17. JEANNIE, THE CORNISH HERMIT
In 1903, the Penzance police and workhouse authorities became aware that a hermit was living on the moors and wandering the cliffs: a young woman who seemed quite half-witted. When apprehended by the police, she told them her name was ‘Jeannie’ and that she liked to take walks by the seaside. Since she was very thin, and had no access to victuals of any description, the constables took her to Penzance Workhouse. Jeannie offered no clues as to her true identity. She spoke good English, although it was noted that she had a bundle of papers in a foreign language, which she jealously guarded. The half-starved ‘Cornish Hermit’, as she became known in the newspapers, ate and drank well at the workhouse, but still she pined for a solitary life in the wild: in late September, she scaled a garden wall and ran off. There was consternation among the workhouse authorities, and a sharp lookout was kept at the cliffs in case she had returned to her old haunts. A few days later, a farmer noticed his sheepdogs barking angrily in the field, and he saw the Cornish Hermit trying to hide in the grass. She was recaptured and taken back to the workhouse. A few days later, Jeannie escaped again, and this time the foolhardy hermit was missing for a week, before being discovered lying half dead in a field, without boots and with her clothes in rags, having gone without food for five days and nights in freezing cold weather.
Jeannie survived all her escapades, and ate heartily at the workhouse. Since there was much curiosity about her true identity, charitable local people collected £40, which would be given to her as soon as she had recovered and her identity was known. There was also curiosity as to what event had unhinged her sensitive female intellect and caused her to roam the countryside in a half-demented state, longing for solitude. One day, Mr Ellis, the President of the Plymouth Hebrew Congregation, came to see her; he knew Russian and was able to declare, after reading through Jeannie’s bundle of papers, that she was a Jewish Russian Pole, having been born in the town of Shvel. He spoke to her in both Russian and Yiddish, but she did not respond or react in any way. Mr Ellis hoped to trace Jeannie’s family by writing to every person mentioned in the bundle of papers, and after a few weeks, he received a letter from
a certain Mr Schmulovitch, who claimed to be the hermit’s father. Her mind had become deranged after a love affair went wrong, he explained, and she had been absent from home for many years. He offered to come and fetch her, if he was given the passage money, and the workhouse authorities willingly agreed.
After Jeannie had spent Christmas Day in the workhouse, recovering her strength, her father arrived in Penzance on 6 January. A sturdy, venerablelooking Russian, he seemed genuinely pleased to see the Cornish Hermit, whose escapades had reached even the London newspapers. When he spoke to her in Russian, she did not respond, but she seemed to recognise him as her father, embraced him, and agreed to accompany him back to Russia. She had no recollection at all of her previous life, she said, and seemed as scatter-brained as ever. Mr Schmulovitch said that after being forsaken by her lover many years ago, Jeannie’s intellect had become seriously deranged. Inconsolable after being crossed in love, she had left Russia and gone to Philadelphia. She had come to England 10 years earlier, and had been incarcerated in a Bournemouth asylum for three months, but had escaped to lead a nomadic existence as a tramp for many years before she was rescued by the humane and public-spirited Penzance Workhouse guardians.
On 8 January, the Daily Mail could announce that Mr Schmulovitch and Jeannie had arrived in London, their travel arrangements made by the Jewish Board of Guardians, who also looked after their comfort and safety during the journey, since the father spoke no English at all, and the unpredictable hermit needed constant supervision to prevent her from leaping off the train and wandering away. Later in January they arrived in Berlin, where Jeannie again escaped to go walking about the streets; but fortunately she was recaptured and once more united with her long-suffering parent.
The last thing we know about the Cornish Hermit is that in February 1904, her father wrote back to the generous Mr Ellis to relate that after a long and gruelling journey, he and his daughter were now back in Shvel; her memory had begun to return, and she had started to speak Russian again.