West Briton (Falmouth, Penryn, Helston, The Lizard)
Photograph is finally solved
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Rupert Potter was in the habit of making multiple copies of his photographs so they are difficult to keep track of
Beatrix Potter Society
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They are the most odd specimens, just ordinary natives dressed up in blue clothes, and all seem to have bunions, or very misfitting boots
Beatrix Potter
Indeed all the people do that, and appear inquisitive, and if you look back they pass the time of day amiably.
“The foreign sailors stare impartially at everything in a fidgety inquisitive fashion. Some of them are very picturesque. I saw one leaning against a post on the quay for hours, in a scarlet woollen cap, bright blue jersey, and great seaboots, others with sashes round their middles, and one old Frenchman in sabots. They appear on their good behaviour and attract no attention amongst the natives.
“The town is cosmopolitan, one sees five languages on the window of the barbers shop. Everything has a nautical flavour, the baker sells ship bread, the grocer calls himself a ship’s chandler, the ironmonger’s window is full of binnacles, pulleys and lanterns, sail cloth is the leading article at the draper, and they announce fresh water on sale.”
She added: “There are three policemen – I have seen one of them at the Barbers. They have a hutch no larger than the Tub of Diogenes, at the back of Custom House Quay, with a great flag staff and a very little garden. They are the most odd specimens, just ordinary natives dressed up in blue clothes, and all seem to have bunions, or very misfitting boots. They are on friendly conversational terms with the other sailors, and I have seen one of them having eggs at the butchers.”
As Barry discovered, it was during her Easter visit in 1892 that she travelled to St Mawes, taking the steamer ferry across, on what she described as a glorious “sun-shining day”.
Ever the keen naturalist, Beatrix describes the great variety of birds, “a heron, numerous gulls, cormorants, sea, ducks, or guillemots, and one flock of wild geese, the cormorants fish inside the harbour along the boats, where there was also a porpoise one day”.
Of the trip across to St Mawes, she added: “The steamer stays a little while at the shelter of the jetty, the captain, cooks his lunch and cold tea brought to him by particularly sweet little girl, whom he gives two pence and a kiss – the children are certainly remarkably pretty, I cannot imagine why they do not fall in the water, or get caught by receding waves.
“It is not a safe coast for children. On each of the two occasions we were loitering for the boat we were amused to see a sea fairing man cuffing a fat little son for going to near the edge, but he was again hanging over the hedge. The moment his father’s back was turned fishing out, driftwood with a string. The boys handle boats at a very early age, cleverly paddling about the single or over the stern.”
As part of her trip Beatrix also took a small boat to St Anthony and would have landed not far from Place House. While unable to visit St Anthony’s Lighthouse she met a Miss Emmett, the school mistress from Bohortha. Beatrix wrote the following of St Anthony: “St Anthony is a sweet little bay, the only thing to be said against it, it faces north instead of south.”
She also described her encounter with Miss Emmett: “Such a Cornish rosebud, her plump cheeks tanned and tousled with the wind, and her neck and teeth so white. She was neatly dressed, a cape and a broadbrimmed straw hat and fluttering ribbons, a neat ankle, a stout pair of shoes, and how she did walk up hill.
“She was the village schoolmistress. I found myself looking at her, I made out why afterwards. She had her hair brought forward into a cluster of curls on either side of her forehead, not horrid old-fashioned corkscrew ringlets, but an older fashion style like a Gainsborough or Romney, perhaps being market-day they had been in curl-papers overnight. There was something about her refreshingly amusing. I never met with a character so naive and rustic.”
It was during the Potters’ 1894 trip to St Anthony that Beatrix was duly photographed in a rowing boat by her father Rupert. The Beatrix Potter Society did not know where the sepia-coloured photograph dated March 31, 1894, had been taken.
They said: “Rupert Potter was in the habit of making multiple copies of his photographs so they are difficult to keep track of, and he did not always inscribe them. This particular one, however, is inscribed on the back: ‘Falmouth/March 31 1894/R Potter.’”
Barry added: “Thanks to the assistance of Tash Berks, of Falmouth, I was able to pinpoint the location. She suggested I should go and look at a place named Froe Creek where there was once a tidal mill on the Roseland Peninsula.
“A mystery that had remained unsolved for decades has finally been concluded.”