elegant in decay. ”

“ Once outside the charmed circle of his native land, a Cornishman gets on just as well as a Scotchman, and is as thrifty as need be.
There is an ingrained dislike amongst the Cornish towards mean-looking things, and things ugly or deformed. A well set-up man, with head thrown back defiantly, and arms swinging, is forgiven much on account of his appearance of strength and general can-take-care-of-myselfness. A weak-looking man with a mean face must walk warily if he's to get credit at all for the good that is actually in him. An elegant woman, well-dressed, is immaculate ”

“ We had seen already several ancient dames carrying fish quite as capable of taking care of themselves, which indicated that if the language is lost, the race survives. It's a nice walk along the shore to Mousehole. We might have lingered at Newlyn, only the Bookworm wanted to get upon classic ground, where old Dolly used to smoke her pipe, and drink her flagon of beer with the best, and talk Cornish—the real old lingo, hot, sweet, and strong, so that those who heard her once never forgot it. ”

“ There is no virtue in the dead hand of a near relation. A curious old troth plight was formerly practised in Cornwall: The couple broke a wedding ring taken from the finger of a corpse, and each kept one half. The editor of a local paper (Cornishman) once obtained a piece of rope, with which a man was hanged, for a poor woman who had walked fourteen miles to Bodmin in the hopes of getting it, that she might effect the cure of her sore eyes. [154]
The Rev. S. Rundle writes that “a Cornish surgeon recommended a charmer as being more efficacious than himself in curing shingles. ”

“ The devil is sin, and sin the father of ugliness, [Pg 134] hence an ugly person has the devil for father, and is treated accordingly.
The Cornish are a very hopeful race. Bad times depress, but there is always to-morrow to look forward to, and to-morrow may be better than to-day. Without this bank of hope to draw upon, the two main industries of the county, mining and fishing, would have caved in long, long ago. Contentment is another sign by which you may know the Cornishman at home. If a man meets with misfortune, or a friend has gone under, he sums it all up by saying, "Well, there 'tis." ”

“ One of the most pleasing traits of the Cornish people, which is but one manifestation of the spirit I have been speaking about, is their love for little children. Nowhere in the kingdom, town or country, do you see a brighter, happier, better-dressed company of small children than here in the narrow stony ways of the old fishing town. The rudest men exhibit a strange tenderness towards their little ones ”

“ The unhappy man is still working at his task, and it is [Pg 121] said there is not so much water in the lake as aforetime.
"Then Old Artful will have outwitted himself after all, for he gave the fellow a task intended to be endless," said Guy.
"There is hope; and that is where the Cornish story differs from many variations of Faust," said the Bookworm.
"I like the Cornish all the better for that," said Guy. ”

“ On the summit are some curious markings in the stones, which, when a child, I was told were the devil’s footprints; but the following legend, which I give on the authority of the Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, Vicar of St. Peter’s, is quite new to me:—
“The summit of the rock is reticulated with curious veins of elvan, about which a quaint Cornish legend relates that the Bucca-boo, or storm-god of the old Cornish, once stole the fishermen’s net. Being pursued by Paul choir, who sang the Creed, he flew to the top of Paul hill and thence over the Coombe to Tolcarn, where he turned the nets into stone.” ”

“ Corney was bound 'prentice to a brogue-maker, in his native place—which is Drogheda; but, as he tells us, he was too much the lad o' wax to stick to his last, and left a good home, to seek his fortune on the wide ocean. But there's many of us have done as bad: so we shouldn't cry out upon Corney, you know;—should we, now?—The sea is the sole and only thing in the world that an English, Irish, Scotch, or Welch boy, ever feels truly and deeply in love with. ”

“ The Bookworm said Cornwall was a bigger place than it looked, or than could be gripped between the arms of the Atlantic, because of the tributaries it sent all over the world, every man taking with him a bit of Cornish earth and love, and setting up a new colony beyond the seas, just as the old Greeks carried with them some of the fire from the ancient hearths. ”

“ The folk were orderly, as might be expected of the Cornish people, even on Saturday evening.
The Cornishman is imaginative, and deeply, emotionally, but unaffectedly religious. He is a Celt, and consequently he generally wears an air of gentle melancholy. Hospitality and warm-heartedness are also among his characteristics, as all who have journeyed much in Cornwall have occasion to know.
But although the Cornishman is so religiously disposed, Cornwall is by no means a stronghold of the Established Church ”

“ But Corneille was Cornélien even when he wrote rhymed comedy—he could not have been anything else—and he never would have fallen into rhyme had he not wished to make concessions to the prevailing fashion. [69]
Even when engaged in the most absorbing of [171] intrigues his lovers pretend that they are their own masters, and that they feel only such sentiments as they have elected to feel. At that early day—when Médée and Clitandre were written—the culte of the will had germinated; and time proved that it was predestined to become the chief director of Corneille's work. ”

“ So we arrive at the conclusion that the Cornish people are not, and never have been, intemperate generally; for one reason, because they are of a singularly happy disposition, lively and sociable, with a very intense love of their families and homes; and, secondly, because of the idyllic conditions in which they exist, and always have existed, in a country thinly populated, without big towns, with the healthiest, most equable and genial climate in Britain; and, best of all, isolated, outside of and remote from civilisation with its feverish restlessness, vices and dreadful problems. ”

“ The Cornish woman possesses an adroitness and self-possession, a modulated readiness of speech, far removed from the awkward heartiness of the Anglo-Saxon woman, the emotional inexpressiveness of the Lancashire lass whose eyes wander [22] around as she seeks for words, perhaps completing her unfinished sentence by a snap of the fingers. The Cornish woman—at all events while she is young and not submerged by the drudgery of life—exhibits a certain delightful volubility and effervescence. ”

“ Now, at the King's court there was a "wise man," who smelt a rat as soon as ever he heard about the bramble being in bloom, in season and out of season, whenever the prince happened to be there; so he turned the young prince into a chough, and told him to fly over to the herdsman's house and look around. The Cornish chough was common enough in those days, and the old witch took no notice of the black bird with red beak hopping about the garden, its head on one side, and one eye on Olwen the fair. ”

“ Neither of the old men is there whom I can revere or love (except alone my grandfather, whom I love with trembling) : neither of the women any whom I like to deal with, unless it be a little maiden whom I saved from starving.
“A little Cornish girl she is, and shaped in western manner, not so very much less in width than if you take her lengthwise. Her father seems to have been a miner, a Cornishman (as she declares) of more than average excellence, and better than any two men to be found in Devonshire, or any four in Somerset. ”

“ But the difficulty can only exist for persons who are insensible to dramatic excellence, or who so strongly object to the forms of the French drama that they cannot relish anything so presented. Rodrigue, Chimène, Don Diègue are not of any age, but of all time. The conflicting passions of love, honour, duty, are here represented as they never had been on a French stage, and in the “strong style” which was Corneille’s own. Of the many objections urged against the play, perhaps the weightiest is that which condemns the frigid and superfluous part of the Infanta. ”