Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/350



HE studios stood in a meadow high above the quaint little fishing village of Trenewlyn. The meadow, which the proprietor had jestingly named "Le Champ des Beaux Arts,' came suddenly upon one as a surprise on mounting the stony, dusky street that led up from the quay. The studios—three in number—were a still greater surprise, so modern and out of place they looked in this little old-world nook, where only fisher folk had lived and worked since the village had existed.

The streets were narrow and steep, and rudely paved with rough stones from the neighbouring quarry. The houses were piled in an incongruous fashion up the sloping hill, as if the builders had begun at the quay and gone on at intervals dropping these primitive dwellings here and there just as the fancy took them. History stated that the little village had suffered severely at the hands of the Spaniards in 1595, at which time these ruthless invaders had partly destroyed the beautiful old church which stood in the parish of Polwyn, about a mile off.

The wide blue waters of the bay could be stormy and wild at times, and the fleet of brown-sailed fishing boats were glad enough of the shelter and anchorage formed by the solid stone sea wall that stretched out right and left of the little harbour. It was a pretty sight to see them resting on the pebbly beach, or rocking on the soft rise and fall of the waves, or again standing out to sea like a flock of dark-winged birds, while the groups of women and children stood watching on the quay for a last look or smile from some stalwart lover, or father, or husband. They had their hours of peril, those bronzed and hearty toilers, for the coast was rough and dangerous, and the risk of life and its many hardships but poorly compensated. But, for all that, they were contented and cheerful folk, and apparently satisfied enough with their primitive life and surroundings. There was much that was picturesque and quaint about the little hamlet, and wonderful beauty of bay and coast, where the wide blue sea rolled bold and unbroken to the Lizard Point. And the varying lights and shadows, the quaint dusky houses, the steep streets, the groups of fishermen with their brown nets drying in the sun, the occasional and uncommon beauty of the women, which was curiously Spanish in type and colouring—all these were the delight and inspiration of many an artist who had strayed thither by chance, to stay often enough from choice.

So, in course of time, it entered the mind of one Jasper Trenoweth, owner of the old manor house of Trenoweth, and accounted by the country folk as a somewhat eccentric individual, to buy the waste piece of meadow land that commanded so unrivalled a view,