Читать книгу The Isles of Scilly - Jessie Mothersole - Страница 3

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A “COLOUR-BOOK” on Scilly needs no apology, so far as the subject is concerned, for there is no corner of Great Britain which more demands or deserves a tribute to its colour than do these little islands, scattered about in the Atlantic twenty-eight miles from the Land’s End.

For they are all colour; they gleam and glow with it; they shimmer like jewels “set in the silver sea.” No smoke from city, factory, or railway contaminates their pure air, or dims the brilliancy of their sunshine. They are virgin-isles, still unspoiled and inviolate in this prosaic age, when beauty and charm are apt to flee before the path of progress.

And though their compass is but small, the same cannot be said of their attraction, which seems to be almost in inverse proportion to their size. Scilly exerts a spell over her lovers which brings them back and back, again and yet again, across that stretch of the “vasty deep” which separates her from Cornwall. In this case it might almost better be called the “nasty deep,” for very nasty this particular stretch can be, as all Scillonians know!

Nor do the islands lack variety. There are downs covered with the golden glory of the gorse, with the pink of the sea-thrift, with the purple of the heather; there are hills clothed with bracken breast-high in summer, and changing from green-gold to red-gold as the year advances; there are barren rocks on which the sea-birds love to gather; there are lovely beaches of white sand, strewn with many-coloured shells and seaweed; there are clusters of palm-trees growing with Oriental luxuriance, next to fields and pastures where the sheep and cattle feed; there are bare and dreary-looking moors, “the sad sea-sounding wastes of Lyonnesse”; there are stretches of loose sand, some planted with long grass to keep the wind from lifting it, some with a mantle of mesembryanthemum, which here grows wild like a weed;—and all of them seen against a background of that wonderful and ever-changing sea, which is sometimes the pale blue of the turquoise, sometimes the deepest ultramarine, sometimes again shimmering silver or radiant gold. And then in spring there are the famous flower-fields. Let us visit the islands on an April day, and see for ourselves this harvest of gold and silver. For once we will be day-trippers in fancy though we would scorn to be in fact.

Here in Scilly we find land and sea flooded with spring sunshine, while on the “adjacent island” which we have just left every one is lamenting the cold and the rain. The flower-harvest is nearly over, yet still there are wide fields of dazzling white and yellow, and many hundreds of boxes will yet leave the quay for the mainland. The sweet-smelling Ornatus narcissus is now at its best, and its perfume fills the air. Arum-blossoms, thousands of them in a single field, stand stiffly waiting to be cut, while in the more exposed places late daffodils linger, nodding their yellow heads in the breeze that comes in from the sea. Everywhere there are flowers, flowers, flowers—such a wealth of flowers as one never saw before; and every one is either picking flowers, tying flowers, packing flowers, selling flowers, buying flowers, or talking of flowers. Even the tiny children can tell you the difference between a “ ‘natus” and a “Pheasant Eye”; and will talk wisely in a way to awe the less enlightened visitor of “Cynosures,” “Sir Watkins,” and “Peerless Primroses.”

It is barely thirty years since these sweet flower-fields first began to cover the islands. The “oldest inhabitant,” a great-grandmother of ninety-six (she died in 1913), would call to mind the kelp-making industry which occupied the people in her young days. “Eh,” she would say, “it was not a nice employ; things are better as they are.” And we can easily believe that she was right; for instead of the fragrance of the flowers the air was then filled with the thick and acrid smoke of the burning seaweed; and it was but a poor living at the best that could be made out of it.

There is now hardly a boatman in the islands who does not add to his income by having a patch of ground planted with the “lilies,” as they call them, and sending his boxes of blooms to market during the season.

But flower-growing is not the only industry of the islands. If you ask your boatman to name others as they affect himself, he will probably answer naïvely, “Fishing and visitors”; and he may also add that sometimes he is employed as a “potter.” Although the dictionary allows no other meaning to this word than “a maker of earthen vessels,” let not your imagination be betrayed into picturing a lump of wet clay and a flying wheel! It is crab and lobster pots that are in question, and quantities of these crustaceans are caught round the islands and sold to French merchants.

THE OLDEST INHABITANT

[Pg 16] [Pg 17]

Then there is the mackerel fishery, which is at its height in May and June, when St. Mary’s Pool is full of the picturesque, brown-sailed fishing-boats from Mount’s Bay.

The other “industry” mentioned by the boatmen, that is to say “visitors,” is carried on intermittently all through the year, but is naturally most active during the spring and summer months.

In the summer there are cheap day-excursions from the mainland, and crowds of trippers arrive at St. Mary’s by steamer to spend a few hours on the islands. Some of them land in such a woebegone condition that they are fit for nothing but to lie about on the benches in the “Park” until the hoot of the steamer rouses them to crawl back to the quay. Others, more courageous in spite of having had a “sick transit,” will only stop to snatch a morsel of food before rushing off to the steam-launch for Tresco, where they will make the round of the famous gardens, walk perhaps to Cromwell’s Castle, and return to St. Mary’s dead-beat, just in time to go on board for the homeward journey. And they call that a day’s holiday! But these are not the visitors to bring grist to the boatman’s mill. The kind he wants are those who come to stay, those who come again year after year, and who delight in sailing about amongst the islands and learning to know and love them well. They do not come looking for “Entertainments,” with a capital E. They are quite content with the magical music of the wind and the waves, and with the natural beauties that surround them on every side.

These visitors are neither so many nor of such a kind as to take away from the peaceful charm of the place. You can always get peace and quiet in Scilly, even in the most “tripperish” season, for the trippers follow a beaten track which it is easy enough to avoid. And the islands are, fortunately, quite unspoilt by any efforts to cater for their supposed wants. Not a single penny-in-the-slot machine flaunts its vermilion and yellow in your face; there are no niggers on the beach, nor brass bands, nor cinematographs; no dancing on the pier; no “marine parades” or “esplanades”; above all, here are no artificial “natural attractions” (most hateful of paradoxes), no manufactured show-places to pander to perverted taste. If you come hoping for these things, you will go away (and the sooner the better for all concerned) disappointed. You would only be an alien in this little Paradise.

There are many who will sympathise with this description of the islands taken from a visitor’s book: “A Paradise surpassing Dante’s ideal, but alas! only to be attained by passing through three and a half hours of Purgatory.” For the voyage from Penzance to Scilly is not one to be treated lightly. Looked upon as a pleasure trip, it may be enjoyable or the reverse, according to the weather and the constitution of the passenger; but considered in the light of a test of “good-sailor”-ship it is, I think, without a rival. Do not be set up because you have travelled unscathed to Australia and back, or crossed to America without turning a hair. This little bit of the Atlantic may yet humble you! There seems to be something in the cross-currents between Scilly and the Land’s End which tries the endurance of even the most hardened sailors. How often does one hear it said in Scilly, “I used to think I was a good sailor, but——”; and that “but” speaks volumes! Even sea-captains, regular old sea-dogs who have spent a lifetime afloat, have been known, to their shame and disgust, to fall victims to Neptune on the Scilly passage. I never made a voyage in which less (or should I say more?) was expected of you. The steward gives you a friendly peep at intervals. “Feeling all right, I hope?” You never felt better in your life, and say so. “Well, please hold out as long as you can; my supply is limited.” And you almost feel that it would be ungenerous to disappoint his evident expectations by “holding out” to the end!

But what matters three and a half hours of Purgatory when once one has attained to Paradise? And the passage weighs as nothing in the scale against the charms of Scilly.

In the “good old days” things were very different from what they are now. You could not then make a return journey in the same day. Sailings were few and far between, and people prepared for going to Scilly as for a long voyage.

In Lieutenant Heath’s time (1744) the passage was seldom made more often than once a month or six weeks in summer, and not so often in winter; and he says that as it was made “in small open fisher-boats amidst the running of several cross-tides, the passengers are forced to venture at the extreme hazard of their lives when necessity or duty calls them.” And these passengers “should be qualified,” he continues, “to endure wetting or the weather like so many Ducks; however, the Boatman undertakes to empty the water with his Hat or what comes to Hand without the least Concern.” Half a century later Troutbeck writes that the inhabitants “want a constant, regular, and even monthly communication with England,” chiefly for the sake of getting food. A strong proof of the uncertainty that attended the journey in those days is that in 1793 the “Prudence and Jane,” coming from Penzance to Scilly with necessaries, was driven by a contrary wind to Cherbourg in France! Nowadays it may happen in very exceptionally stormy or foggy weather that a Scillonian’s Sunday dinner does not arrive till Monday, but at least it never goes to France!

When Woodley wrote in 1822, the crossing was made every week, but even then a “good passage” took eight or nine hours, and sometimes the vessel was delayed at sea for thirty-six to forty-eight hours, without any provision of food for the passengers. There is an old lady now living on St. Mary’s who told us that the first time she visited the mainland the crossing took twenty-four hours, and then they were landed at the Mousehole and had to walk the three miles into Penzance.

It was not until 1859 that the sailing-vessels were replaced by a small steamer.

Now the Royal Mail Steamer “Lyonnesse” makes the return journey every day in the summer; and although she may not be perfection, she is reckoned absolutely safe. The distance from Penzance is generally covered in about three and a half hours; but the proprietors reserve to themselves the right to “tow vessels in distress to any other port or place without being chargeable with any deviation of the voyage, or being liable to make compensation to any Passenger”; so if under these circumstances you were taken to Kamschatka you would have no right to complain!

I know of one passenger who was taken out nearly to the Bishop Lighthouse on account of a vessel in distress. Far from complaining, she enjoyed the excitement of the adventure; but such happenings are rare and need hardly be taken into account.

The notice posted on the quarter-deck of the “Lyonnesse” leaves one in a happy state of doubt as to whether passengers or merchandise are the least acceptable: “This Quarter Deck contains 1,014 square feet and is certified for 112 passengers when not occupied by cattle, animals, cargo, or other encumbrance.”

But that passenger would be churlish indeed who had any fault to find with the way in which he was treated by the officials, whether on sea or land. From the highest to the lowest they are as courteous as one could wish—unless, of course, they are provoked to turn, like the proverbial worm.

There is a stoker on the “Lyonnesse” with a portly and majestic figure; but woe to the ill-bred passenger who tries to raise a laugh at his expense! Once such a passenger saw the stoker looming across his field of vision, and, in spite of being curled up and woebegone with sea-sickness, he aimed at him a feeble joke.

ST. MARY’S POOL

“You’d make a splendid advertisement for Mellin’s Food.”

The stoker stopped, and let his eye travel slowly over the speaker. Then came his retort, with withering scorn.

“Well, and you’d make a first-rate advertisement for Keating’s Powder; for anything more like a dying insect I never did see in all my life.”

Whereupon the “dying insect” looked his part more than ever, and was silent.

The Great Western Railway Company once offered to run a fast service of steamers in connection with their trains on condition that they might build a luxurious hotel on St. Mary’s; but the Governor was too wise to consent. Scilly does not need to be revolutionised and popularised and advertised. She is so very charming as she is.

So blessed be the “Lyonnesse,” and long may she continue to reign supreme over that part of the Atlantic—perhaps until the time when we shall be flying across from Penzance, and looking back with horror on the days of sea-passages, even as we now look back to the days of the sailing-vessels.