Writings:
The Rats of Looe Island by Wilkie Collins (1851)
An Extract from 'We Bought an Island' by Evelyn E. Atkins (1975)
Composing Island Symphony by Andrew Hugill (1994)
Island Memories by Andrew Hugill (2000)
The Rats of Looe Island Wilkie Collins (From 'Rambles Beyond the Railway' - 1851)
About a mile out at sea, to the southward of the town, rises a green triangular
shaped eminence, called Looe Island. Here, many years ago, a ship was wrecked.
Not only were the sailors saved, but several free passengers of the rat species,
who had got on board, nobody knew how, where, or when, were also preserved by
their own strenuous exertions, and wisely took up permanent quarters for the
future on the terra firma of Looe Island. In the process of time, and in obedience
to the laws of nature, these rats increased and multiplied exceedingly; and.
Being confined all round within certain limits by the sea, soon became a palpable
and dangerous nuisance. Destruction was threatened to the agricultural produce
of all the small places of cultivated land on the island - it seemed doubtful
that any man who ventured there by himself, might not share the fate of Bishop
Hatto, and be devoured by rats. Under these pressing circumstances, the people
of Looe determined to make one united and vehement effort to extirpate the whole
colony of invaders. Ordinary means of destruction had been tried already, and
without effect. It was said that rats left for dead on the ground had mysteriously
revived faster that they could be picked up and skinned, or flung into the sea.
Rats desperately wounded had got away into their holes, and become convalescent,
and increased and multiplied again more productively than ever. The great problem
was, not how to kill the rats, but how to annihilate them so effectually as
to place the re-appearance even of one of them altogether out of the question.
This was the problem, and it was solved in the following manner:- All the available
inhabitants of the town called to join in the great hunt. The rats were caught
by every conceivable artifice; and, once taken, were instantly and ferociously
smothered in onions; the corpses were then decently laid out on clean dishes,
and straightway eaten with vindictive relish by the people of Looe. Never was
any invention for destroying rats so complete and so successful as this! Every
man, woman, and child, who could eat, could swear to the extirpation of all
the rats they had eaten. The local returns of dead rats were not made the bills
of mortality, but by the bills of fare: it was getting rid of a nuisance by
the unheard-of process of stomaching a nuisance! Day after day passed on, and
rats disappeared by hundreds, never to return. What could all their cunning
and resolution avail the now? They had resisted before, and could have resisted
still, the ordinary force of dogs, ferrets, traps, sticks, stones, and guns,
arrayed against them; but when to these engines of assault were added, as auxiliaries,
smothering onions, scalding stew-pans, hungry mouths, sharp teeth, good digestions,
and the gastric juice, what could they do but give in? Swift and sure was the
destruction that now overwhelmed them - everybody who wanted a dinner had a
strong personal interest in hunting them down to the very last. In a short space
of time the island was cleared of the usurpers. Cheeses remained entire: ricks
rose uninjured. And this is the true story of how the people of Looe got rid
of the rats!
An Extract from We Bought an Island (1975) Evelyn E. Atkins
In this extract Evelyn E. Atkins recalls one of the many moments of high drama
as they attempt to remove their furniture to the island in the middle of the
winter of 1964. All was going relatively well, until the storm arrived…
'The rain lashed at us as we clambered on board. Darkness fell. Wren clad in
oilskins and sou-wester had us all lined up, as with grim face he told us exactly
what we were to do. "It is not just a question of saving the boat,"
he announced, "it is a matter of life and death!" He explained that
we could not take off until there was sufficient water to float the Orlando.
Tremendous seas were running in, crashing over us from the west and threatening
to capsize us. The next moment they sucked back leaving the Orlando high and
dry and, without the support of the sea, she was again in danger of keeling
over. "Do what I tell you, instantly!" he ordered. At that moment
a huge sea crashed down on us. "Everyone to the port!" yelled Wren.
We hurled ourselves over to the other side of the boat. "To starboard!"
roared Wren. And we all scrambled back again. We could not anticipate which
way we had to throw ourselves for in that boiling sea the breakers came in all
directions and Wren hung over the side judging to a nicety exactly where and
when the next roller would break over us. We were not allowed to move except
as ordered, for it would have upset the balance of the boat. We could see huge
breakers creaming over the rocks even in the darkness - it was that wild. Rain
poured down our necks in spite of sou-westers and oilskins, but we had much
implicit faith in Wren that in the short intervals we sat as though we were
in a bus and Zena and I had a long discussion about piles, of all things, inspired
by the fact that we were sitting in pools of an icy mixture of rain and sea
water. And so we went on hurling ourselves to port or starboard as directed.
There was no confusion as to which was which for we knew it was the opposite
side to where we happened to be we just pitched ourselves bodily across from
one side of the boat to the other and hoped for the best…'
Evelyn E. Atkins, from 'We Bought an Island', p143-4, published by Coronet Books,
ISBN 0-340-22688-9.
Composing Island Symphony by Andrew Hugill
To live on an island is one of those dreams which tends to survive childhood.
The British, in particular, seem drawn to the idea. It is curious that an island
race should wish to remove itself to a still smaller island, and yet the desire
is deeply embedded in literature, myth and the national consciousness. The urge
to escape and simultaneously to create one's own world is powerful indeed. It's
psychology has been the source of numerous tales, including Robinson Crusoe,Treasure
Island and, perhaps the most searching exploration of the fantasy, D. H. Lawrence's
strange and relatively little-known short story The Man Who Loved Islands, which
ends in a bleak and mysterious apotheosis. For most people, though, an island
life remains of necessity only a dream, for the very good reason that there
are few habitable islands available.
However, St. George's Island, off the Cornish coast at Looe, is a case where
the dream and a reality have merged. As I write, I am seated at the window of
an eighteenth century stone cottage, one of only a few houses on this tiny island
which is one mile in circumference. I am here as the guest of the island's owners:
two extraordinary and indomitable sisters named Babs and Evelyn Atkins. I am
not the only guest, for a steady stream of day-visitors and voluntary "helpers",
who spend working holidays on the island, are welcomed by the sisters throughout
the summer months. But I am perhaps somewhat unusual, since I am a composer
and the object of my visit is to write an Island Symphony.
The twin towns of East and West Looe rise up steeply either side of the Looe
River estuary where it enters the sea on the south coast of Cornwall, roughly
25 kilometres west of Plymouth. Looe is unusual amongst smaller Cornish holiday
resorts in that it still supports a sizeable fishing industry. It is also a
world centre for shark fishing and the annual festival attracts large numbers
of anglers and, this year at least, animal rights campaigners. The town has
good amenities, and a beautiful single track railway - one of the few rural
branch lines to survive Beeching's cuts in the 1960's - runs up the side of
the East Looe river to Liskeard, to connect with the main line to London. Looe
is steeped in history and the rugged cliffs, dark caves and many small stone
cottages evoke an age of smuggling and seafaring. But it is also a modern town:
last year it held the best New Year's Eve street parties outside London, according
to a national poll, and it contains some excellent pubs and restaurants, in
particular Ye Olde Salutation Inn, known locally as "the Sal"; the
Water Rail restaurant; a fine Tandoori restaurant: The Moonlight; and The Jolly
Sailor.
This last is a pub which dates from the days of smugglers, and legend has it
that a tunnel runs from a secret trapdoor inside, under the sea and out to the
island. For St. George's is a treasure island. As the visitors step off the
boat onto the beach and climb the steep path to the house, they pass a sign
which reads: 'NO METAL DETECTORS'.
"The treasure was supposedly buried by smugglers whose descendants still
live in Looe. If anybody is going to find it", declares Babs Atkins, "it's
going to be me. And I've been looking for thirty years..."
The known history of the island stretches back even further than this. At its
highest point, overlooking the English Channel to the South and the Cornish
coast to the North, a few carved stones are all that remains of a medieval chapel.
At that time, the island was called St. Michael's, and it must have been a lonely
retreat for the monks who lived there. Directly beneath the chapel site the
rock is riddled with caves, some of which are accessible only from the sea.
In high winds the caves moan and echo, like distant and forgotten chanting.
It is a feature of the island that it supports a wide range of landscapes and
wildife all crammed into a tiny area. Just a few feet from the chapel is lush
woodland, complete with woodland birds, butterflies and flowers. Seen from the
mainland the island appears leafy and green; seen from the sea it is craggy
and densely populated with sea-birds. Its geology has some unique features and
the climate is different from the rest of England: it rarely snows, and the
daffodils and blackberries come out a month early. Such a profusion of life
is rare amongst islands: most are windswept and lack trees. Despite this, life
can be tough here. In winter storms, scuds of foam fly over the house, which
is situated a matter of yards from the cliff edge, and walking anywhere on the
island involves a climb since there is no flat ground apart from the croquet
lawn.
The Atkins sisters purchased the island in 1964. The previous owner turned down
substantially larger rival bids, reduced the price and even assisted the sisters
with the mortgage, because he knew that they would keep the island in its natural
state and would live there themselves. Thus, the island represents a thirty
year experiment in living, and the sisters have kept it as a nature reserve,
refusing numerous offers in excess of a million pounds sterling with the risk
of it being turned into a holiday camp or luxury playground. For the first dozen
years or so, Babs worked on the mainland as a schoolteacher. Owing to a leg
injury, Evelyn had been obliged to take early retirement from her job at I.C.I.,
so she settled permanently on the island. In winter, the channel between Looe
and its island becomes impassable for long periods, because of storms and strong
currents. Evelyn spent many months alone, cut off from the outside world. She
had anticipated loneliness, but in the event experienced no feelings of isolation
since, as she puts it, "the island kept me company". Nowadays both
sisters live there all the time.
Electricity is supplied by a generator and the sisters own a mobile 'phone,
but there is no main drainage or gas supply. Barrels of oil and calor gas have
to be brought by boat from the mainland, as do basic provisions and the mail.
All of these are subject to delays according to the weather. Fortunately, there
is a fresh-water spring on the island and a substantial plot of land is given
over to vegetables. There is also a great deal of free food to be harvested
from the sea or cliff tops, including prawns and sea spinach. Nevertheless,
the sisters do have a deep-freeze and do not make an issue of self-sufficiency.
Asked what would happen in the event of a medical emergency, they reply that,
happily, their doctor is a keen wind-surfer who would brave the channel in all
weathers. They also have a supply of medicines, all numbered and coded.
When they first moved to the island, intending to retreat from the world, the
previous owner, Mr Whitehouse, warned them that people would try to land. The
island is too close to the mainland for the distance to deter them. Mr Whitehouse
used to discharge a shotgun over the heads of trespassers and recommended that
the sisters do the same. However, Evelyn is a champion shot and knew that she
would not miss: "the beach would have been littered with dead bodies".
After various unsuccessful attempts to drive away unwanted visitors, the sisters
decided to announce a landing fee, in the hope that people would be deterred.
This had precisely the opposite effect. Local people, delighted that the island
was open to the public at last, visited in their hundreds. At the height of
this period, Evelyn was welcoming five boatloads every half-hour, each of which
wanted tea and refreshments. Exhausted by this, the sisters wrote to the local
council to inform them that, reluctantly, they had to close the island. The
council begged them to reconsider, and so a single boatman was franchised to
make the trip. Visitors are ferried across from the East Looe quayside to spend
some hours on the island. Each boatload is greeted personally by the sisters
and has the run of the island, as well as being able to visit the craft centre:
a hall near the house, which sells various objects made by island helpers (some
of whom are supplied by the Conseravtion Corps) and the sisters themselves,
as well as tea, coffee, soups and biscuits.
The story of the sisters' lives on the island is described in two bestselling
books written by Evelyn: We Bought An Island and Tales From Our Cornish Island.
A third book is currently in progress, bringing the story up to date. Autographed
copies of the books can also be purchased at the craft centre and all royalties
are donated to the island. Many of the visitors have read the books before coming,
and the comments in the visitors-book and a pin-bedecked map of the world make
it plain that there are thousands of friends who share the dream. For them,
the time spent on the island is magical and special, although this is not true
for everyone. Evelyn describes in the books how the island "rejects"
some visitors. I would not have thought this was possible had I not witnessed
it myself. On my first visit, a couple travelling in the boat with me stepped
out onto the beach upon landing, looked around them and, muttering, got straight
back into the boat to return to Looe!
I had come to Looe for a short holiday. At the time I was working on a composition
entitled The Way Things Are, which was almost finished. Unaware of the existence
of the island I went for a walk on the Wool Down on East Looe and, just like
Evelyn 31 years earlier, came over the brow of the hill to gasp at the sight
of it below. Having discovered that visits were allowed, I joined a boatload
of day visitors. In my pocket was the unifinished manuscript of my piece. Now,
I am a professional composer and academic, not particularly given to flights
of romantic fancy, so it was with some surprise and disbelief that I found myself
completing my piece in record time, sitting on a tree stump overlooking the
water. Whether it was the absence of someone "looking over my shoulder",
the beauty of the setting, or just the liberation of a holiday excursion, I
was aware that something was making the flow of composition (normally a struggle
of decision-making) easy.
Upon leaving, I mentioned this to the sisters and, to my delight, they were
very excited and urged me to come back. Since then, I have done so many times
and the inspirational effect has not worn off. When, during one visit, Evelyn
suggested I should write an Island Symphony, I was happy to agree. It was quite
quickly apparent that this Symphony could not be written for orchestra, since
it would be impossible to perform it on the island owing to lack of space. I
therefore decided to make an electro-acoustic piece, using natural, sampled
and synthesized sounds, which could readily be transferred to Compact Disc.
Thus my computer and other equipment became my compositional "island"
and I am working alone on the piece, from conception to performance.
Island Symphony has four movements, and attempts to map out the island in four
different ways and through four different compositional approaches. The word
Symphony is used in its etymological sense of "sounding together",
but the four movement scheme is a quite conscious echo of the classical Symphonic
structure and my piece does have a sense of organic growth and the opposition
of modalities. Movement 1 examines the island as a physical object, taking the
silhouette as a graph of density over time, and a walk round the island as a
sound-narrative. The movement is constructed from a series of in- and out-"breaths"
of varying lengths, mimicking the motion of waves and one's own breathing patterns
during the tour. Movement 2 takes the medieval history of the chapel as its
starting point. In his book Travels in Hyperreality, Umberto Eco (whose surname
makes a satisfyingly appropriate pun for the location) describes ten versions
of the middle ages which appear in modern film, literature and thought. These
"Ten Little Middle Ages" include: ironical revisitation (e.g. Monty
Python);Romanticism (e.g. contemporary space-operas); and the expectation of
the Millennium. My movement, therefore, is a set of ten variations on a medieval
theme. The third movement is pastoral, and movement 4, called "People and
Buildings", takes the sound of the generator and a riff made from the sisters'
initials and processes them to produce new and unexpected sounds and patterns.
Funding for the Island Symphony has come from South West Arts and Cornwall County
Council, and De Montfort University has given me study-leave and some equipment
to help with the composition. The piece will be premiered in Looe in May 1995
and will then make a short tour of England before coming out on CD.
St. George's Island is a potent symbol of creativity and a way of life that
is not hostile to society, but is perforce somewhat removed. It is not possible
for all of us to live on an island, yet many of us inhabit a small island inside
ourselves. For me, that island is St. George's.
© Andrew Hugill, 1994
Island Memories… by Andrrew Hugill
1. …seeing the island from the Wool Down for the first time. Then seeing
it again just after I had finished Movement 1 of the symphony. I walked out
onto the wool down and, lo and behold, the island had vanished! A mist had completely
enveloped it, so that it became impossible to distinguish the land from the
sea.
2. …moving tons of seaweed up from the beach to fertilise the garden. Exhausting
work, barrow after barrow
3. …burying the cat (Sam?), with a small and moving ceremony
4. …Mary Casidine discussing her plays, World War I and British poetry,
late into the night over some wine in the craft centre
5. … the dignity and courage of Tony Pengelly around the time of the funeral
6. … Dick Butters, affectionately calling me ‘you bastard’ in
front of the BBCTV cameras in the Salutation Inn
7. … my first visit to the island, and experiencing what Attie described
in the book, when a couple in the party got off the boat, then got straight
back on again because they didn’t like the island (or it didn’t like
them)
8. …sitting in the craft centre with various helpers, drinking wine and
chatting after a hard day’s work
9. …and composing the ‘Song of the Helpers’, which we all learned
to sing and then performed to Babs and Attie
10. …Nelson knocking people over, then Mary saying that he is her favourite
dog
11. …two nice lady helpers pouring out their innermost thoughts to me one
evening sitting looking at Plaidy beach. I can’t remember what they said,
but the island has such a liberating effect
12. …and my magical experience of writing ‘The Way things Are’
in next to no time in the woods
13. … the damp in Smuggler’s Cottage, and not minding because the
little window and the table were perfect for writing music
14. … making ice-cream with Attie’s ice-cream maker. I’ve never
tasted such good ice-cream, before or since.
15. … the feeling of being rushed when I can only make a short visit, and
the emotional wrench of leaving
16. …hearing the moaning of the wind in the caves under the chapel and
thinking I could imagine the monks singing
17. …a woman walking into the Looe Discovery Centre as ‘Island Symphony’
was playing and saying ‘that’s the sea on the rocks at the Ranneys!’
Unbelievable that she could have heard that in the music – and I never
did find out who she was
18. … some friends – Roger and Yvonne Free, Stuart Strong, Jennie
Boniface, Gus and Sheila, and dear Maureen and Granville Bold
19. … Attie, her passion and intensity, be it high or low, and her ability
to hold the attention and speak eloquently and movingly
20. … Babs, her strength and capability, especially just after the funeral
eating a good meal on the mainland and looking well despite the circumstances
21. … tolerating all the public attention – documentary makers, TV
News items, BBC Radio broadcasters, South West Arts officials, etc. etc. –
because what attracted them to the island was the same as what attracted me
: not just the island itself, but an experiment in living by two extraordinary
women.
Andrew Hugill, 29.10.00