A week ago, my friend the Journalist wrote to remind
me that once upon a time I had offered him a bed in
my cottage at Troy and promised to show him the beauties
of the place. He was about (he said) to give
himself a fortnight’s holiday, and had some notion
of using that time to learn what Cornwall was like.
He could spare but one day for Troy, and hardly looked
to exhaust its attractions; nevertheless, if my promise
held good.... By anticipation he spoke of my home
as a “nook.” Its windows look down
upon a harbour, wherein, day by day, vessels of every
nation and men of large experience are for ever going
and coming; and beyond the harbour, upon leagues of
open sea, highway of the vastest traffic in the world:
whereas from his own far more expensive house my friend
sees only a dirty laurel-bush, a high green fence,
and the upper half of a suburban lamp post. Yet
he is convinced that I dwell in a nook.
I answered his letter, warmly repeating the invitation;
and last week he arrived. The change had bronzed
his face, and from his talk I learnt that he had already
seen half the Duchy, in seven days. Yet he had
been unreasonably delayed in at least a dozen places,
and used the strongest language about ’bus and
coach communication, local trains, misleading sign-posts,
and the like. Our scenery enraptured him—every
aspect of it. He had travelled up the Tamar to
Launceston, crossed the moors, climbing Roughtor and
Brown Willy on his way, plunged down towards Camelford,
which he appeared to have reached by following two
valleys simultaneously, coached to Boscastle, walked
to Tintagel, climbed up to Uther’s Castle, diverged
inland to St. Nectan’s Kieve, driven on to Bedruthan
Steps, Mawgan, the Vale of Lanherne, Newquay, taken
a train thence to Truro, a steamer from Truro to Falmouth,
crossed the ferry to St. Mawes, walked up the coast
to Mevagissey, driven from Mevagissey to St. Austell,
and at St. Austell taken another train for Troy.
This brought half his holiday to a close: the
remaining half he meant to devote to the Mining District,
St. Ives, the Land’s End, St. Michael’s
Mount, the Lizard, and perhaps the Scilly Isles.
Then I began to feel that I lived in a nook, and to
wonder how I could spin out its attractions to cover
a whole day: for I could not hear to think of
his departing with secret regret for his lavished time.
In a flash I saw the truth; that my love for this
spot is built up of numberless trivialities, of small
memories all incommunicable, or ridiculous when communicated;
a scrap of local speech heard at this corner, a pleasant
native face remembered in that doorway, a battered
vessel dropping anchor—she went out in the
spring with her crew singing dolefully; and the grey-bearded
man waiting in his boat beneath her counter till the
custom-house officers have made their survey is the
father of one among the crew, and is waiting to take
