shepherd's meeting, but 'kenned' Joseph Hawell; and of later years
most of the 'Yellow' or Conservative meetings in the district had
seen his manly form and heard his manly words in what he used to call
'the national cause.' For Joseph Hawell was a Conservative and a
Unionist; 'thoro'-bred' he used to say, for his father and his mother
had felt as he did in matters political, and he thought 'they had
mixed a laal bit yaller wid his poddish' when he was a boy. At any
rate he would have liked well enough to have branded his fleecy {151}
Skiddaw darlings with the words 'For King and Country,' and used a
yellow 'dip' if such had been in existence.
I knew his old father--him of Longlands in Uldale--later of Lonscale;
and a better informed man, a man, that is, better read in the news of
the day, was hardly to be found in the farm-houses round Keswick. So
like Dean Stanley of Westminster he was in face that I would
introduce him to my friends as 'the Dean,' and by his side, as he
'cracked' on the things of state, sat usually one of the
sweetest-faced, gentlest-natured of women, his good wife, whose
maiden name was Jane Walker, of Stockdale. They had married in the
'fifties' of last century, and she had borne him five children--John,
Jane (who died in girlhood), Robert, Joseph, and Ann.
Joseph was a Christmas present to the old oak cradle at Longlands
Farm, for he was born on the 24th December, 1854; and he grew up,
with John and Robert, to be as passionately fond of sheep as his
father. Never a boy for books much at school, he still as a
youngster was ever fond of helping on the Fell, and of training the
shepherd's dogs; and rare training he had himself.
{152}
His father had, from a present of ten gimmer lambs, given him by his
father when he was a young man, reared up quite a fine race of the
blackfaced Herdwicks, and was, by the time the lads could bear him
company, flockmaster of 500 sheep on Frozen Fell and Wylie Ghyll, and
of 300 in the Forest, as it is called--the great heathery waste in
the basin at the back of Skiddaw.
Joseph grew up strong and lusty as a shepherd should grow, and
together with his brothers, took to wrestling as all shepherds in
Cumberland ought to do; but the lads, as they grew up, became so fond
of the sheep and so devoted to their father, that as soon as he,
seeing that they were likely to be drawn into the ring, and to lose
some of their interest in the Herdwick sheep, begged them to give up
the wrestling, they gave it up; and henceforth these brothers' one
aim in life seemed to be how they could most help their father to
improve the Herdwick breed, and maintain his honour as a shepherd.
In 1869 the family migrated from Uldale to the secluded farm on Col.
Watson's estate, between Lonscale and Saddleback; and what success
the Hawells, father and sons, obtained {153} as breeders of pure
Herdwicks can be seen by any who will call to-day at the Farm, and
ask to be shown the prizes and cards that literally cover the walls
from floor to ceiling.
The old man, who had struggled with storm on Skiddaw through his
laborious life, failed in health, suffered as shepherds often do from
terrible rheumatism, and was troubled with asthma. At last he felt
obliged to leave the ingle-nook and take to his bed upstairs; but his
love of the shepherd's life was still so strong upon him that a few
days before he died he insisted on seeing one of the prize Herdwick
rams, and the sons had a tough job to get it to 'clim' the 'stee' and
stand in the presence of the dying man. The old man felt death
coming upon him shortly after, but he told those who watched they
need not trouble to fetch the doctor, as he knew his hour had come,
and he was ready to 'gang' home.
I wrote this sonnet at the time of his death:
The sheep are bleating in the fell-side field,
The kine call sadly from the homestead near,
But thou art far away, thou dost not hear.
A greater Shepherd, for thy feet, doth wield
{154}
The rod that thro' the vale of death can yield
Sole comfort. Round thy bed and round thy bier
The trophies of thy hand in letters clear,
Speak; but we speak not: grief our lips has sealed.
Farewell, where Glenderaterra pours apace
Rich music from her thousand upland springs!
Thy name, old friend, the Lonscale streamlet sings;
King-Shepherd thou of Skiddaw's fleecy race;
And still in memory we behold thy face,
Lined by laborious morns and evenings.
And on the headstone in Greystoke churchyard, that records Edward
Hawell's burial, may be seen the following lines:
Here lies a simple shepherd, one who strove
To leave behind a fairer, fuller flock;
Lead him, Great Master Shepherd, in thy love,
To wells of life from the Eternal Rock!
Before he died he had the comfort of seeing Joseph wedded to as good
a daughter-in-law as ever lived. It was but in keeping with the
whole life of the household that Joseph should have first met
Margaret Roberts at the Gillbanks' clipping. The love for all time
that first began at the shearing, went on smoothly till that other
Master of the Shears, one men call Death, cut so cruelly the knot
that Love in this life had tied. Married in 1886, Joseph was happy
as man could be; he {155} was blessed with a son John, and a daughter
Sarah Jane.
With plenty of work on the Fells by day for himself, his brother, and
his men to do, he yet found time to study at night. He took to
politics as his father before him had taken to them, and, having
gained confidence in public speaking, he worked hard at his speeches
and the preparing of them.
Of books he had not many but good; and he specially delighted in
biographies and history. He never tired of reading of the _Spacious
Times of Great Elizabeth_, the _History of Wellingtons Wars_, or of
_Nelson's Exploits_; and when the Royal Jubilee and Armada
Tercentenary came round, no stronger hand or more willing heart was
found in the whole neighbourhood to build up the huge bonfire stack
on Skiddaw top than Joseph Hawell's. As I write I can see him, the
perspiration streaming down his honest face, building away with the
peats, and handing up the paraffin, bucket by bucket; and hoping, as
he told us then, there was not a man in canny Cumberland but would
feel the fiery glow of a patriot's heart that night.
But he will never help us on Skiddaw top more; and never, alas, shall
we go to the {156} shepherds' meeting in Wylie Ghyll with him again,
or see him at the ram fair, or hear him at a 'yaller' speech day, or
sit with him at his own fireside and 'crack' on about the Herdwicks.
It is thought that influenza laid its deadly hand upon him early in
the year 1891, and simultaneously he had some ailment of the
gums--toothache he called it. It must have been something more
serious; he went off to Keswick to see the doctor: the doctor lanced
the gum, but the wound took bad ways, and within a day or so the
strong man was in bed, weak and delirious.
He wished to be up and after the sheep. Must be about his father's
business! And, on a cold Spring day, Friday, February 20th, an angel
came to the lonely farmstead of Lonscale, to bid the brave man's
spirit fare the way that all who really wish to do that Heavenly
Father's business must go uncomplainingly. And still Joseph Hawell's
heart was where it had ever been--at home in England. He thought
that some strange hands were taking him away by force to another
land, and the last words that he spoke were these:
'No! if I must die, I will at least die an {157} Englishman on
English ground!' And so he died.
The strong hand of one stronger than man had taken him; and in a few
days more, on February 23rd, hands tender and strong, the hands of an
affectionate brother and true friends, bore the body of a shepherd,
dead in his prime--for he was but 36 years old--down through the
cow-pasture and over the gurgling Glenderaterra, and so through the
silent Brundholme woods above the wailing Greta away to its rest in
English earth beneath the shadow of the old church of St. Kentigern,
in the Crosthwaite valley, within sight of that horned hill of
Skiddaw he had loved so well. The people of Keswick begged that his
body might be carried through their sorrowful town that opportunity
might be given of showing sympathy and respect. And many a stalwart
yeoman came to the Homegoing. Little they said, but they felt much
as they moved in their dark market-carts toward the burial.
'Eh, but what! it's a terrible loss for us all!' 'The best man amang
us gone.' 'We all mun ga when t' time comes, but it's hard bearing
is this.' 'Niver a handier man wi' {158} t' sheep i' t' whoale
forest.' 'Niver a better man clim't t' fell; a decent, stiddy man as
iver was; niver heard a wrang word from him.' 'Eh, but! it's past
finding out t' way young uns goes, and auld ones stays.' 'Poor lass,
she's lost as good a mate as ever woman had.' 'Poor barns, they've
lost a fadder afore they kent him.' And so sorrowfully they turned
away from the grave, whereon flowers had been strewn and wreaths laid
by hands of men who in their common regret forgot all party
differences and thought only of Joseph Hawell, as a man the 'Blues
and Yellows' were alike proud of in life, and alike determined to
honour in death.
I was a traveller in foreign lands when the news of Joseph Hawell's
death reached me, and I felt for a moment stunned. As I realised it,
it seemed to me as if I did not care to see Skiddaw again. He was a
piece of it; and Skiddaw without him would be no Skiddaw at all, such
an ideal yeoman shepherd; so tender-hearted to the yeanlings; so true
to his mountain flock; such a man among men, honest and upright,
reliable; one always knew somehow that if Joe was present, men right
and left of him would {159} behave like gentlemen; so high-minded and
bent on the 'Just and True'; and, 'as the great ones only are, in his
simplicity sublime.' His influence was wider and deeper than he had
dreamed of, and I felt that with Joe Hawell a power that had worked
for righteousness in a whole fell-side community, had passed as far
as visible form goes from the earth.
On reaching home, it was with a sad heart that I neared the solitary
fell-side farm that had been so darkened with loss. There was the
same kitchen; the fiddle was on the wall; the bacon flitches hung
from the rafter; the stuffed heads of the two old favourite shepherd
dogs, 'Dainty' and 'Rob,' looked out from under the triumphal arch of
sickles from the wall; the gun rested close by; the medicine horn and
lambing bottle were in their places, and the old row of books that
the father and he had so often turned to for thought and inspiration,
were in their shelf--but there was no Joe! Robert took me by the
hand and bade me sit on the settle, and he would tell me all about
it. The poor wife said nothing, but just rose quietly and began to
spread the table and set on tea, and when I urged that I would not
have her fash {160} herself so or put herself out of the way for me,
she urged that it would have been Joe's wish, and I said no more.
Then the dogs came in. 'Ah,' said Robert, 't' rough un, "Jess," has
not forgitten her master yet. She was sair put out o' t' way when my
brother lay ill, whined at nights and would not be comforted; and she
has only just now, after ten weeks' coaxing, consented to follow me
when I go to the Fell.'
[Illustration: JOSEPH HAWELL.]
'And did you have no thought of Joseph's worsening,' I said, 'when he
took ill?'
'No,' said Robert, 'but rather a strange thing happened just a week
before. I am not superstitious, and I said little about it. But I
woke early just as it was beginning to be dawn and saw a sad face
looking upon me. I knew the face well, it was Joe's wife's sister,
and I thought I was dreaming and sat up, and the face still looked
very sadly and then faded away, and I felt it must be a vision. I
have wondered since if it was meant as a token to us. She was the
first person, however, that came to help us when Joe died. It is
singular, is it not? Eh dear! but it's a sair heart that I have as I
go shepherding now; for it's when I'm amang {161} t' sheep I mostly
what seem to miss him. It comes ower me t' warst when I am looking
at t' ewes that we used to talk ower together. You would like to see
some of the letters, I daresay, we received when poor Joe went.' And
saying this, the stalwart man, who loved his brother as tenderly as a
woman, put a bundle of letters into my hand.
'But,' said I, as I gave back these precious documents to the owner,
'did he not leave any papers behind him? He is spoken of in one
letter as gifted beyond ordinary measure as a public speaker.'
'Well,' replied the brother, 'he left very little in writing; but you
know we kept his speeches. They are scattered up and down the
newspapers.' And following into the Herdwick-prize room, I soon
found myself deep in the speeches Joseph Hawell had from time to time
delivered in the political cause he championed.
I asked if he took much trouble in the preparing of his speeches, and
I was told that he did; worked hard for nights beforehand, and
sometimes, as our greater orators have done, learned a bit of his
intended speech by heart. Joseph had as library, up there in the
rafter-smoke, some old 17th and {162} 18th century tomes, full of the
breath of English spoken pure. English history was his chief study;
but 'here,' said the good wife sadly, 'is a book he oft read in,
particularly on Sunday afternoons.' It was a magnificent folio copy
of _The Whole Duty of Man_, _The Gentleman's Calling_, _The Art of
Contentment_, and _The Christian Birthright_, printed by Norton, at
Oxford, in 1695. As I turned over its well-thumbed pages I thought
that Joseph Hawell had gone to good models for his masterful English,
and had drunk wholesome draughts of goodly thought and wisdom as he
studied.
'Did he leave no other written papers?'
'Yes, he left a few songs he wrote from time to time.'
I asked to see them. 'God Save Ireland from Disunion,' was the title
of one; another, in rough copy, was a sheep-shearing song.
Had Joseph written anything else? Yes; there was just one letter or
two he had left behind him in rough copy, and I was welcome to see
them if I cared. I did care; and was rewarded.
He had latterly been a bit troubled in his mind by a friend who had
what are called 'free-thinking notions.' And Joe, who was {163} as
dead against that kind of cant as any religious cant--and he was, as
I can testify, hard upon this latter--had delivered his soul.
The letter was written on February 9th, 1891, and the hand that wrote
it was cold and stiff on February 20th. I dare to look upon this
letter as the yeoman shepherd's last will and testament. It runs as
follows:
'DEAR FRIEND,--I have received your books, and am much obliged. I
have not yet got them read thoroughly, but so far they have but
caused a reaction in my mind in favour of the Christian religion, and
led me to have recourse to some fine old books written more than a
hundred years ago, in a bold and intelligent hand, proving that
astronomy and science are a powerful proof of the might and majesty
of an Almighty Creator.
'Could you follow up your science by winging your way to the highest
star of observation, you would there see other skies expanded and
other planets and systems established, each giving harmony and
perfection of attention to time by the nicest rule. Then wend your
way past other ten thousand worlds, and at the end of this vast tour
you would still be muddling in the suburbs of creation, only to find
that no imagination can {164} fix the limits of His creating hand,
and that conceited, ignorant, and insignificant man is absolutely
unable to comprehend the grandeur and correctness of His magnificent
workmanship. Then am I to be told that the builder of this
stupendous structure is incapable of such a paltry performance as
taking possession of our souls and restoring our lifeless bodies at
His own good will and pleasure?
'I find,' he adds, 'Carlyle's work very instructive, and many of the
passages furnish evidence of the existence of the great Disposer of
all events.'
I said this should stand as Joseph Hawell's last will and testament.
No; there was another letter, written evidently just at the end of
last year, in which he begs of a neighbour the loan of a horse and
gear to enable him to bring down on a sledge from Lonscale Crag one
of the finest single stones there. He wishes to set it up in some
field on the farm, and have his father's name upon it and his
father's deeds and prowess as a breeder of Herdwick sheep, with a
single verse of descriptive poetry beneath, and he feels sure that
his friend will lend a hand 'to erect a monument to at least one
member of the Hawell family whose stainless, honourable, {165} and
straightforward life will always be pointed to with pride by his
descendants.'
Joseph Hawell! the horses have gone, and the sledge has brought its
heavy burden to the home-farm; and on it are engraved two names
instead of one, for there are those who honour the son who would so
have honoured his sire. There by that mountain path they both of
them knew so well of old is the grey memorial cross set, and on it is
carved, in symbol of eternity, the endless knot their Norse
forefathers used. A simple verse is engraved at the base.
Those who pass the 'gale' for the meadows of Lonscale, to breast the
back of Blencathra, or to climb the slopes of Skiddaw, shall surely
learn that our Cumberland mountains still as of old breed men of high
purpose and noble endeavour; and that still, from following the
sheep, God calls His chosen ones by lives of kindliness, simplicity,
and straightforward goodness, to guide their brothers in the path of
duty, righteousness, and truth.
{166}
A FAMOUS YEW-TREE.
There is a passage in George Fox's _Journal_ that brings one face to
face with a brave man of God, reveals the spirit of true martyrdom,
and makes one envious of his dazzling courage:
'Now were great threatenings given forth in Cumberland that if ever I
came there again they would take away my life. When I heard it, I
was drawn to go to Cumberland, and went to the same parish whence
these threatenings came, but they had not power to touch me.'
It is a passage that attracts one to the apostle of the
leathern-apron, and makes one desire to know the scenes of his life's
travail. It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that when one
found oneself at Keswick in a neighbouring valley to Lorton, one
should wish to visit one of the places ever associated with his
memory, and see the spot whence {167} the echoes of the preacher's
voice have never died.
Associated with this wish to follow the footsteps of George Fox, was
the desire to see the Yew-tree, 'Pride of Lorton Vale,' which, on the
day of Fox's sermon, provided seats for the listeners. For the
famous yew-trees in the Lake District are becoming each year fewer.
It is true that the great yew in Tilberthwaite is still standing, but
that famous hollow trunk that kept alive the name of the mission
preacher St. Patrick, in Patrick's Dale or Patterdale, has fallen;
and the great winter storm of 1883 worked havoc upon Seathwaite's
sacred brotherhood:
'Those fraternal four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks!--and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling and inveterately convolved--
are now a wreck,--one fell, the others were riven to pieces.
Here in the Lake District, by command of bluff King Hal, each
estatesman was obliged to plant a yew-tree by his homestead, in order
that he might never lack of wood for his bow when he was called--as
he not unfrequently was called--to the Marches, in defence of the
{168} Border. And in many places, long after the homestead has
passed away, the solitary yew survives to tell us of the troublous
times of old. It was not long since an estatesman sent down to the
local museum of Keswick the old oaken bow-chest of his fathers,
which, though it has been long used as a meal-ark, by its carving
clearly shows it was intended for other use. The family name of
Bowman is a common one in Cumberland, and still in our neighbourhood
the field-names preserve a memory of the village bowman's prowess,
and the 'butts' field is a word of common parlance.
But it is George Fox, the man of peace, that we were most interested
in, as we crossed the Keswick Valley and climbed the long slope of
Whinlatter to pay a visit to the brave man's preaching place, and it
was mere coincidence that that preaching place should be associated
with weapons of war.
[Illustration: THE LORTON YEW.]
People do not realise how fair a view of the whole Skiddaw range is
presented to them as they climb that pass, or they would climb it
oftener. The higher one climbs, the higher does Skiddaw appear, and
deep-bosomed mountain-side in all its massy grandeur of emerald green
and lilac shade in spring, of puce and burnished bronze in autumn,
{169} impresses one with its calm and restfulness. The cloud, sure
sign of fine weather, rests upon its utmost peak to-day, and
irresistibly recalls the lines of Wordsworth's sonnet:
'Veiling itself in mid-Atlantic clouds
To pour forth streams more sweet than Castaly,'
while the pleasant farms with the far-off interchange of happy
cock-crowing, glitter at our feet, and, like an arm of some great
ocean-loch, the white waters of Bassenthwaite come round the
precipice of Barf, and sweep out of the shadow of Wythop woods into
the September sunshine. On our left rises Grasmoor, haunt of the
dottrel, and Hobcarton Crag, beloved of rare mountain flowers. So we
crest the long slope and drop down into Lorton, with the hill-sides
on our right, golden with gorse against the westering sun. Turning
sharply to the left as soon as the village is reached, we pass a kind
of pleasant rural street, if that may be called a street which has
houses only on the one side of it, and just as we emerge into the
country again, find ourself at a spot where the road forks, a portion
of it going over a beck bridge into a farm enclosure by a picturesque
old water-mill and byre, and a portion of it,--the main road {170} to
Loweswater,--bending sharply to the right to go across the valley by
the north side of the stream, which is here hidden from view by a
long barn building. If we pause at this point we cannot help being
struck by the sombre mass of a great yew-tree standing in a pleasant
meadow close to the beck, where at one time there was doubtless a
ford. This is what Wordsworth described as
'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,
Not loth to furnish 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,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary tree!--a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed.'
It is not to-day the noble tree it was when Fox was here, and the
prophecy of the poet was only a few years since like to have been
made utterly vain. For its form and aspect was so magnificent that
its owner sold it to a Lorton wood merchant, and it was just about to
be cut down when some memory of Fox's {171} sermon awoke in the
breast of a faithful member of the Society of Friends in the
neighbourhood, and the wood merchant good-naturedly went off his
bargain.
It is true that it shows no signs of decay, but it has suffered loss.
Two of its main stems were shattered years ago by a hurricane, and
were sawn off at the bole. Let us go along the road to the farm
buildings, and turn back down to what now serves for a watering-place
for horses. It is thus we shall best get an idea of how 'it stands
single, in the midst of its own darkness.'
The branches stretch their shadow over the stream, and the ripple of
the sunny talkative beck contrasts strangely with the deep silence of
the solemn tree. If we go up to Whinfell Hall and ask a keen
observer of nature and plant life about this famous yew, Mr. Wilson
Robinson will tell us that he once measured the trunk at its least
circumference and found it 23 feet 10 inches, and that, about thirty
years ago, a strong south-east gale came with hurricane force down
Hope Ghyll, wrenched off one of the side limbs and carried away a
third of the tree. Another limb has fallen since then, and yet,
shattered and torn, what a magnificent ruin it {172} is, how well
worth climbing over Whinlatter Pass to visit.