THE LAND OF WORDSWORTH
A good way by which to enter the Lake District of England is to travel
to Penrith and thence to drive along the shore of Ullswater, or sail
upon its crystal bosom, to the blooming solitude of Patterdale. Penrith
lies at the eastern slope of the mountains of Westmoreland, and you may
see the ruins of Penrith Castle, once the property and the abode of
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, before he became King of England. Penrith
Castle was one of the estates that were forfeited by the great Earl of
Warwick, and King Edward the Fourth gave it to his brother Richard, in
1471. It is recorded that Richard had lived there for five years, from
1452 to 1457, when he was Sheriff of Cumberland. Not much remains of
that ancient structure, and the remnant is now occupied by a florist.
I saw it, as I saw almost everything else in Great Britain during the
summer of 1888, under a tempest of rain; for it rained there, with a
continuity almost ruinous, from the time of the lilac and apple-blossom
till when the clematis began to show the splendour of its purple
shield and the acacia to drop its milky blossoms on the autumnal grass.
But travellers must not heed the weather. If there are dark days there
are also bright ones,--and one bright day in such a paradise as the
English Lakes atones for the dreariness of a month of rain. Besides,
even the darkest days may be brightened by gentle companionship.
Henry Irving[15] and Ernest Bendall, two of the most intellectual and
genial men in England, were my associates, in that expedition. We went
from London into Westmoreland on a mild, sweet day in July, and we
rambled for several days in that enchanted region. It was a delicious
experience, and I often close my eyes and dream of it--as I am dreaming
now.
[Illustration: PENRITH CASTLE]
[Illustration: _Ullswater._]
In the drive between Penrith and Patterdale you see many things that
are worthy of regard. Among these are the parish church of Penrith, a
building made of red stone, remarkable for a massive square tower of
great age and formidable aspect. In the adjacent churchyard are The
Giant's Grave and The Giant's Thumb, relics of a distant past that
strongly and strangely affect the imagination. The grave is said to
be that of Ewain Cæsarius,[16] a gigantic individual who reigned over
Cumberland in remote Saxon times. The Thumb is a rough stone, about
seven feet high, presenting a clumsy cross, and doubtless commemorative
of another mighty warrior. Sir Walter Scott, who traversed Penrith
on his journeys between Edinburgh and London, seldom omitted to pause
for a view of those singular memorials, and Scott, like Wordsworth,
has left upon this region the abiding impress of his splendid genius.
Ulfo's Lake is Scott's name for Ullswater, and thereabout is laid
the scene of his poem of _The Bridal of Triermain_. In Scott's day
the traveller went by coach or on horseback, but now, "By lonely
Threlkeld's waste and wood," at the foot of craggy Blencathara, you
pause at a railway station having Threlkeld in large letters on its
official signboard. Another strange thing that is passed on the
road between Penrith and Patterdale is "Arthur's Round Table,"--a
circular terrace of turf slightly raised above the surrounding
level, and certainly remarkable, whatever may be its historic or
antiquarian merit, for fine texture, symmetrical form, and lovely,
luxuriant colour. Scholars think it was used for tournaments in the
days of chivalry, but no one rightly knows anything about it, save
that it is old. Not far from this bit of mysterious antiquity the
road winds through a quaint village called Tirril, where, in the
Quaker burial-ground, is the grave of an unfortunate young man,
Charles Gough, who lost his life by falling from the Striding Edge
of Helvellyn in 1805, and whose memory is hallowed by Wordsworth and
Scott, in poems that almost every schoolboy has read, and could never
forget,--associated as they are with the story of the faithful dog, for
three months in that lonesome wilderness vigilant beside the dead body
of his master,
"A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below."
Patterdale possesses this advantage over certain other towns and
hamlets of the lake region, that it is not much frequented by tourists.
The coach does indeed roll through it at intervals, laden with those
miscellaneous, desultory visitors whose pleasure it is to rush wildly
over the land. And those objects serve to remind you that now, even
as in Wordsworth's time, and in a double sense, "the world is too
much with us." But an old-fashioned inn, Kidd's Hotel, still exists,
at the head of Ullswater, to which fashion has not resorted and where
kindness presides over the traveller's comfort. Close by also is a cosy
nook called Glenridding, where, if you are a lover of solitude and
peace, you may find an ideal abode. One house wherein lodging may be
obtained was literally embowered in roses on that summer evening when
first I strolled by the fragrant hay-fields on the Patterdale shore of
Ullswater. The rose flourishes in wonderful luxuriance and profusion
throughout Westmoreland and Cumberland. As you drive along the lonely
roads your way will sometimes be, for many miles, between hedges that
are bespangled with wild roses and with the silver globes of the laurel
blossom, while around you the lonely mountains, bare of foliage save
for matted grass and a dense growth of low ferns, tower to meet the
clouds. It is a wild place, and yet there is a pervading spirit of
refinement over it all,--as if Nature had here wrought her wonders
in the mood of the finest art. And at the same time it is a place
of infinite variety. The whole territory occupied by the lakes and
mountains of this famous district is scarcely more than thirty miles
square; yet within this limit, comparatively narrow, are comprised
all possible beauties of land and water that the most passionate
worshipper of natural loveliness could desire.
My first night in Patterdale was one of such tempest as sometimes rages
in America about the time of the fall equinox. The wind shook the
building. It was long after midnight when I went to rest, and the storm
seemed to increase in fury as the night wore on. Torrents of rain were
dashed against the windows. Great trees near by creaked and groaned
beneath the strength of the gale. The cold was so severe that blankets
were welcome. It was my first night in Wordsworth's country, and I
thought of Wordsworth's lines:
"There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods."
The next morning was sweet with sunshine and gay with birds and
flowers, and all semblance of storm and trouble seemed banished forever.
"But now the sun is shining calm and bright,
And birds are singing in the distant woods."
Wordsworth's poetry expresses the inmost soul of those lovely lakes and
mighty hills, and no writer can hope to tread, save remotely and with
reverent humility, in the footsteps of that magician. You understand
Wordsworth better, however, and you love him more dearly, for having
rambled over his consecrated ground. There was not a day when I did
not, in some shape or another, meet with his presence. Whenever I was
alone his influence came upon me as something unspeakably majestic and
solemn. Once, on a Sunday, I climbed to the top of Place Fell[17]
[which is 2154 feet above the sea-level, while Scawfell Pike is 3210,
and Helvellyn is 3118], and there, in the short space of two hours, I
was thrice cut off by rainstorms from all view of the world beneath.
Not a tree could I find on that mountain-top, nor any place of shelter
from the blast and the rain, except when crouching beside the mound
of rock at its summit, which in that country they call a "man." Not
a living creature was visible, save now and then a lonely sheep, who
stared at me for a moment and then scurried away. But when the skies
cleared and the cloudy squadrons of the storm went careering over
Helvellyn, I looked down into no less than fifteen valleys beautifully
coloured by the foliage and the patches of cultivated land, each vale
being sparsely fringed with little gray stone dwellings that seemed
no more than card-houses, in those appalling depths. You think of
Wordsworth, in such a place as that,--if you know his poetry. You
cannot choose but think of him.
"Who comes not hither ne'er shall know
How beautiful the world below."
Yet somehow it happened that whenever friends joined in those rambles
the great poet was sure to dawn upon us in a comic way. When we were
resting on the bridge at the foot of Brothers Water, which is a little
lake, scarcely more than a mountain tarn, lying between Ullswater and
the Kirkstone Pass, some one recalled that Wordsworth had once rested
there and written a poem about it. We were not all as devout admirers
of the bard as I am, and certainly it is not every one of the great
author's compositions that a lover of his genius would wish to hear
quoted, under such circumstances. The Brothers Water poem is the one
that begins "The cock is crowing, the stream is flowing," and I do
not think that its insipidity is much relieved by its famous picture
of the grazing cattle, "forty feeding like one." Henry Irving, not
much given to enthusiasm about Wordsworth, heard those lines with
undisguised merriment, and made a capital travesty of them on the
spot. It is significant to remember, with reference to the inequality
of Wordsworth, that on the day before he wrote "The cock is crowing,"
and at a place but a short distance from the Brothers Water bridge,
he had written that peerless lyric about the daffodils,--"I wandered
lonely as a cloud." Gowbarrow Park is the scene of that poem,--a place
of ferns and hawthorns, notable for containing Lyulph's Tower, a
romantic, ivy-clad lodge owned by the Duke of Norfolk, and Aira Force,
a waterfall much finer than Lodore. Upon the lake shore in Gowbarrow
Park you may still see the daffodils as Wordsworth saw them, a golden
host, "glittering and dancing in the breeze." No one but a true poet
could have made that perfect lyric, with its delicious close:
"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
[Illustration: _Lyulph's Tower--Ullswater._]
The third and fourth lines were written by the poet's wife, and they
show that she was not a poet's wife in vain. It must have been in his
"vacant mood" that he rested and wrote, on the bridge at Brothers
Water. "I saw Wordsworth often when I was a child," said Frank
Marshall[18] [who had joined us at Penrith]; "he used to come to my
father's house, Patterdale Hall, and once I was sent to the garden by
Mrs. Wordsworth to call him to supper. He was musing there, I suppose.
He had a long, horse-like face. I don't think I liked him. I said,
'Your wife wants you.' He looked down at me and he answered, 'My
boy, you should say Mrs. Wordsworth, and not "your wife."' I looked
up at him and I replied, 'She _is_ your wife, isn't she?' Whereupon
he said no more. I don't think he liked me either." We were going up
Kirkstone Pass when Marshall told this story,--which seemed to bring
the pensive and homely poet plainly before us. An hour later, at the
top of the pass, while waiting in the old inn called the Traveller's
Rest, which incorrectly proclaims itself the highest inhabited house
in England,[19] I spoke with an ancient, weather-beaten hostler, not
wholly unfamiliar with the medicinal virtue of ardent spirits, and
asked for his opinion of the great lake poet. "Well," he said, "people
are always talking about Wordsworth, but I don't see much in it. I've
read it, but I don't care for it. It's dry stuff--it don't chime."
Truly there are all sorts of views, just as there are all sorts of
people.
[Illustration: _William Wordsworth._]
Mementos of Wordsworth are frequently encountered by the traveller
among these lakes and fells. One of them, situated at the foot of
Place Fell, is a rustic cottage that the poet once selected for his
residence: it was purchased for him by Lord Lonsdale, as a partial
indemnity for losses caused by an ancestor of his to Wordsworth's
father. The poet liked the place, but he never lived there. The
house somewhat resembles the Shakespeare cottage at Stratford,--the
living-room being floored with stone slabs, irregular in size and
shape and mostly broken by hard use. In a corner of the kitchen stands
a fine carved oak cupboard, dark with age, inscribed with the date of
the Merry Monarch, 1660.
[Illustration: _Approach to Ambleside._]
What were the sights of those sweet days that linger still, and will
always linger, in my remembrance? A ramble in the park of Patterdale
Hall [the old name of the estate is Halsteads], which is full of
American trees; a golden morning in Dovedale, with Irving, much like
Jaques, reclined upon a shaded rock, half-way up the mountain, musing
and moralising in his sweet, kind way, beside the brawling stream; the
first prospect of Windermere, from above Ambleside,--a vision of heaven
upon earth; the drive by Rydal Water, which has all the loveliness of
celestial pictures seen in dreams; the glimpse of stately Rydal Hall
and of the sequestered Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth so long lived and
where he died; the Wishing Gate, where one of us, I know, wished in his
heart that he could be young again and be wiser than to waste his youth
in self-willed folly; the restful hours of observation and thought at
delicious Grasmere, where we stood in silence at Wordsworth's grave
and heard the murmur of Rotha singing at his feet; the lovely drive
past Matterdale, across the moorlands, with only clouds and rooks for
our chance companions, and mountains for sentinels along our way; the
ramble through Keswick, all golden and glowing in the afternoon sun,
till we stood by Crosthwaite church and read the words of commemoration
that grace the tomb of Robert Southey; the divine circuit of
Derwent,--surely the loveliest sheet of water in England; the descent
into the vale of Keswick, with sunset on the rippling crystal of the
lake and the perfume of countless wild roses on the evening wind. These
things, and the midnight talk about these things,--Irving, so tranquil,
so gentle, so full of keen and sweet appreciation of them,--Bendall, so
bright and thoughtful,--Marshall, so quaint and jolly, and so full of
knowledge equally of nature and of books!--can never be forgotten. In
one heart they are cherished forever.
[Illustration: _Grasmere Church._]
Wordsworth is buried in Grasmere churchyard, close by the wall, on
the bank of the little river Rotha. "Sing him thy best," said Matthew
Arnold, in his lovely dirge for the great poet--
"Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone."
In the same grave with Wordsworth sleeps his devoted wife. Beside them
rest the poet's no less devoted sister Dorothy, who died at Rydal Mount
in 1855, aged 83, and his daughter, Dora, together with her husband
Edward Quillinan, of whom Arnold wrote so tenderly:
"Alive, we would have changed his lot,
We would not change it now."
On the low gravestone that marks the sepulchre of Wordsworth are
written these words: "William Wordsworth, 1850. Mary Wordsworth, 1859."
In the neighbouring church a mural tablet presents this inscription:
"To the memory of William Wordsworth. A true poet and philosopher,
who by the special gift and calling of Almighty God, whether he
discoursed on man or nature, failed not to lift up the heart to holy
things, tired not of maintaining the cause of the poor and simple,
and so in perilous times was raised up to be a chief minister, not
only of noblest poetry, but of high and sacred truth. The memorial is
raised here by his friends and neighbours, in testimony of respect,
affection, and gratitude. Anno MDCCCLI."
[Illustration: _Rydal Mount--Wordsworth's Seat._]
A few steps from that memorable group will bring you to the marble
cross that marks the resting-place of Hartley Coleridge, son of the
great author of _The Ancient Mariner_, himself a poet of exquisite
genius; and close by is a touching memorial to the gifted man who
inspired Matthew Arnold's poems of _The Scholar-Gipsy_ and _Thyrsis_.
This is a slab laid upon his mother's grave, at the foot of her
tombstone, inscribed with these words:
"In memory of Arthur Hugh Clough, some time Fellow of Oriel College,
Oxford, the beloved son of James Butler and Anne Clough. This
remembrance in his own country is placed on his mother's grave by
those to whom life was made happy by his presence and his love. He is
buried in the Swiss cemetery at Florence, where he died, November 13,
1861, aged 42.
"'So, dearest, now thy brows are cold
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.'"
Southey rests in Crosthwaite churchyard, about half a mile north of
Keswick, where he died. They show you Greta Hall, a fine mansion, on a
little hill, enclosed in tall trees, which for forty years, ending in
1843, was the poet's home. In the church is a marble figure of Southey,
recumbent on a large stone sarcophagus. His grave is in the ground, a
little way from the church, marked by a low flat tomb, on the end of
which appears an inscription commemorative of a servant who had lived
fifty years in his family and is buried near him. There was a pretty
scene at this grave. When I came to it Irving was already there, and
was speaking to a little girl who had guided him to the spot. "If any
one were to give you a shilling, my dear," he said, "what would you
do with it?" The child was confused and she murmured softly, "I don't
know, sir." "Well," he continued, "if any one were to give you two
shillings, what would you do?" She said she would save it. "But what if
it were three shillings?" he asked, and each time he spoke he dropped
a silver coin into her hand, till he must have given her more than a
dozen of them. "Four--five--six--seven--what would you do with the
money?" "I would give it to my mother, sir," she answered at last, her
little face all smiles, gazing up at the stately, sombre stranger,
whose noble countenance never looked more radiant than it did then,
with gentle kindness and pleasure. It is a trifle to mention, but it
was touching in its simplicity; and that amused group, around the grave
of Southey, in the blaze of the golden sun of a July afternoon, with
Skiddaw looming vast and majestic over all, will linger with me as
long as anything lovely and of good report is treasured in my memory.
Long after we had left the place I chanced to speak of its peculiar
interest. "The most interesting thing I saw there," said Irving,
"was that sweet child." I do not think the great actor was ever much
impressed with the beauties of the lake poets.
Another picture glimmers across my dream,--a picture of peace and
happiness which may close this rambling reminiscence of gentle days. We
had driven up the pass between Glencoin and Gowbarrow, and had reached
Matterdale, on our way toward Troutbeck station,--not the beautiful
Windermere Troutbeck, but the less famous one. The road is lonely,
but at Matterdale the traveller sees a few houses, and there our gaze
was attracted by a gray church nestled in a hollow of the hillside.
It stands sequestered in its place of graves, with bright greensward
around it and a few trees. A faint sound of organ music floated from
this sacred building and seemed to deepen the hush of the summer wind
and shed a holier calm upon the lovely solitude. We dismounted and
silently entered the church. A youth and a maiden, apparently lovers,
were sitting at the organ,--the youth playing and the girl listening,
and looking with tender trust and innocent affection into his face.
He recognised our presence with a kindly nod, but went on with the
music. I do not think she saw us at all. The place was full of soft,
warm light streaming through the stained glass of Gothic windows and
fragrant with perfume floating from the hay-fields and the dew-drenched
roses of many a neighbouring hedge. Not a word was spoken, and after
a few moments we departed, as silently as we had come. Those lovers
will never know what eyes looked upon them that day, what hearts were
comforted with the sight of their happiness, or how a careworn man,
three thousand miles away, fanning upon his hearthstone the dying
embers of hope, now thinks of them with tender sympathy, and murmurs a
blessing on the gracious scene which their presence so much endeared.
[Illustration: _An Old Lich Gate._]