LXVIII
Something of this description, though perhaps not so pronounced, is always going forward at Land’s End in the tourist season. Land’s End is effectually vulgarised, and despite Kingsley’s verses, it is impossible to come to it in any other than a scoffing spirit. Read of Land’s End, and retain the majestic ideal conjured up by the name of it. Visit the place, and you find nothing but sordid surroundings.
We visited, on another day of happier auspices, Carn Kenidjack and Cape Cornwall,—those grand and lonely bulwarks of the land,—and returned by way of the little township of Saint Just-in-Penwith to Penzance, regaining by this unfrequented route something of the lost romance which had lured us to take this alliterative trip from Paddington to Penzance.
It was now late in the season: cold winds and short days came on apace, with rains that drove the tourists home. We, too, packed our knapsacks for the last time, and presently were whirled up to Paddington and London streets in the Cornishman express.
Footnotes
1 A recipe strongly in favour with the artistic and literary world.
2 June 11th. The apparent error arises through March 25th being at that time still occasionally considered as New Year’s Day.
3 We have been told lately that it was not Napoleon but an American orator named Adams who first applied this epithet to us. If this is true, it comes with an additional bad grace, for whatever right a Frenchman has to such a sneer, certainly no American can claim it.
4 Pindar.
5 Than satirical pamphlets.
6 Underneath
Lieth the Body of Robert
Comonly Called Bone Phillip
who died July 27th 1793
Aged 65 Years,
At whose request The following lines are here inserted.
Here lie I at the Chancel door,
Here lie I because I’m poor
The forther in the more you’ll pay
Here lie I as warm as they
7 N.B.—Not responsible for pronunciation of the English language.
8 I’m afraid your rhymes, Mr. Poet, are somewhat indiscreet.
9 See how sadly the exigencies of rhyme fetter the poet: the palate and not the lip give the sense of taste.
10 Anglice, farm-yards.
11 This seems a peculiarly modern touch.
12 Fill, dear reader, these blanks à discrétion.
13 Corruption also of Phillis.