From a Cornish Window: A New EditionQuiller-Couch, Arthur
History
From a Cornish Window: A New Edition
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
English literature -- History and criticism
5. With what heart Don Quixote rode forth to tilt at sheep and
windmills, and again with what heart in that saddest of all
last chapters he bade his friends look not for this year's
birds in last year's nests.
6. Why the young man went away sadly, because he had great
possessions and could not see his way to bestowing them all
on the poor; why, on the contrary, St. Paulinus of Nola and
St. Francis of Assisi joyfully renounced their wealth; what
Prudhon meant by saying that 'property is theft'; and what a
poor Welsh clergyman of the seventeenth century by
proclaiming in verse and prose that he was heir of all the
world, and properties, hedges, boundaries, landmarks meant
nothing to him, since all was his that his soul enjoyed; yes,
and even what inspired him to pen this golden sentence--
"_You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself
floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens
and crowned with the stars._"
My window, then, looks out from a small library upon a small harbour
frequented by ships of all nations--British, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,
Russian, French, German, Italian, with now and then an American or a
Greek--and upon a shore which I love because it is my native country. Of
all views I reckon that of a harbour the most fascinating and the most
easeful, for it combines perpetual change with perpetual repose. It
amuses like a panorama and soothes like an opiate, and when you have
realised this you will understand why so many thousands of men around this
island appear to spend all their time in watching tidal water. Lest you
should suspect me of taking a merely dilettante interest in the view, I
must add that I am a Harbour Commissioner.
As for the house, it is a plain one; indeed, very like the house a child
draws on a slate, and therefore pleasing even externally to me, who prefer
the classical to any Gothic style of architecture. Why so many strangers
mistake it with its modest dimensions for a hotel, I cannot tell you.
I found one in the pantry the other day searching for a brandy-and-soda;
another rang the dining-room bell and dumbfoundered the maid by asking
what we had for lunch; and a third (a lady) cried when I broke to her that
I had no sitting-room to let. We make it a rule to send out a chair
whenever some unknown invader walks into the garden and prepares to make a
water-colour sketch of the view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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