From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.Bates, Katharine Lee
General
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.
Bates, Katharine Lee
England -- Description and travel
It is a pity not to have space to suggest the softer beauties of the
south coast. From Truro, after a visit to its new cathedral with its
holy memory of Henry Martyn, we drove by way of Sunny Cove to Malpas.
The gulls were screaming as they sought their dinner on the flats, and
a man, wading through the pools, was gathering up belated little fishes
in his hands. We sailed between wooded banks down the Fal to Falmouth,
which is watched over by the garrisoned castle looming on Pendennis
Head. The old port lies in picturesque disorder along the inlet,
while the new town stands handsomely on the height above. Here we saw,
in lawns and gardens, a semi-tropical vegetation, yuccas, acacias,
bamboos, aloes, palms, and pampas grass. Would that there were time to
tell the smuggling scandals of the Killigrews, that witty and
graceless family who ought to have learned better from their Quaker
neighbours, the Foxes! It was by a Killigrew that Falmouth was founded
in the reign of the first Stuart, and Killigrews made merry in
Arwenach House, and made free with the merchandise of foreign ships,
for many a pleasant year. The time when piracy could be counted an
aristocratic amusement has gone by in Falmouth, as well as the
bustling days when this port was an important packet station whence
coaches and postchaises went speeding up to London. It is now putting
on the gentler graces and coming into repute as a winter resort,
though it has not yet attained the popularity of Penzance.
On our way from the one to the other we passed through the mining town
of Redruth, near which, in the hollow known as Gwennap Pit, Wesley
addressed vast audiences. On one occasion the number was reckoned as
thirty-two thousand. "I shall scarce see a larger congregation," he
wrote, "till we meet in the air." The more mystical doctrines of Fox
took little hold on the rough fishermen and miners of Cornwall, but
Wesley practically converted the Duchy, turning it from the most
lawless corner of England, a lair of smugglers and wreckers, into a
sober, well-conducted community. As little flames are said to be seen
playing about a converted Cornishman, Wesley's path across the county
must have been a veritable Milky Way. In such natural amphitheatres as
Gwennap Pit, it may be that the Cornish Miracle Plays, so far
excelling the English in freedom of fancy and symbolic suggestion,
were given. We looked wistfully from Hayle over to St. Ives, with its
long line of fishing boats tied up like horses to a church fence, but
since we could follow only one road at once, held on our way to
Penzance.
[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHT, CORNWALL]
Beautiful for situation, the "Holy Headland" looks out over waters
exquisitely coloured toward
"the great Vision of the Guarded Mount,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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