rowly about the harbour
and on the neck of the Island; the more modern residences and
lodging-houses stretch above Porthminster Beach, with a popular
development at Carbis Bay. More inland suburbs are chiefly devoted to
the mining that has suffered so many vicissitudes--flourishing, then
decadent, and now flourishing again. One such centre is Halsetown, a
mining settlement founded something less than a century ago by James
Halse, of the old Cornwall Hals family; he was a solicitor and a mayor
of St. Ives, intimately connected with the mines. But in this rather
unattractive quarter we are less likely to think of Halse than we are
of Sir Henry Irving, who spent his childhood here. The reputation of a
great actor becomes very much a phantom affair after a few years; but
as we still associate the name of Garrick with a brilliant period of
the Georgian age, so the name of Irving must always be linked with the
later brilliant period of the Victorian. To the younger generation of
theatre-goers he is fast becoming like a half-mythical demigod--one of
those whom the elder folk mention with regretful shakings of the head
when newer favourites are lauded. The actor was not born in Cornwall,
but in Somerset; his mother, however, was a Cornish woman named
Behenna, and one of his aunts was Mrs. Penberthy, wife of Captain
Isaac Penberthy, whose captaincy of course referred to his position as
overseer of mines here at Halsetown. Hither Irving was brought in his
fourth year, and his memories of Cornwall remained vivid to his dying
day. "I recall Halsetown," he said, "as a village nestling between
sloping hills, bare and desolate, disfigured by great heaps of slack
from the mines, and with the Knill monument standing prominent as a
landmark to the east. It was a wild and weird place, fascinating in
its own peculiar beauty, and taking a more definite shape in my
youthful imagination by reason of the fancies and legends of the
people. The stories attaching to rock and well and hill were unending;
every man and woman had folk-lore to tell us youngsters. We took to
them naturally--they seem to fit in wisely with the solitudes, the
expanses, the superstitious character of the Cornish people, and never
clashed in our minds with the Scriptural teachings which were our
daily portion at home. These legends and fairy stories have remained
with me but vaguely--I was too young--but I remember the 'guise
dancing,' when the villagers went about in mask