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I Leap Over the Wall (extract)
Monica Baldwin
'I Leap Over the
Wall' was published in 1949.
Its author, Monica Baldwin (1893-1975) had lived as a strict Augustinian
nun for most of her life, but after leaving her
nunnery she moved
to Cornwall to live in the harbour at Lamorna in 1946. Shortly after
Ithell Colquhoun acquired Vow Cave, Monica gave a manuscript copy of
the book to her, and in 'The Living Stones'
Ithell describes reading it 'with
great admiration and amusement'.
Cornwall, it appeared, was only prevented from
being an island by the little three-mile neck of land between
Severn-mouth and the squashy bog in Morwenstow from which the Tamar
oozes. North, west and south, the Atlantic breakers roar or ripple
according to the season.
To me, this seemed
almost too good to be true. You see, I have always thought of an island
as an ideal setting for romance (Shakespeare knew it when he chose
Prospero's Isle as a background for The Tempest). I felt, too, that it
helped to explain the 'differentness' of Cornwall from the rest of
England. She was more than just one more lovely English county; she was
a country apart, whose people had every right to call folk from the
other side of Tamar 'foreigners'.
 I discovered, too,
that even the dry geographical bones of her were shrouded with romantic
legend. There was the primeval forest that had been swept away when the
sea rushed in and overwhelmed Mounts Bay; the shifting sands of the
north coast that had piled themselves above the ancient churches. And,
loveliest legend of all, lost Lyonnesse, whose lands once stretched from
where the Longships Lighthouse stands to-day over to the Scilly Ises and
eastward right away to Lizard Point.
One writer, suggesting
that the vanished Cassiterides were once a part of Lyonnesse, insisted
that, if you listened breathlessly on those rare still days when no
waves disturbed the sea, you could hear drowned church bells chiming in
the water far below.
Her history I found a
trifle disappointing. There seemed so little of it. Or, possibly, I got
hold of the wrong books. Anyhow, Cornwall appeared to have had next to
no contacts with the history of England. As 'Q' pointed out, a few
sturdy insurrections against the imposition of taxes or the 'reformed'
liturgy—two or three gallant campaigns in the fated cause of Charles I,
and—of course the great revival of religion led by Wesley, made up most
of the written tale.
To atone for this,
however, every stone and mound held hints of her unwritten story. And it
was this which, above all things, thrilled and stirred my
imagination. This kind of history was not to be learnt from books. You
had to get into actual contact with the place itself; with the tombs,
long-stones, dolmens, barrows and stone circles set up more than six
thousand years ago by an unknown race.This was the secret Cornwall of
the hill-tops, moors and ruined cliff-castles, all older than the
earliest records that exist.
Instinctively I knew
that the Old People had left something of themselves behind them; that
each grim monolith contained its own dark life. In those fantastically
shaped stones where so much blood had been outpoured, often in human
sacrifice. 'Something' still lived, mysteriously imprisoned -
'Something' which could only communicate itself if one were able to
receive what it had to give.
I must, I felt, I
absolutely must get down there; preferably to that weird, rather
menacing neighbourhood inland from Morvah and Land's End. For I felt
sure that if I could only soak myself sufficiently in the atmosphere of
such places as the Stone Circles of Tregaseal, or Carn Kenidzhek-'the
Hooting Cairn'—among whose boulders and holed stones the spirits of an
even older people than the ancient Celts still lurk—well— I should have
no difficulty about 'tuning in' to their vibrations...
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The very girders in
the blitz-scarred roof at Paddington appeared transfigured: I saw them
as fairy arches through which one passed out into the realm of gramarye.
'Gramarye.' Yes: that,
undoubtedly, was the word for it. And on that particular morning, it was
everywhere. Now and again I had a definite physical feeling that it was
beginning to break through from the invisible territory which I was
trying to invade.
I settled myself into my corner and looked out
through the broad plate-glass window of the Cornish Riviera express. If
ever a magic casement, I reflected, had opened over a perilous fairy
sea, it was to-day....
Blue skies and flowers
in sunskine on the cliff-tops, with spars from a shipwreck floating in
the cove below...to me that spelt the double personality of Cornwall.
Half her charm lay in the number and unexpectedness of her contrasts.
She communicated herself in a series of odd little shocks.
If I had to pick out
the pair of contrasts which seemed to me the most characteristic of the
double spirit which meets you at every turn in Cornwall, I should have
no difficulty. I felt it long before I actually arrived. It was the
subtle, almost sinister Tannhauser struggle between the two motifs of
paganism and Christianity.
On the one side, you
had the saints and hermits who, in the early centuries, had floated
across from Ireland on a spread cloak or millstone of miraculous origin.
From the little wave-side churches in the sand, from the holy wells
beside which they had dwelt and to which they had given their names,
rose their chant of prayer and praise strong and clear as a pilgrims'
chorus down the years. And on the other ... well, you might say what you
liked.... But there was no denying it; from among the trailing ivy and
the gnarled tree-trunks in the wooded valleys, from the hillside
boulders and the stone circles and the ancient burial-mounds, on a
spring morning or when the moon was full at midsummer, the faint
far-away fluting of the pipes of Pan could still be heard.
I kept my nose glued
to my magic casement. But it was only after the train had rushed through
Reading that the fun began.
It started with a
sudden deepening of colour. The earth reddened. The fields grew lush and
deep. The sky flamed to a more ardent blue. Streams and pools appeared
and the woods and copses changed from burnt olive to emerald and gold.
At Exeter there was a
long stop: long enough to let me hear for the first time the mellow,
deep-voiced dialect of the West country. I liked it better than any
speech I had ever heard.
After Exeter, a new
rhythm crept into the melody. It was the rhythm of the sea. Along the
miles of biscuit-coloured sand that stretch between Teignmouth and
Dawlish, slow waves broke, in long ruled lines of silver. The milky,
egg-shell blue of the water looked faint and feminine against the dark
sorrel-red of the tunnelled rocks through which the train occasionally
boomed. The sea was so close that now and again it seemed as though the
waves would dash themselves across the line.
Plymouth-squalid
beyond words, with its mean slums, war-wreckage and appalling
devastation-was an unwelcome reminder of the civilization from which one
was in flight.
'Look,' somebody in the carriage called out
excitedly, 'we're just going over the viaduct at Saltash!' And I knew
that the gateway into the enchanted country had been reached.A moment
later and, with a rattle and a roar, the train was through it.
I was in Cornwall at
last.
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The first thing that
impressed me about Cornwall was that the landscape had grown sterner.
Instead of the rich red soil and moist pastures of Devon, there were
steep hills with scurrying streamlets and valleys filled with rocks and
under-growth. Now and again the train rumbled across a viaduct and,
looking down, one saw the tops of trees far down in the gorge below.
Here were the forest
tracks along which Sir Tristram must have ridden up to Camelot: the very
woods, perhaps, through which King Mark fled, chased by Sir Dagonet the
Fool....The whole country gave one a vague impression that it had lived
through thrilling happenings. The very air was thick with story. It blew
in through the open window like a breath of incense out of the forgotten
past.
It was before Truro that a Cornish
fellow-traveller started reciting the station names to his companion.
After that, I knew for certain that I was in a foreign land. Menheniot;
Double-bois; Lostwithiel; Carn Brea; Gulval. ... Here was gramarye
indeed. Only to utter such words of power should surely be enough to
summon buccas, spriggans, piskies from their lairs.
I had chosen this
particular region of Cornwall because all I had read of it suggested
that it would be the perfect setting for my Cottage-in-the-Clouds. It
bulged with ancient British villages. It crawled with prehistoric odds
and ends. It contained more holed-stones, fogous, cromlechs, monoliths
and stone circles than any other part of Cornwall. Mysterious presences
and apparitions haunted it.
People said that it
was the last stronghold of the Cornish fairies. And in bygone days, it
had been the chosen dwelling place of giants. Could one ask more?
My plan was to explore
the countryside in the hopes of discovering a cottage. Failing this, I
meant to buy a plot of land and build. It was late afternoon when my
dragon-drawn chariot at last pulled in to Penzance. And—it was raining.
But what rain! To me it seemed almost lovelier than sun-shine. The sky
was a misted opal and the breeze from the sea like wine. And just across
from Marazion, shrouded in veils of faintest lavender, St. Michael's
Mount floated above the water, a dream palace on a fairy isle.
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The cottage was perched on
a narrow terrace half-way up the cliff-side. A white gate led into a
minute cliff garden, so small as to be almost like a shelf. In the midst
of this the house was planted, its long, lean-to roof almost hidden by a
windscreen wall whose crenellated top gave it the appearance of a
fortress on a Lilliputian scale.
'Well, it's certainly small enough,' remarked the driver. It was indeed.
In fact, it was the smallest house I had ever been inside. The
living-room was simply the frame for an enormous casement window that
looked out across the cove on to the sea. Another even smaller room
adjoined it, used, apparently, for kitchen, bathroom, lavatory and
store. There were no shelves or cupboards anywhere and the 'kitchenette'
mentioned in the advertisement had apparently been used as the kennel
for a dog. The walls of the living-room, instead of being papered, were
hung with silken taffeta attached to wooden frames. The design was of a
forest glade with bluebells growing beside dark water under shady trees.
It made one feel as though one were standing in a fairy forest shut in
by trees and flowers instead of walls.
'It's heaven.' I murmured the words rather quietly, in case the driver,
who had just returned from examining the drains, should hear. 'They seem
Okay,' said the driver, without enthusiasm. 'But the garden's no larger
than a piece of toast.'
I followed him into it. It was hardly more than a ledge of granite. Yet
it had vast possibilities. At the far end, the cliff rose steeply behind
a thicket of blackthorn, continuing like a high wall round the back of
the house.
'I like this corner,' I said, peering through the blackthorn to where
bits of the granite rock-face were still visible. 'If all this stuff
were cut down, one could strip the cliff and make a marvellous
rock-garden.
We returned to the cottage. 'I expect I shall buy it,' I announced in a
voice which perhaps, in the circumstances, may have sounded
over-enthusiastic. The driver's expression of faintly amused disapproval
was a little dampening. He said, Well, of course, that was for me to
decide. He would not presume to give advice.
After further poking and prying we locked the door and I went round to
take a last look at the view from the garden. More than ever my
shoe-laces felt as though they were tied to the ground beneath my feet.
'It's like the cell of a medieval hermit,' I reflected. 'It's my
Cottage-in-the-Clouds come down to earth. It's so perfect that it might
have been built on purpose for me. In fact, I believe it was. ..
My heart had begun to thump with a strange excitement. Suppose this were
to be the end of all my voyagings and ventures? Well-why shouldn't it?
After all, the decision lay with me. We drove back from Trevelioc to
Penzance in silence.
In Market Jew Street, I got out and telegraphed to the agent that I
would buy the house.
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