The silent cause of all these sorrowful cries,
--Large jewels, blotched and brown and green and blue,
In simple caskets wove from rushy straw;
I thanked high Heaven for hearts so good and true,
And shared their hope for life that never dies.
They are a far-wandering nation these black-headed gulls. I had seen
separate members of the tribe on the banks of the Neva, and later, on
the banks of the Nile; for they are an adventurous race, and may be
found as far north as Archangel and as far south as Nubia, but the
next time that I saw them in any number they had changed not only
their appearance but their manners. The black or, more properly
speaking, brown head of the gull had become grey. It seems they only
wear their black helmets or bonnets in summer time. Now it was
winter, and they were as mild as doves--tamer birds could hardly be
seen, and the history of their taming, as indeed of their presence so
far inland as the Keswick valley, was very simple. There had been a
very cruel wholesale {65} poisoning of the fish in the river
Greta--the black-headed gulls had heard of it, and came up the
Derwent in great numbers to the feast. It cannot have been all
pleasure, and to judge by the looks of some of the greedier of the
class colic abounded. Whether it was the abundance of the feast or
the after pain, that made an impression on the gull, I know not, but
from that day to this the black-headed gentry of the seaboard have
had such affection for our vale that any storm at sea or any scarcity
of food brings them in great numbers to our valley pastures.
We had a hard winter three years ago, and wherever the rooks were
seen upon the ground, the black flock was dappled with the white sea
gull, and the dolorous voice of the crow was drowned in the laughter
of the black-headed gull.
Very grateful were we in those sad and sombre winter mornings to hear
the gulls laughing round our house-roofs, and not the least enjoyable
thought as we went to our breakfast-table was the knowledge that
these wild sea-people had come to trust us, and were willing to be
our almoners.
There was one house in the valley, set upon a grassy hill overlooking
the lake, which {66} seemed especially to have charm for the bird
visitors. Swift of ear, as of eye, the black-headed gulls noticed
that the family went to breakfast at the sound of a gong. No sooner
did that gong echo across the lawn, than the heaven became white with
wings--a click at the gate was heard, and a maid with a large
pancheon of food specially prepared--hot and tasty--was seen to come
on to the grass and toss out the meal, in splotches, round about her.
Then what had been a silent grey undulating cloud of wings broke up
into a tangled mass of down-sweeping pink legs and up-sweeping white
wings, and with the noise of laughter and talk unimaginable, the
happy people fell to feeding.
I do not think that anything more dainty can be imagined than that
swift balance of up-tilted wing and down-reaching rosy feet, unless
it be the consummate care and nicety with which, before the
black-headed gull put beak to food, it tucked those long sweeping
slender wings close to its side.
Now and again as they fed, the whole flock would rise momentarily
into air and float up as though blown from the earth by some
invisible breath, and then, as silently and simultaneously, sink to
earth again.
{67}
At times one noticed how, rising up, they seemed to move in exactly
one position, moving their yellow rosy-stained beaks and grey heads
from right to left as though they feared an enemy. Yet they had no
need to fear, for it was quite clear that the rooks had been
specially engaged by them to be their sentinels. There they sat each
in solitary sable-hood, on the trees all round the lawn,--policemen
on guard, and of such good manners, that until the visitors from the
sea had eaten and were full, they did not think of claiming their
share of the broken victual.
What astonished one most as these black-headed gulls came morning
after morning to the sound of the gong, was their apparent
determination to lose no time about their food. They sat down to
table and rose up as one bird, but they were not more than ten
minutes about their meal, and there was some reason for this. There
were other breakfast tables spread for them on other lawns; the gong
at Derwent Hill was after all but summons to a first course.
How mild, how gentle, with what dove-like tenderness did these
grey-headed people of the sea appear as with merry laughter they
sailed about my head, their feet tucked {68} up like coral pink
jewels against their breast; how unlike those fierce black-headed
guardians of their nests and young, who had dashed at one, with open
beak and scolding voice and angry wing, upon the spring-tide dunes of
Ravenglass.
{69}
AT THE GRASMERE PLAY.
What a wonderful people these Westmoreland folk are; we see them on
the Wrestling Ground at Pavement end, and we think we never saw such
'playing.' We enter a Westmoreland dale farm, and we feel, if ever
men and women were born to make two ends meet by the care of sheep or
cattle, these are the people. We take lodgings in a Westmoreland
village for a holiday season, and though it may be quite true that
the landlady doesn't rave about the scenery, and is rather of the
type of the good woman-body who had lived at Rydal Mount before she
became lodging-house keeper, and who said to my friend, 'Yes, yes, I
am a tidy good cook and a decentish housekeeper, but I don't know
nowt about sunsets or sic like, and I don't need, they've never been
in my line,' it is at the same time true that, for looking after
one's creature wants and entering into the doings {70} of every day
and making one feel part and parcel of the household, a Westmorland
housekeeper is bad to beat.
But though I thought I knew the capacity of Westmoreland folk pretty
well, a new surprise was in store for me as I took my seat in the
temporary play-house at Grasmere and learned that Westmoreland folk
can not only play in the Grasmere wrestling ring, but can play on the
boards and before the footlights also. It is quite true that the
Grasmere people have had nearly a generation of training in the
dramatic art. A late rector, who was much interested in looking
after the recreations of the village, had translated for them many a
simple pastoral play from the French, and hardly a Christmas came
round, but he and his family, one of whom was herself a talented
writer of country plays, trained the villagers to give their
neighbours a play, and the children in the Bands of Hope to act
charades. Since his time another family who are much honoured at
Grasmere, and who have the same kind of enthusiasm for the dramatic
capacity of the village, had carried on the work, with the result
that at a moment's notice, for any simple play the daughter of the
house might write or adapt, she could count on having as her players
seventeen or eighteen of the {71} villagers who would seem born for
the parts she entrusted to them. There was no rivalry, no
'fratching' from house to house because this person or that person
was not selected for this or that particular part; on the contrary,
the village had such confidence in the conductor of the village
_troupe_ that if Miss S. thought that So-and-so was to take this part
and So-and-so the other, that was enough, and not another word was to
be said. Meanwhile the village had come to look upon the village
play as part of its very life and soul. Grasmere in winter time
would not be recognised by the average tourist. It is a village of
peace absolute and tranquillity beyond words.
From the earliest times 'Cursmas' has been looked upon as a time when
everybody in the dale should enjoy himself. In the old days, when
the fiddlers went round from farm to farm between Christmas-day and
New Year's Day, and when the Merry Night (or Murry Neet) was held
from place to place, the Grasmere folk knew that, however hard they
worked for the rest of the year, at least they would 'laike' until
the Twelfth Night, and precious little work would go forward in the
dales for the first fortnight of each glad new year. The desire for
some simple and rational form of {72} amusement with the beginning of
every year has never died out of their blood, so that a village play
seems to fill a need which is part of their very nature. 'Why, we
could not live without it,' said a Grasmere body to me; 'it's the
brightest spot in our lives.' 'I can't tell you how dramatic it
makes me feel,' said another. 'I am going thro' my dialogue at all
times o' day.' My husband said, 'You've had company to-day then.'
'Ay, ay,' I replied, 'rare company. I was taking two or three parts
in second Act, you see, and changing voices, that was all.'
'But where do you get your theatrical properties?' I said. 'Who
manages the scene-shifting and all the rest of it?' 'Oh, as for
scene-shifting, that is all managed by that great hairy-faced man
that you saw going down the road just now; he is a grand stage
manager and has been at it for twenty years or more.' I did not see
him again until after the close of the performance, when I noticed
him with his pocket-handkerchief in an unconventional way fanning out
the footlights, and then going up on a ladder to puff out the oil
lamps above the stage. 'And as for properties,' the good dame
replied, 'if you mean by that the things we have on the stage, well
everything is lent--there is {73} crockery from one house and chairs
from another, and the dresses, why they are the old originals that
were worn by our grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. We all know
to what farm or to what house we must go for this or that particular
dress, and it is lent very willingly.' 'And do you have large
audiences?' I said. 'Large audiences, well, if th' room would hold
double the number we could fill it, because folk of all maks and
sizes come together. This year we are giving a special afternoon
performance for the quality, but I am told that all reserved seats
have been booked for weeks.'
It was growing dark as I stood by the cottage door. The omnibus, as
it drove down from the Raise gap with folk from Keswick coming to see
the play, was sending sparks out behind from its 'slipper,' as though
it were making fireworks. And soon I saw the lamp-lighter lighting
up the oil lamps in the quaintly intricate lanes of the village
beside the Mere. Knots of people were gathered already at their
door-ways talking of the play, and already folk were drawing towards
the village hall near the Red Lion. I soon joined them, and passed
up a break-neck stairway to a big barn-like room, the {74} back part
of which was filled with rough boards knocked up into temporary
benches, and the forepart had wooden cottage chairs for reserved
seats. The drop-scene was down--the lake and island with Helm Crag
and Dunmail Raise, as seen from Loughrigg, on a summer evening.
A big moon shone in a solid sort of way in mid-heaven, and was
repeated at intervals right down through the picture, as though the
scene-painters would say: 'This is the moon, it is rising now, and
there it is fully risen.' But I was assured that this was the result
of some accident by fire that had taken place years ago in the said
drop-scene, and that these moons were, after all, only the patches
that repaired the beautiful picture. Three fiddlers and a piano were
making lively music when the bell tinkled and the curtain went up.
It was a very simple scene--the village carpenter sitting in his shop
working away at a stool, but it was to the life; and the Jacob who
was working there, with his red handkerchief round his throat, spoke
and acted to the life, and well he might--he was a village carpenter.
A tourist came upon the scene, and got very little change out of
Jacob, and less still out of Jacob's mother, Mrs. Rawlinson, {75} who
(after a very amusing dialogue with the tourist) determined to allow
him to be her lodger. She made him pay double the usual price
because he asked for 'sec a new faddlement as a seven o'clock
dinner.' Dolly, the maid, comes in with a handkerchief bound over
her head, as is the fashion of the North-country maids when they are
dusting or brushing up. They fall to talk:
Mrs. Rawlinson: 'I'se goin' to have mair nor sebben shillings a room
this time, but I was forced to ask a good price, for he'll be wanting
late dinners, and a' maks o' cooking and faddlements. What does ta
think wawmlets'll be, Dolly?'
Dolly: 'Nay, I never heard tell o' sec a thing.'
Mrs. Rawlinson: 'And grilled bones to his breakfast; but I kna' what
them'll be, just a marra bone served up hot in a napkin. I can
mannish that finely. Then he talked about a dish o' curry; that'll
certainly be some mak o' a French stew, made rare and hot wid pepper
and an onion or two.'
Dolly: 'What, thou's goin' to be sadly tewed.'
Mrs. Rawlinson: 'Nay. I was nobbut a bit put about at first, but I
mean to ask {76} Betty Braithwaite to lend me her beuk as larns yan
to mak hundreds and hundreds of things 'at I never heard of, nor
naebody else, I wud think.'
As long as I live I shall remember the delightful get-up of this said
Mrs. Rawlinson, with her high black cap and flower in it, and her
old-fashioned criss-cross shawl, and her spotless white 'brat'; and
the way in which she pronounced the word 'omelette' as 'waumlett'
convulsed the house.
The second scene in that first act was one that went home to the
hearts of all, for if the Westmoreland folk love one thing more
dearly than another it is 'a sale.' The sale is really the
excitement of the winter time. I believe that if nobody was changing
farms they would compel someone in the neighbourhood to pretend that
he was, that a sale might be held. It is not the fierce excitement
of bidding one against the other that causes the great gathering at
the sale, but 'everybody's tied to go,' as they say--bound to go to
the sale, just as everybody is bound to go when they are bid to a
funeral. It would not be friendly not to do so, and high, low, rich
and poor, one with another, meet at the sales, as De Quincey has
reminded us, to see {77} one another and to hear how the world is
stirring.
The Grasmere Players in this sale scene were all of the manner born,
and a young mason played the part of 'Tom Mashiter' (auctioneer) with
great delight to himself and to his audience.
'Here's t' fadther and muther and t' dowter he cried, as he put three
teapots together. 2s. 6d. for the lot just to get us into the
bidding! Here's a pair of copper scales; see how true they hang!
Now I durst bet there's not above half a dozen among us as honest as
them is. There's not, howiver; and I know who's yan o' the
half-dozen; ye can settle the other five amang you. Three an' six.
Three an nine. Come, be quick. Nay, I'll not wait. I'll tak some
on ye in, ye'll see, if ye don't bid quicker----'
And the scales were knocked down 'mid roars of laughter.
'Here's another good jar, yan o' t' auld fashion, wid a pair o' good
lugs to hod by. A penny for it I have bid; who'll say tuppence?
Tuppence for you, Sarah. It's a real good un, yan o' t' rare
auld-fashioned mak, like me an you, Sarah. I think there's nobbut us
two left o' the auld lang-eared breed.'
{78}
Then there were quilts sold with a deal of very amusing talk to make
them go off. One was in rags and tatters, but the auctioneer
suggested that it might do for a sick horse or a sick cow. I was
listening with great amusement, and I heard an old fellow beside me
say, 'Well, but things is goin' ower cheap,' and in another moment
jerked out, 'A penny--here,' and was not a little astonished that his
bid was not taken. I only mention this to show you how to the life
the whole thing was done, and with what deep interest the spectators
gazed upon the play.
In the second act the plot thickens, and the interest centres in the
two chief actors of the little play--Aaron Hartley, with his
apparently rejected addresses to the statesman's daughter up at
Hardcragg Farm, and Betty Braithwaite. Aaron comes into his mother's
kitchen, and, as far as any Westmoreland man dare let himself go,
allows her to see that things are all up between himself and Betty.
He must go off to 'Lunnon,' for he cannot face living on in the dale
now, and all the hay grass but one meadow has been got in.
'I think I must be going away, muther, for a bit. I don't see but
that you'll mannish {79} finely without me. We've gitten a' the hay
in but t' midder, and that'll not take so lang. It's nobbut a light
crop, and then it'll be verra slack till bracken time, and what,
Jonty's match to make a good start with that if I sudn't be back.'
Just then the farm servant Jonty enters. I believe that he was a
coachman in the village, but he was a consummate actor, and his
quaint, silent ways and the lifting up of his hand and scratching his
head behind his ear when talking were quite admirable. He has had,
from youth up, the wish to have something from London, and he tells
Aaron that he's 'wonderin' whether he could mannish to bring him a
"spead" fra Lunnon' when he comes back; 'but maybe the railway folk
wad charge ower dear for carryin' on it.' Aaron chaffs him out of
the idea that a 'spead' made in London is better than one made in
Kendal, and suggests a nice silk handkerchief. 'I never thowt o'
that,' says Jonty; 'that wad be as like as aught.' Libby, the pretty
farm servant breaks in here, and says: 'I wish tha would think on it,
and not be so ready with thy jacket sleeve.'
'Ye'll not can tell me (says honest Jonty) how much t' silk
handkercher'll be until ye've {80} bought it, I doubt; but if ye'll
send word I can just send ye the brass in a letter.'
And, saying, 'Well, I mun see all's reet afore goin' to bed,' the
faithful farm servant leaves the cottage to go round the byre.
But the actress of the piece throughout is Aaron's mother, Mrs.
Hartley. She sits there at her knitting, with her pretty crossover
on her shoulders, sair troubled at heart by her son Aaron's love
affair; she drops her stitches, for her eyes can hardly keep back the
tears, but she seems to know intuitively how much and how little
comfort she may give her son, and how far she may insist upon his
confidences. The attempt on her part to make it appear as if it did
not matter at all and that everything will come right in the end is
very bravely done. Fewest words are best.
'Good night, mother,' says Aaron. 'You'll not mind a' I've said.'
'Nay, lad, not I. Good night.'
And so the curtain falls. The second scene in the second act brings
Jonty and Mattha Newby (the village tailor) together. Mattha, as I
heard, was the son of a village tailor. To-day, evidently from his
boyhood's remembrances, he is able to play the tailor's part well.
Jonty has {81} been 'wrestling with a dyke' and torn his jerkin, and
Mattha volunteers to mend it. A song was introduced into this scene
which I had written for the occasion. It ran as follows:
Come! sweet April, whom all men praise,
Bring your daffodils up to the Raise,
Bid the delicate warbler trill,
Come with the cuckoo over the hill
Sprinkle the birch with sprays of green,
Purple the copses all between;
Bend the rainbow, and swell the brooks,
Fill the air with the sound of rooks,
Rubies lend, for the larch to wear,
The lambs are bleating, and May is near.
August comes, and the speckled thrush
Sings no more in the lilac bush,
Lambs in the meadow cease to bleat,
The hills are dim with the noontide heat,
From all her hedges the rose is fled,
And only the harebell lifts her head;
But green are the new-mown vales with grass
As if the Spring were again to pass,
And children bring from the far-off fell
The rose-red heather--the bee loves well,
Comes October with breath more cold,
She breathes, and the bracken turns to gold,
The cherry blushes as red as blood,
The rowan flames in the painted wood,
The larch-tree tresses are amber bright,
The birch is yellowing up on the height,
{82}
And over the valley and over the hill
A deep hush broods and the sheep are still,
But rainbow gossamers fill the air,
Tho' the old earth rests, the world is fair.
Now are the mountains winter-white,
Helvellyn shines in the clear moonlight;
The carollers sing, and the Christmas bells
Send sweet messages up the fells;
The old folk meet for their Christmas cheer,
The young folk skate on the frozen mere;
But Spring is coming, the shy buds peep,
The snow-drop moves in her long, long sleep,
The lemon-light shines on the leafless larch,
And the wood grows purple to welcome March.
Fair, how fair, are the changing days
That keep us happy beneath the Raise,
We who, in honour of Oswald the King,
Our 'bearings' still to the Old Church bring,
We who here in the silent time
Act our part and carol our rhyme.
Seasons change, and our hair grows grey,
But merrily goes the Grasmere play,
And two things stay with us all the year--
Love of our valley, and heart of cheer.
It had been prettily set to music by a Grasmere lady, and the two
bass voices chimed in with the two last lines in each verse, and
Mattha the tailor and Jonty the farm servant gave great effect to the
song by the sudden addition of their manly notes. Before the curtain
falls on this scene, we learn that the tourist (to whom {83} we were
introduced in the first scene), Mr. Augustus Mallister, who has heard
that she is an heiress, is determined, if possible, to win the heart
of Betty Braithwaite. He knows that Aaron's absence has made her
heart grow fonder. He determines to write a letter, which shall be
posted in London, purporting to come from Aaron, in which the absent
lover declares that he has become engaged to an American girl; and so
the curtain falls.
In the last act, and the first scene, there is a pretty passage,
although it is a pathetic one, between Mrs. Hartley and the girl
Betty Braithwaite, to whom Mrs. Hartley has given Aaron's letters to
read--one of them the fatal letter. In the last scene Norman
Braithwaite and his wife, an excellent make-up, come in to talk
matters over, and the letter from London amongst other things. Jonty
remembers how that, on a certain day in August, the tourist chap,
'the fine gentleman' as he called him, had been spouting out a letter
about an Aaron getting wed to an American, and they at once seemed to
see light and to feel that the letter Mrs. Hartley had received was a
forgery. Just at that time Aaron and Betty enter, and one can tell
by a glance at them that it doesn't matter how many forged letters
have been written in {84} London; they have quite made up their minds
to make a match of it. As for Mallister, 'the fine gentleman,' Jonty
breaks in:
'Is it Mallister you're talkin' on? We weant see any more o' yon
ne'er-do-weel here. I met t' p'liceman going off wid him to Kendal.'
Norman: 'T' p'liceman! What for?'
Jonty: 'It seems he's been wanted for some time. He's been up to
some forgery or summat o' that mak.'
Poor Mrs. Rawlinson, 'the fine gentleman's' landlady, enters greatly
distressed that the good name of her house has been compromised by
letting lodgings to a forger. 'Why,' says she, 'I thought he was a
gentleman, wi' his wawmlets to his breakfast, and his late dinners
and siclike.' And so with the assertion that there is nothing to
wait for and the wedding shall take place at Martinmas, the curtain
goes down, and all's well that ends well.