United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is young, it is interesting, it is intelligent, it is emotional, it is cosmopolitan not the Bouillon Duval cosmopolitanism of the Newlyn School, but rather an agreeable assimilation of the Montmartre cafe of fifteen years ago. Art has fallen in France, and the New English seems to me like a seed blown over-sea from a ruined garden.
The world went on just the same, quarrelling, chattering, lying; sentimental, busy and richly absurd; its denizens tilting against each other's politics, murdering each other, trying and always failing to swim across the channel, and always talking, talking, talking. Marazion and Newlyn, and every other place were the world in little, doing all the same things in their own miniature way.
Yet circumstances and some unsuspected secrets of disposition had brought about that event; and now, as he hastened along, the vision of the dark woman he once loved at Drift did not for an instant cross his thoughts, for they were full of the fair girl he meant to marry at Newlyn.
Higher yet, dark plowed fields, with hedges whereon grow straight elms, cover the undulations of a great hill even to its windy crest, and below, at the water line, lies Newlyn a village of gray stone and blue, with slate roofs now shining silver-bright under morning sunlight and easterly wind.
The Land's End had disappointed him; he had found Nature neither grand nor terrific there, but sleepy and tame as a cat after a full meal. Nor did he derive any pleasure from the society of his craft at Newlyn.
In earlier days, smuggling and wrecking constituted the occupation of a large number of the Cornishmen, but under modern conditions these gentle arts can no longer be successfully practiced, and fishing furnishes about the only alternative. Just across the peninsula is St. Ives, another fishing village, even more picturesque than Newlyn and quite as much in favor with the artists.
Between Marazion and Newlyn stretches Mount's Bay; while a mile or two of flat sea-front, over which, like a string of pearls, roll steam clouds, from a train, bring us to Penzance. Beside this road lay our white cottage, with the sunshine lighting up a piece of new golden thatch let into the old gray, and the plum-trees behind it bursting into new-born foam of flowers.
She felt that her own position must henceforth be exalted in Newlyn, for the effects of the combination of catastrophes led to that end. Her husband was the sole care she had left, and physicians foretold no great length of days for him. The lugger would be put up to auction, with the drift nets and all pertaining thereto. The cottage was already Tregenza property.
"He will turn slowly and hold his shoulders stiffly and try to look indifferent," she thought, "but oh his eyes!" The Sparrow and the Cassowary were much delighted with their own dinner and their own ball. Freddy Newlyn was a kindly little man, with an absurd fussy manner full of importance, as so many kindly little men have.
The noisier the others grew as dinner progressed, the closer she and this quiet-voiced boy seemed to draw together. "Poor old Ponty, too bad he couldn't come," cried Mr. Newlyn, pecking, sparrow-like, at a scrap of food on his plate. "Anything wrong, Lady Kingsmead?" "No, I don't think so. He telephoned just before dinner oh!"
Word Of The Day