7)4 i-i CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE WORDSWORTH COLLECTION LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF THE ENGLISH LAKES PUBLISHED BY JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW $nblish£rs to the Sntbersitg. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. New York, • - The Macmillan Co. London, - • - Sintpkin, H ajnilton and Co. Cambridge, • - MaoniUan and Bowes, Edinburgh, ■ ■ Douglas aTid Foulis. ROBERT SOUTH EY. Literary Associations of the English Lakes By the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley Honorary Canon of Carlisle In two Volumes With Volume I. Cumberland, Keswick Fifteen and Southey's Country Illustrations Glasgow James MacLehose and Sons Publishers to the University 1906 First edition 1894 Second edition 1901 Third edition 1906 GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. TO MY KIND FRIEND AND FELLOW-LABOUREK WILLIAM HENRY HILLS, WHO HAS DONE MORE THAN ANY MAN IN THE DISTRICT, TO KEEP OUR ENGLISH LAKELAND, UNDISFIGURED, AND "SECURE FROM RASH ASSAULT," FOR THE HEALTH, REST, AND INSPIRATION OF THE PEOPLE. PREFATORY NOTE TO FIRST EDITION A RESIDENCE of fifteen years in the Lake District has led me to beHeve that for lack of some compendium of the Literary Associations of the country-side, the memories of the men and women whose life and work have added such charm to the scene of their labours are fading from oif the circle of our hills. This book has been written to preserve in their several localities, for visitors and residents alike, the names, the individualities, the presence of the minds and hearts, that have here gathered inspiration and shed lustre upon their homes. My thanks are due to Ernest Coleridge, to Mrs. Sandford, author of Thomas Poole and his Frietids ; to the late Mrs. Joshua Stanger, to the late Mrs. David Lietch, to Miss Moorsom, to Professor W. Knight, to Miss Mary Carr, to Mrs. Hannah M. Wigham, to Miss F. Arnold, to Messrs. George Watson, Plsher Crosthwaite, John Reid, and William Fletcher, for permission to use original matter, or for information which they kindly gave me during the viii PREFATORY NOTE writing of this book. Particularly do I desire to thank the friend who helped me with her kind suggestions during the passing of the book through the press, for her care in verifying references and in the making of the index. H. D. R. Crosthwaite Vicarage, May I, 1894. PREFATORY NOTE TO THIRD EDITION A Third Edition of the Literary Associations of the English Lakes is called for and is issued with a few alterations. H. D. R. Crosthwaite Vicarage, March, 1906. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE The Gateways of the Lake District - - i CHAPTER II Greta Hall Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Calvert : Coleridge at Greta Hall : Charles Lamb's Visit to the Lakes CHAPTER III Greta Hall ------- 40 The Southeys come to Greta Hall : Description of the House and its Household : Characteristics of Robert Southey : Southey and Coleridge : Southey and Wordsworth X CONTENTS CHAPTER IV PAGE Applethwaite : Windy Brow : Chestnut Hill - 86 Sir George Beaumont and Wordsworth : Wordsworth and Dr. Lietch : William Calvert : Calvert and Shelley : the Shelleys at Chestnut Hill CHAPTER V Keswick 119 Gray's Visit to Keswick : Sir John Bankes : Bankes' Charity : Dr. Brownrigg : Jonathan Otley : Clifton Ward : Frederic Myers : William and Lucy Smith CHAPTER VI Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite : Scafell AND SkIDDAW - - - - - - 154 Ruskin : Rogers : Turner : Gray : Keats : Wordsworth : Southey : Carlyle : the Arnolds at Derwentwater : Carlyle's Description of the View from Great Gable : Wilkinson and Wordsworth's Ascent of Scafell : Waterloo Bonfire on Skiddaw CHAPTER VII MiREHOUSE ----- 179 Tennyson's Visits to Mirehouse : Tennyson and the Speddings : Carlyle at Mirehouse CONTENTS xi CHAPTER VIII PAGE 195 CocKERMOUTH : Bridekirk : Brigham : Pardshaw Crag -------- The Wordsworths at Cockermouth : Fearon Fallows : Tickell : Sir Joseph Williamson : Abraham Fletcher : John Dalton : Elihu Robinson : Fox and the Early Quakers General Index - - - - - - - 238 Index of Places ------- 243 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Portrait of SOUTHEY Frontispiece SWARTHMOOR HALL 8 Portrait of S. T. Coleridge i6 Greta Hall in Winter 32 Portrait of Hartley Coleridge - - - - 48 Crosthwaite Church 80 Shelley's Cottage, Chestnut Hill - - - 96 Borrowdale in Winter 112 Portrait of Thomas Gray 120 Borrowdale 144 View from Friars' Crag 152 Borrowdale Yews 160 View from Scafell, looking North - - - 168 The Terrace Walk at Cockermouth - - - 192 A Summer Day on Derwentwater - - - 224 LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF THE ENGLISH LAKES CHAPTER I THE GATEWAYS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT The traveller to the Lake District, if he will let the imagination have its way, can never be un- solaced and alone. He is in company not only with mountains, but with men. For the wanderer from vale to vale there is added to what Matthew Arnold called " the cheerful silence of the fells," the great cheer of silent fellowship with those whose spirits still move and have their being in realms of thought and living effort, and whose footsteps are still found on cloudy upland or in sunny dale. There is perhaps in the world no bit of mountain ground twenty miles in diameter, so crowded with lofty memories of men, who lived and loved and helped their own times, and added for all time to the world's store of thought and music, as this little bit of the three northern English counties, that meet at the Shire stones on Wraynose Pass. I. A 2 THE ENGLISH LAKES There is hardly a valley or a hill down which or on which, one does not meet great ghostly presences. And fortunately for us, these for the most part have had such faithful chronicling, as to be re- cognisable even to the cut of their woodland dress, their gait, their glance, the very sound of their voice, when in our fancy we see them approaching. There, for example, gaunt and awkwardly made, with face so solemn, when wrapped in thought, that country folks said, " It was a feace wi'owt a bit of plesser in it " ; in blue-black cape, a Jem- Crow cap or " bit of an owd boxer hat," frilled shirt and cut-away tail-coat ; umbrella under his arm, perhaps a green shade over his eyes, comes Wordsworth to the post at Ambleside. Here, with shirt loose at the throat, in his white ducks and hatless, stands ' Christopher North ' by the rudder of the Windermere Boat, and when he leaps to land the earth seems to shake beneath him. Here, brown-eyed De Quincey starts and trembles, and talks to himself and hurries on. That little, shuffling-gaited person, " untimely old, irreverendly grey," who shoulders his stick as if it were a gun, then stops dead, then runs, then pauses again, is Hartley Coleridge — ' Lile Hartley,' as they call him hereabout. There again, with ' nebbed ' cap on head and wooden clogs on feet, book in hand, the tall, slenderly-built, dark-eyed man, who, if you pass him takes little notice, then pauses, looks up with a queer puzzled face, as if he were short-sighted and wanted to look over his spectacles at something or somebody GATEWAYS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT 3 in the sky, and then returns the salutation with abstracted air, is Robert Southey. And here, in this old market cart with bracken in the bottom for cushion, slow-winding down the vale, are Mrs. Wordsworth and Dorothy ; Dorothy, the wild-eyed, Dorothy, with a face as brown and tanned as a gipsy's, going to meet the walkers of their party at Dungeon Ghyll. A man with grey eyes Dorothy meets there ; broadly-built, and a little above middle height, pallid in complexion, and rather heavy of face, but of brow magnificent ; he and Dorothy are soon rapt in deepest talk. This is the " dear, dear Coleridge " of Dorothy's Journal, But there are less easily recognisable forms from further days of old, that meet us in our journey towards the Lake District, whether we come from Lancaster across the sands, or take train straight to Windermere. If we choose the latter course we see the little form of Catherine Parr — one day to be queenly Kate who dared to argue with bluff King Hal — walking in the castle meadow of Kendal, composing, perhaps, as she walks one or other of her simple prayers ; or we may imagine young Romney between 1756 and '62, working away at his first portraits in the house of his master, Steele, down in the grey town of the Dale of the Kent.^ Away to the ^ John Dalton, the chemist, and author of Meteorological Essays, worked here in his cousin George Bewley's school, first as usher, afterwards as joint-proprietor with his brother Jonathan, between the years 1781 and 1793. 4 THE ENGLISH LAKES north-east Kentmere vale opens, and Gilpin, quaint Gilpin in grey hosen and brown coat, maker of many sermons, publisher but of one, yet by his life preacher always of three — good faith, true courage, and sweet sincerity — comes riding down on mission- journey bent. He was born at Kentmere Hall in the year 1517.^ Courage had had a long ancestry in that family, for one reads in old Sir Daniel L. Fleming's de- scription of Westmoreland how Richard Gilpin in the time of King John was " enfeoffed in the Barone of Kendale, and he slew a wild boar that raged in the mountains adjoining, whence it was that the Gilpins have a boar for their coat." It is not every village clergyman that refuses a bishopric when it comes his way. This did Bernard Gilpin. His enemies would have him haled to the stake for having adopted the principles of the Reformation. As they could not do it by force, they would try wile. They drew up thirty articles against him and laid them before Bishop Bonner. " The heretic," said Bonner, " shall be burnt in less than a fortnight." Gilpin heard of this plot, and with utmost com- posure prepared to suffer for the truths he had espoused, nay, rejoiced that he might seal his testimony of faith with his life. He called his almoner, William Airy, to his side. " At length," said he, laying his hand upon his steward's shoulder, ^ A beautiful memorial brass, made at the Keswick School of In- dustrial Arts, has lately been placed to his memory in the Kentmere Church. GATEWAYS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT 5 " they have prevailed against me, I am accused to : the Bishop of London from whom is no escaping ; | God forgive their maHce and give me strength to ; undergo the trial." So he patiently suffered arrest i and rode away to London. On the journey his ' horse fell, and he broke his leg. His enemies I taunted him : for one of Gilpin's sayings was, " that ' nothing happened us, but what was for our good." " Is this thy broken leg then, for thy good ? " said they. " I make no question but it is," replied he, and Gilpin was right ; for Queen Mary died before he could go forward on his way to London, and thus the Apostle of the North regained his liberty. As the traveller to the English Lakes, by the branch line from Oxenholme to Windermere passes the mouth of Kentmere vale, let him remember Edward Irving's testimony to Bernard Gilpin's worth. " He is a model soul, he, of the student, of the preacher, of the pastor, and of the wise and worthy member of society." Let him call to mind the words of the late Bishop Lightfoot, who, preaching to the people of Houghton-le-Spring on the Ter- centenary Commemoration of their one-time pastor, spoke of Bernard Gilpin as " the noblest representa- tive " and in his teaching " the noblest exponent of the Reformation " ; " prototype of the English parish clergyman, he anticipated, too, by three centuries, the supplemental work, which in our own age for the first time the clergy have grafted upon their parochial ministrations." A man who led the way in matters of education, whose character was finely balanced from first to last ; who added to unworldli- 6 THE ENGLISH LAKES ness courage, and to courage tenderness and love, and to tenderness cheerfulness of soul ; who saw his way through all the paths of life by the lamp of his conscience, which he kept well trimmed. In all things he kept by the model of Christ. Like his Master, he was a sharp sword against the scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ; a place of refuge to the naked and destitute, a shepherd to the flock, food to the hungry, and drink to the thirsty.^ And let him think of that power to impress great souls with truth and worthiness, which seems from of old to have found our valleys fair for its feet, and on our mountain heights to have felt its angel wings. If, on the other hand, one ' crosses the sands,' and leaving the main line at Carnforth, goes by Ulver- ston, and so to Coniston or to Lakeside and enters the Lake District as it ought to be entered, through the portal of the hills or over the shining water-flood, one cannot help being reminded that while Turner painted here, there amongst the mosses and coppice land the painter Romney, the son of the Dalton cabinet-maker, grew to fame. Again, as we look out to Swarthmoor Hall, beyond Ulverston, we remember one who put all art from him for love of God and his fellows. In that ancient hall George Fox found refuge, and a helpmeet for life, in 1669. Nor must we forget when at the gates of Lake- land, that Furness Abbey — in the vale of Deadly Nightshade — kept alive the lamp of literature through dark times. There, in the year 11 80, ^ Cf. Leaders in the Northern Church, Bishop Lightfoot, p. 131 et sea. GATEWAYS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT 7 lived and wrote Jocelyn the Monk, the biographer of good St. Kentigern, or St. Mungo, as the Scotch call him — the first great bishop of our diocese, he who set up the Cross in the Thwaite near Keswick in 553- If, however, the traveller will not enter the English Lake District from the south, but prefers to come from north and west, or north and east, he will find himself again in goodly company. Say he comes by some coast packet, and lands at Whitehaven. Here, in fancy, he may meet upon the quay young Shelley with his child-wife Harriet and his sister-in-law, Eliza Westbrook, in excellent spirits, waiting in what he called that " miserable manufacturing seaport town " for the winds to fill the sails of " the packet " to bear him and his poems (in MSS.) and his " Address to the Irish People " away at midnight to Dublin via the Isle of Man ; or we may find him in the inn penning his letter under date Feb. 3, 18 12, to Miss Hitchener, in which he details his leaving Keswick, and expresses his satis- faction at the prospect of escape from the " filthy town and horrible inn"^ where he was then writing. Or again, we may find the Seer of Craigenputtock pacing the decks of a cargo-boat bound from Glen- caple to Liverpool with a certain Esbie he has found in the steerage, deep in talk of mysticism, during the " six weary hours " he is forced to stay at White- haven ; and we may compassionate Carlyle whose journal entry runs thus : — " Re-embarkment there ^MacCarthy's Early Life of Shelley, p. 136. 8 THE ENGLISH LAKES amidst bellowing and tumult and fiddling unutter- able, all like a spectral vision."^ But we would fain look back to days when this Whitehaven was less begrimed by the fruit of its coal-measures, and might still claim some title to its name. The gentle Spenser, who, some aver, won his wife in Cumberland, may be in fancy with us ; Spenser, bound hither not so much I think to woo or marry the grey-eyed maiden of St. Bees, as to ship himself in the train of his friend Lord Grey de Wilton, the Irish Secretary of State, for work in that most distressful country over sea. But if we cannot conjure the shade of Spenser into being on the quayside, at least here we may surely catch a glimpse of the gentle " Algrind," Spenser's friend. Archbishop Grindal, whom Lord Bacon called " the gravest and greatest prelate of the land." He was born at Hensingham, near St. Bees, in 15 19; and the grammar school he founded and endowed with lands of the ancient priory still flourishes in the hollow by the shore that gave refuge to St. Bega, the first Abbess of St. Bees. If, interested in the literature of our Saxon and Norse forefathers, we go to St. Bees, we may see the door-impost, which with its quaint carving serves as illustration to that part of Beowulf's poem that tells of the dragon that guards the mound of sacred treasures. Or again, if we venture a little inland from Whitehaven, we may see written clear upon the Gosforth cross a Christianised version of the Saga of the Voluspa which was carved thereon, so ^Froude's Carlyle. First Forty Years, Vol. II., p. 163. GATEWAYS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT 9 Dr. Stephens of Copenhagen thinks, not later than the end of the seventh century. But the traveller who cares for Christian missal and mediaeval letters and art, will, as he takes train from Whitehaven to Keswick, look out at the boulder-strewn shore of Harrington, and remember that St. Aedfrith's wondrously illuminated copy of the Gospels which was wrought for Cuthbert the Saint, was rescued from the sea by the bearers of St. Cuthbert's body, at low tide here ; and if at the British Museum he ask for sight of it, he may see, still sticking to its vellum pages, the salt that our Solway gave it on that eventful day so many hundred years ago. We have had our great Christian teachers of later date than Cuthbert from this part of Cumberland. For besides Grindal, the great and good, whose parents lived at Hensingham I am not sure but that St. Bees may not also boast that it nurtured Edwin Sandys, that writer for the Reformation, who, born at Esthwaite Hall in 15 19, became Prebend of Carlisle, 1552, and had to flee the country for that in 1553 he dared to preach in favour of Lady Jane Grey's pretensions to the crown. He came from exile the day the crown was set on the head of Queen Elizabeth, and died Archbishop of York, in 1588. As Cumbrians, chiefly do we thank him for founding the little school of Hawkshead, in 1585, which near two hundred years later taught, amongst its scholars, Wordsworth and his three brothers, and trained the heart and eye by which we who are readers of Wordsworth's poetry feel and see to-day. 10 THE ENGLISH LAKES Still bound for Keswick and the heart of the Lakeland hills, let the traveller, as he passes Workington or ' Derwent's Muth ' as it was called, remember how St. Cuthbert's body, borne by the monks from Lorton Vale, once came thither ; or let him feel the " shuddering presage " of " that en- sanguined block of Fotheringay " which a fair Queen may once have felt, as her " boat there touched the strand." On towards the Lakeland hills we speed, and as the train runs into the Cockermouth station, thoughts of our greatest Cumbrian poet banish other memories. Here was born William Wordsworth, April 17 in the year 1770. All the way from Workington that river has been with us, which, as Wordsworth wrote, was used "To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song, And, from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flowed along my dreams." ^ The " tempting playmate " whom he and his sister Dorothy so dearly loved, is by reason of the march of manufacture and the mining industry, less tempt- ing to-day, but still by its sandy banks in the September sun the ragwort shines and the boy bathers play. And whether we listen to the voice of the river away up in Borrowdale, " murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves," or nearer to the town leaping through the flowery groves of Isel, it is full charged of Wordsworth's music. ^ Prelude, Book I., p. 238. The quotations from W^ordsworth, unless specially noted, are taken from the single volume edition of his works. Macmillan & Co. 1888. GATEWAYS OF THE LAKE DISTRICT ii There is yet one other gateway to the Lake District, and he who journeys from Penrith to Pooley Bridge can never forget that at Penrith the worthy mercer William Cookston dwelt, whose only daughter, Ann, became the mother of our great Cumberland bard ; that it was at Penrith Wordsworth got his earliest schooling, and had for fellow-scholar his future wife, Mary Hutchinson. He will remember also, that to Brougham Hall beyond Mayborough Mound and the Tournay field close by — with their memories of primeval parliaments and old time trials of strength — often came a gladiator of later parlia- mentary times, the eccentric statesman, orator, and writer, Lord Brougham. Journeying on by coach from Penrith towards Ullswater, one sees at Yanwath, the farm-house home of the bard of Eamont Vale, Wordsworth's friend, the garden-loving Wilkinson. Further on we pass Eusemere, so well known by Dorothy Words- worth, visited by De Quincey, and often sojourned at by Wordsworth. There, between the years 1795 and 1806, lived Thomas Clarkson, the distinguished advocate and historian of the Abolition of Slavery, the author too of the Portraiture of Quakerism, and the writer of the Memoirs of William Penn. These are some of the literary associations with the minds of other days, that meet us as we enter the portals of the English Lakes. Let us pass within the mountain sanctuary, and speak with these presences and summon other spirits from the past, there, in their native haunts, beloved of old. CHAPTER II GRETA HALL COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, AND CALVERT : COLERIDGE AT GRETA HALL : CHARLES LAMB'S VISIT TO THE LAKES. It was in June 1800, so far as one can glean from Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife and little Hartley first came up into the Lake District, to stay at Dove Cottage with the Wordsworths, just returned from Germany, and thence to go on to Windy Brow at Keswick. Here is an extract from that Journal: — "Wednes- day (June 22, 1800). On Sunday, Mr. and Mrs. Coleridge and Hartley came. The day was very warm. We sailed to the foot of Loughrigg. They staid with us three weeks, and till the Thursday following, from ist till 23rd of July. On the Friday preceding their departure we drank tea at the island. ... I accompanied Mrs. C. to Wytheburn." ^ During this time Coleridge must have gone back- ward and forward to Keswick, for in a letter to his friend Poole, dated July 4, 1800, he describes his '^ Life oj William Wordsworth^ by William Knight, LL.D., Vol. I., p. 266. GRETA HALL 13 arrival at Keswick, and the commencement of his residence at Greta Hall. Poor man he is far from well. A cold caught on his journey to the North has prostrated him ; he is so weak " that writing is hateful to him." Judging by his letters he seems to have been a chronic invalid during his residence at Greta Hall. In the same journal under date Friday morning, August 8, Dorothy writes — " Walked over the moun- tains by Watendlath. A most enchanting walk. Watendlath a heavenly scene. Reached Coleridge's \ at eleven o'clock. " Saturday morning. I walked with Coleridge in the Windy Brow woods. " Monday. Walked to Windy Brow. " Wednesday. Made the Windy Brow seat." ^ Whether the Calverts were the entertainers of the Coleridges on this occasion, or had lent them their house, I know not. Coleridge certainly appears to have been gradually finding that Keswick was a desirable resting-place, and we know Calvert of Windy Brow offered to place part of the house at his disposal, if only he and Wordsworth would join forces with him and go in for scientific research and chemistry. I suppose Dr. Brownrigg's work at Ormathwaite had vastly interested him. At any rate Calvert, steward for the Duke of Norfolk, was a man of rare qualities ; appreciative of Wordsworth's wisdom and poetry, of Coleridge's eloquence and philosophy ; and determined, if it might be, to have both poets for neighbours. ^Knight's Lzfe of Wordsworth, Vol. I., pp. 267, 268. 14 THE ENGLISH LAKES Coleridge saw the Keswick valley ; and the beauty of the place added to a proximity to Calvert, to Sir Gilfrid Lawson's library, to William Wordsworth, and to Dorothy, laid strong hold upon his mind, and bade him leave London and set up house in Cumber- land. He took up his quarters at Greta Hall in the autumn of 1800. Therefrom he writes a letter to Humphrey Davy, dated Feb. 7, 1801, and asks for information as to text books and laboratory equip- ment, in which he describes Calvert of Windy Brow thus : " A gentleman resident here, his name Calvert, an idle, good-hearted, and ingenious man, has a great desire to commence fellow-student with me and Wordsworth in Chemistry. He is an intimate friend of Wordsworth's, and he has proposed to W. to take a house which he (Calvert) has nearly built, called Windy Brow, in a delicious situation, scarce half a mile from Greta Hall, the residence of S. T. Coleridge, Esq., and so for him (Calvert) to live with them, i.e. Wordsworth and his sister. In this case he means to build a little laboratory, etc. Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have before lived with Calvert on the same footing " (I suppose this refers to their stay at Windy Brow in 1792) " and are much attached to him ; because my health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his health, too, is like little potatoes, no great things ; and therefore Grasmere (13 miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us to enjoy each other's society without inconvenience, as much as it would GRETA HALL 15 be profitable for us both ; and likewise because be feels it more necessary for him to have some intellectual pursuit less clearly connected with deep passion than poetry. . . . However, whether Words- worth come or no, Calvert and I have determined to begin and go on. Calvert is a man of sense and some originality, and is, besides, what is well called a handy man. He is a good practical mechanic." ^ If there had been any doubt as to the exact date when they came to Keswick and went into residence at Greta Hall — for Sara Coleridge only tells us briefly that it was in 1800, and Derwent Coleridge that it was in the autumn of the year 1800 — it is removed by a letter to Josiah Wedgewood, under date July 24, 1800, in which Coleridge, evidently writing from Greta Hall, says, " This is the first day of my arrival at Keswick," and then proceeds to describe the roomy house on an eminence, a furlong from the town, with its enormous garden sub-let in part for market produce, as it is at this day, and the delight- ful shady walk by the river Greta, now hardly traceable. Nor is there any doubt as to what the mother and children looked like. Of the former, Mr. Reynell, who saw the Coleridges at Stowey, wrote : " I found Mrs. Coleridge as I have con- tinued to find her, sensible, affable, and good-natured, thrifty and industrious, and always neat and prettily dressed. ... Mrs. Coleridge is indeed a pretty ^ Knight's Life of Wordsworth, Vol. 1., p. 230. * Life of Coleridge : J. Dykes Campbell, p. 74. 1 6 THE ENGLISH LAKES Of little Derwent, who was born at Greta Hall on Sep. 14, 1800, Dorothy Wordsworth tells us in Dec. I 801, " Derwent in the cradle asleep . . . the image of his father,"^ And writing of his little Hartley to Sir H. Davy on July 25, 1800, Coleridge says, " Hartley is a spirit that dances on an aspen leaf; the air that yonder sallow-faced and yawning tourist is breathing is to my babe a perpetual nitrous oxide. Never was more joyous creature born. Pain with him is so wholly transubstantiated by the joys that had rolled on before, and rushed on after, that often- times five minutes after his mother has whipt him he has gone up and asked her to whip him again." ^ How different a picture this of the child " whose fancies from afar are brought," from that of the man, " untimely old, irreverendly grey," whom Wordsworth foresaw in the six years old child, with " Pain " for " guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality."^ But how came Coleridge to be at Greta Hall in residence? His friendship with Calvert and Words- worth had helped him to Cumberland, and the happy opportunity of finding a house just ready for his wishing had decided the matter of his stay in the Keswick Vale. Let us imagine it is June of 1800. If we had been down at Fligh Hill, somewhere near Bromley's House, we should have seen a team of smoking horses just come in from Whitehaven, and having a ^ Knight's Life of Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 282. "^ Fragmentary Remains of Sir Humphrey Davy. Ed. by his brother, 1858. 3 To H. C. Six Years Old, p. 184. S. T. COLERIDGE. w GRETA HALL i? bait at the stables there. On the waggon with its hood would have been the words, " William Jackson, Carrier, Whitehaven to Kendal ancf Lancaster." The owner is not with them ; he is still building, away at Greta Hall, a kind of double mansion. In part of this, the most northerly part, he is already living ; and part of it is being plastered and par- titioned off from the rest of the house, to receive, at the end of the month, a friend of Mr. Calvert's and Mr. Wordsworth's, a philosopher and poet. The waggon may go on its way, and if we should never see it again it will not be forgotten, for Wordsworth, * him o' Rydal,' knows that stately waggon well, and ere it cease to ply, will give it immortality of verse. The poet "Through all the changes of the year, Had seen 'it' through the mountains go, In pomp of mist or pomp of snow, Majestically huge and slow." ^ And though a time came when the driver, for his peccadillo at the Cherry Tree, poor Benjamin, " The patient, and the tender-hearted Was from his team and waggon parted " ; ^ and, as Wordsworth says, " Two losses had we to sustain, We lost both Waggoner and Wain ! " ^ that was not till near 1805, and this is only 1800. Old Jackson, a veritable gentleman of the yeoman school, is, however, thinking of retiring from the 1 TAe Waggoner, Canto fourth, p. 233. 2 Idem. ^ Idem, T. B 1 8 THE ENGLISH LAKES business ; has built * Greata Hall/ as he used to spell it, with the proceeds of the ' stately wain ' ; and has determined to seek the otimn cum dignitate that an income of ;^200 a year may give, and spend the last years of his life in study of his Bible, and his Shakespeare, and his Hume, and in the enjoyment of a not inconsiderable library of books which he has accumulated. I called him a gentleman of the old type of Cum- berland yeoman school. I suppose his pedigree went back to crusading times at least, for, as one stands by his tombstone — which lies eighteen paces to the north in line with the third buttress on the north aisle of the Crosthwaite Church, counting from the east end — one can see his coat of arms graven on the stone ; a greyhound above, and below three crescents and stars, with the motto, " Semper paratus," beneath. Below is the simple inscrip- tion : " In Memory of William Jackson of Greta Hall, Keswick, who died September i6, 1807, aged 5 I years." To this master of Benjamin and the 'girt waggon' has Wordsworth probably written, and told him that a friend of his and his sister Dorothy, with whom they have been travelling in Germany, a man of great learning and a poet, is anxious to settle down for study in the Keswick Vale. Jackson, with his love of ' beuk larning ' is pleased to have him for his tenant or part-tenant. Wordsworth or Calvert has probably told Jackson that their friend Coleridge is not a rich man except in brain ; and Jackson has had another offer at double the GRETA HALL 19 amount Coleridge can afford to pay for accommoda- tion. But brains win the day with Jackson, and Coleridge finds in the builder of the dipartite house a neighbourly friend as well as a landlord ; a man so well pleased with the intellectual companionship of his tenant that, when the first half-year's rent is due, he will just say, " No, no, Mr. Coleridge, I love your children, and I like your friendship ; the house is only part finished in the plastering, I shall take no rent from you, sir, this time at all." This is how Coleridge writes of Jackson to Robert Southey, in April of 1801 : " Our neighbour is a truly good and affectionate man, a father to my children, and a friend to me. He was offered fifty guineas for the house in which we are to live, but he preferred me for a tenant at twenty-five, and yet the whole of his income does not exceed, I believe, ;^200 a year. A more truly disinterested man I never met with ; severely frugal, yet almost carelessly generous ; and yet he got all his money as a common carrier, by hard labour, and by pennies and pennies. He is one instance, among many in this country, of the salutary effect of the love of knowledge — he was from a boy a lover of learning."^ So in the early summer of 1800, hither from London Coleridge came, where he had been busy translating Schiller's Wallenstein, and had agreed to be co-contributor with his friends, Wordsworth, Southey, and Lamb, to the columns of the Morning ^ Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, by C. C. Southey, Vol. II., p. 148. 20 THE ENGLISH LAKES Post. Hither he came with his wife — Southey's sister-in-law — and his child Hartley. Coleridge was then in his prime — in his twenty- ninth year — " Hungry for Eternity," as it has been said ; feeling that all nature was but a symbol and a voice of something far more deeply interfused, a spirit in man that would commune with his Maker. Dreams of * pantisocracy ' and ' Susquehanna,' despite its poetically sounding syllables, had passed away. The ' Hartleyan ' philosophy, which had once so attracted him, was a thing of the past. The young runaway recruit, the ' Comberbatch ' who, at the bidding of the advertisement in Chancery Lane, "Wanted, a few smart lads for the 15th Elliot's Light Dragoons," had joined the army in 1793 ; and had bravely answered the question of the Inspecting General at Reading : " ' Do you think,' said the General, ' you can run a Frenchman through the body ? ' I " ' I do not know,' replied Coleridge, ' as I never ? tried, but I'll let a Frenchman run me through the , body before I'll run away. '"^ He has long ago forgotten the pain in the stomach that prevented him cleaning his horse's heels and his own accoutre- ments, and the feeble attempts he made — worst of the awkward squad — to manage his hot and fiery steed at drill. The round-faced Unitarian minister, with ill-fitting short shooting jacket, who appeared suddenly upon the scene and filled Mr. Rowe's pulpit at Shrewsbury, in 1793, ay, and his chapel too ; and for three weeks " fluttered the proud ^ Gillman's Life of Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 59. GRETA HALL 2i Salopians like an eagle in a dovecot,"^ will never preach in a Unitarian pulpit again. He has been to Germany, he has reconsidered his principles, and the outcome of it all is much what he expressed to Mrs. Barbauld, who tackled him at a drawing-room party with the question, " So, Mr. Coleridge, I under- stand you do not consider Unitarians Christians ? " " I hope, Madam," said he, " that all persons born in a Christian country are Christians, and trust they are under the condition of being saved ; but I do contend that Unitarianism is not Christianity T'^ Almost with shame does he now speak of the time when leaving Jesus College to set on foot the publi- cation he called the Watchman, in 1796, with a fervour as great almost as had possessed Fox of the leathern suit, clad in blue coat and white waistcoat, that so " not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen upon him," he had set out from Bristol to Sheffield, by way of Birmingham and Manchester, a volunteer lecturer with a flaming prospectus, to set forth the Truth, political and social and religious, that the Truth might make England free. But to-day in Keswick the Coleridge of those past days is Coleridge still. He has the fire of a soldier, the fervour of a preacher, and a singleness of heart that holds that ' name, wealth, and fame, seem cheap to him beside the interests of what he believes to be the truth and will of his Maker.' "Fame is the fiat of the good and wise."^ "By ^ Gillman's Life of Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 109. 2 Idem, Vol. I., p. 164. ^ Idem, Vol. I., p. 175 «. 22 THE ENGLISH LAKES fame," he explains himself to " mean anything rather than reputation, the desire of working in the good and great permanently, through indefinite ages, the struggle to be promoted into the rank of God's fellow-labourers." ^ " I expect," he said, " neither profit nor general fame by my writings ; and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward. It has soothed my affections ; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyment ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."^ And here at Greta Hall will he work out his own salvation. Not without regret has he left the Quan- tock Hills and that happy home at Nether Stowey, which gave him permanent shelter beside a true friend, his good friend Thomas Poole. As Tennyson speaks of " the poplars four, that stand beside my father's door," ^ so Coleridge wrote in 1798: " And now beloved Stowey ! I behold Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ; And close behind them, hidden from my view. Is my own lovely cottage, where my babe And my babe's mother dwell in peace."* He came hither to this green and silent hill ^(yi\\ma.-a!% Life of Coleridge, Vol. I., p. 175. ^VxtidiCeto Coleridge^ s Poems. Pickering. London: 1848. ^ Ode to Memory, Stanza IV. * Fears in Solitude. Sibylline Leaves. GRETA HALL 23 beside the Greta, but often in thought must he have travelled southward who wrote, " I parted from Poole with pain and dejection for him, and for myself in him " ^ and who sang "With light And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend, Remembering thee, O green and silent dell ! And grateful, that by nature's quietness And solitary musings, all my heart Is softened, and made worthy to indulge Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind."^ But Coleridge's chief delight in thinking of Nether Stowey must have been that when there he became acquainted with Wordsworth, who then resided at Alfoxden hard by, " whose society," he tells us, " I found an invaluable blessing, and to whom I looked up with equal reverence as a poet, a philosopher, or a man." ^ To be again within reach of this Wordsworth with whom in his annus mirabilis of production, 1797, he had planned the Lyt'ical Ballads, and had written Remorse, The Ancient Mariner, The Dark Ladie, and Christabel, was some compensation for the change of residence. And though he has been far from well in the past year, 1800, he has written the second part of Christabel. This is sign and seal of returning health. The poem returned to him, when he was feeling up to the mark, " with all the loveliness of a vision," ^See Life of Coleridge: J. Dykes Campbell, p. 113. ^ Fears in Solitude. Sibylline Leaves. ' Gillman's Life of Coleridge, Vol. L, p. 102. 24 THE ENGLISH LAKES and he came to Keswick in 1800, "with his poetic powers no longer in a state of suspended animation," determined if strength were his, to dedicate his power to his verse and to the glory and honour of God and the help of his fellow-men. The exceeding beauty of the scene from Greta Hall had much to do with this reawakening. What Coleridge prophesied as to the powers divine that would come upon him, when in his letter to Godwin he wrote, " I return to Cumberland and settle at Keswick, in a house of such prospect that if, according to you and Hume, impressions and ideas constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become a god," ^ had come to pass. How pleased the poet was with his choice of habitation, we gather from a letter to his friend Poole, under date Aug. 14, 1800, in which he says, " Our house is a delightful residence, something less than half a mile from the lake of Keswick, and something more than a furlong from the town. It commands both that lake, and the lake of Bassen- thwaite, Skiddaw is behind us to the left, to the right and in front mountains of all shapes and sizes ; the waterfall of Lodore is distinctly visible. In garden, etc., we are uncommonly well of, and our landlord who resides next door in this twofold house is already much attached to us. He is a quiet sensible man with as large a library as yours and perhaps larger, well stored with encyclopaedias, dic- tionaries, and histories, etc., all modern." ^ Of Coleridge's awakening muse and the retuning ^See Life of Coleridge^: J. Dykes Campbell, p. 112. ^Cf. Thomas Pooh and his friends, by Mrs. H. Sandford. GRETA HALL 25 of his harp, the second part of Christabel is witness. Bitterly as he felt at times his removal from Stowey and separation from his dear friend Thomas Poole, " in the great windy parlour where he used to feel so much at home," he found, as he told Poole in a letter written Nov. i, 1800, that everything he promised himself in this country had answered far beyond his expectations, " The room," says he, " in which I write commands six distinct landscapes — the two lakes, the vale, the river, and mountains and mists, and clouds and sunshine make endless com- binations, as if heaven and earth were for ever talking to each other. Often when in a deep study I have walked to the window and remained there looking without seeing ; all at once the lake of Keswick and the fantastic mountains. ... at the head of it, have entered into my mind, with a suddenness as if I had been snatched from Cheapside and placed for the first time on the spot where I stood, and that is a delightful feeling — these fits and trances of novelty received from a long known object." What he was like when he came to the lakes we know from Dorothy Wordsworth's careful descrip- tion.^ We get a good account of his appearance in the winter of 1798, from WiUiam Hazlitt, with whose forehead, so Coleridge afterwards said, he had then conversed uninterruptedly for two hours, and with whom, as a good historian, the poet was well pleased. " His complexion," says Hazlitt, " was at that ^Knight's Life of Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 112. 26 THE ENGLISH LAKES time clear and even bright. His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows," — these Hartley inherited — '' and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a sea with darkened lustre. * A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent ; his chin good-humoured and round, but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing. . . . Coleridge," he continues, " in his person was rather above the common size, inclining to the corpulent. . . . His hair," during the latter part of his life perfectly white, " was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his forehead." ^ De Quincey, who saw S. T. Coleridge for the first time in the August of 1807 at Bridgewater, thus pictures him: — "In height he might seem to be about five feet eight (he was in reality about an inch and a half taller, but his figure was of an order which drowns the height) ; his person was broad and full, and tended even to corpulence ; his complexion was fair, though not what painters technically style fair, because it was associated with black hair ; his eyes were large, and soft in their expression ; and it was from the peculiar appear- ance of haze or dreaminess which mixed with their light that I recognised my object. This was Cole- ^ Life of Coleridge : J. Dykes Campbell, p. 8i ; from The Liberal, 1^0. III., 1823. GRETA HALL 27 ridge. I examined him steadfastly for a minute or more, and it struck me that he saw neither myself nor any other object in the street. He was in a deep reverie. . . . The sound of my voice, announcing my name, first awoke him ; he started, and for a moment seemed at a loss to understand my purpose or his own situation ; for he repeated rapidly a number of words which had no relation to either of us. There was no mauvaise honte in his manner, but simple perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in recovering his position amongst daylight realities. The little scene over, he received me with a kindness of manner so marked that it might be called gracious. . . . Coleridge led me to a drawing-room, rung the bell for refresh- ments, and omitted no part of a courteous recep- tion," . . . and then " like some great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that, having been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, suddenly recovers its volume of waters and its mighty music, swept at once, as if returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, that it was possible to conceive. . . . For about three hours he had continued to talk. ... In the midst of our conversation, if that can be called conversation which I so seldom sought to interrupt, and which did not often leave openings for con- tribution, the door opened and a lady entered. She was in person full, and rather below the common 28 THE ENGLISH LAKES height, whilst her face showed to my eye some prettiness of rather a commonplace order. Coleridge paused upon her entrance ; his features, however, announced no particular complacency, and did not relax into a smile. In a frigid tone, he said, whilst turning to me, ' Mrs. Coleridge,' in some slight way he then presented me to her. I bowed, and the lady almost immediately retired. From this short but uncongenial scene," adds De Quincey, " I gathered, what I afterward learned redundantly, that Coleridge's marriage had not been a very happy one."i De Quincey may have been right, but who was to blame? Was it the constantly unselfish, if unintellectual and rather over-domestic gentle woman, who for all her fussiness kept a household together for years in the hope that her queer- natured spouse would return to his bairns and superintend their education ? or was it the fault of the man of over-strung nerves and constant in- validism, of whom Southey once said, " the moment anything assumed the shape of a duty Coleridge felt incapable of discharging it," who unhappily sought refuge in opium for ills that it only added to. We cannot pronounce judgment ; it is enough for us to know that life was not all roses for the pair who took up residence in the beginning of this century at Greta Hall. The wife was too delicate in health to go far from home, and the country people saw little of her, but the husband might have been seen any week walking in the ^ Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets: De Quincey, chap. ii. GRETA HALL 29 direction of the Poet's Tryst at Thirlmere, or strolling up to Windy Brow. Other guests of literary fame might have been noted coming down the steep garden walk, and passing towards the lake or towards the hills in company with the poet. Samuel Rogers was guest in the early days of Greta Hall hospitality. One, too, whose name is indissolubly linked with the poem, The Waggoner^ to whom indeed it was dedicated,^ that most " good man of most dear memory," — for he was, as Wordsworth wrote, " good if e'er a good man lived," — Charles Lamb, he, too, was visitor at Greta Hall. One would not go into detail as to this visit of Charles Lamb to Greta Hall, were it not for the fact that it proved the power of our mighty Skiddaw, to break down the determination of the city-bred and town-loving Lamb, to refuse to the solitudes of our Cumberland hills and dales their sovereign authority over the heart of man, their rightful power to chasten and subdue. It is not a little interesting to see how often ^ " My dear Wordsworth, — You cannot imagine how proud we are here of the dedication," wrote Charles Lamb in 1819. "We read it twice for once that we do the poem. . . . ' Benjamin ' is no common favourite, there is a spirit of beautiful tolerance in it ; it is as good as it was in 1806. . . . Methinks there is a kind of shadowy affinity between the subject of the narrative and the sub- ject of the dedication," and he playfully suggests that if Wordsworth had substituted his own name, Charles Lamb for Benjamin, and the Honourable United Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, for the master of the misused team, Mr. Jackson, "it might seem, by no far-fetched analogy, to point its dim warnings hitherward." — Lamb's Letters, edited by T. N. Talfourd, Vol. I., p. 23. 30 THE ENGLISH LAKES Lamb had rejected the proffered invitation to make the acquaintance of our hills, and how a climb up Skiddaw was at last accomplished with the result that its natural sovereignty over the soul was ad- mitted, and that Lamb went away haunted by the horned hill which " shrouds His double front among the Atlantic clouds, And pours forth streams more sweet than Castaly."^ How came it about that Lamb should come to Greta Hall ? The old school days at Christ's Hos- pital which Lamb remembered with such pleasure to his dying day, as is evidenced by that verse " I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days ; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces," had been made chiefly joyous to him by his friend- ship with an older student, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One remembers the letter from Charles Lamb descriptive of his love of that friend Coleridge in those memorial school days.""^ In those old blue-coat days, whether he shared with Coleridge the dainties with which, much to the boy's confusion, his dear old maiden aunt would waylay him as she sat on the steps of the coal-cellar and patiently waited for the boy to pass to school, that so she might smuggle some bit of sweetstuff to his mouth from the pudding-basin carefully con- cealed beneath her shawl, we know not, but that he ^ Wordsworth'' s Poems, " Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side," p. 156. ^ Final Memorials of Lamb, by Talfourd, Vol. II., p. 196 et seq. GRETA HALL 31 shared his shy heart with him, and made Coleridge his hero, we do know. Two years his junior, for Lamb was born in February, 1775, he had then learned to listen to the rich discourse of the "inspired charity-boy"^ with delight that had no envy about it ; and when Coleridge came to London, full of hopes and glorious schemes, Charles Lamb would come often in the evening to the little public-house in Smithfield called the ' Salutation and Cat,' and let Coleridge's golden discourse on " Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," sink deep into his soul. " Coleridge, you know not my supreme happiness at having one on earth whom I can call a friend,"^ so wrote Lamb in 1796. "You are the only correspondent, and I might add, the only friend, I have in the world. I go nowhere, and have no acquaintance. Slow of speech, and reserved of manners, no one seeks or cares for my society, and I am left alone. . . . You dwell in my heart of hearts." ^ Yet had Lamb another friend, Charles Lloyd of Old Brathay, of whom he once wrote, " I am dearly fond of Charles Lloyd, he is all goodness " ; of whom he sang : " Long, long, within my aching heart, The grateful sense* shall cherished be ; I'll think less meanly of myself That Lloyd will sometimes think of me." ^ ^Essays of Elia, "Christ's Hospital." "^Lamb's Letters, Vol. I., p. 41. '^ Idem, Vol. L, p. 27. * Of a holiday with Lloyd. ^ Poems, Plays, and Essays, "To Charles Lloyd, An Unexpected Visitor." 32 THE ENGLISH LAKES But Lloyd had left the ' Bull's Mouth Inn' and Coleridge had left the ' Salutation and Cat ' in town. They were within a few miles of one another now, away at the English Lakes, and other attractions — remembered so well, since his visit to Coleridge at Nether Stowey — would appeal to Charles Lamb's heart. There were now at Greta Hall, the " beloved wife" Sarah — " Dear Sarah — to me also so very dear, because so very kind," ^ — as he once wrote — and the " dear, dear little David Hartley, that minutest of minute philosophers," after whose welfare, even down to the matter of his cutting his first tooth, Charles Lamb so constantly enquired in his affec- tionate letters. Already in 1800 had Lloyd done his best to get Lamb " to come and see the wonders of the English Lakes." " I need not describe," Lamb had then said to his friend Manning, " the expectations which such an one as myself, pent up all my life in a dirty city, have formed of a tour to the Lakes," but he added, " hills, woods, lakes, and mountains, to the eternal devil. ... I am not romance-bit about Nature. The earth, and sea, and sky (when all is said), is but as a house to dwell in. " Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat sempstresses, ladies cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with spectacles (you may know them by their gait), lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks' and ^ Lamb's Letters, Vol. I., p. 142. GRETA HALL 33 silver-smith's shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling home drunk ; if you happen to wake at midnight, cries of fire, and stop thief; inns of court with their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges ; old book-stalls, ' Jeremy Taylors,' ' Burtons on Melan- choly,' and ' Religio Medicis ' on every stall. These are thy pleasures, O London ! with-the-many-sins. O, city, for these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang ! " ^ So wrote Lamb to Manning, on his first invitation to the English Lakes, in 1800. But a second invitation came in January of 1801, this time from Wordsworth at Grasmere, and the cockney in Lamb's heart that once confessed that all of the country it cared for, were the begrimed and stunted trees in disused churchyard corners, and the side courts and nooks that border Thames Street, was now too full of London delight to admit of his accepting the invitation, even if his purse had not been as it was, empty. This was his reply.: " I ought before this to have replied to your very kind invitation to Cumberland. With you and your sister I could gang anywhere ; but I am afraid whether I shall ever be able to afford so desperate a journey. Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense 1 Lamb's Letters, Vol. I., pp. 181-182. T. C 34 THE ENGLISH LAKES local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street, the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and customers, coaches, waggons, play- houses ; all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden ; the watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles ; — life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night ; the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon the houses and pavements, the print shops, the old book stalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime and a masquerade — all these things work themselves into my mind and feed me without the power of satiating me. The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. All these emotions must be strange to you ; so are you, so are your rural emotions to me. But consider, what must I have been doing all my life not to have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such scenes ? " My attachments are all local, purely local — I have no passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then it was the spurious engendering of poetry and books) to groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book-case which has followed me about like a faithful dog (only ex- ceeding him in knowledge) wherever I have moved, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where I have sunned myself, my old school — these are my mis- GRETA HALL 35 tresses — have I not enough, without your mountains ? I do not envy you, I should pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends with anything. Your sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and lakes, affect me no more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable characters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, where I might live with handsome visible objects. I consider the clouds above me but as a roof beautifully painted, but unable to satisfy the mind ; and at last, like the pictures of the apartment of a connoisseur, unable to afford him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, from disuse, have been the beauties of Nature, as they have been confinedly called ; so ever fresh, and green, and warm, are all the inventions of men, and assemblies of men in this great city. I should certainly have laughed with dear Joanna. ^ " Give my kindest love, and my sister's, to D. and yourself. And a kiss from me to little Barbara Lewthwaite. Thank you for liking my play ! C. L."^ One does not wonder that Wordsworth in his lines, Written after the Death of Charles Lamb^ owns : "Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my friend, But more in show than truth," for there came a third invitation to the prisoner to the " dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood," to come and see the hills and vales ; this time alas ! ^ Wordsworth's poem, Joanna, which describes the effect of laughter echoing in the mountains. * Lamb's Letters, Vol. I., p. 2I2. 36 THE ENGLISH LAKES without promise of seeing Wordsworth, for Words- worth was away, but with promise of sight of Skiddaw. The invitation was sent from Greta Hall early in August of 1802, and T expect it conveyed to Lamb and his sister Mary a promise that they shall not only see Calvert, but the Lloyds and Thomas Clarkson, the anti-slavery philanthropist at Eusemere on Ullswater. His account of what he saw and did may be gathered from his letter to Manning, dated 24th September, 1802 : " I set out with Mary to Keswick without giving Coleridge any notice, for, my time being precious, did not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains, great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, etc. We thought we had got into fairy-land. But that went off (and it never came again ; while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets), and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose that I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skiddaw, etc., I never shall forget GRETA HALL 37 ye, how ye lay about that night like an intrenchment ; gone to bed as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study ; which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an ^olian harp, and an old sofa, half bed, etc. And all looking out upon the fading view of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren. What a night ! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or two with the Clarksons (good people, and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have since been in London, and passed much time with us ; he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulls water (where the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end of Ullswater, I forget the name, to which we travelled on a very sultry day over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself that there is such a thing as that which tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected before ; they make such a spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do after an illumina- tion. Mary was excessively tired when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold. 38 THE ENGLISH LAKES running over cold stones), and with the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all about and about, making you giddy ; and then Scotland afar off, and the Border countries, so famous in song and ballad ! It was a day that will stand out like a mountain, I am sure, in my life. But I am re- turned (I have now been come home near three weeks, I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and bathe in rivers without being controlled by any one to come home and work. I felt very little. I had been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going off, and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after all. Fleet Street and the Strand are better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. Still I turn back to those great places where I wandered about, participating in their greatness. After all I could not live in Skiddaw. I could spend a year, two, three years among them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still Skiddaw is a fine creature."^ Skiddaw had asserted itself as a perpetual power in the London-loving mind. " I feel," wrote he to Coleridge of his visit, " that I shall remember your mountains to the last day that I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am like a man who has been ^ Lamb's Letters, Vol. I., p. 221. GRETA HALL 39 falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out when he leaves the lady." ^ And something else besides Skiddaw and its breezy view had charmed Lamb. The little two- year-old Derwent Coleridge in his yellow coat, " Stumpy Canary " as they called him, had won his heart side by side with David Hartley, the six-year- old philosopher; for Sara Coleridge tells us that Lamb was charmed with the little fellow, and much struck with the quickness of eye and memory dis- played by him in naming the subjects of prints in books. " Pipos, Pitpos," was Derwent's name for the " striped opossum," and this he would utter with a nonchalant air, as much as to say, of course I know it all as pat as possible. Lamb always after that in his letters to Greta Hall asked after his friend " Pipos." 1 Idemy Vol. I., p. 220. CHAPTER III GRETA HALL THE SOUTHEYS COME TO GRETA HALL : DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSE AND ITS HOUSEHOLD : CHARACTERISTICS OF ROBERT SOUTHEY : SOUTHEY AND COLERIDGE : SOUTHEY AND WORDSWORTH. In that same month and year — September of 1802, when Lamb was writing his letters of thanks to Coleridge, and the account of his conversion to the charm of mountain scenery — there was born in Southey's home at Bristol, after some years of childlessness, " a little snub-nosed, grey-eyed thing," Margaret. If it was grief for the death of a clever child, Herbert, — " a boy whom every eye that looked on loved " — which afterwards enchained Southey in the Keswick Vale, it was, alas, the death of this little darling Margaret, in August of 1803, that drove him from Bristol to the North. " Edith," wrote Southey, " will be nowhere so well as with her sister Coleridge. She has a little girl some six months old " — this was the Sara, the dark-eyed Sara, sung of afterwards in Wordsworth's Triad, who was born at Greta Hall, three days GRETA HALL 4 1 before Christmas of 1802 — "I shall try and graft her into the wound while it is yet fresh." ^ Southey had determined upon a sight of the Lakes, and a visit to Greta Hall and Wordsworth, as long ago as 1800, when away at Lisbon, and had written to Coleridge of his proposal. The letter in answer from Coleridge, which he found when he returned to England, is dated April 13, 1801, and may be transcribed: " My dear Southey, — I received your kind letter on the evening before last, and I trust that this will arrive at Bristol just in time to rejoice with them that rejoice. Alas ! you will have found the dear old place sadly minused by the removal of Davy. It is one of the evils of long silence that, when one recommences the correspondence, one has so much to say that one can say nothing. I have enough — with what I have suffered, and with what I have heard, exclusive of all that I hope, and all that I intend — I have enough to pass away a great deal of time with, were you on a desert isle and I your Friday. But at present I purpose to speak only of myself, relatively to Keswick and to you. " Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field and an enormous garden, nine- tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's camp — an encamped army of tent-like moun- '^ Southey' s Letters, ed. by J. W. Warter, Vol. I., p. 229. 42 THE ENGLISH LAKES tains, which, by an inverted arch, gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite ; and on our left Derwentwater and Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrodale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms and a tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your wanderings. Without going from our own grounds we have all that can please a human being. As to books, my landlord, who dwells next door, has a very respectable library, which he has put with mine — histories, encyclopaedias, and all the modern gentry. But then I can have, when I choose, free access to the princely library of Sir Gilfrid Lawson, which contains the noblest collection of travels and natural history of, perhaps, any private library in England ; besides this, there is the Cathedral library of Carlisle, from whence I can have any books sent to me that I wish ; in short, I may truly say that I command all the libraries in the country. . . . The house is full twice as large as we want ; it hath more rooms in it than Alfoxden ; you might have a bedroom, parlour, study, etc., etc. ; and there would always be rooms to spare for your or my visitors. In short, for situation and convenience — and when I mention the name of Wordsworth, for society of men of intellect — I know no place in which you and Edith would find yourselves so well suited." 1 1 Life and Correspondence of Robert Soutkey, ed. by his son, Rev. C. C. Southey, Vol. II., p. 146. GRETA HALL 43 The three united libraries proved an irresistible charm, and notwithstanding that a vague offer had been made to Southey that he should go off as Consul's secretary to Palermo and Constantinople, his sympathy with Coleridge was strong upon him, and he felt drawn to Keswick. " Time and absence," he wrote in July, " make strange work with our affections ; but mine are ever returning to rest upon you. I have other and dear friends, but none with whom the whole of my being is intimate — with whom every thought and feeling can amalgamate." ^ And he goes on, *' In about ten days we shall be ready to set forward for Keswick, where, if it were not for the rains, and fogs, and the frosts, I should probably be content to winter ; but the climate deters me." ^ Southey did not then know, as he afterwards found, that it was the winter in the Keswick Valley that is par excellence the dry and the beautiful time of the year, and that fogs are then almost unheard- of phenomena. He came, but he was not overcharmed. He had been too long abroad not to be always com- paring Spanish scenery, on the grand scale, with our lesser hills and valleys. " These lakes are like rivers ; but oh for the Mondego and the Tagus ! And these mountains, beautifully indeed are they shaped and grouped ; but oh for the great Mon- chique ! and for Cintra, my paradise ! — I miss the sun in heaven, having been upon a short allow- ance of sunbeams these last ten days," Other "^ Southey' s Life, Vol. II., p. 151. ^ Idem. 44 THE ENGLISH LAKES places, too, competed with Keswick for the future laureate's homing — Richmond and the silvery Thames, and the hills of Wales and their clear amber streams, called for him. A home in Gla- morganshire, in the vale of Neath — " one of the loveliest spots in Great Britain," named Maes Gwyn — had great attractions for him, not the least that, by living there, he could study the Welsh language. Thither Southey would immediately have gone to write his history of Portugal, there he intended to enter into a grand confederacy with the animal world ; to have a cat, a dog, an otter, an osprey, a snake, and a toad, and all his books about him ; but at the last moment a dis- agreement with the owner of the house, about some necessary alteration, obliged him to drop Maes Gwyn. And thus, when Bristol became intolerable, owing to the death, by " water on the brain," of poor little Margery, their first-born, away to Keswick, on Coleridge's invitation, came Robert Southey and his wife Edith. He was full of projects for a Biblio- theca Britannica and his book on Portugal, hard at work upon the revision of ' Madoc,' and deter- mined to shut the door of grief by incessant mental excitement and literary study. Southey and his wife arrived in Keswick on Sept. 7, 1803, and writing to his brother Tom, the lieutenant on board the Galatea, next day, he tells him, "Here my spirits suffer from the sight of little Sara who is about her size." However, he adds bravely, " God knows I do not repine, and that in my soul I feel His will is best. These things do one good : they GRETA HALL 45 loosen one by one the roots that rivet us to earth, they fix and confirm our faith till the thought of death becomes so inseparably conected with the hope of meeting those whom we have lost, that death itself is no longer considered an evil." ^ I quote this because the man who wrote these words lived for forty years at Greta Hall in just the same firm faith and constant thought of re-union, as one by one his friends passed away ' into the silent land ! ' Ay, and he found medicine here to heal his heart's sickness. " Would that you could see these lakes and mountains ! How wonderful they are ! How awful in their beauty ! All the poet part in me," he wrote, " will be fed and fostered here. I feel already in tune." ^ "Nothing in England can be more beautiful than the site of this house. Had this country but the sky of Portugal, it would leave me nothing to wish for . . . and Coleridge is company enough. ... I have been round the Lake, and up Skiddaw, and along the river Greta, and to Lodore." ^ To Danvers he wrote in October : " The panorama from the summit (of Skiddaw) is very grand. The summit is covered with loose stones split by the frosts, and thus gradually are they reduced to soil and washed down to the glens, so that, like old women, Skiddaw must grow shorter. To-day," he adds, " I have been tracking the river Greta, which, instead of Great A ought to have been called Great S\ but its name hath a good and most apt meaning, '^ Southey's Life, Vol. II., p. 226. "^Idem. '^Southefs Letters, Vol. I., p. 232. 46 THE ENGLISH LAKES ' The loud Lamenter.' It is a lovely stream. I have often forded such among the mountains of Algarve, and lingered to look at them with a wistful eye, if I may so express myself, with a feeling that it was the only time I was ever to behold the scene before me so beautiful ! . . . God knows I often looked upon my poor child with the same melancholy."^ So by " the loud Lamenter " did the man of sor- row pass that first autumn, which, so far as weather went, was an uncommonly fine one ; and lucky it was he had come in autumn, for as he said himself to his friend Duppa, in December of that year : " Autumn is the best season to see the country, but spring, and even winter, is better than summer, for in settled fine weather there are none of those goings on in heaven which at other times give these scenes such an endless variety." ^ And to Miss Barker he also wrote : " Summer is not the season for this country ; Coleridge says, and says well, that then it is like a theatre at noon. There are no goings on under a clear sky. . . . The very snow, which perhaps you would think must monotonise the mountains, gives new varieties ; it brings out their recesses and designates all their inequalities . . . and it reflects such tints of saffron, or fawn, or rose colour to the evening sun." ^ Southey did not feel at first any " root-striking " at Greta Hall, but the hills that had conquered Lamb were victorious in their power to comfort him and ^ Southey s Letters, Vol. I., p. 240. "^ Southey s Life, Vol. II., p. 239. ^ Southey s Letters, Vol. I., p. 257. GRETA HALL 47 give him peace and strength. And as he sat each day in his great study-room upstairs, in which, as he said, he felt " at first like a cock-robin in an empty church," he gazed on a view described in his Vision of Judgment : " Mountain and lake and vale ; the valley disrobed of its verdure ; Derwent retaining yet from eve a glassy reflection Where his expanded breast, then still and smooth as a mirror, Under the woods reposed ; the hills that, calm and majestic, Lifted their heads in the silent sky, from far Glaramara, Bleacrag, and Maidenmawr, to Grizedal and westermost Withop." 1 The restfulness of the scene, its calm and its silence, sank into his soul, so that when the spring of 1804 came, though it brought not for him the violet, the cowslip, and the nightingale, these lakes and moun- tains gave him " a deep joy for which nothing else could compensate." Of guests at Greta Hall in that first autumn we know that Hazlitt was one ; and Wilkinson, the worthy clergyman, whose drawings of the English Lakes District are, if somewhat conventional, still faithful so far as outline goes, being then in Keswick, was often up at the house ; General Peachy was at the Island ; Thomas Spedding at Mirehouse ; Calvert at Greta Bank, as the new-built Windy Brow was called ; and Sir Gilfrid Lawson and his great library were firm friends before Christmas came. As to the disposition of the house, the Coleridges occupied the left-hand half of it, which again was shared in part by the Jacksons. In the lower right- ^ Vision of Judgntent, Part I., The Trance. 48 THE ENGLISH LAKES hand room called Peter, the combined family dined. In the lower room just opposite, named Paul, after- wards called ' Hartley's Parlour,' they breakfasted in common. Up above stairs, over Peter and Paul, ran the great main room, the outlook from which is familiar enough to the reader of the Doctor, from the vignette on its title page. Here the elders took tea, and received visitors ; here, too, Southey passed his never varying and laborious days with pen and book, for this was Southey 's study. Next it, and to the north was Coleridge's study, sometimes called the organ room. Except for the ' Clog and Lantern room,' just beyond Aunt Lovell's bedroom at the foot of the stairs, and for the little side bedroom at the head of the stairs, where Sara Coleridge used to lie awake and hear the Greta roar and the forge hammer clang, there are no other rooms that need be described. As to the household at what Southey used jocularly to call 'The Ant Hill,' in that first season of 1803, there were beside the Coleridges and Southeys and Aunt Lovell, Southey 's beloved dog Dapper, and Jackson's dog Cupid, and what Southey called " a noble jackass." Dear old Nurse Wilsey too, an aboriginal inhabitant of the house, and Betty Thomp- son, whose affection and long service are inscribed upon her master's, the Laureate's, tombstone in Crosthwaite Churchyard, formed part of the family. Cats galore, Bianchi, Pulcheria, Othello, the Zombi, Rumpelstiltzkin, and many others with names as fanciful, abounded, for Nurse Wilsey shared with her ta/i^€^/ ^•ii>i7 was at that time " a sunny dell," though now the trees have cast it into shade. Calvert had tried to get Wordsworth to leave Dove Cottage at Town End, that he might join Coleridge and himself, " a man who had inventions rare," at Windy Brow, and he had failed. Sir George Beaumont would try his luck ; and so in 1803, when he knows that the arrival of the first- born on the 1 8th of June will have probably made Wordsworth feel already that Dove Cottage is too circumscribed for the use of a family man, he buys and presents to the Poet this plot of ground in Applethwaite. He has probably heard how both Wordsworth and Coleridge feel the long miles between Keswick and Grasmere too long for their friendship's sweet content. Perhaps, also, he has heard from Wordsworth, as Walter Scott has heard, what pleasure Words- worth has had in making Southey's better ac- quaintance in his late visit to Keswick. " I had the pleasure of seeing Coleridge and Southey at Keswick last Sunday. Southey, whom I never saw much of before, I liked much." ^ Be that as it may, a portion of the sweetest dell in Skiddaw's breast is for sale, and Wordsworth has the chance of becoming a resident beneath his native Cumbria's grandest hill. " Beaumont ! it was thy wish that I should rear A seemly cottage in this sunny dell, On favoured ground, thy gift, where I might dwell In neighbourhood with One to me most dear, ^Knight's Life of Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 366. 88 THE ENGLISH LAKES That undivided we from year to year Might work in our high CaUing — a bright hope To which our fancies, mingHng, gave free scope Till checked by some necessities severe."^ So spoke Wordsworth in sonnet form in 1 804. The " necessities severe " were the waywardness of poor Coleridge, his irresolution to rid himself of the opium fiend, and the hypochondria that drove him from England in search of new health and new will, in 1 804. " The necessities " — as Words- worth put it — " of his domestic situation." ^ Then the mill rose up and drove the Muses thence. Wordsworth gave Sir G. Beaumont's gift to his daughter, Dora, when she was " a frail feeble month- ling," and all idea of house-building passed out of the poet's head. Later Dr. Lietch, a true lover of Nature and of Wordsworth's interpretation of it, much sorrowing, for he was sorely stricken, finding in the quiet dell at Applethwaite the balm that such sweet beauty of sight and sound can bring to wounded mortality, and hearing that he could procure a little piece of ground, in the middle of the poet's plots, wrote to tell him of his wish to build a cottage there. He offered to purchase the intermediate strip, at the same time expressing his wish not to interfere with any plan that Words- worth might have of building a cottage there. The letters are so honourable to the memory of Dr. Lietch's generosity, and Wordsworth's replies are so characteristic and contain a little bit of ^ A( Applethwaite, near Keswick, p. 212. ^See note to Sonnet, At Applethwaite, p. 212. APPLETHWAITE 89 such interesting local history, that I venture to transcribe them. The first is a letter to Dr. Lietch's nephew, a lawyer, about the projected plan of building at Applethwaite Ghyll. " The Howe, Keswick, Sept. I4S. " Dear Tom, — We have bought a landed estate of about 12 or 1300 yards square, and wish to have a touch of your art in conveying the same. I believe you will find some very curious and ancient tenure and customs of this estate — which consists of two small plots on the skirts of Skiddaw adjudged to two poor men as their share of common right, when the old mountain was enclosed and began to belong as much as a mountain can, to a man. " The father of one of the old fellows was the first man employed in making the first road for wheeled vehicles to travel over, in this valley, every- thing previously, coping stones and all, being con- veyed on pack-horses from more civilised lands. "The purchase money is ;^5o, and I suppose it will be necessary to have the title looked into. I have put off, till you came, finishing the purchase, having meantime given the luck penny, after the fashion of these parts. So that now they cannot turn us out of the valley ; and some of the kindred will perhaps build up a little cottage in one of the loveliest scenes in all this beautiful land. " A field and a wooded glen belonging to the poet Wordsworth lies on each side of this little plot of ours, and Wordsworth thirty or thirty-five 90 THE ENGLISH LAKES years ago planted a yew, and planned a cottage for himself in this sequestered glen. He will never build one there now, but I have written to ask him if he wishes to do so, for, if so, he will not perhaps like anyone to sit down between his fields, and in that case our cottage once more vanishes, for the old poet, to whom we all owe so much, must not be displeased. — Dear Tom, Yours faithfully, D. LlETCH. " To Thomas Lietch, Solicitor, North Shields." Wordsworth's reply to Dr. Lietch's enquiry as to his willingness to sell, ran as follows : " Dear Sir, — I am sorry that I cannot meet your wishes in respect to parting with any portion of my little property at Applethwaite ; it is endeared to me by so many sacred and personal recollections, some of very long standing, that I much regretted the erection of that small mill when it took place, and had I known of the intention the fulfilment of which impaired so much the privacy of the Place, I should have done my utmost by purchase or otherwise to have prevented such an intrusion. " Circumstances frustrated my original intention of building at Applethwaite, and at my advanced age I am not likely to do so, but that may not be the case with some of my family. "If your intention was to fix the site of your cottage upon the ground bounded on both sides by my property, I certainly should feel much obliged by your selecting some other spot, and APPLETHWAITE 91 one which might interfere as little as possible with the prospect and character of the Dell. " Believe me, dear Sir, to be sensible of the kind expressions you use towards me and sincerely yours, — William Wordsworth. "Rydal Mount, Sept. 18 I4S." " To William Wordsworth, Esq. (from Dr. Lietch), Sept., 1848. " Dear Sir, — After the expression of your wishes respecting the dell at Applethwaite, it is impossible for me to entertain the idea of building a cottage there. I would have purchased the piece of ground some time ago, but from unwillingness to intrude upon the question contained in my last note — and only bought it a few days ago on being informed that you had abandoned all intention of building upon it. " Though a very hampered patch as the site of a cottage, yet as there is no possibility of procuring a spot whence the view, so glorious in itself and so interesting to me, for the reason before alluded to, could be commanded, I had made up my mind to be content with the narrow space, and had arranged to get the little field behind, whence the whole of the magnificent scene opens upon the eye. The owners had accepted my offer of ;^5o for these two small allotments, and Wilson Clarke (of Gale Cottage) would have wanted but a small sum for the field above, provided he could induce the old woman who holds it for her life to transfer it to me. I mention this solely that you may, if you think 92 THE ENGLISH LAKES proper, secure yourself from all chance of future intrusion, and not as conveying any wish that you would relieve me of my purchase, on account of its being now of no use to me. The men were by no means anxious to dispose of their little property, and if I do not keep it, I daresay will take it again on very easy terms — so that I hope you will not consider me at all in the matter. I shall however retain my right to the ground until you express your wishes. It is impossible not to speak with open heart and tongue to one whose thoughts have been through life more familiar companions than those of one's personal friends, and it is this which leads me on to say that the reason I so much desired to obtain a resting-place, however small and humble, in that dell was, that many a time I have carried into it a heart, weary both with bodily pain and the burden of this unintelligible world ; and have felt it soothed and relieved by the gentle spirits of the beautiful place ; sometimes by the grandeur and the beauty of the scene, sometimes by the mingled sounds of the church bells and the running brook which blend there, perhaps more musically than anywhere else in the whole valley. " I never had the happiness of seeing you in my life, but in fancy I have often seen you in this dell, with the friends who, in early life, often accompanied you there ; those great spirits to whom I also owe so much. The idea, that among the numbers who have no doubt sought this sweet little seclusion for its beauty, there was one who had often sought it in depression, and left it in tranquillity, and who loved APPLETHWAITE 93 it the more thoroughly for your sake, will not, I hope, lessen the attachment you have so long and so justly felt for it. — I have the honour to be, dear Sir, yours very respectfully, D. LlETCH." To this letter, which so pathetically describes the peculiar beauty of Applethwaite Glen, Wordsworth rejoined : " My dear Sir, — I trust you have attributed my tardiness in replying to your very gratifying and obliging letter received (I am sorry to say, a fort- night ago) in some measure to its right cause, viz., its reaching me at a time when the distressing circum- stance of my daughter-in-law's somewhat sudden death in a foreign country gave a great shock to the family. Moreover, 1 thought an opportunity was at hand for me to have a personal interview with you. " It would be less difficult and painful to my feelings to express by words than by writing, the reasons for my non-compliance with your wishes. " At present I need only say that my original acquisition of, and subsequent appropriation and long-continued possession of, that little property are accompanied with a sacred feeling which puts it out of my power to make any change which I can avoid ; and I can only say that I exceedingly regret standing in the way of wishes with which I sincerely sympathise. " I am much obliged by your offer to transfer your purchase, and shall readily accept it if it meets with the approbation of my younger son-in-law, who has, during his life, an interest in the property. 94 THE ENGLISH LAKES " Let me add that I have some hope of being able ere long to go over to Keswick myself, in which case I hope to have an interview with you. — Believe me, my dear Sir, to remain with great respect, sincerely yours, W. Wordsworth. "Rydal Mount, loth Oct., 1848." Dr. Lietch forwent his pleasure, and Wordsworth became proprietor of the adjacent fields. He built " a seemly cottage " soon after, as the date upon the door-head tells us, and we may to-day, by leave of the kind inhabitant, read on a brass plate within, a copy of that sonnet to Sir G. Beaumont which the gift called forth. Let us leave Applethwaite after a gaze from Southey's favourite vantage-ground upon the terrace- road, a little to the north of where the beck flows down to the old disused mill ; there we may in fancy find the three artists. Glover, Nash, and Westall, as Southey once found them, all hard at work : and then let us go by Ormrthwaite, and strike across the meadow under the " Ridge of the Dead," the high uplifted burial-place of the Norse- men forefathers of old, their Hlad-rigg, the Latrigg of our time, till we reach Spooney Green Lane ; thence crossing the Lane, let us go by Windy Brow farm to Greta Bank. Latrigg above us is for ever connected with the one-time owner of Windy Brow — Mr. William Calvert of Greta Bank — " a Cumberland squire very popular in his day," as Mrs. Howard of Greystoke APPLETHWAITE 95 wrote in her journal. For this was the Calvert who in 1 8 1 4, when corn was at famine prices, got leave to enclose the old Norse burial-place on the height, with its seventy cist-vaen remains, and making a good road for his plough team from base to summit, put the play-ground of the people — that so they might eat bread, as well as play ' pace- 6ggs ' ^ — under tilth, with the double result of proving that corn cannot ripen in Cumberland at i 200 feet above sea level, and that the cost of such under- taking, no matter how public spirited, means ruin- ation to the private purse of the experimenting agriculturist. This William Calvert, Professor Dowden thinks, was in Wordsworth's mind, when the latter wrote the last 5 th, 6th, and 7th verses of his Stanzas in Thomson's Castle of Indolence. He was certainly a " noticeable man with large grey eyes " ; but those who have seen the delicate pencil drawing, which still exists, of his striking face and head and curly locks, know that his lips were beautifully shaped, and that it was impossible for any poet who had ever seen him to describe him thus : " Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear, Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy ; Profound his forehead was, though not severe ; " ^ and though he had " inventions rare," a water-clock, an instrument for measuring heights of hills by angle, ^Pace-egging, or Pasch-egging, is still an Easter game with the Cumberland school-children. ^ Stanzas written in my pocket copy of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, p. 182. 96 THE ENGLISH LAKES and the like, and though he was so keen a chemist that he was willing to lay out any reasonable sum of money necessary for the setting up of a laboratory at Windy Brow in 1801, we must go to another poet for a true description of William Calvert. It is not in Wordsworth's verse that we shall find so good an account of him as in Shelley's letter after his visit to the Duke of Norfolk at Greystoke Castle in the beginning of December, 181 1. " We met several people at the Duke's," wrote Shelley to a friend. " One in particular struck me. He was an elderly man, who seemed to know all my concerns, and the expression of his face, when- ever I held the argument, which I do everywhere, was such as I shall not readily forget. I shall have more to tell of him, for we have met him before in these mountains, and his peculiar look struck (me and) Harriet." 1 But here at Windy Brow or Greta Bank we think of others than Shelley as guests. Hither came Wordsworth, much perplexed as to his future, and his sister Dorothy, in the September of 1794, to be guests of William Calvert, owner of the old farm- house, so soon to be dismantled ; — the family house of the Calverts, since the Elizabethan days of the German settlers who came to work the copper ore in the valleys. William Calvert and Dorothy Wordsworth are to-day listening sadly enough to the voice of the " Loud Lamenter " that flows below the house — louder in those days, for that then its channel had ^MacCarthy's Early Life of Shelley, p. 123. 1 I ■ ii; M| K^ '^^^B J J H ^m ra^H s Z W HMI P w ^"^^^iS o ^^H^ ^W^H^^I^^^ MWMilti^g(^Mjyg^/g^^.:^!!!^jiMI H ■K^ ^H^^^^H^HE jl "^^WjJM^^^K^^^^^^^-^Btf^^^fll o SH|^ Wu|||^H^j| f-g^--.i^^ff^^^^4^^l^^^^f^^m u ^r^ H^ ^^^mM w fm II^^P «^ES SBKjH iaBB j^H^HB^K^^^^^ 1 1^ APPLETHWAITE 97 not been cleared, for purposes of building, of its immense stones, which by their concussion in high floods produced, as the poet tells us, the loud and awful noises he described in his sonnet : " Greta, what fearful listening ! when huge stones Rumble along thy bed, block after block ; Or, whirling with reiterated shock, Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans;" — ^ for Raisley Calvert, brother of William, the young Cambridge undergraduate, who has tired of the frivolity of University life,^ is down here sick unto death, smitten with decline. Or Wordsworth perhaps is in conversation with Calvert before writing to Matthews for his opinion as to the possibility of getting a post in the London press, for he is at his wits' end to know how, since he has refused to take ^ To the River Greta, p. 712. ^The following letter written by Raisley Calvert to his brother William throws light upon his character : *' Dear Brother, — I think it proper to acquaint you that I left Cambridge soon after my arrival there. The reasons for my acting thus I shall state as briefly as possible. " 1st. That I will never enter into the profession for which I was intended, enormous expense attending a student's life at Cambridge, which (to preserve any kind of respectability) will be much greater than my income will allow of. I can in every respect live much more to my satisfaction in London (which is none of the cheapest places in the kingdom) at about half the expense as in Cambridge. "My tutor will have a bill against me of about 12 pounds from the time I was entered till the end of my stay here which was not above a week. . . . "I know of no satisfaction or enjoyment you can have at Cam- bridge for the money Custom calls upon you to throw away there, except you deem Drunkenness, and worse, such. You may perhaps at first view suppose my words are link'd with exaggeration or I. G 98 THE ENGLISH LAKES orders, or sit on an attorney's stool, he is to earn bread for his own and his sister's needs, and be enabled to pursue the vocation of poet which he feels Heaven has designed for him. And what if Raisley of the pale face and hectic flush was listener in those anxious days of friends in council at Windy Brow, and has in confidence told Wordsworth, that at his death he intends to leave money that shall help him ? So that when William Calvert joins his regiment at Tynemouth Barracks^ Wordsworth writing from Windy Brow, under date of Oct. I, 1794, will be able to say as follows: " Dear Calvert, — I returned to Keswick last Sun- day, having been detained in Lancashire much longer than I expected. " I found your brother worse than when I left Keswick, but a good deal better than he had been some weeks before. chimera, but there is a young man at Cambridge, with whom I was acquainted and to whom I thought myself in every respect equal (and he was thought to be an Economist), yet he could not live for less than 160 pounds per annum. ' ' But you may say that I might have improved myself wonder- fully in Classics, Mathematics ; so I might. But I never met \vith any person who is willing to allow the utility of Classics in the social intercourse of life. " The utility of Mathematics is, I confess, a little more obvious, but either to distinguish myself or gain any emolument at the Uni- versity by this study will require such intense application as to weaken extremely your constitution. "I set out I believe to-morrow for Brabant by way of Dover, and as it is very likely I shall stay some time on the Continent I particu- larly desire you to deposit a sum of money in the hands of Messrs. Ransom & Co. . . . " — I am, your affectionate Brother, R. Calvert." APPLETHWAITE 99 " He is determined to set off for Lisbon, but any person in his state of health must recoil from the idea of going so afar alone, particularly into a country of whose language he is ignorant. I have reflected upon this myself, and have been induced to speak with him about the possibility of your giving him as much pecuniary assistance as would enable me to accompany him thither, and stay with him till his health is re-established. I could then return and leave him there. This, I think, if possible, you ought to do ; you see I speak to you as a friend, but then perhaps your present expenses may ren- der it difficult. Would it not exalt you in your own esteem to retrench a little for so excellent a purpose ? " Reflecting that his return is uncertain, your brother requests me to inform you that he has drawn out his will, which he meant to get executed in London. " The purport of this Will is to leave you all his property, real and personal, chargeable with a legacy of six hundred pounds to me, in case that on enquiry into the state of our affairs in London he should think it advisable so to do. " It is my request that this information is com- municated to you, and I have no doubt but that you will do both him and self the justice to hear this mark of his approbation of me without your good opinion of either of us being at all diminished by it. If you would come over yourself it would be much the best ; at all events fail not to write by return of post, as the sooner your brother gets off the better. 100 THE ENGLISH LAKES He will depart immediately after hearing from you. — I am, dear Calvert, your affectionate friend, W. Wordsworth. " To Ensign Calvert, Tynemouth Barracks, Northumberland." I am enabled to quote this memorable letter by the kindness of a friend in whose possession it is. Memorable because it contains the first information of the generous intent of a dying young man who thereby gave us Wordsworth's work and art. " I should have been," says Wordsworth, " forced by necessity into one of the professions, had not a friend left me ;^900. This bequest was from a young man with whom, though I call him friend, I had but little connexion ; and the act was done entirely from a confidence on his part that I had power and attainments which might be of use to mankind." ^ And very sure it is that on the temples of the dying man at Windy Brow is set a wreath of grati- tude no winds of time shall cause to wither or to fall. As long as Wordsworth is read, will also be read that memorial sonnet to his grateful friend : " Calvert ! it must not be unheard by them Who may respect my name, that I to thee Owed many years of early liberty. This care was thine when sickness did condemn Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem — That I, if frugal and severe, might stray Where'er I liked ; and finally array My temples with the Muse's diadem. ^Knight's Life of Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 98. APPLETHWAITE loi Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth ; If there be aught of pure, or good, or great, In my past verse ; or shall be in the lays Of higher mood, which now I meditate — It gladdens me, O worthy, short-lived Youth ! To think how much of this will be thy praise."^ Above the sonnet Wordsworth wrote the note, " This young man, Raisley Calvert, to whom I was so much indebted, died at Penrith, 1795." It is no small honour to Cumberland that on the banks of the Greta and Derwent dwelt the families of men, who were able to foresee and aid, by timely help, the literary genius of the Lakes at the beginning of this century. What Wedgwood, whose forefathers sprung from Broughton, did for Coleridge, that Calvert did for Wordsworth. Nor was Words- worth the only poet that found welcome and help at Windy Brow. Thither, in 1800, came Coleridge, seeking for a home ; and there, when he entered the valley in 1803, was Southey made at once a welcome guest. There, too, somewhere close on Christmas Day, 181 1, did Calvert invite the elder bard of Greta Hall to meet the young runaway boy- poet Shelley, to whom he had showed no small kindness. " We first," wrote Shelley, " met Southey at this Calvert's house." And now let us leave Windy Brow with its memories of great political cracks between Lord Lonsdale and Sir Gilfrid Lawson, Calvert, Southey, and Brougham, and long scientific discourses sug- gested by Humphrey Davy's letter, and the latest 1 To the Memory of Raisley Calvert, p. 356. 102 THE ENGLISH LAKES invention Calvert had in mind ; leave the walk in that sonorous amphitheatre of wood above the river, where Dorothy helped to pile the stones into a seat for all who loved " to muse on flood and fell." As we go across the stone bridge to Brigham, let us remember that the love of electricity and electrical machine that Calvert bequeathed to Windy Brow in 1800, has borne fruit in 1890, and that Greta Bank, in common with the town of Keswick, is at this day lighted with the marvellous force stolen from the river Greta up yonder at the Forge. Let us turn to the left, and so along the Penrith Road up the Brow by the brewery to Chestnut Hill. We are bent on visiting the one-time honeymoon haunt of Shelley. So up the Ambleside Road we go till we reach, beyond the first cottage and a barn on our right hand, a long range of building that with treble roof-tree runs upward step on step. A side postern gate gives us a peep into a " lovely orchard garden " — once how different — where Shelley and his young girl-wife, and Eliza Westbrook disported themselves. The roof gathers moss, for a sycamore shades it on the garden side, and on the roadway side a beech and elm and wild cherry-tree overhang it. At the far end, a dark Scotch fir stands up to take command. Enter the garden you will find a room with bow-window, and steps that lead thereto ; a little room all clad outside in slate-mail. That was Shelley's drawing-room and study ; beyond it, is the tiny bed-room the poet occupied. The house, when Shelley was hereabout, ended short off there ; the APPLETHWAITE 103 more important looking part beyond is a later f addition, as also is the little belfry now falling into 5 decay at the Shelley end of the house, which was I added by an occupier in the middle of the century. The garden is altered to-day : Shelley had the run of the whole long patch ; a fence forbids that now ; a garden wall and hedge of evergreen cut off the view from the paddock, where originally a simple rail fence stood. The old Dutch garden once so trim and neat, and filled with cheer of flower and herbs, has been overrun with gigantic rhododendron bushes that convert it to a wilderness. But still the 1 hepatica blossoms first here in spring just as Shelley I saw it, and the snowdrop, and crocus, and yellow ] Cambrian poppy, tell us the Love-time has come, as i they told it to the poet. This is Chestnut Hill. Gideon Dare, as fine a specimen of our Northern yeomen as could be, judging by his portrait, used to own this property. He lived in the little cottage at the further end, and he rests now in the Crosthwaite Churchyard a few paces from the main entrance, with the date of July 21, 1849, upon his beautifully carved tombstone. The remarkable looking youth of nineteen, the ' young collegian who had been expelled from Oxford for his tract, Tke Necessity of Atheism, \ had, in the first week of September, 1 8 1 1 , married 1 Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a coffe-house i keeper in London, a child of sixteen summers. \ Shelley suddenly appeared at Keswick in the begin- ning of October, with his sister-in-law Eliza, in ^ 104 THE ENGLISH LAKES search of a " sequestered place which it was" as De Quincey tells us, " for eight months in the year," and also of a cheap place, " which it was not," ^ and took lodgings at Daniel Crosthwaite's of Townhead. Except for Calvert of Windy Brow and the Duke of Norfolk, an old friend of Shelley's family, the pair were as friendless, as they were nigh penniless, Wordsworth was at Grasmere, but did not come over the Raise. Wilson of Elleray was busy with his revision of his Isle of Palms ; De Quincey at Grasmere regretted afterwards that he did not at this period avail himself of the opportunity of " showing any little attention in my power to a brother Oxonian, and to a man of letters," ^ and added, " My own library, which being rich in the wickedest of German speculations, would have been more to Shelley's taste than the Spanish library of Southey." ^ Coleridge, too, was in London, and this he appears to have considered a misfortune for Shelley. " I might have been of use to him, which Southey could not, for I should have sympathised with his poetics ; metaphysical reviews and the very word metaphysics is an abomination to Southey, and Shelley would have felt that I understood them." All that was known of Shelley's existence in the valley was that a young man, very like Southey in face, a sort of second edition, who was ^ De Quittcey's Works, ed. by Masson, Vol. XI., 368. "^ Idem, p. 369. ^ Idem, p. 370. APPLETHWAITE 105 a writer, but " ratherly-what queer i' his weeas," who, for example, did not go to church on Sunday, and made flames at nights " in bottles and what not " in the garden, was staying at Chestnut Hill. " The scenery here is awfully beautiful," so wrote Shelley on November 14, "... but the object most interesting to my feelings is Southey's habita- tion. He is now on a journey, when he returns I will call upon him." ^ Shelley was wrongly informed, Southey had come back from his twelve weeks' jaunt in the early part of September. Again on November 23, 1811: "I have taken," he writes to Miss Hitchener, with whom the young bridegroom perhaps hardly knew he was really in love, " a long solitary ramble to-day." (I suspect that ramble was up by Rakefoot, and along Walla Crag to Lodore by the old packhorse road to to Borrowdale.) " These gigantic mountains piled on each other, these waterfalls, these million-shaped clouds tinted by varying colours of innumerable rainbows hanging between yourself and a lake as smooth and dark as a plain of polished jet — oh, these are sights attunable to the contemplation ! . . . I have been thinking of you and of human nature. Your letter has been the partner of my solitude — or, rather, I have not been alone, for you have been with me." 2 Then came a slight snow-fall, and in December '^Life of P. B. Shelley, by E. Dowden, LL.D., Vol. I., p. 210. ^ Idem, p. 197. io6 THE ENGLISH LAKES he writes : " These mountains are now capped with snow. The lake, as I see it hence, is glass}- and calm. Snow-vapours, tinted by the loveliest colours of refraction, pass far below the summits of these giant rocks. The scene, even in a winter's sunset, is inexpressively lovely. What will it be in summer ? " ^ In the interval of these two last letters, Shelley had visited at Greystoke. " We are now so poor," wrote Shelley to Med win on November 30, 181 1, " as to be actually in danger of every day being deprived of the necessaries of life, . . . and it is nearly with our very last guinea that we visit the Duke of Norfolk at Greystoke to-morrow. I have very few hopes from this visit." ^ Shelley was right ; the Duke, moved by com- passion, did intercede with his old friend, Shelley's grandfather, alas ! without result. At Greystoke Shelley met Calvert, and was therefore in a fair way to make Southey's ac- quaintance. Though shocked by Shelley's views, Calvert was determined to befriend the young "revolutionist." He interceded with Gideon Dare, the estatesman who probably did not much wish to be " boddered " with " sic like," and had asked Shelley the rather exorbitant rent of two guineas and a half The result of the intercession Shelley tells us : " The rent of our cottage was two guineas and a half a week, with linen provided ; he has made '^ Life of P. B. Shelley, by E. Dowden, LL.D., Vol. I., p. 197. ^ Idem, I., p. 202. APPLETHWAITE 107 the proprietor lower it one guinea, and has lent us linen himself." ^ Calvert did more than lend them this linen, he lent them advice. He procured for the young boy- reformer and his child-wife the acquaintance and interest of Southey. The Shelleys had hardly been a week of the new year, 1 8 1 2, at Chestnut Hill, when the Southeys called ; and to the question from one of the ladies, if Gideon Dare had let them the garden also with their part of the house, " Oh no," replied Mrs. Shelley, " the garden is not ours ; but then, you know, the people let us run about in it whenever Percy and I are tired of sitting in the house." ^ Poor child ! one can hardly look upon the few trim little beds that remain at Chestnut Hill, with their quaint, old fashioned box-edgings and their tiny paths, without a sigh, to think how soon that playful child-life became such sorrow and bitterness. Shelley was soon a guest at Greta Hall. Southey, hard at work upon his life of Nelson, which had been long laid by, would doubtless put it all aside, push manuscript from him, and rise with all courtliness to welcome the poet preacher of Atheism, and Reform, and Irish Emancipation, to a long talk in his great drawing-room study. But fire and water cannot mingle ; and though at first sight Southey charmed young Shelley, so that Shelley could speak of him as " a great man," ^ Life of P. B. Shelley, by E. Dowden, LL. D. , see note in Vol. I. , p. 195, "^ De Quincey's Works, Shelley, Vol. VI., p. 18. io8 THE ENGLISH LAKES he soon found that they had little or nothing in common. " I have also been much engaged in talking with Southey," wrote Shelley to Miss Hitchener on December 26, 181 1. "You may conjecture that a man must possess high and estimable qualities if, with the prejudices of such total differences from my sentiments, I can regard him great and worthy. In fact, Southey is an advocate of liberty and equality," ^ But Southey was an advocate for existing establishments, and — worse than all — a bitter pill indeed for one who had prefaced a poem to aid an Irish patriot in prison a year before with a quotation from the Curse of Kehaina, Shelley found him, as he told the Sussex schoolmistress in this same letter, decidedly " anti- Hibernian." '* Southey hates the Irish ; he speaks against Catholic Emancipation. In all these things we differ ; our differences were the subject of a long conversation." ^ From that day the idol of Greta Hall had fallen. Lucky for the worshipper that he was able so soon to put another in its place, as he did by the sudden discovery that the author of Political Justice, Godwin, the great lawgiver and prophet who was to bring in the golden age, was still alive. Godwin, the foreteller of the time when every man was to be a moral hero, and a logical machine so framed as to forward the general good with '^ Life of Shelley, by Dowden, Vol. I., p. 212. '^ MacCarthy, Shelley's Early Life, p. 129. APPLETHWAITE 109 unfailing persistence and punctuality and precision, when all property was to be held of right by those who could best use it for the public good, was still walking this planet. Godwin should be Shelley's idol in place of that effete and worn-out sham and superstition which he had found Southey to be. Writing to Godwin on Jan. 16, 181 2, to tell him of his determination to go over to Ireland and preach and pamphleteer Catholic Emancipation, Shelley says, " Southey, the poet whose principles were pure and elevated once, is now the paid champion of every abuse and absurdity. I have had much conversation with him. He says * you will think as I do when you are as old.' " Let us see what impression Shelley made upon the poet at Greta Hall. " Here is a man at Keswick," ^ writes Southey to his friend Bedford, under date Jan. 4, 1 8 1 2, " who acts upon me as my own ghost would do. He is just what I was in 1794. His name is Shelley, son to the member for Shoreham ; with £6000 a year entailed upon him, and as much more in his father's power to cut off. Beginning with romances of ghosts and murder, and with poetry at Eton, he passed at Oxford, into metaphysics ; printed half a dozen pages, which he entitled * The Necessity of Atheism' ; sent one anonymously to Coplestone, in expectation, I suppose, of converting him ; was expelled in consequence ; married a girl of seventeen, after being turned out of doors ^MacCarthy, Sheikas Early Life, p. 131. no THE ENGLISH LAKES by his father ; and here they both are, in lodgings, living upon ;!f200 a year which her father allows them. He is come to the fittest physician in the world. At present he has got to the Pantheistic stage of philosophy, and, in the course of a week I expect he will be a Berkeleyan, for I have put him upon a course of Berkeley. It has surprised him a good deal to meet, for the first time in his life, with a man who perfectly understands him, and does him full justice. I tell him that all the difference between us is that he is nineteen, and I am thirty-seven, and I dare say it will not be very long before I shall succeed in convincing him that he may be a true philosopher, and do a great deal of good with ^6000 a year ; the thought of which troubles him a great deal more at present than ever the want of sixpence (for I have known such a want) did me. . . . God help us ! the world wants mending, though he did not set about it exactly in the right way, God bless you Grosvenor ! R. S." ^ The Berkeley medicine prescribed by Dr. Southey was procured by carrier and post from Llyod of Brathay ; but it was not taken till some months after at Lynmouth, and then only made the taker sick of the whole philosophic school that thus attempted " to cover up their ignorance by proud invention of foolish words," But meanwhile Shelley worked away hard at his appointed task, up at the little cottage under the beech and sycamore on Chestnut Hill. The "^ Southey' s Life, Vol. III., p. 325. APPLETHWAITE in Address to the Irish People on Catholic Emanci- pation was written. His one hundred and fifty essays were completed. A sheaf of short poems for publication in Ireland, the motive of which he described under the motto, " I sing, and Liberty may love my song ! " and a novel called Hubert Cauvin, designed to set forth the causes of the failure of the French Revolution, — these were the products of a pen that worked till the brain reeled, and resort was had to that most disastrous of all medicines, laudanum. But Keswick heard that the Duke of Norfolk had had the young poet over at Greystoke, and I expect that Keswick at once called to pay its respects. This probably broke in upon Shelley's time and tried his patience. He got to hate Keswick. Then there was an accident on the lake in a boating excursion, which may have made Mrs. Shelley dislike the water. Then, unfortunately, some ugly fellows, who roused alarm in the neighbourhood and caused half Keswick to sit up, and obliged Southey himself at Greta Hall, " to take down a rusty gun and manfully load it, for the satisfaction of the family," ^ paid a visit to Chestnut Hill, presented themselves at the door on the night of Sunday, Jan. 20, and knocked Shelley down when he came to open it. Particulars of this burglarious attack are given in the Cumberland Pacquet of Jan. 28, 1812. To add to all these disagreeables, Shelley, anxious ^Soiitkey's Life, Vol. III., p. 316. 112 THE ENGLISH LAKES 4 to explain some elementary chemical phenomena, made hydrogen gas in a retort after dark, and roused the suspicions of Gideon Dare, who felt that it was quite time to get rid of anything so like the black art, and calling next day presented his com- pliments to Mr. Shelley, and begged to say that he must suit himself elsewhere. Now all these things were against him, and Shelley determined to leave an ungrateful, hateful Keswick for the Land o' the Green, and to take the next slate-brig that sailed from Whitehaven for Dublin Bay. But Calvert was true to the last ; and though it was probably sadly against his wife's wish to have that dreadful talker of strange doctrines, in season and out of season, within bowshot of her boys' or girls' ears, the Shelleys nevertheless were invited to spend the last week of their sojourn in the vale at Windy Brow. On Sunday, Feb, 2, i8i2, Shelley and his wife and Eliza Westbrook turned their back for ever on Keswick. Calvert's kindness was still fresh in his mind, and writing a letter " from this filthy town and horrible inn," dated at Whitehaven, Feb. 3, he says : — " We felt regret at leaving Keswick. I passed Southey's house without one sting. He is a man who may be amiable in his private character, stained and false as is his public one. He may be amiable, but, if he is, my feelings are liars, and I have been so long accustomed to trust to them in these cases, that the opinion of the world is not the likeliest correction to impeach their credibility. But APPLETHWAITE 113 we left the Calverts with [regret?]. I hope some day to show you Mrs. Calvert. I shall not forget her, but will preserve her memory as another flower to compose a garland which I intend to present to you. Harriet and Eliza, in excellent spirits, bid you affectionate adieu. Adieu, Your P. B. Shelley."! So Shelley, Southey's ghost in feature and voice, as well as in youthful dreams, to mend or end all, went away from Keswick with mixed feelings. Towards Southey — though in later years the young poet acknowledged how really kind and courteous the bard at Greta Hall had been — Shelley bore for long, feelings of bitter aversion, so that on November 6, 1 8 1 7, when eight years had passed, Crabbe Robinson tells us : — " I went to Godwin's. Mr. Shelley was there. I had never seen him before. His youth, and a resemblance to Southey, particularly in his voice, raised a pleasing expression, which was not altogether destroyed by his conversation, though it is vehement, and arrogant, and intolerant. He was very abusive towards Southey, whom he spoke of as having sold himself to the Court. And this he maintained with the usual party slang. His pension and his Laureateship, his early zeal and his recent virulence, are the proofs of gross corruption." Crabbe Robinson adds, " On every topic but that of violent party feeling the friends of Southey are under no difficulty in defending him. Shelley ^ MacCarthy's Early Life of Shelley, p. 136. X. H 114 THE ENGLISH LAKES spoke of Wordsworth with less bitterness, but with an insinuation of his insincerity," etc.^ It was certainly a strange right-about-face that Shelley had made in his feeling for, and view of, Southey. " Southey," he wrote to Miss Kitchener, two days after Christmas day, 1811, "though far from being a man of great reasoning powers, is a great man. He has all that characterises the poet : great eloquence, though obstinacy of opinion, which arguments are the last things that can shake. He is a man of virtue. He will never belie what he thinks ; his professions are in compatibility with his practice." ^ Yet, within a month, could this kind, fatherly friend at Greta Hall appear such a monster of sham and superstition that Shelley could leave Keswick without a farewell, and pass Greta Hall gate without a sting ! But at least if Shelley had no regret at leaving Southey and Greta Hall friends, he took away from Keswick a delightful memory of Mrs. Calvert. Those who have looked upon the pretty little pencil drawing of her, in her quaint scuttle bonnet, or half hat, half bonnet, will see at once what a remarkable face Mrs. William Calvert must have had. And those who have been permitted to peep into the family house-keeping account she kept, will see that while her husband was a man of ideas, a man of fine intellectual sympathies, whose bane was procrastination, and, whose motto was " never do ^ Henry Crabbe Robinson's Diary, ed. by Dr. Sadler, Vol. II., p. 67. ^Life of Shelley, by Dowden, Vol. I., p. 213. APPLETH WAITE 1 1 5 to-day what you can do to-morrow," Mrs. Calvert was " practical, methodical," and capable of being as good or better a steward of the Duke of Norfolk's estates than ever Calvert could have been. Accom- plished too was Mrs, Calvert, to judge by her beautiful pencil sketches of her husband's face that remain to us ; and as for kindness, let Southey's letters attest how thoughtful for her friends she was, and how careful for the welfare of other households, even down to seeing that they were supplied with such cats as "The Zombi," or "Othello," to keep down the mice. But if a mother be judged by her children, then let Dr. John Calvert, Sterling's friend, whom Carlyle described as " a very human, lovable, good, and nimble man — the laughing blue eyes of him, the clear cheery soul of him, still redolent of the fresh Northern breezes and transparent Mountain streams," ^ let this man rise up and speak for her ; or let that little Mary Calvert, who grew up the girl- friend of Sara Coleridge and Edith May Southey, and the beloved of Dora Wordsworth be witness ; she who remembered going with such pride to help Edith to make and put the wreath of laurel on her father's head when he returned to Greta Hall in 1813 as Poet Laureate. This Mary Calvert, wedded in August, 1824, with Mr, Joshua Stanger, heard the poet Southey make his delightful speech at the wedding breakfast ; while, for all that brother John's blue eyes laughed so merrily, her bridesmaids were sad, and Sara i Coleridge's dark eyes grew dewy, and Dora Words- \ ^Carlyle's Lt/e of John Sterling, Part II., chap. v. ii6 THE ENGLISH LAKES worth's grey eyes softened and filled with mist. She left her girlhood's friends and was parted from the valley of her love for nineteen years. Yet her heart was with this home of her youth ; and hither she returned the year that Southey died : and in the house whose entrance from the main road is not a bowshot from Shelley's old lodging on Chestnut Hill, she dwelt for forty-seven years. That home, high- lifted with finest prospect of the Keswick Vale of any known hereabout, with sound of falling water at her door, and yew-tree shade above her roof, to remind her of the old farm house of Fieldside which it supplanted, saw gathered within its hospitable walls the fading circle of friends that made the Lakeland famous. Thither came the Southey children, thither the Coleridges, and the Wordsworths. On its walls were the tokens of that fair friendship, in pictures of the poets and their belongings. In its book-shelves the writings of the honoured Lakeland School. And hidden away in secret drawers, the cherished albums filled with scraps, and letters, and verse of the famous guests and friends. There, with a perpetual fund of anecdote and merriment from a heart that softened, but never saddened with years, dwelt Mrs. Stanger, the merry little Mary Calvert, who, in the old days, remem- bered how Shelley had been sorely troubled when he opened out a packet one day at Windy Brow to find that the work-box he had designed for Mr. Calvert's little girl was not there ; and remem- bered too the trouble upon her mother's and father's faces, when the young firebrand began to APPLETHWAITE 117 let off his fireworks before Miss Mary and Master John had been removed from the dining-room, and had been sent up to bed. The friend of the poor, " In humblest homes a helpful visitor," as Derwent Coleridge wrote of her ; in her own home, to all visitors who cared about the olden time, she too was helpful ever. " In her dear hands were gathered The various strings of grateful memory To pluck them at our bidding one by one." And last remaining of the charmed circle of the Lake school of literati hereabout, she well deserves to be classed among those whose associations with the Lakeland-poet households bestowed not least worth, and added not least interest, to her beloved vale. How many times did one leave Shelley's cottage and Chestnut Hill, and pass up the road towards Ambleside for one hundred paces ; thence enter the park-like meadow-land made glorious with the rich background of Latrigg larch and the purple of Blencathra's hazel bowers, and look from Field- side's lawn of sun and shade " Down the steep cleft thro' which the Greta flows, Hurrying to Brundholme's overhanging wood " ; and " Seated or pacing the long terrace walk That fronts the high-placed cottage . . . Decked as it is with all that graces life," feel all the good days came back again of Calvert, Shelley, Coleridge, and Southey, as one listened ii8 THE ENGLISH LAKES to that genial talk of the lady of Fieldside, or saw, not infrequently, the tear gather as she spoke of the dear Greta Bank and Greta Hall times, and, pointing to the far-off church of St. Kentigern in the valley, heard her say : " My time, dear sir, cannot be long now. I hope to see them all again." Then the face would brighten and she would add, "If ever a good man lived it was Robert Southey. I have known many able men in my life, I have known none more unselfish in his thought and deed, more beautiful in his home life and his affections, than he ; dear sir, Southey's goodness will surely live for ever." She had but one wish, " that her mind might by God's mercy hold out as long as its case," and that prayer was granted. At the time ap- pointed, at the ripe age of eighty-seven, she fell on sleep and was borne on February lo, 1890, by sorrowing hands, to the sound of muffled bells and mourning waterflood, down the long steep, and by the shining river, away to the old churchyard of Crosthwaite, in the valley. CHAPTER V KESWICK gray's visit to KESWICK : SIR JOHN BANKES : BANKES' CHARITY : DR. BROWNRIGG : JONATHAN OTLEY : CLIFTON WARD : FREDERICK MYERS : WILLIAM AND LUCY SMITH. We leave Fieldside and pass up towards the Toll- bar and so win " The Moor." But we halt often and turn round, for the sun is chasing shadow across the plain ; Bassenthwaite gleams like " the flashing of a shield," Derwentwater is divinely blue, and the mountain heads from " Glaramara to west- ernmost Wythop " are clad in glorious pomp of autumn purple and gold. We may imagine ourselves back a whole century and a quarter. That man who has turned round at a spot just beyond the larch plantation to gaze backward, is a poet. You would hardly think it, there is such a refinement of dandyism about him. So dapper is he of dress, from the well-tied bob- wig to the brass buttons on his drab knee-breeches, from well-starched stock to shining shoe-buckle, you would guess he was a city exquisite, rather than some strolling poet. But you will under- stand when you see his neatness, how it came I20 THE ENGLISH LAKES to pass that he left behind him in such faultless handwriting that three-volumed common-place book which Pembroke College so carefully guards. His face is pale, you might almost believe that he is not long for this world, and yet he is light of step and will accomplish a three hundred mile walk before he returns to Cambridge for the October term. His brow fine, his nose parrot-shaped, his mouth and chin not strong features, are made weaker by the " neb " as the northerners call it. He has been staying for a week at Keswick on this his first tour to the Lakes, in October of 1769, and he is alone. His companion in travel, Dr. Wharton, was seized with asthma at Brough, and we who read Gray's Journal are not sorry. It was because of that seizure that Gray's Journal of his visit to the Lakes was written, in order that his would-be fellow-traveller might know how Gray the companionless fared. And here we are in imagination chatting on the Ambleside road-track over the open common to the moor (for the turnpike was not in those days), at the superbest point of view for Derwentwater and the Keswick vale, with the author of an Elegy that shall live as long as English verse is read. Glad enough he is to escape from the horror of the impending rocks of Borrowdale, to the more open country of Helvellyn, but for all that loath to leave the scenes he had found so fair in this sweet vale of Keswick. And, looking for a moment from the play of sudden sunlight upon lake and mountain and plain spread out before us, we see by the THOMAS GRAY. KESWICK 121 , light and shadow in Gray's face that he has indeed, as he tells us he had, on that 8th day of October, 1769, "almost a mind to have gone back again" ;^ but he is evidently too frail a man to be warranted in taking the extra fatigue of twice mounting this long climb from the Keswick vale ; and he has a long Sunday walk before him, for he means to reach Ambleside to-night. Right glad we are that he did not attempt it ; for we know from his Journal that when he reached Ambleside, he looked into " the best bed-chamber " of the inn there, and finding it, as he says, "dark and damp as a cellar, grew delicate, gave up Wynander-niere in despair, and resolved I would go on to Kendal directly." 2 But at least we may learn before we part with our poet-friend, what in his judgment are the best " stations " or spots from which to view the beauties of the Keswick valley. There can be no doubt as to what he will say. In his judgment these are Crow Park, Cockshott, Castle Hill, the Vicarage Hill, the rising ground at the end of Great Wood, just beneath Falcon Crag and Grange. " In the evening," says the dapper little man, " walked alone down to the Lake by the side of Crow Park " ; ^ Crow Park with the roots of the huge oak trees still visible ; oaks once part of the primeval forest, which made Keswick valley the ^ Works of Thomas Gray, ed. by E. Gosse, Journal in the Lakes, Vol. I., p. 264. 2 Idem, p. 267. ^ Gray's Journal in the Lakes, Works, Vol. I., p. 258. 122 THE ENGLISH LAKES fear of the Roman, and may well have caused the Norse invaders, Ketil, Ormr, Walla, and Sweyn to have their village camps on high ground. These oak trees have long since gone, " full charged with English thunder to plough the stormy main." The Greenwich Hospital which entered upon the estates of the attainted Earl of Derwentwater, and certain Whitehaven shipyards are to blame. "Walked to Crow Park," says Gray, ... "I prefer it [the view from thence] even to Cockshott Hill " 1 or Castle Hill. Pass along by the pack- horse tract through Great Wood, and when under Falcon Crag be sure to get the view both ways. Above the Carf-close-reeds, the Claude mirror will play its part divinely, " From hence " (Castle Hill), continues the poet, " I got to the Parsonage. . . . This is the sweetest scene I can yet discover in point of pastoral beauty." ^ If you wish for other stations from which to view Skiddaw and the Crosthwaite Vale aright go over Portinscale Bridge and thus to the right to the Howe Farm. Thence back to Portinscale, and so to the woods and rising ground called the " Park " — Fawe Park of to-day — whilst for a final station or view point, you must mount part of the road he has just come and go along " the Penrith Road two miles or more," and turn "into a corn-field to the right called Castlerigg," where he " saw a Druid circle of large stones, one hundred and eight feet in diameter, the biggest not eight feet high, but most of them still erect : they are fifty in number. The ^ Gray^s Journal in the Lakes, Vol. I., p. 259. "^ Idem, p. 260. KESWICK 123 valley of Naddle appeared in sight and the fells of St. John's, particularly the summits of Catchedecant (called by Camden Casticand) and Helvellyn^ said to be as high as Skiddaw, and to rise from a much higher base." ^ We thank the poet Gray and part. That lane \ to the left that we had almost passed as | we chatted with our guide is Rakefoot Lane. | It has a good Icelandic shepherd's ring about I it, for the Rachan, or Reckan, or Rekkan, is 1 in Icelandic still the narrow way by which the | Norsemen drive their flocks, afield or home ; \ when the sheep follow their leader in single file | we still say hereabout, " How the sheep are j raking ! " * The old Roman Camp once lay somewhere close by, and later, the castle of the Lords of Derwent- water frowned from the Castlerigg. Its stones or some of them may still be seen in the masonry of the Keswick Town Hall. For the stones were sledded down from hence to Stable Hill, and built up at the bidding of Sir Thomas Ratcliffe, into a manor house on Lord's Island, it is conjectured about 1651. In 1757, some of its material was ferried across to the building of the ungainly Market House, the nuisance of our time. Tradition has it, that a certain Will Monkhouse perished by having over-loaded his boat with the material — boat, stones, and William sunk in mid channel ; it is believed the stones and the boat remain at the bottom of the lake at this day. It is certain from the Cros- ^ Grafs Journal in the Lakes ^ Vol. I., p. 261. 124 THE ENGLISH LAKES thwaite Register that William Monkhouse was buried in the churchyard of St. Kentigern in 1757. But this is a digression. Rakefoot with its castle reminds one of Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire, wherein a brave woman stood her ground though it was raked by cannon and culverin ; and repelled a triple assault upon it in the stormy times of Roundhead and Cavalier. That lady, the heroine of the Isle of Purbeck for those three years of the Great Rebellion, at one time held her castle-fortress against the Parliamentarians, when only she and her maidservants could guard the walls and serve the guns ; and on the fourth of August, 1643, was, by her splendid courage, and the resolute aid of some eighty soldiers, delivered " from the bloody intentions of those merciless rebels," Sir W. Erie and Thomas Trenchard This was Lady Bankes, wife of the Right Hon. Sir John Bankes, chief justice of common pleas, who, dis- charging the duties of privy councillor of King Charles I. to the last day of his life, died on December 28, 1644, at Oxford, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. Sir John Bankes may well be ranked among illustrious men of the Lake District. The letters from ill-fated Strafford, then Lord Wentworth, " to my much respected friend, Sir John Bankes," are full of affectionate regard for a man who, by his justice and integrity, so won the heart of foe and friend that, though he subscribed to the famous declaration made by the lords and gentlemen with the King at York, June 15, 1642, and was Royalist KESWICK 125 to the last, was nevertheless continued in his office by the Parliamentarians in 1643. Bold and fearless for his conscience sake to the end, Sir John Bankes scrupled not, when on the bench at Salisbury in 1643, to declare the action of Essex, Manchester, and Waller treasonable ; and had not natural death befriended him, would like enough have suffered later for his sturdy indepen- dence. Where did Sir John Bankes win his lessons in manliness and loyalty ? Where did he go to school and find that mens conscia recti was the noblest mind ? He learnt his lesson on this breezy Castle Ridge. The purple woods and fells, the stormy winter mountains, the freedom and hopefulness of our English spring, the solemn pomp of autumn — these were his teachers. Sir John Bankes was born in a simple yeoman home, at Castlerigg, by the side of the Rakefoot " lonning." All the early schooling that he got he doubtless received at the old High School, by the Crosthwaite Church gates. Go down into Keswick, and ask for Rigg's Coach Office, and, by kind permission, the curious in such old world days may see the Wainscot Room, and the groined ceiling of the Town House, where the lad grew up to boyhood, after that his father, the yeoman farmer, had left his sheep upon the fells, to take to sale of household stuff, and of such good worsteds, cotton, and harden-sark, as were then worthy merchandise. " Fair seedtime had his soul " : the native modesty 126 THE ENGLISH LAKES and simple piety of our best Cumberland dalesmen was his unto the end. The only epitaph he desired upon his tomb were the words : " Not unto us, Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be glory." And this was the man who, when he was Attorney- General, was, in 1635, recommended to the King for promotion to the office of High Treasurer, as exceed- ing Bacon in eloquence, Chancellor Ellesmere in judgment, and William Noy in law. Like the young Lord Clifford ^ in Sir Lancelot Threlkeld's keeping, there beneath the slopes of Blencathra, he had in his laborious life of law-court and kings' chambers, never forgotten the love that he had found " in huts where poor men lie." He knew the bitterness of the end of those who, when strength fails them, must cease to labour, and when they cease to labour, must feel want. As a dying man he remembered the poor of Keswick, and determined that a kind of workhouse, properly so called, should be endowed, wherein the poor should find labour for their hands and rest unto their minds. An almshouse wherein, not carted off almost like prisoners to a far-off cheerless home, but here, in the midst of their friends and home associations, without stain or blot upon their necessity and de- pendence, the respectable poor should find asylum, a warm roof above, beneath, food and friendliness. He did this charitable deed with the sole proviso that they who were helped should help themselves. So he bequeathed ;^30 per annum to his native town of Keswick for the support of a manufactory iCf. Vol. II., p. 3 ei seq. KESWICK 127 of coarse cottons. The Almshouse Factory has ceased to be. The Cockermouth Union has taken its place, but still in Keswick, each year, the worthy poor find 5 s. a week a kind of guarantee against homelessness, or its alternative, the Cockermouth Union. This is the result of the Bankes' Charity. God bless the worthy Chief Justice of the High Court of Common Pleas, who died in 1644. Let us go into Keswick and visit the spot where old Sir John Bankes' Almshouse once stood. We shall find a brand new post office has dispossessed it of its being, and in a side wall may read an inscription that tells us of its one time existence. If, in our imagination, it chance to be January 6, 1 800, we shall hear a bell tolling at Crosthwaite Church, and by its " tellers " we shall know it is a man who is dead. The blinds at Ormathwaite Hall are all down, and folk in Keswick say, " T' auld Doctor, he's just deead." Yes, at the age of eighty, William Brownrigg, one of the most original chemists of his day, the most illustrious son of a family who have been settled at Ormathwaite since 1677, has just passed away. He began life as a doctor at Whitehaven ; took to researches into " Mephitic Exhalations " of the coal pits there, as causing disease among the miners ; wrote on chokedamp, and the need of ventilation in mines ; analysed the waters of the mineral springs of Spa, far-famed throughout Eu- rope ; first described the new metal which had been brought to England from Cartagena by a relative of Brownrigg's in 1741, white gold as it was then 128 THE ENGLISH LAKES called, to-day called platinum. And in 1748, when a salt famine was feared in England he published an essay on the practice of salt-making in various parts of the world, and suggested the establishment of salt pans all along our coast ; inquired into the cause of jail fever, and wrote Considerations on the Means of Preventing Contagion and Eradicating In- fection. One does not wonder that Black, Priestley, Benjamin Franklin, and all the chief scientists of that day were in correspondence with William Brownrigg ; nor that he died a Copley Medallist and F.R.S. None can gainsay the literal truth of the terse epitaph to his memory in Crosthwaite Church. But how one would wish to have been in his company on that wild day in 1772, when Sir John Pringle, president of the Royal Society, and Dr. Benjamin Franklin, then guests at Ormathwaite, put off in a boat to the middle of Derwentwater, and proceeded to make the first experiment that had ever been made to ascertain the effect of " pouring oil on troubled waters." The facts of that experiment may be found in the sixty-fourth volume of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions : the results may be seen in the use to which oil is frequently put nowadays, in calming heavy seas. I confess I never enter the Bank and Post Office in Keswick without thoughts of the Keswick lad, upon whom old Doctor Bi'ownrigg's mantle fell, and who was born close by about the year of the Doctor's death : a certain Jobby Dunglison, who became one KESWrCK 129 of the ablest and best teachers of physiology in his day in America ; — for it was at the bank that his mother lived until her death. Dunglison began his literary work in 18 17, by a paper in the London Monthly on " The Floating Island on Derwentwater," and in later life he wrote his Legends of the English Lakes. He died in 1869, just one hundred years after the poet Gray's visit to Keswick. Let us go back in fancy to that favourite view- point of the poet and think of others who were doing what they could, here in the beginning of the century, to keep the lamps of science, and thought, and literature alight in Keswick and its neighbour- hood. We will descend this time from the moor by the Tollbar and Castlette, and so enter the town by St. John's, and Derwentwater Place, for we would see not only the home of Jonathan Otley, but the dwelling place of the Rev. F. Myers, and the lodging of that remarkable man William Smith, the too little known author of Thorndale. On our way we pass the Manor House. Close by it may be seen an old cottage tenanted, but sublet in part, by a certain Younghusband, to which Jonathan Otley, a young swill-maker of very ancient Grasmere stock, came at the age of twenty-five to follow his calling. He had had such schooling as Langdale and Ambleside schools could give, but his eyes and his love of using them had done most for him. Board and lodging were not as costly as they are now. His agreement with his landlord was for I. I 130 THE ENGLISH LAKES 4s. 8d. a week, and this included four square meals a day. He tried hard to get his host to put in his Sunday meals for nothing, but to this the host objected ; " Nay, nay," said he, " we boil the pot on Sunday, barn," so the pot was paid for. Here he worked at his baskets and his swills for five and a half years. Here, till 1797, the swill- maker sat in the little shop-room that still overlooks the main road ; and gradually his fame grew. He was not only a swill-maker but a watch and clock " reightler " too, and as I have heard tell, " cliverest man wi' his hands hereabout, I suppose." And when all the watches in the country-side came into his clever, honest hands to be " fettled up," it was more convenient for their owners that he should dwell nearer the Market Place. So in 1797, he removed to a lodging in Kings-head Yard, and there, though his bill for board and lodging went up by bounds till it stood at los. a week, the clock-maker lived for fifty-five years. This man, lodging at the tiny cottage up the steps in Kings-head Yard, was noticed to be constantly away on the hills — talking with the fox-hunters as to the local names of the various crags ; tracking streams to their sources ; discovering fountain-heads in far fellside or quiet woody places, carefully cleansing them of fallen leaves and planting flowers here and there about them ; observing winds and storms ; going off to the Floating Island ; marking high and low lake level on the rocks at Friars' Crag ; going to the high fells with a barometer to make observations as to altitudes ; coming home KESWICK 131 with his hands full of botanical examples and his pockets full of various specimens of lavas and vol- canic ash. This man, Jonathan Otley — the Gilbert White of Keswick — had many visitors to his little clock-maker's den, " Jonathan's up the steps " as it was called. Dr. Dalton, the great chemist, would go there. Dalton had met Otley first on Skiddaw in July, 181 2, and noted then that he was carrying a barometer and was taking observations. He got into conversation with him, and the result was a life-long friendship, — extending over thirty-one years, — much correspondence and many a mountain excursion together for scientific research. Professor Phillips, the curator of the York Museum, Professor Sedgwick, and with him Murphy of the Ordnance Survey, and later Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, were constant visitors to the watchmaker's little shop. These all came to love him for his graciousness and refinement of character, as they all came to him for accurate observation and for help in scientific research. All took him into their con- fidence, and treated him as a friend and a brother. For Jonathan Otley, shy retired man as he was, a man who said little and thought the more, was a reader and thinker, and his correspondence shows that he was a gentleman in all he did and thought. What was he like? Those who enter the Kes- wick Museum in the Fitz Park and ask to be shown Daniel Crosthwaite's oil painting of Jonathan, can satisfy themselves on this point. The old man's face is full of tender feeling and quiet reflectiveness. 132 THE ENGLISH LAKES The grey eyes are at once keen and gentle, the mouth most sensitive, and the whole features are those of one who, " retired as noontide dew," has so communed with nature that the " beauty born of murmuring sound Has passed into his face." It is, I think, impossible to exaggerate the sense of natural refinement that is seen in Otley's counten- ance. Now, what claim has Otley to be ranked among those with whom there are literary associations in this Lake District ? He was the writer of one of the first Guide Books that made the district easy of access. That Guide, with its beautiful outline sketches of the various hills, has been the prototype of all accurate guide books since. It was published in 1823 under the title, A Concise Description of the English Lakes and adjacent Mountains^ and is a production of careful original research. In 1 8 1 5 he gave Dr. Dalton the first accurate account of the phenomenon of the Floating Island ; some of its peculiarities were described in MSS. in the archives of the Manchester Philosophical Society. In 1 8 1 8 he published the first accurate map of the district. One does not wish to under-rate the excellent charts of the various lakes which that worthy old sea captain, Peter Crosthwaite drew and published as early as 1783 ; but these maps, though they are intensely interesting as far as the Lake dwellings of that day are concerned, and accurate as far as the shore lines and water depths go, did KESWICK 133 not attempt to deal with the outlines or measure- ments or stratification of the fells and mountain masses that lie around the lakes. But it is as a geologist, or rather as the father of geology of this district, that " Jonathan Otley up the steps " will be remembered. It was Otley who first introduced Sedgwick to Cumbrian geology. He used to tell Dr. Lietch, with some pardonable pride, how he went across " Willy " or " Wiley " Ghyll in Skiddaw Forest, and showed Professor Sedgwick where the Skiddaw granite made its appearance. But what brought Otley most note was a paper published in 1820, Remarks on the Succession of the Rocks in the District of the Lakes. Sedgwick was profoundly impressed with it. And in 1831 he told the Geological Society that Jonathan Otley had been the first to recognise that " the greater part of the central region of the Lake Mountains is occupied / by three distinct groups of stratified rocks of a slaty ; texture." ^ "We owe," says he again in 1836, "our first accurate knowledge of these subdivisions to Mr. Jonathan Otley of Keswick, who not merely de- scribed them in general terms, but gave their true geographical distribution with a very near approach to accuracy." ^ Professor Phillips, in 1856, writing of Jonathan Otley's geological work, says : " The earliest notice of a real and firm distinction between cleavage and 1 Transactions of the Cumberland Association, Part II., p. 144. ^ Idem. 134 THE ENGLISH LAKES stratification, derived from English examples, which I have met with is in Otley's Concise Description of the English Lakes.^ which notice appeared first in the Kirkby Lonsdale Magazine^ in 1820."^ The correspondence that has been preserved betwixt Otley and Dalton, Phillips and Sedgwick and Airy, is full not only of anxious-questioning and answer as to scientific details, such as rock-bed, rock-joints, cleavage stripes, boulder distribution, Mell Fell and Kirkby Lonsdale conglomerates, view- points, ordnance cairns, rock cisterns on Great Gable, temperatures, lake levels and the like, but it is full of affection also ; hearty soul-grasp, tender home-life details, local gossip, solicitous enquiry after personal health and personal friends. Thus Sedgwick writes in 1853:"! cannot for- get the happy and laborious days I spent in Cumberland, and the pleasure and instruction I had from your society. Alas ! thirty-one years have passed away since I first saw you at Kes- wick. . . . Pray, send me some Keswick news." ^ The old man, then in the eighty -seventh year, tells him in reply, that till March in the former year he had been so well in health that he had walked two or three times a week to Barrow Side, and spent hours in amusing myself by form- ing little wells of the springs that arise on the mountain side. Let me interpose, that in Jonathan's Journal of this date occurs the entry, March 16, 1852: 1 Transactions of the Cumberland Association, Part II., p. 146. 2 Idem, p. 158. KESWICK 135 " At spring on Barrow Common, planted now and before, water-cress, scurvy-grass, veronica, and for- get-me-not." The old man goes on to tell Sedgwick, that he went last April to Friars' Crag in the drought to note the water-level on the rock. He reached the Lake last on Sept. 4, and began to feel that the old stone stairs which he had climbed for fifty-five years were too hard for him, and so had removed to a house near his old friend, Charles Wright. In his love of observation he cannot help adding as postscript, " Tuesday morning, May I o ; gloomy and cold, snow on Skiddaw, more on Helvellyn." ^ Other letters pass in following years, full of notes of calcareous slates, hard Coniston grit, lower and middle Cumbrian series, and such like details. His friend Sedgwick hopes to come down to Keswick in 1855, and the geologist writes that he has very mixed feelings. He cannot help being glad at the thought of a sight of him, but he cannot help the painful thought that he will be unable to walk the hills with him as twenty-eight years ago they did, though even then he remembers Sedgwick had the better legs of the two. But he adds, " Having entered my ninetieth year I have the use of my limbs, and a good appetite, . . . on a fine day I am able to walk to the water- side." 2 There is a touching description of one of these ^Transactions of the Cumberland Association, Part II., p. 159. "^ Idem, p. 163. 136 THE ENGLISH LAKES walks of the infirm old naturalist to the water- side, when he was in his eighty-seventh year, by his friend and biographer, Dr. Lietch. "On Tuesday, April 27th, 1852, after a long time of very dry weather, rowing near Friars' Crag, we saw old Jonathan Otley (then aged eighty-six) carefully picking his way over the rough rocks towards his famous low water-mark. He had cut a notch in the rock, in the dry summer of 1824, and by this he had ever since chronicled the levels of the lake. In the dry summer of 1826 it was once below the mark of 1824; and in the still drier summer of 1844 it was four inches below the level of 1824. The feeble veteran — feeble, but not unhealthy or in- firm — picking slowly his way by the help of his staff, in the light of the setting sun, along the shore to this ancient record, in order to ' describe a new remarkable event ' of the valley, seemed like tradition creeping and stumbling forward to chronicle the silent births of time. There was something very characteristic of the man in the scene and the situation, and I should have liked very much to have had his figure drawn as he appeared, moving along, in his well-known solitary, quiet manner, amid the scenes which he has loved, and done so much to make familiar to others, during more than half a century ; and busied too in one of these careful, accurate observations for which he has long been famous. The evening light, the low calm, almost silent waters of the lake — for they scarcely lapped against the crag KESWICK 137 at his feet — the rough track he was treading, and all the sights and sounds which in this valley- accompany the close of the day, were in harmony with the idea of the old man. The waters of life were low with him now, weak as the ripple scarcely breaking on the rock, yet they were calm and bright withal. . . . The similitude between the hour and the man, the sunset and the departing life, became so impressive, that it was an unpleasant shock to see him slip and fall on the rock, as though the life had so nearly toppled over on the shores of time. Fortunately, however, no harm was done ; the veteran first examining his hand, gathered himself up, and then with redoubled caution proceeded on his errand. We pulled the boat up to the rock, and after hearing him say, with one of his little pleasant chuckles ending in a low whistle or what seemed like a whistle out of one side of his mouth, that he was ' nothing the worse,' we accompanied him to his notch in the rock known as ' Jonathan Otley's mark,' and I saw him, with a piece of slate stick and an inch rule, go through his careful process of regis- tering the level of the lake." But Jonathan Otley's life was drawing to a close. He should make no more water-marks upon Friars' Crag. The eyes that had once, on a clear day, seen the Welsh mountains from Coniston Fell, and thrice from Skiddaw had looked upon the Irsh hills, were looking out beyond other seas to other hills, even the heights of heaven. Now and again we hear in his talk a note of extreme 138 THE ENGLISH LAKES loneliness. The old man who held companionship with cloud and torrent, birds and flowers, lichen, mossy rocks, and shining waterfloods, feels the prison-house of his infirmity a heavy weight upon him. Then comes silently to this good waiter and watcher the first angel stroke of paralysis. On August of 1855, a second, and he lies bedfast in his home near the Picture Gallery in St. John's Street, helpless and speechless. Professor Sedg- wick calls to see him. Otley is quite sensible and recognises his friend, reaches his withered hand, that though it would, can ill give hearty hand-grasp now. There is a silence, their eyes meet, and the tender-hearted Professor bursts into tears and cries, as he falls upon his knees, " Jona- than, I'll pray with you." ^ Still for three months the veteran guide and geologist waits and watches ; notes constantly the change of shadow and light upon his little bed- room wall, as the days shorten, and December darkens, till at the last, at five o'clock of the seventh day of that Christmas month, he, having nearly completed his ninety-first year, gives up the ghost ; and his body is borne to sound of forward hymn and muffled tread of many mourners, to the Poet's Corner in the Crosthwaite Church- yard. The old clock in the church tower strikes as we stand and read the inscription to this Guide, Botanist, Geologist, and Meteorologist. His hand ^ Life and Letters of Sedgwick. Clark & Hughes. Vol. II., p. 325. KESWICK 139 gave that old clock power to strike ; and though it be now after long years " a crazy clock with a bewildered chime," we feel, for love of the hand that made it, that it may strike on as it will ; for no man ever lived that better deserved to have inscribed above his rest : — " A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold." And better than riches it is to have the memory of such simplicity and worth as was Jonathan Otley's. As we gaze across from the Brow top, or Castlette Cottage, once the abode of Jonathan Otley, we see the Castlehead, wooded to its top, where one time stood the Roman legionary as he signalled to the camp on Castrigg, and flashed his message by spear- head to Caermote beyond Bassenthwaite, or Castle Rock in Borrowdale ; and one goes on to think how many years had elapsed before Castlehead, that great stopper in a volcano's mouth, gave up the secrets of its make and origin, Otley was one of the first who questioned it of its history. The building of a new church was the means of his enquiry. *' It chanced," he tells us in a letter dated Dec. 20, 1836, to his friend Pro- fessor Sedgwick, who had written asking him for his observations on the angles of rock-joints, dip- joints, master-joints, strike-joints, and the strike and cleavage of rock-beds, " that there is a quarry opened on the east side of Castlehead where they are getting slates for the new church, now building at the south end of Keswick," the church of St. John's. And to this church-building in 1836 the geological world HO THE ENGLISH LAKES owes it, that one of the problems of rock-joints in the Cumbrian slate was made plain. But it remained for another geologist, Clifton Ward, the loving biographer of Jonathan, to tell us how once the volcano spouted flame and dust from here, and forced, from its central heart of fire, ashes for the building of our Lake-land hills. He now alas ! lies, " Dust to dust in this volcanic land. Whose secrets he so well could understand," in the churchyard of St. John's just at the foot of the Castlehead, and many a generation of men must pass before another such a lover of our hills and such an observer of their making, such a discoverer of their prehistoric moulding, shall move, goat-footed from crag to crag, and find, in following nature, nature's God. Clifton Ward, whose accurate and scientific work on the Government Survey of this District will be to all time his best monument, and whose monograph of geological notes, — to accompany his survey, — is a classic, found as he roamed through these hills so much of rest unto his soul, so much of the oracles of the mind of God in nature, so much of the Creator's loving will graven upon His table of stone, — which our mountains were to him, — that he desired to speak of it to others. He took orders and became colleague of the then vicar of St. John's. Frail of body from the first, he had hardly realised how much of his strength had then gone in the work of his arduous calling as Geological Surveyor. He took cold, and at an early age passed into that world KESWICK 141 of light and fuller knowledge he so desired ; but all who are interested in the literary and scientific associations of our English lakes must bow the head at his grave side, and remember that if to Jonathan Otley we owe the first classification of our Cumbrian slates, to Clifton Ward we are indebted for what is probably the last word on the matter, so far as human observation can now go. Nor should it be forgotten that the whole of Cumberland to-day owes its network of literary and scientific societies to the desire and will, the resolute purpose and foresight of this good man. As we descend the hill into Keswick, Faber the poet comes to mind. He who best knew the country beyond the Raise, the singer of the Bratha, and the poet of Black Combe, had still in his heart room for the beauties of Derwentwater and the glory of that unrivalled scene which is spread out before us as we take our stand on Castlehead. One remembers the opening stanza of his poem Castle Hill, Keswick. " Come let us gather here upon the hill The noble hearts that yet beat pure and high, And, while the lake beneath our feet is still, Sweetly our speech may run on chivalry." So sings Faber, as in fancy he stands, sees the " sun sinking in the west"; watches "on great Blencathra's haunted crest " " the purple folds of summer twilight wind," and lets the loveliness and beauty of the scene sink into his heart, " where summer day fades o'er yon Cumbrian mountains far away." One does not forget how Faber's verse shows that he has been 142 THE ENGLISH LAKES " where Greta flows," and Glenderaterra, and the nameless streams ; that he has roamed the woods to the west of Derwentwater is evidenced by his sonnet Keswick, under date August 3rd, 1838. "The four black pools the woodman finds, Far in the depths of some unsunny place, As silent and as fearful as a dead man's face," may still be found there, and Faber may be seen close by ; but it is pre-eminently Castlehead that is associated with his name. Now, by the new church, quarried from the Castle- head, we pass, and cannot but remember how the first pastor of that church, though not a poet himself, was the father of a poet, critic, and essayist of whom we need not be ashamed, and was one whose constant thought and endeavour after higher life for the people amongst whom he moved, and higher wishes and diviner thought for the church he served, has left behind him a name of gracious sweetness that we would not let die. Frederic Myers, the Maurice of the north, has not it is true left much literary work behind him, but his Essays on Great Men, his Catholic Thoughts on the Church of Christ and the Church of England, stamp his genius and his desires as at once original and ennobling. Here, at the end of Derwentwater Place, is the St. John's Library, which Myers planned before the days of free libraries for the people. How Myers impressed one of his contemporaries may be gathered from the account given by the late Bishop Harvey Goodwin, who now lies at rest in this beloved valley, and whose young under- KESWICK 143 graduate imagination was fired to be up and doing by his introduction to Myers in years long gone by. Goodwin had come to Keswick to read for Cambridge with Thompson, afterward Master of Trinity. Keswick was still the Keswick not only of Jonathan Otley but of Robert Southey. It was Mr. Bush, then curate of Crosthwaite, who intro- duced the young collegian to Myers, and he took the fancy of the Cambridge student immensely ; but it was not till 1840, when Goodwin brought a reading party to Brow Top, that he saw much of Myers, *' I found his society," says Goodwin, " exceedingly agreeable, and, as I thought, profit- able." At first sight there is not much in common in their mental characteristics. Myers was " utterly unmathematical and unmusical, careless of the honours of the schools ; dreamy, mystical, fond of German speculations, and having an ecclesiastical system almost his own." What was it then that attracted young Goodwin, the Cambridge coach, to Frederic Myers, the Keswick parson ? " One of the things," says Goodwin, " was the comprehensive view he took of his duties as a parish priest." " The Educator of his People " he somewhere gives as the description of the parish priest. Then there was "his zeal in working out his views " ; a freshness and originality about him, a semi-Carlylean way of viewing men and things. It is not saying too much of the influence Myers brought to bear upon Goodwin in that long vacation, to assert that the encouragement he gave the young Cambridge wrangler to take part in 144 THE ENGLISH LAKES the pastoral work of the parish, helped to make him the good and great Bishop of Carlisle he afterwards became. I have heard Bishop Goodwin speak of the evening lectures he gave at Myers' wish ; of the speech Myers got him to make on the value of education, when, with the poet Wordsworth on his right hand, he opened his parish school. A friend who was present on that occasion told me that nothing could induce the old poet to make a speech ; he simply bowed and said, " I agree with every word that Mr. Myers has spoken." And what was it brought to this valley, from the flats of Lincolnshire, that gentle, courteous pastor, who broke down barriers between class and class, and, by his humour and pleasantry, won the affection of the sturdy Cumbrian folk ? What induced the dreamy mystic, the scholarly fellow of Clare College, to work on here at his ideal of parish life from 1838 to 1851, till, at the age of forty, he passed away, worn out by work and will to help his kind ? It was the beauty of our earthly Paradise ; that sense of being nearer to God, which quiet lakes, and solemn fells, and shining mountain-heads can give. We cannot enter either the church or churchyard of St. John's parish without remembering that the son of that far-seeing and liberal-minded parish clergyman left behind him a son who grew up, not only to be a poet who entered deeply into commune with nature, but an enthusiastic searcher into the mysteries of the spirit world. They who stand by KESWICK 145 the grave of F. W. Myers feel that to few men of his time must the gate of the secret of the great beyond have opened with more gladness, and those who remember how the music of his song haunted them when it first fell upon their ears, know well that wherever that keen enquiring spirit moves there will surely be the voice of truth and the sound of melody ; but especially they will thank the poet and worker in things of the spirit for his interpretation of the spirit of Wordsworth's poetry and for the biography of the Rydal Laureate, at once so full of insight and appreciation, which as a son of the Lakeland he was so well qualified to give us. His early love of natural scenery grew with Myers into a passion. In later days he seems specially to have cared for Ullswater and Patterdale, and staying at one or other of the homes of the Marshalls in that valley he wrote the poem of which the fol- lowing verses speak both his early love and his later joy in the beauty of the daedal earth. " O rock and torrent, lake and hill, Halls of a home austerely still. Remote and solemn view ! O valley, where the wanderer sees Beyond that towering arch of trees Helvellyn and the blue ! Great Nature ! on our love was shed From thine abiding goodlihead Majestic fostering ; We wondered, half-afraid to own In hardly-conscious hearts upgrown So infinite a thing. T. K 146 THE ENGLISH LAKES Within, without, whate'er hath been, In cosmic deeps the immortal scene Is mirrored, and shall last : — Live the long looks, the woodland ways, That twilight of enchanted days, — The imperishable Past." I always associate Sunbarrow Fell with this true poet of the English Lakes. It must have been from hence he surveyed that High Street Range, with its Roman road, he has immortalised in verse. But other enthusiastic seekers after truth and goodness rise up before our minds as we linger here. For here at No. 3 Derwentwater Place there used to reside for part of the year a delicate man, a poet and thinker. Here the author of Thorndale and Gravenhurst, the mystic William Smith, met the woman of his choice, and the lonely-natured man found such love and companionship of heart and soul as falls to the lot of few, in the person of Lucy Gumming, the German translator, of true poetic soul. Lucy Gumming thus describes their meeting : " My beloved mother — at that time a complete invalid — a little niece of mine, who then lived with us, and I, had been spending the early summer in Borrowdale, and we too, attracted by the new and cheerful row of lodging-houses, now took up our abode at 3 Derwentwater Place. The solitary student, to whom I confess I not a little grudged the drawing-room floor, soon sent to proffer one request — that the little girl would not practise her scales, etc., during the morning hours. Now and KESWICK 147 then we used to pass him in our walks, but he evidently never so much as saw us. There was something quite unusual in the rapt abstraction of his air, the floating lightness of his step ; one could not help wondering a little who and what he was, but for several weeks nothing seemed more entirely- unlikely than our becoming acquainted. " The lodging-house that we all occupied was kept by a mother and two daughters, who had had a reverse of fortune, and to whom this way of life was new. We were their first tenants. One of the daughters especially was well educated and in- teresting. To her I gave a copy of Grillparzer's ' Sappho,' which I had recently translated. I knew she would value it a little for my sake, but it never occurred to me that she would take it to the recluse in the drawing-room. She did so, however. Piles of manuscript on his desk had convinced her that he was ' an author,' and it amused her to show him the little production of one of the other lodgers ; perhaps he may have thought that she did this at my request, perhaps this kindliness disposed him to help by a hint or two, some humble literary aspirant, for always he was kind; at all events, the very next day he sent down a message proposing to call, and on the 21st August there came a knock at our sitting-room door ; the rapid entrance of a slight figure, some spell of simplicity and candour in voice and manner that at once gave a sense of freedom ; and the give-and-take of easy talk — beginning with comments on the translation in his hand — had already ranged far and wide before he rose, and. 148 THE ENGLISH LAKES lightly bowing, left the room. I thought him ab- solutely unlike any one I had ever met ; singularly pleasant in all he said ; even more singularly en- couraging and gracious in his way of listening." William Smith, born at North End, Hammersmith, in 1808, a fair-haired boy with deep black eyes, had gone through the rough and tumble of Radley School-days, and had passed, in company with such lads as John Sterling, through the mill of a Glasgow University session. And having therein been bap- tised with the baptism of Metaphysics, he was set on thinking, and found, as old traditional faiths seemed to fall away, or need re-explanation, " a something far more deeply interfused," a spirit of obedience to the nearest duty. Thenceforth this pure soul, instead of flying from God because he could not understand, fled to Him that he might know Him. He set himself inexorably on the path to find out truth. Thenceforth this solitary man, " decided not to live : but know." Byron had charmed him, till face to face with the Swiss mountains young William Smith realised that Byron's love of beauty in nature, was but a compensation for want of cordial sympathy with man, and was in no sense " a related feeling, strengthened by, and strengthening that sympathy." But another poet has arisen : a poet who in directest contrast with the splendid rebellion of Byron taught obedience and reverence, who realised that duty is the stern daughter of the voice of God, and who instead of putting nature on a KESWICK 149 pedestal apart from God and man, and thus worshipping her, found in the glory of her mani- festations the still small voice that spoke both of God and man ; detected " in nature a communion and an intelligent influence passing in all ages between the Spirit of the Universe and the heart of man." Was it then to be marvelled at, that this second Arthur Clough, as he may be called — steeped in the community of thought that such early associates as Maurice, Sterling, Grove, Lewes and Mill shared — set himself deliberately the life's task " Given self to find God " ; was it to be marvelled at, that he whose pain and passion was that he must know, and that definitely, found that the task of jostling in the market place and scrambling for place and fame was impossible, and so gave up his barrister profession, and at the age of forty went into the wilderness, as other prophets before him had gone, to be alone with Nature and with God ? So with the love of thinking for its own sake and with a passionate thirst for Nature and beauty, it was little wonder that Wordsworth-Land claimed him for his own. In 1848, he came to Bowness and there lived the life of a recluse. He was tempted by Christopher North to fill temporarily the Chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, but he refused. He was already beginning to think out Thorndale. In 1852 he crossed the Raise and settled near his friend till death. Dr. Lietch, at Portinscale, and in 1852, 1853, 1854, he 150 THE ENGLISH LAKES pursued " The wistful and perpetual argument." All this time he was working at his book Tkorndale, or the Conflict of Opinions, in which Materialist, Theist, Catholic and Evidentialist all obtain an equal hearing and all represent phases of thought through which the writer has himself passed. But in 1856 the light, pleasant three-windowed room, with peeps of lake and mountain, at 3 Derwentwater Place, then fresh from the hands of a mason-poet, Richardson of St. John's Vale, had an attraction for him which was irresistible : it was near the excellent little library which Myers, aided by his friends the Marshalls, had set on foot. Thither he came ; there he finished Thorndale ; and there, as aforesaid, the dark-eyed solitary found it was not good that man should be alone. Of his future wife. Miss Gumming, we are told, that she was above the middle height, slender, and carried herself like a queen. Her face delicately oval ; the eyes dark grey, large and intent ; but words cannot convey the sparkle and brilliancy and witchery of her face. They married in 1861 — he then fifty-three years of age, she ten years his junior — and settled for the summer at Tent Lodge, Coniston : and what the sweetness of that married life was to him let these few lines witness : " O vex me not with needless cry Of what the world may think or claim, Let the sweet hfe pass sweetly by The same, the same, and every day the same." KESWICK 151 And that sweet life passed sweetly through the summer to the winter which found them again at Keswick, the wife working away at a story, the husband at his Gravenhurst. Gravenhurst, or Thoughts on Good and Evil, came out in the spring of 1862. One barrier to intellectual peace the philosopher had found in the seeming contradiction involved in the existence of evil in a divinely ordered world. In Gravenhurst, Smith tried to show how evil may after all find an interpretation in the light of science, as servant of God. In 1864, the lovers removed to Newton Place in Borrowdale, the little battlemented house among its larches just to the west of the road that leads by the Borrowdale Hotel. There for part of each year till 1871, they lived and loved and laboured. His pen was never weary. There are no less than 136 articles to his account in Blackwood's Magazine, between 1839 and 1871. His last contribution was in July of 1871, and was on the Coming Race. But his days were numbered ; decline, which made rapid strides, drove him from Borrowdale to Brighton in December of that year, but doctors availed nothing. His passion for the quiet country still clung round him ; the flashing waters of the Derwent, the hooting of the owls, the chiming of the waterfalls, — of these the dying man had need. He would lift up his eyes unto the hills of Borrow- dale, those eyes that were so soon to lift no more. " We will go off together to the country," he said 152 THE ENGLISH LAKES one day to his wife, "have done with medicines and doctors, and there we will solemnly and quietly await the inevitable end, and we will love each other to the last." Those were the brave words of a thoughtful man who had in seeking truth found rest unto his soul. " There comes a time," wrote he, " when neither fear nor hope are necessary to the pious man but the love of righteousness for righteousness' sake, and love is all in all. God takes back his little child unto Himself, a little child that has no fear and is all trust." So the pure heart faced death, and unafraid went home. He died at Brighton on Tuesday, March 26, 1872, but he left behind one whose love, as I read of it, seems passing the love of women. For nigh ten years she waited and watched with a passionate longing for the doors of heaven to open and the hand of the new life to reunite the hearts whom death had severed. On her tomb might well have been inscribed these words her husband wrote in Gravenhurst, " To love is the great glory, the last culture, the highest happiness : to be loved is little in comparison." Lucy Smith's letters, given in Merriman's story of the life of these two lovers of truth and of each other, are full of tender thought and poetry and appreciation of our lakeland scenery. But what her unpublished correspondence may have been we gather from a working man's lips, who was led to write to her by his admiration of Thorndale. He says of her letters to him, " I never opened one KESWICK 153 that did not afford me means of grace for many a day afterward. I am not irreverent in thought, when I think of her as always manifesting (to me it seems so) the constancy of God, changeless in all sorrow and all joy. We have an impulse toward all good in the very thought of her, as she lived, and wrote, and spoke." CHAPTER VI DERWENTWATER AND BASSENTHWAITE SCAFELL AND SKIDDAW RUSKIN : ROGERS : TURNER : GRAY : KEATS : WORDSWORTH : SOUTHEY : CARLYLE : THE ARNOLDS AT DERWENTWATER : CARLYLE'S DESCRIPTION OF THE VIEW FROM GREAT GABLE : WILKINSON AND WORDSWORTH'S ASCENT OF SCAFELL : WATERLOO BONFIRE ON SKIDDAW. Is it nothing, as we stand at Friars' Crag with memories of those rough mountaineers, who, long- ing for a higher life, would wait here till Herebert, Cuthbert's friend, ^ should come across from yonder island and speak to them of the word of life ; with thoughts too, of those monks of St. Anthony, in later time, who ferried pilgrims to St. Herbert's island shrine, — is it nothing to us to remember that here a great preacher of the higher life for our own time, first turned to Nature, his inspirer? One calls to mind that it was at the " Crag of the Friars " that John Ruskin received one of those impulses to care for the close study of natural form, one of those revelations of the wonders 1 Cf. Bede's Ecclesiastical History, chap. xxix. DERWENT WATER 1 5 5 and beauty in natural growth, that made him what he was — a prophet voice to England, bidding us reverence and regard an unsullied landscape and a countryside unmarred for the eye of worker, prayer, and thinker, as a mirror of the mind of God to man. " This gift of taking pleasure in landscape," writes Ruskin, " I assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men. . . . The first thing which I remember, as an event in life, was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friars' Crag on Derwent- water ; the intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through the mossy roots, over the crag, into the dark lake, has associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever since." ^ That was not the only visit that young John Ruskin paid to Friars' Crag. In his Iteriad he describes how he and his companions saw the women of Keswick hard at work washing their linen on the beach, in true Swiss lakeland fashion : "And now, having passed thro' a sun-shading wood. On a point of rough rocks o'er the waters we stood. The roots of the fir, of the elm, and the oak, Through the rock-covering soil they a passage have broke, And oh, they presented such nets for the toes. We were always in danger of breaking our nose." ^ This is only the jingling verse of a boy of twelve ; but it is clear proof that the boy had an eye, " as practised as a blind man's touch," to observe what trees grew, and how they grew with roots inveter- "^ Modern Painters, Part IV., ch. xvii., sec. 13. ^ Ruskin' s Poems, The Iteriad, "Friars' Crag." IS6 THE ENGLISH LAKES ately convolved on Friars' Crag in 1 8 3 1 . That early impression of the wonder of Friars' Crag on Ruskin's boy-mind was not effaced by all the glorious landscape which he studied and loved in other parts of England, or on the Continent. Speaking to a friend a few years ago, who was about to come to take up his abode in Keswick, Ruskin said, " The scene from Friars' Crag is one of the three or four most beautiful views in Europe." " And," he added, " when I first saw Keswick it was a place almost too beautiful to live in." Those who care to turn aside to see it, may now find a simple unhewn Borrowdale stone to the memory of John Ruskin, with a profile portrait of the man in his prime, who here, as a little child, felt first the power of Nature to arrest atten- tion and to touch the heart. This monument was erected on October 8, 1900, by some of Ruskin's friends. The profile portrait with the crown of wild olive round it and the motto To-day is the work of Signor Lucchesi. The monument is in the keeping of the National Trust. We can take boat if so it be our pleasure and row with Rogers and Turner on the lake, looking for points of view to illustrate the poem : " When Evening tinged the lake's ethereal blue, And her deep shades irregularly threw ; Their shifting sail dropt gently from the cove, Down by St. Herbert's consecrated grove ; Whence erst the chanted hymn, the tapered rite, Amused the fisher's solitary night " ; ^ ^ Rogers' Poems, Pleast{res of Memory, Part II. DERWENT WATER 1 5 7 or we can go with Wordsworth alone to St. Herbert's Island. There " Not unmoved Wilt thou behold this shapeless heap of stones, The desolate ruin of St. Herbert's cell,"^ and we may think not only of Herebert but of the Rydal poet "When he paced Along the beach of this small isle." ^ In thought of those two men of God, those two friends who sought God's bosom in one and the same hour, as long ago as the year 687, as we hear " the cataract of Lodore, peal to St. Herbert's orisons," we may catch within the sound, the mel- low monotone of Wordsworth murmuring out his memorial poem. Or if we will, we may join Robert Southey and all his household on picnic bent, to Otterbield Bay, thenceforth to be called Mutton-pie Bay. Southey delighted in these mutton-pie picnics, as an extract from a letter written in 1 8 1 5 to John Poole by Mrs. Coleridge shows. These outings on the lake were serious matters in Mrs. Coleridge's eyes ; in Southey's eyes they could not come too often, or be too long. " Sara," she writes, " is so delicate that I dare not let her study much ; indeed she has always had her full share of play, and certainly more pleasure than falls to the lot of most children '^Inscriptions: For the spot where the Hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Isle, Derwentwater, p. 154. "^ Idem, 158 THE ENGLISH LAKES in general. For Southey chooses to take the children on the water, whenever a party is going from the house, and as this generally lasts all day, and comes pretty often during the summer, they certainly have too much of this sort of thing." ^ Haply steering towards the landing between the Rosetrees and Fawe Park, we may tramp up through the willowy marsh, and sadly neglected pathway, to the track going over Fawe Park Hill, and there may in fancy join William Smith, in earnest con- versation upon his characters in Thorndale with his old friend and neighbour, Dr. Lietch. We may then row back to the landing, and go with the boy Ruskin to Castlehead, or, joining in thought such spirits as Dr. Brown, Gray, Southey, Wordsworth, Rogers, Turner, Jonathan Otley, Keats, Carlyle, and William and Lucy Smith, we may set out for a walk down Borrowdale : Turner will leave us when we have passed Castlehead to strike off for Stable Hills. He thinks he will turn Lord's Island into St. Herbert's for the nonce, and get a better background for his King Henry's Chapel thus. He will go and see. Southey will almost certainly leave us at Cat Ghyll, to go up to his tryst with Sir Thomas More at the ford under Falcon Crag, and so round home with Dr. Brown by Walla Crag, his favourite walk. Gray is sorely tempted to go with him, for he is full of talk of how his Claude glass " played its part divinely" when he passed this way in 1769, at a spot hard by called Carf-close Reeds, where he says, 1 From an unpublished letter in possession of Mrs. Sandford, DERWENTWATER 159 " The view opening here both ways is the most delicious view my eyes ever beheld." Jonathan Otley is also tempted to go in at the gate below Falcon Crag, to see how the flowers he has planted at the Fairy-Keld, or at the Spring on Barrow Common, are doing, but he hears that the " Floating Island " is again visible, and he wishes to make some experiments on the earthly gases it contains, so he plods on with us. That halloo above our heads comes from the quaint old father of the love of scenery in this part, Dr. Brown, who has parted from Southey at Cat Ghyll and climbed to the edge of the towering bastion of Falcon Crag. One cannot pass along beneath Walla and Falcon Crags without remembering that Dr. Brown, a poet who wrote worthy verse of the old-fashioned type, and delighted to chronicle the effect of natural scene upon his mind, in prose or poetry, had found inspiration by the view from Walla and Falcon Crags, and by this lake at eventide, had let the deep hush of nightfall sink with rest into his soul Here is his picture of a quiet night scene in the Vale of Keswick : " Nor voice nor sound broke o'er the deep scene But the soft murmur of soft-gushing rills, Forth-issuing from the mountain's distant steep, Unheard till now, and now scarce heard, proclaimed All things at rest, and imaged the still voice Of Quiet whispering in the ear of Night." It gratified Wordsworth, when he was writing his Description of the Scenery of the English Lakes, to i6o THE ENGLISH LAKES quote at greater length from this poem, "as the writer was one of the first who led the way to a worthy admiration of this country." No one who has read Dr. Brown's Description of Keswick, republished in Wesfs Guide to the Lakes, can fail to remember the enthusiasm with which he describes the lake and vale that in its full perfection of grace seemed to him to unite " beauty, horror, and immensity," and that needed the " united powers of Claude, Salvator, and Poussin " to do it full justice. Nor will he ever forget how the writer, speaking of the view from Walla and Falcon Crags, says, " I will now carry you to the top of a cliff where, if you dare approach the ridge, a new scene of astonishment presents itself, where the valley, lake, and islands seem lying at your feet, and where this expanse of water appears diminished to a little pool, amidst the vast immeasurable objects that surround it ; for here the summits of more distant hills appear beyond those you had already seen, rising behind each other in successive ranges ; and azure groups of craggy and broken steeps form an immense and awful picture, which can only be expressed by the image of a tempestuous sea of mountains." Just at the gate of the road that leads up to Ashness, we meet a striking-looking, dark-eyed man, with an air of command about him ; along with him are an author-friend, two sons, and a young daughter, all remarkable in appearance ; but the little girl looks tired, for she has come over Armboth Fell, through noontide sun and heather, at the ending of July. DERWENTWATER i6i The elder man is Dr. Arnold. That boy with the curling mass of hair is a poet, Matthew, and if we passed this gate ten years later, we should find him here again with his favourite sister, and know how well he remembered that hot fierce trudge across the fells, which suggested the two opening lines in his beautiful poem, Resignation : " To die be given us, or attain ! Fierce work it were to do again." ^ To-day if, in imagination, we turn up the hill with these two, the brother and sister Arnold, these " ghosts of that boisterous company," we shall find the stream they saw which " Shines near its head, In its clear, shallow, turf-fringed bed,"^ up there at Ashness bridge, "Whence the eye first sees, far down, Capp'd with faint smoke, the noisy town."^ But though we would fain sit down with the poet and his sister, "And again unroll, Though slowly, the familiar whole,"* of that first Armboth walk in 1833, when the Arnolds were young, and the Doctor was still with them, we feel we must join our own ghostly com- pany, and move on towards Lodore. There, while Jonathan Otley pushes off in his boat with his testing rod to the " Floating Island," Keats will '^Arnold's Poetical Works, Resignation. 2 Idem. ^ Idem. * Idem. I. L i62 THE ENGLISH LAKES scramble up the waterfall, Wordsworth will stay by the lake side and murmur out his lines : "Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore " ,• ^ or else maybe will repeat the Lines on the Floating Island his " dear, dear sister " wrote, just before the sad giving way of her mind ; or else, pausing at one of the grandest views of Skiddaw that we have, he may mouth out in his own peculiar way, that splendid sonnet to Our British Hill which begins " Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side." There is some banter between Carlyle and Words- worth, perhaps about that jingle of " Robert the bard's," " How does the Water come down at Lo- dore." " It's not an English poet's work at all, but just a jingle about a Scotch waterfall," says the Chelsea sage. " Do you not remember how Sam Rogers used to tell, that Porson was never weary of quoting Garnett's lines on the Falls of Lanark ? " Back comes Keats and what says he of the Fall ? " I had an easy climb among the streams, about the fragments of rocks, and should have got I think to the summit, but unfortunately I was damped by slipping one leg into a squashy hole. There is no great body of water, but the accompaniment is delightful ; for it oozes out from a cleft in perpen- dicular rocks all fledged with ash and other beautiful trees." 2 ^ An Evening Walk, p. 4. "^Letters of John Keats, ed. by Sidney Colvin, p. 115. Macmillan, DERWENTWATER 163 Who knows ? that view of the Lodore rocks may have been in mind, when afterwards Keats in his Ode to Psyche wrote : " Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees. Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep." And now we trudge on with Wordsworth and with Carlyle smoking infinity of tobacco, and with Gray the pale worn man, and the almost as delicate- looking William Smith, to Grange. As we pass on. Gray evidently begins to be a trifle nervous ; he will hereafter recall the walk at this point and write, " The crags now begin to impend terribly over your way " ; and hanging loose and nodding forward, " seem just starting from their base in shivers." He will tell us that the scene reminded him of " those passes in the Alps, where the guides tell you to move on with speed, and say nothing, lest the agitation of the air should loosen the snows above. I took their counsel here," says Gray, " and hastened on in silence." ^ We are soon at the point where we get the delightful view of Grange, with its water flashing and winking under the bridge ; its picturesque cluster of buildings upon the ice-worn boulder on the western bank — less picturesque to-day, because so many of the old Scotch firs have fallen — and its great shining height of Maiden Mawr, the mountain of the " big camp," rising up like a vast wall of moss-agate behind it. Smith's eyes are not on Maiden Mawr, but on the river Derwent at our feet. The mosses ^Cf. Works of Thomas Gray, ed. by E. Gosse. Journal in the Lakes. Vol. I., pp. 255-256. 1 64 THE ENGLISH LAKES in the stream, the reflection of the stakes in the water, the wonderful double glow of sunlight and of sound ; these, as readers of his book will know, are what he cares about. As for Gray he is an hungered, and he will go no further than that old farm house, the other side of the bridge, to eat his oaten cake and butter, and drink his bowl of milk or glass of home-brewed ale, and listen to " the civil young farmer," fresh from his oatfield harvest, as he tells how all the dale was up in arms last year for loss of their lambs, and shouted and hallooed from the crags above the eagle's nest and helped him to swing by the rope, from the cliff on to the ledge where the nest was, to avenge himself and the valley flocks upon the birds of Jove, " which flew screaming round, but did not dare to attack him." ^ Smith turns back to Newton Place to go on with his article for ' Maga ' ; still forward plod Words- worth and Carlyle, and we with them. Far up the vale of Borrowdale we go, tracking the stream " from Glaramara's inmost caves " on by what Gray called " the dreadful road that led through that ancient kingdom of the mountaineers, the reign of Chaos and old Night." And here we are at last beneath the shadow of the yews — " Those fraternal Four of Borrowdale Joined in one solemn and capacious grove ; Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,"^ ^ Cf. Works of Thomas Gray, ed. by E. Gosse. Journal in the Lakes. Vol. I., p. 257. ^ Yew Trees, p. 187. DERWENTWATER 165 strange trysting has been held, and underneath, " Whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked With unrejoicing berries — ghostly Shapes May meet at noontide ; Fear and trembHng Hope, Silence and Foresight ; — Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow ; — there to celebrate As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship." ^ Wordsworth will linger here to make and mould his grandly tragic lines ; and right glad are we that he saw it before that memorable storm of 1888, which blasted irrecoverably that " Living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay. Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed."^ We leave him with his ghostly company " to lie and listen to the mountain flood " ; and up by Seathwaite farm we go, with the seer of Ecclefechan, to climb by Styhead Pass to the Great Gavel's utmost peak. I should not have been surprised if a certain sage of Greenwich had joined the sage of Chelsea, in this Great Gavel climb. For the Astronomer Royal is determined for observation purpos s to have the Maen or Man, the pile of stones erected by the officers of the Ordnance Survey, " shifted ten feet to the Magnetic west," and he is anxious also to have some damage to the natural rock cistern at ^ Vew Trees, p. 187. "^ Idem. 1 66 THE ENGLISH LAKES the top of the " Gavel " repaired, which that old well-hunter, Jonathan Otley, began to be interested in as long ago as 1812. But I expect Sir George Airy and Thomas Car- lyle had little converse with one another if they met, and perhaps they never met on the Gavel at all. For what impressed Carlyle about his climb the day he was there, was, that man and Nature had a common heart, were one in the silence and the solitude, one in the murmur of eternity which, on the solemn mountain heights, may be heard. This is Carlyle's account of the view, as I believe, from Great Gavel as given us in Sartor Resartus : " A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, like giant spirits of the wilderness ; there in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried. Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire ; never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, that she was his Mother and divine. ... a murmur of Eternity and Immens- ity, of Death and of Life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as if Death and Life were one ; as if the Earth were not dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendour, and his own spirit were therewith holding communion." ^ Such was Carlyle's thought as he stood alone on Great Gavel ; other minds have been impressed much in the same way, when in solitary communion with the spirit of the place, they have "^Sartor Resartus, Bk, II., chap. vi. DERWENTWATER 167 "felt the sentiment of Being spread O'er all that moves and all that seemeth still ; O'er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought And human knowledge, to the human eye Invisible, yet liveth to the heart." ^ This is how the view from Scafell Pike impressed Wilkinson of Yanwath, Wordsworth's thoughtful Quaker friend. " There is," said he, " a solemn silence on the summits of the mountains that I have not found on the plain or in the valleys. The air is still, the earth seems at rest, the sound of water is not heard. The voice of man, the notes of birds, and the noise of beasts, do not reach these serene regions. Can I withhold thanksgiving and gratitude from Him who brought messages of love and of mercy from the bosom of His Father? May I not here in deep silence worship Jehovah ? " ^ If to-day, leaving Carlyle on Great Gavel, we clamber to companionship with Thomas Wilkinson on Scafell Pike, we may chance to find Wordsworth has left his rest beneath the shadow of the Fraternal Four, and clomb thither also. He too is impressed with the deep silence. Here is a description of his visit to the Scafell Pikes, " a point of view " to which he supposed at that time of day " few were likely to ascend." " The stillness seemed to be not of this world ; we paused, and kept silence to listen ; and no sound could he heard. The Scafell Cataracts were voiceless to us ; and there was not an insect to hum in the air. The vales which we had seen from "" Prelude, Bk. II., p. 248, ^ Tours to the British Mountains, with Poems of Lowther and Eamont Vale. 1824. pp. 229, 230. i68 THE ENGLISH LAKES Ash Course ^ lay yet in view : and, side by side with Eskdale, we now saw the sister vale of Donnerdale, terminated by the Duddon Sands. " But the majesty of the mountains below and close to us is not to be conceived. We now beheld the whole mass of the Great Gavel from its base — the Den of Wastdale at our feet, a gulph im- measurable — Grasmire, and the other mountains of Crummock — Ennerdale and its mountains, and the sea beyond." ^ We can stand with Wilkinson and Wordsworth, and feel the same awful silence sink into our souls, and know the same majesty of mountains. We can note, as Wordsworth noted, that here " round the top of Scafell Pike not a blade of grass is to be seen. Cushions or tufts of moss, parched and brown, appear between the huge blocks and stones that lie in heaps on all sides to a great distance, like skeletons or bones of the earth not needed at the creation, and there left to be covered with never-dying lichens, which the clouds and dews nourish, and adorn with colours of vivid and exquisite beauty. Flowers, the most brilliant feathers, and even gems, scarcely sur- pass in colouring some of those masses of stone, which no human eye beholds, except the shepherd or traveller be led thither by curiosity." And we, in this day of mountain climbers, are fain to smile at his next sentence, " and how seldom must this happen." ^An error for "Esk Hause." Wordsworth's Poetical Works. Knight's Edition. Guide to the Lakes. Vol. VIII., p. 283. DERWENT WATER 169 But it may well be that never shall we witness such storm-grandeur as was Wordsworth's lot to witness when, having climbed hither on a still autumn day, he was bade by his shepherd guide not to linger, for a storm was coming. " We looked in vain to espy the signs of it. Mountains, vales^ and sea were touched by the clear light of the sun. ' It is there,' said he, pointing to the sea beyond Whitehaven, and there we perceived a light vapour unnoticeable but by a shepherd accustomed to watch all mountain bodings. We gazed around again, and yet again, unwilling to lose the remembrance of what lay before us in that lofty solitude, and then prepared to depart. Meanwhile the air changed to cold, and we saw that tiny vapour swelled into mighty masses of cloud which came boiling over the mountains ; Great Gavel, Helvellyn, and Skiddaw were wrapped in storm ; yet Langdale, and the mountains in that quarter, remained all bright in sunshine. Soon the storm reached us ; we sheltered under a crag ; and almost as rapidly as it had come it had passed away, and left us free to observe the struggles of gloom and sunshine in other quarters. Langdale had now its share, and the Pikes of Langdale were decorated by two splendid rainbows. Skiddaw also had his own rainbows; before we again reached Ash Course [Esk Hause], every cloud had vanished from every summit,"^ We turn to descend, happier that such eyes and hearts have been before us on this Scafell Pike, glad for the associations gathered round its silent, solitary peak. ^ Wordsworth^ s Description of the Scenery at the Lakes, Fourth Edition, p. 115. I/O THE ENGLISH LAKES Such is the company of chosen spirits with whom the wanderer up Borrowdale and the mountains in its vicinity, may move ; but if we desire to make the compass of Bassenthwaite, or climb Skiddaw, we may have choice of companions there also. We may, for example, join the gallant Mrs. Radcliffe, who rode over Skiddaw, in 1794, and left behind her such an account of the terrible danger and difficulty of making this, apparently, the first ascent by woman- kind of our tremendous mountain, as would lead one to believe that, at any rate in her mind, the feat was equal to a climb up Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Kiliman- jaro, or the Mountains of the Moon. Derwentwater, from the height to which this good dame ascended, dwindled, she says, to the smallness of a point. " The air became very thin " and " diffi- cult to be inspired." It was in sooth only by special providence and the extreme care of her guide that Mrs. Radcliffe, who had gained the summit by a way " dreadfully sublime," ever returned from that awful wilderness, those tremendous wilds ; ever, in short, reached the valley alive. We can, if we will, ascend on foot our cloven mountain, or mountain of the horns — " Skidda," as the shepherds call it — with Charles and Mary Lamb, in 1802, or with Keats in 1812. If we go with either, when we have reached the Gale and got as far as Hawell's cross, we shall inevitably turn out of our way to the Ghyll that gives the Keswick folk their water, and quaff, as they too quaffed, a cup of clear crystal in their honour. Keats writes, June 29, 18 18; "We went DERWENTWATER 171 to bed rather fatigued, but not so much so as to hinder us getting up this morning to mount Skiddaw." ^ One does not much wonder at the fatigue, for he had walked from Wythburn to Keswick before breakfast, and made the circuit of Derwentwater, and then, after ordering dinner, had fagged up hill to the Druid Circle. But up Skiddaw he started next morning with peep of day. " It grew colder and colder," says he, " as we ascended, and we were glad, at about three parts of the way, to taste a little rum which the guide brought with him, mixed, mind ye, with Mountain water. I took two glasses going, and one returning ... all felt, on arising into the cold air, that same elevation which a cold bath gives one — I felt as if I were going to a Tournament." ^ But, for a bit of real fun, I think I should have been inclined to go with Keats, along under Skiddaw, by the side of Bassenthwaite, en route for Carlisle to Ireby, where he was greatly amused to see " a dancing school holden at the Sun . . . they kickit and jumpit with mettle extraordinary, and whiskit and friskit, and toed it and go'd it, and twirl'd it and whirl'd it, and stamped it, and sweated it, tattooing the floor like mad. . . . There was as fine a row of boys and girls as you ever saw ; some beautiful faces, and one exquisite," ^ So vigorously danced was the grand old Cumber- land three-cornered and eight reel, on that day '^Letters of John Keats, ed. by Sidney Colvin, p. 115. "^ Idem, p. 115. ^ Idem, p. 116. 172 THE ENGLISH LAKES in the Ireby Inn, that Keats could only compare " the difference between our country dances and these Scottish figures," with the difference between "stir- ring a cup o' tea and beating up a batter-pudding." ^ " I never felt, " he writes, " so near the glory of Patriotism, the glory of making by any means a country happier. This is what I like better than scenery." " It is pleasant to hope that the revival of some of these old dancing days in our midst may have a latent power to keep us patriots. We need a happier England, and that speedily ; ay, and a country life filled far more full of joy. We can have Gray the poet too, with us, as we stroll along the road above Bassenthwaite. He made the circuit of that lake in 1769, and was not a little relieved to find that, though the road was then only in some parts made, and was a dangerous cart road, there were no precipices. Poor Gray, he little thought as he penned this Lakeland journal that he would so soon be twitted for his timorous apprehension of the savage moun- tains and the impending and terrible cliffs in this neighbourhood ; or that his drive in the " chay " round Bassenthwaite, on October 6, 1769, would ever be the subject of criticism. But one reads in Clarke's Sm'vey of the Lakes, which appeared twenty years after, the following : " When Mr. Gray was at Keswick he was desirous of seeing the back of Skiddaw, and accordingly took chaise to Ousebridge, '^Letters of John Keats, ed. by Sidney Colvin, p. Ii6. "^ Idem, p. 117. DERWENTWATER 173 thinking to have a view of the precipices by the way. Timidity, however, prevailed over curiosity so far that he no sooner came within sight of those awful rocks than he put up the blinds of his carriage. In this dark situation, trembling every moment lest the mountain should fall and cover him, he travelled to Ousebridge. He thus avoided seeing, not only the horrors, but the beauties of the place, and therefore (more honestly than most of our authors) gives no description of what he saw." Keats went on foot to Ireby, en route for Car- lisle ; Gray, being a delicate man, went back to Keswick in his " chay," for " the sky was overcast and the wind cool," and he tells us that he dined at the public-house near Ousebridge. That public- house has long since ceased to exist, but Peter Crosthwaite who surveyed and mapped Broadwater in 1785, that is sixteen years after Gray's visit, gives us its whereabouts. And Clarke, in his Survey of the Lakes ^ I789) speaks of it as, "a convenient place to call, as pleasantly situated on the edge of the lake ... a very good new building erected purposely for the convenience of travellers, by the late Mr. Spedding of Armathwaite." " There is," he adds, " a very good dining-room and parlour with a bow-window, which has a pretty look out, and very good stables. Here, used to be held several meetings every year of the Justices of the Peace, for their private sessions, also county courts. Here also was held the first regatta in 1780, at which there was one species of amusement, not since made use of at those public diversions, viz., 1/4 THE ENGLISH LAKES a prize to swim horses for." The inn has passed away in whose bow-window sat Gray the poet, and at which "the quality" assembled to see the new diversions of the first regatta on Bassenth- waite. Go where we will in the Crosthwaite Vale, it is to Skiddaw and Skiddaw's top we turn our eyes. Beautiful in the hoar-frost of October, the silver white of winter, the grey-bleached grassi- ness of April, the emerald dust of May, the purple of August, the russet of September, this massive mountain head lifts into the blue or wreathes itself in cloud : never more interesting than when as on some great night of national rejoicing it wears a diadem of fire. We know something of the glory of seeing old Skiddaw rouse, with its banner of flame, the burghers of Carlisle, for four times in our genera- tion, on Jubilee night, on the Tercentenary of the Armada, on the celebration of the marriage of the Duke of York, and on the night of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, have we planned and assisted at the building of a fire on the " girt man," and sent the rockets heavenward from the height. Here is Southey's account of a bonfire after Waterloo, given in a letter to his brother the doctor, under date, Keswick, August 23, 181 5 : — "Monday, the 21st of August, was not a more remarkable day in your life than it was in that of my neighbour Skiddaw, who is a much older personage. The weather served for our bon- fire, and never, I believe, was such an assemblage DERWENTWATER 175 upon such a spot. To my utter astonishment. Lord Sunderlin rode up, and Lady S., who had endeavoured to dissuade me from going as a thing too dangerous, joined the walking party. Words- worth with his wife, sister, and eldest boy, came over on purpose. James Boswell arrived that morning at the Sunderlins'. Edith, the Senhora, Edith May, and Herbert were my convoy, with our three maid-servants ; some of our neighbours, some adventurous lakers, and Messrs. Rag, Tag, and Bobtail, made up the rest of the assembly. We roasted beef and boiled plum-puddings there ; sung ' God save the King ' round the most furious body of flaming tar-barrels that I ever saw; drank a huge wooden bowl of punch ; fired cannon at every health with three times three, and rolled large blazing balls of tow and turpentine down the steep side of the mountain. The effect was grand beyond imagination. We formed a huge circle round the most intense light, and behind us was an immeasurable arch of the most intense dark- ness, for our bonfire fairly put out the moon. " The only mishap which occurred will make a famous anecdote in the life of a great poet, if James Boswell, after the example of his father, keepeth a diary of the sayings of remarkable men. When we were craving for the punch, a cry went forth that the kettle had been knocked over, with all the boiling water. Colonel Barker, as Boswell named the Senhora, from her having had the command on this occasion, immediately instituted a strict inquiry to discover the culprit, from a 1/6 THE ENGLISH LAKES suspicion that it might have been done in mis- chief, water, as you know, being a commodity not easily replaced on the summit of Skiddaw. The persons about the fire declared that it was one of the gentlemen ; they did not know his name, but he had a red cloak on ; they pointed him out in the circle. The red cloak (a maroon one of Edith's) identified him ; Wordsworth had got hold of it, and was equipped like a Spanish Don — by no means the worst figure in the company. He had committed this fatal faux pas, and thought to slink off undiscovered. But as soon as, in my inquiries concerning the punch, I learnt his guilt from the Senhora, I went round to all our party, and communicated the discovery, and getting them about him, I punished him by singing a parody, which they all joined in : ' 'Twas you that kicked the kettle down ! 'Twas you. Sir, you ! ' " The consequences were, that we took all the cold water upon the summit to supply our loss. Our myrmidons and Messrs. Rag and Co. had, therefore, none for their grog; they necessarily drank the rum pure ; and you, who are physician to the Middlesex Hospital, are doubtless acquainted with the manner in which alcohol acts upon the nervous system. All our torches were lit at once by this mad company, and our way down the hill was marked by a track of fire, from flambeaux dropping the pitch, tarred ropes, etc. One fellow was so drunk that his companions placed him upon a horse, with his face to the tail, to bring him down, themselves being just sober enough to DERWENTWATER 177 guide and hold him on. Down, however, we all got safely by midnight ; and nobody, from the old lord of seventy-seven to my son Herbert, is the worse for the toil of the day, though we were eight hours from the time we set out till we reached home."^ We may regret, for that poor drunken fellow's sake, that Wordsworth kicked the kettle over. But we perhaps hardly can realise the excitement, nay, the intoxication of joy, that took on all forms of festal inebriety when the Great Duke had been the victor's victor upon the plain of Waterloo. But there were those who wept bitter tears even on that festive occasion. Poor little Sara Cole- ridge was not considered strong enough to ascend the mountain, and there was another who was much disappointed, Derwent Coleridge, who came over from school at Ambleside, but arrived too late to join the bonfire party. This is Mrs. Coleridge's account of the day as she wrote it for Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey : " Have you heard, my dear Sir, of the rejoicings we have had on the top of our great mountain Skiddaw ; most likely you have seen an account of it in the papers, of a bonfire to celebrate the victories, upon the highest summit of that high mountain. Wordsworth and Southey and their families ascended, besides a very large party of ladies and gentlemen, among whom were Lord and Lady Sunderlin, the former seventy-six and the latter upwards of sixty years old. "^ Southey' s Life, Vol. IV., p. 121. I. M 178 THE ENGLISH LAKES " Sir G. Beaumont had imprudently walked to the summit in the morning so could not go at night, so he with his lady and the Misses Malone with a great many others were content to view the sight from our windows, and a splendid thing it was to behold ; and seeing the company descend by the light of torches had a most uncommon and beautiful effect ; they reached the vale at half- past twelve, at midnight, after which we sent up a fire-balloon and a number of small fireworks. All Mr, Dawes's boys came over from Ambleside, but not in time enough to ascend the hill, which vexed poor Derwent much, so that no one of our name was there, for I am not equal to a walk of ten miles mountain road, and Sara is much too delicate to be permitted such a thing. She saw her cousins Edith and Herbert set out, with tears in her eyes, protesting that she could perform the thing with the greatest ease, but all set a face against her attempting it. I had a very anxious time during the nine hours of their absence, for I feared lest the mists should come on and so keep them on the heights all night ; but not a cloud came to distress them, and not one of the party were any worse for the expedition. On the following week we had illuminations, trans- parencies, and a balloon at Ld. S.'s on the other side of the lake, with elegant refreshments and a great deal of good company. We took all the dear children, and on these occasions his Lordship always sends his carriage to fetch and carry us horae."^ ^Cf. Thomas Poole and his Friends, by Mrs. H. Sandford, Vol. II., p. 251. CHAPTER VII MIREHOUSE TENNYSON'S VISITS TO MIREHOUSE : TENNYSON AND THE SPEDDINGS : CARLYLE AT MIREHOUSE. In the land that gave us Laureates from 1813 to 1850, we cannot but go back to one who took the " laurel greener from the brows Of him that utter'd nothing base," ^ and remind ourselves that Alfred Lord Tennyson also knew the beauties of our Keswick Vale. It is by a coincidence that Alfred Tennyson, our first poet-baron, came to the Lake District in the year that Sir Robert Peel offered a baronetcy to the then Laureate, Robert Southey ; an offer which was gratefully and wisely declined on the ground of his limited income and inability to bequeath anything of substance that could keep up the title. In that year, 1835, arrived two young College friends, Alfred Tennyson and " Old Fitz " — as ^ To the Queen. i8o THE ENGLISH LAKES the translator of Omar Khayyam used to be called at Cambridge — to stay with James Spedding the Baconian, at Mirehouse, upon Bassenthwaite. There in April with the daffodils " breaking about the door" did they wander out into the park, and perhaps on moonlight nights beside the mere, would push off from the shore and hear " the long ripple washing in the reeds." ^ " Counting the dewy pebbles, fix'd in thought," ^ they think they see Excalibur, "The sword That rose from out the bosom of the lake," ^ brighten to the moon. Or, standing on the "dark strait " of wooded land there, by " a broken chancel with a broken cross " * of the old parish church, they may have felt, as the lake waters rolled out into the haze and broadened up the Vale, that " On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full."^ Yea, and in dreams there at Mirehouse the poet and his friend may have seemed "To sail with Arthur under looming shores, Point after point " ; ^ for Morte D' Arthur was the poem which was then in manuscript. And whilst " Old Fitz " played chess at night with Spedding's mother, Tennyson and young James Spedding would retire to medi- ^ Passing of A rthur, ^ Idem. ^ Coming of Arthur. ^ Morte D' Arthur. ^ Idem. ^ Idem. MIREHOUSE i8i tate upon the poem line by line. Fitzgerald, who tells us of this " conning over of the Morte U Arthur and Lord of Burleigh " till late hours of the night, never forgot that happy April and May at Mire- house, and the impression made upon him then of Alfred Tennyson's greatness. Old Mr. John Spedding could scarcely understand what all this waste of time was about. " Well, Mr. Fitzgerald," he would say, " and what is it ? Mr. Tennyson reads, and Jem criticises, is that it ? " But had he been alive with us to-day, he would be proud to think how much his talented thoughtful son had added to the finish, almost " faultily fault- less," of that marvellous poem, Morte D' Arthur. We cannot learn that Wordsworth or Southey — though in that year, 1835, there was much inter- communication between the Rydal and Greta Hall houses — ever saw the poets or heard of Tennyson's visit to the Lakes. Wordsworth met Tennyson first at Moxon's in 1843, but I have enough faith in Wordsworth's critical judgment and Southey's swift perception of character to believe that had they joined the Mire- house symposium, and heard Morte U Arthur and the Lord of Burleigh, they would have agreed in the judgment Wordsworth afterwards expressed to Professor Reed on the poems that appeared in 1842, that here they had found one who would be, nay was, " decidedly the first of our living poets." And they would have been glad enough then to crown with the bay those twenty-six-year-old brows that one day should wear it, and which, in the opinion 1 82 THE ENGLISH LAKES of some who busied themselves to bring it about, should have worn it in place of Wordsworth, at Southey's decease. Perhaps, had he been living to-day, Wordsworth would have told us that he had modified the opinion he then expressed of Tennyson, viz., that he (Tennyson) was not much in sympathy with what he most valued in his own attempts, " the spirituality with which he had endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the moral relations under which he had wished to accept its most ordinary appearance!" Here in 1850 Tennyson comes, a newly wedded man, and changes the view of " Thames below the gates " — of Shiplake Vicarage, which he has so graphically described as "Thames along its silent level Streaming thro' the osiered eyots," for the curves and coils of Greta, and the flashing of Derwent — Derwent rolling its might of waters through the willowless plain and scanty alders of Crosthwaite valley, on from lake to lake. He comes hither now as the author of In Memoriam, intended for private circulation but given to the public in the early spring of this same happy marriage year. It is to a Laureateless land that he comes. Wordsworth has died on the 23 rd of April at Rydal Mount, and though it is getting on towards the eventful 17th of November, no Laureate has yet been appointed. Had we been standing, in October of that year. MIREHOUSE 183 1850, at Miss Robson the milliner's humble little door in Keswick, just where Greenhow's shop stands out so conspicuously beside the Queen's Hotel, I think we should have seen a very remarkable looking pair of lovers issuing from the house. What did they look like? Thomas Carlyle, a friend and for the past eight years a keen critic, who, in 1842, wrote, " Alfred Tennyson alone of this time has proved singing in our curt English language to be possible in some measure," was climbing our Cum- brian hills in that same autumn. " Mrs. Tennyson," says Carlyle, " lights up bright glittering blue eyes when you speak to her, has wit ; has sense : " ^ (those blue-grey eyes she got from the Franklin stock down in Lincolnshire) ; she seems frail and delicate, but her carriage is that of a queen. The fine gipsy-looking man at her side, half- hidden by his great sombrero hat and the clouds of tobacco rolling from his pipe, has, so Carlyle tells us, " a great shock of rough dusty dark hair, bright laughing hazel eyes, massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow brown com- plexion almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy. His voice musically metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail and all that may lie between." Up comes an open carriage, and while the lady is having a talk in the little gossip-shop of that day, the handsome gipsy-looking man hears that this is the Mirehouse carriage. The lady, who is Miss Spedding, returns, and at once the shaggy stranger ^ Froude's Carlyle, "Life in London," Vol. IL, p. 61. i84 THE ENGLISH LAKES bows, and makes tender inquiry after his bosom friend, James Spedding, and evidently knows and loves Mirehouse so well, that in a trice it is arranged for him and his wife to take seats in the carriage, and go out to Mirehouse to pay a call. This, too, not without relief to Miss Robson, who, as I have been told, " thought the poet rather a formidable person for her little lodgings, but was charmed with Mrs. Tennyson, she was so sweet and gentle." Much talk have they on the way, but never once does the stranger lend a clue as to his connection with the Mirehouse friends he seems to know so intimately, and for nigh upon four miles the lady of the carriage is kept in wonder as to who this " fine featured, dim-eyed, bronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is ; dusty, smoking, free and easy." It is not till the gates are reached, that he says with a grim humour, " I am Alfred Tennyson, James' friend, and this, Madam, is my wife." There was no little flutter at Mirehouse that day, for, as I have heard from one who was then a little girl, Mr. Tom Spedding, the elder, was in delicate health, and it was a rare event for sudden visitors to come to the house. But the visit of that afternoon meant a stay. Nothing would serve but that the chance callers should be guests. I have been told how those mild days of softest autumn sunshine went happily and memorably by ; how in the morning Tennyson swam, as Carlyle would say, outwardly and inwardly with great composure, in an inarticulate element of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; how John MIREHOUSE 185 Spedding, then in his eightieth year, would take the happy lovers on the lake in the " all-golden after- noons"; and how the young children would go off to bed not willingly, knowing that when they had retired the poet would read aloud in his sonorous chant, some of his latest published poem. In Memoriam. This was the last visit that Tennyson paid to Keswick, for though he came again to Westmoreland four or five years later, and saw the long lights shake across the Coniston Lake from Tent Lodge, and heard from far up the Tilberthwaite Gorge " the quarry thunders flap from left to right," he never more saw our Cumbrian cataracts at " the Dash," or *' at Lodore," " leap in glory," never so far as can be ascertained, crossed Dunmail Raise again. But as long as Tennyson is read, there will be read that touching poem which links him to the Speddings of our vale. A poem written to J. S. embalms the memory of a younger brother, Edward Spedding, and at the same time reminds us that Tennyson himself was already a man of sorrow, and had felt the " curse of Time, the grief of orphan- hood." "Alas! In grief I am not all unleam'd ; Once thro' mine own doors Death did pass ; One went, who never hath return'd. " He will not smile — not speak to me Once more. Two years his chair is seen Empty before us. That was he Without whose life I had not been."^ ^Dr. Tennyson had died in the March of 1 831, so this gives us Edward Spedding's death as having occurred in 1833. 1 86 THE ENGLISH LAKES " I knew your brother : his mute dust I honour, and his Hving worth ; A man more pure and bold and just Was never born into the earth." Pure and just he was, and noble-minded also, for the poet continues : " I will not say, ' God's ordinance Of Death is blown in every wind,' For that is not a common chance That takes away a noble mind. " I wrote I know not what. In truth How should I soothe you anyway, Who miss the brother of your youth? Yet something I did wish to say : " For he too was a friend to me : Both are my friends, and my true breast Bleedeth for both ; yet it may be That only silence suiteth best. " Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace : Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul. While the stars burn, the moons increase. And the great ages onward roll " ; and so he concludes his poem with a verse which all who stood by the Laureate's grave, in October of 1892, in Westminster Abbey, may repeat with a full heart, not only for Edward Spedding, but for the Singer himself, who called him friend : " Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet, Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet ; Lie still dry dust, secure of change."^ 1 To J. S. MIREHOUSE 187 Others than Tennyson have helped to make Mire- house famous. In June, 1818, Carlyle writes to his friend, James Johnstone, " Your project of a tour to the Cumberland Lakes meets my mind exactly. Get matters arranged and 1 shall gladly accompany you to Keswick, or Ulleswater, or wheresoever you please." ^ Carlyle must have visited at Mirehouse at that time, for in a note to a letter of Mrs. Carlyle, in the summer of 1865, he writes, "Before this I had been at Keswick with my valued old friend, T. Spedding, walked to Bassenthwaite Ha's (seen five and forty years ago, and not recognisable)." ^ Of this visit Mr. Froude, Carlyle's biographer, speaks thus : " After her birthday " — Mrs. Carlyle's, 1 4th July, 1865 — "he paid a visit to his old friend, Mr. Spedding, at Mirehouse, near Keswick. Spedding himself (elder brother of James, the editor of Bacon) he thought one of the best men he had ever known. There were three ' beautiful young ladies,' Mr. Sped- ding's daughters. Mirehouse was beautiful, and so were the ways of it ; ' everything nice and neat, dairy, cookery, lodging rooms.' Simplex munditiis the real title of it, not to speak of Skiddaw, and the finest mountains of the earth." ^ He must have enjoyed himself indeed when he could praise so heartily. " My three days at Keswick," he said when they were over, " are as a small polished flag- stone, which I am not sorry to have intercalated '^Carlyle's Early Letters, ed. by C. E. Norton, Vol. I., p. 159. 2 Idem. ^Froude's Carlyle, "Life in London," Vol. IL, p. 290. 1 88 THE ENGLISH LAKES in the rough floor of boulders, which my sojourn otherwise has been in these parts." ^ Happy Mirehouse to have thus been able to minister to pleasure of philosopher and poet ! Happier for having set, as it did set in its day, a noble example of simple ways and high thought, of unostentatious hospitality and duty to rich and poor alike, and earned so well, a title so honourable as simplex munditiis. It is not to be wondered at that Carlyle's memories of this visit to Mirehouse were happy. He was always so completely at home with his friend, Mr, Spedding. There was about the owner of Mirehouse a clear common sense, a calmness of judgment, a width of sympathy, and an abiding sense of humour which made him specially attractive to a man of swifter impulse. It is true that Mr. Spedding, beyond certain articles from time to time in the reviews, wrote little ; but he was a great reader, and his literary instinct was undoubted. Thus it came about that when James Martineau, with Gray and and others, were thinking of starting the National Review, the man to whom they turned for counsel was Tom Spedding. Years ago, when he and his brother James were younger men in chambers in London, some choice article from Carlyle's pen had come before them. They ascertained where Carlyle was living, and with- out more ado went straight to Craigenputtock, and so began a life-long friendship with the Northern Seer. " Tom Spedding," Carlyle used to say, " is iProude's Carlyle, "Life in London," Vol. II., p. 291. MIREHOUSE 189 the only man who really understands me," and certain it is that there existed between these two a bond of friendship which admitted of fullest criticism of each other, and grew strong beneath the strain. As to that last visit to Mirehouse in 1865, one who was a fellow-guest at the time, and who com- panioned Carlyle thither from Scotland, has described to me how the spirits of the man, worn out and jaded with his just completed Frederick the Great, came again to him, as, long clay pipe in hand, he strolled about the garden and the lawn, and into the stables, and up to the farm, talking for all the world as gravely and philosophically to the cow-boy as he would have done to the master of the house. " That book's just been the death of me," he would sigh. Then he would walk languidly about, till languor and the book were forgotten in some hearty story, or some bit of passing criticism on men and things. On one occasion during this visit Carlyle went into one of the library recesses, and found himself confronted with a print of himself as he had ap- peared when a young man. " What creature is this," said the sage ; " oh, it's my own print ; I'm glad to make its acquaintance again." Mr. Spedding came up, and as Carlyle read the inscription beneath it, " From your most obedient servant," he cried out, " What an infernal story ; you were never anybody's obedient servant yet, Carlyle," and there was a hearty laugh. IQO THE ENGLISH LAKES On another occasion the talk turned upon funerals, and Carlyle, oblivious of the fact that a young Scotch minister was of the company, drew an Eng- lish bow at a venture, and described a Scotch funeral as being in its absolute simplicity and absence of all religious service at the grave side, -far more consonant with the dignity and proper feeling of the occasion, than the Church of England service ever could be. The Scotch minister interjected, "But, Mr. Carlyle, we have prayer at the grave side in Scotland." "Na, na, man," said Carlyle, and still would have it that his version was the correct one. " But," interposed Mr. Spedding, " we feel that our English Church service is full of consolation and help at such a time. We would not for all the world be without either the service in church or the prayers at the grave side." " Na, na," replied Carlyle, " I tell ye at such times silence is best." There are those who would fain have that library filled again with the voices of old time. Tennyson's deep-chested tones, Fitzgerald's laugh, Monckton Milnes' wit, Carlyle's strong Northern brogue, James Spedding's dignified speech, and Tom Spedding's humour. For these the silence is not best. It would be ungracious to the literary associations of the neighbourhood, to pass from Keswick without a remembrance of how that old Crosthwaite Vicar- age, whose ivy-swathed walls upon its terrace-garden height are well-nigh hid from view by its screen of limes, was the birthplace of Mrs. Lynn Linton. All who wish to know of her memories of Crosth- MIREHOUSE 191 waite in the olden time will read her autobiographical sketch in Christopher Kirkland, but it is sad enough reading. That she, the youngest of the children^ motherless at the age of five months, should have been left to the mercy of a set of passionate boys, who, as she grew up, teased her, and bullied her till she became as furious as a little wild beast ; and to the tender care of a father, who " believed in Solomon and the rod, and put religious correction as well as muscular energy into his stripes," was bad enough ; but when one realises that in her high temper and bravery she was generally selected to do the necessary apple-stealing, and any bit of family work that would end in disgrace ; and was always, failing the detection of the culprit, pitched upon to be made a public example of, one wonders the child grew up with any heart at all. The rough and tumble of those old days when the neighbouring parsons would, like the priest of Uldale, work afield during the week, then go down to the public house for Saturday night, " strip to t' buff," and having floored their men, go home to prepare their sermons for the next morning, puts Vicar Lynn in fair contrast with the clerics of his time. For Vicar Lynn, as all averred, was a gentle- man : and then the voice of him, — to hear Vicar Lynn read a lesson in the parish church, was worth coming miles for. As we read Christopher Kirkland, we seem to see how the little dare-devil girl grew up in surroundings which forced her to think and act for herself, drove her for solace to the " huts where poor men lie," 192 THE ENGLISH LAKES and made the woods and hills her daily teachers. Readers of Lizzie Lorton will realise what the outcome of this early education in human nature was to the writer of that interesting tale of our country side. And those who take Mrs. Lynn Linton's Lake Country in hand, will find with what " inevitable eye " she made the fields and valleys of her beloved home her " never failing friends." Warm-hearted as she was, in much of her writings, the undertone of combative opposition to the con- ventional, and to things as they are, seems to be a voice that began to find utterance in that vicarage garden of " Eden," as she called it, where all alone she stole apples for her brothers at their bidding, and would not tell ; and where first she plucked the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, and found so few to help, to counsel, or encourage her. On one of the lime trees of the Vicarage garden, may be seen the initials E.L. which were carved by the " spirited young Tom-boy," as she once described herself in the days of long ago. I never see those letters without a memory of how the last time in the Autumn of 1897, her eyes filled with tears as we sat on the garden seat near by, talking of her girlhood, and of all the associations that the Vicarage garden had for her in its storehouse of memory. She never saw the garden again, for she entered into rest on the 14th July in the following year. Few so loved this Keswick Valley as she did. Her last wish was that her ashes might rest in the Crosthwaite churchyard. They were there deposited in July of 1898, and the simple slab MIREHOUSE 193 beside her father's tomb reminds us that her work in life was literature. The Vicarage Hill has other literary associations for us. In the middle of last century at the little house called to-day, Skiddaw Grove, dwelt a poet, Chauncey Townsend, who first made the acquaint- ance of the valley under the guidance and through the friendship of Robert Southey. He came to Greta Hall as a guest in September 1 8 1 8. Southey, writing to his future son-in-law Herbert Hill, in a letter memorable because he speaks therein of his having just been introduced for the first time by Lord Lowther to Wordsworth, says of Chauncey Townsend, " I expect a guest next week, his name is Chauncey Townsend, a youth with every imaginable advantage that nature and fortune can bestow." And in a letter to Grosvenor Bedford in the previous year, he mentions him as being " as far as it is possible to judge by his views and letters a highly interesting youth. His poetry is of uncommon promise." Townsend's poems are hardly remembered now, but one never passes the little wooden gate at the bottom of the steps that lead up from the road to the miniature garden terrace whereon the house stands, without a thought of how often the man who was a poet at heart saw hence the glorious afterglow on Skiddaw, and golden light of evening flooding the Crosthwaite valley to the west. How many generations have been helped by that view ? Here in the stockaded camp, as was proved by some chance excavations a year or two ago, I. N 194 THE ENGLISH LAKES dwelt in Neolithic time the old sun-worshippers of Lakeland. Here almost certainly the Vikings, as the Balderwort testified till it was rooted up at the beginning of last century, had their place of worship, and here long before the Vikings came, came one who worshipped Him who is the Light of all the world, the saintly Briga or Brigha, whose memory survives in the Nun's well at Brigham, Keswick, and Brigham, Cockermouth. She came from Ireland to bring to the people of the vale the Gospel message she had learned from her brother St. Brandan, and she probably built a place of prayer or ' stowe ' on the hill, which to this day though spoken of as Vicarage Hill, is written of in ancient documents and official maps of the locality as Bristowe or Brigh-stowe Hill. It is a coincidence that the two adjacent hills in this northern vale of Crosthwaite should be linked to the great merchant city of the west. Brigha, who gave her name to the city of Bristol or Bristowe, gave her name also to the Vicarage Hill of to-day. Southey, who hailed from Brigha's Stowe or Bristol, has given his own name to the hill where Greta Hall stands. CHAPTER VIII COCKERMOUTH, BRIDEKIRK, BRIGHAM, PARDSEY CRAG THE WORDSWORTHS AT COCKERMOUTH : FEARON FALLOWS : TICKELL : SIR JOSEPH WILLIAMSON : ABRAHAM FLETCHER : JOHN DALTON : ELIHU ROBINSON : FOX AND THE EARLY QUAKERS. We take train now and cross the valley towards Braithwaite, and the hills of Barf and woods of Wythop. We are bent on a visit to the birthplace of our Cumbrian poet, and as we go we pass the resting-place of his brother laureate. There, high up on the Crosthwaite Tower in pleasant summer days, would Robert Southey sit for hours, and " muse o'er flood and fell." It is worth while keeping a good look out as we pass the Crosthwaite Churchyard for a sight of the pink-grey Shap granite pillar in shape of an early cross, upon the brow of the hill, that marks the grave of one of the most remarkable of our later Carlisle bishops. There rests Harvey Goodwin, of whom the Latin inscription records that he tired not in defending the 196 THE ENGLISH LAKES faith of his fathers by his words and writings, " but specially by that book The Foundations of the Creeds Upon the affection of this good shepherd of his flock had the fells and dales laid a hold, strong as they did upon that humbler shepherd " Michael." He first learned the joy of scenery in this vale, and coming, as he came, from the flats and fens of Norfolk to our hills, when preparing for his under- graduate course, his mind was marvellously impressed. No wonder that he, whose eyes were constantly lifted to the hills, whence came his aid, should wish when they closed in death, to lie here. It is true, as Coleridge once wrote to William Godwin, that " mountains and mountain scenery put on their immortal interest, when we have resided among them and learned to understand their language, their written characters and intelligible sounds, and all their eloquence so various, so un- wearied," But even the passing traveller, when he speeds across the valley and looks back at old " Skiddhr," may feel impressed by its sense of restful bulk and quiet calm, and may think that this old moraine in the valley where, more than thirteen centuries ago, St. Mungo first planted the cross in sight of Skiddaw, is a fair place for the resting of all mountain shepherds or shepherds of men, that shall have their toil in earth, or their joy in heaven. Now the train rattles over the Derwent The shallows and alders of Wordsworth are there to the right ; up on the left, near the " Village-of-the-ford- of-the-Parliament " Pord-thing-scales, the Portinscale of our day — there may be seen a grey arched bridge; COCKERMOUTH 197 there was situate one of the recognised fords for packhorses and travellers who journeyed from Kes- wick to Whitehaven in the olden days. That green hill by the river, close upon our right, crowned with its farmhouse and tree-cluster, is the How ; it was one of the favourite " view points," which Gray the poet spoke of, when we met him at the Moor on Castlerigg. He walked thither, he tells us, " through the meadow and cornfields," on October 5, 1769, and saw "both lakes, and a full view of Skiddaw therefrom." Now, as we pass beneath the woods of " wester- most Wythop," we gaze across at Mirehouse, with its memories of Carlyle, James Spedding, Tennyson, and Fitzgerald ; thence to Cockermouth, and we are aware, as we cross the Cocker, where it streams to meet the Derwent, of a colourless grey town in a hollow cup of the Vale, with a church steeple, white and cold against a grim-looking ruin. That ruin, disfigured by a red-stone brewery beside it, was the Norman stronghold, built by Waldeof, first Baron of Allerdale. Marks, doubtless, of Roman mason-tools may be found upon the honest Brigham grit, of which it was in part built ; for much of its great castle-court walls was collected from the remains of the Roman city of Papcastle hard by. Umfravilles, Multons, Lucies, Percies, and Nevilles, all doughty barons, have held their fortress-keep here. Hither marched Robert Bruce in 13 15, and the castle owned his power to subdue ; but later, when in 1387 the Earls of Fife and Douglas and Lord Galloway, with 30,000 Scots at their back. 198 THE ENGLISH LAKES came against it, the castle slammed down its port- cullis and held its own. It was not the last time that it proved its strength. In the year 1648 it was garrisoned by Oliver Cromwell's men. And though the Cumberland Royalists laid their guns in the halfmoon battery away there to the south-west on Harrot Hill, the Parliamentarians in possession under Lieutenant Bird read their Bibles and sang their hymns, and kept their powder dry, to such purpose that the castle never fell. Near a century earlier the castle gates may have proudly lifted up their heads to give swift welcome to Mary Queen of Scots. She, who on May 16, 1568, stepped ashore at Workington with her sixteen attendants, sorely out of gear, and weary with flight from the disastrous field of Langside, found hospitality within these ancient walls, and what to her mind was of much value, the chance of appearing, as a queen's sister should, in glorious apparel. For here, or more prob- ably at his own house, Cockermouth Hall, Sir Henry Fletcher, that most good and courteous gentleman, noticing how soiled were the Queen's white silken garments, presented her with thirteen ells of crimson velvet, for more fitting vesture. But little thought the Queen, that bright May morning, as she passed from Cockermouth's street, out over " the Goat," with almost Royal progress to her prison fate at Carlisle Castle, that she was going by the very spot where, 202 years later, on the 7th of April, 1770, would be born the poet, who should chronicle her ill-fated landing on Cumbria's strand ; when, COCKERMOUTH 199 " Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed, The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore ; And to the throng, that on the Cumbrian shore Her landing hailed, how touchingly she bowed ! ^ We will go down into the main street of the market-town. We will turn to the left, and as we pace along on the right-hand pavement of the street, we shall soon be aware of a substantial two-storied mansion of Jacobean type, solid, square, ugly, but comfortable and roomy, set back from the main street. That was the house to which in 1766, John Wordsworth, a law-agent, just made steward for Sir James Lowther of the manor and forest of Enner- dale, came, a man of twenty-four, bringing with him his young bride Ann Cookson daughter of the worthy Penrith mercer. In that house were born five children, Richard, William, Dorothy, John, and Christopher. And if we will but cross the river by the bridge a little further on, and walk back to the smaller foot-bridge, we shall get a fair view not only of the garden with its terrace walk, but of the castle away to the north- east, and the hills of wood and the soft grassy swell, that rise from the pastoral amphitheatre through which the Derwent runs. We shall be able then, while the clang of the hammer is heard, or the whistle of the factory rings discordantly, or the trains roar by in the distance, to think ourselves back into the quieter times of old, to understand how this solemn river of " Derwent winding among grassy holms," when the poet was nursed by its '^ Mary Queen of Scots, p. 713. 200 THE ENGLISH LAKES banks "a babe in arms," could bring a hush upon the busy air and " Make ceaseless music that composed my thoughts To more than infant softness, giving me Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind A foretaste, a dim earnest, of the calm That Nature breathes among the hills and groves."^ The river is grey-white beneath grey skies ; one can seldom, except on rare days in March, see it beneath the house as " a bright blue river " ; but it is worth while to note how accurately the boy described the impressions of his childhood. For Wordsworth must often enough have gone along the " Beckside " or " the Sand," as it is locally called, and so under the castle wall into " the Lands." Just under the north-west tower of the Castle, the Derwent is very deep, and as it swirls out of the Castle Pool or " Ploo," it passes over the shallows of the opposite bank, which are of a blue-grey gravel. The effect of the blue-grey of the water here is very striking. We can well understand how with this shallow in his mind, Wordsworth could describe it, as he did, in The Prelude. Nor shall we forget how for us, as for the boy poet, running beneath " the shadow of those towers That yet survive, a shattered monument Of feudal sway, the bright blue river passed Along the margin of our terrace walk."^ 1 The Prehide, Bk. I., p. 238. "^ Idem, p. 239. COCKERMOUTH 20 r We cannot make out with certainty which is the back water or millrace that he describes as the bathing-place when he was a boy ; but it is in all probability the millrace of the old Goat Mill. Here in this fair river-circled mead, as boys do stilly Wordsworth " Basked in the sun, and plunged and basked again Alternate, all a summer's day, or scoured The sandy fields, leaping through flowery groves Of yellow ragwort." ^ Still survive, against the terrace wall at the back of the house beside the river, its privet and rose- hedges. This was the poet's and his sister Dorothy's favourite playground. That hedge, as Wordsworth tells us, was an " impervious shelter " to birds that built there. We can see the children going shyly day by day to have just one more peep at the sparrow's nest, " dreading, tho' wishing to be near it " : we can see them racing round the flower-beds together after the butterfly, though as for Dorothy, " she, God love her ! feared to brush The dust from off its wings." ^ We can call to mind the poem he composed in the orchard garden at Town-end years after, as the little terrace garden above the Derwent came to his mind. " Oh ! pleasant, pleasant were the days. The time, when in our childish plays. My sister Emmeline and I Together chased the butterfly ! " ^ '^Idem. "^To a Butterfly, p. 170. '^ Idem. 202 THE ENGLISH LAKES And remembering, as we stand by the terrace walk and gaze up the river to Waldeof's Castle- hold, that sonnet, An Address from the Spirit of Cocker- mouth Castle, we cannot but be struck with the way in which the golden rag-wort and gay-winged butterfly haunted the memory of the boy who left Cockermouth for school at Hawkshead when he was nine, who spent his holidays as often as not at Penrith, where his father resided for part of each year, and who severed his connection with this old terrace garden for ever, at his father's death in 1784, when he was but a lad of thirteen years old. To the east, at two miles distance, we may descry a bald-headed hill with a road leading over its summit, the wind-blown " Hay Hill " or Watch Hill, Beacon Hill perhaps, of the time when the British warriors held their camp at Caer Mote and the Romans flashed their signals from Papcastle to the Castlehill at Keswick. And if we had stood with the boy Wordsworth in the terrace garden, we should have plainly seen another nearer path, that led from the river ford away over the some- what rocky eminence of " Mickle" or Michael Brows, a footpath not so clearly marked now as in the beginning of the century, but one that still in summer time shows like a drab riband over the shoulder of the hill. Whichever track it was, that faint pathway line touched the young poet's heart and fired his soul with questioning of the great beyond. "A disappearing line, One daily present to my eyes, that crossed COCKERMOUTH 203 The naked summit of a far-off hill Beyond the limits that my feet had trod,"^ laid, so Wordsworth tells us in his thirteenth book of The Prelude, a powerful spell upon his fancy, "Was like an invitation into space Boundless, or guide into eternity." ^ As one looks round the little garden so associated with the poet's and his sister's happy childhood, one may in imagination see too, the "honoured Mother, she who was the heart And image of all our learnings and our loves," ^ gathering a bunch of daffodils, with perhaps a bit of " Daphne Mezereon " or sweet-scented " Ribes," to pin a nosegay to her boy's breast, because it is near the time for service, and because to-day he is going to say the Catechism in the church, as was customary before Easter. Sometimes one catches a glance of the wistful face of that mother gazing upon the children at their play from the window above.^ For William has a moody violent temper ; she has just had to rebuke him for wanting a penny for seeing a woman " do penance in a sheet at the church " and the lad is in a pet. Besides, Mr, Eilbanks, the teacher of the school near the church, has been down and had a talk about William's moodiness. She feels 1 The Prelude, Bk. XIII., p. 326. ^ Idem. ^Idem, Bk. V., p. 266. *Cf. Knight's Life of Wordsworth, Vol. I., p. 13. 204 THE ENGLISH LAKES that William will either be remarkable for good or evil, and he is the only one of her five children about whose future welfare she is anxious. The mother's happier forecasting was justified. We can never know how much the spirit of her prayerful, anxious nature, brooding over the boy, was stay and support to the lad, who learned, as he lived on, to control his own temper, and taught indirectly the worth of " self-reverence, self-know- ledge, self-control " in all he thought and sang. Let us leave Cockermouth ; a prophet is ever without honour in his own country. A few years ago, when they began to build the sepulchre of their prophet here by setting apart a room to be called the Wordsworth Institute, for lectures and literary gatherings, the poet's eldest son congratu- lated the movers in the matter, " for," said he, " in my father's time, though he often made the inquiry, he never could learn that a single volume of his poems was either read, or on sale, in the town that gave him birth." ^ Other men of eminence have been born here. Just across the little " Low Sand Lane " that separates the early home of the Wordsworths from the buildings opposite, was born in July 4, 1787, in the humble cottage of a handloom weaver, a boy who grew up to be a kind of calculating marvel, to whom arithmetical problems were as easy as the eating of bread and butter. Fearon ^This forgetfulness of the poet has now been, it is hoped, done away by the erection of a beautiful fountain in the Public Park to the memory of Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. COCKERMOUTH 205 Fallows, at the age of six, could do such mental arithmetic as the computing of the farthings in six guineas. He worked on at the loom as he grew, learned Latin between the pauses of the work at the treadles, became arithmetic master at Plumbland School, went thence, by means of a scholarship in 1809, ^o St. John's College, Cam- bridge, was third wrangler in 1 8 1 3 (Herschel being first in that year), became lecturer, and moderator, and principal examiner at Cambridge, took orders, and, in 1826, was chosen by the Admiralty to go out to Cape Town to found an observatory. It will be remembered by some, that the ap- pointment of a Cape Observatory Astronomer was signalised by a hoax that filled the whole astro- nomical world with laughter. Enough time was allowed to pass to enable Fearon Fallows to have got out to the Cape, when a pamphlet was pub- lished by Murray, whose name was considered guarantee to some extent for its truth. The writer described the making of the huge telescope, and its gigantic glass ; described the way it had been shipped and unshipped, and put together at the Cape. It spoke of the expectation of its makers, and of the intense interest with which it was first directed to the moon, and then announced the dis- covery there of winged men and women. People in this country were really in suspense as to its truth ; and in America, a party of learned men believed it to be true. The Man in the Moon was no longer a matter of speculation, and a Cockermouth 2o6 THE ENGLISH LAKES man had been the discoverer. Suddenly it was noticed that there was no ship afloat which could have held the telescope as described, for the Great Eastern had not yet been built. The secret was out — the world of star-gazers had been hoaxed. There at the Cape, Fearon Fallows lived and laboured with an able partner of his life and life's work, the daughter of his patron, the Rev. H. N. Harvey, vicar of Bridekirk ; and it is astounding that, with the imperfect instruments supplied to him, he was able to effect what he did. Alas ! work and worry, a touch of sunstroke, and an attack of scarlet fever, called him too soon to his rest: he died at his post on 25th July, 183 1, in his forty-third year. One never thinks of the brave man, smitten with death, but refusing to leave the observatory before the equinox, without remembering how splen- didly his wife helped him. She worked away at the astronomer's art till she was able to undertake " the circle observations," while he was engaged with " the transit," and, in every way, became his most efficient assistant. Let us go out of Cockermouth to St. Bridget's Kirk, — Bridekirk of to-day, — and see the quaint church, with its deeply interesting Saxon font, that, as the runic inscription tells us, " Richard wrought, and to such state of beauty brought " ; and let us remember that in that font was baptised the vicar's daughter, the little girl who afterwards became the astronomer's right hand in the lonely Cape Town Observatory. COCKERMOUTH 207 It is not often that the vicar makes the son of his parish clerk his son-in-law ; this was a case in point, and worthier son-in-law no vicar ever had. There are those still living in the parish who can call to mind the wavering, quavering voice in which the astronomer's father used to give out the key-note of the psalm that was to be sung, in the primitive, ante-organ days. The vicarage we are gazing at is not only cele- brated for having been one time the home of Fallows' patron; here in 1685 was born Addison's friend, the poet Thomas Tickell. He went at fifteen years old to Queen's College, Oxford, be- came Fellow there in 1708, and through Addison's interest obtained the post of Under Secretary of State. One does not find in his poems much, if any, local colouring, but one cannot but be inter- ested to note, that in Tickell we see an example of the sort of enthusiasm of regard and personal friendship which the Cumbrian nature, when it does give itself away, is capable of For here was a mediocre poet, who found in his affection for Addison the whole source of his inspiration ; and who was moved by the death of Addison to rise out of mediocrity and write to the Earl of Warwick a poem of which Dr. Johnson has said, " Nor is a more sublime or more elegant funeral-poem to be found in the whole compass of the English language."^ Tickell was not the only State Secretary that was born at Bridekirk. For here in the year ^Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Thomas Tickell. 208 THE ENGLISH LAKES 1625 first saw the light Joseph, son of Vicar Williamson, who became a Westminster schoolboy, afterwards a scholar and fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, secretary to Sir Edward Nicholas, Secre- tary of State at the Restoration, a knight in 1667, and Secretary of State and Privy Councillor in 1674. It is true that he purchased this post from Lord Arlington for the sum of £6000, as was the fashion in those days ; but he evidently im- proved the business, for when some years later he resigned it, he got his £6000 back with a ^500 as bonus for his goodwill, in addition. In 1677 he was elected President of the Royal Society, and he held the post for three years. He died in 1701 at Rochester. Shrewd, hard- headed, worldly-wise, and keen, as his portrait in Queen's College appears to testify, his manners were affable and his generosity was undoubted. The men who are called to dinner in Hall at Queen's College to the sound of the silver trumpet which Sir Joseph Williamson presented, can never forget that he rebuilt the north side of the old quadrangle at his own charge, and left the College j^6ooo at his death, with plate and books to the value of another ;^4000, He also founded a mathematical school at Rochester, and made donations of books to St. Bees, while to Bride- kirk Church he gave " gilt bibles, and prayer books, and velvet covering, and red linen for the altar, with silver flagons and chalices for the adminis- tration of the Holy Communion." COCKERMOUTH 209 But of his literary efforts little is known. His papers were State papers ; and though it is certain that he felt the need of the encouragement of English folk to study modern languages and history, and may, by his advice to Charles II. on this point, almost be called the father of the present diplomatic service, his literary efforts seem to have taken the form of being editor of the " Times'''' of his generation. Williamson knew the power of the press. As editor of the London Gazette he was determined to make it the leading paper in England. He got rid of a troublesome rival in the editor of the Newsbook by making him retire on a government pension, and absorbed the Newsbook in the London Gazette. He set on foot a system of Special Correspondents in England and on the Continent, and intercepted the news letters of a rival who was attempting to carry out a like scheme. The " Times" editor of his day, though we cannot admire his methods, at least deserves recognition for his indomitable energy, and we leave Bridekirk with a thought of how much our modern daily press may have owed to the enterprise of its humble vicar's son. Let us return from Bridekirk to Cockermouth, or when we reach Papcastle, the " Derventio " of Roman days, Papcastle, the birthplace in later days of the last of the race of born "jesters," the crack-brained, witty rhymester, Salathiel Court, let us strike across the field for Broughton, the one-time home of the father of the great Potters of Etruria, the Wedgwoods, they who so befriended I. o 210 THE ENGLISH LAKES at his need, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Whist- ling Syke, the little, low, dark-looking building on the moor road between Broughton and Dear- ham, is the house built by the grandfather of Josiah Wedgwood in the year 1708. One can never think of the name of Wedg- wood without feeling that he, and such benefactors as Raisley Calvert and Wynn, deserve a nation's thanks for their assistance to a nation's literature. For whatever gifts Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey gave to England, were only possible by the munificence of such private benefactions as came at a critical time to these young writers, from Wedgwood, Calvert, and Wynn. Let us not forget that close by, at Little Broughton, was born into a humble tobacco-pipe maker's family, Abraham Fletcher, one of the rare spirits whose genius consists in indomitable perseverance and desire for knowledge. Abraham Fletcher carried on all his study at night time, and would retire to a hayloft, to which he ascended by a rope that he could draw up after him, and so secure the quiet and privacy he desired. At the age of thirty this self-taught man became a teacher of mathematics and science, afterwards took up medicine, and was doctor as well as schoolmaster, and left behind him at his death in 1793, ^ mathematical work, The Universal Measure, which was spoken of at the time as the largest and best collection of mathematical problems, comprised in one volume, that had at that day appeared in the English language. COCKERMOUTH 211 Thence let us go across the Derwent vale to Brigham. That church of St. Bridget was one time ministered in by John, the poet Wordsworth's son. And many a time did the poet come thither. Just at the place where the Bullgill railway joins the Cockermouth and Whitehaven line, there stands a signal-box. Near there, till the railway ran, bubbled forth a clear well, much trodden round by the hoofs of thirsty cattle. The name of the well, " Nun's Well," " struck by chance " on Wordsworth's " startled ear," and he wrote the sonnet entitled, Nun's Well, Brigham, the only poem in which his Protestant soul allowed itself to be beguiled for a moment into the thought of the saintliness of the cheer with which " hooded votaresses " their "ritual honours to this Fountain paid. Albeit oft the Virgin-mother mild Looked down with pity upon eyes beguiled Into the shedding of ' too soft a tear.' " ^ But for us a prophet in earlier days than Words- worth claims our attention here. To this well, in the year 1652, very thirsty and tired from his controversy with Mr. George Larkham, — the inde- pendent minister who was keeping the vicarage warm for the evicted vicar, Rickarby, during the Commonwealth usurpation, — came Fox the Quaker, on discourse bent with parson John Wilkinson in Brigham Steeple-house. '^Nutis Well, Brigham, p. 713. 212 THE ENGLISH LAKES Thirsty and weary enough, for Fox's temper had been sorely tried. He had been roughly treated at Millom, where the gentry had hired a boy with a rapier to do him bodily hurt, and he had only escaped capture by walking up and down in the fields all night ; and though he had a grand meeting in Lorton Vale "where the people lay up and down in the open, like people at a ' leaguer,' " and where he had preached for three hours to a church crowded out, he had been sorely withstood by Larkham of Cockermouth and Wilkinson of Brigham, " a preacher of great repute." Fox's Journal is worth quoting at some length, so natural and vivid is the picture that he draws. " So when I had largely declared the word of life unto them, for about three hours, I walked from amongst the people, and they passed away very well satisfied. Among the rest a professor followed me, praising and commending me ; but his words were like a thistle to me. At last I turned about and bid him ' Fear the Lord,' where- upon priest Larkham of Cockermouth (for several priests were got together on the way who came after the meeting was over) said to me, ' Sir, why do you judge so ? You must not judge.' But I turned to him and said, ' Friend, dost not thou discern an exhortation from a judgment? I ad- monished him to fear God ; and dost thou say I judge him ? ' So this priest and I, falling into discourse, I manifested him to be amongst the false prophets and covetous hirelings. And several COCKERMOUTH 213 people being moved to speak to him, he and two others of the priests soon got away. When they were gone, John Wilkinson, who was preacher of that parish, and of two other parishes in Cumber- land, began to dispute against his own conscience for several hours, till the people generally turned against him ; for he thought to have tired me out ; but the Lord's power tired him out, and the Lord's truth came over him and them all. Many hundreds were convinced that day, and received the Lord Jesus Christ, and His free teaching, with gladness ; of whom some have died in the truth, and many stand faithful witnesses thereof. The soldiers also were convinced, and their wives, and continued with me till First-day. " On First-day I went to the steeple-house at Cockermouth, where priest Larkham lived. When he had done, I began to speak, and the people began to be rude ; but the soldiers told them we had broken no law, and they became quiet. Then I turned to the priest, and laid him open among the false prophets and hirelings ; at which word the priest went his way and said, ' He calls me hireling,' which was true enough ; all the people knew it. Then some of the great men of the town came to me and said, ' Sir, we have no learned men to dispute with you.' I told them I came not to dispute, but to show the way of salvation to them, the way of everlasting life. I declared largely the way of life and truth, and directed them to Christ their teacher, who died for them, and bought them with His blood. 214 THE ENGLISH LAKES " When I had done I went about two miles to another great steeple-house of John Wilkinson's, called Brigham : where the people, having been at the other meeting, were mightily affected, and would have put my horse into the steeple-house yard ; but I said, * No, the priest claims that ; take him to an inn.' When I came into the steeple-house yard, I saw the people coming in great companies, as to a fair; and abundance were already gathered in the lanes, and about the steeple-house. I was very thirsty and walked about a quarter of a mile to a brook, where I got some water, and refreshed myself" ' There would be no lack of this refreshment at Brigham in those days, for there was the famous chantry well in the chantry field, now covered by spoil from the limestone quarries close by, and there was the baptismal well in the churchyard, beside the celebrated " Nun's Well " that moved Wordsworth to the making of his verse. For Fox's and for Wordsworth's sake, one could wish no railway had ruined the original site of the latter well ; but still, hard by, there is a little channel in the grass "Through which the waters creep, then disappear, Born to be lost in Derwent flowing near."^ We may, after slaking our thirst, go back in memory to that day in 1655 when George Fox met ^ Journal of George Fox, ed. by W. Armistead, 1851, Vol. I., p. 15s, seq. "^Null's Well, Brigham, p. 712. COCKERMOUTH 215 the vicar of Brigham-cum-Mosser-cum-Lorton, who had so opposed him against his own conscience in the Lorton Vale ; " who, as I passed by him," continues Fox, " said, ' Sir, will you preach to-day ? if you will,' said he, ' I will not oppose you in word or thought.' I replied, ' Oppose if thou wilt ; I have something to speak to the people. And,' said I, ' thou carried'st thyself foolishly the other day, and spoke against thy conscience and reason, insomuch that thy hearers cried out against thee.' So I left him, and went on ; for he saw it was in vain to oppose, the people were so affected with the Lord's truth. When I came into the steeple-house yard, a professor came to me and asked if I would not go into the church, as he called it ? And I, seeing no convenient place to stand to speak to the people from, went in, and stood up on a seat, after they were settled. The priest came in also, but did not go up to his pulpit. The Lord opened my mouth, and I declared His everlasting truth and word of life to the people ; directing them to the Spirit of God in themselves, by which they might know God, and Christ, and the Scriptures, and come to have heavenly fellowship in the Spirit. I declared to them that everyone that cometh into the world was enlightened by Christ the life : by which light they might see their sins, and Christ, who was come to save them from their sins, and died for them. And, if they came to walk in this light, they might therein see Christ to be the author of their faith, and the finisher thereof; their Shepherd to feed them, their Priest to teach them, and their great Prophet to 2i6 THE ENGLISH LAKES open divine mysteries unto them, and to be always present with them. I explained also unto them, in the openings of the Lord, the first covenant, showing to them the types and the substance of those figures, and so bringing them on to Christ, the new covenant. I also manifested unto them, that there had been a night of apostasy since the apostles' days ; but that now the everlasting gospel was preached again, which brought life and immortality to light : and the day of the Lord was come, and Christ was come to teach his people himself, by his light, grace, power, and spirit " A fine opportunity the Lord gave me to preach truth among the people that day for about three hours ; and all was quiet. Many hundreds were convinced, and some of them praised God, and said, ' Now we know the first step to peace.' The preacher also said privately to some of his hearers, that I had broken them, and overthrown them." ^ It was not the last bout that Fox had with parson Wilkinson, for no sooner was he of " the leathern suit " out of prison at Carlisle, than, re- membering the old adage that a shoemaker sticks to his last, he is again at Brigham, as his Journal shows us, " After my release from Carlisle prison, I was moved to go to priest Wilkinson's steeple-house again at Brigham : and being got in before him, when he came in, I was declaring the truth to the people, though they were but few ; for the most and best of his hearers were turned to Christ's free ^ [ournal of George Fox, Vol. I., p. 156. COCKERMOUTH 217 teaching ; and we had a meeting of Friends hard by, where Thomas Stubbs was declaring the word of Hfe amongst them. As soon as the priest came in he opposed me ... so if any law was broken, he broke it. When his people would be haling me out, I manifested his fruits to be such as Christ spoke of when he said, ' They shall hale you out of their synagogues,' and then he would be ashamed, and they would let me alone. There he stood till it was almost night, jangling and opposing me, and would not go to his dinner, for he thought to weary me out. But at last the Lord's power and truth came so over him, that he packed away with his people. When he was gone, I went to the meeting of Friends, who were turned to the Lord, and by His power established upon Christ, the rock and foundation of the true prophets and apostles. " We had a general meeting there which was large and peaceable, and the glorious powerful presence of the everlasting God was with us." ^ If we have the good fortune to know the owner of the great house above the steep limestone quarry, we may, as we pass upon our way, have sight of one of those characteristic, unscholarly, and ill- spelt, but brave and devout letters Fox used to write to his good dame at Swarthmoor Hall, to keep her informed of the troubles that befell him,, the stripes and imprisonments he had to bear for his witness to the truth as he knew it. ^ ^Journal of George Fox, Vol. I., p. 169. 2 Since this was written, William Fletcher of Brigham Hill has. passed away, to the sorrow of all Cumberland. 2i8 THE ENGLISH LAKES And now, as we mount westwards up the long slope from the Derwent Vale, with George Fox much in mind, another worthy will for the moment dispossess the memory of the Quaker. We shall pause by the little hamlet of Eaglesfield with its Quaker meeting-house, and parish-hearse-house all in one, and we shall remember that Robert de Eaglesfield, Chaplain to Philippa the Queen of Edward the Third, and founder of Queen's College at Oxford " on his own ground," ^ sprang from hence. But our minds are fuller of the Quaker stock that Fox planted here, than of any Plantagenet ecclesiastics, notwithstanding that the very name of the hamlet implies a church connection and rings with church history. Let us turn aside down the lane hard by, to the humble three-windowed cottage with its white-washed porch that faces up the road, and gaze reverently at it. For here on the 5th of September, 1766, in the same year that our old friend Jonathan Otley was born, there saw the light one of England's greatest chemists, John Dalton. I say greatest chemists, for Dalton's Atomic Theory reconstructed the whole science of chemistry. The little cradle still preserved at " Paddle " which rocked that babe, rocked one whose name and fame became world wide. Here the lad grew and startled his father by constructing at the age of ten an almanac which is still extant. At the age of thirteen he became the village ^A Survey of Cumberland, by Sir Daniel Fleming, in 1871, p. i. Published by the Cumberland and Westmoreland Archaeological and Antiquarian Society. COCKERMOUTH 219 preceptor, opened a mixed school on his own account, and painted over the doorway of the Httle room which still stands at the end of a near burn — " Pens, Ink, and Paper, sold here." From this school, which was afterwards moved to the Friend's meeting-house for convenience, he went, in 1 781, at the age of fifteen, to Kendal, as assistant master to a relative ; there, working hard at his mathematical studies under the guidance of blind Gough, the botanist, he remained, till in 1793 he was appointed teacher of physical science and mathematics in the New College at Manchester. Dalton's success in after life was so much bound up with that appointment to New College, and the gaining of that appointment was so much Gough's doing, that it is worth while quoting a letter to a friend in Keswick, in which John Dalton describes the botanist : — " John Gough is the son of a worthy tradesman in this town (Kendal) ; unfortunately he lost his sight by the small-pox when he was about two years old, and may now be about thirty. He is, perhaps, one of the most astonishing instances that ever appeared, of what genius united with perseverance and energy and other subsidiary aid, can accomplish, when deprived of what we usually reckon the most valuable sense. He is a perfect master of the Latin, Greek, and French tongues, the former of which I knew nothing of when I first came here from my native place near Cockermouth, but under his tuition have since acquired a good knowledge of them. He understands well all the 220 THE ENGLISH LAKES different branches of mathematics, and it is wonderful what difficult and abstruse problems he will solve in his own head. There is no branch of natural philosophy but what he is acquainted with. He knows by the touch, taste, and smell, almost every plant within twenty miles of this place. He can reason with astonishing perspicuity on the construc- tion of the eye, the nature of light and colours, and of optic glasses. He is a good proficient in astronomy, chemistry, medicine, etc. He and I have long been very intimate, as our pursuits are in common, viz., mathematical and philosophical. We find it very agreeable frequently to communicate our sentiments to each other and to converse in those topics." ^ Wordsworth refers to Gough and his blindness in The Excursion, Book VII., in the fine lines beginning, " Soul-cheering Light, most bountiful of things," Dalton's earlier teacher and friend here, was a certain John Fletcher, Dominie of the Pardshaw Crag School, and we can see in fancy the grave young Quaker school-master and his delightfully studious pupil going off to visit the rain-gauges on the hills, puzzling over the arithmetical problems by the fireside, or perhaps making the .^oHan harp which so delighted the young lad's keen sense of music, and encouraged him to become a student in musical sounds, to the confusion of a later Yearly Meeting, .^olian harpmaker at Eaglesfield or not, we have preserved to us verses written to such an iProm A Bag of Old Letters— "Dx. John Dalton," by Mrs. H. M. Wigham, pp. 79, 80 ; reprinted from The Friends' Quarterly Examiner. COCKERMOUTH 221 instrument by Dalton, and we know that in 1795, he and another Friend "drew up a petition to the Yearly Meeting soliciting permission to use music under certain limitations." John Fletcher and blind Gough, Dalton's later mentor and friend, are not the only two we grate- fully call to mind ; here, in the humble handloom weaver's cottage we think of the weaver's colour- blind sons, Jonathan, as well as John ; we can see Deborah Greenup, Dalton's mother, busy with her new spinning wheel, just sent her from Calbeck, and we can call to mind how years afterwards the humming of just such a wheel brought back to young John Dalton's mind the pleasant evenings spent at Eaglesfield in times of old. We can hear the same Deborah rating her son John for sending her " sic a pair of red stockings " as would put any member of the Friends' society to shame, the fact being that John was colour-blind and knew it not, and had brought what he believed to be a very beautiful pair of silken hose of quiet drab, for his mother's wearing, from the hosier's shop in Kendal. " Thou hast brought me a pair of grand stockings, John ; but what made thee fancy such a high colour? What ! I could never go to meeting in them ! " says the worthy dame. John assures her that the stockings in question are a nice drab ; Jonathan, the brother, is called in — he is of the same opinion, the stockings are a nice drab colour. All Eaglesfield is summoned and the village verdict is " Varra fine stuff, but uncommon scarlety," ^ and so their humble iCf. A Bag of Old Letters— "T>x. John Dalton," p. 85. 222 THE ENGLISH LAKES cottage became the birthplace of scientific observation on the phenomenon of colour-blindness. Dalton, writing in 1794, says, "The flowers of most of the cranes'-bills which others call pink appear to me in the day almost exactly sky-blue ; while others call them deep pink ; but happening once to look at one in the night by candle-light, I found it of a colour as different as possible from daylight ; it seemed then near yellow, but with a tincture of red ; whilst nobody else said it differed from the daylight appearance, my brother excepted, who seems to see as I do. ... I was the other day at a Friend's house, who is a dyer. . . . His wife brought me a piece of cloth . . . which I called reddish snuff-colour ; they told me ... it was one of the finest grass-greens they had seen. ... I mean," he adds, " to communicate my observations to the world through the medium of some philo- sophical society. The young women tell me they will never suffer me * to go into the gallery' with a green coat, and I tell them I have no objection to their going in with me in a crimson (that is, a dark drab) gown." ^ He confessed to his old friend Elihu Robinson that he had on one occasion fallen a victim to the charms of a young lady who descanted on the " use of dephlogisticated marine acid in bleaching and the effects of opium on the animal system," and so surrendered at discretion. " During my captivity," he said, " which lasted about a week, I lost my appetite and had other symptoms of bondage about me, but have now happily regained ^A Bag of Old Letters— "T>x. John Dalton," pp. 85, 86. COCKERMOUTH 223 my freedom."! But the fact was, "his head was too full of chemical processes and electrical experi- ments to think much of marriage," and he used to aver that he never had had time to wed. Dalton's fame was not blown far and wide till 1808, when he took the scientific world by storm by his New System of Chemical Philosophy ; from that time to his death in 1844, honours were showered upon him. Eleven years before he died he saw himself stand in marble, by the will of the citizens of Manchester, and by the skill of Chantrey, the Sculptor, at the entrance of the Royal Institution in Manchester. But better far is it than fame, to know that his heart ever kept its humility and its love for the place that gave him birth. Hither the old bachelor came each year to see the little house where he was born, to speak of the remembrances that each familiar bit of household furniture brought before his mind ; to laugh as he would think of the cupboard where the crystallised carbon was kept, that used to go so red when it was burned in the candle, and under the more familiar name of sugar, was to him at once such a marvel, and such a temptation. His near relations had died, but there was a thrifty couple who always made him welcome when he came down hither to Eaglesfield, and to them, for kindness' sake, the old chemist left all his worldly goods, as recognition and reward. A devouter worshipper at the shrine of the secrets of God in Nature we have not known in this century. ^ Idem, p. 87. 224 THE ENGLISH LAKES He was, it is true, no courtier, as the following anecdote will show. When he was presented in 1835 to King William IV., the sovereign said, "* Ah! Mr. Dalton, how are you getting on at Manchester ? ' to which he replied, * Well, I don't know : just middlin', I think.' " His Cumberland friends twitted him with his want of manners. " ' Thou hardly- showed court manners/ said they, ' in addressing the King in such common parlance.' ' Mebby sae,' replied the philosopher, ' but what can yan say to sic like fowk ? ' " ^ But if the pure-hearted, honest, homely soul knew little of courtly ways, yet did he ever stand in the courts of a Higher King, and we will, as we linger outside the lowly cottage by the Eaglesfield lane, remember the concluding words of Professor Sedgwick's address at the meeting of the British Association at Cambridge in the year 1833. " There was," he said, " sitting among them a philosopher whose hair was blanched by time, whose features had some of the lines of approaching old age, but possessing an intellect still in its healthiest vigour — a man whose whole life had been devoted to the cause of Truth ; he meant his friend Dr. Dalton. Without any powerful apparatus, for making philoso- phical experiments, — with an apparatus, indeed, many of them might almost think contemptible, — and with very limited external means for employing his great natural powers, he had gone straight forward in his distinguished course, and obtained for himself, in those branches of knowledge which he had cultivated, a M Bag of Old Letters— ''Dx. John Dalton," p. 90. COCKERMOUTH 225 name not perhaps equalled by any living philosopher in the world. " From the hour of his birth, the God of Nature had laid His hand upon his head, and had ordained him for the ministration of high philosophy. But his natural talents, great as they were, and his almost intuitive skill in tracing the relations of material phenomena, would have been of compara- tively little value to himself and to society, had there not been superadded to them a beautiful moral simplicity and singleness of heart which made him go on steadily in the way he saw before him, without turning to the right hand or to the left, and taught him to do homage to no authority before that of Truth." 1 We go forward now with a devout prayer that whoever owns that cottage will keep it in good order and add some simply inscribed stone above the door, giving the great chemist's date of birth and death for the information of wayfarers. For Dalton is a name of which Cumberland must ever be proud. ^ So long as Cumbrians remember their world- famous chemist, and pilgrims come to see his birthplace, they will remember, also, a certain Elihu Robinson, a worthy Quaker, who dwelt here, and without whose aid, it is ten chances to one that Dalton would never have done what he did for science and the world. It was Elihu Robinson ^A Bag of Old Letters— "Hr. John Dalton," pp. 91, 92. 2 Since this was written I am glad to say the owner of the property has consented to do this. — H, D. R. I. P 226 THE ENGLISH LAKES who helped the village lad in his studies, and en- couraged him in his earliest endeavour. Elihu Robinson's house is still visible with its " orchard garden eminently fair," wherein he, the earliest of Cumbrian meteorologists, used to measure rainfall, note the wind, and heat, and cold, and dewfall, and learn the time from his own well- constructed sun-dial, and make such observation as should guide himself, and his friends the farmers, as they guided their ploughs. Any time for half- a-century after his marriage in 1757 with Ruth Mark, we might have seen in Elihu Robinson's kitchen the good wife at her wheel — " My dear Ruth spinning beside me as I write." And about 1776 we should have seen his cousin, young John Dalton, here of an evening, puzzling away at his mathematical problem. " ' Yan med deu't,' the boy would cry, meaning one must do it ; then he would rise, and bidding Elihu ' good neet,' would say, ' I can't deu't to-neet, but mebbe to-morn I will.' " ^ Wilkinson, the Quaker poet of Yanwath, was a fast friend. Writing in October, 1785, Wilkinson gives us a picture of that happy fireside at Eagles- field. " ' How dost thou spend thy evenings ? ' asks Wilkinson. ' I suppose thy Ruth sits next thee with her knitting, then Mally' " — his niece — " ' with hers, then the maid with her wheel, and William'" — the man-servant — " ' in the corner with his bee- hives, and now and then thou takes from thy desk some worthy author to enliven the after-supper ^Cf. A Bag of Old Letters— " 'EVihu Robinson," by Mrs. H. M. Wigham, p. 7 J reprinted from Friends' Qtmrterly Examiner. COCKERMOUTH 227 occasion.'"^ There were times when very worthy- living authors enlivened those homely evenings at Eaglesfield. Under date "nth month, 13th, 1792," Robinson writes: — "This evening I had the satisfaction to afford a night's lodging to that worthy and indefatigable labourer in the cause of humanity, Thomas Clarkson, who hath employed his time and attention for about seven years in the abolition of the slave trade. . . . He is a fine- looking person, of a manly presence, about 32 years of age. He entertained us about five hours with solid, clear, and often very satisfactory remarks relative to the abolition of slavery. . . . In discourse he doth not seem to give much at- tention to anything but what is connected with the main business of his life, viz., the abolition of slavery and the banishment of oppression and corruption from civil government. He appears to have a great regard for our Society which may perhaps arise from our well-known and unanimous sentiments and unremitting endeavours for the freedom and relief of the abused Africans." ^ It says much for Elihu's well-known wisdom and weight, that Clarkson should have journeyed to this little out-of-the-way hamlet to unburden his soul to his sympathetic ears. It says much also for Elihu Robinson's sagacity, that when, years after, John Dalton wrote him from Kendal asking for advice on the choice of a profession, Elihu, though he recommended him to stick to schoolmastering ^ Idem, p. 6. "^A Bag of Old Letters— '■'■YX^yx Robinson," pp. 8, 9. 228 THE ENGLISH LAKES as being noble labour, said, " I doubt not but thy genius, unshaken perseverance, and steady appli- cation, may gain a competent knowledge in any profession, and I am far from thinking that of physic would be a misconstruction or misapplication of thy talents, parts, or genius." ^ Robinson well knew that of the two professions John Dalton had proposed — Law and Physic — it would be only in the latter that the young man's peculiar talents would find the opportunity they needed. But the humour, the tender-heartedness, the affection and piety of R(3binson come out most in his correspondence with the young estatesman, poet Wilkinson, who was indeed a man after Elihu's own heart. " Winnow thy wheat, take it to market, put thy worldly affairs in order, and prepare to come and see us," ^ he writes to him. " I hope we shall have conversation, if not to much edification yet tinctured with innocence and brotherly kindness. If a little flash of wit or rather humour escapes us, it will be perfectly free from scandal or evil surmising. No person, friend or enemy, need be afraid that their character will be left in a worse condition than we found it. We shall pity evil- doers and praise those that do well." ^ That word pity reminds me of the distress of soul which this brother of pity, who was the almoner of many Friends, often endured, on seeing distress around him which he had not means to alleviate. M Bag of Old Letters— "T>x. John Dalton," pp. 82, 83. "^ Idem, " Elihu Robinson," p. 11. ^ Idem. COCKERMOUTH 229 " The distresses and afflictions of my fellow-creatures often disturb my peace," he once wrote. " I cannot relieve many, but I may pity them. And yet where I cannot fully relieve by pecuniary help, even to take note of their distress by a sympathetic look or expression may in some degree tend to lighten the burden of affliction."^ Twenty years the senior, this EHhu was a con- stant friend and critic of the literary efforts of Thomas Wilkinson. This Wilkinson, the Yanwath poet, honoured by Wordsworth and beloved by Clarkson, writing in his journal an account of his ride on pony-back from Penrith to London to the yearly meeting of Friends in 1785, says, "At Ken- dal I met Elihu Robinson whose friendship is very dear to me, and we rode on together." And it is clear from the correspondence that remains to us that they rode on together in fullest heart- friendship, and in intellectual accord, till in 1809 Elihu, on the pale horse men call death, rode away and left him to weep in the little upper chamber here at Eaglesfield, and to write his touching tribute to his friend's memory, " as he sat by the form of his beloved companion now cold and silent." Eaglesfield has had its men of earthly and of heavenly service, and may well be proud of their memories. Few men hereabout have lived lives of nobler simplicity and purer aim than John Dalton's friend the Quaker Robinson. If ever "an old age serene and bright" led men to their resting it was "^ Idem, p. 12. 230 THE ENGLISH LAKES his, who could thus write in 1803, " ^s I am approaching second childhood I may now some- times think, speak, and act as a child. But if in second childhood the simplicity and innocence of the child be conspicuous it doth not appear a very degraded or melancholy situation." ^ Few have passed into the valley of the shadow with fuller trust than he, in whose diary the last entry but one runs as follows : — " Oh, sweet Jesus ! thou merciful Mediator, thou art touched with a feeling of our infirmities ! calm my unsettled mind ! support me through this pilgrimage ! oh be with me to the end ! Amen."^ We leave the village with grateful hearts, and round now by the village pond, and so back to the road we go, away toward Pardsey Crag, the Mecca of Cumbrian quakerhood. As we turn to Pardsey Crag we think of those rough days when the " Prophet of the Leathern Suit" and his followers faced the storm of orthodoxy here in the North. Readers of Chancellor Ferguson's admirable His- tory of the Quaker Movement in Cumberland and Westmoreland, will know what short shrift the poor persecuted Friends received at the hands of Sir Gilfrid Lawson, Black Musgrave, Daniel Fleming and the like ; what bitter treatment at the hands of Carlisle gaolers was theirs, and will understand the pathos of the situation and the simple bravery of Fox's character as seen in his account of his ^A Bag of Old Letters — " Elihu Robinson," pp. 13, 14. ^ Idem, p. 16. COCKERMOUTH 231 visit to Cumberland in 1663. I quote from his Journal. .^ " When I had visited Friends in those parts, and they were settled upon Christ, their Foundation, I passed through Northumberland, and came to old Thomas Bewley's, in Cumberland. Friends came about me and asked, ' Would I come there to go into prison ? ' For there was great persecution in that country at that time ; yet I had a general meeting at Thomas Bewley's which was large and precious ; and the Lord's power was over all. " One Musgrave was at that time deputy-governor of Carlisle. Passing along the country, I came to a man's house that had been convinced, whose name was Fletcher, and he told me, * If Musgrave knew I was there he would be sure to send me to prison, he was such a severe man ! ' But I staid not there, only calling on the way to see this man, and then I went to William Pearson's, near Wigton, where this meeting was, which was very large and precious. Some Friends were then prisoners at Carlisle whom I visited by a letter, which Leonard Fell carried. From William Pearson's I visited Friends till I came to Pardshaw-crag, where we had a general meeting, which was large ; all was quiet and peaceable, and the glorious powerful presence of the everlasting God was with us. " So eager were the magistrates about this time to stir up persecution in those parts, that some offered five shillings, and some a noble a day, to any that could apprehend the speakers amongst Quakers ; but it being now the time of the quarter-sessions 232 THE ENGLISH LAKES in that country, the men who were so hired were gone to the sessions to get their wages, so all our meetings were at that time quiet. " From Pardshaw-crag we went into Westmore- land, calling on the way upon Hugh Tickell, near Keswick,^ and upon Thomas Laythes, where Friends came to visit us ; and we had a fine opportunity to be refreshed together. We went that night to Francis Benson's, in Westmoreland, near Justice Fleming's house. This Justice Fleming was at that time in a great rage against Friends, and me in particular ; insomuch that in the open sessions at Kendal just before, he had bid five pounds to any man that should take me, as Francis Benson told me. And it seems, as I went to this Friend's house, I met one man coming from the sessions that had this five pounds offered him to take me, and he knew me ; for as I passed by him, he said to his companion, ' that is George Fox,' yet he had not power to touch me ; for the Lord's power preserved me over them all. The justices being so eager to have me, and I being so often near them, and yet they missing me, tormented them the more."^ Other outlying parts of the English Lakeland have their memories of Fox still fresh upon them. Swarthmoor Hall and the Ulverston and Kendal neighbourhoods are full of them. But except for ^ Hugh Tickell's house was on the site of the present Derwent Cottage, at Portinscale. The Charity bequeathed to the parish of Crosthwaite still keeps his name alive, and a well by the side of the road preserves to us his wife's name Dorothy. "^Journal of George Fox, Vol. II., p. lo. COCKERMOUTH 233 that letter he wrote to David Fleming of Rydal Hall, we have not much to recount of Fox's presence in direct association with the English Lakes : " Friend, Thou hast imprisoned the servants of the Lord, without the breach of any law ; therefore take heed what thou doest, for in the light of the Lord God thou art seen, lest the hand of the Lord be turned against thee ! — G. F." To this in the Journal, Fox adds the footnote : " It was not long after this ere Fleming's wife died, and left him thirteen or fourteen motherless children." ^ Over the brow of yonder hill to the south lies Lorton Vale, and as all lovers of Wordsworth know : " There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore ; Of vast circumference and gloom profound This solitary Tree ! " ^ Long after it had ceased supplying "weapons for the bands Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched To Scotland's heaths ; or those that crossed the sea And drew their sounding bows at Azincour," ^ that tree listened to the preachers of Peace as better than War. There, whilst Cromwell's soldiers who chanced to be quartered on that spot kept order, did George Fox and his friend James Lancaster speak " largely " on the occasion before mentioned, to a great multitude of people in the year 1653, and Fox, writing in his Journal an account of the ^ Idem, p. 22. ^ Yew-Trees, p. i86. ^ Idem. 234 THE ENGLISH LAKES sermon, tells us, " This tree was so full of people that I feared they would break it down." But our goal to-day is the " Crag of the Bards- wood," the old Eisteddfod place perhaps, where in the Celtic times of yore, when their country was one great forest and had not yet been cleared of trees to supply fuel for the " bloomaries " ^ and forges on the coast, the men met at their annual festival to give and take the prizes of their tribal song, or listen to the soul-stirring appeal of their seers, the bards. The country round is desolate on this grey day, almost grim in its melancholy, but sometimes we have seen the sunlight strike the crags into whiteness, and laugh along the upland. The Crag itself is at first sight disappointing. It is not till one climbs on to the breast and finds the limestone out-crop lying about in great semi-detached masses, like the limestone boulders of Bethel and Ai, that one feels the spell that is upon the place, the awe almost that breathes upward from the ground. Then if one nears the natural pulpit, with its natural stone footstool for the preacher, one can understand the solemn hush that fell upon that congregation gathered on the slope below, who felt that God's glory was indeed with the man who was to address them, yea, that angels were ^ The smelting pits and forges for reducing the iron ore by use of charcoal and blast were so called. For the production of this char- coal the Cumberland seaboard was largely denuded of its woods and forests. COCKERMOUTH 235 really ascending and descending upon him and upon them, and that for them at least this was none other than "the gate of heaven." It certainly is at first sight an unlikely place for a preacher of righteousness. How could his voice carry to the listening multitudes ? The Pnyx at Athens is at first sight not less disappointing, — how will the voice carry there ? Closer enquiry proves that both Pnyx and " Pardshaw " Crag are peculiarly adapted for their work. The voice of Pericles or of George Fox had, as it was lifted up, a background that beat back the words with splended effect, far down the slope to the furthest listener in the crowd. Here to-day, as there at Athens years ago, by trial of the acoustic properties, can one vouch for the fact of the wondrous fitness of a rocky platform for voice of Pagan orator or Christian prophet. It has been said that had 10,000 people gathered here to listen to Fox the Quaker, his words would have been carried to the 20,000 ears. And certain it is, that on that day, June 17, 1857, when Neale Dow, the American temperance reformer, addressed a vast concourse, a day memorable for the fact that more beer was sold round Pardsey Crag than had ever been drunk there since it was lifted from its semi-tropical sea, his words were heard by a congregation estimated at not less than 5000 people. Here, as one stands in the silence and solemnity of this bare crag to-day, one calls to mind not only 236 THE ENGLISH LAKES the enthusiastic manner of Fox the Quaker, but the anxious, half-convinced face of that great preacher of repute, John Wilkinson, the vicar of three steeple- houses, who came hither " latin' his flock," as Cum- brian shepherds would say, and of whom Fox tells us in his graphic manner, that "he would walk about the meeting on the first day like a man that went about the commons to look for sheep." But parson Wilkinson, all the while of his restless wandering up and down, was finding the peace which comes of conviction, and so touching is the account of his conversion to the Quaker views that one dares, at risk of wearying one's readers, transcribe it from the Journal under date 1657. " I passed," says Fox, " hence [Abbey-holm ?] to a general meeting at Langlands in Cumberland, which was very large ; for most of the people had so forsaken the priests that the steeple-houses in some places stood empty. And John Wilkinson, a preacher I have often named before, who had three steeple-houses, had so few hearers left, that, giving over preaching in them, he first set up a meeting in his house, and preached there to them that were left. Afterwards he set up a silent meeting (like Friends') to which came a few ; for most of his hearers were come to Friends. Thus he held on till he had not past half a dozen left ; the rest still forsaking him, and coming away to Friends. At last, when he had so very few left, he would come to Pardsey-Crag (where Friends had a meeting of several hundreds of people, who were all come to sit under the Lord Jesus Christ's teaching) and he COCKERMOUTH 237 would walk about the meeting on the First-days like a man that went about the commons to look for sheep. During this time, I came to Pardsey- Crag meeting, and he, with three or four of his followers that were yet left to him, came to the meeting that day, and were all thoroughly convinced. After the meeting, Wilkinson asked me two or three questions, which 1 answered to his satisfaction ; from that time he came amongst Friends, became an able minister, preached the Gospel freely, and turned many to Christ's free teaching. And after he had continued many years in the free ministry of Jesus, he died in the year 1675,"^ We leave the " Crag of the wood of the bards," plunge down the slope and pass the Friends' meeting- house that at one time stood on the summit, but now nestles more securely at the foot of the hill, and make our way back to Brigham station. Yet we do not leave behind the impression made by that gloomy, desolate gathering-place for men in desperate earnest in the dark days of old. The blue encircling mountains, the melancholy plain, the worn and wild- looking prophet pleading from his rocky " rostrum," the sea of anxious upturned faces, — all this comes back upon us, as turning from that Mecca of the Society of Friends, we set our best foot forward on our homeward journey, and feel right glad we under- took the pilgrimage that has linked the poet, the man of science, the friend of poverty, and the prophet, into one bond of golden memory. '^/ourtial of George Fox, Vol. I., p. 313. GENERAL INDEX Addison, Joseph, 207. 112 seq., 117 ; Southey and, loi ; Airy, Sir George, 134, 166. see also Windy Brow. Airy, William, 4. Calvert, Mrs. William, 113, 114, Arlington, Lord, 208. Carlyle, Mrs., 187. Arnold, Jane Martha, 161. Carlyle, Thomas, 7 ; Southey and, Arnold, Matthew, 161; Resignation, 70 seq. , 74 ; De Quincey and, 161. 72 seq. ; John Calvert and, 115 ; Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 161. Wordsworth and, 163, 164 ; on Lake Scenery, 166 ; Tennyson Balmer, Billy, 49. and, 183 seq. ; Speddings and, Bankes, Lady, 124. 187 seq. ; Reminiscences, 70 seq. ; Bankes, Sir John, 124 seq. Fretich Revolution, 74 ; Sartor Barbauld, Mrs., Coleridge and, 21. Resartus, 166 ; Frederick the Barker, Miss, 46, 175. Great, 189. Beaumont, Sir George, 178; Words- Chantrey, Sir Francis, 223. worth and, 87 seq., 94. Charles L, 124. Bedford, Grosvenor, 109. Christopher North , see Wilson , John. Benson, Francis, 232. Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 172 seq. Bewley, Thomas, 231. Clarke, Wilson, 91. Bird, Lieutenant, 198. Clarkson, Thomas, 11, 36, 227. Boswell, James, 175 seq. Clifford, Lord, 126. Bowles, Caroline, 78, 79. Coleridge, Derwent, 15, 16, 39, 49, Briga, or Brigha, 194. 60, 116, 178. Brougham, Lord, 11, loi. Coleridge, Hartley (David) 12, 20, Brown, Dr., 158, 159; Description 32, 39, 59, 60 ; Description of, 16, of Keswick, 159. 26 ; Lamb and, 39 ; as a child, Brownrigg, William, 13, 127, 128. SO seq. Bruce, Robert, 197. Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 81,83. Bush, Rev. L, 143. Coleridge, S. T., Description of, 25 seq.; Wordsworths and, 12, 13,14, Calvert, John, 115 seq. 18, 23, 42, 58, 87 ; Calverts and, Calvert, Mary, \x^ seq. 13, 14 seq., 87 ; Sir H. Davy and, Calvert, Raisley, 97; Wordsworth, 14, 16; Jackson and, 18 seq.\ and, 98 seq. Morning Post and, 19; Charac- Calvert, William, 36, 47, 95, 96 ; teristics, 20 seq., 28, 58, 59 ; God- Coleridge and, 13, 14,87; Words- win and, 24 ; De Quincey and, worth and, 13 seq., 87, 96 seq.; 26 seq.; Charles Lamb and, 30 Characteristics, 14, 15, 95 seq. ; seq., 36; Southey and, 19, 28, 40, Shelley and, 96 seq., 101, 106 5^^., 44, 58, 60, 75 ; on Lake Scenery, GENERAL INDEX 239 41, 46, 196; his ill-health, 59; Shelley and, 104 ; Wedgwood and, 15, loi, 210; The Watch- man, 21 ; Sibylline Leaves , 22, 23; The Ancient Mariner, 0.2,; Chris- iabel, 23 ; The Dark Ladie, 23 ; Remorse, 23 ; The Friend, 58 ; see also Greta Hall. Coleridge, Sarah, 12, 63, 157, 177 ; Description, of, 15, 28 ; Charles Lamb and, 32. Coleridge, Sara, 15, 39, 40, 44, 48, 53, 60, 115, 157, 178. Cookson,Ann, j-eeWordsworth, Ann. Cookson, William, 11. Coplestone, Dr., 109. Cottle, Joseph, 63. Court, Salathiel, 209. Cromwell, Oliver, 198. Crosthwaite, Daniel, 131. Crosthwaite, Peter, maps, 132, 173- Cumberland Pacquet, in. Cumming, Lucy, see Smith, Lucy. Dalton, Dr. John, 218 seq. ; Otley and, 132, 218 seq. ; E. Robinson and, 222 seq. Dalton, Jonathan, 221. Danvers, Charles, 45, 50. Dare, Gideon, 106, 112. Davy, Sir Humphrey, 101 ; Cole- ridge and, 14, 16, 41. Dawes, Vicar, 178. De Quincey, Thomas, 2 ; Coleridge and, 26 seq. ; Southey and, 63, 72, 73) 75 5 Shelley and, 103, 104. Derwentwater, Earl of, 122, 123. Douglas, Earl of, 197. Dow, Neale, 235. Dowden, Professor, 95. Dunglison, J., 128. Duppa, 46. Egglesfield, Robert de, 218. Eilbanks, Mr., 203. Erie, Sir W., 124. Faber, Frederick W., 141. Fallows, Fearon, 204 seq. Fallows, Mrs., 206. Fell, Leonard, 231. Ferguson, Chancellor, 230. Fife, Earl of, 192. Fitzgerald, Edward, 175, 179, 180, 181. Fleming, David, 233. Fleming, Sir Daniel, 4, 230, 232. Fletcher, Abraham, 210 seq. ; The Universal Measure, 210. Fletcher, Sir Henry, 198. Fletcher, John, 220. Fox, George, 6, 211 seq.; 230 seq.; Journal of, 212 seq., 215 seq., 231 seq. Franklin, Sir Benjamin, 128. Froude, J. A., 187. Galloway, Lord, 197. Gillmann, James, 58. Gilpin, Richard, 4. Glover, John, 94. Godwin, William, 24, 108, 113, 196. Goodwin, Bishop, 140, 142, 143, 195 j^^. ; Foundations of the Creed, 196. Gough, John, 219 seq. Gray, TThomas, Description of, 119, 120 ; at Keswick, 120 seq. ; at Derwentwater, 158, 163 seq. ; at Bassenthwaite, 172 seq. ; Journal in the Lakes, 120, 121, 163. Greenup, Deborah, 221. Grey, Lord, De Wilton, 8. Grindal, Archbishop, 8, 9. Harvey, Rev. H. N., 206. Hazlitt, William, 47 ; his Descrip- tion of Coleridge, 25, 26. Hitchener, Miss, 7, 105, 108, 114. Howard, Mrs., 91. Hutchinson, Mary, j^e Wordsworth, Mary. Jackson, William, 17 seq., 29, 47 ; see also Greta Hall. Jeffrey, Lord, 'j'j. Jocelyn, 7. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 207. Johnstone, James, 187. Keats, John, in Lake District, 161, 162, 170 seq. ; Ode to Psyche, 163. Ketil, 86, 118, 122. Lamb, C\\2ix\&s, Morning Post ■a.xiA, 19; Coleridge and, 19, 30 seq.; 36, 38 ; Wordsworth and, 29, 33 ; 240 THE ENGLISH LAKES C. Lloyd and. 31, 32 ; on Lakes, 32 seq., 35 seq., 170; Character- istics, 33 5ey., 59. Lamb, Mary, 36, 37, 170. Lander, W.S.,Southey and, 54, 77, 85. Larkham, George, 211, 212, 213. Lawson, Sir Gilfrid, 14, 42, 47, loi, 230. Lawson, James, 49. Laythes, Thomas, 232. Lietch, Dr., Wordsworth and, 88 seq. ; Otley and, 133, 136 seq. ; Wm. Smith and, 149, 158. Lietch, Thomas, 89. Linton, Mrs. Lynn, t.<^o seq. \ Chris- topher Kirkiand, 191 ; Lake Coun- try, 192 ; Lizzie Lorton, 192. Lloyd, Charles, 31, 32, 36, no. Lockhart, J. Gibson, on Southey, 64 seq. London Gazette, 209. Lonsdale, Lord, 76, loi. Lough, John Graham, 85. Lovell, Aunt, 48. Lovell, Robert, 63. Lowther, Sir James, 199. Lynn, Vicar, 69, 191. Malone, The Misses, 178. Manning, 32, 36. Mark, Ruth, 226. Martineau, James, 188. Mary, Queen of Scots, 10, 198. Milnes, Monckton, 190. Monkhouse, Will. , 123. Montagu, Basil, 58. More, Sir Thomas, 56, 57, 158. Morgan, J. J., 58. Morning Post, The, 19, Musgrave, "Black," 230. Myers, Rev. Frederic, 129, 142, 150 ; Characteristics of, 142 seq. ; Catholic Thoughts on the Church of Christ and the Church of Eng- land, 142 ; Essays on Great Men, 142. Myers, F. W., 141. Nash, 94. National Review, The, 188. Newsbook, The, 209. Nicholas, Sir Edward, 208. Norfolk, Duke of, 13, 96, 106, in. North (Christopher), see Wilson. Ormr, 86, 122. Otley, Jonathan, 129 seq. ; Charac- teristics, 133, 134 seq., 158, 166; Portrait of, 131 ; his Friends, 131, 135 seq. ; Death of, 137 ; Concise Description of the English Lakes, 132 seq. .^ Peachy, General, 47. Pearson, William, 231. Peel, Sir Robert, 179. Phillips, Professor, 130, 131, 133. Poole, John, 157. Poole, Thomas, Coleridges and, 12, 22, 25, 60, 177. Pringle, Sir John, 128. Quillinan, Edward, 80, 84; Lines on Death of Sotitliey, 80. Radcliffe, Mrs., 170. Ratcliffe, Sir Thomas, 123. Reid, Professor, 77, 181. Reynell, Mr., 15. Richardson, John, 150. Rickarby, Vicar, 211. Robinson, Elihu, 222, 226 seq. ; Dalton and, 227; Wilkinson and, 228 seq. Robinson, H. Crabbe, 84, 113. Robson, Miss, 183, 184. Rogers, Samuel, 29, 76, 156, 158. Romney, Samuel, 3, 6. Rowe, Mr., 20. Ruskin, John, on Southey, 68, 69; at Friars' Crag, 154 seq.; Iteriad, 68, 69, 155. Sandys, Edwin, 9. Scott, Sir Walter, 87. Sedgwick, Professor, Otley and, 131, 133, 134, 138 seq. ; Dalton and, 224 seq. Shelley, Harriet, 7, 96, 102, 107, m, 112, 113. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 7; Calvert and, 96 seq., loi, 106 seq., 112 seq., 117; at Chestnut Hill, 102 seq.; De Quincey and, 104; Cole- ridge and, 104 ; Southey and, 107 seq., 112 seq.; Characteristics, 104 seq.. Ill, 112 ; on Lake Scenery, 105 ; Godwin and, 109 ; Words- worth and, 113, 114; Necessity of GENERAL INDEX 241 Atheism, 103, 109 ; Tract on Catholic Emancipation, iii ; Hu- lert Cauvin, 11 1. Smith, Lucy, 146 seq., 150, 152. Smith, WiUiam, 129, 146 seq., 150, 158, 163 ; Wordsworth and, 148 seq. ; Thorndale, 129, 146, 149, 152, 158 ; Gravenhurst, 146, 151, 152; The Coming H ace, 151. Southey, Bertha, 53, 78. Southey, Cuthbert, 53, 82. Southey, Edith, 40, 42, 44, 175, 176 ; Death of, 70. Southey, Edith M. , 53, T15, 175, 178. Southey, Herbert, 39, 40, 53, 55, 175. ^77' 178. Southey, Isabel, 53, 55. Southey, Katharine, 53. Southey, Margery, 40, 44, 55. Southey, Robert, Description of, 53, 54, 55, 63 seq., 69 seq. ; Removal to Keswick, 40 seq. ; Coleridge and, 19, 28, 40 seq., 4rA, 58, 60, 61, 73; Wordsworth and, 41, 54, 75 seq., 80 seq., 84; Characteristics, 44. 48, S3 ^eq., 57, 61, 63 seq., 67 seq., 74 seq., 118 seq., 174; on Lake Scenery, 45 ; De Quincey and, 63 seq., 72 ; Carlyle and, 70 seq., 74 seq. ; Epitaph on Tomb of, 82 seq.; Shelley and, 104 seq., io5 seq., 112 seq.; Poet Laureate, 113, 115, 179 ; Madoc, 44 ; Vision of Judgment, 47, 62 ; Colloquies, 56; Joan of Arc, 62; Battle of Blenheim, 62 ; Roderick, 62 ; Curse of Kehama, 62 ; Lines on Lodore. 162. Southey, Thomas, 44, 56. Spedding, Edward, 185 seq. Spedding, James, Tennyson and, 180 j^^., 184, 185, 187. Spedding, Miss, 183. Spedding, Mr., of Aramthwaite, 173- Spedding, Thomas, 47, 184 ; Carlyle and, 187 seq. Spenser, Edmund, 8. St. Aedfrith, 9. St. Anthony, 154. St. Bega, 8. St. Cuthbert, 9, 154. St. Herbert, 154, 156, 157. I. ' St. Kentigern, 7, 81, 196. St. Mungo, see St. Kentigern. Stanger, Joshua, 115. Stephens, Dr., 9. Sterling, John, 115, 148. Strafford, Lord Wentworth, 124. Stubbs, Thomas, 217. Sunderlin, Lady, 175, 177. Sunderlin, Lord, 175, 177. Sweyn, 122. Taylor, Sir Henry, 62, 70, 71, 72, '^7. Tennyson, Dr., 185. Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, at Mire- house, ijgseq., 183 j-e^. ; Words- worth and, 181 ; at Keswick, 182 seq. ; Carlyle and, 183 seq. ; De- scription of, 183 ; Lord of Bur- leigh, 181 ; Morte U Arthur, 181; In Memoriam, 178, 182, 185. Tennyson, Lady, T.%j,seq. Thompson, Betty, 48. Thompson, Dr. W. H., 143. Threlkeld, Sir Lancelot, 126. Trench^rd, Thomas, 124. Tickell, Dorothy, 232. Tickell, Hugh, 232. Tickell, Thomas, 207. Times, 209. Townsend, Chauncey, 193. Turner, William, at Derwentwater, 156, 158. Voluspa, Saga of, 8. Waldeof, 197. Walla, 122. Ward, Clifton, 140, 141. Warwick, Earl of, 207. Watts, Alaric, 78. Wedgwoods, The, Coleridge and, 15, loi, 210. West's Guide to the Lakes, 160. Westall, W., 57, 94. Westbrook, Eliza, 7, 102, 108, iia, 113- Wharton, Dr., 120. Wilkinson, John, 213, 214, 216, 236. Wilkinson, Thomas, 11,55, 167,226; Robinson and, 228 seq. Wilkinson, Rev. Mr., 47. William IV., 224. Williamson, Vicar, 208. Williamson, Sir Joseph, 208. 242 THE ENGLISH LAKES Willy, Southey's serving-man, 49. Wilsey, Nurse, 48, 51, 52. Wilson, John, 49, 144 ; Isle of Palms, 104. Wordsworth, Ann, 11, 199, 204. Wordsworth, Christopher, 199. Wordsworth, Dora, 88, 115. Wordsworth, Dorothy, 10, 11, 13, 14, 25, 96, 102, 175 ; at Cocker- mouth, 199, 201 ; Dorothy Words- worth! s Grasmere Journal, 12, 13, 25 ; Lines on the Floating Island, 162. Wordsworth, John, L, 199. Wordsworth, John, II., 199. Wordsworth, John, III., 211. Wordsworth, Mary, 11, 175. Wordsworth, Richard, 199. Wordsworth, William, Description of, at Hawkshead, 9 ; at Cocker- mouth, 10 ; 199 seq. , 203 seq. ; at Penrith, 11 ; Wilkinson and, 11, 55, 167, 226 ; Coleridge and, 12, 14, 18, 23, 42,58, 87; Calvert and, 14, 87, 95 seq. ; Mor?iing Post and, 19 ; Lamb and, 29, 33 ; Southey and, 41, 55, 75 seq., 87; Hartley Coleridge and, 16, 50 ; Characteristics, 75 seq. ; Sir G. Beaumont and, 88 seq. , 94 ; Dr. Lietch and, 88 seq. ; Shelley and, 114 ; Myers and, 144 ; William Smith and, 146 seq. ; Dr. Brown and, 159 ; on Scawfell, 167 seq. ; on Skiddaw, 176 seq.; Tennyson and, 181 ; his Death, 182 ; The Prelude, 10, 200, 201, 203; To H. C, Six Years Old, 16, 50; The Waggoner, 17, 29 ; Lyrical Ballads, 23 ; Sonnets, 30, 88, 97, 100, 162 ; Written after the Death of Charles Lamb, 35; Joanna, 35; The Triad, 40 ; The Excursion , •jj ; Epitaph on Southey, 8 1 seq. ; Stanzas Written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson's Castle of In- dolence, 95 ; Inscriptions, 157 ; An Evening Walk, 162 ; Nun's Well, Brigham, 211, 214; Mary Queen of Scots, 199 ; To a Butter- fly, 201. Wright, Charles, 135. INDEX OF PLACES Alfoxden, 23, 42. Caermote, 139, 202. Allan Bank, 58. Caldbeck, 221. Ambleside, 37, 120, 129. Cape Town, 205. Applethwaite, 86 ; Southey and, 56 ; Carf-close Reeds, 122, 158. Wordsworth and, 87 seq. Carlisle, 42 ; Castle of, 198 ; Prison Armboth, 160, i5i. of, 216, 231. Ashness, 160, 161. Carnforth, 6. Askham, 53. Castle Hill, (Castlehead, Castlette), Keswick, 121, 122, 129, 139, 140, Barf, 195. 141, 142, 158, 202. Harrow Common, 135, 159. Castle Rock, Borrowdale, 139. Bassenthwaite, 24, 42, 66, 82, 119, Castlerigg (Castrigg), 122, 123, 125, 139, 170, 171, 172. 139. 197- Black Combe, 141, Castlette Cottage, 139. Blencathra, 117, 126, 141. Catchedecam, 123. Borrowdale, 10, 42, 120 ; Castle Cat Ghyll,Southeyand, 56,57, 82, 158. Rock, 139 ; Newton Place, Wil- Causey Pike, 56. liam and Lucy Smith at, 151, Chestnut Hill, Shelley at, 102 seq.. 164 ; Yew Trees of, 164. 107, no, 116. Bowness, 149. Cocker, The, 197. Braithwaite, 195. Cockermouth, 198, 212 ; Words- Bratha, The, 141. worths at, 10, 199 seq. ; Castle of, Brathay Old, 31. 197, 200, 202 ; Hay Hill, 202 ; Bridekirk (St. Bridget's Kirk), 206, Michael Brows, 202. 207, 209. Cockshott (Cockshut), 121, 122. Brigham, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, Coniston, 6. 237; St. Bridget's, 211; Nun's Corfe Castle, 124. Well at, 194, 211 ; George Fox at, Crosthwaite Church, 18, 69, 80, 81, 212, 216. 127. Brighton, 151. Crosthwaite Churchyard, 48, 49, 103, Bristol, 40, 44. 118, 124, 138, 192. British Hill, 86. Crosthwaite School, 125. Brough, 120. Crosthwaite Vale, 122. Brougham Hall, 11. Crosthwaite Vicarage, 192. Broughton, loi, 210. Crow Park, 121, 122. Broughton, Little, 210. Crummock, 168. Brow Top, 139, 143. Brundholme Woods, 56. Dalton, 6. 244 THE ENGLISH LAKES Dearham, 210. Derwent, The, 10, 163, 196, 197, 200, 201. Derwentwater, 42, 66, 82, 119, 120, 141, 170 ; Floating Island in, 129, 130, 132, 159, 161; Lord's Island, 158 ; St. Herbert's Isle, 154, 157, 158 ; Low-water mark in, 136. Derwent's Muth, see Workington. Donnerdale, 168. Dove Cottage, Townend, Words- worth at, 12, 87. Druid Circle, 56, 122, 177. Duddon Sands, 168. Eamont Vale, 11. Eaglesfield, 218, 221, 223, 224, 226, 229. Emerald Bank, 56. Ennerdale, 168, 199. Eskdale, 168, Esthwaite Hall, 9. Eusmere, 11, 36. Fairy Keld, 159. Falcon Crag, 56, 57, 121,122,158,159. Fawe Park, 122, 158. Fieldside, 117, 119. Fri .rs' Crag, 130, 135, 154, 155, 156. Furness Abbey, 6. Gale Cottage, 91. Gale, The, 170. Glaramara, 10, 119. Glenderaterra, 142. Gosforth, 8. Grange, Borrowdale, 121, 163. Grasmeve, 14, 33, 37, 104. Grasmire (Grasmoor) 168. Great Gavel (Great Gable), 165, 166, 167, 168. Great Wood, 56, 121, 122. Greta, The, 15, 41, 45, 54, 56, loi, 142. Greta Bank, see Windy Brow. Greta Hall, 86 ; Coleridges and, 13, 14, 15. 16 seg.; Jackson and, 18 seg. ; its situation, 24, 36, 40, 41, 45, 66 ; Rogers at, 28 ; Charles Lamb at, 29, 36 seg. ; Coleridge's .study in, 37, 48 ; Southey and, 45 seg., 53 seg., 66 seg., 79 seg., 109 ; Description of house, ^I,47 seg.; Southey's study in, 48, 66, 80. Greystoke Castle, 96, 106, in. Hammersmith, 58. Harrington, 9. » Harrot Hill, 198. Hawell's Cross, 170. Hawkshead, 9, 202. Helvellyn, 37, 120, 123, 135, 169. Hensingham, 8, 9. Highgate, 58. Houghton-le-Spring, 5. Howe, The, 89, 197. Howe Farm, 122. Howrahs, The, 81. Ireby, 172, 173. Isel, 10. Island, The, 47. Kendal, 121, 219, 229, 232. Kentmere, 4. Kentmere Hall, 4. Keswick, 7 seg., 13, 43, 87, 120, 121, 156 ; Bromley's House, 16 ; High Hill, 16 ; Museum, 50 ; Market House, 123, 125 ; Almshouse, 126 seg. ; Post Office, 128 ; Der- wentwater Place, 129, 142, 146, 150; .Vlanor House, 129; Kings- head Yard, 130; St. John's Church, 129, 139, 140 ; St. John's Library, 142. Lake Scenery, 36, 38, 43, 45, 47, 66, 105, 121, 159, 199, 200, 234. Lakeside, 6. Lancaster, 3. Langdale, 129, 169. Langdale Pikes, 169. Langlands, 236. Latrigg, 56, 94. Lodore, 24, 37, 45, 82, 105, 151, 161. Lorton Vale, 10, 212, 215, 233. Loughrigg, 12. Lowther Castle, 55. Maes Gwyn, 44. Maiden Mawr, 163. Mayborough Mound, 11. Millom, 212. Mirehouse, 180 seq., 183 seg., 187 seg., 197. INDEX OF PLACES 245 N addle, Vale of, 123. Skiddaw, 24, 29, 37, 38, 42, 123, Nether Stowey, 15, 22, 23, 32. 131. 137. 169, 170; Descriptions Newlands, 56. of, 45, 170, 174 ; Views of, 122, Newlands Beck, 56. 162, 196 ; Bonfires on, 174 seq. Newton Place, Borrowdale, 151, 164. Skiddaw Dod, 56. Spooney Green Lane, 94. Ormathwaite (Ormrthwaite), 13, 86. Spring's Farm, 56. 94. St. Bees, 8, 9, 208. Ormathwaite Hall, 127, 128. Stable Hills, 158. Otterbield Bay, 157. Stowey, Nether, 15, 22, 23, 32. Ouzebridge, 172. Styhead Pass, 165. Oxenholme, 5. Swarthmoor Hall, 6, 217, 232. Papcastle, 197, 202, 209. Tent Lodge, 150, 185. Pardsey (Pardshaw) Crag, 220 ; Threlkeld, 63. George Fox at, 230, 231, 232, 234, Tilberthwaite Gorge, 185. 235, 236, 237. Pembroke College, 120. Ullswater, 11, 37. Penrith, 11, 63, loi, 199, 229. Ulverston, 6, 232. Plumbland School, 205. Pooley Bridge, 11. Vicarage Hill, Keswick, 86, 121, Portinscale, 122, 149, 196, 232. 193. 194- Radley School, 148. Walla Crag, 56, 105, 158, 159. Rakefoot, 56, 105. Wastdale, 168. Rakefoot Castle, 124. Watendlath, 13, 56. Rakefoot Lane, 123. Whistling Syke, 210. Rochester, 208. Whitehaven, 7, 8, 112, 127. Roman Camp, Keswick, 123. Wigton, 231. Rydal Hall, 233. Windermere, 3, 5, 121. Rydal Mount, 91. Windy Brow, 12, 13, 14, 87, 94, 96, 112, 116. Scafell Pike, View from, 167, 168 Workington, 10, 198. seq. Wythburn, 12, 171. Seathwaite Farm, 165. Wythop, 119, 195, 197. Shiplake Vicarage, 182. Shrewsbury, Coleridge at, 20. Yanwath, 11, 229. GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. CANON RAWNSLEY'S WORKS Cheaper Edition of Canon Rawnsley's Works on the ENGLISH LAKES. 3s. 6d. net per vol. Each Volume Cr. 8vo, with many Illustrations. With 8 full-page Plates, ^s. bd. net. A Rambler's Note Book at the English Lakes With lo full-page Plates, ■^s. bd. net. Lake Country Sketches Second Edition. With Z full-page Plates. 3^-. bd. net. Life and Nature at the English Lakes Second Impression. With 16 full-page Illustrations. IS. bd. net. 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