painting a picture of cornwall
[the overperfumed Egyptian House, Penzance]
Last time we came to Penzance it blew a gale the whole time, and the overpowering perfume which rose up to our flat in the Egyptian House from the Lush-style soap shop below contributed to us leaving early. But we knew we liked this part of Cornwall and wanted to come back and stay in a less breathtakingly scented place. So we have spent the week in Newlyn, just along from Penzance, with the delightful smell of a honeysuckle hedge outside the front door - and the occasional waft of sea and fish.
[The Terminus, Penzance Station, Cornwall (1925), Stanhope Forbes]
I’m very fond of end-of-the-train-line places. Hull, Le Havre, Marseille, St Ives. There’s a sense of excitement when the London train finally pulls into Penzance station - Paddington seems so far away from here - and there was a little crowd of smiling people on the platform when we went to meet Phoebe. I like the dark, curved train shed and the buffers at the very end of the journey, then the way passengers emerge to the sounds and smells and sights of the seaside and boats and sub-tropical plants. The station staff have time to chat and we are now very sold on the idea of travelling on the Night Riviera sleeper train.
[‘Zennor’ (undated), Robert Morson Hughes (1873-1953)]
The whole of this part of Cornwall has an end-of-the-world feel and you can see the edges as you climb up the hills and steep slopes from Penzance and over to Zennor. The land just falls away, often abruptly, as if field by field it is dissolving into the sea. It’s very beautiful, this quilted landscape, but it doesn’t take much effort to imagine how very different it would be on a bad day.
[‘St Ives’ (1930), Winifred Nicholson, nb the washing lines]
The Penwith peninsula has many associations with writers and artists. DH Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield at Zennor, Virginia Woolf, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson at St Ives - plus a whole constellation of C20 artists in the surrounding area. There’s the Leach Pottery (a quick visit confirmed that I am in the Lucie Rie camp when it comes to ceramics and that I may as well give up the struggle to appreciate Bernard Leach and his acolytes), a squillion other potteries, and artists’ studios everywhere.
[Caroline Townshend & Joan Howson (1940), St Credan, Sancreed]
It may have been the time of year and/or the warm spell after rain, but there was a real sense of greenery and lushness, with exuberantly large and floriferous plants everywhere. It’s such a shame that the business of growing cut flowers in Cornwall to send by train to Covent Garden Market has all but died out;
[‘Anemones’ (1926), Harold Harvey]
Harold Harvey’s paintings of women picking anemones and the daffodil-pickers in the window in St Credan suggest acres and acres of colour in springs past.
[‘Summer’ (1917), Harold Harvey]
But Cornwall is still full of flowers, just not the picking kind. Erigeron grows out of stone walls and steps, and nasturtiums lines the steep paths. I made a list of all the flowers I saw: tall pink nerines, deep burgundy rhodochiton, crimson flag lilies, yellow Kahili ginger lily (very exotic looking), deep violet fuchsia, blue hydrangeas, and enormous numbers of lovely pink and white Japanese anemones, to name just a few.
[1952 poster by Harry Riley ]
Despite its long beach and promenade, Penzance isn’t terribly resortish these days, but it does have plenty of character. There are old granite buildings, 1930s Art Deco/Moderne white flights of fancy, the Cornish Pirates rugby ground in the centre of town (the shouting and cheers can be heard all round the bay on match night), the spectacular Jubilee Pool (now with a geothermal section so you can lightly poach yourself in salt water - highly recommended), the mad Egyptian House, the 1912 Savoy Cinema, and saffron buns and pasties and fish and chips.
[‘The Strand, Newlyn’ (1919), Ernest Procter - so much remains the same today]
Newlyn is much smaller and squashed in on the hillside above the fishing harbour. Tiny whitewashed cottages with slate roofs open onto very steep and narrow lanes, and much of the town has not changed since the Newlyn school of artists arrived in the 1880s and set about painting the fishermen, boats, children, and the hard lives of the locals (I can’t say I’m a huge fan of their rather sentimental/slightly exploitative approach).
[Dod and Ernest Procter (1934) by Felix H. Man - Trewarveneth St is exactly the same today]
We stayed in a place with a washing line with a pulley (there are lots of two-tier lines around here), just above a lovely former infants’ school built around 1900 and now Trewarveneth Studios, not far from Harold Harvey’s own house and round the corner from Dod and Ernest Procter’s house (above, standing in our road down to the harbour). There was a fine view of the sea with Penzance and St Michael’s Mount in the distance, and lots of butterflies having a fine old time dancing around the pink valerian in the garden. It was proper holiday with plenty of time to read, notably Bring No Clothes, and to bake scones to have with clotted cream and amazing local raspberry jam.
[Sophie Harding - here]
And I had the great pleasure of meeting Sophie Harding, who has lived in Penzance for many years. Sophie is an artist who loves pink and red, blue and white stripes, zinnias and daffodils, pears and cherries, and fully appreciates the joys and positive effects of colour.
Happy Sunday!
PS one of the best train journeys in the UK lasts about eleven minutes and goes from St Erth to St Ives at the end of the line.
I've only been fortunate enough to visit Cornwall once, as I live in the US. I remember standing on the cliffs by a disused tin mine in the pouring rain and it was glorious!
Betjeman beautifully describes a train journey to the sea, though not perhaps at Cornwall, in his essay "Winter at Home":
"The train from London will be fairly empty. By the time evening has set in there will be hardly anyone in it at all, for the larger towns on the way to the sea will have taken off most of the passengers. What started as an express will have turned into a local train,, stopping at oil-lit stations while the gale whistles in the ventilators of empty carriages. Standing out white on a blue glass ground will appear the names of wayside stations and, reflected in a puddle, the light of a farmer's car in the yard will sparkle beyond the platform fence.
Then we will go on into the windy dark until at last there is a station slightly more important than those we have passed, lit with gas instead of oil, and that is mine. I shall hear the soft local accent, smell the salt in the wet and warmer air and descry through the lines of rain that lace the taxi-driver's windscreen,, the bulks of houses that were full and formidable in summer and now have not a light in any of their windows.
'
Perfect Sunday reading as we’re on our way to Cornwall ... thank you Jane ( btw have tried the night riviera, very jiggly and a bit cramped , like camping on a train and it unfortunately broke down . BUT we were brought our ordered breakfast to the door by the train porter which more than made up for the breakdown !)