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Title: The Old Man; or, Ravings and Ramblings round Conistone
Author: Gibson, Alexander Craig
Language: English
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[Illustration: CONISTONE HALL.]
The Old Man;
RAVINGS AND RAMBLINGS ROUND
CONISTONE.
I MAY SPEAK OF THEE AS THE TRAVELLER DOTH OF VENICE:
——VINEGIA, VINEGIA,
CHI NON TE VEDE, EI NON TE PREGIA.
—_Love’s Labour’s Lost._
LONDON:
WHITTAKER AND CO. KENDAL: J. HUDSON.
1849.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Variations in hyphenation, spelling and punctuation remain
unchanged except where there is conflict with the index.
In the original the side notes appear at the head of each page.
Most have been moved to the beginning of a proximate paragraph.
In cases where paragraphs are several pages long, they remain
embedded in the text.
The errata have been implemented.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
INDEX.
PAGE.
Ancient Forests, Remarks upon, 38
Anecdote from Mr Wordsworth, 49
———— Curious Chronological, 84
———— of a Hairy Trout, 107
———— of deaths in a Slate Quarry, 108
———— of Fox-craft, 27
———— of New Ale, 33
———— of Jenkin Syke, 84
———— of “Kibble filling”, 97
———— of Lieut. Oldfield, R.N., 85
———— of Mrs Robinson, 81
———— of Parson Walker’s Economy, 54
———— of Ravens, 100
———— of Simon’ Nick, 101
———— of the Church Beck, 82
———— of the Name of Tyson, 45
———— of the Rev. E. Tyson, 64
———— of Wordsworth’s Duddon, 43
Anderson, Robert, quoted, 55
Archives, Parochial, 111
Bannockstone Bridge, 74
Betty Yewdale, 144
Birkett, Dan, 48
Birks Bridge, 45
Black Bull, the, 79
Black Hall, 40
Blea Tarn, 135
Brantwood, 117
Brathay, the River, 29, &c.
Brimfell, 102
Busk, the, 33
Caldron Dub, 125
Chapel Stile, 141
Church Beck, the, 82
Church Clock, the old, 66
Church Conistone Village, 73, &c.
Cockley Beck, 41
Colwith Force, 145
Conistone Bank, 117
———— Chapel, 77
———— Etymology of, 5
———— Hall, 19
———— Lake, description of, 8
———— —— Environs of, 12
———— Monk, 73
———— Schools, 78
———— Villa, 118
Copper Mines, 91
Copper Ore, process of dressing, 97
Courting Customs, 67
Crown Inn, 77
Deer Park, the Ancient, 112
De Quincey, Thos., quoted, 7, &c.
Dow Crags, 71
Dungeon Ghyll, 138
Elterwater, 143
Epitaph in Conistone Church, 78
———— in Langdale Church-yard, 142
Falls, the Mines, 90
—— in Seathwaite Beck, 69
Fell-foot, 33
Fells seen from Brantwood, 117
———————— the Lake, 14
———————— the Old Man, 105
———————— Walna Scar, 70
Fish of Conistone Lake, 9
Fir Island, 9
Flemings, Le, their Residence at Conistone, 20
Floating Island, 124
Gait’s Water, 71
Gibraltar, 66
Green, the Artist, quoted, 26
Halfpenny Ale-house, the, 117
Hird, Mary, 59
Holme Ground, 24
Holy Wath, 89
Islands on Conistone Lake, 9
Kernel Crag, 100
Lake Foot, the, 115
Langdale, Great, 137
———— Little, 29
———— Pikes, 137
———— Tarn, 30
“Langden Jerry”, 135
Legend of the Devil’s foot-mark, 75
——— of “Girt Will’s Grave”, 125
Levers Water, 101
Lloyd, the Rev. Owen, 142
Ling-Moor, 30
Low Water, 107
Mackay, Dr. Chas., quoted, 7
Macaulay, T.B., quoted, 58
Martineau, Miss, quoted, 7, &c.
Mill-beck, 138
Miners, Character of, 99
Monk Conistone, 73
—— ————— Park, 14
Newfield, 48
Nibthwaite, 115
Old Man, the, 103
———— Summit of, ibid.
———— View from, 104
Oukrigg, 102
Paddy’ End, 100
Parkinson, the Rev. R., quoted, 25
Parsonage of Conistone, 125
————— of Seathwaite, 47
Priest’s Stile, 83
Quarries, Slate, 132
Raven Crag, 27
Robinson, Mrs, 80
Ruins, Supposed British, 70
Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 47, &c.
Seathwaite Beck, 47
————— Chapel, &c., ibid.
————— Head of, 38
Sedgwick, Professor, quoted, 6
Sheep Shearing, 20
Shire Stones, The, 35
Slate Riving and Dressing, 133
Slater’s Bridge, 29
Smith, Miss Elizabeth, 119
——— Mrs, her parody on “Ruth”, 123
Southey’s “Doctor,” quoted from, 144
Stepping Stones, The, 43
Stoneythwaite, 49
Sunken Graves, The, 42
Tarn Hows, View from, 146
Tent Lodge, 118
Thwaite, The, 74
Tilberthwaite, 28
Torver, 112
Tumulus at Fell-foot, 34
Tyson, a common name, 44
——— Daniel, 41
——— The Rev. Edward, 62
Ulpha, 40
Undercrag, 65
Walker, The Rev. Robert, 51
Walla-barrow Crag, 49
Walna Scar, 69
Waterhead Inn, 7
——————— View from, 12
Weatherlam, 28
West the Antiquary, quoted, 19
White Houses, Mr Wordsworth on, 30
Whittlegate, The Custom of, 83
Wilson, Professor, quoted, 6, &c.
Woo’ Geordie, 22
Wordsworth, Mr., quoted, 29, &c.4
—————'s Seat, 117
Wraysdale Cottage, 83
Wrynose, 34
ERRATA.
At page 7, line 8, for “materials” read _subjects_.
” 9, line 6, insert a comma between “or” and “by.”
” 30, line 34, for “mountaineous” read _mountainous_.
” 40, line 6, for “Oustead” read _onstead_.
” 69, line 7, for “dishabille” read _deshabille_.
” 84, line 1, for “Hall” read _How_.
” 98, line 13, for “to” read _from_.
” 112, line 14, for “anoo” read _anno_.
” 115, line 3, for “a” read _its_.
” 146, line 2, for “puce” read _grey_.
It has long been a favourite notion with me that if, instead of general
guides to, or descriptions of all the Lake country comprised in single
volumes, of which we have a superabundance, we could have each distinct
locality treated of fully and minutely in a work devoted exclusively to
itself, and written by some one whose long residence in, and intimate
knowledge of the district described would secure its accuracy, we
should possess a series of Lake books much more comprehensive, more
useful, and more amusing than any we can yet boast of. An idea slightly
similar to this seems at one period to have germinated in Professor
Wilson’s brain; but, notwithstanding the fertility of the soil, it
bore no fruit. In a review of Green’s Guide, the Professor says,—“It
is our serious intention to pitch our Tent, next summer, somewhere or
other among these said Lakes. Each of our principal contributors will
have a Lake assigned him, and the lesser ones a Tarn. Wastle shall have
Windermere—Odoherty, Ullswater—Ourselves, Keswick—and Kempferhausen is
perfectly welcome to Conistone. By a just distribution of our forces,
the Lakes will find themselves looked at and described in a way they
never experienced before.” As nearly thirty years have elapsed since
this intention was promulgated, and we have still to deplore its
non-fulfilment, I have taken the initiative with the Lake somewhat
depreciatingly assigned to the German savan. It is devoutly to be
wished that my modest example were followed with regard to the other
great Lakes, by parties who know them as perfectly as I know Conistone.
It may hardly be gainsaid that there are such about every one of our
Lakes, able, were they willing, to do much more justice to their
subjects than poor Conistone has obtained from me; and if they would
only set about it, I might, at least, claim the credit of having opened
the ball.
In the volume now offered to his favourable consideration, the reader
will find a very sufficient guide to all that is worthy of notice in
the neighbourhood it depicts. The accuracy of its descriptions will
be apparent when he visits the scenes described. The few anecdotes,
traits of character, and sketches, or rather, perhaps, _scratches_,
of mountain life can be vouched for as correct, and native to the
district. And the information it professes to offer upon topics
of supposed interest, local or general, is, when no authority is
specified, all deduced from personal observation. These little
merits may, perhaps, serve, in some degree, as a set off against its
short-comings as a literary composition, and those are now sufficiently
manifest even to myself; but in extenuation, I may plead that they
are such as may be attributed to inexperience in author-craft, or
such as may be looked for in a performance mainly written by way of
amusement in the uncertain and brief snatches of relaxation from duties
and anxieties of a nature peculiarly unfavourable to the improvement
of a faulty style of composition by study or practice. I may state,
however, that these duties and cares arise chiefly from an occupation
which, more than any other, affords facilities of observing the
topographical peculiarities of a district of country, and of noting the
characteristics, social and psychological, of its inhabitants of every
class. On this latter department of my subject, I should have dilated
more freely, had I not been restrained by two salutary considerations,
the first being a wish to keep within compass, and avoid prolixity—the
second, a desire to live in peace and goodwill with those amongst whom
my lot in life is cast. It is not easy to tell the even down truth of a
class, any more than of an individual, without exciting wrath.
By the way, it is remarkable that, notwithstanding all that has been
scribbled anent the Lakes, we are yet without anything like a correct
portraiture of the Dales-people. The narratives and traits of character
in Mr Wordsworth’s works, though generally striking and beautiful,
are, as regards the peasantry, mere emanations of poetic fancy, rather
than true delineations of life and manners. The same may be said of
Wilson. De Quincey’s papers on the population of the Lake district, are
correct only so long as he confines himself to colonists of his own
rank. When he comes lower, it is plain enough to those who know the
Aborigines, that he has only been permitted to study that, the most
interesting, class in their Sunday faces and best behaviour, and that
his observation there is rarely more than skin-deep.
It was reserved for a lady to give us the best essay upon the
peculiarities of our aboriginal character; but even Miss Martineau,
with all her female penetration, and her more than female genius and
talent for observation, is, in that part of her work, oddly astray in
her illustrations and erroneous in her assertions. For instance, she
avers that our women-folk are all mutes. On this it is only necessary
to remark that some of their husbands, and that I, myself, not
unfrequently, nor yet unfervently, wish that Miss Martineau’s averment
had better foundation. Bating this defect, her work on the Lakes,
taking it for all in all, is the best, and by far the cheapest, of all
Lake books, and _their_ name is Legion!
One word more. I have been accused of using irreverently a name which
it is the fashion now for all to revere. I should be truly sorry,
could I fancy I had afforded real grounds for such accusation. If the
opinion of one so obscure as I could be of any importance, I might
truly declare that I yield to none in my respect for Mr Wordsworth’s
character—that few can estimate the poetic grandeur and fine moral
feeling of his truly great poems more highly than I; and if I have
hinted at what I consider defects in his genius and philosophy, as
exhibited in his works, who shall censure me for expressing an honest
opinion, even though the mode of expressing it be a trifle more
flippant than the subject may seem to warrant? It were as reasonable
to extinguish a small luminary for announcing a fancied discovery of
spots upon the sun, as to demolish me for fancying that I discern a few
specks upon the otherwise resplendent disc of the great light of our
Lakes.
Entreating the gracious patience of the reader for having spun a plain
unvarnished tale at such a length, and bespeaking his more gracious
indulgence to the manifold faults in “my von leetle performance,” as
Signor Blitz used to call his conjuring tricks, I beg to subscribe
myself the reader's
Very humble servant,
A. C. G.
Yewdale Bridge, May 21st, 1849.
RAVINGS AND RAMBLINGS ROUND CONISTONE.
CHAPTER I.
GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION—ETYMOLOGY—ATTRACTIONS—A
STRING OF AUTHORITIES—THE LAKE—ITS
ATTRIBUTES—STATISTIC—PISCATORIAL—COMMERCIAL—FATAL, AND SCENIC.
Conistone, anciently Conyngstone and Cunyngstone, is situated in that
isolated portion of Lancashire which, divided from the mother county by
Morecambe Bay, bears the general designation of Lonsdale North of the
Sands, and in the extensive sub-division of Lonsdale North called High
Furness, which, the map will tell you, lies between Windermere and the
Duddon, and between the Brathay, in Little Langdale, and Low Furness.
[Sidenote: A BAKER’S DOZEN OF PANEGYRISTS]
Of its name, different derivations are given by different authorities.
Some give it a British origin, viz., “_ton_ a town, _con_ at the
head of, _is_ a lake.” Others say it is from the Saxon “Konyg'ston,”
thereby inferring it to have been, some time or other, a residence
or appanage of royalty. Others, less profound and less ambitious,
derive its name from the facilities for hiding in “times of trouble”
afforded by the intricate and inaccessible character of its cliffs,
crags, and boulders, and call it Cunning Stone. The first describes its
position—the second may flatter the loyal vanity of its residents, and
the third accords with its natural character, its ancient orthography,
and the local pronunciation of its name; therefore take which best
suits your taste, and allow me to tell you something about it as we
find it now.
The beauties of Conistone have never been adequately described, neither
has it received even “the shadow of justice” from any writer since
the days of Gray, the poet, old West, the antiquary, and Mrs Anne
Radcliffe, of romance-spinning celebrity, all of whom wrote of the
scenery of Conistone in terms of quaintly eloquent eulogium. Indeed,
the once popular, and still admired, fabricatrix of “Mysteries,” places
it pre-eminent over all its neighbours in its diversity of beauty; and,
since her day, many have spoken or written in praise of one or more of
the items which go to make up the sum of its unparalleled attractions.
A lady of high rank and wealth informed me that the salubrity of its
atmosphere is such that, when in very precarious health, and advised by
an eminent court physician to proceed to Madeira as her only chance of
recovery, a few weeks’ residence at Conistone restored her to robust
and permanent health.
Professor Wilson says, that when “you come in sight of the Lake of
Conistone, the prospect is at once beautiful and sublime,” and “you
will acknowledge that Conistone can almost bear a comparison with
Windermere.” And even he admits elsewhere, that it surpasses Windermere
in the quality of its char!—perhaps, to most people, the highest praise
he can give it.
Another equally experienced, though not equally eminent gastronome,
declares its black-faced mutton to be incomparably the best ever boiled.
Professor Sedgwick, in his “Geology of the Lake District,” names
Conistone thrice for any other locality once.
Experienced and successful mining adventurers class it A1., on account
of its underground wealth.
[Sidenote: A BOLD DEDUCEMENT]
Dr Charles Mackay says that Conistone Water is “the most placid of all
the lakes.”
Thomas de Quincey, the English opium-eater, speaking of the view of
Conistone from the road near Tarn Hows, says—“to which, for a _coup de
theatre_, I know nothing equal.”
A talented artist of indisputable taste says, that no other vicinity
affords such an abundance of subjects for fine pictures.
The rain-gauge states, that scarcely one-half of the rain falls here
that falls at Keswick, (where, by the bye, Lord Byron makes a devil say
it usually rains).
Last and best, Miss Martineau says, the traveller “has probably never
beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm;
of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest
beauty.”
And I, being neither bard, antiquary, romancist, moral philosopher,
gourmand, natural philosopher, miner, bookmaker, opium-eater, painter,
moist weather meter, nor philanthropist in particular, but the least
in the world of them all, “in the abstract”—keeping its scenery,
atmosphere, geology, mineralogy, fish, flesh, and fine weather all at
once in view, and lumping, as is fair, the opinions of all these great
and undeniable authorities together,—hold it to be matchless, not only
in the Lake district of England, but in the world, at least in any part
of it that I have seen.
In executing my agreeable task of pointing out some of the more
prominent of the beauties and attributes of Conistone, I shall suppose
you, my reader (should I gain one) to be a diffident, well-disposed
young gentleman, located at the Water Head Inn, and just coming down
stairs after a capital night’s rest. It is no matter, for our present
purpose, how you contrived to get there without seeing anything I am
going to shew you, but there you are, “with shining morning face,”
praying complacently, as you trip down stairs, that you may never find
yourself in worse quarters. You may present my compliments to Mrs.
Atkinson, and request her to let you have breakfast in the parlour
with the projecting window. If you be very hungry, you had better not
look out yet; but, should there be any delay in the appearance of your
breakfast, a thing not very likely, you may amuse yourself with the
visitor’s book until it comes in; but don’t scribble any nonsense in it,
as has been done by some youths who have been permitted by their mammas
to leave home prematurely.
[Sidenote: LENGTH, &c., OF CONISTONE LAKE.]
Breakfast being brought in, whilst you are eating, I may as well say a
word or two on the statistics of the lake whose head lies within a few
yards of your feet, and whose ancient name was Thurston Water. It is
about six and a half miles long, therefore ranks next after Windermere
and Ullswater in point of size, or, to speak very exactly, in point
of longitude, for I should suppose the area of Bassenthwaite Water
to be larger than the area of this lake, it (Bassenthwaite), though
only four miles long, carrying a better breadth with it than Conistone
Water, whose greatest width does not exceed a mile, many parts not half
a mile, the average lying, perhaps, between them. Its greatest depth
is stated in the Guide Books to be twenty-seven fathoms, but a map or
chart of the lake in my possession, which was made from actual survey,
many years ago, by a talented native of the dale, gives the depth of
forty fathoms at about two-thirds of the distance down the lake, and
twenty or thirty yards from the western shore. This places the depth
of Conistone Lake second only to that of Wastwater, which is stated
by some to be forty-five fathoms, by others to be _un_fathomable.
Conistone Lake contains, in addition to some mere rocks, two islands.
[Sidenote: ISLANDS, FISH, AND MERCHANDISE.]The uppermost, called
Knott’s Island, after its proprietor, or more frequently, Fir Island,
from its handsome covering of Scotch firs, becomes peninsular in very
droughty weather; and the lower, called Peel Island—why, I don’t
know—or Montagu Island, after the Dukes of Montagu, formerly Lords
of the Manor, and succeeded by the Dukes of Buccleugh, or by the
Aborigines, the “Gridiron,” the best name of the three, inasmuch as it
pretty accurately describes its shape, it having a handle or _shank_
of rocks projected in lengthened chain from its south-western side,
is covered by natural wood of no great altitude; and its rocky sides
are so high and precipitous, as to render landing upon it a matter
of difficulty, if not of danger, but, for all that, pic-nic parties
sometimes resort to it. There was also a floating island about twenty
yards square, finely covered with young birches of decent stature,
which used to move about the lower end of the lake, but unfortunately
it was stranded amongst the reeds near Nibthwaite by a strong
north-east wind which prevailed for a day or two in October, 1846, when
the lake was unusually swollen by heavy rains. I shall, perhaps, point
it out to you by and bye.
As to the lake’s vulgarly useful qualities, it contains the best char
in the world, and quantities of unsurpassable trout of delicious
flavour, and often of large size—for instance, there was one cut up
at your present quarters, some time since, which weighed fourteen
pounds. Of its pike, I need only say that one of them roasted or baked
“with a pudding in its belly,” is, on certain occasions, worth all the
scenery in the neighbourhood. It is also rich in eels and perch, more
particularly the latter. It serves as a commodious highway towards the
port of exportation for two hundred and fifty tons of copper ore every
month, as well as for nobody knows how much slate, flags, birch brooms,
and small timber. Conjointly with the circumjacent mountains and
valleys, and the copper mines, it brings, during each laking season,
a goodly haul of fish to your host’s net, in the form of tourists and
visitors. There has been only one person drowned in it within the
memory of man, and he was a stupid, drunken fellow, who walked into it
over the slate quay. Of course, under these circumstances, the most
harmless water in the world could do nothing else but drown him.
[Sidenote: SOMETHING “OLD KIT” SAYS.]
Of its ornamental characteristics you shall judge for yourself, as soon
as you finish eating.
Well, having despatched a few cups of coffee and a fair proportion
of a most satisfactory array of etceteras, (for be it remarked, _en
parenthese_, that a breakfast furnished by Mrs Atkinson does not
yield even to that at Grasmere described by Christopher North, in
terms sufficiently graphic, “to create an appetite under the ribs of
death,”) you may take a look from the window. Your first impulse is
an expression of gratitude to me for advising you to make a hearty
breakfast before looking forth, for assuredly, say you, this would,
if seen before, have effectually withdrawn your attention from the
creature comforts before you, albeit first-rate.
[Sidenote: RHYME AND A REASON FOR IT.]
The eminent Scotchman already twice mentioned, who is a high-caste
laking authority, although his judgment is somewhat warped by his
attachment to his own Windermere, says, somewhere, that a man sitting
where you do now, might fancy himself looking from the cabin window
of a ship at anchor in a beautiful land-locked bay of some island
in the South Sea. You don’t know how far that flight may be correct;
but you _think_ that the Pacific bays must, in beauty, fall somewhat
short of the scene before you. And you are nearer right than the great
Christopher, who is out of his latitude in the South Seas, else he had
never drawn the pretty-sounding comparison. Though many of the bays in
those seas are lovely enough, yet few, as I am told, can come within
a day’s sail of Conistone Water, so far as ordinary impressions of the
beautiful may bear me out; and the beauties of Conistone, as they are
manifold, so are they manifest even to the lowest order of taste, or
talent, or whatever the principle may be that enables a common-place
man, like myself, to distinguish beauty when he looks at it, and
as they are apparent to all, so must they be appreciable by every
one, and—but I am waxing enthusiastic, and shall, if I go on, become
intolerably nonsensical, for, with me, there is not even the one step
between the sublime and the ridiculous; therefore, as I prefer being
absurd in verse to being ridiculous in prose, till I cool down a little—
“I'll have a shy
At Po—e—try.”
Conistone, fair Conistone, how vain it were to roam
Abroad in search of beauty, with such scenes as thine at home,
For, nowhere,—seek the frigid north, or sultry southern clime,
Are mingled so the beautiful, the sweet and the sublime.
Thy placid lake is beautiful—its winding shores are sweet—
Thine Old Man Mountain is sublime, whose top the white clouds greet,
As brother greeteth brother, with a hearty, close embrace,
And round whose rugged rock-bound sides the sportive cloudlets race.
Though other lakes be passing fair,—though fair be “green Grasmere;”
Though Rydal boast its herony, and Rydal Mount be near;
Though Ullswater be gorgeous, and Bassenthwaite be broad;
Though lovely be the lake that holds Saint Herbert’s old abode;
Though Crummock slumber pleasantly, 'neath high Scale Force’s roar,
“And Butter”-_mere_ “is beautiful, but that you knew before;”
Though Wastwater and Ennerdale look sternly dark, but clear;
Though Eden-like the islets be of regal Windermere;
Though each hath its own beauties, yet amongst them is not one
Can boast of beauty varied so as thine, sweet Conistone!
Thy rivulets are bright as is air bell or crystal bead,
And high, and wild, and lone the Tarns those rivulets that feed.
Thy sunny sky is cloudless oft, and healthful are thy gales;
And sweet, in their secludedness, thy tributary vales;
And pleasant are thy homesteads snug beneath thy mountains dark,
And stately stands thine ancient Hall within its coppiced park.
And lofty are thy crags from whence the wakeful raven stoops,
And wildly are thy fells arranged in strange fantastic groups,
Uprearing their majestic heads in grandeur, gloom, and pride,
And none may tell what treasures vast their rugged bosoms hide.
And such are _some_ attractions which in Conistone we find;
But Conistone! dear Conistone!! thy best remains behind,
For never elsewhere have I found, though I have wander’d far,
A dinner like thy mutton-chops preceded by thy char!
[Sidenote: EASTERN SHORE.]
There, there! you seem to have had enough of that, and I, having let
off my superabundant steam, may now get on in a sedate, business-like
manner. The placid lake and its winding shores you are now staring
at, and tastefully, as you perceive, are its winding shores decorated
with timber disposed in rich variety of thriving young plantations,
clump, grove, coppice, hedge-row, solitary tree, avenue, and shrubbery,
gracefully interblended here, and separated by fields and wide
pastures of glorious verdure there, the whole finished off on the
east, which we shall dispose of first, by miles and miles of heath
purpled moorland. Along the lake on its said eastern side, are the
finely-sheltered grounds of Tent Lodge, Bank Ground, Conistone Bank,
Brantwood, and Water Park. The lake appears to terminate at about five
miles distance—in fact, a little below “the Gridiron,” or a mile and a
half from the lake foot—the water thereabout making a gentle sweep to
the east. The southward prospect is bounded by the high-lying moor of
Gawthwaite, from whence the green and cultivated slopes of Lowick and
Blawith appear to descend in easy gradation to the water edge. Bringing
the eye back along the western shore, your attention is next arrested
[Sidenote: WESTERN SHORE.] by the brightly verdant, cultivated and
conical height of Stable Harvey, standing out in fine contrast against
the dark brown Beacon hill in Blawith, which considerably overtops it,
and forms, with its broken outline, a highly picturesque background to
the landscape in that direction. The landward edge of Stable Harvey is
hidden from where you are, by the lengthened heath-clad summit, and
coppiced and furze-clad side of Torver common, which rises steep from
the margin of the lake to a considerable height. As you follow up the
margin of the lake, you next descry the beautiful farm of Hawthwaite,
with its rookery, plantations, and numerous single trees, occupying
a fine situation under the northern shoulder of Torver common, and
presenting one of the most eligible sites for a gentleman's seat, with
extensive grounds, in the north of England. Nearer still, you see a
promontory covered with bright verdure, and tipped, or fringed, with
low spreading wood, running out, as it seems from the Water Head,
into the very middle of the lake. It is the Hall Point; the grounds
lying between it and Hawthwaite, and extending from the water side to
the tops of the heights more than a mile to the westward, form the
ancient deer-park, which possesses such a luxuriant and widely-extended
covering of natural timber, as might gladden the hearts of those who
affect to hold that any utilitarian interference with nature tends
grievously to degrade or destroy the romantic characteristics of lake
scenery. The Hall itself is concealed by the upper arm of the bay,
with the trees and neat, but singular and high, steep-roofed edifice
upon it. The said building is a boat-house belonging to “The Thwaite,”
a handsome residence upon the southern declivity of the richly-wooded
eminence to your right, over which you may note “The Old Man,”
anciently, and more correctly, “Alt Maen” (British),
“Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,”
and looks, from this window, something like part of the back and head
of a huge elephant, with his trunk slightly extended and a wart on his
forehead.
[Sidenote: GROUNDS, FELLS, AND VILLAGE.]
You had better now take a boat and row a mile or two down the lake, and
row yourself, or, if you are lazy, at least sit with your face to the
stern, and fresh beauties will open upon your enraptured gaze at every
stroke of the oars.
[Sidenote: “TIME’S CHANGES.”]
Beyond, or above, the inn you are leaving, is the residence of Mr
James Garth Marshall, one of the princely manufacturers of that name
in Leeds; it is surrounded by—excepting in some particulars Rydal
Hall—decidedly the finest demesne in the Lake district, so far as
the most beautiful combination of all the elements of natural and
artificial loveliness can establish its superiority; for nowhere else
have I seen wood and water, hill and valley, green sward and purple
heather, rugged crag and velvet slope, grey rock and bright blossoming
shrubs brought under the eye at once, in such magnificent contrast.
Over the western side of the grounds, you may note the picturesquely
rugged and jagged summit of Raven Crag, at the head of Yewdale, and
nearer to you, but still more to the west, the wild, precipitous and
lofty Yewdale crags. Over them the long ridge of Henn Crag, and higher
still the broad summit of Weatherlam; and, as you row farther down the
lake, the lofty undulating range connecting those with the Old Man,
which last you may now contemplate in all his hoary grandeur and rugged
magnificence. And, having just shewn you one of the finest demesnes
and grandest mountain groups in the Lake district, I now shew you the
most romantically situated village, parts nestled at the foot of the
steep craggy hills, and parts stuck here and there upon the face of the
adjacent declivity, every separate detachment, whether consisting of
one or many houses, having its own separate designation, but forming
altogether the village of Church Conistone, and containing, by the
last census, twelve hundred people. Its scattered appearance suggests
the idea of something having, at some former period, flown across the
country with a bagful of houses, and losing a number here in irregular
lots through a hole in the sack. And here, close by in the apex, or,
to speak nautically, the bight of the bay, between a row of lofty
sycamores and the wide-spread woods of the old park, stands Conistone
Hall, the ancient seat of the once warlike family of le Fleming, but
now a farm house—with a considerable portion removed, and the banquet
hall, wherein, of old, knightly revellers befuddled their brains
in honour of high born ladies, converted into a barn, and a mighty
commodious barn it makes; but how very applicable would be a quotation
from Hamlet here, were it not hackneyed. The hall's most striking
features now are its massive ivy-clad chimneys, though it is well
worthy a closer inspection, and I shall perhaps tell you more about it
at our next confabulation.
CHAPTER II.
DAYLIGHT VERSUS MOONLIGHT—POSSIBLE RESULTS OF MOONLIGHT LAKING OR
LOVE-MAKING—CONISTONE HALL—“THE HALL CLIPPING”—VALE OF YEWDALE—YEWDALE
CRAGS—OLD YEW TREE—RAVEN CRAG—HUNTING INCIDENT.
[Sidenote: MONITION.]
Some harmless individuals who desiderate the reputation of a taste
for the romantic, and fancy that such reputation is to be attained by
affecting to think differently from the ordinary race of observers,
maintain that this lake and the circumjacent landscape, like the ruins
of Melrose, as described (unseen, except by daylight) by Sir Walter
Scott, are seen to most advantage by moonlight. I don't agree with
them! The beauties around you are so numerous, so diversified, such
perfect realities, and the deformities or defects in the scenery are
so few and so minute, that no softening or shadowing is required to
enhance a reasonable man’s enjoyment of the loveliness of Conistone.
The more extensively, and the more distinctly its features are
developed, the more must it be admired. As with some rare specimens
of human nature, “the more you see of it, the better you like it.”
Therefore, be it mine to gaze upon, to exhibit and to dilate upon the
attractions of this “our own fair vale,” just when the “sun of the
morning” has mopped up the mists of the night,—when mountains and mere,
crags and cottages, woods and waterfalls, fields and fell-sides, are
fairly lighted up, and fully brought into view in all their proud
proportions, and in all their contrasted colours. And, moreover, as
Conistone is best seen under
“One unclouded blaze of living light,”
so will any susceptible young gentleman like yourself best consult
his well-being by forswearing all loitering by moonlight, whether for
laking or love-making purposes. I myself, in those days “when hope was
high and life was young,” grievously deteriorated my mental quiet,
as well as my physical comfort, by indulging in these too natural
propensities, as may be evidenced by the following rhymes which, under
the retrospect of wounded feelings and aching bones, I felt constrained
to indite, and now offer to you by way of caution against yielding to
the promptings of an excitable imagination; and, first, what say you to
this?
MATTER OF MOONSHINE.
Where the hazels droop o'er a lake-laved slope,
Sat a sweet little maid and I,
And a chastened light lay softly bright
On water, wood, and sky;
For the lovely moon, in the “lift aboon,”
Was 'shrined on her azure throne,
And bright and clear in the slumbering mere
Her mirrored semblance shone.
We were silent both, and the evening moth
Was the only life that stirred,
And the far, faint roll of the waterfall
The only sound we heard;
Till soft and slow did a murmur low
Come on through the quivering trees,
And the boughs of the brake and the reeds of the lake
Were bent by a passing breeze.
And still did we lean on our couch so green—
That sweet little maid and I—
And we marked its course as, with lessening force,
The breeze swept ruffling by.
Whilst the lake rippled o'er from shore to shore,
And shattered the moonbeams bright,
Till that mirror broad o'er its surface showed
One shivering sheet of light.
But it passed away, and the waters lay
Once more in their holy sleep,
With the orb so fair still glittering there
In their bosom dark and deep;
When that sweet little maid glanced up and said,
With her smile so fond and free,
“I can tell you how what we've witnessed now
May apply to you and me:
If yon radiant light that adorns the night,
Seem the light of my love for you,
And her form beneath your answering faith
So perfect, deep, and true;
If that breeze appear any transient care
That may ruffle your bosom’s rest,
Then they shew that my love will the brighter prove,
When peace forsakes your breast.”
Long years have fled since that sweet little maid
Thus sweetly said to me,
And as seasons change, will the fancies range
Of maidens young as she.
And from hopes of bliss, in a life like this,
Will dreamers all awake—
And all that was said by that sweet little maid,
Was as moonshine on the lake.
So much for mental quiet; the next, as the show people say, will be for
physical comfort, viz.:—
'Twas eve, and over Walna Scar the sun had sought the west,
And shades of night were settling thick o'er Thurston’s glassy breast,
But yet I lingered on the lake as loath to leave a scene
So lovely as, ere day’s decline, fair Conistone had been.
When over Hawkshead’s heights arose a mild and mellow light,
Announcing, with its silver sheen, the coming Queen of Night;
And now I lingered on the lake her advent high to see,
When stealing through the breezeless night came sounds of melody.
And from the mantling mist emerged a slowly gliding boat,
Which seemed in that imperfect light upon the mist to float;
And now I lingered on the lake a wild, sad song to hear,
And deemed it all too sweet for sound of this terrestrial sphere.
That seraph song to silence sank, the boat swept slowly past,
But soon another strain was heard as sweet as was the last;
And still I lingered on the lake in strange entrancement held,
Whilst through the calm mist-laden air the plaintive cadence swelled.
The moon rose fair above the fell, and fast her radiance cleared
The gloom away, and by her light another boat appeared;
And now I lingered on the lake to watch that lonely pair
Of tiny barks, propelled by hands of maidens young and fair.
Then soon as ceased the second song, the first-seen boat drew nigh,
And promptly did the first-heard voice in harmony reply;
And still I lingered on the lake unseen from either boat,
While Brantwood’s echoes multiplied each bosom-thrilling note.
As boat crossed boat—song after song did their fair crews repeat
Across the cool and glancing mere, in alternation sweet;
And still I lingered on the lake, and prayed they might prolong
Till day their strife of melody, alternate song and song.
And when they ceased, all nature seemed involved in sudden shade,
The lake its placid brightness lost, the moonlight seemed to fade;
No more I lingered on the lake—I felt the charm was fled,
And feeling, too, I’d caught a cold, went sneezing home to bed.
[Sidenote: FARTHER WEST.]
When I commenced this tedious, but, in your case, requisite
digression, you were seated in a boat upon the lake, and staring with
all your might at the turret-like, ivy-clad chimneys of Conistone
Hall; concerning which hall West, the precise and industrious
Furnesian Antiquary, who published his great work in 1774, says
therein—“Conistone Hall appears upon the bank of the lake; it was for
many ages the seat of the Flemings, and though now abandoned and in
ruins, it has the air of grandeur and magnificence.” And again, in
his history of the family who possess it, he says—“Sir Richard le
Fleming, in the reign of Henry III., married Elizabeth, daughter and
heir of Adam de Urswick, by which marriage he acquired the manor of
Conistone, and other considerable possessions in Furness;” and—“Upon
the acquisition of the manor of Conistone, the family returned to
Furness, the first seat of the Flemings. The Castle of Caernarvon
was abandoned, then erased, and Conistone Hall was the family seat
for seven generations. After the union of Lancaster with Le Fleming
(temp. Hen. 4th), Rydal and Conistone vied with each other for seven
generations more to fix the family in Westmorland or Lancashire. Sir
Daniel le Fleming came and gave it against the latter; since that event
(about 1650-60), the Hall of Conistone, pleasantly situated upon the
banks of the lake of that name, has been deserted.”
[Sidenote: MORE OF “THE HALL.”]
If the Hall were in ruins seventy-four years ago, you may perceive
that, though sufficiently venerable and time-shaken, there is nothing
exactly like ruins about it _now_; but, as I said before, a great part
of it has been removed, as is shewn by certain jambs and chimney-pieces
which remain in the outer surface of what is now the outer wall, and
have formed the fire-places of an extensive range of apartments which
formerly occupied the space along the northern side of the present
edifice. What remains of the Old Hall, I have also said, is converted
into a farm-house and appurtenances, both of which are of a most
commodious and substantial description; and, should your sojourn at
Conistone happen to fall in the early part of July, let me exhort you
to attend the Conistone Hall clipping, or sheep-shearing, where you
will witness some “scenes of life and shades of character” not to be
seen every day, nor in every locality; and, moreover, you will find
the viands to accord in character with the building,—_i. e._ to be
plentiful, substantial, and old-fashioned.
[Sidenote: SHEEP-SHEARING.]
I say that the scene, or rather the series of scenes, presented by a
sheep-shearing in the lake country, are of a description not to be
passed by in these artificial days, when “touches of nature,” which
“make the whole world kin,” are rare as they are rich;—therefore,
supposing you to be at Conistone in the proper season, I shall, with
your approval, of which I have little doubt, and with Mr Irving’s
hospitable permission, of which I have still less, introduce you to
that of Conistone Hall.
The sheep, which are of the black-faced breed, are all gathered in from
the fells on the previous day, or early in the morning, and are penned
up in lots in a large detached barn through which you pass, and, in a
yard behind which you are startled by a scene of animated and noisy
bustle wonderfully at variance with the surrounding quiet. In two rows
along the inner side of the semicircular yard wall, are seated the
clippers, numbering from 25 to 30, each astride upon a stool, busily
plying his shears upon a sheep laid bound on the stool before him; and
you cannot help being surprised at the rapidity with which the animals
are divested of their superabundant coverings; that tall man there
in the blue linen jacket is one of the most expert, and can take the
fleece from a mountain sheep in three minutes. I am told his father,
a respectable yeoman in an adjacent vale, was still more dexterous,
and that, for a wager, he, in one day, clipped—a number which, as I am
anxious to maintain my character for veracity, I shall not here state.
The average rate of clipping is, of course, lower than what I have
mentioned; but, allowing it to be so, this number of shears incessantly
at work for seven or eight hours, may give some idea of the number of
sheep denuded each year on this and similar farms.
[Sidenote: DRAMATIS PERSONÆ AND DINNER.]
In attendance upon the clippers are a much greater number of men and
lads supplying them with unclipped sheep and removing those operated
upon to another part of the yard, where, beside a turf-fire and a
kettle of melted tar an active youth is stationed ready to stamp them
with their owner’s initial, with another near at hand ycleped “the
doctor,” carrying in his hand a pot of ointment to anoint the wounds,
which, in such a hurried operation, many of his ovine patients receive.
Multitudes of boys are skipping about on every side, collecting the
cords as they are removed from the limbs of the clipped sheep, and
carrying them to be applied to the feet of their successors upon the
clipping stools. In a remote corner of the yard, a small party of
sedate, business-like individuals are rolling up the fleeces upon a
couple of small sloping platforms, and handing them over the wall
to others who are building them upon carts, to be carried to the
storing-house. One jolly-looking personage, with an aspect worthy of
his office, is moving about and dispensing “clipping drink” to all and
sundry. And “Woo' Geordie,” known elsewhere as “_Mop_ George” (after
his chief article of merchandise,) is poking about gathering up stray
fragments of wool. These, with one or two groups of idle on-lookers
waiting for, and wondering when it will be, dinner-time, and perhaps an
artist sketching the various and ever-changing groups, constitute the
_dramatis personæ_ of the sheep-shearing, whilst nothing but work is
going forward; but, now the last sheep shorn, the last fleece rolled
up, and “Woo’ Geordie,” liberally informed that he may convert to his
own proper use and emolument all the fragments of wool that remain
on the ground (no inconsiderable prize to him,) adjourn we to the
Hall where a banquet waits our attack, which is perfectly worthy of
Conistone Hall in its best days, for gigantic rounds of beef, and legs
of veal, ditto of mutton, and quarters of lamb, with every tempting and
appropriate accompaniment, are arranged upon a table which accommodates
thirty hungry people at once, and the first detachment, having stuffed
to repletion with the above enumerated solids, topped off with sweets,
“_quæ nunc perscribere_ (or _describere_ either) _longum est_,” are
succeeded by a second troop equally sharp set, and those who were
idlers before, are by no means the least industrious now. “Another
and another (_set_) yet succeeds,” until the whole party, amounting
to something above six score, are fed and satisfied. You may observe
that the whole company does not partake of its generally pastoral and
agricultural character, for the duties of one end of the table are
probably discharged, to all the successive troops of eaters, by a
practitioner of the law, and those of the other by a ditto of medicine,
both of whom are glad to relieve, by a few hours’ mirth, untutored
though it be, their daily routine of attention to the multifarious
derangements to which the business and the bodies of “God’s humanity”
are liable.
[Sidenote: FUDDLING AND FUN.]
Dinner being at last fairly finished, “now comes the sweetest morsel of
the night,” and strong ale and tobacco, as their legitimate successors,
supersede beef and pudding, and all the guests being settled down in
the capacious Hall, as many as can, round the long table, others on
forms or benches arranged in rows, and others, more favoured, apart
from the crowd, around a small table placed under a chimney large
enough to be a dwelling-house for a family of moderate pretensions;
pipes are filled and lighted, glasses are filled and tasted, and
singing is commenced by John Kendal giving, in characteristic and
peculiarly comic style, a quaint old ballad of the “down, derry down”
genus, concerning a parson who “had a remarkable foible of loving
good liquor much more than the Bible,” and of whom it was said “he
was much less perplext in handling a tankard than handling a text,”
and, once set a going, a stream of songs interspersed with “quips and
cranks,” and no! not “wreathed smiles,” but wide grins and roars of
laughter, with noisy joke and noisier repartee, carries rapidly away
the remaining hours of the evening. The majority of the songs are of a
stamp now to be met with only amongst the mountains, or in such other
districts where primitive pastoral habits yet prevail, and are to be
appreciated and enjoyed only by those who hold broad humour and natural
spirit and freedom to be a sufficient compensation for rudeness of
phraseology, and the absence of polish, refinement, and high sentiment;
and you may notice, that, as might be expected, their subjects and
sentiments become less and less refined, and their humour less and less
restrained, in due proportion with the sinking of the potent clipping
drink in the tilted barrels, till at length the _very_ orderly part of
the company think it time to depart.
[Sidenote: CLOSE OF THE CLIPPING.]
I may be censured for introducing you to scenes like these, and the
only excuse I have to offer is that I wish to give you a correct idea
of life and manners amongst the primitive inhabitants of these our
dales, and it is only by mixing freely amongst the people upon such
occasions, that any true knowledge of their habits and customs is to be
gained.
I was lately deluded into reading a book entitled, “Conistone Hall,
or the Jacobites,” written by a dignitary of the English Church,
“in order,” as he says, “to exhibit the tone of feeling and the
disorders of Church and State, to which the ill-advised revolution
of 1688 gave rise.” I was simple enough to hope to find matter of
local interest in a book called “Conistone Hall,” but was grievously
disappointed,—it might as well have been called “Lancaster Castle,”—and
the subject-matter is quite worthy of the author’s object.
And now, having bored you, probably _ad nauseam_, about the Old Hall,
it were well to return to your Inn; and, having allowed you what is
requisite of rest and refreshment, I shall carry you off upon your
longest excursion first; “and,” to quote The Professor thereanent,
“if murmuring streams and dashing torrents, and silent pools, and
shadow-haunted grass-fields, and star-studded meadows, and glimmering
groves, and cliff-girdling coppice woods, and a hundred charcoal
shellings, huts and cottages, and one Old Hall, and several hall-like
barns, and a solitary chapel among its green graves, and glades, and
dells, and glens without number, knolls, eminences, hillocks, hills,
and mountains,—if these, and many other such sights as these, all so
disposed that beauty breathes, whispers, moves, or hangs motionless
over all, have power to charm your spirit,——away with the cavalcade
into the heart of the expecting mountains.”
[Sidenote: HORSE AND AWAY.]
If, like myself, you prefer enjoying a long excursion upon four legs
to enduring it upon two, your host can supply, at a satisfactory rate,
ponies well accustomed to the roughest roads in the country. You
declare for the equestrian mode of progression: well, say the word, and
behold your steed at the door. Being safely and pleasantly mounted,
you turn your pony’s tail to the lake, and canter up the road till you
come to a group of ancient and picturesque cottages and farm-buildings,
called High Waterhead (Conistone Water being bicipital), and then take
the road to your left, which passes through amongst these houses, and
by another old homestead called 'Boon (_vulgo_ above) Crag, holding on
along an occupation road which winds through a considerable portion
of Mr Marshall's wooded parks; and, as you jog along, keep a sharp
eye to the left,—“ride, as the Spaniard hath it, with your beard on
your shoulder,”—and your vigilance will be rewarded with occasional
glimpses of the lake and its shores, broken up into a series of lovely
fragmentary pictures by the irregular intervention of the scattered or
“clumped” timber. You soon begin to descend into the middle of the vale
of Yewdale, which Mr Parkinson, the accomplished canon of Manchester
and Principal of St. Bees, maintains to be the most beautiful in the
lake district, and which is described by Green, the artist, as being
“a grand valley lying at the feet of the high mountains on the north of
Conistone Water.” As you approach it, you must, if you have eyes and
soul, be struck with “the steep, frowning glories” of the mile-long
range of lofty cliffs which bound Yewdale on the whole extent of its
western side, the otherwise barren aspect of which is finely relieved
by thick groves, comprising oak, larch, birch, holly, &c., stretching
along the foot of the crags, and also by numerous and various trees
flourishing here and there along the face of the steep, in situations
“the most inaccessible by shepherds trod,” even up to the highest verge
of the precipice, where it makes one giddy to imagine how they have
been planted, for they ore not of spontaneous growth, but were all
planted by the late Mr Knott.
[Sidenote: REMARKABLE IN YEWDALE.]
You cross the pellucid Beck of Yewdale by a ricketty wooden bridge,
pass through the farm-yard of Low Yewdale, and immediately after gain
the high road, which runs along the west side of the valley close under
the crags. As you near the head of the vale, be pleased to observe,
as you will doubtless be pleased in observing, the sweetly situated
farm of High Yewdale, with its long rows of unmercifully clipt yews,
looking like magnified chessmen, one of which was recently recommended
to my notice by an observant fair friend, as presenting a ludicrous
resemblance to a starched puritan of the time of the Commonwealth,
attired in round beaver and “cloak of formal cut.” You must here
diverge a little from your line of ramble to examine the aged tree
which gives its name to the vale, and which some unscrupulous local
chronologists stoutly maintain to have been coeval with the deluge.
Without feeling myself called upon to establish that fact, I may
safely enough assert that it must be of vast antiquity, and it is the
largest yew that I have yet fallen in with, those immortalized by
Wordsworth as “the pride of Lorton vale,” and the “fraternal four of
Borrowdale,” not excepted. I, and two friends, girthed it one summer
with three riding-whips knotted together, and found it, at five feet
from the ground, to measure 29 feet in circumference. You see that it
has an aperture in the northern side of its huge trunk, which, like
Mercutio's wound, though “not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church door, 'twill serve” to let you go in and creep round between
that centre pillar formed of the most internal layers of its wood and
the surrounding wall formed of its external layers and bark, a large
portion of the intermediate timber having, like the halls of Lord
Byron’s fathers, “gone to decay.”
[Sidenote: FUTILE FOX-CRAFT.]
This wondrous feat being duly accomplished, for your future exaltation,
retrace your steps as far as the Shepherds' Bridge, and then, holding
to the right, you soon pass through a gate, and come out upon a
somewhat stony road winding along between the beck and the foot of
Raven Crag, which rises on your right, steep and rugged, to form its
multi-peaked crown. That precipitous peak (or pike) immediately above
you, was the scene of an event remarkable in the annals of mountain
fox-hunting. A poor fox, after an unusually long chase, reached the
summit of Raven Crag, closely pursued by only three hounds, the rest
of the pack being distanced long before; as a last chance for life, he
made directly for the edge of that precipice, purposing, doubtless,
to swerve when close to the verge, and thus rid himself of his
pursuers by throwing them over: this sagacious expedient was, however,
unsuccessful, for, when he reached the edge, his three foes were too
near to admit of his effecting the saving turn, and all four were
projected from the brow of the cliff, and dashed, out of all semblance
of _caninity_ and _vulpinity_, on the stones not far above your present
position.
CHAPTER III.
WEATHERLAM—TILBERTHWAITE—THE BRATHAY—WORDSWORTH'S
BRIDGES—HALLGARTH—LITTLE LANGDALE, ITS TARN, &C.—WHITEWASH, PRO AND
CON—THE BUSK AND FELL-FOOT—“JOAN’S ALE WAS NEW”—ANCIENT TUMULUS—ASCENT
OF WRYNOSE—THE SHIRE STONES—SOURCE OF THE DUDDON—WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS
THEREON—AUTHOR’S DITTO DITTO—TRADITIONAL SAYINGS ABOUT OLD WOODS—THEIR
EXTENT DISPUTED.
As you wind round the heel of Raven Crag, you obtain a fine view of
the Old Man’s stupendous brother, Weatherlam, rearing his massive
summit over the circumjacent hills, like a giant amid ordinary
mortals. You follow a narrow winding road through the verdant fields
and copse-clad hillocks of Holme ground, and soon find yourself in
the vale of Tilberthwaite; and “O,” you suspirate, as you roll your
eyes around, “what a spot for a honeymoon—'the world forgetting, by
the world forgot'—so lovely in its seclusion and so lonely in its
loveliness.” The only unpleasant characteristic of Tilberthwaite is
an odd, uncomfortable feeling of which, though absurd enough, you
cannot entirely divest yourself—an idea of difficulty in getting out
of it. It is so encompassed by steep hills and hanging woods, that
you involuntarily compare yourself to a cockroach in the bottom of a
porridge basin. The name of Tilberthwaite is said to be compounded of
Tillbear and thwaite, and to signify an enclosure for the cultivation
of bear (pronounced beer), an old name for barley. This word, like
many more that are obsolete in England, is still used in Scotland; for
instance, it occurs in Tam O'Shanter, where it is said that Cutty Sark—
“Shook baith muckle corn and _bear_,
And held the kintra side in fear.”
[Sidenote: RIVER AND BRIDGE.]
And again, an old song commences—
“There'll be nae shearing here the year,
For the craws hae eaten the _bear_ the year.”
But the day advances, and you’d better advance along with it, for
“you've many a mile to go” before you get back to your comfortable
quarters at Conistone. Push on then, along the bye road through the
fields, and you again reach the high road. You follow it through the
farm-yard—take the gate to the right, and pursue a rough way meandering
pleasantly for about a mile through an irregularly-wooded vale. The
enormous heaps of loose blue stone on every side of you are from the
slate quarries, of which I shall perhaps tell you more when I have more
time.
The stream you now approach is a branch of the Brathay, which rises
on Wrynose and other hills round the head of Little Langdale, down
which valley it flows, forming a fine fall at Colwith and at Skelwith,
after joining the Great Langdale branch in Elterwater, and become a
principal feeder of the “Regal Windermere;” you stand upon the verge of
Lancashire, for this brook here divides it from Westmorland. Don’t cross
it as yet, but follow its course upwards on the Lancashire side, and
you will soon fall in with a primitive stone bridge—one of the very few
remaining of those whose rapid disappearance Mr Wordsworth deplores,
whilst he expresses admiration of “the daring and graceful contempt of
danger and accommodation with which so many of them are constructed,
the rudeness of form of some, and their endless variety.” If neglect of
danger and accommodation, and rudeness of form, be the distinguishing
and essential attributes of the class, this, connecting Tilberthwaite
with Little Langdale, and called Slater’s Bridge, ought certainly to
be preserved as an exquisite and unique specimen of a style of bridge
all but extinct; for the sturdy Dalesmen perversely prefer bridges that
are safe and commodious, though they may sacrifice the picturesque and
rudeness of form to obtain these vulgar requisites.
[Sidenote: DOCTRINES OF MR. WORDSWORTH.]
Pass by, not over, the bridge—a horse passing over it might remind
one of the famous asinine performer on the tight-rope—and you come
to the hamlet of Hallgarth, which has little to distinguish it from
a thousand others, save the rather uncomfortable peculiarity of not
being touched upon by the “blessed sun” for about three months in the
year. As you leave it by a steep acclivity, you had better take a
survey of Little Langdale which lies spread out at your feet. Rather
farther than midway between you and the abruptly rising range of hill
called Lingmoor, which divides this vale from its larger namesake,
lies Langdale Tarn, which bears out the Poet Laureate's assertion,
that “Tarns are often surrounded by an unsightly tract of boggy
ground.” The chief beauty of Little Langdale consists in the irregular
hillocky nature of its ground and the sites of its dwellings, many
of which nestle so cozily in little dells, behind rocky knolls, and
beneath umbrageous trees, as to convey a notion of the most attractive
snugness; but here I am heretic enough to dispute the infallibility
of the Poet Laureate’s taste. He has declared war against whitewash
in something like the following terms:—“The objections to white, as
a colour, in large spots or masses in landscapes, especially in a
mountainous country, are insurmountable”—and, quoting somebody who
[Sidenote: A WORD FOR WHITE HOUSES.] says “that white destroys the
gradations of distance,” he holds on thus—“Five or six white houses,
scattered over a valley, by their obtrusiveness, dot the surface, and
divide it into triangles, or other mathematical figures, haunting the
eye, and disturbing that repose which might otherwise be perfect.” By
the bye, a fair lady, whose opinion, in most matters of taste, I hold
in the deepest reverence, recently became a convert to this doctrine
of Mr Wordsworth, because she noticed the effect just instanced,
not when gazing upon a landscape, but when compiling patch work in
which fragments of white intruded amongst the blues, yellows, greens,
reds, and neutrals, woefully disturbed the harmony and repose of the
cushion cover or quilt. Mr Wordsworth says also, in support of his
anti-whitewashing theory, that “in nature, pure white is scarcely ever
found but in small objects, such as flowers; or in those which are
transitory, as the clouds, foam on rivers, and snow.” But I must remind
those who take for gospel every word that Mr Wordsworth preaches, that
the “White Cliffs of England,” the snows upon a thousand hills, and the
foam of a thousand cataracts are neither minute nor transitory; and
that large masses of white in nature, such as these, as well as white
clouds, and the terrible white of a stormy sea upon a rocky coast are
all calculated to excite sensations of the sublime and beautiful in
any bosom, whether the possessor be very much of a man of feeling and
imagination or the reverse. But coming back to cottages, with all due
deference to the Poet Laureate’s argument, and with more to that of his
fair and talented supporter, I do maintain that no objects can give
such a gratifying air of life and cheerfulness to a valley surrounded,
or not, by high mountains, or so strikingly enhance the bright green of
herbage and foliage, or the more sombre, but warmer, tints of near or
distant hills, as a liberal sprinkling over the landscape of pure white
[Sidenote: OUT-DOORS AND IN-DOORS CONTRASTED.]cottages, embosomed, as
these are, each in its own nest of sheltering trees; and I do wish that
the farmers of Langdale, and all our other fell-dales, would expend a
shilling or two annually on lime, and bestow upon their romantically
situated homesteads, “the cleanly, pleasant appearance derivable from
a plentiful periodical application of white-wash.” Their present grim,
dingy, almost squalid exteriors, are strongly suggestive to the mind
of a stranger of internal poverty, desolation and dirt, than which
nothing can be more distant from their real in-door condition; for, in
all these scattered houses, miserable as they look externally, there
is abundance for the wants of the inmates and for the requirements of
hospitality, and their cleanliness is such that, as I have partaken of
many meals spread upon their unclothed tables, so, in the absence of a
table, would I not scruple to eat my dinner if laid upon any of their
blue flagged floors,[A] for those are cleaner than many table-cloths I
have seen in the course of my peregrinations through other countries.
[A] It is said that “great wits jump together,” and it would appear
that, under certain circumstances, the same saltatory exploit may be
performed by a great and a small wit; for instance, Miss Martineau
in her capital essay on the Lake District, treating of the inside
cleanliness of the houses, makes nearly the same remark as I have made
above. I am sorry that I cannot conscientiously adopt the complaint
of the very modern literary gentleman who accused Shakspeare of
forestalling all his best ideas, because the above passage, or at
least the same idea, if it be one, occurred in the first edition of
these papers, and was printed above three years before the appearance
of Miss Martineau’s work.
[Sidenote: WORT AND WELCOME.]
_Mais revenons a nos moutons_,—return we to our ramble. As you move
forward, here take a good look at Langdale Pikes, perhaps the most
picturesque hills in England, and seen to advantage from this road,
over Wallend and Blea Tarn. Which last again brings Mr Wordsworth upon
the stage; indeed it is difficult to descant upon any part of the lake
country without running foul of him, and this Blea Tarn is the scene
of one of those purely poetical descriptions so truly and peculiarly
his own, which prove by the earnestness, fervour, and simplicity of
their style, that their author is a true poet, with all his whims;
and they may well be received as an ample atonement for even more of
the middling quality than he, during his long and peaceful life, has
inflicted upon the reading world.
The newly-made cart-road to your left leads to Greenbourne—a wild and
retired dell under the north-eastern shoulder of Weatherlam, where a
spirited and meritorious mining adventure, set on foot by some working
miners from Conistone, is in progress, and is likely to prosper. The
farm under the fell on the other side of the valley, is called the
Busk, and was formerly a public house, as was also Fell-foot, the
uppermost house in the dale. It is said of these old hostels, that
they would commence brewing when they saw their chief customers, the
caravans of travellers, carriers, and pack horses (then the only mode
of conveying goods, as this was the only road, between Kendal and
Whitehaven), appear on the top of Wrynose, and that they would have
good drink ready for them by the time they reached the bottom. This
reminds one of the old story of the thirsty London traveller drawing
up and calling for ale at an old public house, called the “Dog and
Doublet” on Carleton Thwaite, and being told by the landlady in her
brewing apron, that “they happened to be out of drink just then, but
if he would light his ways down and stop a leyle bit, he should have
_wort_ and welcome while the yell was getting ready.” As you approach
Fell-foot you cross the beck, and entering Westmorland, come upon the
ancient pack-horse road; and passing close in front of Fell-foot,
a favourable sample of the old-fashioned mountain farm-house, you
commence the ascent of Wrynose. In the field immediately behind the
farm buildings, is a large mound or tumulus which has never been
noticed in any published work, but which, it is much to be desired,
that some learned antiquary would examine, and report upon its nature
and probable or possible origin. It is an oblong square, with a tabular
summit from thirty to forty yards long, and from ten to fifteen
broad—attained by a broad terraced road of very gradual ascent, which,
after encompassing the mound twice or thrice, comes out upon its summit
at its northern extremity.
[Sidenote: WRYNOSE.]
As you creep up the mountain, you may perceive in the deep verdant glen
under your left, a number of small cone-shaped tumuli, whether formed
by the hand of man or by the operations of nature this deponent sayeth
not.
Having climbed for nearly a mile, please to halt and look back, and
you have a view well worth all your toil, embracing Little Langdale,
Colwith, Skelwith, Loughrigg, the bright waters of Windermere, and the
groves and mountains beyond, altogether making up a picture approaching
in beauty, though inferior in richness and variety, (as all other
prospects are) to that seen from the Castlerigg, near Keswick.
[Sidenote: CLASSIC GROUND.]
And now, having nearly attained the summit of Wrynose Pass, I
shall impart to you such instructions, as will enable you, without
difficulty, to find the three shire stones, which here mark the spot
where the three counties, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire
meet; and this service I may mention is not rendered you by any of the
hackney itineraries or guide-books, for I never could make them out
until I received explicit directions in the matter from an old woman in
Seathwaite. At what appears the top of Wrynose, when ascending it from
Langdale, you come upon a short track of level ground, where the road
runs along between a low wall of rock on the right and a peat-moss on
the left. Near to the point where the rocky wall runs down to nothing,
and where the road makes a sweep to the left to rise an acclivity, look
to the right, and, at a few yards distance from the road, and stuck
in rather wet ground, you will descry three stones of the size of a
high-crowned hat—about five feet distant from each other—and forming a
triangle; each stone is in a different county, and if you are tolerably
_lish_ and lengthy of limb, you may place a foot upon one stone, the
other foot on another, and your hands on the third; or should the
circumstances under which you visit the spot require you to do the feat
more gracefully or more decorously, you may place both feet on one and
distribute your hands between the other two—either way you perform it,
you may brag thereafter that you, in your individual person, have been
in three counties at one and the same time.
You leave the spot where “three fair counties meet together,” and
topping the aforesaid short ascent, soon begin to descend, and as you
descend, do not attempt to shew your learning by quoting Virgil, and
calling this “_facilis descensus Averni_,” for it is a most _infacile_
and _innerman-jumbling_ “_descensus_” into a very different place—a
vale destined through future ages to hold a proud rank amongst the
thousand be-rhymed and be-sonneted localities of ancient and modern
poets, such as “The Plains of Troy, of which blind Homer sang,”
“Parnassus' hill where wells fair Castaly,” “The isles of Greece,
the isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” “The soft
flowing Avon,” “The wide and winding Rhine,” “The Banks o’ Doon,” “The
Groves of Blarney,” &c., &c., &c.—for it is the subject of a rosary of
sonnets by our great moral poet, of higher celebrity than any given
to the world since the days of Petrarch, and I hope that neither Mr
Wordsworth nor you will think that I exceed my commission by quoting
here the two first of the series of “Sonnets on the River Duddon.”—
[Sidenote: “SORDID INDUSTRY.”]
I.
Not envying Latian shades—if yet they throw
A grateful coolness round that crystal spring,
Blandusia prattling as when long ago
The Sabine Bard was moved her praise to sing;
Careless of flowers that in perennial blow
Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling;
Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering
Through ice-built arches radiant as Heaven’s bow;
I seek the birth-place of a native stream.
All hail! ye mountains! hail thou morning light!
Better to breathe at large on this clear height
Than toil in needless sleep from dream to dream:
Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright,
For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme!
II.
Child of the clouds! remote from every taint
Of sordid industry thy lot is cast;
Thine are the honours of the lofty waste;
Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint,
Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissue quaint
Thy cradle decks;—to chant thy birth, thou hast
No meaner Poet than the whistling blast,
And desolation is thy Patron-Saint!—
She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare
Those mighty forests, once the bison’s screen,
Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair
Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green;
Thousands of years before the silent air
Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen!
The first two lines of the second of these sonnets furnish an instance
of the prime defect in Wordsworth’s philosophy and poetry, namely, his
affected (for it cannot be real), contempt for, and his perpetually
recurring sneer at, what he here calls sordid industry. I say this
contempt cannot be real, because Wordsworth, though a great Poet,
possesses quite an average share of ordinary unpoetical prudence and
discernment, and though in earnest, no doubt, in his worship of
“unprofaned nature” holds in due appreciation those commonplace
comforts of civilized life, which, without the aid of the sordid
industry, would scarcely be attainable. Moreover, to meet him on his
own ground, this wild locality is by no means very “remote from _every_
taint of sordid industry”—these hills are devoted to sheep farming, and
though I am far from stigmatizing stock farmers as being more sordid
than other classes, yet is their ordinary employment as essentially
sordid in its nature, and as coarse, unromantic and disagreeable in its
details, as any other common mode of money-making, notwithstanding all
that has been said, or sung, to the contrary.
[Illustration: SOURCE OF THE DUDDON.]
[Sidenote: A HUMBLE IMITATION VERY!]
And now, in humble imitation of my betters, I cannot refrain from
trying my poor hand at a sonnet, and, when you have well considered
the same, I hope and believe that, however infinite you may reckon its
poetical inferiority, you will admit that its sentiment is more in
accordance with the subject—that it is conceived in a more Catholic
spirit than those of my great prototype—
“And that _my_ raptures are not conjured up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,” attend;—
Here springs the Duddon, trickling from the end
Of Wrynose, thus suggesting the belief
That Wrynose lacks a pocket-handkerchief.
It argues much untidiness to send
A nose-bred rill meandering o'er the breast
Of Seathwaite vale; but, as you downward wend,
Where verdure, rocks, and water aptly blend
To form a scene whose presence few had guess'd,
Amid these wild brown fells, you'll bless the source
Of this clear stream whose gushing waters lend
A music cheering you as you descend,
With easy lounge along its fitful course,
And pray that, whilst these wild brown fells endure,
Wrynose’s catarrh ne'er may find a cure!
[Sidenote: “MIGHTY FORESTS.”]
The head of this vale does not hold out much promise of beauty, and
you feel surprised that any one, were he fifty times a poet, could
contrive to make anything readable on such a subject as the dreary
uninteresting valley before you. It is indeed a desolate spot,
stretching its unrelieved length for two miles from the foot of this
hill, with nothing for the eye to exercise itself, or the heart to
console itself with, but bare fells, grey crags, screes and boulders,
and a stone-vexed rivulet winding its lonely way along the bottom of
the dale, but not a sign of life except what may be contained in moss
and lichens, with here and there a little fern and grass.
There are many who would persuade you that all these bleak hills and
dales were formerly and for centuries covered with dense forests. Mr
Wordsworth, in sonnet number two, speaks of “mighty forests” having
existed hereabout for thousands of years before archery or hunting
became fashionable, and Dan Birkett, of whom more anon, declares that
formerly a con (vulgarly called a squirrel), could hop from branch to
branch all the way from the top of Wrynose to Millom Castle; the same
tradition, I may remark, exists in the same form in other localities;
for instance, it is averred that the aforesaid little animal, could, in
the olden time, accomplish a similar aerial journey from Wythburn to
Keswick, and also from Loweswater to the sea at Moresby. But perhaps
the best of the sort is the tradition cherished by the descendants of
one of the old Border clans, which asserts that some time before “the
good old days of Adam and Eve” a moss trooper might ride in the shade
of trees from the head of Annandale to the Solway, about thirty-five
miles, and all upon land belonging to the Hallidays.
[Sidenote: WHAT THE SOIL SAYS.]
Take my word for it, the extent, duration, and number of these old
forests are very much exaggerated. Let us take these hill sides as an
instance. Where are the vestiges of a thick wood existing here for
ages? Burnt, you may say!—Yes, but where is the rich loam inevitably
produced by copious deposit of decayed vegetable matter on dry
situations, or the deep peat-moss that always betokens the former
existence of timber in wet localities? Here, to your left, you perceive
there has been a small land-slip—examine the soil exposed, and what do
you find? Why, about a single inch of the soil created by vegetable
growth and decay, just as much as the poor little mosses can make and
no more, and a substratum of the tenacious reddish gravel locally
called sammel; but no where do we see anything approaching to the thick
superstratum of rich vegetable mould always discovered on the sites
of primeval forests. No! no! where you cannot find either loam or
peat-moss, be assured there has been at no period, however remote, any
considerable covering of wood.
CHAPTER IV.
ULPHA—COCKLEY BECK—THE SUNKEN GRAVES—DALE-HEAD—“THE STEPPING
STONES”—HINGING HOUSE—THE CLAN TYSON—ANECDOTES—T’ BIRKS BRIG—REMARKS
ON SCENERY, AND QUOTATIONS—SEATHWAITE BECK—MISS MARTINEAU ON
THE CHURCH AND PARSONAGE—NEWFIELD—ENTERTAINMENT FOR MAN AND
BEAST—DAN BIRKETT—WALLA-BARROW CRAG—STONEYTHWAITE—MR WORDSWORTH’S
ANECDOTE—CHARACTER OF SCENERY.
As you pursue your rugged way down the vale, you at length come in
sight of a group of buildings, which offers to you, as the gibbet
did to the castaway mariner, the comforting assurance that you are
still a sojourner in a civilised country—a matter on which you were
beginning to feel uneasily dubious. It is the onstead of a large
sheep farm, well known by the designation of Black Hall, which forms
the most northerly portion of the Chapelry of Ulpha—a wild tract of
country extending for many lonely miles along the Cumberland side of
the Duddon, deriving its outlandish looking appellation from the same
royal personage who is said to have accorded the honour of bearing his
name, as part of theirs, to the town of Ulverstone and the Lake of
Ullswater, the old Saxon Monarch Ulfo or Ulphus (some call him one and
some the other), who, for anything that I know to the contrary, was
one of the Kings of the Heptarchy. Probably, when I mention this, you
will remember that Scott, in the Bridal of Triermain, tells of the
Baron’s Page, when sent by his lord to enquire at the Sage of Lyulph’s
Tower whether the fair apparition in his dream was “an airy thing” or
of the earth earthy—
“He traced the Eamont’s winding way,
Till Ulfo’s lake beneath him lay.”
[Illustration: COCKLEY BRIG.]
[Sidenote: ETYMOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY.]
Push on, and, as you round the elbow of the hill, you are farther
cheered by the nearer prospect of another domicile on the Lancashire
side of the brook; that is the residence of Mr Daniel Tyson, the worthy
proprietor and occupant of Cockley Beck, the name of the house and
farm being derived from the stream that rushes along its north-western
boundary, and said to signify “a winding or rugged stream;” others
say its name is derived from the former condition or character of the
bridge here which used to be “Cocklety,” a term implying “a daring
contempt of danger and accommodation” on the part of its architect;
others, again, say that the name of the brook ought to be Cockling or
Cackling Beck, because the noise it occasionally makes in its stoney
bed may, by the aid of a _leetle_ imagination, be likened to that by
which a hen announces to all concerned that she has just got safely
quit of an egg.
[Sidenote: CONJECTURES.]
The vale of Seathwaite now assumes a more attractive aspect; your
pleasantest road lies through the farm-yard of Cockley Beck, and that
hearty-looking elderly man, the uniform cherry-colour of whose honest
phiz bespeaks exposure to many a biting mountain blast, is Daniel
Tyson himself. If you are disposed to rest and chat awhile, you may
lead him, nothing loath, into conversation, and if you do so, I fancy
that some of his communications will surprise, if they don’t interest
you; for instance, in allusion to some skins you may notice hung up
to dry, he will inform you that the weasels about Cockley Beck have a
fashion, on the advent of winter, of changing their colour from brown
to white, resuming their more sombre coloured coats on the return of
spring; a fact in local zoology of which I incline to imagine you have
not hitherto been cognisant. He will also tell you, should anything
suggest the subject, that, in one of his pastures, a little up the
beck, there existed, till within the last few years, a number of graves
arranged in rows, but which now, either from the sinking of the soil,
or the growth of the surrounding moss, &c., have become level with
the adjacent surface, and all distinct traces of them obliterated.
What rather adds to the interest excited by these mysterious tombs is,
that there is no history, authentic, traditional, or legendary, to
account for their existence—thus affording a capital field for those
imaginative geniuses who love to speculate upon such mysteries or to
frame what maybe awanting for their satisfactory development. With
me the favourite probability in this instance is, that a skirmish,
tolerably fatal, has been fought in this sequestered nook during the
progress of some of the horrible wars that, from time to time, have
saddened our merry land, and that the slain have been buried here
where they fell; but, whether the supposed skirmish was fought between
the factions of York and Lancaster about the time poor King Henry
sought and found, for a season, a house of refuge in this vicinity; or
between the Cavaliers and Roundheads, when the Flemings of Conistone
stood out for Church and King; or between the Dalesmen themselves and
a stray party of Moss-trooping Scots, who, “in the old riding times,”
occasionally pushed their predatory incursions even into these poor
valleys, neither Mr Tyson nor I will inform you, for, as I said before,
history, authentic and apocryphal, is silent on the subject, Daniel is
a man of verity, and I am but a lame hand at invention; therefore you
need not hope for even a fabricated story (which, after all, would be
better than none), in connection with this now effaced souvenir of
the good old times.
[Illustration: THE STEPPING STONES.]
[Sidenote: A SUBJECT OF SONNETS.]
But it is time you were taking leave of Cockley Beck, and as you are
doing so, you may perceive at the foot of the heights to your left a
number of rubbish heaps, the result of a mining speculation set a going
and kept up by some spirited and very persevering gentlemen chiefly
resident in Ulverstone. You now canter along a decent road through flat
meadows where, if it be the season, the lads and lasses of the dale are
busily engaged in securing the hay-crop and carrying it home, probably
on horseback, for the old farmers here have not as yet begun to use
carts for that purpose. On this road, too, there are “oceans of gates”
to open, the frequent recurrence of which becomes rather troublesome,
should your pony not be all the steadier. You very soon arrive at
another farm, called Dalehead; but, by the bye, just before you reach
that, you had better turn off to the right by a track that soon brings
you to the river side, and take a look at the stepping stones by which
the Duddon is crossed at this point. When you have looked at them, you
seem to wonder what it may be that should entitle them to be noticed
more than any other stepping stones in the country. I'll tell you. Mr
Wordsworth says they are—
“What might seem a zone
Chosen for ornament—stone matched with stone
In studied symmetry, with interspace
For the clear waters to pursue their race
Without restraint,”
and so on. It certainly does require a poet’s eye to discover the
title of these stones to be made the subject of two whole sonnets of
fourteen lines apiece; and apropos to that, I once, at an evening party
near Hawkshead, overheard a gentleman ask another, “Have you read
Wordsworth’s sonnets on the Duddon?” “No.” “O then,” said the first,
“if you ever do read them, don’t believe them! We were there last week,
and we didn’t find anything as he has described it.” Now though this
advice is entitled to some respect, inasmuch as the giver is an amateur
painter and musician of high excellence and also a very keen angler,
which last a respected friend of mine would call the most intellectual
and poetical pursuit of the three, I cannot _quite_ coincide with it,
and I shall soon make _you_ admit that, although the vale of Seathwaite
may not be all that the Laureate, in the customary exercise of poetic
licence, may seem to make it, yet is it well worthy a visit from any
one with the smallest pretensions to a taste for the picturesque.
[Sidenote: PHYSIQUE OF THE DALESMEN.]
Leaving Dalehead, you soon come to another farm-house, noticeable as
presenting, in strong contrast to its dingy-looking, though prettily
placed neighbours, a clean and cheerful, because whitewashed, exterior,
a veracious index of the comfort, tidiness, and hospitality that
characterise its interior. It is called Hinging House, and is the
residence of another of the clan Tyson, the members of which are
so numerous in this, and the sister vales Eskdale, Wastdale, The
Langdales, &c., that in case of need, their chief, if they’d had one,
might levy a regiment of his own name, as was done, if I remember
aright, by one of the Highland Chieftains, and a regiment, too, that
would be scarcely surpassable even by the Queen’s household troops
as regards the strength, stature, figures and features of the rank
and file. In this dale alone there are, zoologically speaking, some
magnificent specimens, both male and female, of the genus _homo_
amongst the Tysons: and, indeed, the same may be said truly enough of
the Walkers, Dawsons, Birketts, and the bearers of other Seathwaite
surnames.
[Illustration: BIRKS BRIDGE, RIVER DUDDON.]
The great number of families bearing the name of Tyson renders it
necessary for their neighbours and themselves to adopt the custom of
distinguishing individuals by the names of their residences, as
Daniel of Cockley Beck, George of Black Hall, Harry o’ t’ Hinging
House, and so on _ad infinitum_.
[Sidenote: TWO STORIES.]
Not long ago, I had occasion to call at a house in Little Langdale,
and the friend who accompanied me was joined, whilst waiting in the
fold, by a fine ruddy and lively little fellow who had not then
attained the dignity of his first breeches. He was, by way of starting
a conversation, accosted with the question most common under such
circumstances, “What is your name?” The answer was ready, “Jimmy o’ t’
Fell-foot!” “What other name have you?” “I have _nin_!” and neither
his questioner nor his grown-up brother, who came up during the
conversation, could prevail upon the youngster to assert his right to
any other designation than “Jimmy o’ t’ Fell-foot.”
Another anecdote illustrating the power of this custom and then we'll
march on. Mr Tyson, the much respected incumbent of Seathwaite, had,
and perhaps still has a son settled in London, and a worthy statesman,
one of his parishioners, having business requiring his presence in
town, was furnished with Mr Thomas Tyson’s address, which, with some
difficulty, he contrived to make out, and greatly astonished the
servant who opened the door to his knock by asking, in a dialect
very distinctly not that of a Cockney, “If ye pleese, does Tom o’ t’
Priest’s leeve here?”
[Sidenote: A SLIGHTED BEAUTY.]
Continue your course down the vale, again passing through the farm-yard
and holding on along the foot of the fell by a road which has become
somewhat more rugged, you, by and bye, re-approach the river and arrive
at the Birks Bridge—the which I may guarantee to be much better worth
an examination than those paltry stepping stones that disappointed
you so grievously. The Duddon, for some distance above and below
this bridge, considerably narrows and deepens, and loses the general
rapidity of its current, passing through a chasm, the jagged rocky
walls of which rise perpendicularly to a considerable height above the
surface, and sink to a depth a good deal below the level of the river’s
bed above and below the chasm (whether this be “the Faëry Chasm” which
Mr Wordsworth has pressed into his service as a subject for one of
his sonnets, not knowing, can’t say, but it may perhaps do as well for
it as any other). At a point where opposite portions of these rocky
walls jut out so as to render the space between extremely narrow, the
little arch of the bridge springs boldly across the void, the jutting
portions of rock forming piers more substantial and durable, barring
earthquakes, than any artificial structure for the same purpose in the
kingdom. The water on the lower side of the bridge is still and very
deep, I should say nearly two fathoms, and bears a beautiful tinge
of faint blue, but is so clear that, if you happened to wear blue
spectacles, you might very well fancy that you were staring down into
a river course destitute of water. The best view of this little bridge
and its picturesque natural adjuncts is to be gained by fastening
your steed to the gate at its further end, and descending to a little
platform of rock nearly on a level with the surface of the water about
twenty yards below the bridge, and, when there, I think you will agree
with me that this neglected atom of scenery is a full compensation for
the fatigue of even a longer and rougher ride than you have undertaken
on this joyful occasion, as Saunders Mucklebackit’s mother called her
grandson’s funeral.
Remount your Bucephalus and canter away down the dale past the farms of
Troutwell and Browside, through scenery which suggests a couplet from
“The Lady of the Lake,” for assuredly
“Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world,”
applies with equal propriety to Seathwaite as to the glorious scenery
around Loch Katrine. As you approach the farm of Nettleslack, you must
make up your mind to quit either the river or your poney, for the road
diverges from the Duddon, which now assumes a course where
“It seems some mountain, rent and riven,
A channel to the stream hath given.
Where he who winds 'twixt rock and wave,
May hear the headlong torrent rave,
And like a steed in frantic fit,
That flings the froth from curb and bit,
May view her—chafe her waves to spray,
O'er every rock that bars her way,
Till foam-globes on her eddies ride
Thick as the schemes of human pride,
That down life’s current drive amain
As frail, as frothy, and as vain!”
[Sidenote: THE “CHERISHED” OF DUDDON.]
But you must take my word for all this, for you cannot “wind 'twixt
rock and wave” on horseback, therefore keep the good road, whilst you
have it. Cross Seathwaite Beck by Nettleslack Bridge, and push on for
the little Inn at Newfield, to reach which you must pass between the
Chapel and the Parsonage. Behind the latter, you may notice Seathwaite
Beck, a tributary of the Duddon nearly as large as itself, which rushes
impetuously and noisily along—
“Hurrying with lordly Duddon to unite;
Who, 'mid a world of images imprest
On the calm depth of his transparent breast,
Appears to cherish most that torrent white,
The fairest, softest, liveliest of them all!”
The “torrent white” looks exceedingly black and gloomy under the shadow
of these dense overhanging branches, causing the numerous patches of
snow-like foam to look “than snow more white” by the contrast.
[Sidenote: CHAPEL, PARSONAGE, AND PUBLIC.]
Of Seathwaite Chapel Miss Martineau says, “when the traveller reaches
the Church, he finds it little loftier or larger than the houses near.
But for the bell, he would hardly have noticed it for a Church in
approaching: but when he has reached it, there is the porch, and the
little grave-yard, and the spreading yews encircled by the seat of
stones and turf, where the early comers sit and rest, till the bell
calls them in. A little dial on a whitened post in the middle of the
enclosure, tells the time to the neighbours who have no clocks.” Miss
Martineau may undertake to supply all “the neighbours who have no
clock” with that essential article of domestic respectability, for I
can answer for it, there is no house in Seathwaite without one. “Just
outside the wall,” Miss M. says, “is a white cottage, so humble that
the stranger thinks it cannot be the parsonage: yet the climbing roses
and glittering evergreens, and clear lattices, and pure uncracked
walls, look as if it might be.”
I have a good deal to say in connection with this same Church and
Parsonage, but I suppose it must be deferred, for after your long ride
you must be somewhat athirst, and an unromantic feeling of emptiness
most likely renders you insensible to the charms of scenery as well
as sentiment. Your pony, who has been here before, has for sometime
shewn an impatient consciousness of the proximity of Edward Stables’
corn-chest, and, in fair time of day, here you are at the door of
his public, which, though of rather unpromising exterior, has the
wherewithal inside to furnish forth a plain, but plentiful, savoury,
and to a man, in your circumstances, satisfactory feed—
“And here the ale is foaming up,
And genuine is the gin,
And you may take a liberal sup
To cheer your soul within.”
I am not sure that I quote correctly, but you will find that the facts
are correctly given. If it be about the end of the week, you will
probably fall in with my friend Dan Birkett, “t’ heead Captain of
Seeathwaite Tarn-heead Mines,” who will not require much pressing to
take a glass of grog, and whose varied conversation may amuse you,
whilst your ham and eggs are being cooked. Amongst other matters, he
will tell you that, in the Longhouse Close, on the side of Walna Scar,
with which you shall be made acquainted by and bye, are to be seen the
remains of an ancient British town, consisting of the ruins of several
stone-built huts, and a large enclosure, where Dan says they secured
their flocks from the wolves: he also says that they wore no clothes
except a coat, but painted their legs blue, and lived out upon the
bare hill-sides, that they might preserve the bottoms, which were then
covered with wood, for hunting in.
[Sidenote: ANTIQUITIES AND ANECDOTE.]
Whilst you are taking your ease at your Inn, you may note from the yard
thereof a very fine, precipitous and rocky height upon the farther side
of the stream, which it is impossible to pass by unnoticed. It bears
the fine rolling name of Walla-barrow Crag, and, upon its further side,
the remains of a Roman castrum are said to exist, and, though I, when I
made the attempt, was unable to trace them, they may be there for all
that. Looking along the heights to the south of Walla-barrow Crag, you
will be struck with the appearance of trees and
“A field or two of brighter green, or plot
Of tillage-ground, that seemeth like a spot
Of stationary sunshine!”
indicating the situation of a farm called Stoneythwaite, perched like
an eagle’s nest on the summit of the precipice, with some of its fields
upon ledges half-way down.
“The laurel-honouring Laureate” says, respecting this portion of
Duddon vale,—“The _chaotic_ aspect of the scene is well marked by the
expression of a stranger, who strolled out while dinner was preparing,
and, at his return, being asked by his host, “What way he had been
wandering?” replied, “As far as it is _finished_!”
[Sidenote: A SINGLE WORD ON SCENERY.]
The wild is the prevailing characteristic of Seathwaite scenery; and,
at the same time, it is invested with an air of quietness and repose
which prevents its wildness approaching the savage or terrible, though
many distinct parts of it, as well as its general aspect, are fully
entitled to the epithet of sublime.
[Illustration: SEATHWAITE CHAPEL.]
CHAPTER V.
THE REV. ROBERT WALKER—HIS PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND BREEDING—HABITS
OF LIFE—HIS INDUSTRY, ECONOMY, AND HOSPITALITY—HIS WAYS OF
MONEYMAKING—HIS DEATH—DESCRIPTION OF HIS OUTER MAN—COMMENTS—GENERAL
POVERTY OF THE OLD CLERGY—MARY HIRD—HER CHARACTER AND DEATH.
Having fed yourself and seen your pony fed, whilst the latter is
enjoying needful rest, you may return to the Chapel and make a more
deliberate examination thereof than you could do when you lately passed
it on horseback and hungry, and see that you approach that “low, small,
modest house of prayer” with befitting reverence for it, and the ground
of the humble cemetery around it, in the opinion of greater men than
you or I can ever hope to be, are each doubly hallowed, the former
as having been for sixty-six years the scene of the labours, and the
latter as holding “the mortal dust” of the “Wonderful Walker;” and
who, you inquire, was he? and how was he wonderful? I'll tell you all
about him in as few words as possible. The Rev. Robert Walker was the
youngest child in a family of twelve, who were all born to a small
yeoman, at Undercrag, in this dale. He was born in 1709, and being
sickly in boyhood, it was determined, in accordance with very general
custom in such cases, to “breed him a scholar.” His father died when
he was seventeen, and he soon obtained the appointment of parochial
[Sidenote: PREFERMENTS AND PROFITS.] teacher at Gosforth, in
Cumberland. After labouring there, and in the same capacity at
Loweswater for some few years, he was ordained to the living of
Buttermere—the smallest Chapel, and, by no means the largest living, in
England. His income as incumbent of Buttermere, even though eked out by
teaching, being insufficient for his wants, moderate as they were, he
worked hard, when his clerical and pedagogical duties permitted, as a
common country labourer, span, knitted, and acted as private secretary
and scrivener general, and sometimes as marketing agent in sheep,
wool, &c., to all his neighbours. Amongst other modes of raising the
needful whilst at Buttermere, I have been told by one of his Seathwaite
neighbours, that he taught the Buttermerians the art of drawing their
lake and the adjacent lake of Crummock with the draught net, and for
this service he was paid at the extravagant rate of _one halfpenny_ for
every draught they took, whilst he remained amongst them. After this
he obtained the living of Torver, a small Chapelry, under Ulverstone,
situate a mile or two from Conistone down the west side of the lake;
and shortly after that, he attained the great object of his very
natural ambition—the ministry of this his native valley; married a
wife with a fortune of forty pounds, and yet did not allow his strict
habits of economy and industry to slacken. There was no labour too mean
for him to engage in; indeed his daily routine of employment as given
by his trumpeter-in-chief, Mr Wordsworth, is such as few Bishops in
these degenerate days would permit a clergyman to indulge in. Listen to
it—“Eight hours in each day, during five days in the week, and half
of Saturday, except when the labours of husbandry were urgent, he was
occupied in teaching. His seat was within the rails of the altar: the
communion table was his desk; and, like Shenstone's schoolmistress,
the master employed himself at the spinning-wheel, while the children
[Sidenote: A POOR PARSON’S LABOURS.] were repeating their lessons by
his side. Every evening, after school hours, if not more profitably
engaged, he continued the same kind of labour, exchanging, for the
benefit of exercise, the small wheel at which he had sate, for the
large one on which wool is spun, the spinner stepping to and fro.
Thus was the wheel constantly in readiness to prevent the waste of a
moment’s time. Nor was his industry with the pen, when occasion called
for it, less eager. Intrusted with extensive management of public and
private affairs, he acted, in his rustic neighbourhood, as scrivener,
writing out petitions, deeds of conveyance, wills, covenants, &c., with
pecuniary gain to himself and to the great benefit of his employers.
These labours (at all times considerable) at one period of the year,
viz., between Christmas and Candlemas, when money transactions are
settled in this country, were often so intense, that he passed great
part of the night, and sometimes whole nights at his desk. His garden
also was tilled by his own hand; he had a right of pasturage on the
mountains for a few sheep and a couple of cows, which required his
attendance; with this pastoral occupation he joined the labours of
husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to
his own less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which
the cultivation of these fields required was performed by himself. He
also assisted his neighbours in haymaking and shearing their flocks,
and in the performance of this latter service, he was eminently
dexterous.”
For this assistance, he was in the annual habit of levying
contributions upon his near neighbours of hay, and on those more
distant of wool; and there are several yet remaining, who remember
his trudging about the head of the dale with his old white galloway,
collecting the tributary fleeces which were carried home pannier-wise
upon the said galloway’s back.
[Sidenote: ILLUSTRATION OF CHARACTER]
His economy was still more wonderful than his industry, and I have been
told by an eye-witness of a somewhat curious instance of it. He greatly
enjoyed a game at whist on the winter evenings, and in old age when his
sight was dim, he had, when playing, a mould candle lighted and placed
upon a shelf behind him; but it sometimes happened, when more than four
players were present, that the old Parson had to “sit out” in his turn,
and when that was the case, he always carefully extinguished his mould
candle and allowed the rest of the party to find out their trumps as
they best could by the light of the rush dipped in fat, re-lighting his
mould so soon as he cut in again.
He was offered, and it would appear, was, at first, inclined to accept,
the adjoining benefice of Ulpha to hold in conjunction with that of
Seathwaite, for he writes to the Bishop, an unexpected difficulty
having arisen—“If he,” the person who started the difficulty, “had
suggested any such objection before, I should utterly have declined any
attempt to the curacy of Ulpha: indeed I was always apprehensive it
might be disagreeable to my auditory at Seathwaite, as they have always
been accustomed to double duty, and the inhabitants of Ulpha despair of
being able to support a schoolmaster who is not curate there also;” and
again he says that the annexation would cause a general discontent in
both places, and Mr Walker had more sense than to brave such discontent.
His hospitality likewise has been extensively dilated upon, and,
as I think, unnecessarily. Had he been inhospitable, he would have
been unlike his neighbours, for hospitality is even yet a prominent
characteristic of the district; and, moreover, I once took the liberty
of inquiring into the extent and nature of his hospitality at an old
lady who well remembers him, when I found that she was inclined to
give the credit of liberal hospitality to his wife rather than to Mr
Walker, stating that Mrs Walker would occasionally bestow some homely
dainty upon neighbour children, requesting them to conceal it from “t’
maister.”
[Sidenote: HOSPITALITY AND HOSTELRY.]
He supplied messes of broth on Sundays to such of his hearers as came
from a distance, and Mr Wordsworth mentions this as involving an act
of generous self-denial, because to make the requisite supply of
Sunday broth, it would be necessary to boil the whole week’s meat on
that day, reducing the family to the necessity of eating nothing but
cold meat until the next supply of broth was required. This appearance
of self-denial _dis_appears, when we come to know that it is, even
yet, a rule in the domestic economy of old Seathwaite families to
boil sufficient meat to serve several days’ dinners in every Sunday's
broth; and, as has been elsewhere said, though the dried mutton,
oat-bread, fresh butter, and sweet milk so liberally offered to
callers by my hospitable though homely friends in Seathwaite are all
more than excellent, yet is their broth as little tempting a mess as
it has been my fortune to encounter, the “singit sheep’s heid broth”
of a Duddingston public, or the “a la mode soup” of a St. Giles's
eating-house not excepted.
Mr Walker’s biographers and panegyrists omit altogether to mention
a very important means he adopted to help to “bring grist to the
mill,” and that was keeping an ale-house, not a jerry-shop, mind, for
in “Wonderful Walker's” time, his Parsonage was an ordinary country
ale-house, in which the ordinary customs of country ale-houses were
regularly observed. For instance, at certain periods, he held “auld
wife hakes,” or “merry nights,” and such like jollifications, where, as
Anderson sings—
“The bettermer sort sat snug i’ the parlour;
I’ t’ pantry the sweathearters cuttered sae soft;
The dancers they kicked up a stour i’ the kitchen;
At lanter the card-lakers sat i’ the loft.”
[Sidenote: HABITS AND HABILIMENTS.]
I don’t mean that this exact arrangement of guests was religiously
followed at the Seathwaite Parsonage hakes, but such, beyond dispute,
were the staple amusements on these jolly occasions. One custom of
Mr Walker’s public, I should mention as differing from the practice
of its successors; ale, if “drunk on the premises,” was charged
fourpence per quart, but if swallowed outside, on the road or in the
church-yard, only threepence. The ale licence was taken out in the name
of his brother. He refused to have any dealings with Quakers, because,
as I understand the matter, that stiff-necked generation have some
out-of-the-way and inconvenient notions about the propriety of paying
Church dues.
He discharged his clerical duties zealously and faithfully for
sixty-six years at Seathwaite alone, which was his third benefice. He
brought up, educated well and established well in life, a numerous
family, and, in 1802, died universally lamented, at the age of
ninety-three, leaving two thousand pounds and a large quantity of linen
and woollen cloth spun by himself, chiefly within the communion rails,
where he had his seat when engaged in teaching the young intelligences
of the dale to read and write.
The following descriptive sketch of his ordinary dress and occupations
occurs in a letter from Conistone in 1754:—“I found him sitting at the
head of a large square table, such as is commonly used in this country
by the lower class of people, dressed in a coarse blue frock, trimmed
with black-horn buttons; a checked shirt, a leathern strap about his
neck for a stock, a coarse apron, and a pair of great wooden-soled
shoes plated with iron to preserve them (what we call clogs in these
parts), with a child upon his knee, eating his breakfast; his wife, and
the remainder of his children, were some of them engaged in waiting
upon each other, the rest in teazing and spinning wool, at which trade
he is a great proficient; and, moreover, when it is made ready for
sale, he will lay it, by sixteen or thirty-two pounds weight, upon his
back, and on foot, seven or eight miles, will carry it to market, even
in the depth of winter. I was not much surprised at all this, as you
may possibly be, having heard a great deal of it related before. But I
must confess myself astonished with the alacrity and the good humour
that appeared both in the clergyman and his wife, and more so at the
sense and ingenuity of the clergyman himself.”
[Sidenote: COMMENTARY.]
After all, these are but every day wonders and amount to no more than
the bare fact of a resolute, conscientious, and very indigent man,
carrying with him into the Church the stern habits of frugality,
industry, temperance, and self-denial in which he was reared, and
which he doubtless had seen practised in his father’s family from his
earliest childhood. One really might suppose that the Poet Laureate
and the Principal of Saint Bees, his most prominently eulogistic
biographers, are struck with admiring astonishment on discovering such
an assemblage of homely working-day virtues in a clergyman (though very
sorry should I be to insinuate that the cloth deserve the imputation);
for they may see, and must have seen, the same virtues practised,
under circumstances less favourable to their development, amongst the
humble classes of the laity often enough without considering themselves
called upon to say or to think anything about the matter. But, however
that may be, the humble grave of “Wonderful Walker,” chiefly under
the influence of Mr Wordsworth’s writings, has become a shrine before
which many, from great distances, bow annually; and at one of my visits
to Seathwaite I fell in with a much esteemed elderly friend, who,
with a party of ladies, had made an excursion, half pilgrimage, half
pic-nic, to Robert Walker’s tomb and Church, and he declared with much
appearance, and, I doubt not, much reality of feeling, that it gave
him higher gratification to stand by “this low Pile,” and that simple
unadorned place of rest, than he could have derived from a visit to any
scene the most famous in ancient or modern history.
[Sidenote: CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE OLD CLERGY.]
I hope I shall be acquitted of any wish to depreciate the real
excellences of Robert Walker’s character; but I maintain that it
is scarcely just to the bulk of human kind to bestow the title of
“Wonderful” upon an individual who to the frugality, temperance,
integrity, and industry of the class he sprang from, superadded the
piety, purity, and some of the learning of the profession he adopted.
But, as sings the Roman poet—
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi; sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur ignotique longâ
Nocte, _carent quia vate sacro_.
That his poverty was by no means wonderful, the following sketch of
the English Country Clergy of the seventeenth century, from Macaulay’s
history, may suffice to prove, bearing in mind that the circumstances
of the clergy of that date in the more populous parts of the kingdom
were those of the clergy of these remote chapelries far into the
succeeding century. And Southey tells us that the curate of Newlands,
near Keswick, about that time was obliged to add to his income by
exercising the crafts of tailor, clogger, and butter-print maker.
[Sidenote: “A NOBLE PEASANT.”]
Here is Macaulay’s picture:—
“Not one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family
comfortably. As children multiplied and grew, the household of the
priest became more and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more
plainly in the thatch of his Parsonage, and in his single cassock.
Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and
by loading dung-carts, that he could obtain daily bread; nor did
his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his
concordance and his inkstand in execution. It was a white day on which
he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the
servants with cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the
children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys followed the plough;
and his girls went out to service. Study he found impossible; for the
advowson of his living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to
purchase a good theological library; and he might be considered as
unusually lucky, if he had ten or twelve dog-eared volumes among the
pots and pans on his shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might
be expected to rust in so unfavourable a situation.”
And again, to prove that his original class do, in some instances,
possess the virtues specified, I may adduce the case of a neighbour
of Mr Walker's, whose melancholy end caused a wide-spread feeling of
commiseration and regret throughout this and the neighbouring dales;
and I shall quote the account of her given by a gentleman who knew
her well—who frequently stayed in her house when hereabout on fishing
excursions—who, with a hand “open as day to melting charity,” possesses
a heart ready to acknowledge and to sympathize with goodness, whether
it appears in the disposition and the works of peasant, parson, peer,
or prince—
“She was by no means a common character. Left a widow many years
ago, with a young family, by great industry and exertion she brought
them up and settled them in the world in useful and respectable
callings. In the sweet and quiet vale of Duddon, about a quarter of
a mile below the bridge which unites Seathwaite and Ulpha, at an
angular bend of the river, is a deep hole called the ‘Smithy Dub.’
About a stone-throw from this, on the Cumberland side of the river,
behind one of those detached rocks, so characteristic of Duddon
dale, stands a neat and roomy cottage and a garden, well furnished
with bee-hives and flowers. Here she kept a small shop for the sale
of groceries and drapers’ ware, and in due time her eldest son was
fixed in the new smithy, by the river side. With a manner and outside
somewhat plain and countryfied, she had as kind a heart as ever beat
in the human bosom. She appeared almost to keep open house, and gave
away, I should think, more bread and cheese and home-brewed, than is
sold in some public-houses. If you called about hay-time, the well
white-washed house, the fire-place, and all was beautiful to behold:
and in the large grate was an immense thick sod of purple heather,
in full blossom, the prettiest chimney ornament I ever saw. I have
occasionally boarded in that cottage for a week at a time, and never
saw any one applying for relief go away empty-handed. Few indeed, in
a contracted sphere, have been so generally respected; and long will
it be, ere that pleasant valley loses an inhabitant so beloved and
regretted by rich and poor, as was Mary Hird.”
[Sidenote: A SAD STORY.]
I have said that the end of Mary Hird was melancholy, and it may not be
improper, trivial and slight though these lucubrations be, to relate
the circumstances attending it here.
[Sidenote: THE FELLS IN WINTER]
On the afternoon of February the 4th, 1848, she left home in accordance
with an arrangement made with a traveller from Ulverstone, who had
offered to take her over Birker Moor in his gig to Eskdale, where
she wished to visit some relations—the friendly traveller agreeing
to pick her up at a stated hour at the end of the Birker Moor road.
She unfortunately had been too late, and had walked onwards, as was
supposed, under the impression that he was behind and would overtake
her. However that might be, no alarm was felt on her account at home,
until Miss Tyson, the clergyman’s daughter, called at the cottage
on her way from Eskdale, and it then came out that she had not been
seen there, though that was the sixth day after her departure. The
neighbourhood was alarmed instantly, and a long line of willing and
anxious friends, taking the whole breadth of the wild moor before
them, soon discovered her body lying about forty yards from the road,
where, but for the continual misty state of the atmosphere during the
whole week, she must have been discovered days before by people passing
along the road. The lacerated condition of her hands and knees and her
torn dress shewed that the poor old woman, after losing the power of
walking, had struggled onwards, no one knows how far, upon her hands
and knees: she had taken out her spectacles, as it was thought, to
assist her in seeing her way through the bewildering mist; and she
had lost a handkerchief, containing oranges for her grandchildren,
at some distance from the spot where she died. I am well qualified
to speak as to what the poor old creature must have suffered from
the weather, for I had to cross over Walna Scar (which is near two
thousand feet high) twice upon the day she perished, and though I am
tolerably robust, and had the assistance of an active pony, I nearly
sunk under it myself. There had been a heavy snow which, for a day or
two, under the influence of soft weather and showers, had been melting;
the whole country was saturated with wet—“every road was a syke, every
syke a beck, and every beck a river.” The high lands were covered with
a thick, cold, driving, suffocating mist, which every now and then
thinned a little to make way for one of these thorough-bred mountain
showers, of which none can have any conception who have not faced them
on the fells in winter—wetting you to the skin and chilling you to the
marrow in three seconds, and piercing your exposed skin like legions
of needles and pins. The hollows in the road, which are neither few
nor far between, were filled with snow in a state of semifluidity,
cold as if it had been melted with salt, through which I splashed
and struggled, dragging my floundering, jaded pony after me with the
greatest difficulty. Though my road was over a much greater elevation
than Mary Hird's, hers would be nearly as much exposed to the weather
and as completely covered in by the smothering mist; it is therefore
not to be wondered at that, though an active hale old woman, she sank
upon the dreary moor.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PRESENT INCUMBENT OF SEATHWAITE—HIS APPEARANCE, MANNER,
CONVERSATION, AND PREACHING—A CONTRE-TEMPS—CAUSES OF
DEFECTION—UNDERCRAG—“A VALE WITHIN A VALE”—“THE OLD CHURCH CLOCK”—“BAD
CUSTOMS”—COUNTRY VERSUS TOWN—ASCENT OF WALNA SCAR—OLD BRITISH
CAMP?—VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT AND DESCENT OF WALNA SCAR—GAITS WATER AND
DOW CRAGS—RETURN TO CONISTONE.
[Sidenote: AN OBLIGING CICERONE.]
As you loiter about the church-yard, you will be inevitably saluted
by an elderly personage arrayed in an elderly black coat, corduroy
“never-mention-thems” ending at the knees, dark rough yarn stockings,
by way of continuations, and strong country made shoes fastened with
leather whangs. He has the appearance of one with whom the world has
gone smoothly. His double chin, broad convex shoulders, “fair round
belly with” fell mutton “lined,” sturdy, well-developed under-limbs,
and, above all, the cheerful and benevolent expression pervading
his venerable features, all indicate one whose lot in life has been
peaceful, happy, and contented. His outer man would seem to fix his
rank in life very little above the surrounding farmers and yeomen.
His manner is simple, easy, and unaffected, and his style of language
is vastly superior to that of any with whom you have exchanged words
during your Seathwaite expedition. I may as well tell you who and
what he is. Well, then, he is the Rev. Ed. Tyson, and a collateral
descendant of the famous individual I told you so much about in
our last chapter,—was, for a short time, his coadjutor, and, at his
death, succeeded him in the ministry of this romantic chapelry. Ask
him for how long he has watched over the spiritual interests of his
unsophisticated flock, and he will answer “_only_ forty-six years this
time.” The “this time” means that, after acting as Mr Walker’s curate
for some time, he left Seathwaite, and returned at his death in 1802.
Forty-six years added to sixty-six, the duration of Robert Walker's
ministration, gives the sum of one hundred and twelve years, during
which the clerical function has been discharged in Seathwaite by only
two individuals. To this, I fancy, you can scarcely find a parallel! Mr
Tyson will have much pleasure in pointing out what is worthy of note
in and about his chapel; as the pew lined with cloth of “Wonderful
Walker's” own spinning, and again I may say that you will scarcely
find a parallel to this in any English church—a pew lined with cloth
spun by a clergyman! The pulpit is worth looking at on account of its
antiquity, and so is the door of a cupboard beside it, both being of
carved oak, and bearing a date which I forget.
One of the many writers who have chosen the Duddon for their theme,
says that he has seldom witnessed anything so gratifying as the manner
in which Mr Tyson greets his parishioners on a Sunday morning, as he
passes through amongst the assembled groups in the church-yard. He
might have increased his gratification by entering the church, and
hearing the church service read in Mr Tyson's unpretending, but earnest
and even affectionate style, and still more, by staying to hear one of
his plain, practical, and convincing discourses, so perfectly adapted
to the circumstances and understanding of his rustic congregation,
and yet so good in their matter, so impressive in the manner of
their delivery, and so excellent in their diction, composition, and
arrangement of topics, that any congregation, the most polished and
intellectual, might listen to them with the same pleasure and profit,
as that with which they are evidently attended to by the simple-minded
and uncultivated worshippers in Seathwaite. I have latterly made it a
custom to go to Seathwaite once a year to hear Mr Tyson preach, which
custom I mean to keep up, so long as I may be permitted.
[Sidenote: KERNEL NOT HUSK.]
I once witnessed a rather amusing scene occasioned by the plainness
of Mr Tyson’s exterior. I had accompanied a gentleman from London on
an excursion to Seathwaite, and introduced him to Mr Tyson, without
thinking it requisite to mention his position in the parish, and
noticed with some surprise, that whilst the worthy parson, with his
usual ready kindness, was shewing us through the chapel, and pointing
out the remarkables in its vicinity, my companion scarcely treated him
with the consideration due to his rank, character, and profession;
but my surprise increased almost to consternation, when the stranger,
looking over his shoulder to our venerable Cicerone, asked very
abruptly, “but, I say, who _is_ the parson here?” Mr Tyson looked
rather astonished for an instant, but immediately answered, with
some little dignity, “_I_ am the parson, sir—for want of a better.”
The gentleman's hat was off directly, and, with a deep obeisance,
a muttered apology was tendered to what he doubtless thought the
clergyman’s insulted dignity.—“Yes, sir,” continued Mr Tyson, “I am the
parson here, and if you calculated upon finding parsons in these dales
dressed in black silk stockings and broad-cloth breeches, you see you
have been mistaken!”
[Sidenote: A WORD FOR MINERS.]
Miss Martineau says that Mr Tyson will tell the traveller “of the
alteration in the times, and how the Wesleyans have opened a chapel
in Ulpha, which draws away some of the flock; and that others have
ceased to come to church since the attempts to get copper from
the neighbouring hills,—the miners drawing away the people to
diversion on Sundays.” I cannot help thinking that Miss Martineau has
misunderstood the worthy pastor as to this latter cause of diminution
in his congregation. The miners are certainly no more given to Sunday
diversion than the rest of the community, and they have the less excuse
for indulging in amusement on Sunday, inasmuch as they have more time
for week-day recreation than their agricultural compeers. I cannot
observe any difference between the manners and conduct of the miners
and of the other inhabitants of Seathwaite, nor can I understand how
any such difference can be supposed to exist, because all the people
employed in the Seathwaite mines are natives of this or the adjoining
vales—are, in fact, for the most part, sons or brothers of the
small yeomen and farmers, and have taken to mining because it is an
occupation that affords them better earnings for less work, than does
agricultural or pastoral labour, their only other resources.
Bidding adieu to Seathwaite chapel, and to its venerable and obliging
minister, you must return to Newfield for your pony, and set out on
your way back to Conistone. You ride up the dale by the road you
descended for about half a mile or more, and just before you reach the
guide-post, where the road you came by turns off to cross Nettleslack
Bridge, you had better leave the road, passing through a gate on your
right, and following a track through a field for about forty yards, to
take a look at the humble homestead of Undercrag, where Robert Walker
was born. Though the buildings are of the humblest, the situation is
very beautiful, nestling, as its name signifies, at the foot of a high
wall of grey rock nearly perpendicular, but delightfully chequered with
little slopes and irregular shelves of bright green turf. Undercrag
has little about it to attract notice before many of its neighbours;
its only claim to our attention is its being the birth-place of one,
whose homely name has become known wider and farther than has that of
any other native of the lake country, always excepting the name of his
great biographer.
[Sidenote: “A PEACEFUL RETIREMENT.”]
Leave Undercrag, and on regaining the highroad, instead of crossing the
bridge to your left, and so returning upon your track, hold straight
forward, and you soon enter a little circular basin of green fields,
besprinkled with ancient cottages and farms, intersected with stone
walls, and enlivened by two or three sparkling brooklets which meet in
its centre. It reminds you of De Quincey's description of Easedale—“a
chamber within a chamber, or rather a closet within a chamber—a chapel
within a cathedral—a little private oratory within a chapel.” The
houses in this little den are all within the sweep of the eye, and are
easily enumerated; Hollin house, Tongue-house, Beck-house, Long-house,
The Thrang, and—what next? Gibraltar!—each with
“A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground,
Masses of every shape and size that lie
Scattered about beneath the mouldering wall
Of the rough precipice, and some apart,
In quarters unobnoxious to such chance,
As if the moon had rained them down in spite.”
[Sidenote: COURTING CUSTOMS.]
There is a little book bearing the odd title of “The Old Church Clock,”
written by the Rev. Mr Parkinson, canon of Manchester, &c., which,
possibly, you may have read. If you have, you may remark how strangely
inaccurate the amiable author is in his local geography. To take one
instance of many, he represents the sister of his hero to have the
very reprehensible habit of slipping out of the paternal door, after
bed-time, somewhere about the head of Yewdale, as near as I can fix
it, and tripping it deftly over hill and dale, to meet her scamp of
a sweetheart in this little dell. The said sweetheart must have been
a very irresistible, as well as a very unreasonable personage, to
entice a decent man’s daughter to enact the cart going to the horse,
and give him the meeting so far from home—for the distance is little
short of a round dozen of miles—and she is described as taking the
rough, wild road that you have travelled over in this excursion. It is
“rather of the ratherest,” and moreover, though this same custom of
“meeting by night in the shady boreen” may suit a taste so romantic
as that of the reverend author, it is not the custom of the daughters
of these dales, who, with a careful regard for personal comfort and
security from interruption, always have their wooers within the house
after the family retire to rest; and I may quote Anderson, the Cumbrian
bard, in support of the correctness of this statement, premising
that the customs of this portion of Lancashire are, in all respects,
similar to those in Cumberland and Westmorland. He says,—“A Cumbrian
peasant pays his addresses to his sweetheart during the silence and
solemnity of midnight, when every bosom is at rest, except those of
love and sorrow. Anticipating her kindness, he will travel ten or
twelve miles over hills, bogs, moors and mosses, undiscouraged by the
length of the road, the darkness of the night, or the intemperature of
the weather. On reaching her habitation, he gives a gentle tap at the
window of her chamber, at which signal she immediately rises, dresses
herself, and proceeds, with all possible silence, to the door, which
she gently opens, lest a creeking hinge or a barking dog should awaken
the family. * * Next the courtship commences, previously to which the
fire is darkened or extinguished, lest its light should guide to the
window some idle or licentious eye. In this dark and uncomfortable
situation (at least uncomfortable to all but lovers), they remain
till the advance of day,” and so on, concluding with some moralizing
remarks upon this naughty custom, which I do not feel myself called
[Sidenote: THE BALANCE OF MORALITY—WHERE?] upon to repeat. These
“sittings,” which are in constant practice all over these northern
counties, and which, after all, are not so bad as the Scotch and Welsh
sweethearting customs, generally come off on the Saturday nights; and
this practice, which involves the violation of the Sabbath, as well
as the breach of decorum, is unnoticed, or rather winked at, by most
writers who pretend to describe “life and manners” in the Lake country,
such as Wilson, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and, lastly, Mr Parkinson. In
fact, there appears a design amongst that tribe of writers to cry up
the inhabitants of secluded districts such as these, at the expense
of the inhabitants of towns. I am ready to do battle in this cause
under the banner of Miss Martineau, who, in her triumphant answer
to the arguments of those who opposed the introduction of railways
into the Lake district, on the plea, amongst others equally absurd,
that the morality of the people would suffer from contact with the
denizens of towns, who, it was dreaded, would avail themselves in
crowds of the increased facilities of transit, says—“As for the fear
that the innocent rural population will be morally corrupted by
intercourse with people from the towns, we have no apprehension of
this, but are disposed to hope rather than fear certain consequences
from the increased intercourse of the mountaineers with the people
of large towns. We doubt at once the innocence of the one party,
and the specific corruption of the other. Scarcely anything can be
conceived more lifeless, unvaried, and unideal, than the existence
of the dalesmen and their families; and where the intellect is left
so idle and unimproved as among them, the sensual vices are sure to
prevail. These vices rage in the villages and small towns; and probably
no clergyman or justice of the peace will be ever heard speaking of
the rural innocence of the region,—which is, indeed, to be found only
in works of the imagination. The people have their virtues many and
great.”—And so they have! but as to their morals being purer, or their
lives and conversation more innocent than those of the parallel classes
in towns, it is all nonsense. My life has been about equally divided
between town and country, the nature of my occupation has given me
much—I hope not wasted—opportunity in both of noting human nature _en
deshabille_, and I tell you that good and evil in town and country,
in crowded capital and lonely fell-dale, are “much of a muchness.” As
a general rule, you may safely aver that the best educated community,
is also the best behaved, and the standard of education amongst our
mountaineers is by no means a high one.
[Sidenote: RETROSPECT AND RIVULET.]
But quitting this subject, on which one might prose till midnight, you
had better commence the ascent of Walna Scar, and you’d also better
gird up your loins, and make up your mind to encounter a labour of
no ordinary magnitude; but as you rest and look back occasionally,
the view rewards you well for your labour. Mr Wordsworth gives a very
poetical and correct enumeration of the beauties of these prospects,
but the passage has been quoted so often that you must have read it,
and, therefore, though sorely tempted, I shall not give it here now.
Part of Seathwaite beck comes leaping, frothing, and sparkling down a
very rocky channel on your left. I think it is Captain Marryatt who
describes an American river as forming “a staircase of waterfalls;”
you have here this quaint fancy realized on a small scale for nearly
half a mile along the side of your steep fell-road. On the farther
side of this merry companion, is the extensive enclosure in which is
situated Dan Birkett’s Town of “t'auld Ancient Britons.” The following
instructions, furnished to me by a respected clerical friend, who is,
in the ordinary pedestrian acceptation of the phrase, indisputably
a “Wonderful Walker,” sufficed to enable me to find it out, and may
serve your turn now. You will observe that he supposes the instructed
party to be journeying from Conistone towards Seathwaite. “Follow the
cart-road from Walna Scar to Seathwaite, till it meets the brook coming
from the Peat-beds—turn to the right over the brook and wall, and march
at right angles to your former course, upon some thorn trees distant
about 500 yards. If the bogs are impassable, follow the Seathwaite road
to the gate of the road leading to the Peat-beds, and there scramble
over and among rocks to the above-mentioned thorn trees.”
[Sidenote: THE RUINS OF WHAT?]
I visited these remains with a member of the Archæological Association,
and he expressed a decided opinion that they were a genuine antiquity,
but thought they had formed a summer encampment, rather than a Town.
On the other hand, a Seathwaite shepherd assured me that they were
the ruins of a Peat-scale; that is, an erection for storing peats,
until leisure serves to get them brought home. After a good hour’s
climb, I must suppose you safely at the top of Walna Scar, and lost in
admiration at the magnificent prospect you contemplate, when looking
back to the north and west. The hill peering over the high ridge to
your right, is Bowfell, then Great End, and next Scawfell Pikes and
Scawfell, the highest hills in England. Those more distant, and seen
over the western slope of Scawfell, are the Ennerdale hills, with the
Pillar conspicuous amongst them, the scene of the fatal catastrophe in
Wordsworth’s beautiful poem called “The Brothers.” Over the lower range
of hills beyond Seathwaite, you may see the Isle of Man, the hills of
Galloway, and Saint Bees Head, with the broad expanse of sea between
them, glittering like ruddy gold in the red light of the declining
sun. This huge arm of the mountains thrust out, as it seems, to shake
hands with the sea, is Blackcombe, a well known land-mark for sailors.
Under it, to the south, are extended the fertile fields of Millom,
bounded again on the south by Duddon sands, over which the sea
creeps up into the country, converting the bare sands twice every day
into a broad area of water. The rich district of Low Furness divides
the Duddon estuary from Morecambe Bay, which you may contemplate in
all its vastness of extent and irregularity of shore. Stretching along
the eastern horizon, are the hills of Yorkshire, the most conspicuous
of which is Ingleborough. Nearer home, you behold the bright waters of
Windermere, divided into three portions by intervening heights. And
here nearer still, you have nearly the whole six miles of
“Our own dear lake
Beside the ancient Hall,”
with the beautiful valley of the Crake reaching from its foot to the
sea at Greenodd.
[Sidenote: LANDS, WATERS, AND ROCKS.]
[Illustration: GAITS WATER AND DHU CRAGS.]
[Sidenote: DRAWING A FOX.]
You will find the descent of Walna Scar worse than the climb, for, on
the Seathwaite side, the road is good and smooth, but, on the Conistone
side, it is less like a road than a superannuated water-course, and
that not of the “gentlest conditions.” After you have safely descended
the steepest portions, and crossed by a primitive stone bridge over a
brawling brook, pray leave your road for about half a mile, to look at
Gaits Water. You will find it to present a scene of savage desolation
approaching the terrific, and I know nothing equal to it for wildness
in the Lake country. It is an oval Tarn, about half a mile round,
on the eastern side of which the Old Man rears his most rocky and
precipitous side; at the head is a steep, high pass, connecting the
Old Man with Dow, or Dhu Crags, which last rise on its western side,
high, barren, verdureless screes, surmounted by a coronet of tremendous
black rocks, partly mural and partly columnar, of vast altitude, with
rough jagged edges, and bisected here and there with awful-looking
chasms, which, with the _borrans_ formed by the accumulation of huge
fragments of rock along the south-west of the shore, form a favourite
harbour for foxes, against which the shepherds wage a constant war
of extermination. They have an extraordinary method of taking the
fox, when they trace him to one of these rocky hiding-places; they
draw him out with a screw, like a cork from the neck of a bottle.
They have a gigantic cork-screw upon the end of a pole, which they
sometimes succeed in insinuating into poor reynard's _corpus_, and so
ruthlessly screw him to destruction. On the three sides I have pointed
out around Gaits Water, the walls of the dungeon come sheer down to
the water-edge: the fourth is fortified with a grotesquely-piled
accumulation of rocks of enormous size. Altogether, it is a scene
to make a man shudder, and wish himself anywhere else;—so return to
your road, and prick along under the southern slope of the Old Man to
Conistone.
As you approach the village, you have a view of all the vale of
Yewdale, shining sweetly in its _setting_ of dark brown hills and
moors. You reach Church Conistone by an abruptly-descending road, lined
and over-arched by a long grove of flourishing oaks. Of the village
itself, through a portion of which you take your way, we will say more
anon; meantime, your mind’s eye is doubtless gloating upon the good
things awaiting your attack at the Inn.
CHAPTER VII.
THE VILLAGE.
WALK TO THE VILLAGE—BANNOCKSTONE BRIDGE—A WILD LEGEND—THE CHURCH AND
SCHOOLS—INNS—THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER—MRS. ROBINSON—JENKIN SYKE—HAUSE
BANK—PARKGATE—HIGHTHWAITE, &C.
As you will, most probably, be rather stiff, not to say saddle sick,
with your last long and rough ramble, I may calculate upon your being
disposed to make this a short and easy one; so what say you to a
saunter through the village of Church Conistone? You are possibly aware
that there are two Conistones, the designation of each possessing an
ecclesiastical character. The district around the uppermost part of
the lake, and for half a mile down the western shore, and two or three
miles down the eastern, is called Monk Conistone, and forms a part of
the parish of Hawkshead; whilst Church Conistone, lying on the west of
the lake and Yewdale beck, and extending to Torver in one direction and
Fell-foot in another, is a chapelry in the parish of Ulverstone.
The road leading from the Waterhead to the village runs for some
distance along the edge of the lake, and is delightfully shaded with
trees, chiefly oaks. On the right, a single range of extensive level
fields divides it from the finely-wooded Guards hill; on the left, the
wavelets of the lake run upon a gentle grassy slope close up to the
roadside, and, occasionally, in very wet weather, the lake extends its
waters across the road and the fields beyond it, leaving pedestrians no
other choice but wading or walking back.
[Sidenote: THE ROADSIDE.]
Where the road makes a sudden sweep to the right, and leaves the water
side, you may notice the miniature docks and piers where slate, &c.,
are shipped for the lake foot on its way to the sea, and the scene of
the only fatal accident known to have occurred in Conistone lake. The
first houses you approach are the buildings belonging to the Thwaite
farm, sheltering prettily under its wooded eminence, and, adjoining
them, the neat old-fashioned residence, called Thwaite Cottage; a
little further still, occupying a natural terrace on the southern
declivity of the aforesaid eminence, stands Thwaite House, or “The
Thwaite,” which commands a most comprehensive view of the vale, the
village, the mountains and the lake, in one ocular range. Saunter on,
and you soon come to a group of singular-looking buildings—built, a few
years ago, by Mr Marshall—surrounded by pretty flower-gardens which,
in the season, agreeably relieve the dismal effect of the dark blue,
or rather _light black_ stone of which the walls are constructed, with
very little mortar, lest the white should disagree with the character
of the scenery, as Mr Wordsworth avers it does: but the ivy, with its
bright green tapestry, is now rapidly covering the nakedness of these
comfortless-looking walls.
You now come to Yewdale Bridge, and, crossing it, enter Church
Conistone; but here I wish you to turn off the road, and passing
between some houses on your left, walk down the beckside for about
150 yards, and you reach a very primitive-looking bridge, formed of
two huge flags laid upon piers of ancient and substantial mason-work,
and named, with manifest propriety, “Bannockstone bridge.” It was not
this I brought you out of your way to see; but I want you to bestow
especial notice upon a large stone lying in the beck-bottom, just to
the lower side of the bridge. Though it is covered by from two to three
feet of water, Yewdale beck is so pure that you have no difficulty
in discovering that the otherwise flat surface of this stone is
interrupted by a ridge or elevation, some inches in height, occupying
one of its corners, and in the edge of that elevation nearest to you
is the deep, perfect, and unmistakeable imprint of a very large heel.
Convinced, from the time I first noticed it, that some story might be
ferretted out, to account for the production of this large heel-mark, I
took considerable pains, for which I expect your gratitude, to collect
the following facts in explanation of its traditionary origin, and now,
without amplification or comment, I retail them for your satisfaction.
[Sidenote: FRUITS OF REPENTANCE.]
In those pious and enlightened times, when the profession and practice
of witchcraft were so common that very few women could grow old and
ugly, especially if they were also poor, without being suspected of
having sold their immortal part to the Father of evil, a very old woman
whose name has not been preserved, but the certainty of whose commerce
with the devil no one ever doubted, dwelt in a hut upon the point of
land which runs into the lake near the mouth of this brook. After
practising the ordinary routine of a witchwoman’s life for several
years, it is said that, as the time drew near for the fulfilment of
her short-sighted bargain, she was seized with terror and remorse, and
resolved to try whether she might not find a means of nullifying the
agreement and evading payment of the fearful penalty to be exacted
from her in return for the evil power with which her master had endued
her old age; and, with this object, she visited a holy man, one of the
Monks of Saint Mary of Furness, who was stationed at the place now
called Bank Ground, which stands pleasantly upon the opposite side of
the lake. He, when made aware of all the bearings of the case, offered
some hope of redemption from the consequences of her contract, on the
conditions of teetotal abstinence from any future indulgence in the
[Sidenote: A MIRACLE.] evil art, _abnegation_ of the devil, his works
and devices, and a course of penance so severe and protracted, as to
make the penitent witch think the cure almost as bad as the disease;
but concern for “her pore sole,” as Winifred Jenkins pathetically
designates it, determined her to accept of Father Brian’s terms,
provided he could secure her against the power of Satan in the interim.
Being instructed to flee for her life, and to call loudly upon Father
Brian and Saint Herbert for aid, should Beelzebub come, as was likely,
to claim his own before the completion of her saving penance had
rescued her from his dreaded clutches, she returned home, and turned
over a new leaf, beginning to lead a tolerably exemplary life. As might
be expected, the other contracting party was not long in hearing of
this unpardonable breach of faith, and, one evening, he startled his
quondam disciple by making his appearance at the door of her domicile,
when she, remembering the Monk’s instructions, darted through the open
window, and fled, with the speed of light, directly up the course of
this beck, screaming loudly enough for succour as directed. She had
reached the site of this bridge, and her pursuer was just about to lay
his claws upon her, when the Saint, or the Monk, or both heard her, and
the devil’s foot, not the cloven one,—for neither dead Saint nor living
Priest can be supposed to have power over that,—but his other foot, was
set upon that stone, the heel sank into the ridge upon its surface,
and the stone hardening, he was held fast by the heel, and thus, by
the miraculous intervention of the dead Saint or the living Monk—I
cannot learn exactly whether—the penitent witch escaped; and, moreover,
ere the devil was released, Father Brian, being well versed in this
particular line of business, succeeded in obtaining possession of the
document on which the claim upon the old woman’s soul was founded, and
so was able to remit a considerable portion of her heavy penance. The
print, much too large to be produced by any human heel, is, as you
see, still there to testify to the truth of the history I have collated
for your special behoof, and, therefore, I hope that you will readily
recognise its perfect credibility.
[Illustration: CHURCH CONISTONE.]
[Sidenote: “WHERE GOD ERECTS, &c. &c.”]
You will now return to the road, and move on towards the village by the
Crown Inn, a very commodious, respectable, and well-conducted house of
entertainment for man and beast, with unexceptionable accommodation,
and a more than unexceptionable hostess. Immediately beyond it, in a
level green enclosure, having handsome iron rails on one side and low
stone walls on the other, stands an oblong barn-like building, with a
few blunt-arched windows in its dirty yellow walls, and over-topped at
its western extremity by an unsightly black superstructure of rough
stone, which some might call a small square tower badly proportioned,
and others, with apparently equal correctness, the stump of a large
square chimney. The oblong building is the church, and the level
enclosure is the church-yard, in which the almost total absence of
tombstones and the paucity of mounds lead you to the correct inference
that death is rather a rare visitant at Conistone.
If you have any desire to explore the interior of the sacred edifice,
the parish clerk, who, by the bye, is a poet of no mean pretensions,
lives in one of these cottages close at hand, and he will readily open
the doors and admit you. The only objects possessing even the smallest
interest are—first, the antique oak-chest, with its curious padlock,
which stands in the southern entrance, and in which the ancient
parochial records were deposited—and second, a plate of copper fastened
upon the wall over the Conistone Hall pew, engraven upon which in old,
but very legible characters, are the following commemorative notice and
quaint epitaph. You will perceive that there is probably an error in
the dates:—
[Sidenote: CHURCH AND SCHOOLS.]
“To the living memory of Alice Fleming, of Coningston Hall, in the
County Palatine of Lancaster, widow (late wife of William Fleming, of
Coningston Hall aforesaid, Esq., and eldest daughter of Roger Kirkby,
of Kirkby, in the said county, Esq.,) and of John Kirkby, gentleman,
her second brother, was this monument, by her three sorrowful sons,
Sir Daniel Fleming, Knight, Roger Fleming and William Fleming,
gentlemen, to their dear mother and uncle, here erected. The said John
Kirkby (having lived above thirty years with his sister, and having
given to the churches and poor of Kirkby and Coningston the sum of
£150), died a bachelor at Coningston Hall aforesaid, September 23,
A.D., 1680, and was buried near unto this place the next day. And the
said Alice Fleming died also (having outlived her late husband about
27 years, and survived five out of her eight children,) at Coningstone
Hall aforesaid, Feb. 26, 1680, and was buried in this church, close
by her said brother, Feb. 28, 1680; in the same grave where ye Lady
Bold (second wife to John Fleming, Esq., deceased, uncle to ye said W.
Fleming,) had, about 55 years before, been interred.
EPITAPH.
Spectator, stay and view this sacred ground;
See, it contains such love on earth scarce found;
A brother and a sister—and you see
She seeks to find him in mortality.
First he did leave us, then she stayed and tryed
To live without him—liked it not, and died.
Here they ly buried whose religious zeal
Appeared sincere to Prince, Church, Commonweal;
Kind to their kindred, faithful to their friends,
Clear in their lives, and cheerful at their ends.
They both were dear to them, whose good intent
Makes them both live in this one monument.
So dear is sacred love, though th’ outward part
Turn dust, it still shall linger round the heart.”
In the vestry-room there is a library consisting of theological works,
for circulation amongst the parishioners, but judging from the dusty
state of the volumes, old divinity is not a favourite study with the
reading public of Conistone. Leaving the church, you may notice,
flanking the church-yard at two of its corners, a couple of tasteful
little buildings, whose character and use you cannot well mistake. They
are the boys’ and girls’ schools, and have been conducted upon the
Home and Colonial School system, which, during the three or four years
it has been tried here, has given great satisfaction.
[Sidenote: THE BLACK BULL.]
Opposite to the school and to the church gates, stands the Black Bull
Inn, one of that low-browed, old-fashioned, roomy and snug class of
public houses once so numerous in all the rural districts of England,
but now fast disappearing before the sweep of modern improvement, or,
if you like it better, modern innovation—and around whose ample hearths
“the rude forefathers of the hamlet” were wont to muddle their brains,
whilst settling the affairs of the parish, or discussing those of the
country;—
“Where village statesmen talked with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.”
This same Black Bull derives a sort of classical interest from being
the “Howf” where the English Opium-eater took up his quarters, when
he made his two unsuccessful attempts to accept Mr Wordsworth’s
invitation to visit him at Grasmere. You want to know what made the
attempts unsuccessful! Upon my word, I can scarcely tell you; but I
can give you Mr De Quincey’s own account of the matter, as detailed in
his interesting autobiographical sketches in _Tait’s Magazine_:—“My
delay”—in accepting a long-standing invitation—“was due to anything
rather than to waning interest. On the contrary, the real cause of
my delay was the too great profundity, and the increasing profundity
of my interest in this regeneration of our national poetry; and the
increasing awe, in due proportion to the decaying thoughtlessness of
boyhood, which possessed me for the character of its author. So far
from neglecting Wordsworth, it is a fact, (and Professor Wilson who,
without knowing me in those, or for many subsequent years, shared my
feelings towards both the poetry and the poet, has a story of his
own experience somewhat similar to report)—it is a fact, I say, that
twice I had undertaken a long journey expressly for the purpose of
paying my respects to Wordsworth; twice I came so far as the little
rustic inn (at that time the sole inn in the neighbourhood) at Church
Conistone—the village which stands at the north-western angle of
Conistone Water; and on neither occasion could I summon confidence
enough to appear before him. * * * The very image of Wordsworth, as
I pre-figured it to my own planet-struck eye, crushed my faculties
as before Elijah or St. Paul. Twice, as I said, did I advance as far
as the lake of Conistone, which is about eight miles from the church
at Grasmere, and once I absolutely went forward from Conistone to
the very gorge of Hammerscar, from which the whole vale of Grasmere
suddenly breaks upon the view. Catching one glimpse of this loveliest
of landscapes, I retreated like a guilty thing, for fear I might
be surprised by Wordsworth, and then returned faint-heartedly to
Conistone, and so to Oxford _re infectâ_. This was in 1806—and thus
far, from mere excess of nervous distrust in my own powers for
sustaining a conversation with Wordsworth, I had, for nearly five
years, shrunk from a meeting for which, beyond all things under heaven,
I longed. These, the reader will say, were foolish feelings.” Very
possible, indeed, that the reader _may_ say so, Mr De Quincey! more
particularly if he hold with me the opinion that the man who records
his experience of those feelings, is, though inferior in genius,
certainly superior in scholastic acquirements to the object of his
idolatrous awe.
[Sidenote: DE QUINCEY’S IDOLATRY.]
[Sidenote: HISTORY OF A HOSTESS.]
At the period of the English opium-eater’s sojourn at the Black Bull,
its domestic affairs would be under the control of Mrs Robinson,
the eldest daughter of “Wonderful Walker,” and quite as wonderful a
person, in her way, as her more celebrated father. In early life,
she was wooed, won, and privately married by a respectable working
miner named Bamford, who subsequently obtained an appointment as
sub-agent and clerk at the Leadhills Mines, in Dumfriesshire. During
her husband’s protracted last illness, she, having in common with all
Parson Walker’s children, received an excellent education, discharged
his duties as clerk, or accountant, in a manner so satisfactory to the
Mining Managers, that, after his death, she was allowed to continue in
his office and lift his salary, until an alteration in the management
caused her removal. She then returned to her father at Seathwaite
Parsonage, and she continued with him for some time, until her favour
was sought by her second “venture,” Robinson. To his pretensions the
patriarchal pastor was, however, unfavourable, and he kept such strict
watch upon their movements, that they found it impossible to transact
the requisite courtship in a satisfactory manner, until she contrived
to give her lover an impression of the out-door key in _dough_, and
he got a duplicate manufactured therefrom, which admitted him to her
society when “Wonderful Walker” was safe in the land of dreams. At
these stolen meetings, a marriage was arranged, which came off in spite
of all obstacles, and they settled on the farm called Townend, on the
eastern side of Conistone Lake. A simple anecdote I have heard, may
serve to illustrate Mrs Robinson’s shrewd and upright character. One
Sunday afternoon, some Conistone youths crossed the lake, and bought
of her husband a quantity of apples. Some dispute arising as to the
partition of the purchase, it was agreed that Robinson should divide
them. Her quick eye detected him giving a larger share to one than the
rest, when she called out, “Nay, nay, Thomas! if thou will make Tom
Park a present, bring him out some of thy own, but don’t give away other
folks’ apples.” From Townend, they removed to the Black Bull, where she
remained for many years. She discharged the duties of parish officer
in her own turn, and in that of her son-in-law, and the parish books
yet bear testimony to the beauty of her hand-writing, and the accuracy
and clearness of her accounts. She also managed a small woollen mill,
carried on here by the late Mr Gandy, of Kendal; and even in extreme
old age, when bent double by years and infirmity, so that she could
not sit upon a chair without leaning forward upon a table, she would
write for hours with her books upon her knee. Of the Black Bull there
is little more to say, than that mine especial good friend, Mrs Bell,
is, as hostess, in every respect a worthy successor of Mrs Robinson,
and if you choose to place yourself under her care, and don’t feel
comfortable, the fault will not be hers. And, lest you should be misled
and prejudiced by the identity of surname, I should tell you that she
is no connection of “Peter Bell.”
[Sidenote: THE CHURCH-BECK, &c.]
We will leave the examination of that portion of the village to the
north of the Black Bull for another convenient occasion, and you had
better now cross the bridge over the church beck, the waters of which,
from having been used at the mines in the process of dressing copper
ore, present such an appearance as might arise from some thousands of
washerwomen exercising their vocation amongst the hills, and sending
their suds down to the lake. The bed of this beck is fearfully rugged,
and reminds one of the Border stream, the Tarras, of which the old
rhyme says—
“There ne'er was ane drowned in Tarras,
Nor yet in doubt,
For ere his head could win down,
His brains would be out.”
Many years ago, a young miner, who was courting the daughter of a
blacksmith who resided at the mines, got into this beck one dark night
when it was heavily flooded, and his body was found about a quarter
of a mile below this bridge frightfully mangled. At the farther end
of the bridge stands the post-office, and, leaving it to your right,
you may ramble away down the road by Low Houses, Wraysdale Cottage,
and Gateside, and then you come to Mount Cottage, where you must stay
to inspect Mr Barrow's flower-garden, conservatory, shell grotto,
grotesquely sculptured stones, of which nature was the artist, and,
above all, his collection of busts, clerical, phrenological, general
and diabolical.
[Sidenote: “WHITTLE-GATE.”]
Immediately beyond Mount Cottage is a stile where a foot-path leading
to the Hall commences. It is called “Priest’s Stile,” and I have heard
two accounts of the origin of its appellation. First, it is said to
be so called, because a former Incumbent of Conistone died suddenly
whilst crossing it. I prefer the second derivation of the name, because
it affords an opportunity of mentioning a curious ancient custom, as
well as reason good for congratulating ourselves and our clergy upon
the progress of social improvement. In former times, the minister of
Conistone, who was also the parochial schoolmaster, had no fixed home
of his own, but held rights of “Whittlegate” over his chapelry; which
signifies that he was lodged and fed by the different householders,
each in turn, for longer or shorter periods, according to the value of
the several tenements. Conistone Hall being by far the largest property
in the chapelry, was favoured with the poor clergyman’s company, and
had the benefit of his “whittle” much more frequently than any other
residence, and consequently, on his way to and from church and school,
the Priest very often was seen using this stile, and thence arose
its name. The custom of “Whittlegate” is now all but obsolete, and,
I believe, exists only at Wastdale-head, where, I understand, the
schoolmaster is still supported on that uncomfortable system.
[Sidenote: A LONG LINK.]
Rising a short ascent called, no one knows why, Doe How, you soon
reach another cluster of dwellings, named Bowmanstead, the most
prominent amongst which are the Baptists’ Chapel and the Ship Inn;
and beyond them, a row of houses which had its name from a somewhat
odd incident. There was formerly an open ditch, called locally a
syke, across the road here; and once the funeral array of a man named
Jenkin, on the way to Ulverstone, then the only place of interment for
this part of the parish, had got near to Torver, when the mourners
discovered that the coffin had slipped, unobserved, from the “sled”
it was carried upon, and, deeming it unseemly to proceed without it,
they returned, and found it here in the syke, whence the spot is called
“Jenkin Syke” to this day.
You saunter on past the Corn-mill and cottages around it, and down a
short declivity to Hause Bank. An intelligent villager, who has resided
at Hause Bank during the whole of a long life, tells me that the
ancient cottage adjoining the smith’s shop was formerly an ale-house,
and that a neighbour, who died at a great age, when my informant was
a boy, used to relate that he remembered having seen two brothers
of the Fleming family who were staying at the Hall, go in there for
ale, and make a scramble with their change amongst the children round
the door, of whom the relater was one. The names of the brothers, he
stated, were “_Major and Roger_.” This reminiscence is remarkable, and
worthy of record, because, supposing my calculations to be correct,
it connects, by a single life, an individual of our own time with an
officer who fought under the great Duke of Marlborough, and was the son
of a gentleman who was obnoxious to Cromwell’s sequestrators, having to
pay, during the time of the Commonwealth, a large annual fine for his
loyalty. My authority is a condensed history of the Fleming family, on
referring to which I find that “Michael, the sixth son of Sir Daniel
Fleming, was Major in the regiment commanded by the Hon. Col. Stanley,
afterwards Earl of Derby, was in most of the sieges and battles in
Flanders during the reigns of King William and Queen Anne, and was
returned to Parliament for Westmorland in 1706.” I fancy he would be
great-grandfather to the estimable lady who now holds the estates and
honours of her ancient house. The other brother remembered by the old
man would be, as I have reason to believe, Sir Daniel’s eighth son,
Roger Fleming, who entered the church, and became Vicar of Brigham, a
preferment enjoyed at the present day, not by a son of the Knight of
Rydal Hall, but by a son of the Bard of Rydal Mount.
[Sidenote: ONE OF NELSON’S HEROES.]
We have not done yet with Hause Bank, for you should be told that the
old-fashioned house in the fold, surrounded by equally old-fashioned
farm-buildings, was formerly the residence of Lieutenant Oldfield,
R.N., and is still possessed by his widow.
This Mr Oldfield rose from before the mast, and was made Lieutenant by
Nelson himself, as a reward for very important service rendered on a
critical occasion—that of piloting the fleet through an intricate and
dangerous navigation at the entrance of the Baltic, previous to
——“the glorious day’s renown
When to battle fierce came forth
All the might of Denmark’s crown.”
The Danes had lifted all the buoys, and taken other measures to place
difficulties in the way of the British fleet gaining the anchorage
off Copenhagen, and no other man but Oldfield was to be found in the
whole fleet, who would undertake a pilot’s responsibility under such
circumstances.
[Sidenote: A QUOTATION.]
Leaving Hause Bank, you next pass “Piper-hole,” and soon after reach
Park-gate, the farthest houses in the village in this direction. Then
take the narrow road to your right, past the pretty farm of Outrake,
and following it for a steep half mile, it brings you out upon the
table-land high above the village, where stands the ancient hamlet of
Highthwaite, called here “Heethat,” and from which you have a grand
view of the Lake and the vales of Conistone and Yewdale. Descending by
another steep lane, you arrive at another cluster of very comfortable
cottages called Cat-bank, formerly Catherine Bank, upon the brow
beyond which stands a recently-built row of ten cottages, with large
well-tilled gardens in front.
Taking the foot-path behind these, whence the natural panorama of
the dale and village appears to vary at every few steps, you pass
one or two small groups of houses, and arrive at the steep road you
descended in returning from Seathwaite. The old-fashioned farm-houses
and cottages adjoining, which are shaded by a straggling regiment
of magnificent Scotch firs, are called Dixon-ground; and from the
flat in front of the higher farm, the whole of the upper portion of
Conistone lies spread out beneath you, and beautiful it looks; “here a
scattering, and there a clustering, as in the starry heavens.” But as
you walk down this lane, I'll tell you how Father West describes the
Conistone of nearly a century back; “the village of Conistone,” says
he, “consists of scattered houses; many of them have a most romantic
appearance, owing to the ground they stand on being extremely steep.
Some are snow-white, others grey; some stand forth on bold eminences at
the head of green enclosures, backed with steep woods; some are pitched
on sweet declivities, and seem hanging in the air; others, again, are
on a level with the lake; they are all neatly covered with blue slate,
the produce of the mountains, and beautified with ornamental yews,
hollies, and tall pines or firs. This is a charming scene, when the
morning sun tinges all with a variety of tints. In the point of beauty
and centre of perspective, a white house, under a hanging wood, gives
life to this picture. Here a range of dark rugged rocks rises abruptly,
and deeply contrasts with the transparent surface of the lake, and the
stripe of verdure that skirts their feet.
* * * * *
The hanging woods, waving enclosures, and airy sites are elegant,
beautiful, and picturesque; and the whole may be seen with ease and
pleasure.”
[Sidenote: “GOOD BYE FOR THE PRESENT.”]
I need not tell you that Conistone is greatly altered since then, but
it is for the better. It has lost none of its old beauties, and it has
gained many new ones. But here we are again at the central point of the
village, the Church bridge; and if you are as tired of rambling as I am
of raving, you will be exceedingly glad when I bid you good bye for the
present.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE COPPER MINES.
Perchance you now feel no insurmountable objection to visiting and
inspecting the grand source of the prosperity of Conistone—the copper
mines to wit.
Miss Martineau tells you that—“The traveller should see the copper
works at Conistone (if he can obtain leave,) both for their own sake,
and for the opportunity it gives him of observing the people engaged
there, and because they lie in his way to the tarns on Conistone Old
Man, and to the summit of the mountain itself.” Should you happen
to know this very eminent and excellent writer, pray tell her that
she might have omitted the parenthesis which insinuates that leave
to inspect the mines is sometimes refused; for I assure you and her,
that such leave has never been refused during the reign of the present
liberal and enlightened manager, and that has lasted upwards of twenty
years, and will, I earnestly hope, last for upwards of twenty more. You
will find that you have nothing to do but walk up to the office like
a gentleman, as you are, (if you be not a lady,) send in your card,
state your wishes, and you will not only obtain the wished permission,
but the offer of a proper equipment, and candles, and be directed to a
competent guide and cicerone.
Very well, then; you may follow the same route you took at the
commencement of your last ramble—that is to say, along the Lake side,
by the slate-quays, over Yewdale Bridge, past the Church to the Black
Bull, the end of which you pass, and soon come to a wooden bridge
connecting the road with a number of cottages arranged in the form of
an irregular square with a tail to it, and called “the Forge.”
[Sidenote: WAY TO THE MINES.]
As you saunter on towards the hills, you arrive at a huge inelegant
building of three high stories, formerly a corn-mill, but now converted
into eight roomy dwelling-houses, and a large public room. Immediately
above this old corn-mill, on a gentle acclivity at the apex of the
fertile triangular plain of Church Conistone, so close to the fells
as to be almost overhung by them, and surrounded by richly-decorated
grounds, stands Holy-wath, the residence of one to whom Conistone is
mainly indebted for the prosperity she has for so many years enjoyed.
Those interested in planting operations, especially in _trans_planting
“adult trees,” may here see numerous examples of success in that
difficult art; for all these large healthy trees in the grounds of
Holy-wath were transplanted by Mr Barratt, some few years ago, from
beyond the lake.
The neat cottages beyond, smiling over the beauty below them, are
called 'Boon Beck, and, like nine-tenths of the houses you have seen,
are inhabited by miners. Pass through the Fell-gate, taking the road to
the right, and a pretty stiff pull you will find it.
[Sidenote: GHYLL AND FALLS.]
On the upper side of the road, you have a steep fell-side consisting
of grey rock, alternating with green pasturage, and on the lower a
high and dry stone wall, and when you come to a gate therein, you may
rest, and look over, or through it, at the dale and village from a new
point of view. It is “devoutly to be wished” that, when wearied in
the up-hill journey through life, we may always find a resting-place
pleasant as this. You are, of course, delighted, for the beauty of
Conistone is of that sterling character that, from whatever direction
you gain a peep at it, you are struck with renewed admiration, and
you are always inclined to fancy that it is seen to most advantage
from the place whence you then happen to be looking. But all earthly
delights must end, and you must not stand all day gazing so eagerly
at the landscape through the gate—reminding one of a hungry monkey
eyeing gingerbread nuts through the bars of his cage. So resume your
walk, and when the wall terminates, you have in its place a deep
rugged ravine, with the soap-_suddy_ beck brawling and foaming along
its jagged course at the bottom. And here the lover’s leap might
commodiously be perpetrated, as one of Mr George Robins’ advertisements
said in its enumeration of the attractions of a property he had to
sell hereabouts some years ago. But you had better, if you contemplate
such an exploit, defer the execution of it, until once I have shown
you all that is worth seeing around this same Conistone; and then, if
you still wish to quit a world containing a locality so beautiful,
why, the sooner such an insensate animal makes his exit, the better
for all parties concerned. About half way up the ghyll, you come to
a waterfall of about forty feet, where the water, being much broken
by the inequalities above, and upon the broad ledge it falls from,
spreads out like a huge white apron _gathered_ a little at the waist.
A hundred yards higher is another fall, and, higher still, a third,
where the stream is split into three by two sharp projecting rocks,
and, about half way down, falls upon a sort of “slantindicular” shelf,
whence, white as butter-milk, it makes a second fall at right angles
to the first, and forms altogether a highly interesting subject of
contemplation.
[Sidenote: CHRONOLOGICAL DATA.]
And now, occupying the upper end of an oblong basin amongst the hills,
you see “a little town” of sheds, offices, workshops, and water-wheels,
which, with the constant clatter of the machinery issuing therefrom,
presents a most extraordinary contrast to the silence and solitude
of the surrounding wilderness. These are the works belonging to the
Copper Mines, which Copper Mines were in existence when Christianity
was not, for there is good reason to believe that copper was wrought
here, and that extensively, by the Romans during their first occupation
of the country, and also by the Britons before them. In support of this
supposition, I beg to offer an extract, bearing upon the subject, from
that very grave and erudite work, Mr A'Beckett’s History of England.
“Before quitting the subject of Cæsar’s invasion, it may be interesting
to the reader to know something of the weapons with which the early
Britons attempted to defend themselves. Their swords were made of
copper, and generally bent with the first blow, which must have greatly
straitened their aggressive resources, for the swords thus followed
their own bent, instead of carrying out the intention of the persons
using them. This provoking pliancy of material must often have made
the soldier as ill-tempered as his weapon.” Since those remote days,
these mines have never been entirely deserted, save for a few years
during the rumpus kicked up by Oliver Cromwell and his compatriots, at
which period of our national history, lead and cold iron being more
in request than “sounding brass and tinkling cymbals,” they were shut
up; but on the restoration of tranquillity and of “that sad scamp, the
Merry Monarch,” operations were resumed, and continued with varying
energy and success until the advent of the present management. At
that period there were only two or three miners employed, but since
then, matters have been very different. The mines have been rapidly
increasing in extent and prosperity; they now employ several hundred
people, and are become a splendid property to the present enterprising
company.
[Sidenote: MINING—OLD AND MODERN.]
It is worthy of being remarked, that, in the early ages, the mode
of obtaining the ore, which is generally found in veins, or lodes,
intermingled with quartz, and surrounded by very hard rock, was similar
to that which the Roman historians say was adopted by Hannibal to
smooth his passage over the Alps; that is, they kindled large fires
upon the veins, and, having heated the stone as much as possible,
poured water upon it, (the Carthaginians used vinegar,) which, by
the sudden and copious abstraction of caloric, caused it to crack,
or burst, and so rendered a circumscribed portion workable by their
rude implements, some of which—small quadrangular iron wedges, with a
hole at the thick end for the insertion of a handle—have been recently
found in the very old workings. The invention of gunpowder and its
application to blasting purposes, have, of course, for ages, superseded
this primitive _modus operandi_;
And now these rock-built hills are hourly “shaken
By thy humane discovery, _Friar Bacon_!”
Some of the operations are carried on by what are called
“tribute-workers,” the workmen receiving a certain proportion of what
they raise, and, when fortunate, some of them realize large sums under
this system; but the greater part by far of the underground work is
done by bargain, some man, or, more frequently, men, undertaking
to excavate a given number of fathoms in a certain locality and
in an assigned direction, for so much per fathom; the results of
their labours being brought out along the levels by waggons, and by
“kibbles”—a sort of large strong bucket—up the shafts. If you happen to
be fresh from College, it may be necessary to inform you that a level
means a horizontal, and a shaft a perpendicular excavation.
High up the mountain side, you may notice a solitary water-wheel which,
from having nothing near it visible from below, appears to be spinning
away like a child's toy mill, without aim or object. It is at the top
of the main shaft, and is employed in hoisting those kibbles and water
to the horse level.
[Sidenote: THE HORSE LEVEL.]
And now having arrived at the works, before examining the details of
the dressing process, suppose you take a subterranean ramble, and
see how and where the ore is obtained, and to do that comfortably,
it were well to borrow some regular mining habiliments to save your
clothes;—the gentlemen below stairs will excuse your appearing amongst
them in full dress.
It will be wise to select the oldest and most extensive part of the
mines for exploration, and _it_ is that most to the east; so, when you
are properly equipped, and have procured candles and a guide, proceed
at once to the horse level mouth, light your candles, open the door and
walk in, and as you proceed, it were well, once in a way, to take a
lesson from your respectable fellow-biped the goose, who, I have been
told, always lowers his head when entering even the highest doors; for
if you disdain the Saviour of the Capitol’s example, you will hardly
save your own capital, the arch of living rock beneath which you travel
being too low for even a little man to walk with an erect front. When
you have progressed thus with your crest lowered for some distance, you
may straight your back and look up, for you are under the “Cobbler’s
hole,” a tremendous chasm, from which a vein of copper, extending to
above the water-wheel you saw on the hill-side, has been wrought, and
when you are advanced about a quarter of a mile into the level, you
are at the side of the shaft which reaches from the said water-wheel
through all the workings down to the deepest level; and by which the
kibbles containing the ore are hoisted a few fathoms above your head,
and there emptied into a large hopper, the mouth of which is six or
seven feet above the level, and under it the waggons are run to be
loaden.
[Sidenote: VISIT TO THE INTERIOR.]
If you are determined to descend the shaft, it must be by a series
of ladders, with wooden sides and iron steps, and you come upon a
platform, or “landing,” at every few fathoms. Diverging occasionally
from, but generally following the line of the shaft, you pass several
old “bunnins”—I am not sure about the orthography, but the derivation
is, I fancy, from _bound in_—which are short logs of wood jammed
between the opposite walls of rock for the miners to stand upon when
working in such situations. As you proceed on your perilous journey,
you must not allow the thundering echoes of the distant blast, or the
astounding rattle of the rapidly descending kibble and its chain,
to deprive you of your presence of mind, else you are “but a dead”
tourist. But supposing that you carry your senses along with you,
and are resolved to stop at nothing short of the deep workings, you
continue, sometimes crawling down the ladders, and sometimes stepping
cautiously across the landings, and pass several levels in your
descent—viz., one twenty fathoms down, one thirty-five, one fifty, and
at length you arrive at the seventy fathom, when you are some where
about the level of the village, or about 420 feet below the place
where you commenced your underground knight errantry—or, again, about
640 feet below the top of the shaft. There is, “at the lowest depth a
lower still,” some twenty fathoms below this another working called
“the ninety;” but you are already deep enough for any useful purpose.
Moving a short way onwards, you come in sight of two men working upon
a “bunnin,” and looking, according to your notion, very much like
inhabitants of a still lower region, the darkness being made barely
visible by a couple of twinkling candles plastered against the rock
with clay. Their attitudes are somewhat picturesque, as they hold up
and turn the jumper with the left hand, whilst they keep driving it
into the flinty rock by an incessant rapping with a hammer held in
[Sidenote: BORING AND BLASTING.] the right. Having bored their holes
to a sufficient depth, they proceed to clear them out with an iron
instrument something like a yard-long needle, with its point bent
and flattened—first scraping out the borings or fragments of stone,
with the point, and then drying the hole with a small wisp of straw,
or dried grass, drawn through the eye, and worked up and down in the
hole until all moisture is completely mopped up. They then fill a tin
tube with gunpowder, and conveying it into the hole, withdraw the tube
and leave the hole filled to one-third, or one-half its depth with
the powder. Having corked down, by way of wadding, the wisp used in
drying, and carefully cleaned away any stray grains of powder which may
possibly adhere to the sides, they next thrust a long sharpened rod of
copper, called a “pricker,” down one side into the powder, and pass an
iron “stemmer,” or ramrod, grooved on one side to fit the pricker, to
feel whether it work easily, which it will not do, if the pricker be
improperly inserted. They then beat in with the stemmer a quantity of
soft rotten stone, called “stemming,” sufficient to fill up the hole,
finishing off with a little clay, and commence the withdrawal of the
pricker, an operation of some nicety. Having got it out, they pass down
the hole it leaves a long straw filled with powder, having a piece of
match-paper attached to its outer extremity; and having secured their
tools, and uttered two or three indescribable warning shouts, the
precise sound of which it is difficult to realize, but which consist of
the monosyllable “fire,” they ignite the touch-paper and immediately
retire to a respectful distance, and you had better retire with them,
to await the report, which, when it does occur, will be pretty likely
to make you jump an inch or two out of your skin. Returning to their
working, they note carefully the effects of the blast, and breaking
up the larger fragments, and beating down any loose pieces that may
hang about the sides, they select a suitable “lofe,” and recommence
boring. About three blasts in this hard rock is considered a fair
day's work, the men working eight hours a day in shifts—which does not
mean that they array themselves in chemises to work in, but that they
are relieved, or shifted, at the end of eight hours, by other workmen
taking their places.
[Sidenote: RETURN TO DAYLIGHT.]
And now having visited the depths of the mines, and witnessed the most
important, as well as the most common of the underground operations,
and, moreover, being almost “scomfished” with the powder smoke, you are
anxious to return to the blessed light of day, and “Heaven's untainted
breath,” and may clamber up the interminable ladders you descended by.
What you have seen, of course, conveys no adequate idea of the extent
of the mines, for these hills are almost honey-combed by levels and
other workings; but you have seen enough to show you the nature of
copper mining. It is rather extraordinary that the mines, even in their
deepest parts, are infested by myriads of rats, and why they harbour
there, or what they get to eat, would require a longer head than mine
to discover.
It says much for the excellent arrangements on the part of the
management, that, notwithstanding the dangerous nature of the work,
and the number of hands employed, serious accidents are of very rare
occurrence; and when they do occur, they are almost always the result
of negligence, frequently involving disobedience of orders, on the
part of the sufferer. However, one of the most melancholy that has yet
occurred, was purely accidental, and I may relate it as a sad episode
in mining life. A father and son—Irishmen—named Redmond, were employed
at the foot of a shaft, “filling kibbles.” The father’s kibble had
descended, and he had unhooked the chain, handed it to his son to
attach to _his_ kibble, which was full, and commenced refilling, when
his attention was attracted by a cry, and, starting round, he saw his
son carried with the kibble rapidly up the dark shaft. He called to
him to hold on by the bucket, but that was considered hopeless by the
workmen about, because the shaft is tortuous, and the sides very rugged
and uneven. A very short time shewed that they were correct, for the
unfortunate youth's body was heard tumbling down the shaft. The old man
placed himself below, stretching out his arms to catch the body as it
fell, and was with difficulty dragged from the position where he would
have shared the fate of his son, whose mangled body fell close to his
feet.
[Sidenote: ANECDOTES GRAVE AND GAY.]
Another story of a different character connected with kibble-filling,
I may tell you by way of relief to the above sad narrative. A man
was employed in this department, who had seen better days, and whose
thoughtlessness or ill luck had reduced him to labour thus for his
daily bread, but whose humour and ready wit were by no means impaired
by his fallen fortunes. One of the agents observing some small stones
falling down the shaft, said, “Take care—or you'll have your brains
knocked out!” He continued his work, replying coolly, “If I’d ever had
any brains, Captain, I shouldn’t have been here!”
[Sidenote: PROCESS OF SEPARATION.]
And now, having safely returned to this every-day world, you may
examine the processes through which the ore has to pass, before it is
fit for the market, for, unlike most other mining, one-half of the
work is not done when it is brought above ground. Well, first, you
perceive, it is thrown from the waggons into a heap, where water runs
over it, and by cleaning the lumps, shews more plainly what each piece
is _made of_. Then from the heap it is raked by men to a platform,
or long low bench, along which a number of little boys are actively
engaged in picking or separating the richer pieces from the poorer,
and it is highly amusing to watch the expertness and celerity with
which the imps make the selection, and toss each lump into its proper
receptacle. The richest portion is carried at once to the crushing
mill, the poorer is thrown into another shed below, to be broken up
and further picked, and the mere stones are wheeled off to the rubbish
heap. The ore being broken small is thrown into the crushing mill,
and passed once or twice through it, being returned to the mill by
an endless chain of iron buckets, which dip into the heap of crushed
ore below, and, carrying it up, empty themselves into the mill. When
ground to the size of coarse sand, the ore is carried to the “jigging
troughs,” which are large square boxes, filled with water, and having
each a smaller box, with a grated bottom, suspended in it from a beam
above, and filled with ore, a “jigging” motion being imparted to the
grated boxes by water-power. This jigging under water causes the grains
of pure ore, which are heavy, to sink and pass through the grating of
the inner box, and the particles of spar and rock, which are lighter,
to rise to the top, whence they are scooped off and wheeled away to
undergo another pounding and washing. The pounding is effected by means
of two long rows of stamps or heavy iron-shod pestles, kept incessantly
rising and falling in beds fronted with perforated iron plates, and fed
with the material, and a flow of water to wash it, when fine enough,
through the holed plate. It is, after that, collected to go through the
process of “buddling,” which consists of laying it on slanting shelves,
at the head of long wooden troughs, also slanting longitudinally, and
a limited stream of water being allowed to run through it and wash it
slowly off the shelves and down the inclining troughs, the heavier and
valuable portion remains at the head, whilst the lighter and worthless
portion is washed down to the lower end. All the waste water used in
any of the dressing processes is made to flow through a series of large
tanks or reservoirs, in which it deposits all the fine particles of
ore that may be floating away, and from these tanks some thousands of
pounds' worth of ore is collected annually in the form of slime, and
looking like bronze, which with all the other ore is shipped to Swansea
to be smelted.
[Sidenote: ANOTHER WORD FOR MINERS.]
An impression is general that the people employed here are more than
ordinarily “ignorant and profligate.” Nothing could be farther from
the truth than such a supposition. They, doubtless, have their share
of the failings of human nature, and many enjoy themselves rather
freely at the month’s end, when they receive their pay, but open or
obtrusive profligacy is very rare, and their ignorance is certainly not
so general as that of the pastoral and agricultural population around
them. And I maintain that, in kindness to each other, in the proper
discharge of the duties of domestic life, in demonstrative respect for
those above them, in real civility to strangers, though accompanied
perhaps, in some instances, by gruffness of manner, the mining
population of Conistone are not to be surpassed by any other of equal
numbers in the world, and are certainly not equalled by any that I have
been amongst.
I have now nothing more to say about either mines or miners, but leave
you to divest yourself of your miners' habiliments, and cleanse your
fingers from the candle grease at your leisure.
CHAPTER IX.
THE OLD MAN.
ASCENT FROM THE MINES—THE KERNEL CRAG RAVENS—PADDY' END AND
SIMON’ NICK—LEVERSWATER, &C.— THE SUMMIT—“OLD MAN,” UNDE
DERIVATUR—ENUMERATION OF OBJECTS SEEN FROM THE SUMMIT—MOUNTAIN AND
MERE—DALE AND DOWN—SEA AND SHORE—TOWER AND TOWN—THE DESCENT.
It were well now to delay no longer the favourite and finest of all
Conistonian excursions; therefore again gird your loins with strength,
and prepare to ascend the Old Man. For that purpose, I think the
pleasantest, though not the nearest route is directly past the Mines;
so, leaving on your right the works you have been inspecting, you
take a very rough and very steep cart-road winding its weary way up
the mountain, and pass between another more elevated and more recent
range of works and workings styled Paddy'-end—after the discoverer of
the richness of the veins in that direction—and a high precipice of
solid stone called Kernel Crag. On this crag, probably for ages, a pair
of ravens have annually had their nest, and though their young have
again and again been destroyed by the shepherds, they always return
to this favourite spot; and frequently, when one of the parents has
been shot in the brooding season, the survivor has immediately been
provided with another helpmate; and, what is still more extraordinary,
and beautifully and literally illustrative of a certain impressive
scripture passage—it happened, a year or two since, that both the
parent birds were shot, whilst the nest was full of unfledged young,
and their duties were immediately undertaken by a couple of strange
ravens, who attended assiduously to the wants of the orphan brood,
until they were fit to forage for themselves.
[Sidenote: FATAL INDISCRETION.]
In the face of the precipice to the left, over Paddy'-end, you may
note a nearly perpendicular fissure, or niche. It is called Simon’
nick, also after the discoverer, and thereby hangs a tale. The said
Simon, to the great mystification, and greater mortification of his
compeers, succeeded in obtaining large quantities of rich ore from
this nick, wherein no one but himself could discover any indications
of it. They were all, of course, very curious and anxious to fathom
this mystery, but they could make nothing of it. Simon resisted all
enquiries, direct or insidious, till one unfortunate night when, “hot
with the Tuscan grape,” or, to express it less poetically, the Black
Bull malt, he divulged the fatal secret that he owed his mysterious
and envied success to the co-operation of the Fairies. For this breach
of confidence, he received condign punishment, for he never again
fell in with anything worth working; and becoming reckless from the
consequences of his own indiscretion, he abandoned all caution in his
perilous operations, and the charge in one of the holes he had prepared
for blasting exploding prematurely, Simon paid the penalty of his
imprudence with his life.
Still toiling upwards, you soon attain the edge or lip of the basin
containing Leverswater, one of the finest of our mountain lakelets,
nearly circular in shape, surrounded by very steep grassy slopes
and magnificent rocky precipices, and measuring upwards of a mile
in circumference. Were Mr Wordsworth here, he might again make the
bewailing inquiry—
“Is there _no_ spot of English ground secure
From rash assault?”
for you may observe that even this lonely tarn is rendered subservient
to purposes of “sordid industry” (I feel spiteful at that phrase)
by having its waters dammed up, so as to form it into a mere vulgar
reservoir of water for the dozen or two of water-wheels at the works
below. And, moreover, as you follow the path along the southern verge
of Leverswater, under the noble offset from the Old Man, called
Brimfell, you fall in with very plain indications that mining is
pursued, and that vigorously, even up here. In one of these levels
very rich ore has been found, including, in minute quantities, copper
in a malleable state, which, if I am correctly informed, is the only
instance of native malleable copper being found in Britain.
[Sidenote: A STIFF PULL.]
You wend your way along a very uneven path on the hill-side to the west
of Leverswater, and when you arrive at a point about opposite to that
on which you approached it, and nearly under a precipice called Oukrigg
(Wool-crag?) you take the very steep ascent to your left, and follow
up a small water-course, until you observe more on your left a fine
dell dished, as it were, out of the hill-side, and thickly dotted with
sheep. It is called the Gillcove, because, from time immemorial, the
sheep belonging to a farm in the village called the Gill (or Ghyll),
have been depastured upon it. You traverse this same cove, and rise
over the shoulder of Brimfell, regularly gaining upon the mountain; but
the ascent becomes dismally laborious here, so much so, that you are
fain to lie down to recover breath, and whilst doing so, what say you
to a little familiar chat with the Old Man himself?—Listen!
Old Man! Old Man!!—Your sides are _brant_,
And dreadfully hard to climb;
My strength fails fast, and my breath is scant,
So I'll e'en rest here and rhyme.
“Yea, my slopes are steep and my dells are deep,
And my broad bald brow is high,
And you'll ne'er, should you rhyme till the limit of time,
Find worthier theme than I!
“My summit I shroud in the weltering cloud,
And I laugh at the tempest’s din;
I am girdled about with stout rock without,
And I've countless wealth within.
“My silence is broke by the raven’s croak,
And the bark of the mountain fox;
And mine echoes awake to the brown glead’s shriek,
As he floats past my hoary rocks.”
Old Man! Old Man! many an age
Has glided away while you've stood,
And much has been graven on history’s page,
Since your summit was laved by the flood.
“Yea, nations are dead and centuries fled,
Whilst here, like a trusty guard,
O'er mine own sweet vale, braving thunder and gale,
I have held close watch and ward.
“And many a change, portentous and strange,
Hath swept o'er this change-loving earth;
Yet here do I stand, and I frown o'er the land
With the aspect I wore at my birth.”
[Sidenote: THE PINNACLE.]
There! you perceive Shakspere is correct as ever when he says we may
find sermons in stones, and I trust you will profit by the Old Man’s
homily.
Resuming your clamber, you, by and bye, come out upon the high narrow
ridge connecting the Old Man with the fells behind him. It is now all
plane sailing, and you soon arrive at the pinnacle, or pillar, or pile
of stones upon the mountain’s “very topmost towering height,” which is,
according to the best authority, 2,632 feet above the sea.
[Sidenote: THE OLD MAN’S GODFATHERS.]
In the place of this solid erection there stood, a few years ago, an
externally similar, though larger pile containing a chamber, which
formed a welcome shelter to such shepherds and tourists as happened
to be overtaken on the mountain by bad weather. This chambered pile
was pulled down by certain officers employed on the trigonometrical
survey, or rather by their orders; and, by the bye, I have heard that
the labourer who undertook the demolition had five pounds for the job,
and earned the satisfactory wages of somewhere near one pound per hour
by it. Be this as it may, those gentlemen ought, when they restored the
erection, to have made the new equal in all respects to the old one,
instead of giving us a pile inferior both in its useful and ornamental
attributes. Any erection of this description on a hill-top being
locally called a “man,” this is said by certain shallow etymologists to
give the _Old_ Man his name, as though a mountain of his respectability
would stand unchristened, until somebody, like the “three rosy-cheeked
school-boys, the tallest not more than the height of a counsellor’s
bag,” in the Laureate's poem on “Perseverance” (I believe), undertook
and completed the task of rearing a pile of stones upon his vertex.
The Rev. W. Ford, who has written one of the many “Guides to the
Lakes,” says there are three piles on the mountain top—“the Old Man,
his wife, and son,” thereby inferring that the name of the hill bears
some allusion to the featherless biped of similar designation. This is
certainly wide of the mark, but there are two reasonable derivations
of this mountain’s quaint appellative, and both are probably correct.
Some say the name comes from two British or Saxon words _Alt_, high,
and _Maen_, crag or rocky hill, which pretty well describe the Old Man.
Others say that the same Roman soldiery who called their beautiful
station at the head of Windermere _Amabilis Situs_ (since degenerated
into Ambleside), called this hill _Altus Mons_, which, by a natural
metonomy, gradually became _Auld Man_, for, be it remembered, the
natives of this immediate vicinage, even at the present day, pronounce
_old_ in the Scotch fashion.
[Sidenote: “KINDRED HILLS.”]
The view from this same Old Man is, in my opinion, and in that of many
others, unequalled in England; and though, on the north and east, the
prospect is somewhat limited by its kindred hills, they are hills such
as you would not have removed, if you could, even to enlarge the
prospect, for they comprise all the English mountains worthy of notice,
and, in other directions, some of those of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
Commencing here at the south-west, you have Blackcombe, which is not
seen to very great advantage, in as much as you are looking down upon
it, a mode of inspection which you must know to be unfavourable to the
dignity of either mountain or man.
Near to it is a tarn called Devock Water, which contains trout of
peculiarly excellent quality, traditionally said to have been imported
by the Monks of Furness from Italy, and it fully supports the character
of those holy men as judges of good living, for no one should say he
has eaten trout, till once he has tasted those of Devock Water. The
next hill of any mark is Birksfell, which is a striking object, not
so much on account of its altitude—for that is no great matter—as its
isolated position and conical shape. Then you see Scawfell and the
Pikes, followed up by Great End, Great Gable, and Bowfell, beyond
which, more to the east, is Skiddaw, and beyond Skiddaw are to be seen
the dim outlines of the Scotch hills about Langholm. Still bringing
the eye round in the course of the sun, you look at Blencathra, and
then “the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn.” Nearly in the same
line, but much nearer, you have Langdale Pikes, and in the side of
them Stickle Tarn glistens like a gem in a lady’s hair. Recurring to
the more distant line, you see Fairfield, Kirkstone, High Street, and
Hillbell. You have overlooked very many important mountains, but I
have enumerated the most prominent as seen from the Old Man. Rather
nearer than Hillbell is Wansfell, at the foot of which you may perceive
Ambleside, and a little lower, a considerable portion of Windermere,
with numerous seats upon its banks, Wray Castle the most conspicuous;
and nearer and more to the right, the vale and lake of Esthwaite, with
the pretty village of Sawrey (which Wilson calls “scarcely a village
indeed, but rocks, glades, and coppices bedropt with dwellings!”)
smiling in the sun, at its south-eastern extremity. A little farther to
the right, another portion of the “river lake” is visible, and beyond
that a remarkable succession of elevated ridgy moorlands stretches
across the view, until it is stopped by a portion of that chain of
hills called the “Backbone of England.” You remark that, if yonder
ridge be in reality a portion of England’s backbone, she must have been
a ricketty child, for there are inequalities upon it such as no healthy
spine would exhibit.
[Sidenote: A WIDE SWEEP.]
More to the right, the view becomes more extended, for it embraces much
of that part of Lancashire lying to the west and south of the county
town, watered by the Ribble and the Wyre, and at the western extremity
of which you can distinctly see the town and port of Fleetwood.
Stretching far in-land from it, you have all the majestic Bay of
Morecambe, looking so beautiful with its numerous rivers meandering
along its level sands, that you fancy it would be almost a sin to carry
into execution the project of embanking it. Following along its shores,
your eyes come to the town and castle of “John O'Gaunt, time-honoured
Lancaster;” then the wooded promontory of Cartmel, jutting into the
bay, and, on its north-western side, the fertile and undulating
district of Low Furness, with the Isle of Walney stretched along its
seaward side like a natural breakwater. Then you look upon the miles of
smooth, flat sand, over which the Duddon is
“Gliding in silence with unfettered sweep.”
Directly over that, and across the sea, are to be seen very plainly
some of the hills of Wales, Snowdon, I believe, amongst the rest; and
you have under your eye the whole of that portion of the Irish sea
stretching from Wales to the Isle of Man, and thence to the Mull of
Galloway and Burrow Head, and, again, a considerable portion of the
Solway Frith. I am told that in “certain conditions of the atmosphere,”
the high hill in Ireland, called Slieve Donard, where O'Neale
entertained Rokeby and Mortham, and
“Gave them each sylvan joy to know,
Slieve Donard’s cliffs and woods could shew”—
is to be seen between the Scottish headlands and the Isle of Man. If
it be so, and there is no good reason to doubt it, it seems that, from
the Old Man, the eye can at one sweep behold all the divisions of the
Kingdom, as well as “the Kingdom of Man.”
[Sidenote: A FACT FOR NATURALISTS.]
You may now take a look at the objects nearer home, and perhaps the
most striking is the tarn, occupying a concavity in the eastern side
of the Old Man, and called, on the principle of _lucus a non lucendo_,
Low-wat-hung by a tremendous precipitous range called Buckbarrow
Crags, which, like Dow Crags, is a favourite place of refuge with
foxes; and upon its ledges sheep frequently get “crag-fast,” from
which predicament they have to be rescued by an adventurous shepherd
lowered over the beetling precipice by a rope, the animal, aware of its
peril, allowing itself to be slung in the rope and drawn up. Low-water
is remarkable for trouts of large dimensions, and once, like the tarn
sung by the poet, had one of enormous size supposed to be immortal.
It was frequently seen by the men working in the slate quarry above,
and it was not unfrequently hooked, but no tackle was strong enough
to land such a monster. So much for its strength: but, alack for its
immortality,—it was found one morning dead upon the shore. I am too
tenacious of my character for veracity to tell you its weight and size;
but, according to my informant, nature, compassionating its great age
and its high stormy location, had furnished it with a covering of
_hair_, a fact unparalleled, as I think, in the annals of ichthyology.
[Sidenote: TWO DEATHS.]
Directly under Low-water, you have a bird's-eye view of the works
belonging to the Mines, which, with the roads intersecting the hills
about them, have a rather odd appearance. Beyond these, Weatherlam
rears his massive cone to nearly an equal height with you.
Down to the right, you have a delicious view of the vale of Monk and
Church Conistone, in early autumn most beautifully chequered with
fields of ripe and ripening grain. But I have already dilated _usque
ad nauseam_ (sufficiently to sicken a dog) upon the beauties of that
same valley, so let it rest, and commence your descent, taking a path
to the southward of Low-water, through amongst the slate-quarries,
which, for many years deserted, are again in active operation. One of
these, called Saddle Stone quarry, was the scene, some years ago, of
two melancholy deaths,—one of them mysterious, the other singular. On a
Monday morning, the labourers discovered a man’s hat floating in some
water in a hole a good way into the working, and, on a search being
instituted, they soon after found the body of a Mr Dixon, a respectable
and intelligent native of the dale. It was supposed that he had
sauntered into the level, and, whilst directing his attention to the
air-shaft above, had walked into the water.
[Sidenote: CHOICE OF ROUTES.]
The other was one of the labourers, named Gould, who, with his
fellow-workmen, had sat down to rest, or dine, somewhere under the said
shaft. He was leaning back, when a stone, scarcely larger than a good
walnut, fell from the shaft, and striking him upon the forehead, killed
him on the spot. Passing this ill-omened hole, you follow the steep
path downwards, and pass considerably to your left the “Pudding Stone,”
the largest boulder stone I have seen, excepting that near Keswick.
It is higher than it is long or broad, and rests upon a ridge,
where it is puzzling to conceive how it could have stayed by chance.
You also pass on the left, but nearer to you, two singularly rugged
hillocks called High and Low Crawberry, with Crawberry Hause between.
On the right is the Bell, a precipitous rocky hill, where ravens, and
buzzards, or gleads, take up their abode; and descending still through
an extensive rocky pasture, rejoicing in the euphonious title of the
Scrow, formerly covered with wood, as is evidenced by the traces of the
charcoal pits yet visible, you reach a wooden bridge, and cross it into
the Mines road, with which you are already so well acquainted, that
it is scarcely incumbent upon me to rave any further at this present
speaking.
I would by no means bind you to ascend or descend the Old Man by
the routes I have described. I merely recommend them as offering
most objects likely to amuse, and as being considered the easiest
for pedestrian adventurers. But, by taking the road to the slate
quarries, you may ride a steady pony to within a quarter of a mile of
the summit,—or by following the Walna Scar road for a mile or two,
and taking the path by Gaits Water, you may, with one or two short
intervals of leading, ride to the very top; the road, however, is some
miles longer, seeing that you must circumvent the Old Man before you
attain your object by this route, and you will find it no trifling task
to get round _him_.
[Sidenote: PROPER SELF-APPRECIATION.]
During this and the preceding ramble, it might, perhaps, be expected
of me to say something upon geology. The only excuse I have to offer
for this serious omission—whether sufficient or otherwise—is, that
I know nothing about it. I can, however, do the next best thing to
lecturing on the subject myself, and that is recommend you to peruse
the letters of Professor Sedgwick to Mr Wordsworth on the Geology of
the Lake District, which you will find in a handsome and well got up
guide-book, published by Mr Hudson, of Kendal, or the chapters on the
same subject by Professor Phillips, contained in another guide-book,
of which Adam and Charles Black, of Edinburgh, are the publishers,
either or both of which are amply sufficient, if well studied, to
enable you to talk geology in any society very respectably. I am a very
superficial observer myself, and only pretend to point out what is
amusing, leaving the instructive to abler hands and wiser heads.
CHAPTER X.
THE CIRCUIT OF THE LAKE.
THE VILLAGE AND CHURCH AGAIN—THE DEER PARK—HIGH GROUND, LITTLE ARROW,
AND HAWTHWAITE—TORVER—HEM HALL—TORVER MILL—SUNNY BANK—OXNESS—BROWN
HOW—WATER-YEAT—ARKLID—NIBTHWAITE—WATERPARK—THE LAKE FOOT—“THE
GRIDIRON,” AND FIR ISLAND—BRANTWOOD—CONISTONE BANK—BANK GROUND—T’
HO'PENNY YALL 'US—TENT LODGE.
I intend now to treat you to a fourteen miles’ ride, namely, down the
western side of the Lake and up the eastern, to accomplish which it
is necessary again to pass through the village by Yewdale Bridge, the
Crown Inn and the Church. When I last mentioned the Church to you, I
think I alluded to “an old oak chest,” with a very oddly constructed
padlock, in which chest is deposited a mass of ancient documents
connected with the ecclesiastical business of the chapelry. Since
then, through the polite attention of my urbane and erudite friend,
the parish clerk, I have had an opportunity of rummaging at will
through these parochial archives, but the only papers possessing the
least interest were a number of slips, each recording the oaths of two
people—always females by the bye—as to the costume in which defunct
persons were carried to their long home. As these afford a striking
and instructive instance of the wisdom of our ancestors, and refer
to an act of Parliament, of the existence of which, at any period of
our national annals, perhaps you were not cognizant, any more than I
was myself, I have taken the liberty of transcribing one of the most
legible; and here it is:—
[Sidenote: AN OLD MONOPOLY.]
Parociall Chappell de Coniston.
We Elizabeth Grigg widdow and Agnes Fleming widow—doe severally make
oath that ye corps of Elizabeth wife of George Towers was buryed April
ye 3d day Anno Dmi 1688 And was not put in wrapt or wound up in any
shirt shift sheet or shroud made or mingled with Flax Hemp Hair Gold
or Silver &c; nor in any coffin lined or faced with Cloath &c; nor now
other material but sheeps wooll only According to Act of Parliamt. In
Testemony whereof we ye sd. Eliz Grigg and Agnes Fleming have hereunto
set our hands and seals
Capt. et. Jurat Septimo die Elizabeth Grigg
Aprilis Anno Dmie 1688 Her X mark
Coram me Agnes Fleming
Rogero Atkinsonne Her X mark
You cross the Church Bridge, and, riding down the village in the same
direction as before, leave it at Parkgate, where the road enters the
old deer park, still pretty well covered with coppice wood, oaks and
other trees from the Lake side, about half a mile to your left to the
top of Bleathwaite, the same distance to your right. Looking back
from the little height beyond Parkgate, you have a delicious view of
the scenery around the upper part of the Lake, and it is, perhaps, as
well that the wooded park soon screens this view from your admiring
retrospection, or it is possible that your progress southward might be
seriously retarded by your “longing, lingering looks behind.”
After emerging from the forest-fringed road through the park, you soon
pass the pleasant residence called High Ground, and the picturesque
homestead of Little Arrow, and leaving the beautiful farm of Hawthwaite
considerably to the left, you shortly enter the ancient and primitive
chapelry of Torver, where—
“Provided you've got a strong taste for rusticity,
And Wordsworth has not made you sick of simplicity”—
you may have your taste gratified, for there are few places now in
England, where old-fashioned and unsophisticated habits and manners
prevail more decidedly than in Torver. There is no account of any
family of rank ever being resident in Torver, and nearly all the land
is still possessed by the descendants of the men whom Sir Walter Scott
apostrophizes as
[Sidenote: PEOPLE AND STEEPLE-(HOUSE.)]
“——Those gallant yeomen,
England’s peculiar and appropriate sons,
Known in no other land. Each boasts his hearth
And field as free as the best lord his barony,
Owing subjection to no human vassalage,
Save to their King and law. Hence are they resolute,
Leading the van on every day of battle,
As men who know the blessings they defend.
Hence are they frank and generous in peace,
As men who have their portion in its plenty;
No other kingdom shows such worth and happiness
Veiled in such low estate.”
A very neat and appropriate chapel has just been erected in Torver,
after a design furnished gratuitously by Mr M. Thompson, an architect
resident, I believe, in Kendal. The old chapel, removed in 1848, was
an object of interest from the fact of its having been consecrated by
Archbishop Cranmer, and said to have been the first church erected in
England for the exercise of the Protestant form of worship.
Close to the chapel stands the snug and tidy public-house, known pretty
widely by the title of Torver Kirk-house, and if you happen to be
a-thirst, I can honestly recommend Thomas Massicks’ home-brewed ale. In
fulfilment of a trite rhyming proverb, these houses of entertainment,
adjoining houses of prayer, are very abundant in our rural parishes,
and are so extensively patronized both by wayfarers and neighbours,
that Mr Wordsworth, when he says
“The Kirk of Ulpha to the pilgrim’s eye
Is welcome as a star, that doth present
Its shining forehead through the peaceful rent
Of a black cloud diffused o'er half the sky:”
&c. &c., would have given us a truth of much more general application,
had he said—
Old Ulpha Kirk-house to the pilgrim’s eye
Is welcome as the sun that doth present
His blowzy visage through some hopeful rent
In clouds, whose rain has left not one stitch dry.
[Sidenote: HILL, MILL AND PILL-(BOXES.)]
After noticing the many old, but comfortable and substantial dwellings
with which the remarkably verdant fields of Torver (which flow with
milk and honey) are “bedropt,” you must take the road which the
guide-post tells you leads to Ulverston—if you can’t read, ask at the
blacksmith’s shop—and when you reach the eminence on which stands the
old farm-house called Hem, or Hen Hall, turn round and take a good look
at the Old Man, who is certainly seen to the greatest advantage from
this point of view. In looking at him on any other side, his connection
with the chain of hills behind him detracts much from the dignity of
his aspect; but from this side, and especially from this precise spot,
he appears to stand forth, independent and self-reliant, the advanced
guard of an army of Titans.
At Hem Hall, you may leave the high road for about a hundred yards,
taking a narrow steep lane straight before you, to look at Torver
Mill,—and a splendid fall the “Blackbeck of Torver” makes a little
above the mill,—returning to the highway at Beckstones, and descending
rapidly till you cross the beck near to the exceedingly well-named farm
of Sunny-bank, and the Bobbin Mill. By the bye, if you would like to
see how very rapidly they can make bobbins or reels for holding cotton
thread, and boxes for holding Professor Holloway’s pills and ointment,
by the use of which you may escape the penalty entailed upon us all by
old father Adam, you should ask leave to inspect the operations in this
bobbin mill, and I have no doubt that my good friend, Mr Kendal, will
be happy to do the honours to any pretty-behaved young gentleman like
yourself.
[Sidenote: THE LAKE-FOOT.]
You pass Sunny-bank, its pretty farm, its bridge and bobbin mill, and
return to the lake-side below the mouth of Torver beck, and opposite
to “the Gridiron,” and ride on through the farm-yard of Oxness, past
Brown How, near to which a very handsome mansion has just been built
upon a singularly beautiful site by the lake side. The scenery here is
very picturesque, consisting, as it does, of successive but irregular
precipitous ranges of grey rock—in some parts bare, and in others clad
with a heavy drapery of glittering ivy—separated by intervals of purple
heather, or green brackens and greener pasturage.
You are now near the water-foot, and just before you reach the hamlet
of Water-yeat, stop on a little eminence and enjoy a view, one glimpse
of which, I have been told, would be ample compensation for a journey
from Timbuctoo. The whole length of the lake lies spread out before
you, from the Copper sheds at Nibthwaite to the Inn at Waterhead,
which last, though at six miles’ distance, is very distinctly
seen—beautifully backed up by the slopes and woods of Mr Marshall’s
noble park; these again over-topped by the distant, finely-outlined
range of mountains beyond Rydal and Grasmere.
At Water-yeat, you take a road leading across the valley and over the
river Crake, to a large old farm-house called Arklid, when you again
turn your nose towards Conistone, passing through the venerable village
of Nibthwaite, and by the richly-wooded grounds of Waterpark, the road
sometimes approaching the lake side, and sometimes diverging from it.
[Sidenote: WILSON AND WORDSWORTH.]
The lower part of Conistone Water is said to be tame, and many of its
most faithful admirers do not attempt to contradict what has almost
assumed the aspect of an admitted fact. But you now see that it is
anything but tame, and if you cannot accept the evidence of your own
optics, or if you doubt the infallibility of your own taste, you will,
perhaps, feel more confidence in your perception of the beautiful,
when I tell you what Professor Wilson says anent the foot of this
lake. You will please to observe, too, that, as I have already said,
the Professor’s taste is somewhat warped by his devotion to his own
magnificent Windermere, and that he has, on other occasions, written
somewhat slightingly of Conistone Water. Hear what he says now:—“Pull
away to the foot of the lake, if you choose, and you will be well
repaid for your labour by the pretty promontories and bashful bays they
conceal, and merry meadows lying in ambush, and “corn riggs sae bonny”
trespassing upon the coppice woods that, year after year, yield up
their lingering roots to the ploughshare, and grey, white, blue, green,
and brown cottages of every shape and size, and pastoral eminences of
old lea crowned with a few pine trees, or with an oak, itself a grove.”
There, after that, I hope you will never allow Conistone Water-foot to
be twitted with tameness again, without running at least one tilt in
its defence.
Mr Wordsworth says that the lakes in general should be approached by
this road, and as he says it well, and, like the true worshipper of
Nature that he undoubtedly is, I feel constrained to quote him:—“The
stranger, from the moment he sets his foot upon these (Lancaster)
sands, seems to leave the turmoil and traffic of the world behind him;
and, crossing the majestic plain when the sea has retired, he beholds,
rising apparently from its base, the cluster of mountains among which
he is going to wander; and towards whose recesses, by the vale of
Conistone, he is gradually and peacefully led.”
As you pursue your pleasant road along the lake, now rising and
descending over a gentle hillock, and again running along the level
lake shore, the Conistone fells become grander and grander, as you
bring them nearer, the Old Man still towering over his compeers, the
Patriarch of his tribe, and seeming what the Professor happily says “he
certainly is, with his firm foot and sunny brow,
‘The king o’ guid fellows and wale o’ auld men.'”
[Sidenote: “WORDSWORTH’S SEAT.”]
Again, passing “the Gridiron” and then Fir Island close to this side
of the lake, the road runs between the lake and the most attractively
placed villa of Brantwood, in the charming grounds of which is a seat
called “Wordsworth's seat,” because that great poet is in the habit
of recommending it to his friends as the point whence _he_ thinks the
beauties of Conistone are beheld to the most advantage: and certainly
the landscape from the said seat is truly exquisite, if such a
young-lady-like term can with propriety be applied to a view, where
none may say whether the grand or the beautiful predominates. The
sparkling waters of the lake in the foreground,—beyond it the fertile
plain and green acclivity, sheltered and shaded by an abundance of
scattered and congregated trees and by giant hedge-rows, and dotted and
diversified by innumerable white, grey, and _black_ houses, peeping
here and there from their embowering foliage, or smiling over the
brilliant verdure of the fields,—the picture being filled up in the
background by that most magnificent of all mountain ranges, comprising
Walna Scar, the Old Man, Brim Fell, High Carr, Oukrigg, Weatherlam,
Henn Crag, Yewdale Crag and Raven Crag, with their countless waterfalls
shining, here like patches, and there like zig-zag lines of snow,
forming altogether a _coup d'œil_ rarely to be equalled—never surpassed.
[Sidenote: A HOME OF GENIUS.]
Leaving this highly favoured spot, you proceed past the gate of
Conistone Bank and Black-beck Cottage, nestling prettily in the
overhanging wood, with which the road is thickly fringed, sometimes
on one side, but more frequently on both, and wherever the western
side is left open, you have the view respecting which Miss Martineau
says,—“And there he (the traveller) will assuredly pause, and hope
that he may never forget what he now sees. He has probably never
beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm;
of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest
beauty.
* * * * *
The traveller feasts his eye with the scattered dwellings under their
sheltering woods,—the cheerful town, the rich slopes, and the dark
gorge and summits of Yewdale behind; while the broad water lies as
still as heaven between shore and shore.”
After pausing, as Miss Martineau says you assuredly will, for a
reasonable space, pray move on, passing, down to your left, the
two pretty farms of Bank-ground, one of which is in the course of
conversion into an ornamental cottage residence, by a lady whose
ancestors have possessed it for centuries. Then passing the large new
house built upon the site of the old cottage which used to rejoice
in a name suggestive of the low-priced jollifications of ancient
times, namely the Halfpenny Ale-house, or, more correctly, t'Ho'penny
Yall'us, you descend by Howhead, and soon run to cover under the
umbrageous groves of Tent Lodge, decidedly the most interesting of
all the seats around Conistone Lake, having, for many years, been the
residence of a family, widely celebrated on account of the wonderful
talents and acquirements of one of its female members—the learned,
elegant, estimable, and accomplished Elizabeth Smith. I might myself
from my own knowledge of that lady’s history and character, picked up
in this locality, which she, for years, honoured and adorned with her
residence, and which was the scene of her early death, give a sketch of
her story. But this has been done already by much abler hands, amongst
others by Mr De Quincey in _Tait’s Magazine_, and of his excellent
paper on Miss Smith, I propose to offer such an epitome as, with due
regard for time and space, will enable you to form some notion of her
extraordinary character and attainments.
[Sidenote: DE QUINCEY LOQUITUR.]
The narcotic-loving philosopher commences thus:—“On a little verdant
knoll, near the north-eastern margin of the lake, stands a small
villa, called Tent Lodge, built by Colonel Smith, and for many years
occupied by his family. That daughter of Colonel Smith who drew the
public attention so powerfully upon herself by the splendour of her
attainments, had died some months before I came into the country. But
yet, as I was subsequently acquainted with her family through the
Lloyds (who were within on easy drive of Tent Lodge), and as, moreover,
with regard to Miss Elizabeth Smith herself, I came to know more than
the world knew—drawing my knowledge from many of her friends, but
especially from Mrs Hannah More, who had been intimately connected with
her, for these reasons, I shall rehearse the leading points of her
story; and the rather because her family, who were equally interested
in that story, long continued to form part of the lake society. On
my first becoming acquainted with Miss Smith’s pretensions, it is
true that I regarded them with but little concern, for nothing ever
interests me less than great philological attainments, or, at least,
that mode of philological learning which consists in mastery over
languages. But one reason for this indifference is, that the apparent
splendour is too often a false one. They who know a vast number of
languages, rarely know any one with accuracy; and the more they gain
in one way, the more they lose in another. With Miss Smith, however,
I gradually came to know that this was not the case, or, at any rate,
but partially the case; for of some languages which she possessed,
and those the least accessible, it appeared finally that she had even
[Sidenote: A FEMALE’S LORE.] a critical knowledge. It created also a
secondary interest in these difficult accomplishments of hers to find
that they were so very extensive. Secondly, that they were nearly all
of self-acquisition. Thirdly, that they were borne so meekly, and
with unaffected absence of all ostentation. As to the first point, it
appears that she made herself mistress of the French, the Italian, the
Spanish, the Latin, the German, the Greek, and the Hebrew languages.
She had no inconsiderable knowledge of the Syriac, the Arabic, and the
Persic. She was a good geometrician and algebraist. She was a very
expert musician. She drew from nature, and had an accurate knowledge
of perspective. Finally, she manifested an early talent for poetry;
but, from pure modesty, destroyed most of what she had written, as
her acquaintance with the Hebrew models had elevated the standard
of true poetry in her mind, so as to disgust her with what she now
viewed as the tameness and inefficiency of her own performances. As to
the second point—that for these attainments she was indebted almost
exclusively to her own energy, this is placed beyond all doubt, by
the fact, that the only governess she ever had (a young lady not much
beyond her own age) did not herself possess, and therefore could
not have communicated any knowledge of languages, beyond a little
French and Italian. Finally, as to the modesty with which she wore
her distinctions, _that_ is sufficiently established by every page of
her printed works, and her letters. Greater diffidence as respected
herself, or less willingness to obtrude her knowledge upon strangers,
or even upon those correspondents who would have wished her to make
a little more display, cannot be imagined. And yet I repeat that her
knowledge was as sound and as profound as it was extensive. For, taking
only one instance of this, her translation of Job has been pronounced
by Biblical critics of the first rank, a work of real and intrinsic
value, without any reference to the disadvantages of the translation,
or without needing any allowance whatever. In particular, Dr Magee,
the celebrated writer on the Atonement, and subsequently a dignitary
of the Irish Church—certainly one of the best qualified judges at that
time—describes it as 'conveying more of the character and meaning of
the Hebrew, with fewer departures from the idiom of the English, than
any other translation whatever that we possess.'”
[Sidenote: MISS SMITH’S STORY.]
Mr De Quincey next proceeds to “briefly sketch her story”—mentioning
her birth at Burnhall, in the county of Durham, in 1776—the engagement
of her governess—the acquisition of, and removal of the family to “the
splendid inheritance of Piercefield, a show place on the banks of the
Wye”—their numerous visitors there, and the influence of two of them
(Mrs Bowdler and her daughter) in exciting in Miss Smith her ardent and
enduring love of learning and piety—the ruin that, in her 16th year,
fell upon “the house of Piercefield. The whole estate, a splendid one,
was swept away by the failure of one banking house;” the greatest loss
to Miss Smith being the library, which followed the general wreck—“not
a volume, not a pamphlet was reserved; for the family were proud in
their integrity, and would receive no favours from the creditors.”
Then the residence of the family in many different parts of the
kingdom under their sadly altered circumstances, and the comfort they
derived from their daughter, who, “young as she was, became the moral
support of the whole family, and the fountain from which they all
drew consolation and fortitude;”—their settlement in Patterdale, and
then finally at Conistone, in the cottage close behind Tent Lodge—for
the villa was built, after Miss Smith’s death, on the spot where the
_tent_ stood in which, during her long illness, she was wont to enjoy
[Sidenote: PRAISE WORTH HAVING.] the breezes from the lake, and the
glorious scenery around it—the manner in which her fatal illness was
contracted—its progress—her death in 1806, at the lamentably early
age of 29—and several anecdotes illustrating the extraordinary and
various perfections of Miss Smith’s character, are all detailed by Mr
De Quincey at great length, with great elegance of diction and great
force of expression, as this last extract will serve to exemplify:—“She
was buried in Hawkshead Church-yard, where a small tablet of white
marble is raised to her memory, on which there is the scantiest record
that, for a person so eminently accomplished, I ever met with. After
mentioning her birth and age (twenty-nine), it closes thus:—‘She
possessed great talents, exalted virtues, and humble piety.’ Anything
so unsatisfactory or so common-place, I have rarely known. As much or
more is often said of the most insipid people; whereas Miss Smith was
really a most extraordinary person. I have conversed with Mrs Hannah
More often about her; and I never failed to draw forth some fresh
anecdote illustrating the vast extent of her knowledge, the simplicity
of her character, the gentleness of her manners, and her unaffected
humility. She passed, it is true, almost inaudibly through life; and
the stir which was made after her death, soon subsided. But the reason
was, that she wrote but little! Had it been possible for the world to
measure her by her powers, rather than by her performances, she would
have been placed, perhaps, in the estimate of posterity, at the head
of learned women; whilst her sweet and feminine character would have
rescued her from all shadow and suspicion of that reproach which too
often settles upon the learned character, when supported by female
aspirants.”
[Sidenote: HEREDITARY LACK OF TASTE.]
This you will admit to be no ordinary measure of praise; and when
you reflect that it is meted out by one of the greatest and most
philosophic scholars of this or any other age—one whose acquaintance
with literature (and _literateurs_), ancient and modern, is inferior to
that of no other writer whatever, you will pardon me for lingering so
long at Tent Lodge, and for taking such extensive liberties with the
English Opium Eater’s charming papers on the “Society of the Lakes,”
and, at the risk of greatly overstepping my usual limits, I must make
_one_ further quotation:—“The family of Tent Lodge continued to reside
at Conistone for many years; and they were connected with the Lake
literary clan chiefly through the Lloyds, and those who visited the
Lloyds; for it is another and striking proof of the slight hold which
Wordsworth, &c., had upon the public esteem in those days, that even
Miss Smith, with all her excessive diffidence in judging of books and
authors, never seems, in any one of her letters, to have felt the
slightest interest about Wordsworth or Coleridge.” It is possible that
Miss Smith’s indifference about Wordsworth was, like the rash humour of
Cassius, something that her mother gave her, for it may be admitted to
be a defect in the otherwise powerful understanding of that venerable
lady—whose memory is cherished in Conistone with undiminishing
respect and affection—that, to the close of her long life, she always
appeared to regard our greatest of living bards with something more
like contempt than anything else. Indeed I have seen a copy of verses
written by her, parodizing one of his poems, perhaps the most beautiful
and pathetic he has produced. If my memory does not betray me, the
parody commenced somewhat in this way:—
“He dwelt by the untrodden ways,
Near Rydal’s grassy mead,
A Bard whom there were none to praise,
And very few to read.”
The imitation, you observe, is sufficiently close to the original.
[Sidenote: AN ILLUSTRIOUS NAME.]
I believe the only surviving member of Mrs Smith's once numerous
family, is one of her sons, now Sir Chas. Smith, who has pitched his
tent far from Tent Lodge. After Mrs Smith’s death, the villa was
purchased by Mr Jas. G. Marshall, and, it is understood, is about to
become the residence of a gentleman whose family name is not unknown in
modern literature, nor yet in old romance.
NOTE.—I ought, in this tenth division of my discourse, to have
remembered my promise relative to the floating island. I make the
best reparation I can by telling you now, that the last time I saw
the said island, it was stranded amongst the reeds between the Copper
Quay at Nibthwaite and the outlet of the lake, and when I looked for
it again, it had left that berth, and gone I knew not whither; but
on enquiring after it at the Commodore of the Copper fleet, I was
informed that the erratic object of my solicitude is now occupying a
berth in juxta-position to Mr Harrison’s quay, below Waterpark, where
it may be inspected. Ben’s memory is failing, or he would have told
me the number of trees upon it, having counted them one day whilst
on duty in its vicinity. However, it may suffice to inform you that
it is a piece of earth about twenty yards square, well covered with
herbage and young birches of decent growth. Altogether, were it not
for its unfortunate preference of short to long voyages, it would be a
highly important addition to the attractions of Conistone Water, and
decidedly the best specimen of its genus in the kingdom.
CHAPTER XI.
YEWDALE BECK—THE PARSONAGE—OAK COTTAGE—HOLLIN-HOW—FAR-END—THE
SAW MILLS—YEWDALE—“GIRT WILL’S GRAVE”—HOLME
GROUND—TILBERTHWAITE—HODGECLOSE—SLATE-QUARRIES.
This ramble being, in play-bill phrase, positively our last performance
here this season, I am inclined to make it a pretty long one;
therefore, you had better order out your pony, and be off without loss
of time.
You may canter along the road to the village as far as Yewdale
bridge, and, crossing it, turn to your right, and proceed along a
narrow, shaded, and rugged lane up the banks of the stream. The house
across a field or two to your left, with some fine oaks beside it,
is the Parsonage, both the house and grounds of which have been much
beautified and extended by the present incumbent. You soon gain the
high road at a neat little house called Oak Cottage; and may notice
a little beyond it a handsome, but not very large residence, called
Hollin-how, and near to that, close under the beetling precipice, a
picturesque group of new cottages and old farm buildings, bearing the
odd title of Far-end.
Continuing to skirt the brook, you pass a pool close under the road,
and divided from it only by a few trees and bushes growing upon the
steep high bank, and I may now inform you that this pool, called
Cawdrell, or Cauldron Dub, has been haunted, as also has Yewdale
Bridge, for a century or two, by certain apparitions who develope their
incorporealities in a somewhat eccentric manner, of which I shall tell
you more directly.
[Sidenote: AN EXORDIUM.]
These neat new buildings to your right, are mills erected by Mr
Marshall, for sawing timber and for cutting and polishing the blue
flag-stones worked from a quarry at the back of the Guards hill. The
land round the saw-mills is divided into garden allotments, let at easy
rents to the neighbouring cottagers, and the industrious attention
paid by the allottees to the delving, clearing, and cropping of their
several parcels, is a pleasing proof of the high estimation in which
they hold the privileges thus accorded them. I should have mentioned
that Lady le Fleming has devoted a field adjoining the church-yard to
the same excellent purpose.
Move on, and, as you pass the Saw-mills, you enter the vale of Yewdale,
on which, and on its charms, seeing that I have long ago exhausted
my vocabulary of praise, it were but repeating a thrice-told tale to
say much more respecting it. But, that you may not ride up Yewdale
“in solemn silence,” as, according to the newspapers, they drink to
dead men at public dinners, “I'll tell you a tale without any flam” in
connection with Yewdale and Cauldron Dub.
It is a story possessing a fair allowance of tragic incident, and
in some hands might be worked up into something worth while; but I
am a wretched story-teller, and regret exceedingly that I cannot
recapitulate its leading particulars in the racy and terse, aye, and
poetical, albeit broadly provincial phraseology of my rustic informant.
In good time here we are at the very fittest spot for the commencement
of my story, about a quarter of a mile above the Saw-mills, where, by
craning over the hedge to your right, you may perceive, near to the
verge of the precipitous bank of Yewdale Beck, and a few yards from
the road side, a long narrow mound which seems to be formed of solid
stone covered with moss, but which a nearer inspection would shew
to be composed of several blocks fitted so closely together as to
prove the mound to have had an artificial, and not a natural origin.
You observe it is somewhere between three and four yards long. That
singular accumulation of lichen-clad rock has been known for centuries
amongst the natives of Yewdale and the adjacent valleys, by the
romance-suggesting designation of “Girt Will’s Grave.” How it came by
that name, and how Cauldron Dub and Yewdale Bridge came to be haunted,
my task is now to tell.
[Sidenote: A GIGANTIC SQUATTER.]
Some few hundred years ago, the inhabitants of these contiguous dales
were startled from their propriety, if they had any, by a report that
one of the Troutbeck giants had built himself a hut, and taken up his
abode in the lonely dell of “The Tarns,” above Yewdale Head. Of course
you have read the history and exploits of the famous Tom Hickathrift,
and remembering that he was raised at Troutbeck, you will not be much
surprised when I tell you that it was always famous for breeding a race
of extraordinary size and strength, for even in these our own puny
days, the biggest man in Westmorland is to be found in that beautiful
vale.
The excitement consequent upon the settlement of one of that gigantic
race in this vicinity soon died away, and the object of it, who stood
somewhere about nine feet six out of his clogs—if they were in fashion
then—and was broad in fair proportion, became known to the neighbours
as a capital labourer, ready for any such work as was required in
the rude and limited agricultural operations of the period and
locality—answered to the cognomen of “Girt (great) Will o’ t’ Tarns,”
and, once or twice, did good service as a billman under the Knight of
Conistone, when _he_ was called upon to muster his powers to assist in
repelling certain roving bands of Scots or Irish, who were wont, now
and again, to invade the wealthy plains of Low Furness.
[Sidenote: MISTRESS AND MAID.]
of Conistone, at the period of the giant’s location at the The
particular Knight, who was chief of the Flemings Tarns, was far
advanced in the vale of years, and, in addition to some six or eight
gallant and stately sons, had
“One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.”
And Eva le Fleming, called by the country people “the Lady Eva,” was
famed throughout the broad north for her beauty and gentleness, her
high-bred dignity and her humble virtues; but it is not with her that
my story has to do. She, like the mother of “the gentle lady married
to the Moor,” had a maid called Barbara, an especial favourite with
her mistress, and, in her own sphere, deemed quite as beautiful. In
fact, it was hinted that, when she happened to be in attendance upon
her lady on festive or devotional occasions, the eyes of even knights
and well-born squires were as often directed to the maid as to the
mistress, and seemed to express as much admiration in one direction as
the other. And when mounted on the Lady Eva’s own palfrey, bedecked
in its gayest trappings, she rode, as she oftentimes did, to visit
her parents at Skelwith, old and young were struck with her beauty,
and would turn, as she ambled past, to gaze after her, and to wonder
at the elegance of her figure, the ease of her deportment, and the
all-surpassing loveliness of her features. Her lady, notwithstanding
the disparity of their rank, loved her as a sister, and it was
whispered amongst her envious fellow-servants, that her mistress’s
fondness made her assume airs unbecoming her station. True enough it
was that she seemed sufficiently haughty and scornful in her reception
of the homage paid to her charms by the young men of her own rank,
and by many above it. The only one to whom she showed the slightest
courtesy on these occasions was wild Dick Hawksley, the Knight’s
falconer, and he was also the only one who appeared to care no more for
her favours than for her frowns.
[Sidenote: AN ABDUCTION.]
The Lady Eva, as well befits high-born dames, was somewhat romantic in
her tastes, and would often row for hours upon the lake, and wander for
miles through the woods, or even upon the mountains, unattended, save
by her favourite bower-maiden. And one evening in autumn, after having
been confined for two whole days to the hall by heavy and incessant
rain, tired of playing chess with her father and battledore with her
younger brothers, or superintending the needlework of her maids, and
tempted by the brilliant moonlight and now unobscured skies, she
summoned Barbara, and set out upon a stroll by the lake side.
The pair were sauntering along a path cut through the dense coppice,
the lady leaning in condescending affection upon the shoulder of her
maiden, and listening to a recital of how, on her return from some
of her visits to her parents, she had been waylaid by Great Will of
the Tarns, and how, on a recent evening, he had attempted to seize
her rein, and would have stopped her, had she not whipt the palfrey,
and bounded past him. The lady was expressing her indignation at
this insolence, when a gigantic figure sprang upon the pathway, and
snatching up the screaming Barbara with the same ease with which she
herself would have lifted an infant, vanished on the instant amongst
the thick hazels.
[Sidenote: A CHASE BUT NO RESCUE.]
The Lady Eva stood for a minute struck powerless with terror and
astonishment at this audacious outrage; but the sound of the monster
crashing his headlong course through the coppice, and the half-stifled
screams of his captive, soon recalled her suspended faculties, and then
“Fair” _Eva_ “through the hazel grove
Flew, like a startled cushat-dove,”
back to the hall, where, breathless with terror and exertion, she gave
the alarm that Barbara had been carried off by the Giant. There was
noisy and instantaneous commotion amongst the carousing gentles at the
upper, and the loitering lackeys at the lower end of the hall. Dick
Hawksley, and a few more, darted off in immediate pursuit on foot,
while several rushed to the stables, in obedience to the calls of their
young masters, who were, one and all, loudly vociferating for their
horses. Scarce a minute passed, ere half a dozen le Flemings, attended
by as many mounted followers, were spurring like lightning through the
wood in the direction of Yewdale. They came in sight of the Giant and
his burthen as he neared Cauldron Dub, with the light-heeled falconer
close behind, calling loudly upon him to stay his flight; but he held
on with tremendous strides, till he reached the brow over the pool,
when, finding that the horsemen were close upon him, and that it was
hopeless to try to carry his prize farther, he stopped—uttered one
terrible shout of rage and disappointment—and whirled his shrieking
victim into the flooded beck, resuming his now unincumbered flight with
increased speed. Dick Hawksley rushed over the bank a little lower
down, and the horsemen, abandoning the chase, galloped to the brink of
the stream, which was high with the recent rains. They saw the falconer
plunge into the torrent, as the bower maiden, yet buoyant with her
light garments, was borne rapidly down. They saw him seize her with one
hand, and strike out gallantly for the bank with the other, but the
current was too strong for him, encumbered as he was with the girl in
his grasp. The devoted pair were swept down the stream, at a rate that
made the spectators put their horses to a gallop to keep them in sight,
even while the exertions of the brave falconer sufficed to sustain
their heads above water, which was only till they came under the
bridge, where the water, pent in by the narrow arch, acquired four-fold
force, and there they heard him utter a hoarse cry of despair, and the
gallant Hawksley and the Lady Eva’s beauteous favourite were seen no
more, till their bodies were found, days after, on the shore far down
the lake. One or two of the horsemen continued to gallop down the side
of the beck, in the bootless hope of being able even yet to render
them some aid, but the most of them turned their horses’ heads, and
went off once more at their utmost speed in pursuit of the murderous
Giant. He, considering the chase at an end, had slackened his pace, and
they were not long in overtaking him. Great Will struck out manfully
with his club (time out of mind the giant’s favourite weapon) as they
rushed upon him, but they speedily surrounded him, and, amid a storm
of vengeful yells and bitter execrations, the Giant of the Tarns
was stretched upon the sward, “with the blood running like a little
brook” from a hundred wounds, for he was so frightfully slashed and
mangled by their swords, that—as my informant näively averred—there was
not so much whole skin left upon his huge body as would have made a
tobacco-pouch.
[Sidenote: SPEEDY RETRIBUTION.]
It will be apparent enough to the most obtuse intellect, that, after
such events as these, the localities where they occurred must, of
necessity, be haunted, and, as the ghosts of murderers, as well as of
murder_ees_, if they be right orthodox apparitions, always appear to be
re-enacting the closing scene of their earthly career, it is scarcely
required of me to dilate farther upon the manner of their appearance.
Of course I do not expect, and certainly do not wish to be called upon
to prove the even down truth of every particular of the story, with
which I have been doing my little best to amuse you; but the assured
fact of the Dub and the Bridge being haunted, and that by sundry most
pertinacious spirits, I am ready to maintain against all comers.
But here you are approaching the lovely secluded farm and cottage of
Holme Ground, and whenever I am sick of this world and its vanities,
which as yet, I am happy to say, maintain _some_ hold upon my
affections, it is here that I should be satisfied to take up my rest.
[Sidenote: ROAD AND ROAD-SIDE.]
You may remember that it was hereabouts you crossed the vale of
Tilberthwaite,
“Paled in with many a mountain high,”
on a former ramble. On the present occasion, you hold the road to your
right, and a precious steep, rugged sample of a road it is; but as you
gradually surmount the ascent, you may take a retrospective glance,
now and then, at the beautiful vale, or rather dell, of Tilberthwaite,
and the mountains with which it is “paled in,” all of these being
surmounted by the massive Weatherlam, which is seen to much advantage,
and shews itself to be a magnificent hill from this road.
Travel onwards, with belts of plantations occupying all conceivable,
and some inconceivable inequalities of ground on your left, and
“mountains and moorlands, bleak, barren, and bare,” on your
right, till, as you approach Hodgeclose, you pass one or two very
awful-looking chasms, yawning in close proximity to the road. These
are slate-quarries, which have, for many years, been placed upon the
superannuated list. At Hodgeclose, you must turn from the road, pass
through the farm-yard and a wood-girdled field or two, to inspect an
adjacent slate-quarry, in which inspection you will find the proprietor
an intelligent and obliging cicerone. He will first conduct you by a
subterranean passage two hundred yards long, to the principal quarry,
where the men are busy boring and blasting, and loading the carts with
masses of slate metal, technically called clogs. It is in truth a
strange looking spot this same quarry, being about eighty yards long
and twenty wide, with perpendicular walls of living rock rising to
a height of, at least, fifty yards, fringed at the top by low trees
and bushes, the circumscribed portion of white clouds and blue sky
appearing, from below, to rest upon the tree tops. The only exit is
by the level through which you entered, though there is another level
branching off to the right, and leading to an enormous dark cavern,
“Where, far within the darksome rift,
The wedge and lever ply their thrift.”
[Sidenote: MOUNTAIN HANDICRAFT.]
Its great extent is shewn by the candles of the workmen at its farther
extremity—its height, by a chink in the roof, where a few stray rays of
daylight faintly and feebly struggle through.
Having explored the slate beds, you may proceed to the slate sheds,
where the men are engaged in riving and dressing the slate, and, from
the expertness of the workmen, a very interesting process it is. The
clogs, you perceive, are thrown down in heaps at the open side of the
shed, and are of various shapes and sizes, the average size being
that of a well-grown folio volume. One of these the splitter seizes,
and holding it adroitly on edge with his left hand, taps one side of
it with a hammer like a small pickaxe, with its points flattened and
sharpened, until he establishes a decided crack, which he follows up,
and repeating this process, divides the clog into smooth slates, quite
as rapidly as you could divide the leaves of any gigantic folio. When
riven to a proper degree of thinness, the slates are laid alongside
of a man who sits very commodiously upon a prostrate beam of wood,
into the upper side of which a long flat-topped staple is fastened. On
this staple he holds the undressed slates, and chips them into shape
as quickly as any young lady of your acquaintance could clip muslin
with her best scissors. They are then laid aside, and classified
according to their fineness, the finest being called London—the second
Country—the coarsest Tom—and a very small quality for slating the walls
of houses is called Peg.
[Sidenote: A NOBLE EXCAVATION.]
Having thanked Mr Parker for his courtesy, and, if you can afford it,
left a small gratuity for the men, you may proceed upon your way, which
is a very pleasant one, as ways go, winding through woods and fields
into the valley you traversed on your way to Wrynose. Then cross this
same valley to examine another slate-quarry belonging to Mr Marshall,
in which you will find a magnificent cavern, not dark, but quite as
light as any part of the world without, having an ample window near its
roof; it is nearly circular, about forty-five yards in diameter, and
the same in height, forming a grander dome than is possessed by any
artificial edifice I have yet beheld.
CHAPTER XII.
LITTLE LANGDALE—BLEA TARN—GREAT LANGDALE—LANGDALE
PIKES—WALLEND—MILL-BECK—DUNGEON GHYLL—CHAPEL STILE—LANGDALE
CHURCH-YARD—ELTERWATER—HACKETT—COLWITH AND COLWITH FORCE—TARN
HOWS—FINALE.
Quitting the slate quarries, you follow the road by which you formerly
travelled on your way to the classic Duddon, till you reach the
stream separating Lancashire from Westmorland. You now cross this
stream at the point where you approach it, and at once enter Little
Langdale, up which the road takes you past “the New Houses,” Birk How,
“Langden Jerry,” The Busk, and Langdale Tarn, all of which have been
noticed either collectively or separately, on a previous occasion.
After winding by a rough ascending road, half way round the mountain
range called Lingmoor, you arrive at Blea Tarn, which, to quote _the_
Professor, is “a lonely, and if in nature there be anything of that
character, a melancholy piece of water!” It is thus finely described in
Mr Wordsworth’s Excursion, as the abode of his Solitary:
'Urn-like it is in shape—deep as an urn;
With rocks encompassed, save that to the south
Is one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplies a boundary less abrupt and close,
A quiet treeless nook with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glitters in the sun,
And one bare dwelling; one abode—no more!
It seems the home of poverty and toil,
Though not of want. The little fields made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,
Pay cheerful tribute to the moorland house.
There crows the cock, single in his domain;
The small birds find in spring no thicket there
To shroud them; only from the neighbouring vales
The cuckoo, straggling up to the hill-top,
Shouteth faint tidings of some gladder place!'
[Sidenote: “BLEA-POND.”]
‘What!’ methinks we hear a voice exclaim—‘Is that a description of
bare, dull, dreary, moorland Blea-Pond, where a man and a Christian
would die of mere blank vacancy, of weary want of world, of eye and
ear?’ Hush, critic, hush! forget you that there are sermons in stones,
and good in everything? In what would the poet differ from the worthy
man of prose, if his imagination possessed not a beautifying and
transmuting power over the objects of the inanimate world?”
It is indisputable that the poet must possess something that may be
called “a transmuting power” of vision, for to the unpoetical optics of
any “worthy man of prose,” like you or me, Blea Tarn is much more like
a platter than “an urn.” Once upon a time, I—even I myself—in a very
sentimental mood, perpetrated a sonnet upon Blea Tarn, and, if you can
tolerate such enormity, here it is:
It is the very home of loneliness
This lonely dell, with lonely hills around,
Whose hundred rills emit one lonely sound—
A hum which doth the lonely soul oppress,
When joined with the lone scene you look upon.
The lonely pool with murky shadows thrown
Across its waters; and, within the gloom
Of mountain shade, the lonely dwelling-place,
Upon whose lonely roof each flitting trace
Of sunbeam fades like smiles beside a tomb.
And were you long to linger there and muse
In chilling loneliness, 'twould make you shiver,
Submerge your brightest fancies in the blues,
Mar much enjoyment, and derange your liver.
[Sidenote: PLAIN AND PIKES.]
It is no longer, nor has it been, for many years, a “treeless nook,”
for the “one abode” is now shaded by a sycamore or two, and the
hill-side beyond the tarn is covered with Mr Wordsworth’s most especial
aversion, an extensive plantation of fine larches, which were planted,
I suppose, by Dr Watson, the venerated Bishop of Llandaff, in the
possession of whose representatives the place still remains. For miles
hereabouts the scenery partakes largely of the Blea-tarn character,
and were it not for the house, the road, the little fields and the
intruding larches, there were nothing to indicate that the hand or
foot of man has been there. It is not until you are descending a steep
hill towards Wall-end, that the fertile meadows, the flourishing
trees, the hedge-rows and the homesteads of Great Langdale, and the
magnificent Pikes towering beyond them, neutralize the effect of the
dreary scene you are emerging from. But in introducing you to Great
Langdale, I am glad to resign my office to a much more efficient and
eloquent cicerone—so attend to _him_:—“Promise not to lift your eyes
from your ponies' ears, till we cry 'eyes forward'! We wish you to
enjoy the soul-uplifting emotion of instantaneous magnificence. There,
honest Jonathan, hold the gate open till the cavalry get through; and
now,——behold the VALE OF GREAT LANGDALE! There is no lake in that depth
profound—the glittering sunshine hides a cloud of rich enclosures,
scattered over with single trees; and, immediately below your feet,
a stately sycamore-grove shrouding the ancient dwelling of Wall-end.
Ay, your dazzled eyes begin now to discern the character of the vale,
gradually forming itself into permanent order out of the wavering
confusion. That thread of silver is a stream! Yonder seeming wreath
of snow a waterfall! No castles are these built by hands, but the
battlements of the eternal cliffs! There you behold the mountains, from
their feet resting on the vale as on a footstool, up to their crests in
the clear blue sky! And what a vast distance from field to cloud! You
have been in Italy, and Spain, and Switzerland,—say, then, saw ye ever
mountains more sublime than the Langdale Pikes?”
[Sidenote: GHYLL AND FALL.]
After passing Wall-end, you are fairly upon the floor of the vale of
Langdale, and crossing its fertile fields by a tolerable road, and
the other branch of the Brathay by an equally tolerable bridge, you
follow the road rather down the vale, till you reach the farm house of
Mill-beck, where you must stable your steed, whilst you scramble about
a quarter of a mile up the fell to look at Dungeon Ghyll. Arrived at
the entrance of this famous “rock-dungeon,” where Coleridge says “three
wicked sextons’ souls are pent,” and occasionally make a terrible
rumpus with “bells of rock and ropes of air,” the devil answering “to
the tale with a merry peal from Borrowdale,” you descend by a rude, but
stout ladder into the watercourse. After clambering over some rather
impracticable rocks, you obtain a full view of the fall, and declare
it to be an ample recompense for your journey, had it been five times
as toilsome. A perpendicular wall of solid rock rises on each side,
scarcely three yards apart, to the height of one hundred feet. At the
inner extremity of the chasm, about fifty yards from its external
opening, and directly opposite to you as you enter, the water rushes
in one clear unbroken fall, from a height of ninety feet, into a deep
circular basin, whence a lamb, which had been dashed over the fall
without injury, was rescued from drowning by Mr Wordsworth, to await
the legitimate fate of all lambs, they, like many of the human species,
“being destined to a drier death on shore.” The most curious feature
of Dungeon Ghyll is two huge rocks, which appear to have been rolling
down simultaneously from the Pikes above, and to have met and jammed
together across the top of the chasm, forming a bridge, which it is
a favourite feat with adventurous spirits to cross over, and which,
in its “contempt of danger and accommodation,” might almost seem to
have been placed there to gratify the peculiar taste in bridges of the
lamb’s benevolent preserver.
[Sidenote: WET OR DRY?]
There are various opinions on the momentous question of what is the
best weather for visiting falls such as this of Dungeon Ghyll. One
eminent lover and describer of mountain scenery, says:—“To our liking,
a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the noise is
beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified, till your head
splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn door, and roar into
a friend’s ear all in vain a remark on the cataract. To him you are a
dumb man. In two minutes you are as completely drenched in spray, as if
you had fallen out of a boat—and descend to dinner with a tooth-ache
that keeps you in starvation in the presence of provender sufficient
for a whole bench of bishops. In dry weather, on the contrary, the
waterfall is in moderation; and instead of tumbling over the cliff in
a perpetual peal of thunder, why it slides and slidders merrily and
musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in
many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose foam-bells is playing or asleep
the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache have you—speak in a whisper, and
not a syllable of your excellent observation is lost; your coat is
dry, except that a few dew-drops have been shook over you from the
branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of the cushat—and as for
tooth-ache interfering with dinner, you eat as if your tusks had been
just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss nuts, upper- and
lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the country.”
I have the temerity to hold the opposite opinion on this “momentous
question.” Some idea of the grounds on which I found that opinion,
may be gathered from the following rhyming epistle, in which, “long,
long ago,” I essayed to give a distant friend an account of a _winter_
excursion to Dungeon Ghyll:—
[Sidenote: WATERPROOF ZEAL.]
Of our wet ride to Dungeon Ghyll
A sketch, you say, would much delight you,
And though I lack descriptive skill,
A sketch I'll do my best to write you.
We took the way at high forenoon—
Three couples all on ponies mounted—
'Twas fair at first, but altered soon—
A change on which we’d scarcely counted;
For when we came to Yewdale head,
Thick clouds old Raven Crag were cloaking,
And as through Tilberthwaite we sped,
'Twas plain we’d catch a hearty soaking.
As Brathay beck with previous rains
Was flooded so we could not cross it—
We therefore wended round by lanes,
With mud and mire one _clarty_ posset.
And after crossing Colwith Bridge,—
The narrow ways forbade all other
Course but jostling in the hedge,
Or following after one another,—
In single file through Fletcher’s wood
Away we rustled, splashed, and clattered—
The foremost steed threw up the mud,
Bespattering me, whilst mine bespattered
The next behind, and in this way
We kept up one continued spatter,
And helter-skelter, clothed with clay,
We galloped on through Elterwater.
And when we came to Chapel Stile,
The heavy rain our spirits daunted,
But after sheltering there awhile,
It slackened, and again we mounted.
And as we rode up Langdale flat,
The lanes for many a rood with water
Were flooded deep, we splashed through that,
And came out looking something better.
Because we kicked up such a spray—
Our steeds abating none their paces—
It washed off almost half the clay
That stuck upon our clothes and faces.
And when we reached the resting farm,
We tied our ponies in the stable;
And then, our stiffened limbs to warm,
Ran off as fast as we were able.
Right up the hill to Dungeon Ghyll
We scudded like so many rabbits;
The ladies all got many a fall
By tripping in their riding habits;
Till, straggling up the torrent’s course,
We neared the fall whose ceaseless thunder
Seemed roaring hoarse, behold the force
That cleft this mighty rock asunder.
I've said I lack descriptive skill,
And now I really wish I’d held it,
To tell of pealing Dungeon Ghyll
When winter’s snows and rains have swelled it.
We ventured up within the rent
Where the vexed element was dashing,
And came forth cleaner than we went,
Receiving there a further washing.
We then descended to the farm,
And round the grateless fire we sauntered,
Our toes and noses well to warm,
Then back to Chapel Stile we cantered.
We saw our steeds get corn and hay,
And then enquired about our dinners,
For riding in the rain all day
Had left us six wet hungry sinners.
And when for clothing dry we’d bawled,
And some brief time to dress devoted,
_Les dames_ came forth dry gowned and shawled,
The gentlemen dry breeched and coated.
They, in the hostess’ shawls and gowns—
We, in poor Isaac’s coats and breeches,
Were much like masquerading clowns
Hobnobbing Tam O'Shanter’s witches.
But ne'ertheless the fare was good,
The room was warm, the waiter handy,
And all (_who would_) washed down their food
With reeking draughts of “_toddied_ brandy.”
Then round the hearth so cozily
We drew, mirth, song and chat combining;
And when our proper clothes were dry,
The moon and stars were brightly shining.
We cantered down by Skelwith Bridge,
And round by Borwick fast we wended,
Then scampering over High Cross’ ridge,
We to our own fair vale descended.
If e'er you pass o'er Wrynose hill,
Where three fair counties meet together,
Be sure to visit Dungeon Ghyll,
And visit it in rainy weather!
[Sidenote: A FAIR FINISH.]
When you have had enough of Dungeon Ghyll, descend the mountain side,
return to Mill-beck, re-mount your pony, and canter down the vale
past pretty farm houses, green fields, and slate-quarries, to Chapel
Stile, where my esteemed friend, Mrs Tyson, the youthful and blooming
landlady, will unexceptionably administer to your physical wants,
which, no doubt, are becoming importunate, whilst her husband will pay
equal attention to the requirements of your pony.
[Sidenote: FROM GAY TO GRAVE!]
Having refreshed to your satisfaction in Mrs Tyson's best parlour,
where the furniture of ancient oak bears such a polish as might
tempt you to re-enact the story of Narcissus, you may proceed to
examine the church yard, for here, again, the house of prayer and the
house of refreshment are in juxta-position. In this little mountain
burial-place, you will find, under a yew tree, a plain tombstone
erected to the memory of a late incumbent—the Rev. Owen Lloyd, son
of Mr Charles Lloyd, of Old Brathay, who was the early and life-long
friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth—a participator, I believe,
in the much-ridiculed scheme of Pantisocrasy—an accomplished scholar,
and an elegant, though little known, writer. You may find a very
interesting sketch of his history and character in De Quincey’s papers
on Lake Society, and to that I must refer you. On the humble tombstone
of his excellent, but unhappy son, you may read the following epitaph,
which, I need not tell you, is by “the aged poet, whose residence is
the crowning honour of the district”:
By playful smiles, (alas! too oft
A sad heart’s sunshine) by a soft
And gentle nature, and a free,
Yet modest hand of charity,
Through life was Owen Lloyd endeared
To old and young; and how revered
Had been that pious spirit, a tide
Of humble mourners testified,
When, after pains dispensed to prove
The measure of God’s chastening love,
Here, brought from far, his corse found rest,—
Fulfilment of his own request;—
Urged less for this yew’s shade, though he
Planted with such fond hope the tree,
Less for the love of stream and rock,
Dear as they were, than that his Flock,
When they no more their Pastor’s voice
Could hear to guide them in their choice
Through good and evil, help might have,
Admonished, from his silent grave,
Of righteousness, of sins forgiven,
For peace on earth and bliss in Heaven.
[Sidenote: ELEGIAC STANZAS.]
If _post mortem_ poetical panegyric be a proof of the affection with
which the subject has been regarded through life, (and why should
it not?) Owen Lloyd must have enjoyed no ordinary share of the love
and esteem of his neighbours and friends, for his early death is the
subject, in addition to Mr Wordsworth’s epitaph, of three other sets of
elegiac verses, viz., by Mr Hartley Coleridge, Mr Ball, of Glen Rotha,
and Mr —— Lloyd, his surviving brother. Mr Hartley Coleridge’s verses
are scarcely worthy of his name, though they certainly contain some
striking stanzas, as this,—referring to his school days:—
“Fine wit he had, and knew not it was wit,
And native thoughts before he dreamed of thinking,
Odd sayings, too, for each occasion fit,
To oldest sights the newest fancies linking.”
And these,—to a later period of life, when the gloom that darkened his
latter days was appearing:—
“I traced with him the narrow winding path
Which he pursued when upland was his way,
And then I wondered what stern hand of wrath
Had smitten him that wont to be so gay.
“Then would he tell me of a woeful weight—
A weight laid on him by a bishop’s hand,
That late and early, early still and late,
He could not bear, and yet could not withstand.”
These must serve as a specimen of Hartley Coleridge's dozen stanzas.
Mr Ball’s are remarkable only as containing the following tolerable
Irishism:—
“The rock that meets the current’s way
May _stillest_ rills _arrest_.”
[Sidenote: BETTY YEWDALE.]
His brother’s verses I have not seen, and having devoted more time to
this subject than you may approve of, you had better now return to your
inn—pay your moderate bill, and set out, passing the Elterwater powder
works, and through the straggling village of that name—take a glance
at the tarn with its reedy shores, and pushing on, you pass, unseen,
far up on the height to your right hand, the farm houses called Hacket,
formerly the residence of old Betty Yewdale, the heroine of one of
the best passages in the “Excursion.” I allude to that in the fifth
book, where the sage and eloquent wanderer describes his having been
benighted amongst the hills—
——until a light
High in the gloom appeared, too high, methought,
For human habitation;——
But making for this light, he finds a matron
“Drawn from her cottage on that aëry height,
Bearing a lantern in her hand she stood,
Or paced the ground—to guide her husband home.”
As you have read “The Excursion,” or, if not, intend to correct that
sin of omission without further delay, I need not quote farther. But I
should tell you that the same Betty Yewdale also figures as the heroine
of a section of that strange book “The Doctor,” or rather, I should
say, she is the narrator of the chapter, for it was taken down from
her own lips, and in her own language, by “the Doctor's” daughter,
Miss Southey, and a friend. It is called “A true story of the terrible
knitters i’ Dent”—is by far the best specimen of our local dialect
that I know, and in truth to nature, interest of narrative, and as a
picture of manners, is infinitely superior to the only production at
all resembling it—the well-known “Borrowdale letter.” I must recommend
it to you as well worthy a careful perusal, giving you the following
short extract as a whet. She and her sister, I must premise, had been
sent from Langdale to Dent, when she was “between sebben an’ eight
year auld, and Sally twea year younger,” and tiring of the mode of
living and the incessant knitting at Dent, which are most graphically
described, they ran away. She gives a minute detail of their three
days’ journey, and continues:—“It was quite dark afore we gat to
Ammelside yat—our feet warr sair, an’ we warr naarly dune for—an’
when we turnt round Windermer Watter heead t'waves blasht sea dowly
that we warr fairly heart-brossen. We sat down on a cauld steean an’
grat sair—but when we hed hed our belly full o’ greeting, we gat up
an’ dreed on agean—slaw enough, ye may be sure, but we warr i’ kent
rwoads.——We began ta be flayet at my fadder an’ mudder wad be angert at
us for running away. It was tweea o'clock in t’ mwornin’ when we gat to
our awn duir. I ca’d out ‘Fadder, fadder! Mudder, mudder!’ ower an’ ower
agean. She hard us, an’ sed ‘That’s our Betty voice!’ ‘Thou’s nowt but
fancies, lig still,’ sed my fadder—but she waddent, an’ sea gat up an’
open’t duir, an’ thear warr we stannin’ dodderin’ an’ daized wi’ cauld,
as nar deead as maks nea matter. When she so us she was warr flay’t than
we,—she brast out a crying, an’ _we_ grat, an’ my fadder grat an’ o',
an’ they duddent flyte nor sed nowt tull us for running away.”
[Sidenote: FORCE, FARMS, AND BIRCHES.]
You soon arrive at Colwith, where you may stop to inspect the force. It
is, in my opinion, one of the finest forces in the country, possessing
by far the largest body of water, with a fall, or rather a succession
of falls, of 152 feet, very much broken and frothed up by jutting
interruptions of rock. Its immediate environs are prettily wooded, and
it is seen to most advantage from below. When you cross Colwith Bridge,
you are again in Lancashire, and in rather a dreary portion of that
important county. You have no houses for miles, except the two farms of
Arnside, which stand _unseen_ in “dual loneliness” upon the wild moor
to the left, and those of Oxenfell over the heights on your right.
As you descend towards Yewdale by the alder-fringed brook, you
may notice a large enclosure of birches, which fully justify Mr
Wordsworth’s preference; for it is difficult to name a deciduous tree
that is prettier in all seasons than the birch, with its tremulous
foliage in summer, and its flea-coloured twigs and its grey-coloured
stem in winter. One cannot help regretting that the twigs of such a
handsome tree should come to such base uses at last!
[Sidenote: A “FLASH” AND ADIEU!]
As you approach the head of Yewdale, the scenery gradually assumes
an aspect of the most varied loveliness. When you enter the vale of
Yewdale, take the steep road to the left over Tarn Hows; but Mr De
Quincey is here a much better cicerone than I, and he says,—“Taking
the left-hand road, so as to make for Monk Conistone, and not for
Church Conistone, you ascend a pretty steep hill, from which, at a
certain point of the little gorge, or _hawse_ (i. e. _hals_, neck or
throat, viz., the dip in any hill through which the road is led), the
whole lake, of six miles in length, and the beautiful foregrounds, all
rush upon the eye with the effect of a pantomimic surprize—not by a
graduated revelation, but by an instantaneous flash.”
You descend by the road winding through Mr Marshall's beautiful
grounds, until you reach the road from Ambleside. You are now very
near your excellent head quarters, and my ravings and your ramblings
are equally near a happy conclusion; so trusting you will drink your
first bumper after dinner to our next merry meeting, I bid you, most
affectionately, adieu.
FINIS.
GEORGE LEE, PRINTER, KENDAL.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Old Man; or, Ravings and Ramblings round Conistone" ***
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